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Buffalo Report articles 2004

 

(Click here for Buffalo Report articles 2002-2003)

 

Bruce Jackson: It's a happy New Year at Peace Bridge Plaza (Peace Bridge Chronicles #87). It hasn't been a long time, it only seems that way. And in addition to the toll booths and inspection facilities moving to Canada and a rational bridge design plan in place, Bass Pro is turning the lights on in the old arena, BlueCross BlueShield is bringing 1200 employees to the heart of town, and the Bills have won 6 straight. Now if Tony Masiello will just forget about that lamebrain notion of putting a gambling joint across the street from city hall... (27 December 2004)

Diane Christian: The Christmas Christ (25 December 2004)

Diane Christian: Winning. What do Milton's Satan and Bush's Secretary of Defense have in common? Glozing. What's 'glozing?' Diane Christian is here to tell you. (24 December 2004)

James Holstun: A sacred/secular note, regarding “Minuit, Chrétiens,” or “O Holy Night.” Many people think it is the most beautiful Christmas hymn of all, and in addition it's got a great nativity story of its own.  (24 December 2004)

Bruce Jackson: New U.S.-Canada border agreement marks major advance in Peace Bridge expansion project. US and Canadian officials have approved a plan that will permit cross-border management at the Peace Bridge. CBM, which many thought a victim to U.S. 9/11 paranoia (but not Senator Chuck Schumer, who argued in favor of it in public and in private meetings with Homeland Security officials), will improve traffic flow on the American side, permit restoration of much of Olmsted's Front Park, and significantly open up design options for the new bridge. (Peace Bridge Chronicles #85. 18 December 2004)

Bernadette Medige: "Abstinence-only Sex Education: Who needs facts when you've got faith (and a lot of public money)? Some well-intentioned people are force-feeding high school kids a huge amount of incorrect and misleading information. We're all paying for the delivery of that bad information now, and we'll all pay for the consequences of it later. (12 December 2004)

Bruce Jackson: Slash, burn and starting over at the Peace Bridge. It's about time. They've dumped the public design meeting and voting process they've been experimenting with the past two years. Good thing, because the process was rapidly approaching meaninglessness and futility. They've adopted a process similar to what NYC did for rebuilding the World Trade Center. If everyone is honest this time (unlike in the twin span phase of the late '90s, when the Buffalo-Niagara Partnership was joining the Bridge Authority in screwing the city), something good might finally come out of this process. That's worth a few more months. Peace Bridge Chronicles #84. (28 November 2004)

Diane Christian: The Other Cheek. Christ couldn't cut it in this crowd. (26 November 2005)

Bernadette Medige: The Privatization of Public Education, part 5: The Corporate Agenda. The latest installment in Medige's continuing well-documented series on the conflict between public and charter schools. (8 November 2004)

Bernadette Medige: The Privatization of Public Education, part 3: How Charter School Legislation Undermines Public Education. A reposting of an earlier article that fell off the server. (8 November 2004)

Peter Slatin: Bill's back.  A report on Bill Clinton's first post-election speech. Even the Republicans in the room were dazzled by a president who could speak about complex issues and who read books rather than short staff summaries. (8 November 2004)

John C. Mohawk: About Prophecyandsurvival.com. We came across an interesting new web site that brought together concern about climate change and Hopi and Iroquois ideas about time, food and the fate of the world. This is what the creator of the site said when we asked him what he was up to. (8 November 2004)

Robert Oscar Lopez: How white liberals became a new racial minority. "White liberals – welcome to the club. If the election has left you disgruntled, if you suddenly feel like nothing you do through legitimate means can change anything, if you feel outnumbered, if your whole country seems to be against you, if you feel branded and marred by some stain of otherness that you don’t understand, if you’re forced to be someone you are not, if you have to be careful so you don’t get deported or lose your job or end up in a Star Chamber, if you feel hemmed in by politics and stuffed into the blue ghettoes on the fringes of the map…you have officially been de-whitened. Join hands with those of us who have been dealing with those very sentiments for our whole lives. You and we are all people of color now, adrift in the cruel ocean of whiteness." (5 November 2004)

