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Dani Rothchild and 30 other Israeli generals: "Time is running out. Start acting." They're urging Sharon to consider sanity as a policy option. He's refused it thus far so there's no reason to think he'll adopt it now. But it's good to see that the zone of sanity is expanding. (30 December 2003)

Leslie A. Fiedler: Newark, Jews, and the Boy on the White Horse. Part of a long conversation with Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian about places, words, identities, beginnings and endings. (28 December 2003)

Diane Christian: The Christmas Story. You want to know what that story is all about? This is what that story is all about. (Christmas Day 2003)

Newton Garver: GOD BLESS AMERICA! All those bumperstickers make the request, so let's get serious about it: what should we be asking God to deliver and what do we want to get out of it? (Christmas Day 2003)

Elaine Cassel: This Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us. Christianity and Christmas are lovely ideas. So much the worse that Bush, Ashcroft, Cheney, DeLay, Frist, Rove are immune to or ignorant of them. (Christmas Eve 2003)

Aram J. Kevorkian: The Christmas Issue: On Leaving the Forest. Jack Kevorkian, who would have been 75 New Year's Eve, died in Paris December 20. For the past 25 years he's been writing The Kevorkian Newsletter, which began as an informational sheet for his legal clients in the US, but which expanded into notes and comments on what was going on in France and on politics, history, war, art, food, music, and so much more. His Newsletters were always a pleasure to read, but perhaps never more so than recently, when the US government and much of the US press began dealing with France as if it were a character in a cartoon written by morons. Jack never lost his sense of humor, his subtlety, or the erudition he wore like an old jacket, that always protected him from cant, sentimentality and other foolishness. Above all, his Newsletters were interesting and human. Jack didn't live to write his Christmas newsletter this year, which would have been number 12 of volume 25, so his children sent to his mailing list the one he wrote a year ago, "On Leaving the Forest." With their kind permission, we're happy to share it with you. (22 December 2003)

Sally Fiedler: Eleanor Mooseheart's Christmas Ditty (22 December 2003)

Robert Lopez: On the bad faith of saying 'No More Mr. Nice Guy.' Saddam has been captured, shaved, inspected for headlice and bad teeth—but the killing of kids continues in Iraq. So what's changed? We've improved the language skills necessary to make killing easier, prettier, more palatable to the guys with the guns and the folks at home. (21 December 2003)

Elaine Cassel: Two Federal Courts Blast Bush and Rumsfeld. The president and his Secretary of Defense have insisted that, because of the threat of international terrorism, they have the right to suspend civil rights of U.S. citizens and to deny access to any part of the justice system to individuals captured or kidnapped by U.S. forces abroad. This week, two appellate courts said in two cases with potentially far-reaching consequences, No, guys, you do not have the right to exclude from the protections of the U.S. Constitution people you think might be bad. (19 December 2003)

Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian: Buffalo Film Seminars VIII/Spring 2004. The complete schedule, with notes on all 14 classic films and on the series itself. (19 December 2003)

Adam Keller on behalf of the Israeli Refuser Forum: Doing things the hard way—the verdict of the five. An Israeli Sharonista military court has figured out what to do with do with soldiers afflicted with the disease of conscience: put them in jail so as not to corrupt anyone else by their intolerable example. (17 December 2003)

Spectator: Golisano's Giambra, Quinn's Democrats, Terrorists' Ashcroft. The Man-who-keeps-score is back, and about time! This time he's homing on in Giambra's convenient discovery of what Tom Golisano was talking about a year ago, Democrats who think they're making nice when they're merely selling themselves out, and John Ashcroft's penchant for keeping suspected terrorists supplied with guns. Wow! (17 December 2003)

Bruce Jackson: The Desaparecidos of George W. Bush. Bush, Ashcroft, Cheney and Rumsfeld insist that civil rights must be restricted or ignored in a post 9/11 world. The courts and Congress have thus far been unable or unwilling to resist their claim. The U.S. government may thereby be doing this nation far more grievous harm than anything carried out or imagined by the 9-11 plotters, or any of their potential successors. (13 December 2003). 

Mitskovski's Question: The Common Council had a public hearing so people could tell the Council what they thought of the draft environmental impact study done by the Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority. Hardly any people came to talk. Hardly any Council members came or stayed to listen. Things did get said, including one important question asked by Mark Mitskovski that everyone had all but forgotten. (With a slideshow). (11 December 2003)

Bernadette Medige:  A Wedding. Two nice people got married in Ontario a few weeks ago. Here's a report. (11 December 2003)

 Elaine Cassel: Yaser Hamdi gets a lawyer: He just can't do anything. Rumsfeld and Bush apparently backed down on their insistence that they can, on the basis of secret "evidence," declare an American citizen an "enemy combatant" and thereby deny him all Constitutional rights. But it may be just more smoke & mirrors. (7 December 2003)

Elaine Cassel: At War with the Constitution. Attorney General John Ashcroft continues his crusade to protect his God-given right to ignore the US Constitution in his prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui. (7 December) 

Newton Garver: Bolivia at a Crossroads. October's revolt of the campesinos got Bolivia a new president, but the problems surrounding control of the country's huge natural gas reserves remain. The simple-minded and reductive analysis of current Bolivian politics in the mainstream US press isn't helping. (5 December 2003)

The Buffalo Report Interview: Paul Koessler on the Peace Bridge Expansion Project: "It's not going to be a twin." The alternate-year chairman of the Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority talks about 9/11, the Detroit Gang, dealing with Washington, why it's taking so long, why Bruno Freschi got shut out, what we're going to have when it's done, and just about everything else you want to know about the state of the Peace Bridge expansion project. (4 December 2003)

John C. Wilson: An Account of One Soldier's War. A moving account of cowardice, heroism, death, and the relentless human cost of wars that never really end. (26 November 2003)

Stephen T. Banko III: A Soldier's Dream "We fought with men we didn’t hate, sent to that fight by men I didn’t trust and for more than three decades, I’ve struggled with the guilt and the isolation that is part of survival. I’ve rarely been able to shake the feeling that I had stolen something from those who died. In reality, of course, we all died there: some the swift certain death borne on a bullet; others the slower, spiritual death that comes from guilt and the liability of remembering too well."  (25 November 2003)

Thomas Robinson: Vice-president Cheney visits Buffalo; tells a few lies; gets $400,000 and applause galore. The Buffalo News told you about the $400K and the applause. Here's the other part of the story. (25 November 2003)

