Also, stay tuned... David Loy and Linda Goodhew (they are married) who were here last night, spent something like 17 years living in Japan and will present on that one Wednesday soon. Terrific people. David’s the new Buddhist prof. at X.U. Ellen
Salon Weekly
~ In 4 Color-Coded Sections:
- Table Notes
- Announcements
- Articles
Books, Reviews, Films, Magazines
A Weekly Email Publication of The Lloyd House: Circulation: c. 600. Growing out
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................................................... Section One: Table Notes ............................................................................ (Note: these notes were taken at the table and have NOT been approved or corrected by the speakers. Reader
beware of inevitable misunderstandings and misrepresentations. E.B.)
At the Table on Wednesday28 Feb. 2007:
David Loy, Linda Goodhew, Mary Biehn, Mira Rodwan, Khassa Selassie, Elaine Urbina, Shari Able, Ellen Bierhorst, Chad Benjamin Potter, Steve Sunderland, Judy Cirillo, Spencer Konicov, Mimi Rook mimiyoga1@yahoo.com, Neil Anderson (Welcome Mimi!)
Sang “Come follow follow” in round... Rousing! Ellen read the preamble with quote from Bill Moyers.
Many thanks to Chad for being our “hogreve” tonight. Excellent job!
TABLE ANNOUNCEMENTS
Mira: I ran into Neil Anderson who recommends seeking “Amazing Grace” about Wilberforce and his proposal to abolish slavery … 1807, passed the British Parliament. At Esquire.
Shari See “the last king of Scotland”.
Bill in CityBeat the lead arts article is on the NURFC exhibit. The new abolitionists.
You can go online to the amazing chain website or the Freedom Center web site to sign the petition.
Steve Angelina Jolie in the Wash Post today on Darfur. Great piece.
David: in a book I read there are more slaves today than at any point in history.
Steve many are children. Sex slavery.
Chad went to San Francisco to audition for the program at the Circus Center. Waiting to hear back.
Steve have a Peace Village dinner for homeless vets this Sat. Getting a lot of attention. Treatment for vets is more abysmal than we know. Nast Trinity Church in OTR at 12:30 Sat. on Race St. Free. Just homeless vets are invited. 30 ROTC students are serving.
Bill “Slavery today” exhibit has been extended at NURFC, 2 weeks.
Khassa from last week’s pot luck, I met with Dr. Jennifer Wms. Of UC, Out of the Crossfire program. She felt I would be a perfect mentor in their program. (Yay!) hospital,…sickle cell… incarceration … vegan … raw foods … culinary chef … used to have Living Room vegan restaurant down town. Also, yoga. Want to have yoga classes here. (?) Yes, sickle cell can be controlled withy nutrition.
Elaine sickle cell carriers have an advantage in fighting off malaria.
Bill: …(joke) I am really pleased for this connection with Jen. Williams. You, K. know more than most people in the medical field about this. Wonderful connection.
TOPICs NOMINATED
War on Iran?: Last week Evan Bukey sent me the Guardian article on our buildup for an air war on Iran. We couldn’t talk about it because of special presentation that was gripping... But he is keen to h ear what we think about this hugely important phenomenon. Ellen.
Taiwan trip, Shari
Mira: on NPR about the end of democracy due to war. Diane Rehm show. There are 237 military bases around the world … Eisenhower on the dangers of the military industrial complex …. David: there were 737 overseas military installations admitted to in 2005 by the pentagon. Mira: we are on our way to losing our whole democracy, financial stability, …
Linda: in the UNICEF report last week, children are cared for worst in the world by Britain and the USA. I want to know why? I want details. Elaine: next week I will bring the full report. I will email it to Ellen (see below in Articles section).
Steve: statistics In the Enquirer today on conditions for women in Ohio, poverty.
SHARI – JUST BACK FROM TAIWAN
Taiwan has many ambiguities … terrible food, no seasoning, everything boiled. If you go to Taiwan, do not eat the sushi. I got Chairman Mao’s revenge from the sushi…not refrigerated.
Taipei is very crowded. … Where the British ruled from, farther south, now has a very expensive restaurant at the top of the embassy building. Very British food.
Social classes have to do with how much ed. You have. Like the British system. An examination … Brit. Had the Plus Eleven. In Taiwan when you were 13 or 14, either to be a worker, entrepreneur, or a university student. But they are not being taught very much business. Too many of them.
What brought me there was I have a partner from L.A. originally from Taiwan. I am in the film business. Since the richest man in Taiwan has devoted his wealth to the cinema … Crouching Tiger … my partner knows this richest man through her family. But it was the Lunar New Year when were there, so this slowed us down. But we did met some people, many in films, who are interested in co-productions. Peggy Chiao, head producer for Arclight films in Taiwan. Won awards. So we have a contact now. She wants us to send our stuff. I have several scripts.
(?) Oh yes, they really celebrate the New Year. They blame everything on the mainland China. Pollution. Cancer rate.
You see mothers on motorcycles. Mother wearing a mask to protect against SARS. A child, baby on the front without a mask, on the bask a young child hanging on, with a helmet, no mask. They zip around.
We went for Karaoke, they love it there. It is expensive. They encourage everyone to sing. I got up and sang, even though my fourth grade teacher told me, “Just move your lips, dear.” They love Americans there.
Elaine: did you go to the Grand Hotel.
S: no I stayed in the minister of finance’s personal home. Did not stay in any hotel.
Elaine six or 7 years ago, I stayed Grand Hotel, built by Chang Kai Check.
S: they do not have toilet paper, use Kleenex. Do pack a few towels if you were going.
And they just opened the collection of the art taken from mainland China in 1948.
Bill they are just starting to discover the native Taiwanese languages and people.
KHASSA – YOGA CLASS AT LLOYD HOUSE
I am going to try to unite myself with everyone else using sun salutations. Stretching, strengthening … regulates breathing, nerves, other organs. Can be used as a complete practice in itself. Can be moderately aerobic. …suitable for beginners. Also appropriate for more advanced students. … when chi is blocked, body gets sick.
Start next week. Mon, tue, Wed, Thurs. Early in mornings, 8 -9, 10 – 11.
Tues evening. Thurs eve. Wed morn. (see in Announcements section.)
$10 per class. 513 687 2705 vital4life7@yahoo.com
I studied at Paradise Found, 500 hours. Certified Yoga Teacher.
Eventually want to incorporate some vegan and raw food workshops. I am a r aw food chef, my main thing. For more information email Khassa: Khassa Selassie <Vital4life7@yahoo.com>
PREPARATION FOR WAR ON IRAN
Link to Guardian Article printed here last week:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2010086,00.html
David Seymour Hersh article, New Yorker, on the impending invasions. (see t his article below in our blue, Articles section. Ellen)
Steve bush is using the line that Iran is endangering our security. Bush claims he is the only one who has all the intelligence to decide. Looks like the Democrats are falling apart around that.
Spencer: I don’t think this is new news. I would expect my government to have continuously updated war plans, whether they would use t hem or not is different.
Ellen: material is being brought in line…
Shari we are now negotiating with North Korea. They have a higher state of nuclear weapon advancement than Iran. Second, the naval attaché talking on the radio, has said ever since WWII we’ve had this military industrial complex and what is impt. Is that we always have to have another war in the wings for it to function. It is such a big part of our national wealth, providing armaments around the world, for the US economy.
Elaine there may be many reasons for this information to come out. I wonder if the administration is allowing this leak for their own purposes, like to threaten Iran and Syria.
Bill I think this is a leak, a second channel of information, and the idea is to scare them into negotiations.
I don’t think Iran is ready to walk across the dance floor at all. … Of course they are planning air strikes. Don’t have the troops for an invasion, unless they bring back a draft. … they are trying real hard to bring Russia, China into a discussion.
Ellen: according to Prof. Bukey, the US news media is not touching this story at all.
Steve The question of why is this coming out now, another chapter in the “1984” story of today. No news is credible. Last night watched Bob Woodruf, AVC anchor, talking to a veteran doc., who said 200,000 had come through the medical system from the Iraq war. But the Pentagon said, “23,000”. So nothing is reliable. We don’t know if what we are hearing is mostly true, mostly false …
Problems of the jury in the Libby trial. This weekend the Post examined this … we have lost any form of credible press to help us become informed.
So this Guardian article is credible.
The fact that we are going to palaver with Syria and Iran with Iraq … it is loony. …My sense is that Bob Woodruf, being lied to by the Secy’ of Defense, on mainstream TV. Outright lies about whether or not Cheney breached the law re. exposing a CIA agent.
The problem is that the Bush administration has succeeded in polluting the major streams of information. We in the universities have not spoken out, “This is crap.”
It is a miracle that Woodruf is exposing the lies. They are crazy. What to do?
David I also disagree a little bit. Clear that this administration just lies through the teeth any time it wants. Media has played along up to now. A little dangerous to say we just don’t know anything. J For one thing, part of the leaks might be to put pressure on Iran to negotiate … But unlike Iraq, the administration is more divided. More public anger and is satisfaction with the war. Media establishment has more opportunity to explore …. In evaluating… Hersch makes the point that Rice and Gates are not in favor of the Iran attack, it is Cheney. Rice wants diplomacy. There are more cracks in the solidness of the administration.
Remember couple weeks ago when the US attacked a Iranian consulate in N. Iraq, Hersch makes the point that we are being provoking. They are clearly trying to create an incident.
Israel’s role bothers me. I think Israel wanted Iraq war. Hersch making the point that according to Saudis, if US attacked Iran it would be bad for the US position in the Middle East, but we might give Israel permission to do it in our stead.
Bill I think we can’t count on the Israelis to do it for us this time, and that’s why we are preparing.
Steve But it is a plausible scenario. Could be argued that Israel is terrified of Iran … that Iraq will be co opted by a Shiia government in Iran into a Shiia alliance. … Why didn’t the general stay with Cheney’s position … The general in Iraq, our US guy, said, “No, it is not provocation of war, the found materials.” The US generals are denying.
… if Cheney had been killed yesterday, they could have used that to justify an attack.
Bill what didn’t ring true for me about the Guardian article, they said Bush resentful about Iran for the hostage crisis, but they were grateful for that for putting in Republicans.
Steve … a parallel army of equal size is the private army, not under the generals. Blackwater.
David even if the generals resign, there will be some career military who are willing to go along with the President. … Israel is the country with the most to lose if Iran gets nukes.
Mimi What is the outcome of our invading Iran? We can’t fix Afghanistan?, Can’t fix Iraq? What are they trying to accomplish?
Bill the question is well then, what do if Iran does have nukes within months? Let them complete their nuclear program? North Korea is more advanced but it is a done deal there.
Steve We don’t know that.
Spencer Remember when China was working on the nuclear bomb … in the 50’s. History repeats itself. Iran has learned from history, are convinced if they have the bomb, then no one is going to invade them. The only way to defend self against US is to have nukes.
David thank you for that. I find the whole hypocrisy of our cant … of course Iran would like to have nukes … I am ashamed that the US , who has signed non proliferation treaties, has spent billions upgrading our nukes. “God is on our side.”\
Elaine yes and they say we don’t need to sign Kyoto either.
David … increasingly militarized world. Only nukes can defend yourself in this world.
Steve the question is, is the realipolitik correct to prevent proliferation.
The mad man in Iran is capable of doing great damage to our oil supplies in the middle east. The neo cons are saying that we might have a madman in Tehran.
Mira guy I heard on NPR, because of the climate crisis there were not enough troops in the US still here to help if there was another Katrina crisis.
Shari remember nuclear threats of the 50’s… I remember having to get under my school desk because of the Russians and it turns out now the Russians never really had a great nuclear capacity, all made up by the Americans.
Mira: I don’t think Cheney has the same rapture in mind that Bush does.
Spencer Iran is facing deep economic problems. For 75 years they have relied on oil resources, growing economy, not enough land for food. Net food importer. Soon they won’t have enough oil for their own economy. I could imagine if I were in charge of Iran I’d be saying to Bush, “You are not going to bully me a round.” Kissinger said if a government is trying to provide the best for its own people you have nothing to fear from that government. The question is whether Iran gov’t is trying to do the best thing for their people.
Bill … I am nervous about all this. A lot of truth to their hegemony. Maybe they do make me more nervous, partly because of their religious fanaticism.