Elaine Cassel: Running From the Religious Right. Part I of a series. "Bush himself is no evangelical Christian. Take it from someone who knows.... Ashcroft, now there is a Christian for you....  He covers bare breasts on statues with drapes. Bush’s daughters let theirs hang out.But the religious bigots worked hard for Bush and he will pay them back." (5 November 2005)

Walter Simpson: On the 2004 Presidential Election. So how come Canadians are so sane and we're not? (4 November 2004)

John Maggiore: Notes from a swing state visit. A report from Reno. "I gathered that people in Nevada were voting mostly for one of two reasons deeply associated with Nevada: fear and loathing. Bush voters fear that the terrorists will hit the casinos; Kerry backers loathe Bush. There’s no arguing with either of these impulses.... I left Nevada feeling pretty good. Campaigns usually have palpable undercurrents two weeks out – you can usually sense a winning or losing effort. This one smelled winning." (25 October 2004)

Susan E. Jeffords and Barclay Simpson: Words at an investiture. John B. Simpson was installed as the 14h president of University at Buffalo in a huge ceremony on October 15. There was a great deal of speechification, the most interesting of which, other than John B. Simpson's own (Academic Excellence and Access: The University at Buffalo in the 21st Century Higher Education Arena), was by his father (who spoke about the need to broaden who gets access to what a university has to offer) and by Simpson's former colleague at the University of Washington Susan E. Jeffords (who spoke of the critical place of the humanities in a modern university). (19 October 2004)

Diane Christian: War, ethics and the state of the union. We get more search engine hits for Diane Christian's articles than for any other contributor to Buffalo Report. Here is a baker's dozen of her most recent contributions. (19 October 2004)

Diane Christian: Sheep and Goats: The Language of Goodness. George W. Bush drops the name of Jesus more than the worst namedropper you ever met dropped the name he loved to drop more than any other. How different things might be if George W. Bush had the slightest idea what Jesus was all about. (18 October 2004)

Gerry Rising: What the polls may not reflect. A few weeks ago we posted a Jimmy Breslin article pointing out that a huge portion of the 18-29 age group (largely Democratic) have cell phones as their only phones, which means none of them are included in any of the presidential campaign polls reported in the daily press. Gerry Rising points out that many newly-registered voters aren't included either, so this year the pollsters might turn out as useful as they were for Alf Landon in 1936 and Tom Dewey in 1948. (15 October 2004)

Charles Bowman: Graphing the dead. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a graph is worth 10,000 numbers in a table. Here's another way of looking at the escalating numbers of deaths and mutilations in Iraq. (8 October 2004)

Christopher Brauchli: DeLay's Scandals. Washington old-timers are comparing Tom DeLay's ethical problems with Wilbur Mills's episode with the stripper who jumped into the Tidal Basin. Nonsense: Wilbur was just being absurd; DeLay's a thug. And Wilbur lost his job because of his foolishness, while the Republicans won't do a thing to DeLay except talk about it, and make sure not to make the same bad-publicity mistakes he did. (8 October 2004)

Spectator: Parliament of Whores. Congress proves that it is possible to line your pockets, wave the flag and screw GIs wounded in Iraq and their families all at the same times.  (8 October 2004)

Bruce Fisher: Consolidating E.C.C. For over a year now, Erie County Executive Joel Giambra has been advocating consolidation of the three campuses of Erie Community College, saying a single campus makes better educational and economic sense. The idea has been greeted with stiff opposition from the College's board and president. We asked Giambra's chief of staff, Bruce Fisher (who is also Deputy County Executive) to explain their continued pursuit of consolidation.(8 October 2004)

Bruce Fisher: Municipal finances are simple: a response to Spectator. Erie county's Deputy County Executive and Chief of Staff responds to Spectator's "Giambra screws Erie County, Naples stooges for DeLay, Bush scrounges for bad science and pulls strings in Iraq," which appeared in Buffalo Report on October 6, 2004.