Robert Oscar Lopez: Machismo. It's Anglos who fetishize it, not Latinos, and they've missed the point. Read this and you can get rid of the gold chains that haven't been working anyway. (22 November 2003)

Elaine Cassel: Gulag Americana. American officials have arranged for an American citizen to be jailed and interrogated in Saudi Arabia without charge, without an attorney, without trial, and for an indefinite period of time. The beat goes on. (24 November 2003)

Peter Smith: Report from London. Buffalonian Peter Smith visited his homeland last week and was there in time to join the Big March protesting Bush's visit and the Bush/Blair Axis. (22 November 2003)

Joel Rose: Casino Gambling in Erie County. Buffalo Mayor Anthony Masiello says a gambling joint in the heart of town will solve all the city's ills. Some people think, in that regard, he's distressingly out of touch with reality. One of the most active and articulate of the mayor's critics on the gambling joint issue is Joel Rose, co-chair of Citizens Against Casino Gambling in Erie County. Here's what said to the Buffalo/Niagara League of Women Voters about all of that at their November 21 meeting. (21 November 2003).

Elaine Cassel: Vengeance, thy Name is Ashcroft. In his attempt for a second hit on civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart, Attorney General Ashcroft brings something new to federal jurisprudence: personal vengeance against attorneys he doesn't like. God told him it was okay to do this. (20 November 2003)

Bruce Jackson: Media and War: Bringing it All Back Home. Keynote address at the Nov. 17-18, 2003, Media and War conference at University at Buffalo organized by Bernadette Wegenstein. (19 November 2003)

Christopher Brauchli: Bush Plays Trick or Treat With the American Dream. The president quotes with pride how much his tax cuts have benefitted the rich. He says nothing about the increasing number of Americans living in poverty, going hungry, able to find only part-time work. Why would he? Those people don't vote Republican or make campaign donations. (20 November 2003)

Jewish Repertory Theatre. Saul Elkin, David Bunis and Marcie Frankel have the first two productions lined up: The Chosen, Dec. 4-28 and Visiting Mr. Green April 22-May 23. Click on the link for details. (19 November 2003)

Diane Christian: Warriors & Liberators. Bush has got his metaphors and models wrong, says Christian, in the latest installment of her continuing examination of the ethical and moral implications of the President's wars and occupations. (15 November 2003)

Adam Keller (for the Refuser Parents Forum): Israeli Refusenik Update: Breathtaking Days in the Military Court. An ambiguous verdict in one trial in Israel's war against conscience, and the defense's summation for the other five. (15 November 2003) 

Jane T. Christenson: Dead Bees. There's lot of death in this world. What does it matter that a hive of bees was destroyed one day last summer in North Carolina? Read this letter and you'll know. (12 November 2003)

Douglas Manson: Book review: Steven High. Industrial Sunset: The Making of North America’s Rust Belt, 1969-1984.by Steven High.  University of Toronto Press. 2003. When the heavy industry left, this side of the lake went into economic decline but the Canadian side continued to prosper. Here's what happened and why. (13 November 2003)

Diane Christian: Evil Acts and Evil Actors and Wishing Death. (CounterPunch) Two more installments in Christian's continuing examination of the ethical and moral questions raised by George W. Bush's foreign wars. (8 November 2003)

The Buffalo Report Interview: Joseph Crangle: Taxing Indians, Breaking Treaties. New York State is out of money so its legislators are trying to tax cigarette and gasoline sales on Seneca reservations. But centuries of treaties and court decisions say they can't tax anything on reservation land. Here's what Buffalo attorney Joseph Crangle, who has long represented the Indians in these matters, says about the state's money grab. (7 November 2003)

Elaine Cassel: A Very Bad Civil Rights Day. A Canadian on the way home scooped up at JFK for 10 months of torture in Syria, local cops as FBI snoops, and getting jail time for waiting on the wrong table. Bill of Rights? What Bill of Rights? (6 November 2003)

Bruce Jackson: Sam Hoyt and other politicians stage D'Youville media event kissy-kiss and June move into is finally allowed to catch up with November . Sam Hoyt, Richard Brodsky and several other pols held a Buffalo media event to announce that they accomplished in November what they should have accomplished in June. Why would they brag about that? (2 November 2003, #77)

Bernadette Medige:Two public conversations about education. Two events in Buffalo last month focused on public education—the October 2^nd kickoff of a statewide series of education summits co-sponsored by The Campaign for Fiscal Equity  and Citizen Action’s Alliance for Quality Education, and Buffalo Conversation II on October 29^th, organized by Kevin Gaughan and co-sponsored by Channel 7. Here's what happened at both, along with some serious questions about the utility of either. (2 November 2003)

Bruce Jackson: Midge Decter and the Taxi-driver: getting the bodies right. Neocon mother superior Midge Decter says Donald Rumsfeld is sexy. A New York taxi driver disagrees. (1 November 2003)  

Elaine Cassel: Prosecutors as Therapists, Phantoms as Terrorists. Sixty federal prosecutors—sixty!—have been interviewing family members of 9/11 victims in the hope of using those interviews as victim testimony in the punishment phase of the capital trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. There's only one problem: the Justice Department hasn't connected Moussaoui with 9/11 yet and the judge in the case won't let Ashcroft kill him unless it does. She won't accept the proposition: "Well, we gotta hang somebody for it." Ashcroft is appealing. (28 October 2003)

Bruce L. Campbell: Shared Border Management is a term that has been bruited about in Peace Bridge development discussions the past year or so. Ideally, it would permit moving nearly all the inspection facilities on the American plaza to the Canadian side, which would in turn permit the restoration of much of Front Park and Fort Porter. BR asked Bruce Campbell, project manager for the Peace Bridge environmental impact study now underway, to list the key questions about, problems with, and advantages of shared border management at this particular border crossing. (28 October 2003)

An error, a correction, an apology. Apologies to Joel Giambra, Ani DiFranco, Scot Fisher and Bruce Fisher. Buffalo Report screwed up. (27 October 2003)

Peyton Randolph: Making the Numbers. Buffalo's got a control board. They're getting their information second-hand. Can they do any good? Do they want to do anything but go through the motions? Peyton is not sanguine. (27 October 2003)