CLOSING COMMENTS
Spencer tomorrow morning I will walk 3 miles, and will thank god we can have a discussion like this in this free country…
David four years ago I went to Iran; deeply touched by the country there. Pluralistic. I was with the school of foreign studies … socialized with government people and also students. Wonderful people. Rich tradition. There is nothing suicidal about that culture. They were warm towards me, despite the bad policies of our country. I can’t sit back when people want to demonize Iran.
Mira we have destroyed so much treasured art in Iraq… we have to let our reps. know. I thought Spencer was going to say he’d call Chabot’s office in the morning. I hope Kucinich will be allowed to speak. Hope Obama is figuring out what he wants to say, do. I’ve given up on Hillary. Our reps. need to know they should look to the constitution and their hearts.
Closed with song: Building Bridges, sung in round for the first time. Sounded fabulous!
~ End of Table Notes~
Hugs to everyone,
Ellen
Section Two: Announcements
A Small Group is the name of Peter Block’s initiative of Cincinnatians to make a difference. Great thing in our city. Check this out. Ellen)
“We must help our young people become successful citizens and neighbors,
instead of failed criminals and adult inmates in our jails and prisons.”
Evans D. Hopkins
You are invited to a special A Small Group monthly gathering with special guest
Evans Hopkins
Friday, March 2, 2007
4:30PM to 6:00PM
Mt. Auburn Presbyterian Church
103 Wm. Howard Taft
Click here for directions- http://www.mtauburnpresby.org/more_about_us.html
(Please note we are not meeting at Peaslee this month.)
Evans is the Executive Director of The Reclamation Movement, a Richmond, Virginia based non-profit he founded to reclaim our youth from “the culture of the streets” before they become part of the criminal justice system and to reclaim former prisoners from the justice system’s “revolving door”.
Evans will share his journey from promising middle-class youth to civil rights militant,
then from criminal and convict to celebrated writer and enlightened man. Evans will discuss how writing saved his life and how he “literally wrote his way out of prison” with articles in the Washington Post, the New Yorker magazine, and numerous other publications.
We will discuss the power of one’s story and what we can do to help young people see that their stories matter and that their lives matter. Evan would like to discuss the following quote by James Baldwin- “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders,
but they have never failed to imitate them.”
To RSVP or for more information, email cert@fuse.net or call 513-451-0166.
Collette Thompson
A Small Group/ Peter Block's Office
215 East 14th Street
Cincinnati, Ohio 45202
513-451-0166 office
513-607-8346 cell
www.asmallgroup.net
Have you said something great about Cincinnati today?
Nina Jackson invites you to sample Noni Juice, health supplement this Sunday Afternoon
I met this cool African American woman when I served on the Martin Luther King Coalition. She was on the coalition from the NCCJ (used to be national conference of christians and jews...now something else). She was solid, smart, and dedicated. I like her a lot. Normally I would not advertise anyone’s pyranmid marketing product on the Weekly, but Nina is special. Noni juice is a tropical fruit extract, high in anti oxidants, good as anti inflammatory. Hence, good for anti-aging, anti-arthritis, good for sickle cell disease according to Khassa, and whatever else ails you. Dot Christensen (very cool Clifton woman, pilot, active in politics, grandma, sings MLK Chorale) told me that she takes it daily, 2 T. per day, and that when she traveled to Austrailia last year and was off it for ten days, she really thought she noticed a difference. Arthritis. Ellen
Hi Everyone,
My name is Nina Jackson and I have some good news. Good news is something that should be shared, and that’s why you are receiving this email. I have some fabulous news for you. Let me introduce you to a company that can have a powerfully positive effect on your life. Tahitian Noni International (TNI) is entering its eleventh year in business, and it has been a phenomenal success. TNI has quickly become one of the fastest-growing private companies in the world. Tahitian Noni International has a presence in more than 76 countries, sales offices in 35 countries, and manufacturing facilities in the United States, Tahiti, Japan, and China.
I would like to extend to you the chance to become a part of this incredible success. You are invited to a T-Party to hear about the awesome opportunities and the wonderful products. If you have any questions or if you would like to learn more, please feel free to attend the T-Party or contact me using the information provided below. Also, you can find out more on our website, www.TahitianNoni.com <http://www.tahitiannoni.com/> or my website www.TNI.com/2354272 <http://www.tni.com/2354272> .
Sunday 3/4 at 2:30
West Cincinnati Presbyterian Church
1708 Baymiller Street
(corner of Baymiller & Poplar off Linn Street in the West End)
Nina’s Cell: 513.238.8011
Nina’s distributor number: 2354272
Tahitian Noni Juice Website:www.tni.com/2354272
Ellen Bierhorst, Ph.D. Is a holistic psychotherapist with over 35 years experience. Specialty area: Optimizing Mental Health ~ “Better than well”. Also: healing trauma, strengthening families and relationships, alcohol and other addictions including food, and weight management, EMDR, GLBT, chronic pain and physical illness. Clifton. 513 221 1289 www.lloydhouse.com
.............................................................................................
Salonista Alan Weiner sends deal for Choral Concert this Sunday
I have a limited number of tickets at a discount ( $ 7.00 vs. 12.00
regular adult) for you to sample our group on March 4, 2007 (in
Finneytown) 703 Compton Rd,. at 3:00 p.m. If you want to check out the
website: www.cincinnatichoralsociety.org We are singing a piece we did
last fall with the KY Symphony Orchestra at Northern "Lux Aeterna" by
Morten Lauridsen and a Franz Schubert "Mass in A flat ."Try to come and
call me if you want a discount!!
Please forward as you like
Alan Weiner
(Baritone-though not a soloist this time) 513-941-6307
SUNDAY OPEN SAUNA AT THE LLOYD HOUSE
New wintertime practice at the Lloyd House! Come join in. Fire laid at noon; lit at 1:00. Set up at 2 or 2:30; sweat starts at 3. Takes about an hour. Please come, try to arrive by 3 at the latest. Bring towel... See below. If you like, bring food to share afterwards. . Pot Luck at 4:30. Drumming about 5:30 Clean up at 7:00. Ellen
Lloyd House Sauna-
Sweat Lodge
Protocol
Mission and Spirit
A good sweat is deeply cleansing of body and purifying of spirit. We reverence the Finns and the Native Americans for this practice, and each other for joining in. Finns first sweat, rinse with cold water (screaming allowed), wash (each other) with soap (you may use warm shower in sink room); Sweat again, splash with cold water, scrape or scrub or beat the skin; Sweat yet again, then final rinse with cold water. … The rattle in the sweat room is for chanting, singing, story telling. After sauna, rest, drink water, then feast and party.
Modesty
· As the Finns say, "We see but we don't look."
· Feel free to use bathing suit or towel
You will need
· Water bottle
· Towel
· (lotion)
· (shampoo)
· (slippers)
Contributing … please help
· build fire, 2 hours before
· clean benches
· split wood -- any time
· bring firewood in dressing room
· haul 3 buckets of water from sink room
· contribute $ -- look for jar in dressing room -- Suggest $5
Advertisement:
Beautiful and Charming, spacious first floor office space at the Lloyd House, fully furnished including bodywork table, chairs, love seat, rugs, armchairs, wood burning (gas ignited ) fireplace. Rookwood even. Available by the hour. Share waiting room. Powder room. Outside entry. Terms: contribute 20% of gross to the house. Call Ellen 221 1290
Heartland Ecovillage* presents:
(*That’s the Ecovillage project at Grailville in Loveland. Been meeting several years now; no building yet but ... Soon? Ellen)
Not Home Alone: Aging in Community
The three plagues of loneliness, helplessness, and boredom account for the bulk of human suffering. (from Dr. Bill Thomas of Eden Alternative and Green Houses). Community is an antidote. Dene will talk about why ElderSpirit Community was created and the lessons learned living in the community.
Presenter: Geraldine (Dene) Peterson
Dene Peterson is the founder and developer of ElderSpirit Community in Southwest Virginia. She is a Purpose Prize Fellow, an honor for entrepreneurs who have done something innovative after age of 65.
Date: Saturday, March 3rd, 2007 from 4 to 6pm
You are welcome to stay and spend some informal time with Dene at a potluck dinner following the talk.
Location: Community Friends Meeting
3960 Winding Way (off Dana, near X.U.)
Cincinnati, OH. 45229
Cost: $5 to $10 donation
For more information: contact Deborah Jordan 513-251-2558 or Judy Leever 513-677-0691
Great film on Great old people:
“do not go gently”
Cincinnati world cinema,
Saturday March 3 and Sunday March 4. 2:00 pm.
Cincinnati Art Museum
Seldom do we have the chance to see a film that is well-made, entertaining and enlightening to the point of providing insights that allow us to shape our own lives in a positive way. DO NOT GO GENTLY is just such a film.
Melissa Godoy's important documentary speaks to people of all ages about what lies ahead in their lives, making the point that our powers of accomplishment and creation know no age limits. Her film addresses the need for new approaches to life and communication in a world of rapidly aging people and illustrates the triumph of imagination and personality over the aging body.
Narrator Walter Cronkite introduces us to three artists who use the perspective and freedom of their advanced age to create some of their most powerful work. As they share their feelings on matters ranging from love to grief, we hear about the stuff from which their art is made - the stuff of life, common to us all. Equally important, we learn that they have secrets for a resilient approach to aging.
We are also introduced to work of Dr. Gene Cohen, including several new scientific discoveries that are relevant to a strategy for healthy aging as a nation: Creative activity can significantly improve the mind-body connection in senior populations, improving long-term health and well-being. Whereas memories do die, the imagination does not – it remains open as a pathway for communication and experience.
If you are young, take your grandparents; if you're a boomer take your parents; if you are 70 or over take a friend – there is a story and a lesson in this film for everyone. Please do not miss this excellent documentary!!
Screening at the Cincinnati Art Museum
Saturday March 3 and Sunday March 4.
All screenings are at 2:00 PM and all tickets are $6.00.
Tickets are available on-line, by phone and the usual local outlets.
Click here for complete film and ticket details: www.cincyworldcinema.org/z_20070227dngg.php
CWC Film Announcement List : www.listrocket.com/list/cincinnatiworldcinem : www.cincyworldcinema.org
Entertainment bonanza on Women’s Day
Thurs. 8 March
7:30 – 9 pm
Freedom Center
FREE
Entertainment: the Freedom Singers (aka MLK Chorale, featuring Ellen in Sop II), Muse women’s chorus, Shakila Ahmad of Muslim Mothers against violence, Sr. Alice Gerdeman of IJPC, Susan Einbinder of HUC, Monique James on human trafficking today, and Cathryne Gardette of Adinkras.
Parking: probably free parking available on Walnut St. near the Freedom Center. Or, pay to park in the Freedom Center garage (go down Central, pass 3rd, next light turn left (East).
Join Discussion on the Collaborative Agreement: to Extend it?
The First Unitarian Church (corner of Linton and Reading—near Lincoln, the old Sears) Racial Justice Task Force is hosting an open meeting on Sunday March 11, 9:30 a.m. to provide input to the ACLU regarding extension of the Collaborative Agreement. All are invited, child care will be provided.
The following is being distributed by the ACLU.
Dear Community:
A large percentage of Blacks in Cincinnati do not trust the police. This has been true for many years and it remains a serious problem. We have worked hard to improve police community relations since August 5, 2002 through the implementation of the Collaborative Agreement (CA). The agreement came about with the support of many African American leaders, faith based groups, social service agencies, the Black United Front and others. United States District Judge Susan Dlott has enforced the agreement but court supervision is scheduled to end on August 5, 2007.
Collaborative Progress. Since 2002, in partnership with the City and the FOP, the parties have accomplished significant use of force reform. Injuries to officers and to citizens during arrests have declined dramatically. The Mental Health Response Teams have been very effective. Accountability is improved through the Citizens Compliant Authority which receives complaints of police misconduct and independent investigators determine the facts and recommend action. Mobile Video Recorders are now in every police car providing a taped record of all citizen contacts. The RAND studies help us determine compliance of the obligation to police Cincinnati without racial bias. The Partnering Center has developed a strong presence in the community helping neighborhoods use problem solving to address crime and disorder with a variety of evidence based strategies.
Should We Continue? There are important terms in the CA, which may not be fully implemented by August 7, 2007, such as problem solving, and aspects of CPOP. And there are controversial programs like Vortex, because of the newness of approach that may need close monitoring. We are reaching out to many people in order to help us decide whether to seek an extension of court supervision.
