11/29/17

Today’s selection — from Capital of the World by David Wallace. Polly Adler was the most famous madam in the New York of the 1920s:

“In her day and for years afterward, [Polly Adler] was one of the most fa­mous women in America. So famous in fact that, in an era when it was rare for a woman to be in business for herself, neither her name nor her address appeared on her business card. The card bore only her telephone number (Lexington 2-1099) and a drawing of a parrot, a pun on her nickname.

“Polly Adler, at the height of her renown in the 1920s and ’30s, seemed to be an intimate of everyone who was anyone in New York City: politicians, socialites, mobsters, and literary lions. But the fame wasn’t derived from being a celebrated chanteuse or the head of a company fueled by the booming stock market. Polly Adler was America’s most famous madam.
She once tried to explain why people liked her, despite the opprobrium normally associated with her profession: ‘I am one of those people who just can’t help getting a kick out of life, even when it’s a kick in the teeth.’ She also delivered the goods, once explaining her success this way: ‘My girls give a man his money’s worth [unlike] ‘whores in everything but name’ … women who marry men for money, to escape their relatives or to gain social standing.’

“But her bordellos, which would later give her best-selling 1953 autobiography its title, A House Is Not a Home, were more than just once-notorious markets for sex. Unlike other famous American brothels, such as the Chicken Ranch, or madams such as Heidi Fleiss, Polly Adler ran a business where the women were certainly an attraction but not always the main course. Despite the New York Daily News’s assertion in 1928 that ‘her career has made her name synonymous with sin,’ Polly’s place had always been more than a whorehouse for patrons; it was a clubhouse for many members of what then passed for New York’s beautiful people. In fact, ‘Going to Polly’s?’ became one of the most popu­lar catch phrases in New York in the ’20s (there is evidence that Adler herself, with her fine-tuned instinct for generating public­ity, popularized its use). Many patrons came by for drinks, back­gammon, and card games as much as for the girls.

“Despite admittedly spending half her income on bribes and kickbacks, Adler was forced to move her brothel more than a dozen times during her twenty-three-year career as a madam. All her places of business were located in elegant upper East or West Side rented apartments or brownstones, the most famous of which was probably at the Majestic at 215 West Seventy-Fifth Street. Built in 1924, the building (and her apartment) was perfect for a bordello, replete with secret doorways and hidden stairs. Her largest bordello was a brownstone at 63 West Seventieth Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue. In addition to rooms for the girls, the place also housed a bar, a library, and an office for Polly.

“All her bordellos were sumptuously decorated, boasting plush carpets, expensive furniture, fine paintings, and walls lined with books. Some people thought it was all a bit tacky, but for many of the members of the famed Algonquin Round Table, the legendary association of (mostly) writers that included many of the most prominent tastemakers of the era, it was just fine. In its time, Polly’s place was almost as popular with The Round Table crowd as, well, the Algonquin Hotel itself. George S. Kaufman, a Round Table member who would co-write (with Moss Hart) two of the most enduring plays of the twentieth century (The Man Who Came to Dinner and You Can’t Take It with You), even had a charge account with Polly.

“Bon vivant, actor, humorist (and Round Table member) Rob­ert Benchley was another fan of Polly with a charge account at her place; he and his friend and fellow Round Table member, the iconoclastic poet/writer/critic Dorothy Parker, became close friends of Polly in mid-1924 and would, like many others, often visit her place for a drink or two before beginning a night of par­ties or after a night at the theater (they also suggested the titles in her book walls in the bordellos). Benchley, in fact, often spent the night there, playing backgammon with Polly in exchange for a girl for that night (who were going for twenty dollars a throw), and Adler claims in her autobiography that he even did some of his magazine writing in the company of prostitutes.

“Benchley also kept a black kimono at her brothel, which was laundered and ironed by Polly’s personal maid, Lion, who also pressed his suits, washed his socks and underwear, and served him breakfast in bed. Described by Adler as a person who ‘lighted up my life like the sun,’ Benchley would also occasionally rent out the bordello for lavish parties for the political and literary crowd. At one party of his, a drunkenly despondent prostitute jumped out an open window; after checking to make sure she was okay, Benchley kept the party rolling. The Benchley/Adler friendship endured. Years later, when both he and Polly had retired to Los Angeles, they would often have drinks together at Chasens res­taurant, then Beverly Hill’s famed hangout of the stars. …

“She was never apologetic about her career. ‘If I was to make my living as a madam, I could not be concerned with either the rightness or wrongness of prostitution,’ she wrote. … ‘Prostitution exists because men are willing to pay for sexual gratification, and whatever men are willing to pay for, someone will provide.'”

author:	David Wallace
title:	Capital of the World: A Portrait of New York City in the Roaring Twenties
publisher:	Lyons Press
date:	Copyright 2011 by David Wallace
pages:	57-60

https://delanceyplace.com/index.php

By George Friedman  Nov 29, 2017  Geopolitical Futures.

