Hail Somaliland

The New Neo Posted on by

A fascinating move by Israel:

Israel’s recognition of Somaliland landed like a dropped plate in a room full of diplomats pretending not to hear the crash. Somalia protested. The Arab League scolded. Turkey and Egypt warned darkly about precedent. The African Union fretted about stability. Western officials whispered about process. All the usual theater. What none of them wanted to say out loud was the obvious truth staring back at them. Israel did nothing radical. It applied the rules.

For thirty years Somaliland has functioned as a state. Not a slogan, not a cause, not a grievance economy. A state. Permanent population. Defined territory. Effective government. Capacity to conduct foreign relations. The four tests of the Montevideo Convention, met quietly and consistently since 1991. Add a fifth fact that the convention does not even ask for but history does. Somaliland has committed exactly zero acts of international terrorism. No hijackings. No embassy bombings. No exported jihad. No global fundraising networks laundering blood as politics.

The article goes on to state that Palestine, the darling of so many countries around the world who have recognized it as a state, lacks characteristics of effective government (unless the aim of effective government is terrorism):

[“Palestine” has no] defined territory under sovereign control. No effective government with a monopoly on force. No independent foreign policy capacity. No coherent administration. Plenty of armed factions. Plenty of glorified murder. Plenty of international terror. And yet that project is treated as sacred, inevitable, untouchable. …

Israel’s recognition of Somaliland … says something deeply offensive to the professional peace industry. Sovereignty is not a vibe. It is a performance. You earn it by governing, not by suffering louder than your neighbor.

Leave it to Israel to point out the contrast.

And from Roger L. Simon:

According to Grok, “Somaliland, a former British protectorate, has maintained relative stability, its own currency, passports, elections, and government since 1991, in contrast to ongoing instability in Somalia.” …

In fact, their residents have been photographed waving the Israeli flag after their country’s leader signed agreements promising Israeli aid for agriculture, health, technology, and economic development.

Is this another important avatar of Netanyahu’s “New Middle East?” It could well be, but in the short run, it certainly will make life extremely difficult for the Houthis with the possibility of Israeli jets parked three hundred miles from their shores. Say goodbye to the terrorists’ control of the Gulf of Aden with its proximity to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.

Let’s hope so.

It’s another roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Is the Ukraine War finally nearing the end? I’ll cut to the chase and say that I don’t think so, although I’d be more than happy to be pleasantly surprised.

But here’s the story:

Donald Trump said security guarantees to end the war in Ukraine were “95 per cent done” as he hosted Volodymyr Zelensky at Mar-a-Lago for peace talks.

Speaking at his Florida holiday home, Mr Trump said a deal to end the conflict was “a lot closer” after an afternoon of negotiations with the Ukrainian president and a call with Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader, on Sunday.

The US president suggested it could take a “few weeks” to get the deal over the line and that some “thorny issues” remain, likely referring to Ukrainian territorial concessions.

As thorny as a briar patch.

(2) Somalia will head the UN Security Council in January. No, that’s neither a joke nor a typo:

The great nation of Somalia is set to assume the rotating presidency of the United Nations Security Council on January 1 for a period of one month. Somalia is currently serving as a non-permanent member of the Security Council for the 2025–2026 term. As president, the nation’s representatives “will chair council meetings, help shape the agenda, and represent the Security Council throughout the month.”

(3) The J5 pipebomber’s motive is revealed:

But…for those willing to accept what the current DOJ has to say about it at face value:

Cole acted alone
Cole was upset about the 2020 election
Cole blamed both of the parties
Cole planted the bombs, intending for them to go off on the night of January 5

This makes sense to me, particularly since the bombs were placed at both the RNC and the DNC.

(4) Brigitte Bardot has died at the age of 91. She quit movies while still young, and devoted the rest of her life to animal rights causes. But she also spoke out against what she saw as the Islamic practices that she viewed as cruel to animals, and was fined many times for her statements on the issue.

Bardot was very much a sex symbol, and I never saw any of her films. She apparently didn’t think too much of them:

With the exception of 1963’s critically acclaimed “Contempt,” directed by Godard, Bardot’s films were rarely complicated by plots. Often they were vehicles to display Bardot’s curves and legs in scanty dresses or frolicking nude in the sun.