In this case, the ACLU represents the African American community in Cincinnati and others who have contact with the police. We would like to meet with your organization or any group you wish to bring together in February and March 2007. We will be meeting with Judge Dlott again in April and it would be helpful to get broad feedback before that court date.
Tri-State Treasures
Tri-State Treasures is a compilation of unique local people, places, and events that may enrich your lives. These treasures have been submitted by you and others who value supporting quality community offerings. Please consider supporting these treasures, and distributing the information for others to enjoy. And please continue to forward your Tri-State Treasures ideas to jkesner@nuvox.net.
Information about Tri-State Treasures and how to submit Tri-State Treasures is at the bottom of this email. Please help me by providing all basic information and formatting your submissions as described below.
Sincerely, Jim
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Mini-Grants for Keeping Cincinnati Beautiful [applications due Friday 23 March]: Up to $500 mini-grants per community. If you have a blighted spot in your neighborhood, see what you can do to improve it. Keeping Cincinnati Beautiful is a monthly e-newsletter that will keep you up-to-date on local solid waste, beautification, & community improvement issues. More info @ 513.352.4388, shirley.phillips@cincinnati-oh.gov, & www.keepcincinnatibeautiful.org.
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Bockfest Weekend & Parade [Thursday-Sunday 1-4 March]: Cincinnati is home to the world's oldest Bock festival. In the 1800s, Cincinnati was one of America's most prolific brewing cities. Cincinnatians drank more beer per capita than any city in the country, & Over-the-Rhine was home to more than 50 breweries. A tradition developed among the breweries to release all of their bock beer on the same day. Bock beer is a rich, complex, robust lager that marks the end of the winter brewing season & the beginning of spring. The word "bock" means "goat" in German. Legend has a Renaissance-era drinking contest between 2 beer-brewing monks. When the losing monk lost his balance, he blamed his topple on an errant goat in the saloon. The winner chided his prostrate friend that the only goat involved was in the beer. Today, that goat is still in the beer & prominently featured in Bockfest themes. A highlight of Bockfest is the city's most eccentric parade, which starts at 5:30 PM at Cincinnati's oldest saloon, Arnold's (210 East Eighth Street, 45202). The parade is lead by a goat pulling a keg, travels up Main Street, & ends with the blessing of the bock. Past parade entries have included monks pulling a Trojan goat, futon queens, German beer bands, a bed pulled by slave labor, & a leather-clad mistress with a huge whip. Bring your favorite canine to walk with "The Bocking Dogs." (Also see Opera Dogs at Bockfest below). Bockfest weekend boasts bock beer & German food, a wide range of live music at a variety of venues, history, & culture. Bockfest kicks off on Thursday with Bock & Brats on Fountain Square (4-8 PM) & crowning of the Sausage Queen @ Arnold's (8:30 PM). On Saturday, historic & architectural tours leave from Main Street, with speakers, tastings, open galleries, & shops available throughout the day. On Saturday evening, a major piece of art will be revealed to the public at the Brewery District's Bockfest Hall. Saturday night will feature more live music & food specials. Sunday will feature the "Bach's Brunch" at the Verdin Bell event center in the Pendleton Arts District (see Bach's Brunch below). Much more info with schedules @ www.bockfest.com.
The Cost Of Growing Economic Inequality [Thursday 1 March @ 7 PM]: The wealth & income gap is the widest it's been in a century. Why is it happening? Why does it matter? What is the social cost? What can we do about it? Chuck Collins, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies & co-founder of United for a Fair Economy, will speak in honor of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. He will focus on ways to advance social justice, especially understanding the impacts of wealth distribution. Collins pioneered bringing religious constituencies together, community & business leaders to speak out against corporate practices, & public policies that worsen America's wealth divide. Co-author (with Bill Gates, Sr) of "Wealth & the Commonwealth;" author of "Economic Apartheid in America;" his new book "The Moral Measure of the Economy" (Orbis Press, April 2007) is about biblical perspectives on the economy. Free & open to the public. At St. Xavier High School, Room 1558-60, 600 W. North Bend Road, Cincinnati, OH 45224. More info @ 513.761.7815 ext 525 & jravenna@stxavier.org.
Opera Dogs at Bockfest [Friday 2 March; staging @ 5:30 PM; begins @ 8 PM]: We're marching Opera Dogs in the Bockfest Parade. Bockfest is a parade that celebrates OTR's German Heritage. Bring your dog dressed in full operatic fashion & march to show your support for OTR, iRhine, Downtown, & the arts. Parade route is Main to Melindy & back down Clay to 12th & Main. No registration or entry fee, RSVP is requested. Parade staging at Arnold's, 210 E. 8th, downtown Cincinnati, OH 45202. More info @ 513.304.4900, MMorgan@huff.com, www.irhine.com, & www.LiveUrbanCincinnati.com.
Flook - Cincinnati Folk Life 2007 Spring Concert Series [Friday 2 March @ 8 PM]: This is the first of three concerts in the Series. From Ireland comes an inventive, exciting group featuring melodically dazzling flutes over a hard-driving rhythm section of guitar & bodhran (Irish drum). A quartet of 2 Irish & 2 British master musicians who come together to create “Music that clearly comes from a Celtic wellspring, but which comfortably blends in elements of jazz, Eastern European music of Brittany, India & the Middle East. And does so in joyously entertaining fashion.” ~ Los Angeles Times. Winner of the 2006 BBC Folk Awards. General admission is $25. At 20th Century Theater, 3021 Madison Road, Oakley Square, Cincinnati, OH 45209. More info & tix @ 513.533.4822, cfl@zoomtown.com, & www.CincinnatiFolkLife.com.
Omnium Gatherum – Encore Presentation [Fridays-Saturdays 2-3, 9-10, 16-17 March @ 7 PM]: When the most powerful country in the world is attacked by a group of religious zealots, what does one do? Have a dinner party. A 2003 Pulitzer Prize nominee, written by Cincinnati native Theresa Rebeck, an encore presentation of the Queen City Off Broadway Acclaim Award-winning production. An exquisite feast of food & argument, with a big surprise at the end, as a group of "famous celebs" confront the global implications of Sept. 11th & beyond in an urgent, impassioned & often hilarious work. "A feisty feast of wicked wit...Piping hot satire that sings & stings" ~ NY Times. "Theatrical Fireworks" ~ New Yorker. "Spirited, amusing & smart. A play that wants us to think as much as we feel." ~ Newsday. Tickets: $15; 2 for 1 for students always & for others on opening weekend. Ask about having a dinner party. At Queen City Off Broadway, 4011 Hamilton Avenue, Cincinnati, OH 45223. More info & RSVP @ 513.227.0480.
Essex Studios Art Walk [Friday-Saturday 2-3 March @ 6-11 PM]: Awarded "best art walk in the city" by Cincinnati Magazine. Celebrate Spring & find art treasures for your home or office. 100+ studios will be open. Valet parking Friday night, plus ample free parking on both sides of the building. Essex Studios, Essex Place & East McMillan, Cincinnati, OH. More info @ www.essexstudios.com.
Homemade Paper Landscapes part of "Into The Woods" Exhibit [reception Saturday 3 March @ 2-4 PM]: The beautiful handmade paper landscape collages created by Margaret Rhein will be featured in the exhibit "Into The Woods." The other artist are Alfredo Escobar (graphite portraits), Roger Blair (wood carvings), Jamee Stratman (acrylic paintings), & Debra Wayne (dichroic glass). The exhibit runs thru Saturday 28 April. At Elk Creek Gallery, Elkcreek Vineyards, 150 Highway 330, Owenton, KY 40359 (a lovely 1-hour drive south of Cincinnati). More info @ 502.484.0005, paperpeg@cinci.rr.com, info@elkcreekvineyards.com, & www.kentuckytourism.com/Listing/5913/.
Portrait Of A Filter: The Art Of Aidin Gargari [Opening Reception, Saturday 3 March @ 7-11 PM]: Aidin Gargari is an artist of mixed media from the Middle East who explores themes of war, capitalism, love, & alienation. The Historic Southgate House, Gallery, 3rd floor. 24 East 3rd Street, Newport, KY 41071. More info @ 859.431.2201 & www.southgatehouse.com/NewWebsite/Gallery.html.
Calligraphy Winter Workshops Rescheduled [Saturday 3 March @ 9:30 AM & 1:00 PM]: Greater Cincinnati Calligraphers' Guild welcomes you & your friends to a "fun" draiser that offers workshops in two calligraphy styles & two paper-altering crafts. Foundation Hand or Walnut Ink is offered @ 9:30-AM - Noon. Script or Paper Coloring is offered @ 1:00-3:30 PM. Cost is $20 per workshop or $35 per day. Pay at the door. Registration is required. More info @ 513.791.8100.
Freedom Summer: Its Significance Then & Now [Saturday 3 March @ 2 PM]: In conjunction with the “Courage Under Fire” exhibit, Rick Momeyer, Professor of Philosophy at Miami University, speaks about his experiences with the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project of 1964. Hall of Everyday Freedom Heroes, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, 50 East Freedom Way, Cincinnati OH 45202. More info @ 513.333.7500, ETurner@nurfc.org, & www.freedomcenter.org.
The Bach’s Brunch [Sunday 4 March @ 11:30 AM]: A perfect finish to your Bockfest weekend, featuring a salute to the guitar by The Faux Frenchmen (gypsy guitars), David Martin (classical guitar), & Greg Schaber (harp guitar, parlor guitar, & Hawaiian slack-key guitar). Brunch menu: bockwurst over Bavarian sauerkraut; braised red cabbage with sliced apples; roasted new potatoes with warm bacon vinaigrette; a spring mix house salad with raspberry vinaigrette, toasted pine nuts, goat cheese, & sun-dried cranberries; roasted vegetable penne with artichoke hearts & garlic oil; juices, coffee, tea & soft drinks are included. Alcoholic beverages available. Sponsored by US Bank of Over the Rhine. To Benefit the Over the Rhine Foundation & to celebrate the churches of Over the Rhine. Tickets are $15. At Bell Event Centre, 444 Reading Road, Cincinnati, OH 45202. More info @ 513.721.1317 (general), 513.541.3359 (The Faux Frenchmen) gregschaber@fuse.net (Greg Schaber) & 859.426.0975 (David Martin).
Bockfest – The Historic Churches of Over The Rhine [Sunday 4 March]: To enhance your Bock to Bach experience visit one of these historic OTR Churches, all of which will feature the music of Bach in their services:
<> Old St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church @ Clay & 13th @ 9:15 AM (Latin service), 11 AM (German service), Noon & 7 PM (English service)
<> St. Francis Roman Catholic Church @ Vine & Liberty @ 10 AM service
<> Philippus United Church of Christ @ 106 W. McMicken @ 10:15 AM service (Tours on Saturday 3 March @ 1:30 & 2 PM - very German!)
<> First English Evangelical Lutheran Church @ 1208 Race @ 11 AM service
<> The Gathering @ 1433 Main @ 11 AM service
<> Nast-Trinity United Methodist Church @ 1310 Race @ 10:30 AM service
Awakening the Goddess [Six Sundays 4 March - 8 April @ 1-3 PM]: 6-week metaphysical course for women facilitated by Lydia Stec D.D. Join other women & awaken the Goddess within through guided weekly ritual. Discover your Goddess archetype through disciplines such as astrology & numerology. Create a personal Goddess Talisman. Dance with the Goddess & learn how to manifest your intentions through a process called treasure mapping. Learn many types of divination & learn to connect your inner Goddess with your Psychic self. $90 for 6 weeks. At Aquarius Star, 1218 Sycamore Street, Cincinnati, OH 45202. More info @ 513.381.3436, lydia.stec@gmail.com, & www.aquariusstar.com.
The Serpent & the Alligator: Ohio’s Ancient Effigy Mounds [Saturday 10 March @ 10 AM]: The Association for Rational Thought & the Ohio Humanities Council (A State affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities) present a talk by Dr. Brad Lepper, Curator of Archaeology for the Ohio Historical Society & an occasional Visiting Professor of Sociology & Anthropology at Denison University. His primary areas of interest include North America’s Ice Age peoples, Ohio’s magnificent mounds & earthworks, & the history of archaeology. Noteworthy research includes excavation of the Burning Tree mastodon & discovery of the Great Hopewell Road, featured in a recent documentary. At Molly Malone’s Restaurant, 6111 Montgomery Rd., Pleasant Ridge, Cincinnati, OH 45213. More info @ rrdavis@fuse.net & www.cincinnatiskeptics.org.