Iran has always seen itself as being in competition with the Arab states for domination of the Persian Gulf. Its ambitions were put on hold in the late 1980s, at the end of an eight-year war with Iraq that cost Iran more than a million casualties. The war ended in a military draw, but strategically it blocked Iran’s hopes for expanding its power westward. The war against the Islamic State, particularly in Iraq, has opened that door again.

The Iranian Surge

The primary burden of the fighting in Iraq fell on the Iraqi army, coupled with several Shiite militias, which fought a long battle of attrition to defeat IS. Embedded in the Iraqi army, and in direct control of the militias, were Iranian advisers. The United States had advisers and troops there too, but the Iranians were far more effective at gaining influence in the predominantly Shiite army. The U.S. reluctantly accepted this state of affairs – it needed IS defeated, but it didn’t want to absorb the casualties that would result from the long, grinding battle that was required. Instead, the U.S. relied on airstrikes.

There obviously had to be some degree of coordination among the Iraqi forces and militias – enough, at least, to prevent fratricide. That means there had to be some coordination with Iranian advisers, who were effectively commanding some units of the Iraqi army. How much coordination is unclear, but IS was defeated in the end, and Iran was left in control of at least a significant portion of the military force in Iraq. Given Iran’s influence and presence around Basra in southern Iraq, the Iranians are in a powerful position inside Iraq, with no major forces in position to contain them. And they are free to send more forces into Iraq if they wish.

Iran is also in a strong position in Syria. Together, Iran and Russia have prevented the collapse of the Assad government. Lebanon’s Hezbollah has been deeply involved in the fighting in Syria, with a large number of Iranian officers deployed with it, and Iranian forces are scattered in support of Assad’s Syrian army. The Russians are already discussing an endgame in which Assad regains the parts of Syria he lost. Whether that happens or not, the pressure is off the Assad regime now. Moreover, Russia has already said it plans to reduce its presence in Syria, which leaves the Iranians as the primary influence on the Syrians, deepening a relationship that existed even before the civil war broke out.

Yemen is another area of Iranian strength. In Yemen, bordering Saudi Arabia to the south, the Iranians are supporting the Shiite Houthi rebels. As the Houthis grew stronger in recent years, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and others launched airstrikes against them. The airstrikes failed to defeat the Houthis, and now they’re even more powerful. A missile was fired from Yemen toward Riyadh early this month. It was allegedly an Iranian-made missile, and a warning to the Saudis to get out of Yemen.

It is important not to overstate Iran’s strength. It is clearly influential, and the door to more power is open, but Iran is not yet positioned to exert decisive military force in the Middle East. At the same time, Iran’s achievements shouldn’t be understated either. It is the most influential power in Iraq and has a significant number of forces there. It more or less controls the most powerful military force in Lebanon and has limited capabilities in Syria. It also has at least advisers in Yemen. Finally, Iran has even made inroads in Saudi Arabia’s sphere of influence. Qatar’s relationship with Iran is part of the reason it has been boycotted by much of the Arab world.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani speaks during Russian-Iranian-Turkish talks at the Black Sea resort in Sochi, Russia, Nov. 22,2017. MIKHAIL SVETLOV/Getty Images

The Potential Coalition

Saudi Arabia is currently the greatest threat to Iran’s ambitions. In the 1960s, when the Shah of Iran was still in control, Iran fought a war against the Saudis in Oman. Their relationship remained hostile after the Iranian revolution. Part of the issue is religion: Saudi Arabia is the heartland of Sunni Islam, Iran of Shiite Islam. But there are deeper issues.

The first is oil. The domination of oil resources by the Saudis and related principalities on the west coast of the Persian Gulf created a perpetual threat to Iran because of the military power it bought. In addition, U.S. guarantees to Saudi Arabia intended to assure the flow of oil supplies from the Persian Gulf gave the Saudis an invulnerability that their own military force couldn’t provide.