Spectator: Giambra screws Erie county, Naples stooges for Delay, and Bush scrounges for bad science and pulls strings in Iraq. A pre-election triptych: (1) Erie County Executive Joel Giambra got his buddy the governor to refuse state aid to the city and force the city into receivership even though both knew the city's financial problems were caused not by local irresponsibility but by state mandates. Now the county is sliding down the same slope and Joel is talking out of the other side of his mouth. (2) The reigning lunatic fringe of the Republican party forced Jack Quinn out of Congress. The wealthy Nancy Naples is saying that if they'll let her in she'll play the game the way the Big Boys want. (3) Competent scientists wouldn't give Dubya & Co. the bottom lines they wanted, so they sought out the second team. And (4) if the Ruling Council in Iraq is ruling anything, how come Bush is still keeping that Brit's head on the chopping block? (6 October 2004)

Bruce Jackson: Breverman as Impresario, Breverman as Jew. There's a spectacular exhibit of Harvey Breverman's work—200 paintings, drawings and prints—at the SUNY-Buffalo Art Galleries through December 31. This is one of the three articles about that work in the exhibition catalog. (5 October 2004)

Diane Christian: The Gates of Hell. George W. Bush was so blinded by his own sanctimonious rhetoric he couldn't see what door he was opening or give thought to what lay behind it. He spoke as if he were the right hand of God, but he only managed to unleash the dogs of war, the demons of hell. (3 October 2004)

Christopher Brauchli: Lies, liars and that pompous pontificator William Safire. Lies are just fine with the Times' name-dropping columnist William Safire, but only if they're being uttered by his Republican friends.

Lisa Hayes: Downsizing at the Buffalo News gets dramatic. The Buffalo News continues to downgrade its product. The News recently went to new presses which allow it to publish a great number of eye-candy color photographs, but at the cost of a significantly reduced amount of space for hard news stories and increased fees for advertisers. It replaced Pulitzer-Prize winning editorial cartoonist Tom Toles with an intern who isn't very good and who knows little about politics, but who, now as a junior staffer, works for a good deal less money. The latest, according to Buffalo author, actor and director Lisa Hayes in this letter to News editor Margaret Sullivan, has a student intern doing drama criticism. Executives at the News say the cost-cutting is necessary because of the paper's huge drop in circulation; old-time reporters point to the staff and news hole losses as key reasons for the drop. You decide. Here is Hayes’ September 21 letter to News editor Margaret Sullivan about UB student Benjamin Siegel’s September 20 review, followed by the review itself. (30 September 2004)

Bruce Jackson: Diane Christian and Michel Foucault at a photography exhibit in Place Bastille, Paris, 1975. Three photographs.

Bruce Jackson: The book that explains better than any other why we are in this mess in Iraq. We posted this review article in Buffalo Report 19 months ago, but it's worth another visit. Every so often we get an email on the order of, "What gives you the right to say that the president of the United States and his advisers are a bunch of damned fools?" Most people believe that experts know something and that a president wouldn't do something against the country's interest in any major way. But only people who haven't read Barbara Tuchman's The March of Folly, in which she explains why, against all kinds of advice and informed opposition and the counsel of common sense, the Trojans took that wooden horse inside the city, the Renaissance popes precipitated the Reformation, King George lost the 13 American colonies, and why Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon got mired in Vietnam in a war everyone in their administrations knew they couldn't win. If George W. Bush read books, this one might have saved everybody a lot of pain.  (18 September 2004)

Elaine Cassel: Fourth Circuit to Moussaoui: Ask Your Questions, Prepare to Die. The Supreme Court told the government that it had to stop depriving Yasir Hamdi of his Constitutional rights, whereupon the government decided he wasn't a threat after all and said they would let him go after three years of mostly-incommunicado solitary confinement, if he promised to give up his American citizenship and swear he would never sue them for false imprisonment, torture, etc. But the Court hasn't said that Zacarias Moussaoui deserved the same protection, so he is still facing a death penalty in a case in which he cannot confront the witnesses against him and his lawyers cannot even find out what the government thinks he did. The lower courts won't protect Moussaoui from prosecutorial excess and the government's need to convict somebody, anybody, and is isn't at all clear that the Supreme Court will once again insist that federal prosecutors and the lower courts treat the Constitution as if it meant anything.  (18 September 2004)

Spectator: What is it about "liar" that you don't understand? The single theme that runs through all Bush administration policies seems to be that if you lie often enough and loudly enough the other guys will get tired and will go away. (15 September 2004)