Abraham Lincoln Inaugural Address Re-enactment [Saturday 10 March @ Noon]: Re-enactor Stanley Wernz presents President Lincoln’s Inaugural Address in an authentic way. National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, 50 East Freedom Way, Cincinnati OH 45202. More info @ 513.333.7500, ETurner@nurfc.org, & www.freedomcenter.org.
Drawing & Creative Workshop Abroad [registration deadline: Saturday 10 March]: In June 2007, Manifest will launch the 1st of what are planned to be biannual expeditions abroad. This trip to Greece is geared towards artists, designers, students, & others interested in creative travel experiences at the heart of the cradle of western civilization. With an itinerary that will include Athens, Mycenea, Epidaurus, Olympia, Delphi, Greek Orthodox monasteries, the island of Milos, remote villages, beaches, & mountains, the trip will be a 3-week creative adventure. A flexible curriculum will allow for creative work, & offer guidance (workshops) for those who are interested, but art making is not required for trip participation. Group leader for this 1st expedition will be Manifest's Executive Director & co-founder Jason Franz, who has led similar trips to Greece in the past. Manifest will work with students' credit-granting institution to develop customized curricula for those wishing to receive credit. Already registered for this trip are several students of fine art & design from across the US, an art critic & author, & several professional artists & designers. More info on itinerary, curriculum, & pricing @ 513.861.3638, manifest@manifestgallery.org, & www.manifestgallery.org/study.
Ongoing Tri-State Treasures
Italian American Film Festival [Wednesdays thru 25 April @ 7:30 PM]: Sante Matteo, Prof. & Coordinator of Italian Studies in the Department of French & Italian @ Miami University presents his Annual Spring Semester Italian American Film Festival. Free & open to the public. Mar. 7: Cobra (1925) with Rudolph Valentino; Kiss Me, Guido (1997), Tony Vitale; Mar. 21: Robin & the Seven Hoods (1964), Gordon Douglas, with Frank Sinatra & the Rat Pack; Mar. 28: Saturday Night Fever (1977), John Badham; Apr. 4: Scarface (1932), Howard Hawks; Apr. 11: The Godfather (1972), Francis Ford Coppola; Apr. 18: Mafia! (1998), Jim Abrahams; The Sopranos, 1st TV series episode; Apr. 25: The Sopranos, episodes from the TV series. In Room 46 Culler Hall, Miami University, Oxford OH 45056. More info @ 513.529.5932, matteos@muohio.edu.
Courage Under Fire: The 1961 Burning of the Freedom Riders' Bus [thru Sunday 25 March]: This collection of photographs offers an opportunity for reflection on the roles of personal courage, violence, law enforcement & the press in the Freedom Rides of 1961. National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, 50 East Freedom Way, Cincinnati OH 45202. More info @ 513.333.7500, ETurner@nurfc.org, & www.freedomcenter.org.
Hamlet [thru Sunday 18 March @ 8 PM, except Sundays @ 4 PM]: World premiere. If you like films like Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo & Juliet and Brazil... In an epic flashback, Hamlet's tale of sex, lies, ghosts, & murder will be brought to the stage through a mix of live action, music, & original video designed by Big Bang Productions. By William Shakespeare. Adapted & directed by Jason Bruffy. At Know Theatre of Cincinnati, 1120 Jackson Street, Cincinnati, OH 45202. More info @ 513.621.ARTS, info@knowtheatre.com, & www.knowtheatre.com.
(this is a fabulous experience. I went to and presented at the one two years ago here in cincinnati. Want to be with hundreds of ecological/political fellow travelers? Make the scene this summer. ellen.)
Online registration now available!
www.earthspiritrising.org
Sixth EarthSpirit Rising Conference
June 8-10-2007
EarthSpirit Rising: Return to Earth Wisdom
Bellarmine University, Louisville, Kentucky
Plenary Presenters:
Margaret Wheatley
Starhawk
Paul Rogat Loeb
Kirkpatrick Sale
Jerry Mander (the globalization expert, co-author of Alternatives to Economic Globalization, terrific book. e.)
Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow
Jane Siberry
Pre-conference workshops, Friday, June 8, 2007:
Margaret Wheatley
Starhawk
Connie Barlow and Michael Dowd
Join us for EarthSpirit Rising
as we work and play together
to create a sustainable and compassionate future.
For more details visit www.earthspiritrising.org
Email: earthspiritrising@imagoearth.org
Call: 513-921-5124
Roy Euvrard’s ongoing photo journalism from small town in France:
http://web.mac.com/roy.euvrard/iWeb/Site/Library.html
From Al Gore: let congress know we are determined!
When the producers of An Inconvenient Truth first approached me with the concept for the film, I was skeptical. Could we really take a slideshow about the climate crisis and turn it into a compelling movie? Davis Guggenheim's Oscar win for best documentary and a second one for Melissa Etheridge's beautiful song "I Need to Wake Up" was a testament to their ability, but it was also a testament to you.
It was you who packed the theaters and got your friends to go see this film, greatly increasing the audience. And then this past December, it was you who connected through MoveOn.org and AlGore.com to attend An Inconvenient Truth viewing parties. At those parties and in the weeks that followed, nearly 200,000 of you wrote to Congress, demanding that they address the climate crisis like the planetary emergency that it is.
Even though I have been a life-long movie fan, I didn't really understand how big of an audience a movie could reach. And of course I never would have imagined in a million years that a movie that I was a part of would receive two Academy Awards-or one-or would have ever been made in the first place! As humbling as this moment is, An Inconvenient Truth will only succeed if it drives all of us to take action. That's why I'm asking you to join me in the next stage of our fight. On March 21st, I'm going to hand-deliver the messages you signed when I testify at Congressional hearings on the climate crisis.
This is an incredible opportunity to demonstrate to Congress that we demand immediate action. And I need your help to really make this moment count. Can you commit to getting 10 friends to send their message to Congress through AlGore.com before March 21st? The more voices I can bring to Washington, the more powerful our message will be.
To get your friends involved, just forward them this note or direct them to:
http://algore.com/cards.html
There is no longer a debate about the fact that global warming is real. We're causing it. The consequences are serious, and could be headed towards catastrophe if we don't fix it. And it's not too late. I don't want to imagine a future in which our children say, "What were our parents thinking?" "Why didn't they wake up when they had a chance?" And I know you don't either.
The hundreds of thousands of you who signed messages to Congress showed me what's possible. Working together we can unite millions of people and build support for real action on a scale that has never been seen before.
Help me take the first step and fill up that hearing room with your signatures. That picture alone will send a powerful message.
Can you commit to getting ten more people to send messages to Congress demanding action to stop global warming?
http://algore.com/cards.html
I'm looking forward to working with you on this monumental task.
Thank you,
Al Gore
Section Three: Articles
Contents:
- Seymore Hersh on Middle East situation from New Yorker
- UNICEF reports U.S. and U.K. LAST in child well-being!
- More Child Misery...Afghanistan
- A Small Group newsletter...check it out.
- Richard Blumberg sends t his... why not have a National liberal Pride parade, like the Gay Pride parades?
- Barbara Collier, salonista, sends thanks for Weekly
>From the current New Yorker magazine. This was discussed at table.
THE REDIRECTION
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?
Issue of 2007-03-05
Posted 2007-02-25
A STRATEGIC SHIFT
In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, ha significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The “redirection,” as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the Unite States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunn Muslims
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni forces, and not from Shiites. But, from the Administration’s perspective, the most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran. Its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made defiant pronouncements about the destruction of Israel and his country’s right to pursue its nuclear program, and last week its supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on state television that “realities in the region show that the arrogant front, headed by the U.S. and its allies, will be the principal loser in the region.”
After the revolution of 1979 brought a religious government to power, the United States broke with Iran and cultivated closer relations with the leaders of Sunni Arab states such as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. That calculation became more complex after the September 11th attacks, especially with regard to the Saudis. Al Qaeda is Sunni, and many of its operatives came from extremist religious circles inside Saudi Arabia. Before the invasion of Iraq, in 2003, Administration officials, influenced by neoconservative ideologues, assumed that a Shiite government there could provide a pro-American balance to Sunni extremists, since Iraq’s Shiite majority had been oppressed under Saddam Hussein. They ignored warnings from the intelligence community about the ties between Iraqi Shiite leaders and Iran, where some had lived in exile for years. Now, to the distress of the White House, Iran has forged a close relationship with the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
The new American policy, in its broad outlines, has been discussed publicly. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that there is “a new strategic alignment in the Middle East,” separating “reformers” and “extremists”; she pointed to the Sunni states as centers of moderation, and said that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah were “on the other side of that divide.” (Syria’s Sunni majority is dominated by the Alawi sect.) Iran and Syria, she said, “have made their choice and their choice is to destabilize.”
Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however. The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the Administration said.
A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee told me that he had heard about the new strategy, but felt that he and his colleagues had not been adequately briefed. “We haven’t got any of this,” he said. “We ask for anything going on, and they say there’s nothing. And when we ask specific questions they say, ‘We’re going to get back to you.’ It’s so frustrating.”
The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser. While Rice has been deeply involved in shaping the public policy, former and current officials said that the clandestine side has been guided by Cheney. (Cheney’s office and the White House declined to comment for this story; the Pentagon did not respond to specific queries but said, “The United States is not planning to go to war with Iran.”)
The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new strategic embrace, largely because both countries see Iran as an existential threat. They have been involved in direct talks, and the Saudis, who believe that greater stability in Israel and Palestine will give Iran less leverage in the region, have become more involved in Arab-Israeli negotiations.
The new strategy “is a major shift in American policy—it’s a sea change,” a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. The Sunni states “were petrified of a Shiite resurgence, and there was growing resentment with our gambling on the moderate Shiites in Iraq,” he said. “We cannot reverse the Shiite gain in Iraq, but we can contain it.”
“It seems there has been a debate inside the government over what’s the biggest danger—Iran or Sunni radicals,” Vali Nasr, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has written widely on Shiites, Iran, and Iraq, told me. “The Saudis and some in the Administration have been arguing that the biggest threat is Iran and the Sunni radicals are the lesser enemies. This is a victory for the Saudi line.”
Martin Indyk, a senior State Department official in the Clinton Administration who also served as Ambassador to Israel, said that “the Middle East is heading into a serious Sunni-Shiite Cold War.” Indyk, who is the director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, added that, in his opinion, it was not clear whether the White House was fully aware of the strategic implications of its new policy. “The White House is not just doubling the bet in Iraq,” he said. “It’s doubling the bet across the region. This could get very complicated. Everything is upside down.”
The Administration’s new policy for containing Iran seems to complicate its strategy for winning the war in Iraq. Patrick Clawson, an expert o Iran and the deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argued, however, that closer ties between the United State and moderate or even radical Sunnis could put “fear” into the government of Prime Minister Maliki and “make him worry that the Sunnis coul actually win” the civil war there. Clawson said that this might give Maliki an incentive to coöperate with the United States in suppressing radica Shiite militias, such as Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army
Even so, for the moment, the U.S. remains dependent on the coöperation of Iraqi Shiite leaders. The Mahdi Army may be openly hostile to American interests, but other Shiite militias are counted as U.S. allies. Both Moqtada al-Sadr and the White House back Maliki. A memorandum written late last year by Stephen Hadley, the national-security adviser, suggested that the Administration try to separate Maliki from his more radical Shiite allies by building his base among moderate Sunnis and Kurds, but so far the trends have been in the opposite direction. As the Iraqi Army continues to founder in its confrontations with insurgents, the power of the Shiite militias has steadily increased.
Flynt Leverett, a former Bush Administration National Security Council official, told me that “there is nothing coincidental or ironic” about the new strategy with regard to Iraq. “The Administration is trying to make a case that Iran is more dangerous and more provocative than the Sunni insurgents to American interests in Iraq, when—if you look at the actual casualty numbers—the punishment inflicted on America by the Sunnis is greater by an order of magnitude,” Leverett said. “This is all part of the campaign of provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran. The idea is that at some point the Iranians will respond and then the Administration will have an open door to strike at them.”
President George W. Bush, in a speech on January 10th, partially spelled out this approach. “These two regimes”—Iran and Syria—“are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq,” Bush said. “Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We’ll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.”