“It was never a great passion of mine,” she said of filmmaking. “And it can be deadly sometimes. Marilyn (Monroe) perished because of it.”

Bardot retired to her Riviera villa in St. Tropez at the age of 39 in 1973 after “The Woman Grabber.”

That’s quite a title; perhaps it loses something in translation?

RIP.

(5) This video on the empty Somali daycare centers of Minnesota has gone viral:

The right: “live not by lies”

The New Neo Posted on by

Solzhenitsyn famously said: “live not by lies.” How many politicians follow that maxim? Vanishingly few. And I wouldn’t expect them to; politics is a dirty, compromised business.

And yet, not all lies are created equal. Some lies are minor: “I had the biggest crowd ever at my rally.” Some lies are much worse: “The MAGA insurrectionists on January 6th killed five people.” Some lies are even more destructive: “The Jews are an evil cabal that runs the world, and all of them must be murdered, even the children.” Or: “Communism will lead to utopia; we just have to kill a few hundred million people who stubbornly refuse to get with the program.”

Politicians need to draw lines about the positions of allies, and to make it clear when a position an ally holds is beyond the pale and highly destructive, especially when that position is based on something that is unequivocally a lie.

Which brings us to discussions such as this one, from a comment by “Nate Winchester.” I had previously written this:

Yes , I think it will “end there” because the offenses of Owens, Carlson, Fuentes et al are especially egregious and vile. If [Vance] can’t be critical of them he is morally bankrupt., These are not small nitpicky issues, to be safely ignored, as other such calls to denounce someone else might be. Perhaps you haven’t listened to them; i have. They are poison, and it’s not “just” about Jews and Israel, either.

It is possible – and necessary – to pick and choose whom to denounce.

I wrote quite a bit more, but that was the part “Nate Winchester” quoted, and he replied:

I believe you have misunderstood me, @neo. I’m not saying they are small things or nitpicky or anything of the sort. You say it will “end there” – how?

Not even rhetorical or leading, I really do mean, “how will it end there?” Because I remember the 2016 election. You could make a drinking game of how often Trump would get asked in interviews about white nationalists and like. Each and every time he expressed strong condemnation and denouncement. And then they would ask it again. Even in Trump’s Charlottesville speech he outright said “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally” and yet what was the meme created by the media? I remember that time because on other blogs I pointed out to Leftists that line, a line of condemnation in a speech by Trump before that day, and a line of condemnation in a speech that followed that one (establishing that in 3 speeches in a row he condemned white nationalists) and it still wasn’t enough for the other side (some of whom even outright denied it).

So yes, part of me just does not believe that it will “end there” because experience has shown me that it won’t. It may “end there” for you and a few other people, but unfortunately those are not the only votes that count in a nation-wide run or voice in public spaces. … My impression looking back is that when the Right said, “Ok, we’re also not ok with racism and will kick out people who have those views” the Left very quickly figured out they could use “racism” to snipe out of the way any Right-leaning figure that was a bit too troublesome for them.

I’m not even saying you’re wrong or Carlson et al aren’t dangerous or anything like that. I’m trying to think what are the long term plays. JD kicks them out of the party and establishes for the Press that a specific charge can cut someone out of the coalition. Then they start badgering JD about the next person/group they want to get cut off. Then the next after that. And another after that.

Because in the post and thread that followed we were talking solely about demands from the right that Vance criticize and even denounce Tucker, Owens, and Fuentes, I assumed with my answer that we were not talking about demands from the left. But apparently that wasn’t clear enough, so let me say that of course, the left will never stop making such demands. Also, it will distort any response that is made in order to make the Republican look as bad as possible. Those things are crystal clear and have been for a long long time.

I’m talking about demands from people on the right. And to clarify further: I’m not even saying that demands from the right will ever end, although I think they are not as incessant or widespread as those from the left. What I meant when I wrote that “it will end there,” was not that the demands themselves will end, just that only some things require a public stance against them. I think that generally, when we’re talking about demands from the right, it’s only the most egregious and destructive lies on the right from which a politician on the right would need to distance him or herself.

And furthermore – for me, the emphasis shouldn’t be on demands and reactions to them, yea or nay.

If a person says “I’m not going to do a certain thing because I don’t respond to demands,” that is paradoxical because the demand is still shaping the speaker’s behavior, albeit in a negative way. It’s a bit analogous to the position of a rebellious teen who won’t do something merely because mom and dad tell him not to do it. The demand nevertheless is still shaping the behavior and the teen is not independent, merely stubbornly negating the demand.