At the moment, Saudi Arabia is facing extreme difficulties. The decline in the price of oil has created economic and political problems for Riyadh, which has always used its oil wealth to maintain stability. The introduction of a 32-year-old crown prince, and his decision to arrest some of the key figures in the kingdom, creates a level of internal instability that is unpredictable.

Given this domestic situation, Saudi Arabia’s ability to protect itself from Iran is unclear. The Saudis have already demonstrated the limits of their air power in Yemen. The historical expectation was that first the British, then the Americans, would guarantee their national security. But that was when the Persian Gulf was an indispensable supplier of the world’s oil. The price of oil is down, but as important, the sources of oil have multiplied, along with producers’ eagerness to sell it. Saudi oil is simply not that important anymore.

The Saudis have been reaching out to the Israelis. Israel can certainly provide military hardware. But the fact is that Israel could be facing its own threat from Iran, and its military is actually relatively small and isn’t designed for large-scale foreign deployments. Because of the size of its force, Israel can’t sustain extended, high-attrition warfare of the sort Iran endured in the 1980s. So the Iranians can threaten Israel with the one strategy that is most dangerous to it: a war of attrition. It’s a distant possibility but one that Israel must consider. Simply put, Israel can’t promise Saudi Arabia much more than materiel, no matter what the Saudis offer in return, and materiel is the one thing the Saudis have in abundance already.

The greatest long-term threat to Iran’s interests, however, is Turkey. The Turks face a fundamental geopolitical question. When the Iranians were relatively confined, Turkey was able to focus on domestic affairs, not venturing deeply into Syria or Iraq. But now, Turkey must decide whether it can live with Iran as the major regional power, or it must assert its own claims on the region. Turkey, by geography and inherent military capability, can block Iran if it chooses to make the effort and take the risk, but at the moment it is working with Iran, particularly on Kurdish issues. Eventually, Turkey will have to choose between the Kurdish issue and the broad strategic issue. Part of that will be determined by the U.S. position on various Kurdish factions and the U.S. vision for dealing with Iran.

A Test of U.S. Disengagement

The U.S. is capable of containing Iran but only with a substantial force. The U.S. has been at war since 2001. At this point, it doesn’t have a clear strategy for the Middle East. In Iraq, the American approach has been to block both Sunnis and Shiites from dominating the country – while reducing the number of U.S. forces present. This left it in the position of having to rely on forces controlled or influenced by Iran to defeat the Islamic State. In Syria, U.S. strategy has been to create a proxy force to overthrow Assad. That has failed. American guarantees to Saudi Arabia and Israel are still in place, but what they mean at this point is unclear. Israel has no need for direct U.S. involvement except under the most extreme war-of-attrition scenario. As for the Saudis, the guarantee the U.S. gave and delivered on during Desert Storm was a very different situation. Oil prices and supply being what they are, it’s not clear what that guarantee is worth.

The U.S. is not configured to deal with the new reality – one that it helped create by invading Iraq and then leaving it, and by supporting the Arab Spring in Syria, which turned into a disaster. These U.S. policies led to the rise of IS, and the fight against IS in turn opened the door to Iran in Iraq and, to a lesser extent, in Syria. Washington has been obsessed with Iranian nuclear capabilities and didn’t anticipate that Iran’s conventional capability and political influence would turn out to be more effective. At this point, it’s not clear what the American interest is in the region and what price it’s prepared to pay to pursue it.

The Middle East has a new and radically different shape. For the moment, Iran has been freed to assert itself. But it still has a long way to go to assert significant power. Apart from the United States, it faces a potential coalition of Saudi Arabia, Israel and Turkey. Each has its weaknesses, but Iran does too, and together they can manage the problem and probably will. Don’t forget the Sunni jihadists, either. Defeated in the guise of IS, they have merely dispersed, not surrendered. And Iran has been their enemy. Thus the Iranian surge must be placed in context. It has changed the dynamic of the Middle East, but it remains vulnerable.

The post Iran Reshapes the Middle East appeared first on Geopolitical Futures.

Flynn allegedly discussed getting paid $15 million to help free Reza Zarrab. Now Zarrab is working with federal prosecutors, including possibly Robert Mueller.

KATIE ZAVADSKI

11.28.17 9:29 AM ET