Bud Johns: "Arnold is governor, Bush is president/because of the Democrats": a report from San Francisco. "The Democratic Party wasn't beaten up on as badly as was the Bush Administration during San Francisco's October 25 End the Occupation, Bring the Troops Home... Now  rally," writes BR's chief West Coast correspondent. "But it was close." 26 October 2003

Joel Rose: Share the Penny. You want to know what's hypocritical and mendacious about Joel Giambra's rationale for screwing Buffalo out of its fair share of the county sales tax? Read this and you'll know. (24 October 2003)

Joel Rose: ...this toxic enterprise in this toxic location. The Pfohl Brothers Toxic Dump in Cheektowaga is one of the possible sites for the Seneca's Erie County gambling casino. Here's what long-time anti-gambling activist Joel Rose had to say about both ideas at a recent public news conference. (24 October 2003)

James Bunn: Plotting Pre-Emptive Strikes: "The Readiness is All." Pre-emptive strikes fare badly in Western literary and philosophical writing: the great writers and thinkers all seem morally offended by it. What are the moral issues of pre-emption?, asks U.B. Professor of English James Bunn. What issues remain when pre-emption is revealed to have been misguided or wrong? What remains for the pre-emptors? What remains for those of us who watched or permitted them to do it? And how can our most important literary works help us deal with what George Bush just did?  (23 October 2003)

Diane Christian: Ruthlessness (CounterPunch). The Homeric Greeks had the gods to help them shift from the ruthlessness of war back to the compassion necessary for ordinary life. George Bush has the ruthlessness part down. But does he have any way to get us back home again? (23 October 2003)

Christopher Brauchli: The death penalty at work: what's good for the pot-bellied pig should be good for a human. Recent studies indicate that the lethal injection method of execution now used in the United States to put convicted criminals to death can cause extended excruciating pain, but one of the drugs used in the process immobilizes the muscles so no one except the person being killed knows it. (22 October 2003)

Elaine Cassel: Why Boykin should stay on message. Lt. Gen. William "Jerry Boykin," who was recently made undersecretary of defense for intelligence, says the U.S. is doing God's work in a holy war against Satan. Don't fire him, says civil rights attorny Cassel: he's the only one of the Capitol gang saying publicly what they all think. He's more useful to the rational world publicly mouthing that foolishness than he is hidden in a Pentagon room making decisions on the basis of it. (20 October 2003)

UB has a new president: John B. Simpson, presently provost and executive vice chancellor at U.C. Santa Cruz. Click on the link for everything about him and the search process. And here is U.B. Council chairman Jeremy Jacobs' letter announcing the appointment (PDF). (17 October 2003)

Pictures from an Introduction. Photos from the October 17 press conference formally announcing John Simpson's nomination: William R. Greiner, John B. Simpson, Jeremy Jacobs, Uday Sukhatme and  Philip E. Wels, MD. (18 October 2003) 

Newton Garver: Bolivia in Turmoil. 54 campesinos were killed in the demonstrations in Bolivia during the past week and La Paz and other major cities are in total shutdown. Foreigners have been told to leave La Paz—but the airport remains closed. Here's an on-the-scene report and an explanation of the issues and their background. (17 October 2003)

Spectator: Buffalo's financial mess: parasitic unions, self-serving politicians, crippling laws, smug suburbs. Joel Giambra & Co. say Buffalo should tighten its belt and solve its own problems. Hard to do when they're sucking the city dry while the city handles their problems, the Albany pols who should represent the city get gerrymandered districts and hide, and Mayor Tony makes nice-nice with incompetence. (11 October 2003)

Bruce Jackson: Ethics (not!) at the Buffalo News redux:  the "Get James Pitts" jihad continues and the lines between advertising and journalism continue to dissolve. So maybe the Partnership really does own the Buffalo News editorial page. But what's one of the editors doing posing in paid supermarket ads? The beat goes on! (9 October 2003)

William Benzon: The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues 2. Benzon continues his examination of Martin Scorsese's seven-part PBS series, "The Blues," with comments on the films by Mike Figgis and Clint Eastwood, plus a very smart comparison between what Martin Scorsese accomplished and what Ken Burns did not accomplish with all that public money and time. (8 October 2003)

Bruce Jackson: Charles Burnett's "Warming by the Devil's Fire." There were three historical films in Martin Scorsese's seven-segment PBS series on the Blues: one by Scorsese, one by Wim Wenders, and one by Charles Burnett. Only one is worth a damn. (10 October 2003)

Peyton Randolph: Money with a Price. Contributions from Indian casino owners topped even labor in the California gubernatorial fiasco. Tony Masiello and a bunch of others were making fools of themselves even before the casino money started building up. What's going to happen around Buffalo when the same kind of money that is getting such a play in California starts buying up local politicians? (7 October 2003) 

William L. Benzon: Scorsese's Blues. Five of the seven segments of Martin Scorsese's Blues series for PBS have now aired. Two are lousy; two have problems but are interesting anyway. One is terrific. Writer and jazz horn player Bill Benzon takes on the first three episodes. (3 October 2003)

Spectator: Hypocrites, snakes, sneaks and swine: A Washington Report. The Republicans spent $100 million special prosecutoring Bill Clinton and Henry Cisneros over nothing and now they say Ashcroft can handle it when the White House is blowing the cover of CIA agents to scare people into silence and Cheney is getting paid of by Halliburnton? They thought Spectator wouldn't notice these shenanigans? He did and he's maaaad! (3 October 2003)

Bruce Jackson: Carovane 2003: Addio alle armi. It was a week in a town square in Italy, talking about war, murder, the good old days, books, poems, and more. A report from an academic on the road. (30 September 2003)

Hanat Matar: Update on the Israeli Refusenik Trials. Quotations from exchanges between defendants and prosecutors. By the mother of one of the five Israeli conscientious objectors currently on trial for refusing to join Israel's army of occupation. (21 September 2003)

 Peyton Randolph: The Cleft Stick of Politics. Andy SanFilippo, who was whipped by James Pitts in the Democratic primary for Buffalo comptroller, is running against Pitts in the November election as a Republican. But he won't get much help from Republican party boss Bob Davis, who is far more interested in protecting Joel Giambra. (20 September 2003)

Newton Garver: 9/11 Plus 30. There's another 9/11 we ought to remember, one marked by thousands of deaths and years of oppression: the violent overthrow of the legally-elected government of Chilean president Salvadore Allende. And in that bloodbath, UB philosopher Garver reminds us, the US was the Bad Guy, not the victim.  (19 September 2003)