In the following weeks, there was a wave of allegations from the Administration about Iranian involvement in the Iraq war. On February 11th, reporters were shown sophisticated explosive devices, captured in Iraq, that the Administration claimed had come from Iran. The Administration’s message was, in essence, that the bleak situation in Iraq was the result not of its own failures of planning and execution but of Iran’s interference.
The U.S. military also has arrested and interrogated hundreds of Iranians in Iraq. “The word went out last August for the military to snatch as many Iranians in Iraq as they can,” a former senior intelligence official said. “They had five hundred locked up at one time. We’re working these guys and getting information from them. The White House goal is to build a case that the Iranians have been fomenting the insurgency and they’ve been doing it all along—that Iran is, in fact, supporting the killing of Americans.” The Pentagon consultant confirmed that hundreds of Iranians have been captured by American forces in recent months. But he told me that that total includes many Iranian humanitarian and aid workers who “get scooped up and released in a short time,” after they have been interrogated.
“We are not planning for a war with Iran,” Robert Gates, the new Defense Secretary, announced on February 2nd, and yet the atmosphere of confrontation has deepened. According to current and former American intelligence and military officials, secret operations in Lebanon have been accompanied by clandestine operations targeting Iran. American military and special-operations teams have escalated their activities in Iran to gather intelligence and, according to a Pentagon consultant on terrorism and the former senior intelligence official, have also crossed the border in pursuit of Iranian operatives from Iraq.
At Rice’s Senate appearance in January, Democratic Senator Joseph Biden, of Delaware, pointedly asked her whether the U.S. planned to cross the Iranian or the Syrian border in the course of a pursuit. “Obviously, the President isn’t going to rule anything out to protect our troops, but the plan is to take down these networks in Iraq,” Rice said, adding, “I do think that everyone will understand that—the American people and I assume the Congress expect the President to do what is necessary to protect our forces.”
The ambiguity of Rice’s reply prompted a response from Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican, who has been critical of the Administration:
Some of us remember 1970, Madam Secretary. And that was Cambodia. And when our government lied to the American people and said, “We didn’t cross the border going into Cambodia,” in fact we did.
I happen to know something about that, as do some on this committee. So, Madam Secretary, when you set in motion the kind of policy that the President is talking about here, it’s very, very dangerous.
The Administration’s concern about Iran’s role in Iraq is coupled with its long-standing alarm over Iran’s nuclear program. On Fox News on January 14th, Cheney warned of the possibility, in a few years, “of a nuclear-armed Iran, astride the world’s supply of oil, able to affect adversely the global economy, prepared to use terrorist organizations and/or their nuclear weapons to threaten their neighbors and others around the world.” He also said, “If you go and talk with the Gulf states or if you talk with the Saudis or if you talk with the Israelis or the Jordanians, the entire region is worried. . . . The threat Iran represents is growing.”
The Administration is now examining a wave of new intelligence on Iran’s weapons programs. Current and former American officials told me that the intelligence, which came from Israeli agents operating in Iran, includes a claim that Iran has developed a three-stage solid-fuelled intercontinental missile capable of delivering several small warheads—each with limited accuracy—inside Europe. The validity of this human intelligence is still being debated.
A similar argument about an imminent threat posed by weapons of mass destruction—and questions about the intelligence used to make that case—formed the prelude to the invasion of Iraq. Many in Congress have greeted the claims about Iran with wariness; in the Senate on February 14th, Hillary Clinton said, “We have all learned lessons from the conflict in Iraq, and we have to apply those lessons to any allegations that are being raised about Iran. Because, Mr. President, what we are hearing has too familiar a ring and we must be on guard that we never again make decisions on the basis of intelligence that turns out to be faulty.”
Still, the Pentagon is continuing intensive planning for a possible bombing attack on Iran, a process that began last year, at the direction of the President. In recent months, the former intelligence official told me, a special planning group has been established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that can be implemented, upon orders from the President, within twenty-four hours.
In the past month, I was told by an Air Force adviser on targeting and the Pentagon consultant on terrorism, the Iran planning group has been handed a new assignment: to identify targets in Iran that may be involved in supplying or aiding militants in Iraq. Previously, the focus had been on the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities and possible regime change.
Two carrier strike groups—the Eisenhower and the Stennis—are now in the Arabian Sea. One plan is for them to be relieved early in the spring, but there is worry within the military that they may be ordered to stay in the area after the new carriers arrive, according to several sources. (Among other concerns, war games have shown that the carriers could be vulnerable to swarming tactics involving large numbers of small boats, a technique that the Iranians have practiced in the past; carriers have limited maneuverability in the narrow Strait of Hormuz, off Iran’s southern coast.) The former senior intelligence official said that the current contingency plans allow for an attack order this spring. He added, however, that senior officers on the Joint Chiefs were counting on the White House’s not being “foolish enough to do this in the face of Iraq, and the problems it would give the Republicans in 2008.”
PRINCE BANDAR’S GAME
The Administration’s effort to diminish Iranian authority in the Middle East has relied heavily on Saudi Arabia and on Prince Bandar, the Saud national-security adviser. Bandar served as the Ambassador to the United States for twenty-two years, until 2005, and has maintained a friendshi with President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. In his new post, he continues to meet privately with them. Senior White House officials have mad several visits to Saudi Arabia recently, some of them not disclosed
Last November, Cheney flew to Saudi Arabia for a surprise meeting with King Abdullah and Bandar. The Times reported that the King warned Cheney that Saudi Arabia would back its fellow-Sunnis in Iraq if the United States were to withdraw. A European intelligence official told me that the meeting also focussed on more general Saudi fears about “the rise of the Shiites.” In response, “The Saudis are starting to use their leverage—money.”
In a royal family rife with competition, Bandar has, over the years, built a power base that relies largely on his close relationship with the U.S., which is crucial to the Saudis. Bandar was succeeded as Ambassador by Prince Turki al-Faisal; Turki resigned after eighteen months and was replaced by Adel A. al-Jubeir, a bureaucrat who has worked with Bandar. A former Saudi diplomat told me that during Turki’s tenure he became aware of private meetings involving Bandar and senior White House officials, including Cheney and Abrams. “I assume Turki was not happy with that,” the Saudi said. But, he added, “I don’t think that Bandar is going off on his own.” Although Turki dislikes Bandar, the Saudi said, he shared his goal of challenging the spread of Shiite power in the Middle East.
The split between Shiites and Sunnis goes back to a bitter divide, in the seventh century, over who should succeed the Prophet Muhammad. Sunnis dominated the medieval caliphate and the Ottoman Empire, and Shiites, traditionally, have been regarded more as outsiders. Worldwide, ninety per cent of Muslims are Sunni, but Shiites are a majority in Iran, Iraq, and Bahrain, and are the largest Muslim group in Lebanon. Their concentration in a volatile, oil-rich region has led to concern in the West and among Sunnis about the emergence of a “Shiite crescent”—especially given Iran’s increased geopolitical weight.
“The Saudis still see the world through the days of the Ottoman Empire, when Sunni Muslims ruled the roost and the Shiites were the lowest class,” Frederic Hof, a retired military officer who is an expert on the Middle East, told me. If Bandar was seen as bringing about a shift in U.S. policy in favor of the Sunnis, he added, it would greatly enhance his standing within the royal family.
The Saudis are driven by their fear that Iran could tilt the balance of power not only in the region but within their own country. Saudi Arabia has a significant Shiite minority in its Eastern Province, a region of major oil fields; sectarian tensions are high in the province. The royal family believes that Iranian operatives, working with local Shiites, have been behind many terrorist attacks inside the kingdom, according to Vali Nasr. “Today, the only army capable of containing Iran”—the Iraqi Army—“has been destroyed by the United States. You’re now dealing with an Iran that could be nuclear-capable and has a standing army of four hundred and fifty thousand soldiers.” (Saudi Arabia has seventy-five thousand troops in its standing army.)
Nasr went on, “The Saudis have considerable financial means, and have deep relations with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis”—Sunni extremists who view Shiites as apostates. “The last time Iran was a threat, the Saudis were able to mobilize the worst kinds of Islamic radicals. Once you get them out of the box, you can’t put them back.”
The Saudi royal family has been, by turns, both a sponsor and a target of Sunni extremists, who object to the corruption and decadence among the family’s myriad princes. The princes are gambling that they will not be overthrown as long as they continue to support religious schools and charities linked to the extremists. The Administration’s new strategy is heavily dependent on this bargain.
Nasr compared the current situation to the period in which Al Qaeda first emerged. In the nineteen-eighties and the early nineties, the Saudi government offered to subsidize the covert American C.I.A. proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Hundreds of young Saudis were sent into the border areas of Pakistan, where they set up religious schools, training bases, and recruiting facilities. Then, as now, many of the operatives who were paid with Saudi money were Salafis. Among them, of course, were Osama bin Laden and his associates, who founded Al Qaeda, in 1988.
This time, the U.S. government consultant told me, Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.”
The Saudi said that, in his country’s view, it was taking a political risk by joining the U.S. in challenging Iran: Bandar is already seen in the Arab world as being too close to the Bush Administration. “We have two nightmares,” the former diplomat told me. “For Iran to acquire the bomb and for the United States to attack Iran. I’d rather the Israelis bomb the Iranians, so we can blame them. If America does it, we will be blamed.”
In the past year, the Saudis, the Israelis, and the Bush Administration have developed a series of informal understandings about their new strategi direction. At least four main elements were involved, the U.S. government consultant told me. First, Israel would be assured that its security wa paramount and that Washington and Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states shared its concern about Iran
Second, the Saudis would urge Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian party that has received support from Iran, to curtail its anti-Israeli aggression and to begin serious talks about sharing leadership with Fatah, the more secular Palestinian group. (In February, the Saudis brokered a deal at Mecca between the two factions. However, Israel and the U.S. have expressed dissatisfaction with the terms.)
The third component was that the Bush Administration would work directly with Sunni nations to counteract Shiite ascendance in the region.
Fourth, the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria. The Israelis believe that putting such pressure on the Assad government will make it more conciliatory and open to negotiations. Syria is a major conduit of arms to Hezbollah. The Saudi government is also at odds with the Syrians over the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, in Beirut in 2005, for which it believes the Assad government was responsible. Hariri, a billionaire Sunni, was closely associated with the Saudi regime and with Prince Bandar. (A U.N. inquiry strongly suggested that the Syrians were involved, but offered no direct evidence; there are plans for another investigation, by an international tribunal.)
Patrick Clawson, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, depicted the Saudis’ coöperation with the White House as a significant breakthrough. “The Saudis understand that if they want the Administration to make a more generous political offer to the Palestinians they have to persuade the Arab states to make a more generous offer to the Israelis,” Clawson told me. The new diplomatic approach, he added, “shows a real degree of effort and sophistication as well as a deftness of touch not always associated with this Administration. Who’s running the greater risk—we or the Saudis? At a time when America’s standing in the Middle East is extremely low, the Saudis are actually embracing us. We should count our blessings.”
The Pentagon consultant had a different view. He said that the Administration had turned to Bandar as a “fallback,” because it had realized that the failing war in Iraq could leave the Middle East “up for grabs.”
JIHADIS IN LEBANON
The focus of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, after Iran, is Lebanon, where the Saudis have been deeply involved in efforts by the Administration t support the Lebanese government. Prime Minister Fouad Siniora is struggling to stay in power against a persistent opposition led by Hezbollah, th Shiite organization, and its leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah has an extensive infrastructure, an estimated two to three thousand activ fighters, and thousands of additional members
Hezbollah has been on the State Department’s terrorist list since 1997. The organization has been implicated in the 1983 bombing of a Marine barracks in Beirut that killed two hundred and forty-one military men. It has also been accused of complicity in the kidnapping of Americans, including the C.I.A. station chief in Lebanon, who died in captivity, and a Marine colonel serving on a U.N. peacekeeping mission, who was killed. (Nasrallah has denied that the group was involved in these incidents.) Nasrallah is seen by many as a staunch terrorist, who has said that he regards Israel as a state that has no right to exist. Many in the Arab world, however, especially Shiites, view him as a resistance leader who withstood Israel in last summer’s thirty-three-day war, and Siniora as a weak politician who relies on America’s support but was unable to persuade President Bush to call for an end to the Israeli bombing of Lebanon. (Photographs of Siniora kissing Condoleezza Rice on the cheek when she visited during the war were prominently displayed during street protests in Beirut.)