Amy Goodman interviews Bruce Jackson and Gary Earl Ross on "Democracy Now!" A conversation (streaming video, audio and text transcript) about Buffalo since 9/11 and what it's like having a son on his way to Iraq. (10 September 2004)

Arundhati Roy in Buffalo: 5 photographs (10 September 2004). The novelist and essayist Arundhati Roy visited Buffalo this month as part of Just Buffalo's If All of Buffalo Read the Same Book program. On the evening of September 8, she gave a reading from her Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things; on September 9 she had a conversation with Amy Goodman, host of Pacifica's "Democracy Now!." Both events were attended by more than 1000 people. These photos were taken at a small interview session the morning of September 8. (10 September 2004)

Bruce Jackson: New York's 144th Assembly District: Hoyt yes; Golombek no. All politics is local. Here's a local issue for people in Buffalo Report's neighborhood. (9 September 2004)

Diane Christian: Hostage Takers. The hostages and hostage-takers you read about are just the hostages and hostage-takers you read about. There are more. Lots more. (7 September 2004)

Bruce Jackson: Zell Miller's Mothers. Why did Democratic senator Zell Miller tell all those lies at the Republican convention? Why was he at the Republican convention in the first place? His own web site explains it all. It has to do with too few men and too many mothers in his life, and his inability to distinguish among them. (5 September 2004)

Christopher Brauchli: Playing the Numbers in the Afghanistan Vote. Afghanistan is about to have its first presidential election. There was worry that Taliban threats might keep voters from the polls but already 10.3 million people have registered to vote and the number is still rising. That's a pretty good percentage, given that Afghanistan has a total voting population of only 9.5 million people. (5 September 2005)

Charles Bowman: With the Raging Grannies in the Big Apple March of August 29. A report from the field, with a slideshow. (3 September 2004)

Spectator: Yet another chapter in why the Spectator isn't a Republican. (A) He doesn't think you should have to sign a Republican party loyalty oath to hear the vice president talk, and (B) he doesn't think chickenhawk Karl Rove has earned the right to determine what John Kerry should be permitted to talk about. Seems fair to us. (2 September 2004)

Bernadette Medige: Privatization of Public Education, part IV: The Conservative Agenda. "When an 'experiment' needs to be replicated in 40 states with inconclusive results we need to start recognizing this as part of a broader political agenda, not an experiment. What is this agenda? I believe the 'reform' here is political and economic, not educational. The goal is to privatize and deregulate public education, which many conservatives view as just another expensive social program. Business interests see a huge market there, given that education is the largest portion of most cities’ budgets, and want a slice of the pie." (1 September 2004)

Buffalo Film Seminars fall schedule, with summaries and links. The 9th series of Buffalo Film Seminars begins August 31 with Buster Keaton's Sherlock, Jr. and Steamboat Bill, Jr. (accompanied by Philip Carli on electronic piano), and ends December 7 with Orson Welles' Citizen Kane. The other films are My Man Godfrey, My Darling Clementine, Odd Many Out, The Red Shoes, Floating Weeds, The Misfits, 8 1/2,  Hearts and Minds, Medium Cool, Badlands, The Mirror, Barry Lyndon and Raging Bull. Here are the details.(30 August 2004)

Diane Christian: Big Men. In which she answers the age-old question: Does size matter? (28 August 2004)

Diane Christian: Disarming. Everybody with guns collaborated in self-righteous self-confidence in the destruction of Najaf. Now what? (27 August 2004)

Diane Christian: War Rules. "All's fair in love and war," goes the familiar saying, which means the exact opposite of what it says. The only rules of war are the rules embraced by whoever is ruling at that moment in that place. The rest is mere luck, most of it bad. (25 August 2004)

Peyton Randolph: Giambra miscounts and Naples goes AWOL. Erie county is sinking into a fiscal black hole and Joel Giambra is about to default on the promises that got him elected. Where was Comptroller Nancy Naples while this mess was developing? Politicians always make it up as they go along, but comptrollers are supposed to be keeping score.  (24 August 2004)