Patricia A. Maloney: It's Not the Same For Us. Washington, D.C., isn't just a place where people hatch plots, mutilate the Constitution, dance with lobbyists and work on the next election. It's also a place where ordinary people live and work. Here's what it was like in Washington, D.C., on September 11, for a former Buffalonian. (18 September 2003)

Spectator: Joel the Shapeshifter and Jimmy the Consistent. How dare Joel Giambra get sanctimonious, asks our resident curmudgeon, and how dare Mayor Conehead stick his nose in Buffalo politics after all the harm he did the city? Political vacuity rules and Spectator is MAD! (4 September 2004)

Peyton Randolph: First Shot. It looks like Buffalo's control board is about to come head-to-head with two of the city's most entrenched unions. Will it be able to take long overdue steps City Hall hasn't had the will to take or will it be same-old, same-old? (2 September 2003)

Bruce Jackson: The little deaths. Few of the U.S. military and virtually none of the Iraqi civilian deaths are noted in the U.S. press. The number increases every day, in this war the President told us we won back in May. (26 August 2003)

Bruce Jackson: Peace Bridge Update: The Air Gets Poisonous. The big concern in Peace Bridge discussion these days is poison in the air from the trucks at the plaza and on I-190. But that's not the only kind of poison polluting the atmosphere. (26 August 2003)

The Hoyt/Jackson Peace Bridge Row: a letter from Hoyt's chief of staff John Maggiore and a response from Bruce Jackson. Sam Hoyt's been playing white knight lately, saying he's out to save the city of Buffalo from the eminent domain depredations of the Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority. It seemed to me that he was misguided, foolish, or disingenuous in his very public campaign and I wrote that in several Buffalo Report articles. In this long and thoughtful letter, Sam's chief of staff says why I was wrong. And in reply I say why I'm not convinced. Nothing personal, folks, it's just politics...(25 August 2003)

Barbra Kavanaugh goes red, white and blue for the white folks. Buffalo Common Council President James Pitts is the one person Barbra Kavanaugh has to beat if she's to become Buffalo comptroller. Her latest campaign literature, targeted for white neighborhoods, uses the same smarmy devices underwritten last year by the Partnership-Paladino-Buffalo News-Etc. gang last year in their very expensive and very successful campaign to cripple the Common Council. (5 September 2003)

The Kuzma File: Buffalo attorney Michael Kuzma is running for City Court Judge. The Erie County Bar Association, which has endorsed many candidates far less qualified than Kuzma, rated him "Unqualified," which fact was dutifully reported in the Buffalo News. So far as anyone can tell, the only reason for that rating was Kuzma refused to take part in secret proceedings, which he has long opposed. Kuzma is famous for taking on clients other attorneys find too distasteful and/or too short of money to be of interest. Here is the letter Kuzma wrote to the Buffalo News in the hope of undoing the smear, and a letter on Kuzma's behalf from Buffalo attorney James Ostrowski, former chair of the Bar Association's Human Rights Committee. (2 September 2003)

William L. Benzon: Ghee on a Saturday Evening. Two days after the lights went out Bill Benzon (UB English PhD and author of Beethoven's Anvil: Mind and Music in Culture) went for a walk around his Jersey City neighborhood. He found America was still there. You wouldn't know it if you've been focusing on Ashcroft's relentless assault on the Bill of Rights or Bush's Big Muddy quagmire war in Iraq, but America is still there. A nice piece.  (20 August 2002)

The Brodsky Peace Bridge Hearing: complete transcript. On Wednesday, July 16, NY Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, chairman of the Assembly's Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions, conducted a hearing in Buffalo regarding the request of the Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority for the power of eminent domain in its current expansion project. (14 August 2003)

Bruce Jackson: Sam Hoyt's open mike: campaining and chaos in the Kavinoky. NY state assemblyman Sam Hoyt held a public meeting on the Peace Bridge eminent domain question at D'Youville College's Kavinoky Theatre last week. It was mostly a random bitch session, with a lot of posturing, preening and pontificating, more than a bit of it by Hoyt himself, and a few minutes of real data from a visiting attorney who seemed to be saying that all of Hoyt's inflammatory activity the past two months was totally unnecessary.  (9 August 2003) 

Spectator: WMD found! AM&A's lost! Giambra befuddled! Republicans buying California! Every member of the Buffalo Report editorial team has been asked or begged to reveal the real identity of Spectator, the commentator feared more than any other by rogues, scoundrels and malfeasants of whatever party or persuasion. Not one has talked and not one ever will. I wanted you to know that. Every one of us took a solemn oath on a jug of the finest 30-year-old single malt you ever saw, and no journalist goes back on one of those. All we can say is, we're happy Spectator is on our side, fighting for truth, freedom and the American way! (10 August 2003)

Bruce Jackson: The New York Times and Michael R. Gordon: Passive Pimping for the White House. Why is the Times and its chief war correspondent floating trial balloons about hypothetical WMD for the Bush administration? And what does this have to do with girls being impregnated by aliens in New Mexico 50 years ago? (4 August 2003)

Maxine Seller: The Other Side of the Wall. Parry's got it wrong, argues Seller: the Israeli wall isn't at all like the Berlin wall. She says why, from the Israeli side, this one is necessary and justified. (7 August 2003)

Walter Simpson: Bush's Brain. The full text of the WBFO commentary by UB's energy officer on the new book about Bush macher/machiavelle Karl Rove. (4 August 2003).