The Bush Administration has publicly pledged the Siniora government a billion dollars in aid since last summer. A donors’ conference in Paris, in January, which the U.S. helped organize, yielded pledges of almost eight billion more, including a promise of more than a billion from the Saudis. The American pledge includes more than two hundred million dollars in military aid, and forty million dollars for internal security.
The United States has also given clandestine support to the Siniora government, according to the former senior intelligence official and the U.S. government consultant. “We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to resist Shiite influence, and we’re spreading the money around as much as we can,” the former senior intelligence official said. The problem was that such money “always gets in more pockets than you think it will,” he said. “In this process, we’re financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential unintended consequences. We don’t have the ability to determine and get pay vouchers signed by the people we like and avoid the people we don’t like. It’s a very high-risk venture.”
American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the Siniora government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. These groups, though small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time, their ideological ties are with Al Qaeda.
During a conversation with me, the former Saudi diplomat accused Nasrallah of attempting “to hijack the state,” but he also objected to the Lebanese and Saudi sponsorship of Sunni jihadists in Lebanon. “Salafis are sick and hateful, and I’m very much against the idea of flirting with them,” he said. “They hate the Shiites, but they hate Americans more. If you try to outsmart them, they will outsmart us. It will be ugly.”
Alastair Crooke, who spent nearly thirty years in MI6, the British intelligence service, and now works for Conflicts Forum, a think tank in Beirut, told me, “The Lebanese government is opening space for these people to come in. It could be very dangerous.” Crooke said that one Sunni extremist group, Fatah al-Islam, had splintered from its pro-Syrian parent group, Fatah al-Intifada, in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, in northern Lebanon. Its membership at the time was less than two hundred. “I was told that within twenty-four hours they were being offered weapons and money by people presenting themselves as representatives of the Lebanese government’s interests—presumably to take on Hezbollah,” Crooke said.
The largest of the groups, Asbat al-Ansar, is situated in the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp. Asbat al-Ansar has received arms and supplies from Lebanese internal-security forces and militias associated with the Siniora government.
In 2005, according to a report by the U.S.-based International Crisis Group, Saad Hariri, the Sunni majority leader of the Lebanese parliament and the son of the slain former Prime Minister—Saad inherited more than four billion dollars after his father’s assassination—paid forty-eight thousand dollars in bail for four members of an Islamic militant group from Dinniyeh. The men had been arrested while trying to establish an Islamic mini-state in northern Lebanon. The Crisis Group noted that many of the militants “had trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.”
According to the Crisis Group report, Saad Hariri later used his parliamentary majority to obtain amnesty for twenty-two of the Dinniyeh Islamists, as well as for seven militants suspected of plotting to bomb the Italian and Ukrainian embassies in Beirut, the previous year. (He also arranged a pardon for Samir Geagea, a Maronite Christian militia leader, who had been convicted of four political murders, including the assassination, in 1987, of Prime Minister Rashid Karami.) Hariri described his actions to reporters as humanitarian.
In an interview in Beirut, a senior official in the Siniora government acknowledged that there were Sunni jihadists operating inside Lebanon. “We have a liberal attitude that allows Al Qaeda types to have a presence here,” he said. He related this to concerns that Iran or Syria might decide to turn Lebanon into a “theatre of conflict.”
The official said that his government was in a no-win situation. Without a political settlement with Hezbollah, he said, Lebanon could “slide into a conflict,” in which Hezbollah fought openly with Sunni forces, with potentially horrific consequences. But if Hezbollah agreed to a settlement yet still maintained a separate army, allied with Iran and Syria, “Lebanon could become a target. In both cases, we become a target.”
The Bush Administration has portrayed its support of the Siniora government as an example of the President’s belief in democracy, and his desire to prevent other powers from interfering in Lebanon. When Hezbollah led street demonstrations in Beirut in December, John Bolton, who was then the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., called them “part of the Iran-Syria-inspired coup.”
Leslie H. Gelb, a past president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said that the Administration’s policy was less pro democracy than “pro American national security. The fact is that it would be terribly dangerous if Hezbollah ran Lebanon.” The fall of the Siniora government would be seen, Gelb said, “as a signal in the Middle East of the decline of the United States and the ascendancy of the terrorism threat. And so any change in the distribution of political power in Lebanon has to be opposed by the United States—and we’re justified in helping any non-Shiite parties resist that change. We should say this publicly, instead of talking about democracy.”
Martin Indyk, of the Saban Center, said, however, that the United States “does not have enough pull to stop the moderates in Lebanon from dealing with the extremists.” He added, “The President sees the region as divided between moderates and extremists, but our regional friends see it as divided between Sunnis and Shia. The Sunnis that we view as extremists are regarded by our Sunni allies simply as Sunnis.”
In January, after an outburst of street violence in Beirut involving supporters of both the Siniora government and Hezbollah, Prince Bandar flew t Tehran to discuss the political impasse in Lebanon and to meet with Ali Larijani, the Iranians’ negotiator on nuclear issues. According to a Middl Eastern ambassador, Bandar’s mission—which the ambassador said was endorsed by the White House—also aimed “to create problems between th Iranians and Syria.” There had been tensions between the two countries about Syrian talks with Israel, and the Saudis’ goal was to encourage breach. However, the ambassador said, “It did not work. Syria and Iran are not going to betray each other. Bandar’s approach is very unlikely t succeed.
Walid Jumblatt, who is the leader of the Druze minority in Lebanon and a strong Siniora supporter, has attacked Nasrallah as an agent of Syria, and has repeatedly told foreign journalists that Hezbollah is under the direct control of the religious leadership in Iran. In a conversation with me last December, he depicted Bashir Assad, the Syrian President, as a “serial killer.” Nasrallah, he said, was “morally guilty” of the assassination of Rafik Hariri and the murder, last November, of Pierre Gemayel, a member of the Siniora Cabinet, because of his support for the Syrians.
Jumblatt then told me that he had met with Vice-President Cheney in Washington last fall to discuss, among other issues, the possibility of undermining Assad. He and his colleagues advised Cheney that, if the United States does try to move against Syria, members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood would be “the ones to talk to,” Jumblatt said.
The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, a branch of a radical Sunni movement founded in Egypt in 1928, engaged in more than a decade of violent opposition to the regime of Hafez Assad, Bashir’s father. In 1982, the Brotherhood took control of the city of Hama; Assad bombarded the city for a week, killing between six thousand and twenty thousand people. Membership in the Brotherhood is punishable by death in Syria. The Brotherhood is also an avowed enemy of the U.S. and of Israel. Nevertheless, Jumblatt said, “We told Cheney that the basic link between Iran and Lebanon is Syria—and to weaken Iran you need to open the door to effective Syrian opposition.”
There is evidence that the Administration’s redirection strategy has already benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation Front is a coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are a faction led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice-President who defected in 2005, and the Brotherhood. A former high-ranking C.I.A. officer told me, “The Americans have provided both political and financial support. The Saudis are taking the lead with financial support, but there is American involvement.” He said that Khaddam, who now lives in Paris, was getting money from Saudi Arabia, with the knowledge of the White House. (In 2005, a delegation of the Front’s members met with officials from the National Security Council, according to press reports.) A former White House official told me that the Saudis had provided members of the Front with travel documents.
Jumblatt said he understood that the issue was a sensitive one for the White House. “I told Cheney that some people in the Arab world, mainly the Egyptians”—whose moderate Sunni leadership has been fighting the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood for decades—“won’t like it if the United States helps the Brotherhood. But if you don’t take on Syria we will be face to face in Lebanon with Hezbollah in a long fight, and one we might not win.”
THE SHEIKH
On a warm, clear night early last December, in a bombed-out suburb a few miles south of downtown Beirut, I got a preview of how th Administration’s new strategy might play out in Lebanon. Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, who has been in hiding, had agreed to a interview. Security arrangements for the meeting were secretive and elaborate. I was driven, in the back seat of a darkened car, to a damage underground garage somewhere in Beirut, searched with a handheld scanner, placed in a second car to be driven to yet another bomb-scarre underground garage, and transferred again. Last summer, it was reported that Israel was trying to kill Nasrallah, but the extraordinary precaution were not due only to that threat. Nasrallah’s aides told me that they believe he is a prime target of fellow-Arabs, primarily Jordanian intelligenc operatives, as well as Sunni jihadists who they believe are affiliated with Al Qaeda. (The government consultant and a retired four-star general sai that Jordanian intelligence, with support from the U.S. and Israel, had been trying to infiltrate Shiite groups, to work against Hezbollah. Jordan’ King Abdullah II has warned that a Shiite government in Iraq that was close to Iran would lead to the emergence of a Shiite crescent.) This i something of an ironic turn: Nasrallah’s battle with Israel last summer turned him—a Shiite—into the most popular and influential figure amon Sunnis and Shiites throughout the region. In recent months, however, he has increasingly been seen by many Sunnis not as a symbol of Arab unit but as a participant in a sectarian war
Nasrallah, dressed, as usual, in religious garb, was waiting for me in an unremarkable apartment. One of his advisers said that he was not likely to remain there overnight; he has been on the move since his decision, last July, to order the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid set off the thirty-three-day war. Nasrallah has since said publicly—and repeated to me—that he misjudged the Israeli response. “We just wanted to capture prisoners for exchange purposes,” he told me. “We never wanted to drag the region into war.”
Nasrallah accused the Bush Administration of working with Israel to deliberately instigate fitna, an Arabic word that is used to mean “insurrection and fragmentation within Islam.” “In my opinion, there is a huge campaign through the media throughout the world to put each side up against the other,” he said. “I believe that all this is being run by American and Israeli intelligence.” (He did not provide any specific evidence for this.) He said that the U.S. war in Iraq had increased sectarian tensions, but argued that Hezbollah had tried to prevent them from spreading into Lebanon. (Sunni-Shiite confrontations increased, along with violence, in the weeks after we talked.)
Nasrallah said he believed that President Bush’s goal was “the drawing of a new map for the region. They want the partition of Iraq. Iraq is not on the edge of a civil war—there is a civil war. There is ethnic and sectarian cleansing. The daily killing and displacement which is taking place in Iraq aims at achieving three Iraqi parts, which will be sectarian and ethnically pure as a prelude to the partition of Iraq. Within one or two years at the most, there will be total Sunni areas, total Shiite areas, and total Kurdish areas. Even in Baghdad, there is a fear that it might be divided into two areas, one Sunni and one Shiite.”
He went on, “I can say that President Bush is lying when he says he does not want Iraq to be partitioned. All the facts occurring now on the ground make you swear he is dragging Iraq to partition. And a day will come when he will say, ‘I cannot do anything, since the Iraqis want the partition of their country and I honor the wishes of the people of Iraq.’ ”
Nasrallah said he believed that America also wanted to bring about the partition of Lebanon and of Syria. In Syria, he said, the result would be to push the country “into chaos and internal battles like in Iraq.” In Lebanon, “There will be a Sunni state, an Alawi state, a Christian state, and a Druze state.” But, he said, “I do not know if there will be a Shiite state.” Nasrallah told me that he suspected that one aim of the Israeli bombing of Lebanon last summer was “the destruction of Shiite areas and the displacement of Shiites from Lebanon. The idea was to have the Shiites of Lebanon and Syria flee to southern Iraq,” which is dominated by Shiites. “I am not sure, but I smell this,” he told me.
Partition would leave Israel surrounded by “small tranquil states,” he said. “I can assure you that the Saudi kingdom will also be divided, and the issue will reach to North African states. There will be small ethnic and confessional states,” he said. “In other words, Israel will be the most important and the strongest state in a region that has been partitioned into ethnic and confessional states that are in agreement with each other. This is the new Middle East.”
In fact, the Bush Administration has adamantly resisted talk of partitioning Iraq, and its public stances suggest that the White House sees a future Lebanon that is intact, with a weak, disarmed Hezbollah playing, at most, a minor political role. There is also no evidence to support Nasrallah’s belief that the Israelis were seeking to drive the Shiites into southern Iraq. Nevertheless, Nasrallah’s vision of a larger sectarian conflict in which the United States is implicated suggests a possible consequence of the White House’s new strategy.