William Benzon: Chicago's Millennium Park (a joint publication with Center Working Papers). Is it possible to turn a railroad yard and parking garage into a grand, playful and inviting public space, without losing the yard or garage? Chicago spent half a billion dollars and—with the help of Frank Gehry, Jaume Plensa and Anish Kapoor—found out that anything is possible. Here's what it looks like. (22 August 2004)

Ian Gillan: Seventeen Dead Burglars. Deep Purple was in town this week. Their performance at Erie County Fairgrounds, in mist and light rain, was one of those superb musical moments that make you wonder if the ordinary categories of music as classical, rock, folk, jazz and such have any useful meaning at all. Afterwards, Ian sent along this latest installment in his Occasionals, this one comprising a note on the death of Francis Crick and an imaginative riff on how Her Majesty's courts might deal with a musician who had seventeen dead burglars in his kitchen. (21 August 2004)

Diane Christian: Holy Places. What is violation of sacred or protected space—whether a structure of stone or a human body—really about? What did the Sumerians of 5000 years ago understand that Donald Rumsfeld misses entirely? What can the desire for mere expediency never justify? What is the attack on Najaf really about?  (20 August 2004)

Peter Smith: Things Worth Fighting For. Peter Smith has been thinking about the unnecessarily dead and it's left him angry at George W. Bush, very angry. And he's going to do something about it. (19 August 2004)

Steven T. Banko III: It's time to wipe the spit off my face again. Dick Cheney and his Capitol chickenhawks, with the help of a small group of misguided Vietnam vets, are attacking John Kerry's Vietnam war record. Even in the heat of a presidential campaign, there are some lies you just shouldn't tell. (18 August 2004)

Leona Czolgosz: Dear Mr. Wilmers. M&T Bank president Robert Wilmers recently offered to underwrite the search for a new Buffalo schools superintendent and to subsidize that superintendent's salary. Buffalo News editor Murray Light wrote a column saying the city should accept Wilmers' offer, no questions asked. But people have been asking questions, especially after Wilmers let it be known that he wanted to pick 3 of the 7 members of the search committee. If Wilmers is paying part of the salary does the school superintendent have to answer to two masters? It's good for the community when local richfolk try to help (Jeremy Jacobs' help was critical in the recent search for Bill Greiner's replacement at UB), but it's not so good when richfolk try to use their money to shape the community to fit their preferences. In this open letter, Leona Czolgosz (the presudonym of an individual deeply involved in Buffalo civic affairs), suggests ways Wilmers might help without doing harm.  (16 August 2004)

Robert Wilmers: Remarks on receiving an honorary doctorate. M&T Bank president Robert Wilmers received an honorary doctorate at UB's May commencement. The commencement heard a lot of speechifying by a lot of people, but Wilmers was the only one who spoke specifically about the importance of an educational institution to a city. This is what he said. (16 August 2004) 

Elaine Cassell: Rumsfeld's Kangaroo Courts. The Supreme Court told Rumsfeld that he couldn't keep holding people in Guantanamo without charges, in violation of both the Geneva Convention and US law, at least not without holding hearings to determine if such trampling of international rights is justified. So Rumsfeld has been holding hearings, and his hearing officers have determined that everything they've done is good and true and necessary. And, elsewhere, the fox has inspected the henhouse lock and found it meets all his specifications. (15 August 2004) 

Spectator: The Outrage Deficit. The latest on the bums in Albany, Giambra's fiscal incompetence, Bush sticking it to schoolkids and GI families, plus two more installments in the "Why the Spectator Isn't a Republican" series. (13 August 2004)

Christopher Brauchli: George's Goat. In which both Republicans and Democrats are taken to task: Republicans for lying their asses off about Kerry's war record and Democrats for not understanding Dubya's need to learn about the fate of goats. (13 August 2004)

Patricia A. Maloney: Mayor Coulda Woulda: Urban concerns back-burnered at DNC '04. Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley hoped his moment of glory at the DNC podium in Boston would get the convention to focus on the problems of America's cities and voters at home to see what a powerful and forceful speaker he was. He succeeded, alas, at neither. So would you want to take the mike right after Jesse Jackson? (10 August 2004).