Joel Rose: August 1 CACGEC Update. Citizens against Casino Gambling in Erie County continues to be the primary voice of sanity fighting a solid mass of public officials who have gone quite amok, have been bought and sold, should have taken Economics 101 rather than Tennis as an elective, or are dumber than wood and should be indicted for legislating or governing while impaired. Here's their latest newsletter with info on an August 4 demo in Cheektowaga, a general meeting August 5, the death of a good friend, and more. (1 August 2003)

Bruce Jackson: The Peace Bridge and Eminent Domain. Last month, Assemblyman Sam Hoyt created a mess in the middle of the Peace Bridge expansion project. It now appears that he's going to clean it up in September. Good. Here's what I think the row was all about, and a note on the far more substantial problems that remain. Peace Bridge Chronicles #68. (28 July 2003)

Peyton Randolph: The Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time Players: Buffalo's control board tries to figure it out. Governor Pataki has named the members of Buffalo's fiscal control board. Now the board has to figure out what to do, how to do it, deal with the very powerful interests that will not want them to do it, and try to get it done before the city implodes. (25 July 2003)

Bruce Jackson: Third and Arizona. What I saw at the Santa Monica farmers' market Wednesday afternoon. (20 July 2003)

Diane Christian: Bad Guy/Good Guy. "You help me find the bad guy or we come back with our tanks and run over your fields and break down your house," a US soldier told a northern Iraqi villager. Can good guys do evil things and stay good guys? Then how can you tell which are the good guys and which are the bad guys? (21 July 2003)

 Peter Smith: Katharine Hepburn on Higher Education.Buffalonian Smith recalls a surprising afternoon with the late actress. He went for talk, got whipped cream and a lecture, and loved every minute of it. (21 July 2003)

Bruce Jackson: Peace Bridge Update: a meeting,  an ego, a process at risk. How much damage did Sam Hoyt do the Peace Bridge expansion process, what did the City's Planning Department plan when it finally decided to plan something, and what happens next? (11 July 2003)

Sam Hoyt v. Peace Bridge, round 2: NYS Assembly Corporations Committee to hold Peace Bridge Hearing July 16. It's testimony by invitation only at the start of the 2004 Buffalo mayoral campaign. (11 July 2003)

Stephen T. Banko III: Jessica Lynch: real heroes and truth as collateral damage. They didn't have to lie about Jessica; we'd have loved the kid anyway. Those Defense Department lies dishonored the real heroism and sacrifice of everybody who served in George Bush's war. They didn't understand that then, they don't understand that now. (4 July 2003)

Elaine Cassel: Fenced Out on the Fourth. The Washington Mall has more police than citizens and one of our great public monuments to freedom has become one of our most active sites of surveillance and control. George Bush has highjacked the 4th of July. (4 July 2003)

The Spectator: Dubya & other people's guts, Meegan & other people's money Giambra and our city. Get out a da way 'cause Spectator's riled up again: he got mad when Dubya said "Bring 'em on" from the safety of the White House and got good guys killed; he got mad when Buffalo PBA union boss Bob Meegan scarfed up more money; he got mad when Joel Giambra, who sanctimoniously chanted "No handout, no bailout" when it came to saving Buffalo, pushed his goodbuddy "Gimme a big handout so I can buy a sports toy" Mark Hamister for the control board. It's all here. (4 July 2003)

Diane Christian: Good Killing and Bad Killing. All the killers have such good justifications worked out it's almost impossible, without a scorecard, to differentiate heroes and villains, murderers and martyrs, targets and victims. Now you've got one. (1 July 2003) 

Sally Fiedler: The Widow's Tale. A husband dies and the widow gets Social Security checks, right? Yes, but they're his Social Security checks, which can't be cashed because the payee has changed tense. So where are the checks you're supposed to be getting? Don't ask. Oh, you asked? You don't want to know. Well, of course you want to know, but you sure don't want to go through this.  (29 June 2003)

Spectator: Arbitrators and Quislings: so where's the outrage? Buffalo is being starved to death by union deals decided by anonymous arbitrators answerable to no one, the prime beneficiaries of which bitch in the city and spend their money in the suburbs, and all the while local politicians seem to think "loyalty" is a seven-letter word meaning "who'll buy me next." Maybe you didn't notice. Spectator did, and he's pissed off. (28 June 2003) 

Heron E. Simmonds: Bikers and liars have their day in Buffalo court. Simmonds was one of the Buffalonians arrested on false charges by Buffalo police after the police lost control of themselves on Elmwood Avenue May 30. (He describes that event in "Reflections on a 'Riot," Buffalo Report 24 June.) All the arrestees, several lawyers and prosecutors, and some of the policemen went to court Wednesday. Here is Simmonds's account of what transpired in the halls of justice. Two questions remain unanswered: why the judge and D.A. Frank Clark didn't toss out all the charges rather than just some of them, and why Clark didn't start a perjury procedure against those boys in blue who were obviously making it up as they went along. (27 June 2003)

Sam Hoyt: Defending his Bridge blockade. Assemblyman Sam Hoyt (D. Buffalo) was severely criticized last week by Buffalo Report and the Buffalo News for what seemed his gratuitous delay of the Peace Bridge expansion project and egregious grandstanding while doing it. In an email to his friends and an article, Hoyt offers his justification for what he did and how he did it. (26 June 2003)

Robert Lopez: Reality check on the President's language. Some of the Iraqis we're trying to equate with Saddam equate Saddam with us. Will Bush have to kill them all? What then? (25 June 2003)

Sam Hoyt Peace Bridge obstruction update: Hoyt stages Albany hissy-fit, wins big, screws Buffalo. What happens when an efficient, productive working arrangement between a city and a public agency gets noticed by an ambitious, press-hungry politician? This week in Albany, Assemblyman Sam Hoyt demonstrated (1) that control of turf trumps public service, and (2) he doesn't care enough about the city to be mayor of Buffalo. (23 June 2003)

Heron E. Simmonds: Reflections on a "Riot." Two dozen Buffalo police attacked a group of benign bicyclists on the city's Elmwood Avenue on May 30, after which they arrested nine of them on scores of trumped-up charges. Simmonds, who teaches philosophy at Canisius, explains what the bicyclists were up to when they were set upon by the police and what the attack looked like from his point of view. (24 June 2003)

Spectator: Alice in Buffalo. It's the summer solstice and our man-in-the-field speculates on advice Joel Giambra gives but doesn't take, advice he takes but shouldn't admit, and downtown land use. (21 June 2003)

Robert Lopez: Dissidents, defectors –  whatever. Foreign dissidents in the US who get the most press play may also represent the most peripheral positions. What does this have to do with whether or not the Philipines ever were liberated from decades of US occupation and control? Lopez is here to tell you! (19 June 2003)

Joel Rose: Giambra says no. Last week Seneca officials said they'd like to buy the Erie County Convention Center and put a gambling casino in it. After a few days of discussion and negotiations, Erie County Executive Joel Giambra turned them down. He suggested that they build a second casino in Niagara Falls instead, and just send Erie County and Buffalo some of the public's share of the profits. Here's the reaction to Giambra's decision from Joel Rose, co-chair of Citizens Against Casino Gambling in Erie County. (19 June 2003)