“I don’t do something merely because people tell me to do it” is a perfectly reasonable position for anyone to take. But it should be combined with, “I also don’t not do something just because people tell me to do it. That is, I make my own decisions independently.” And then the person can either condemn something, refuse to condemn it, agree with it, disagree with it, or declare neutrality, based on the thing itself: is it true or false, is it wrong and destructive, and how important is it?

That should be the basis of the decision. Each politician can make that decision and must make it, setting up a hierarchy of issues he or she deems important enough and offenses great enough on which to draw the line.

“I will condemn no one and no thought or utterance on the right, no matter how awful” is, in my opinion, a position of moral bankruptcy, although it might be arrived at for the very practical reason that the politician has decided that’s the way to election victory. I don’t think that’s the case here with Vance’s stand; I not only think it’s morally bankrupt but I also don’t think it will lead to victory. I think that more people would vote for moral clarity than moral bankruptcy, and that “my buddy, right or wrong, and there is literally nothing that person could say with which I would publicly disagree” is not moral clarity and not worthy of respect.

NOTE: Let me add that it’s a strawman to pretend that the issue at hand is the demand that Vance or any other politician condemn people for disagreeing with Israeli policy or the current Israeli government. I see that strawman argument made constantly; it started on the left and then morphed to the right. I’ve written about some of the actual issues involved, in several posts on Owens and Carlson; for example this and this for Owens, and this and this for Carlson.

And by the way, I don’t think Trump needs to denounce the trio. He’s already called Carlson “kooky” (way too mild, but at least it’s both true and negative). But actions speak even louder than words, and Trump has made it clear by both words and action that he doesn’t share the pernicious beliefs of Carlson, Owens, and Fuentes and is opposed to them. Perhaps as time goes on, this will become more clear of Vance as well. I certainly hope so.

From “Always On My Mind” to “The Letter”

The New Neo Posted on by

I have long been very partial to Willie Nelson’s version of this beautiful song. I find it to be understated rather than overdone, with a bittersweet and mature tone of regret. Here it is:

I had a vague memory – very vague – of the Elvis Presley version. When I listened to it after all these years, it just doesn’t move me the same way at all. I’ve never been a Presley fan; maybe that’s it. But it doesn’t reach me with that same tone of sincerity:

I was very surprised, though, to learn that the first recording of the song was by Brenda Lee. As usual, she sings very very well. However, call me sexist, but I don’t see this as a woman’s song. It just doesn’t work as well as when a man sings it. But here you go:

But none of those people wrote the song. It was written by a threesome: Johnny Christopher, Mark James and Wayne Carson. They sing it here; I like their version a lot:

But perhaps the most surprising thing of all is that Carson also wrote “The Letter,” an extremely different song. His rendition is here:

And the fabulous hit version, sung by The Boxtops and their 16-year-old lead singer with the raspy voice, all yukking it up here because they’re lip-syncing:

J. D. Vance tries to thread the needle

The New Neo Posted on by

Melanie Phillips is not pleased:

Bad as all this is, the really shocking thing has been the refusal by certain mainstream conservatives to denounce [growing anti-Semitism on the right] and shut it down, appearing instead to nod along to it.

It’s certainly true that some have not condemned it, but a great many have – at least it seems that way to me. For example, she cites Kevin Roberts’ initial failure, but not the fact that it caused an uproar and rebellion at Heritage, with many conservatives there leaving in anger.

The split is an old story rather than a new one, with Pat Buchanan and William F. Buckley playing starring roles way back when.

In my opinion,Vance tries to be too clever by half. From Phillips:

One of those influential conservatives, however, is none other than U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who is another of Carlson’s friends. Vance closed the conference by decrying “purity tests” and said: “I didn’t bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to de-platform.”

The difference between “denounce” – that is, criticize – and “deplatform” – that is, silence – is huge, and Vance is smart enough to know it.

From Phillips:

In a subsequent interview on the website UnHerd, [Vance] made some even more troubling remarks. Although he said that antisemitism and all forms of ethnic hatred “have no place in the conservative movement,” he also said the idea that Carlson’s views “are somehow completely anathema to conservatism, that he has no place in the conservative movement” was “frankly absurd.”