Bruce Jackson: Buffalo News downsizing continues. The new presses are in. The Buffalo News is more colorful. There is far less content. 31 pressmen were laid off. The humorless political cartoonist who couldn't draw was replaced with a college kid who knows nothing of politics. And the money keeps flowing to Warren Buffett in Omaha. Part of a series. (2 August 2004)

Elaine Cassel: Why I Am Scared to Death of George Bush—and Why You Should Be Too. "Don't turn away from the frightening truth of what your government is up to—successfully, without accountability, violating every right and privilege Americans have under U.S. and international law." (2 August 2004)

Bernadette Medige: Contempt of court charges contemplated against Pataki in CFE case. The governor and legislature haven't come up with the money necessary to run New York's schools. A judge is telling them this is one obligation they're not free to ignore. (31 July 2004)

Bruce Jackson: What Walt Whitman said about C-SPAN, Fox News, and Wolf Blitzer's Voice. On the pleasures of watching the Democratic convention without being told what to think, what you're seeing, and what you're hearing. (29 July 2004)

Robert Oscar Lopez: A Nine-Day Search For Bush's America. You don't know anybody who's going to vote for Bush and neither do we, so who are the 45 out of 100 Americans who tell pollsters they're going to vote for him in November? Bobby Lopez took to the road to try and find out. "We drove out of New Jersey on July 5, 2004, and spent $1,150 and eight days to travel across Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, and West Virginia, on a political quest to answer the riddle: WHO LIKES GEORGE W. BUSH? The answer...is incredibly simple: Nobody, really." But don't start cheering yet. (21 July 2004)

Diane Christian: The Priesthood of Death. Anybody who has a way with words can bring apparent justification to killing. What's God got to do with it? Not much. 'God,' like 'self-defense,' is just one of the words the righteous killers employ. (12 July 2004)

Diane Christian: Sovereignty. One key reason Bush failed so miserably in Iraq is he was ignorant of 5000 years of the region's political and cultural history. He believed his born-again enthusiasm was all the knowledge he needed, which is, as the late Lenny Bruce used to say, like thinking running around the block three times and taking a good dump would cure the clap. Had he known and understood the stories Diane Christian recounts here, he might not now be a figure of such contempt and scorn in so much of the world—and the blood of thousands of innocent people might not indelibly stain his hands. (4 July 2004)

Sophia Canavos: Arnold Mesches' UB Art Gallery Exhibit: "FBI Files." "As art, this exhibit is moving, but as documentary, it's crushing. If the FBI did, in fact, try to silence an incendiary artist, they failed. Trying to silence the artist by destroying his product neglects to account for his voice." (3 July 2004)

Sidney Young: The Day After the Handover. Sometimes mere prose isn't good enough. (2 July 2004)

Newton Garver: The Politics of Humiliation. "Except for the details and the photos, Abu Ghraib was, after all, a natural consequence of the politics of humiliation combined with the iron curtain of secrecy.... We don’t know what is best for Iraq, On the other hand, it is obvious that what we are doing in Iraq is bad for the USA. The imperialist arrogance makes us foolish, the priority of military force over diplomacy makes us brutish, and using young Americans as instruments of the politics of humiliation corrupts our youth. It is time to end the whole ill-conceived adventure." (30 June 2004)

J.R. Brantwood: The Limits of the Imagination. You can't think of anything Bush and Rove could do to turn this election upside-down? But, then, you would never have thought a senate campaign smearing Max Cleland as anti-military and unpatriotic would have won, would you? Karl Rove did. What's the smelliest thing Bush has in the White House? How could he fix the stink? If Brantwood's right, it's a good thing Karl Rove cancelled his subscription to Buffalo Report. (29 July 2004)

Ed Cardoni: Letter to the Buffalo News and Mary Kunz: "...you never did get it..." The Buffalo News has been running a sniper action against University at Buffalo. First there was an off-the-wall factually-untrue column attacking the university and former president William Greiner by Donn Esmonde. That was followed by an an off-the-wall factually-untrue letter doing the same thing. Then columnist Mary Kunz attacked UB art professor Steve Kurtz—who is currently the subject of torture by John Ashcroft—saying that if Kurtz didn't want to be thrown in jail he should have used oil paint and stuck to innocuous subjects. That was too much for Ed Cardoni, director of the city's premier arts organization, Hallwalls, who wrote this letter to the Buffalo News. The News refuses to publish detailed critiques of deceptive, erroneous or fallacious articles by its staff (Buffalo is a one-newspaper town and the paper is owned by Warren Buffett), but you can read Cardoni's letter here, in the free land of the web. (22 June 2004)