Bruce Jackson: Sam Hoyt Declares War on the Peace Bridge. Buffalo assemblyman Hoyt is waging a war that's already been won and if he is successful he may very well suck defeat out of the jaws of victory. Is Sam marching to a different drummer, totally deaf, more imaginative than we knew? Whatever his reasons, he's probably doing real harm right now to everybody but Manuel Maroun's Ambassador Bridge gang from Detroit. (17 June 2003)

The Hoyt/Peace Bridge File: all the players in their own words: Sam Hoyt’s June 4 letter to PBA vice chair Paul Koessler and chair John Lopinski...Lopinski’s June 6 letter to Hoyt...Hoyt’s June 12 letter to Assembly member Richard L. Brodsky...Anthony Masiello’s 13 June letter to Governor Pataki...Hoyt’s 14 June press release...Hoyt’s statements at 14 June press conference...Koessler’s 15 June response to Hoyt’s press conference statements...Robin Schimminger’s June 16 letter to Assembly Speak Sheldon Singer...the text of Schimminger and Volker’s eminent domain legislation A.8857/S.5452 (18 June 2003)...Jake Lamb's 19 June letter to FHWA

Spectator: What's Wrong With Everything. BTF, WMD, Amherst, Freedom Fries, Charley Fisher and community dialog. BR's man in the field is on a roll! (17 June 2003)

Stan Bratton/Joel Rose: Court of Appeals Invalidates Gambling Compact. New York's Court of Appeals says a governor cannot enter a gambling compact without full legislative approval. This is the first of two cases that may have important consequences for Buffalo's future. Here's a link to the Court's opinion and comments on its significance from anti-casino activists Bratton and Rose. (13 June 2003)

Newton Garver: Freedom and Responsibility. "I'll tell you what's outrageous," wrote Paul Krugman at the end of his June 10 NY Times column, "it's not the fact that people are criticizing the administration; it's the fact that nobody is being held accountable for misleading the nation into war." Yes, says UB philosopher Newton Garver, only it's far more complicated than that, and Wittgenstein and Sartre help explain why. (11 June 2003)

Spectator: Control board crap. Buffalo's in deep trouble and Joel Giambra and Bruce Fisher get to gloat in large part because Mayor Conehead cut a profoundly stupid tax deal with Erie County years ago. If they'd give the city money they shouldn't ever have gotten their hands on in the first place, Buffalo wouldn't need a control board and Giambra and Fisher wouldn't be able to take credit for fiscal sense they don't have. (11 June 2003)

 

Bruce Jackson: Buffalo cops wage war on pedal pushers: Iatrogenic law enforcement on the Niagara Frontier. A peaceful peleton of Critical Mass bicyclists rode around Buffalo last Friday evening. They were attacked by two dozen policemen who staged a riot on Elmwood avenue and made up dozens of bogus criminal charges. Would the cops have gone amok the week before, rather than the week after their fat new contract was signed? (5 June 2003)

Howard S. Becker: Trials, strikes and "manifs". French president Chirac faces serious bribery charges when he leaves office; a war criminal was sent to prison then let out; a serial murderer turns out to have had police protection; officials of the major oil company ELF are on trial for bribery, as is a high official in one of the right-wing parties. But the big news is the labor strikes that have stopped buses, trains and airplanes and been the occasion for parades and marches—called "manifestions" or "manifs." Here's how it all looks to an American abroad. (28 May 2003)

Kevin Gaughan's Teeth. Why does the Buffalo News keep calling Kevin Gaughan a leader when he doesn't have any followers? Why do they keep printing those pictures of his teeth? (27 May 2003)

Diane Christian: Enemy tactics. Is naming someone 'the enemy' a description or a strategy? When it comes to naming enemies, what difference is there between Osama bin Laden, Sadam Hussein, and George W. Bush? When everybody is saying he's got God on his side how do you know which side is good and true and which side is not? What are the consequences of abandoning words? Whom is it okay to kill and how can you be sure? Christian continues her examinations of the ethical foundations of our current state of war. (23 May 2003)

Spectator: The Control Board, Joel Giambra's most recent betrayal of Buffalo, Erie County's $1.25 billion slush fund: it's "Fire Prevention Week" in Nero's Rome! BR's chief political spy blows away the smoke, mirrors and fluff the Albany & County Hall gangs have erected around the ruins of Buffalo's economy. Quel homme! (29 May 2003)

Controlling Buffalo. NY state comptroller Alan Hevesi is coming to Buffalo Wednesday morning to talk about the city's money problems. Andy Rudnick & Co. say a control board (which it appears they want to control) is the city's only chance of salvation. No doubt they'll get some savings out of it. What the rest of us get isn't the least bit clear. (27 May 2003)

Bruce Jackson: M&T vs. the kids. M&T Bank got its way after all: Enterprise school isn't going to set up shop in the vacant AM&A's store on Main Street. Their four hundred K-8 kids will go to the vacant Advanced Training Center between six lanes of fast-moving traffic at the foot of the Kensington Expressway instead. All it took was some fast-footed hypocrisy from Joel Giambra and pass interference by Buffalo's city hall. (20 May 2003). (updated version)

Newton Garver: The news and the truth. The American press has engaged in breast-beating, soul-searching and more than a little gloating over the recent disclosure that a New York Times reporter made up many of his best quotations. A tempest in a teapot, says UB philosopher Garver. Far more consequential are the larger deceptions the press and major politicians engage in knowingly and persistently. "The large unnoticed problem," he writes, "from a moral point of view, is that the highest office-holders model immorality – deception and violence – in the guise of privileged necessities.The press has succumbed to these seductive role-models, but no more than other professions." (19 May 2003)

Spectator: The lost art of Buffalo outrage, dead Democrats, and Why is Andrew Rudnick still here? Every time Spectator comes back from one of his cross-country trips he's energized and cranked-up about Buffalo area political corruption, stupidity, narcissism, greed and/or sloth. Two things that set him off this time were Joel Giambra trying to torpedo the first sane Buffalo police contract in memory, with neither the Buffalo News nor the local Democrats telling him to get back into the suburbs that elected him, and Andrew Rudnick and the Buffalo Niagara Partnership pimping for sports-team-owning and wannabe-owning pals while letting the area's arts organizations starve to death. (May 18 2003)