That makes zero sense if one believes, as I do, that Carlson expresses anti-Semitism or at least heavily implies it, by highlighting and failing to challenge the views of people who lie about Israel in order to demonize that country. In Tucker’s case, it takes the form of promoting the idea (sometimes in his own direct statements, sometimes through fawning interviews with others) that Israel purposely murders Christians and discriminates against them, and that Israel is committing genocide.

A differing view from that of Phillips about the right and anti-Semitism can be found here – although, interestingly, the article steers clear of mentioning Vance:

Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes represent regress masquerading as rebellion. They do not speak for the right; they speak for themselves and for the algorithms that reward outrage and sounding outrageous.

Many, maybe most, prominent people on the right — from President Donald Trump to Pastor John Hagee to Thomas Sowell to Marco Rubio — stand with Israel because they stand with the West, with victims of jihad, and with a commitment to preserve the values of individual freedom, equal justice under the law and freedom of speech. …

To its credit, the American right has no shortage of adults in the room. Many intellectuals, Jewish advocates, and elected Republicans openly condemned the Carlson-Fuentes stunt. You could watch the split in real time: one faction explained that freedom of speech does not require private companies and organization to provide a platform for unreconstructed bigots; the other faction accused “the establishment” of “silencing us.” …

The fact is that Republican support for Israel remains high, even though younger cohorts are more skeptical. Pew Research in April 2025 found solid GOP confidence in Israel’s leadership and warmer views of Israelis than Democrats expressed. In October, Pew found the same partisan gap, even as overall U.S. favorables toward Israel declined. The point: when far-right influencers target Jews, they are out of step with rank-and-file Republican voters — and not speaking for them.

And Vance? I’m still not sure, but I’m fairly certain that before November of 2028 we’ll find out more.

Modern dilemmas: what to do with those empty churches

The New Neo Posted on by

The number of Christian believers in Germany has been falling rapidly, and this presents a problem: what to do with all those empty churches? Maybe it’s time to re-purpose them as mosques – it’s certainly happened before; just ask the Byzantines. But meanwhile, here are some other solutions:

The number of church members in Germany is falling rapidly. In 2024 alone, the two major churches lost over a million Christians due to people leaving the church or dying. Currently, more than 45% of Germans still belong to either to the Protestant Church in Germanyor the Catholic Church. Thirty years ago, that figure stood at almost 69%. This is why churches are now being deconsecrated or desacralized.

… In response to a DW inquiry, the German Bishops’ Conference informed of the closing and decommissioning of 611 Catholic churches between 2000 and 2024. The Protestant Church estimates that some 300 to 350 churches were permanently shut in the same period; more precise figures are not available.

And what happens to former houses of worship? In some cities, especially in Berlin, growing Orthodox Christian congregations have taken over church buildings. But that remains the exception. …

Some are repurposed. In Jülich, a town between Cologne and Aachen, bicycles are now sold in the former Catholic St. Rochus Church. Thomas Oellers moved his business, Toms Bike Center, into the church building. …

In Wettringen, just north of Münster, an abbey has been transformed into a “soccer church” where footballs are knocked about. In Kleve, the former Protestant Church of the Resurrection serves as a boxing arena. Former churches now house pubs, libraries and book stores. Entire cloisters have even been turned into hotel complexes. In Düsseldorf, a hotel has retained its traditional name Mutterhaus (Mother House) in a nod to its original use as a convent for nuns.

In times of housing shortages, there are more and more cases of architects converting church buildings into residential buildings. In Berlin, Rostock, Trier, Cologne and Wuppertal, for example.

Which makes me think of the Philip Larkin poem “Churchgoing.” It was written in 1954, which is a long time ago, indicating that this trend has been going on for a considerable time. You can find the entire poem here, and I call your attention to the fact that in the poem the speaker has been bicycling, and stops in an empty church to take a look: “Hatless, I take off/My cycle-clips in awkward reverence …”

Here’s a longer excerpt:

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

And then of course there’s a poem written about a hundred years earlier than that (probably in 1851) by Matthew Arnold, and entitled “Dover Beach. I wrote at some length about the poem in this post. The stanza that is particularly apt:

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

I believe that Arnold was speaking of Christianity and of Europe, and he sensed what was coming there or what had already begun. He seemed to have seen the trend:

In an 1869 letter to his mother, he wrote:

“My poems represent, on the whole, the main movement of mind of the last quarter of a century, and thus they will probably have their day as people become conscious to themselves of what that movement of mind is, and interested in the literary productions which reflect it. It might be fairly urged that I have less poetical sentiment than Tennyson and less intellectual vigour and abundance than Browning; yet because I have perhaps more of a fusion of the two than either of them, and have more regularly applied that fusion to the main line of modern development, I am likely enough to have my turn as they have had theirs.”