Bruce Jackson: Saying No to the Prosecutor: Why Steve Kurtz's colleagues refused to testify before the grand jury. When someone refuses to testify to a grand jury, there's only one thing you know for sure. (20 June 2004)

Bruce Jackson: My American Passport. Once it opened doors. Now it invites scorn. Thanks, George. (20 June 2004)

Diane Christian: Morality and Death. The spiritual brotherhood of George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden transcends their earthly differences. If both of them read  Blake the world would be a lot better off. (18 June 2004)

Ed Cardoni: The Persecution of Steve Kurtz. Why several witnesses refused to testify to the grand jury, implications of all this for the art community, and what the FBI may really be up to. (16 June 2004)

Spectator: Presidential funerals and Buffalo hometown politics: form trumps substance at the Capitol, City Hall, WNED and One News Plaza. What could those people have been thinking? Could those people have been thinking? (16 June 2004)

Bruce Jackson: Harry Levin and the penultimate manuscript of Finnegan's Wake. June 16 is the centenary of the fictive day immortalized in James Joyce's Ulysses, the day in which Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus prowled the streets of 'dear dirty Dublin.' Maybe this is a good time to tell you how Harry Levin found out what happened to the manuscript that could unlock James Joyce's final secrets (15 June 2004)

Bill Sylvester/William Sylvester: Burying Ronnie. He was a good guy. He was a bad guy. He was a good guy. He was a bad guy. If there's more than one side to any question you can be sure that Bill & William will occupy all of them at once. (13 June 2004)

Bruce Jackson: Bush waffles, then gets testy about torture at the G8. Bush went to the G8 hoping to get troops and money for his Iraq war; he got neither. When it was over, he held a press conference in which he tried to put a smiley face on the flop, but reporters kept asking him about his administration's torture policy. He went platitudinous in response to the first two reporters, and got downright testy with the third. Here's a transcript of the torture parts of the press conference. (12 June 2004)

Spectator: Donn Esmonde's finger, Reagan's wars, Rummy's tickets. Missing the point, fighting the wrong war, and pissing away your hard-earned money. (9 June 2004)

Bruce Jackson: Donn Esmonde, City Planner (not). Buffalo News city affairs columnist Esmonde wants to turn UB into an urban renewal agency, and he faults Bill Greiner for not forcing students to do their laundry on Main Street. It's summer: silly-putty time on the Niagara Frontier. (9 June 2004)

Bruce Jackson: The Real O.J. Story (Antioch Review). Only one person knows for sure what happened that June 12 night ten years ago at 875 S. Bundy in Brentwood. The rest of us know stories, and stories about stories. (7 June 2004)

Bruce Jackson: J. Alfred Prufrock takes control of Peace Bridge expansion project. More and more it seems like Bruce Campbell at the expansion project and Ron Rienas at the Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority are boxing the project in so the only option left at the end will be a modified twin span. A lot of engineering is going on, but what's being engineered isn't the bridge, but rather the public's options. (3 June 2004)

Mary Evans: The Liberals' Draft Bill. The left has been fretting about the White House reactivating the draft after the election if Bush is reelected. Bills to do exactly that have already been submitted in the House and the Senate, not by Bush's chickenhawks but oldline liberals. Here's why. (8 June 2004)

Elaine Cassel: A Sorry FBI. The FBI arrested the wrong guy for the wrong reasons and they're sorry—not for their behavior but because everybody found out about it. (5 June 2005)

Spectator: Firefighters' Foley, Giambra's Halliburton, Chalabi's snitch and GWB's WWII. Is there any idiocy or venality or incompetence by a local or national public official that escapes the watchful eye and acid tongue of BR's Spectator? How does the man do it?  (4 June 2004)