Spectator: The difference between Democrats & Republicans and the AWOL president. There is a difference, says BR's resident political commentator, and it is real. The military part of Bush's official bio, however, is not the least bit real. And Buffalo News Washington correspondent Doug Turner's comments on Bush's aircraft carrier exploitation causes Dr. Spectator to question the condition of Turner's cojones. (16 May 2003) 

Newton Garver: Shadows of the 60's. There's all the difference in the world in the US dropping bombs on Baghdad in an attempt to terrorize Iraqis and Osama bin Laden hatching one deadly plot after the other in an attempt to terrorize the US, right? Not nearly as much as some people would like to think, says UB philosopher Newton Garver who wrote one of the really important articles on the violence of the 1960s, "What Violence Is." Here, and in light of 9/11, the Iraq War, and the Lackawanna 6 arrests, Garver brings those important perceptions on violence up to date. (10 May 2003)

Robert Lopez: The best Hitler I've seen in years. The CBS miniseries Hitler: the Rise of Evil was interesting history and at least equally interesting for the insight it provided on the modern world. They fired the producer for talking about that, and toned down the substance, but the insight lingers on. (23 May 2003)

Mark Boyer: Jazz (& everything else) is alive and well  at Hallwalls. And Hallwalls is alive and well in Buffalo. Boyer finds great music at affordable prices in the one place all the arts and artists call home. (May 8, 2003)

Bruce Jackson: Three photographs of Robert Creeley. Bob Creeley is leaving University at Buffalo's English department, where he has taught for more than 35 years, for a position at Brown. Combined with the death earlier this year of critic Leslie Fiedler and the move of poet Charles Bernstein for Penn, that's pretty much the end of the astonishing literary engine Al Cook created here so many years ago. Creeley's presence in Buffalo extended far beyond UB's campus grounds and he'll be sorely missed. Here, in farewell, are three of my favorite photographs of him. (This is a large file, so it may take a while to load.) (7 May 2003)

Pat Donovan: Creeley named to Academy of Arts and Sciences. The UB Reporter's account of Creeley's long overdue induction into the Academy, his pending departure from UB, and some of his comments about the move. (9 May 2003) 

Peyton Randolph: Buffalo's watchdog. Buffalo's in a downward fiscal spiral and City Hall can't even slow the plunge. The question isn't whether Buffalo will get a fiscal control board but when it will arrive, who will sit on it and how tough it will be. (8 May 2003)

Bruce Jackson: Arctic Silence: icy terror in the heart of the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian Institution decided to move the exhibit of Subhankar Banerjee's superb Arctic National Wildlife Refuge photographs from the main floor rotunda to a lower-level room and to cut the text out of most of his captions. Officials say Alaska Senator Ted Stevens promise to get even with whoever helped in the 52-48 defeat of the ANWR drilling bill had nothing to do with the sudden and unexplained downgrading of what was to have been a major exhibition, that it was just "routine." It was. That's the problem. (6 May 2003)

Kevin Thompson: UB is on solid ground. Fancy houses in Amherst are breaking up and sinking into the mud. Cynics say that UB's North Campus isn't far behind. Not true, says UB's director of Facilities Planning and Design, and he explains why. (6 May 2003)

Bernadette Medige: Privatization of Public Education: Segregation, Desegregation, Resegregation. The second part in Medige's series on key questions in urban education now. How, in a declining urban economy, do you make pubic education work? Is what looks like free choice at all free? Are some people more free than others? Are some schools more free than others? How do we keep from going through the same things twice?  (2 May 2003)

 

Diane Christian: A Scene in Obscene War. American soldiers calmed an angry Iraqi mob by turning their weapons muzzle down and kneeling in silence. A rare moment of understanding in a war the American military and US press still treat as pious soap opera. (5 April 2003)

Diane Christian: A Day of Reckoning. George Bush talks about Saddam's day of reckoning as if he were a biblical prophet. If he knew his Bible better, and any Middle-Eastern mythology at all, he'd know that things aren't so simple. (26 March 2003)

Diane Christian: Blood Sacrifice. Most Americans don't engage in blood sacrifice. Some do. (22 March 2003)

Diane Christian: The Morality of Violence. "There is no logic to the morality of violence," writes Christian in this astute dissection of Bush's logic of preemptive war. "As the sixties protesters had it 'fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity.' There is no morality to violence. It’s the defeat of morality, of a way to live." (17 March 2003)

Diane Christian: Occasion Poems (1 March 2003)

 

Bernie Pattison: The Bee Gee's House. The Gibb brothers spent their formative musical years in a small house in Australia's Redcliffe Penninsula. Our down-under correspondent Bernie Pattison, who now lives in the Gibbs's house, tells what it was like listening to the boys as they were growing up. (9 May 2003).

Robert Lopez: Amherst to Baghdad: race, war and the American Dream. What do white Amherst schoolkids terrorizing a schoolmate because he's Hispanic have to do with US warfare in the Persian Gulf? What does the way white America dealt with African-Americans, Hispanics, Jews and Asians have to do with what the US is doing in the Persian Gulf? Just about everything, says Lopez, in this important essay. (25 April 2003)

Tearing down Buffalo's historic buildings—or not. Buffalo Spree editor Elizabeth Licata circulated a message about a community meeting Saturday night, May 5, having to do with developers' plans to tear down several more historic Buffalo buildings, including one of the grain elevators. Her letter was immediately attacked by Artvoice editor Jamie Moses, whereupon Paul Morgan defended both the buildings and Licata. Here are the three emails, including Licata's information on the buildings at risk and the location of the meeting, plus some notes on who's looking to make money by making the structures go away. (1 May 2003)

Georg G. Iggers:  Response to the professors who favor war in Iraq. On April 18, the Buffalo News published a letter in favor of the war in Iraq from 20 UB professors.  Georg G.. Iggers, long-time civil rights activist and the University's most distinguished historian, responded, but the News never published his letter. Here is what Professor Iggers wrote. (3 May 2003)

UB's War of Words: Georg Iggers' letter was the final item in a string of letters by UB faculty and staff opposing and advocating the war in Iraq. In addition to the letter of 20 advocating war there was a letter from 240 opposing it, a letter hinting at criminal acts from a ringer, replies to those hints, one of which involved extensive consultation with the State's lawyers in Albany. Here's the entire file. (3 May 2003)

William M. Kunstler: Public Ethics and the Bill of Rights. America's best-known civil rights attorney offered these remarks about the Bill of Rights and the need for and value of individual civic engagement at the 1995 UB School of Architecture and Planning graduation. The speech is even more valid now than it was then. (27 April 2003)