Stefan Collini regards this as “an exceptionally frank, but not unjust, self-assessment. … Arnold’s poetry continues to have scholarly attention lavished upon it, in part because it seems to furnish such striking evidence for several central aspects of the intellectual history of the nineteenth century, especially the corrosion of ‘Faith’ by ‘Doubt’. No poet, presumably, would wish to be summoned by later ages merely as an historical witness, but the sheer intellectual grasp of Arnold’s verse renders it peculiarly liable to this treatment.”

Indeed.

Israel is determined to become militarily independent

The New Neo Posted on by

An excellent idea, if they can pull it off:

“I approved, along with the defense minister and finance minister, a sum of NIS 350 billion [$108 billion] over the next decade to build an independent Israeli munitions industry,” Netanyahu said in an address at a graduation ceremony for Israeli Air Force pilots.

The move, he said, stemmed from a desire to “reduce our dependence on all players, including friends,” after allies including the US, UK, and Germany all imposed various restrictions on weapons sales to Israel since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack.

Still, he noted, many countries around the world, including Germany, “want to buy from us more and more systems.”

The Biden administration taught the Israelis a lesson: don’t depend on the US, which is undependable.

The US gets plenty of intelligence from Israel, plus Israel has sometimes taken our military hardware and improved on it. I hope this new (and necessary) initiative won’t end those things that benefit the US.

Here’s an article from about a year ago, describing some of the problems inherent in Israel’s becoming truly independent:

“But we have dependence in all areas. It’s not just about ammunition and munitions: There are all kinds of platforms we need. Even if we produce more of our own bombs, we still need to get the planes from the US in order to fly, so we haven’t really reduced our dependence on the US just by producing more bombs,” he said.

“We talked about building our own planes once and it absolutely ruined us,” the former NSC deputy chief said. “Something like only six countries in the world produce their own fighters. The prices for production are only becoming more and more exorbitant. Even the Europeans ‘cooperate’ and buy from the US. We certainly cannot” build aircraft on our own.

Freilich was referring to the 1980-1987 period when Israel explored “the Lavi project,” which former defense minister Ezer Weizman had dreamed would help Israel become independent in developing its own aircraft.

However, the government ended the program in 1987 – despite many successes even to the test flight stage – deciding that a mix of having maxed out the defense budget in an unsustainable way to around 18% of GDP and the seeming impossibility of competing with US defense companies in this area were just too much.

“Even if we do manufacture a plane of our own, we would still be significantly dependent on the Americans: Many external parts such as metals and electronic components are still being imported from the US,” clarified Dr. Shmuel Even in a posting on the air force website in 2015. “Manufacturing an Israeli plane would definitely benefit the Israeli work market, but the odds of selling large quantities of the plane are pretty low due to tough competition with American industries.”

Frelich continued, “Even the Merkava tank, which Israel made – its engine comes from the US. Again, we are totally dependent.

“Independence from US military supply is fanciful,” he said.

At the very least, Israel can try to become as independent as possible.

Another golden oldie: the day after

The New Neo Posted on by

Hope your Christmas was good. Mine was: a great meal, seeing my grandchildren, and even a couple of presents for me.

The following is an effort of mine from the past. That’s one of the advantages of having been a blogger for umpteen million years – you have a backlog of these sorts of things.

holiday-cheer-christmas-tree.gif

On Christmas Day—blog?
I’d rather have grog,
Or maybe eggnog,
Then go walk the dog.
Or watch a Yule Log,
And eat like a hog,
Then go for a jog.
Blogging’s a bog.
My mind’s in a fog,
Or maybe agog
From much dialogue.
I’ll return to the slog
Already, and blog.

[NOTE: On the words “the dog,” the link goes to an article on the type of dog we had when my son was little.]