In the interview, Nasrallah made mollifying gestures and promises that would likely be met with skepticism by his opponents. “If the United States says that discussions with the likes of us can be useful and influential in determining American policy in the region, we have no objection to talks or meetings,” he said. “But, if their aim through this meeting is to impose their policy on us, it will be a waste of time.” He said that the Hezbollah militia, unless attacked, would operate only within the borders of Lebanon, and pledged to disarm it when the Lebanese Army was able to stand up. Nasrallah said that he had no interest in initiating another war with Israel. However, he added that he was anticipating, and preparing for, another Israeli attack, later this year.
Nasrallah further insisted that the street demonstrations in Beirut would continue until the Siniora government fell or met his coalition’s political demands. “Practically speaking, this government cannot rule,” he told me. “It might issue orders, but the majority of the Lebanese people will not abide and will not recognize the legitimacy of this government. Siniora remains in office because of international support, but this does not mean that Siniora can rule Lebanon.”
President Bush’s repeated praise of the Siniora government, Nasrallah said, “is the best service to the Lebanese opposition he can give, because it weakens their position vis-à-vis the Lebanese people and the Arab and Islamic populations. They are betting on us getting tired. We did not get tired during the war, so how could we get tired in a demonstration?”
There is sharp division inside and outside the Bush Administration about how best to deal with Nasrallah, and whether he could, in fact, be partner in a political settlement. The outgoing director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, in a farewell briefing to the Senate Intelligenc Committee, in January, said that Hezbollah “lies at the center of Iran’s terrorist strategy. . . . It could decide to conduct attacks against U.S. interest in the event it feels its survival or that of Iran is threatened. . . . Lebanese Hezbollah sees itself as Tehran’s partner.
In 2002, Richard Armitage, then the Deputy Secretary of State, called Hezbollah “the A-team” of terrorists. In a recent interview, however, Armitage acknowledged that the issue has become somewhat more complicated. Nasrallah, Armitage told me, has emerged as “a political force of some note, with a political role to play inside Lebanon if he chooses to do so.” In terms of public relations and political gamesmanship, Armitage said, Nasrallah “is the smartest man in the Middle East.” But, he added, Nasrallah “has got to make it clear that he wants to play an appropriate role as the loyal opposition. For me, there’s still a blood debt to pay”—a reference to the murdered colonel and the Marine barracks bombing.
Robert Baer, a former longtime C.I.A. agent in Lebanon, has been a severe critic of Hezbollah and has warned of its links to Iranian-sponsored terrorism. But now, he told me, “we’ve got Sunni Arabs preparing for cataclysmic conflict, and we will need somebody to protect the Christians in Lebanon. It used to be the French and the United States who would do it, and now it’s going to be Nasrallah and the Shiites.
“The most important story in the Middle East is the growth of Nasrallah from a street guy to a leader—from a terrorist to a statesman,” Baer added. “The dog that didn’t bark this summer”—during the war with Israel—“is Shiite terrorism.” Baer was referring to fears that Nasrallah, in addition to firing rockets into Israel and kidnapping its soldiers, might set in motion a wave of terror attacks on Israeli and American targets around the world. “He could have pulled the trigger, but he did not,” Baer said.
Most members of the intelligence and diplomatic communities acknowledge Hezbollah’s ongoing ties to Iran. But there is disagreement about the extent to which Nasrallah would put aside Hezbollah’s interests in favor of Iran’s. A former C.I.A. officer who also served in Lebanon called Nasrallah “a Lebanese phenomenon,” adding, “Yes, he’s aided by Iran and Syria, but Hezbollah’s gone beyond that.” He told me that there was a period in the late eighties and early nineties when the C.I.A. station in Beirut was able to clandestinely monitor Nasrallah’s conversations. He described Nasrallah as “a gang leader who was able to make deals with the other gangs. He had contacts with everybody.”
TELLING CONGRESS
The Bush Administration’s reliance on clandestine operations that have not been reported to Congress and its dealings with intermediaries wit questionable agendas have recalled, for some in Washington, an earlier chapter in history. Two decades ago, the Reagan Administration attempted t fund the Nicaraguan contras illegally, with the help of secret arms sales to Iran. Saudi money was involved in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal, and a few of the players back then—notably Prince Bandar and Elliott Abrams—are involved in today’s dealings
Iran-Contra was the subject of an informal “lessons learned” discussion two years ago among veterans of the scandal. Abrams led the discussion. One conclusion was that even though the program was eventually exposed, it had been possible to execute it without telling Congress. As to what the experience taught them, in terms of future covert operations, the participants found: “One, you can’t trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out of it. Three, you can’t trust the uniformed military, and four, it’s got to be run out of the Vice-President’s office”—a reference to Cheney’s role, the former senior intelligence official said.
I was subsequently told by the two government consultants and the former senior intelligence official that the echoes of Iran-Contra were a factor in Negroponte’s decision to resign from the National Intelligence directorship and accept a sub-Cabinet position of Deputy Secretary of State. (Negroponte declined to comment.)
The former senior intelligence official also told me that Negroponte did not want a repeat of his experience in the Reagan Administration, when he served as Ambassador to Honduras. “Negroponte said, ‘No way. I’m not going down that road again, with the N.S.C. running operations off the books, with no finding.’ ” (In the case of covert C.I.A. operations, the President must issue a written finding and inform Congress.) Negroponte stayed on as Deputy Secretary of State, he added, because “he believes he can influence the government in a positive way.”
The government consultant said that Negroponte shared the White House’s policy goals but “wanted to do it by the book.” The Pentagon consultant also told me that “there was a sense at the senior-ranks level that he wasn’t fully on board with the more adventurous clandestine initiatives.” It was also true, he said, that Negroponte “had problems with this Rube Goldberg policy contraption for fixing the Middle East.”
The Pentagon consultant added that one difficulty, in terms of oversight, was accounting for covert funds. “There are many, many pots of black money, scattered in many places and used all over the world on a variety of missions,” he said. The budgetary chaos in Iraq, where billions of dollars are unaccounted for, has made it a vehicle for such transactions, according to the former senior intelligence official and the retired four-star general.
“This goes back to Iran-Contra,” a former National Security Council aide told me. “And much of what they’re doing is to keep the agency out of it.” He said that Congress was not being briefed on the full extent of the U.S.-Saudi operations. And, he said, “The C.I.A. is asking, ‘What’s going on?’ They’re concerned, because they think it’s amateur hour.”
The issue of oversight is beginning to get more attention from Congress. Last November, the Congressional Research Service issued a report for Congress on what it depicted as the Administration’s blurring of the line between C.I.A. activities and strictly military ones, which do not have the same reporting requirements. And the Senate Intelligence Committee, headed by Senator Jay Rockefeller, has scheduled a hearing for March 8th on Defense Department intelligence activities.
Senator Ron Wyden, of Oregon, a Democrat who is a member of the Intelligence Committee, told me, “The Bush Administration has frequently failed to meet its legal obligation to keep the Intelligence Committee fully and currently informed. Time and again, the answer has been ‘Trust us.’ ” Wyden said, “It is hard for me to trust the Administration.”
U.S. and Britain are the Worst in the world for child well-being!
Salonista Elaine Urbina (M.D.) sends this Unicef report, mentioned with horror at the table last night. Here’s the beginning. Follow the link to read the rest.
ellen.
...
Main findings
The Netherlands heads the table of overall child wellbeing,
ranking in the top 10 for all six dimensions of
child well-being covered by this report. (Things like material well-being, educational well-being...ellen)
European countries dominate the top half of the overall
league table, with Northern European countries
claiming the top four places.
All countries have weaknesses that need to be addressed
and no country features in the top third of the rankings
for all six dimensions of child well-being (though the
Netherlands and Sweden come close to doing so).
The United Kingdom and the United States find
themselves in the bottom third of the rankings for five
of the six dimensions reviewed. (and in overall ranking, they scored last! ellen)
No single dimension of well-being stands as a reliable
proxy for child well-being as a whole and several
OECD countries find themselves with widely differing
rankings for different dimensions of child well-being.
There is no obvious relationship between levels of child
well-being and GDP per capita. The Czech Republic,
for example, achieves a higher overall rank for child
well-being than several much wealthier countries
including France, Austria, the United States and the
United Kingdom. ...
http://unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/rc7_eng.pdf
New Salonista Mimi Rook sends in this:
Hi Ellen,
It was great to come to the salon and meet the participants. This is forwarded from RAWA's web site.
Mimi
(Mimi teaches yoga and Pilates in Camp Washington. ellen)
Children work the streets to support families
Afghanistan is ranked 173rd out of 178 on the Human Development Index
KABUL: Ahmad Wali, 9, is combing the rubbish dump for soda cans to sell as a way to support his 11-member family in the Afghan capital, Kabul. Thousands of children work the streets to help their households through the harsh winter.
"They [empty soda cans] are easily available everywhere and more profitable than other metals which we collect and then sell in the city," Wali told IRIN, as he shivered with cold.
"Afghanistan has received 12 billion $ in aid but there aren't any signs of serious reconstruction. Our people have not benefited from the billions of reconstruction dollars due to theft by the warlords or misuse by NGOs. Even a fraction of this aid has not been used for the benefit and welfare of our people. Government corruption and fraud directs billions of dollars into the pockets of high-ranking officials. It is such a big shame that the government still cannot provide electricity, food and water for its people."
Zoya's Speech <http://www.rawa.org/zoya_oct7-06.htm> , Oct.7, 2006
"The price of 1kg of these [aluminium] cans is equal to 7kg of other metals that we collect and sell. That is why many children are trying to find more soda cans and earn more money for their families," said Wali, who is making up to US$3 a day.
"I have to work hard as my father lost his job and it has become very difficult for us to get by and pay the monthly rent for our house," he explained.
There are no accurate figures on how many children work in Kabul but aid workers fear the number is rising. Some estimates put the number of youngsters working as labourers or beggars in Kabul at about 37,000 in 2004, the last year for which statistics are available.
"Unfortunately, the number of street children is increasing day by day in our country because of the widespread poverty and a lack of proper work opportunities for people," Mohammad Yousef, director of ASCHIANA, a local NGO supporting working children and their families, said in Kabul.
Afghanistan is ranked 173rd out of 178 on the Human Development Index calculated by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which estimates that 70 percent of the population lives below the poverty line of $2 a day.
A survey released by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) in May 2006 revealed that 60 percent of families surveyed stated that almost half their children were involved in some kind of labour.
A report by the UK-based charity Oxfam in November 2006 warned that seven million children, almost half the total in the country, were missing out on education. Oxfam said about six million were stunted due to malnutrition. ... (for the rest, click on link below, ellen)
http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2007/01/16/children-work-the-streets-to-support-families.html
Expatriate Salonista Roy Euvrard:
I've published some photos of where I shop. There are several
clothing stores in town, but they looked like any small clothing
store in the US so I didn't include any photos.
http://web.mac.com/roy.euvrard/iWeb/Site/Marche.html
I hope that you enjoy.
Roy Euvrard (our salonista in France)
and...
Here is an article (on “Why people are moving to France”, including Roy) you might enjoy reading.
http://www.expatica.com/source/preview_content_story.asp?
subchannel_id=1&story_id=13064
and:
I've published a new page on Fetes (festivals, celebrations, birthdays). Note, if you click on "Start
Slideshow" you will see not only larger pictures, but also more dialog.
http://web.mac.com/roy.euvrard/iWeb/Site/Fete.html
Please feel free to give me your feed back. What you would like to
see, etc.
Sample newsletter from A Small Group (Peter Block’s movement)
This email has information on-
· A Small Group meeting tomorrow
· Limited discount registration for Ohio Think Tank
· Remember Our Child- A Retreat for Parents of Children Who Have Died
· Temporary storefront space in OTR
· Bockfest
· Fountain Square Rally
· Democracy for Cincinnati
· International Women’s Day at Freedom Center
· Screening of The Power of Forgiveness
Our next A Small Group meeting, with special guest Evans Hopkins, is tomorrow, Friday, March 2 at 4:30PM in the Social Room at Mt. Auburn Presybyterian Church, 103 William Howard Taft. PLEASE NOTE: We are not meeting at Peaslee Neighborhood Center. Plenty of off street parking is available in the lot behind the church. The best way to access it is from the driveway off of McMillan. Enter the building from the rear of the church just off the parking lot. For directions visit http://www.mtauburnpresby.org/more_about_us.html. For more information about Evans visit www.evanshopkins.com
Discount Registration for Ohio Think Tank
Peter will be speaking at the Ohio Think Tank event on April 23. The organizers of the event are offering five 20% discount registrations to ASG members. They are available on a first come first served basis. This is a $30 savings. Please email me at cert@fuse.net to request one of these limited discount registrations. Remember… the offer is only good for the first five people who respond to this message via email.