Bernadette Medige: The Privatization of Public Education. What are charter schools really about? Where do they come from? What are their economics and politics? What do they mean for Buffalo? The first in an important series. (19 April 2003)

The scary things Mickey Brown said to the Buffalo Rotary Club about casino gambling in Niagara Falls and Buffalo. Seneca Niagara Casino CEO Mickey Brown ran through the dry dull facts about his casino's construction, attendance, profits, and expansion plans a few days ago. Owners of Buffalo's bars, restaurants, theaters and stores should be running for cover or getting ready to tell Tony Masiello it's time to defend the city rather than selling it on the cheap. (27 April 2003)

Bernie Pattison: Anzac Day. Friday is Anzac Day, anniversary of the slaughter of thousands of Australian and New Zealand soldiers at Gallipoli in their doomed attempt to take the Straits of the Dardanelles in Turkey in 1915. BR's furthest-out correspondent ponders the curious pleasure people take commemorating the pointless deaths of healthy young men. (24 April 2003) 

Diane Christian: Ends, means, and the present tense. Christian continues her series of inquiries into the ethics of George Bush's war in Iraq. If the ends don't justify the means, what does? The Bush team has one answer. The dead in Iraq might have another, if they could speak.  (15 April 2003)

Bruce Jackson: Nancy Naples is bored, bought, greedy, and/or crazy. Erie County Comptroller Nancy Naples wants to absorb Buffalo's comptroller's office, thereby removing Buffalonians' last remaining check on City Hall cronyism and other foolishness. She justifies her powergrab with made-up numbers. She wants it on the fall ballot. It's still lunatic time in Buffalo politics, folks. (18 April 2003)

Peyton Randolph: Judicial Food Fight. Are judges who run for office any different from all the other politicians? Should they have special rules or should they be allowed to wallow in the mud with everybody else? (17 April 2003)

Bernie Pattison: War in Iraq: enjoying the moment. It's not just Americans who've gotten addicted to 24/7 war coverage, says our Queensland correspondent. (11 April 2003)
 

The Blitzer file: BR's article last week on Wolf Blitzer's voice, which also appeared in CounterPunch, produced over a hundred emails, most of them expressing anger not just at Blitzer, but at the whorish and epidermal way all the 24/7 cable stations have covered the war. Here's a sampling. (13 April 2003)
 
Sam Wilkeson: M&T v. the Kids. In the March 8 Buffalo Political Diary, we pointed out that Buffalo Mayor Masiello and Erie County Executive Giambra were trying to shove Enterprise Charter School off Main Street not for the airy reasons they offered, but because M&T Bank president Robert Wilmers just didn't want those inner-city K-8 kids on his street. BR reader Sam Wilkeson here tells us just how rotten a deal for the kids the Masiello-Giambra-Wilmers move is. (11 April 2003)
 
Our readers write: Anthony Orlowski: Cutting Teaching at BAVPA. The City of Buffalo is desperate for money, a problem that is perhaps nowhere nearly so apparent as in the school system, where buildings are being shut, programs canceled, classes enlarged. Here is a letter from a Buffalo high school sophomore in one of the city's magnet schools who has watched his program slashed and crowded away. (11 April 2003)
 
Diane Christian: A Scene in Obscene War. American soldiers calmed an angry Iraqi mob by turning their weapons muzzle down and kneeling in silence. A rare moment of understanding in a war the American military and US press still treat as pious soap opera. (5 April 2003)
 
Bruce Jackson: Peace Bridge v. WTC. How come NYC has a design for the World Trade Center site and all we've got is a line of trucks on the Peace Bridge? (8 April 2003)
 
Buffalo Political Diary:  classic building destroyed, M&T vs. the kids, & vanishing Block Grant $$$ (8 April 2003)
 
Bruce Jackson: Wolf Blitzer's Voice.  I have recently come to hate Wolf Blitzer's voice. I didn't used to hate it but now I do. Here's why. (1 April 2003).

 Robert Lopez: Imperio sin fin. The Cold War ended, the Wall came down, and, briefly, the world was full of promise. But the center did not hold, disorder rages, the lessons of failed empires past are unheeded, Pax Americana is a sham, and the words of a long-ago professor have painful currency. (3 April 2003) 
 
Bruce Jackson: That pissant Ralph Nader is coming to Buffalo. I've gotten a bunch of emails from his tour handlers wanting me to post notices here on BR about his upcoming Buffalo performance. No way. Nader's a monster and it's about time everybody acknowledged it. (4 April 2003)
 
Mary Hess: My Dinner with Ralph Nader. No, we won't leave it with just kvetching about how Ralph got weird on us leading up to November 2000. Here's a fine report on his post-election behavior. Mary,  an old friend living in Rochester, sent us this wonderful email on January 17, 2001, more than a year before Buffalo Report came into existence. 
 

Bernie Pattison: The Ghosts of Port Arthur. The US isn't the only place where lone gunmen gratuitously slaughter anyone in sight, and in some places evil doesn't just happen once. A thoughtful report on senseless violence from our farthest correspondent. (6 April 2003)
 

Bernie Pattison: My Cousin Ned. Our friend in Queensland didn't go see "that cavern-mouthed pole-legged Englishman" Mick Jagger playing Ned Kelly and she's not planning on going to see the new film version starring Heath Ledger either. The family's stories about their famous relative need no wide-screen revamping to stay vivid, current and proud. (2 April 2003)
 
Walter Simpson: News Media is Casualty of War. In their coverage of the Iraq war, writes this longtime Buffalo environmental and peace activist, the networks have been spreading more fog than light and the Buffalo News has become "a field office for the White House publicity machine." (2 April 2003)

Bernie Pattison: Aborigines and the different god. White Australians have treated Aborigines about as wretchedly as white Americans have treated blacks and Indians, and the consequences have been awful. But, according to this report from a friend in Australia, something special has happened and some of the victims have found a powerful new voice. (29 March 2003)

Bruce Jackson: Time and skyline in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York. Can you believe that Hollywood gave best director to Polanski for The Pianist rather than to Scorsese for Gangs or Rob Marshall for Chicago? Sometimes Oscar is deaf. dumb, blind and hostile to New York. Here are some thoughts on why Scorsese's film is so good and so important. (And for more, see Maximillian Le Cain's excellent article in our Links section). (29 March 2003)