Remember Our Child
Saturday, April 14 from 9:30AM to 3:30PM
Christ Church Cathedral, 318 East Fourth Street
This is a safe and supportive one-day retreat for parents who are grieving the loss of a child- infant, child, teenager or adult. The retreat will use the Appreciative Inquiry process which will help individuals identify and maximize those situations that bring them comfort in their grief. The retreat is being facilitated by Joan and Michael Hoxsey and Rev. Canon William Scrivener.
No charge but registration is required. Free lunch and parking will be provided.
For more information or to register, call 513-636-4377 or www.christchurchcincinnati.org
TEMPORARY STORE FRONT SPACE ON MAIN STREET IN HISTORIC OVER-THE-RHINE NOW AVAILABLE
Did you ever wish you had a gallery on Main Street for Final Friday?
Or a store front where you could test a product or marketing concepts?
Or a performance space that you could rent by the week?
These addresses are available for short term lease: 1315 Main, 1319 Main, 1334 Main and 1435 Main
WHAT’S THE DEAL?
Each space has lights, heat and a solid floor.
You pay a $200 deposit for the week.
If at the end of the week you return the property in good condition, half the deposit is returned.
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
Contact Kris Sommer of Urban Sites at 513 662 3661 or Kris@UrbanSites.net
BOCKFEST, today through Sunday!
Bockfest is a celebration of bock beer, the Renaissance, Cincinnati brewing history, and the coming of Spring. Events and entertainment will occur throughout Bock Fest weekend. Be sure to visit www.bockfest.com for complete details and additional events.
Thursday, March 1st
4:00 - 9:00 PM Bock and Brats at Fountain Square
The Brewery District and Christian Moerlein will sponsor the First Annual "Cincinnati Beer Toast" at Fountain Square. Members of the public are invited to raise their glass and toast to Cincinnati, its beer heritage, Bockfest, etc. Beer by Christian Moerlein and food by Kaldi's will be available.
8:30 PM Sausage Queen Competition
Arnold's Bar and Grille at 210 East Eighth Street hosts the First Annual Sausage Queen Competition.
Friday, March 2nd
Bockfest Parade in Over-the-Rhine
The Bockfest Parade will be held on March 2, 2007. It will start to form in front of Arnold's Bar and Grill at 5:30 p.m. and start moving up Main St. at 6:00 p.m. The Bockfest Parade is Cincinnati's funkiest and most entertaining parade. It can be watched from the street or from a number of participating restaurants and bars along the route. It is free to enter, without advance notice.
Brewery District BOCKFEST HALL, 1142 Main Street opens at 5:00 p.m. Enjoy the parade! 7:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m. Live music by the Bier Band
10:00 p.m.-12 a.m. Live music by American Standard.
Courtyard Cafee, 1211 Main St. Open All Day with Aunt Gertie’s Beerwurst Sandwich, fire on the patio.
Kaldi’s, 1204 Main Street. Open at 10 a.m. with special menu including Bockconeys, Yard Sausage, Turtle Soup, Ruben, Vege Reuben, Beer Cheese and Pretzel. Special Litre Glass Mugs, Tee shirts, and Posters for sale. Live music by the Zinzinnati Bierband and the Jazz Organ Trio.
Milton’s Tavern, 301 Milton Street has live music by Brad Gordon of the Sundresses at 9:30 p.m.
Saturday, March 3rd
Brewery District BOCKFEST HALL, 1142 Main Street opens at 1:00 p.m. with Live Music by Work in Progress. 6:30 p.m.Moerlein-Rookwood Stein Unveiling. 8:30 p.m. Live Music by Jake Speed and the Freddies. 11:00 pm. Live Music by Tracy Walker.
Courtyard Café, 1211 Main Street Open at noon for lunch with Aunt Gertie’s Beerwurst Sandwich, fire on the patio and Live Music by The Stapletons at 10 p.m.
Kaldi’s, 1204 Main Street. Open at 10 a.m. with special menu including Bockconeys, Yard Sausage, Turtle Soup, Ruben, Vege Reuben, Beer Cheese and Pretzel. Special Litre Glass Mugs, Tee shirts, and Posters for sale. 11:30 a.m. Guest Speaker Richard Schade from the German Council. 12:30 p.m. Saints & Sinners Walking Tour Leaves. 4:p.m. Live Music by Lanappe Cajun 8 p.m. Live music by Dualogy Jazz..
Milton’s Tavern, 301 Milton Street 12:15 p.m. Lecture: Economics of Brewing in Cincinnati. Saints & Sinnrs Bus Tour Leaves.
Sunday, March 4th
THE HISTORIC CHURCHES OF OVER THE RHINE To enhance your Bock to Bach experience visit one of these historic OTR Churches, all of which will feature the music of Bach in their services:
Old St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, Clay and 13th Streets, 9:15 a.m. Latin service, 11:00 a.m. German service, 12:00 noon English service, 7:00 p.m. English service
St. Francis Roman Catholic Church, Vine and Liberty, 10:00 a.m. service
Philippus United Church of Christ, 106 W. McMicken Ave., 10:15 a.m. service, (Tours on Saturday, March 3, at 1:30 and 2:00 p.m. – very German!)
Nast-Trinity United Methodist Church, 1310 Race St., 10:00 service
Sunday, March Bockfest Brunch at the Bell Event Centre at 11:30 . Featured will be the acoustical guitars with performers the Faux Frenchman, Greg Schaber and David Martin. Cost at a low price is $15 due to a generous grant from US Bank in OTR. Please call the OTR Foundation 721-1317 if you would like a reservation.
RALLY, TUESDAY MARCH 6
Fountain Square, 5th & Vine, 4:30pm
Cincinnati's Fortune 500's bring in $175 Billion a year. So why can't we make ends meet??
Our city's Fortune 500 corporations generate incredible wealth, but working people don't see it at home. Our paychecks are frozen, our families often go uninsured, and our neighborhoods are crumbling.
What happened to the social contract? If you work hard and play by the rules, in return you should be able to earn a livelihood for your family. That is not a reality anymore for many working people. Workers are holding up our end of the contract, but many area corporations are not.
Join workers, clergy and other community allies to say it's time for a change. Currently, Cincinnati janitors have an opportunity to win a first contract for living wages and health care. Why shouldn't hotel workers have the same opportunity? Retail workers? All working people in our region?
Organized by United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Service Employees International Union, UNITE HERE, United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Laborers International Union of North America
Democracy for Cincinnati Meeting
Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 7:00 PM.at Maison's Lafayette Clubhouse, 879 Rue de la Paix, Cincinnati OH 45220
Our Guests are two of Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner’s staff members: Chandra Yungbluth, Regional Liaison; and, Kellye Pinkleton, Director, Voting Rights Institute. Please join us for what promises to be a stimulating discussion about Ohio’s voting rights.
RSVP at http://www.dfalink.com/event.php?id=18351
International Women's Day Celebration featuring the Voices of Freedom Chorus and MUSE Cincinnati's Women's Choir
Thursday, March 8, 2007 at 7:30 p.m.Freedom Center's Harriet Tubman Theater
(If you are not able to attend in person, listen live online by visiting www.freedomcenter.org at 7:30 p.m. on March 8th)
Join the Freedom Center as we celebrate Women's History Month in March and International Women's Day on Thursday, March 8, with a fabulous choral performance by the Freedom Center's own adult choir, Voices of Freedom . The choir will join musical groups from the city and will feature musical works by women throughout the evening. The event will open with a welcoming song "Sorida (Swahili) for Welcome" by Rosephanye Powell. Other selections include: "In Times Like These" by Mavis Staples, "We Are" by Dr. Ysaye Maria Barnwell, "Walk A Mile" by Pepper Choplin. Additionally, the chorus will perform verses to "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Sojourner Truth. MUSE will sing Mother's Prayer and several other works relevant to International Women's Day. There will additionally be short presentations on topics around women and peace and international concerns.Joining in the event for the evening are the Voices of Freedom Chorus, the MUSE Cincinnati Women's Choir, Shakila Ahmad (Muslim Mothers Against Violence), Sister Alice Gerdeman (Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center), Monique James (NGO Tri-State Human Trafficking in Children), Susan Einbinder (Hebrew Union College), and Kathryne Gardette (Adinkra). This event is FREE & open to the public. For information contact: 513.333.7500 or http://www.freedomcenter.org/attend-events/voices-of-freedom-chorus.html
Screening and discussion of The Power of Forgiveness
March 25 at 5PM
At Christ Church Cathedral, 318 East 14th Street
New and powerful documentary offering stories with Thich Nhat Hanh, Elie Wiesel and features on the Amish, Ground Zero, Beirut, Belfast, and others. There will be a discussion moderated by filmmaker, Martin Doblmeirer, following the screening.
Call 513-842-2052 for questions or to reserve a seat. Visit www.journeyfilms.com Admission is $5.
Collette Thompson
A Small Group/ Peter Block's Office
215 East 14th Street
Cincinnati, Ohio 45202
513-451-0166 office
513-607-8346 cell
www.asmallgroup.net
Have you said something great about Cincinnati today?
Let’s have a Liberal Pride Parade!
sent in by sometime salonista Richard Blumberg
Source: Orcinus <http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2007/02/first-annual-liberal-pride-parade.html>
Sara Robinson tosses out what I think is a great idea: a Liberal Pride Parade, on the model of the Gay Pride Parades that are now held around the world and have become, in many cities, civic events that cut across gender divides, or even, in some cases, significant tourist attractions. She points out the small scale and diffuse sense of purpose with which those parades started, and the much more important purposes they’ve come to serve.
It was a street party; but it also put the community’s growing institutional strength on display each year, established a forum for the sharing of energy and ideas, and educated millions of straight people (who, in turn, educated others). Doing this year after year gave local gay communities a reason to get organized, and stay organized — so when trouble came calling, they could organize to fight it without a moment of confusion or hesitation. ...
Sara asks whether it’s time to adopt the idea and start holding Liberal Pride celebrations nationally....(for the rest of the article, see http://richard.blumberg.org/2007/02/25/i-love-a-parade/
Praise for the Weekly f rom Barbara Colllier:
Ellen,
I was fascinated by the discussion that took place at the last Potluck Salon (Wed., February 21) and am so sorry I wasn't there to hear it first hand but I teach on Wednesday nights. Occasionally, I have a break from teaching (during holidays) and try to get to the "Table" when I do.
... I would like to contact her (Jennifer Williams of “Out of the Crossfire”) and see what I can do to support her program. ...
Thank you, Ellen, for all you do to make the Salon available...it is a beacon of light in this city that sometimes feels blanketed with apathy.
Be well,
Barbara A. Collier, M.Ed
Educational Consultant
(513) 772-1449 hm
(240) 481-7004 cell
(we were able to get Barbara and Jennifer together. Both pleased! Ellen.)
Section Four: Books/Magazines/Reviews
...................................
Am having a blast subscribing to the National Geograhic Magazine . It’s been decades since last I did. Current issue has great article on Orlando, Florida that seems like it came out of a progressive magazine! see http://www.ngm.com for cool stuff. Ellen
P.S. Send me what you are reading, watching, enjoying... and why. So we’ll be enticed to join you. E.
The Lloyd House Salon (usually about 12 people) Meets on WEDNESDAYS at 5:45,
EVERY Wednesday, 52 WEEKS/YEAR come hell or high water, as my mother used to say.
We of the Lloyd House Salon gather in a spirit of
respect, sympathy and compassion for one another
in order to exchange ideas for our mutual pleasure and enlightenment.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Our Salon blog is a promising interactive site: http:lloydhouse.blogspot.com
Also, we have an Interactive Yahoo Salon group, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LloydHouseSalon
For Pot Luck procedures including food suggestions, mission and history visit
http://home.fuse.net/ellenbierhorst/Potluck.html .
You are invited also to visit the Lloyd House website: http://www.lloydhouse.com
> To unsubscribe from the Lloyd House Potluck Salon list, send a REPLY message
> to me and in the SUBJECT line type in "unsub potluck #". In the place of #
> type in the numeral that follows the subject line of my Weekly email. It
> will be 1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7. This tells me which sub-list your name is on so I can
> delete it. Thanks! ellen bierhorst
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