Bruce Jackson: J. Alfred Prufrock takes control of Peace Bridge expansion project. More and more it seems like Bruce Campbell at the expansion project and Ron Rienas at the Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority are boxing the project in so the only option left at the end will be a modified twin span. A lot of engineering is going on, but what's being engineered isn't the bridge, but rather the public's options. (3 June 2004)

Christopher Brauchli: Cardinal Law goes to his great reward. A golden parachute for Boston's ex-cardinal: good salary, frescoed flat, and a major basilica in Rome, all very far from those public sex scandals, annoying lawsuits and meddlesome reporters. (3 June 2004)

Fahrenheit 9/11 to open nationally June 25. Bob and Harvey Weinstein formed a new company with the acronym FAG which will, in collaboration with Lions Gate and IFC Films, distribute Michael Moore's latest documentary offering. This came about after Disney, which owns the Weinsteins' Miramax, refused to distribute the film, probably because it might offend Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Moore refers to it as a "coalition of the willing." Whatever: it is the best hype a documentary ever had. Go FAG! (3 June 2004)

Elaine Cassel: ACLU Suit Uncovers Secrets of Secret Surveillance. The government tried to keep ACLU from telling people their lawsuit even existed. If Hamilton and Jefferson saw what Ashcroft & Co. have done to the Constitution they'd be on the barricades. It's a govenment designed by Kafka, Lewis Carroll and Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria. (31 May 2004)

Leona Czolgosz: A Different Kind of Partnership Executive. What, speculates Leona, might the Buffalo News have written if, instead of Andy Rudnick and the Buffalo-Niagara Partnership trying to take over the few parts of Buffalo city government they didn't yet own or control, Buffalo politicians instead were trying to get someone responsible, independent, sensitive to community issues and competent to run the Partnership? Yes, yes, yes: we know: that will never happen. But what if? Leona, who knows these things better than most, tells what if.  (26 May 2004)

Christopher Brauchli: The Object of Torture is Torture. The abuse of prisoners by American guards in Abu Ghraib wasn't something invented there. It was an American import. (24 May 2004)

Bill Dady Hogan. Arrest George Bush. Bill Hogan, a regular reader of Buffalo Report who lives in Cork, Ireland, called after the most recent round of Abu Ghraib torture photographs was published in his local newspaper to say that he was appalled and dismayed that the U.S. president and secretary of defense said their unilateral abandonment of the Geneva Convention had some legitimacy under law. "That was the basis of the Nuremberg trials," he said. We said, "We can't publish a telephone call in Buffalo Report, Bill. Write it and we'll put it up." He did, and here it is. (24 May 2004)

Steven T. Banko III: Supporting Our Troops. "I recalled those wonderful kids turned into men by war and turned into heroes in death," writes Banko, a much-honored Vietnam war hero. He tells the most important thing you can do for the soldiers George W. Bush has sent to kill and die in Iraq. (22 May 2004)

Zubeda Jalalzai: The Personal Quests of Saira Shah (Sexing the Political). Saira Shah has made two documentaries about life in Afghanistan under the Taliban and during the early days of the US bombing campaign, Beneath the Veil and Unholy War. "Shah’s intentions are noble: to expose the plight of women under unfathomable oppression. Still, in the glimpse she gives the viewers of the perspective underneath the veil, Shah also replays an old western fantasy of unveiling the Muslim woman.... There is an unmistakable imbalance here in what we as viewers should question and what we should fear." (19 May 2004)

Leona Czolgosz: Regional Field of Dreams. Erie County Executive Joel Giambra has been talking about regional issues for a decade and he's gotten a lot of praise for it. But, even with the enormous political and economic instruments at his disposal, he has accomplished virtually nothing but talk. He's recently talked it over in secret meetings with some friends and associates and now he's gone public with a hand-picked panel that is supposed to turn the talk into reality. But the panel is ill-defined, underfunded, and badly-structured. (19 May 2004)

Sidney Young: Pavlov's Media. Our poet pal Sidney Young kept kvetching about the media coverage of George Bushs's parachute jump."He was strapped to the guy with the parachute. A dead man could have made that kind of jump. A suitcase could have made that kind of jump. And did you see them landing--Bush with his legs out grinning like an idiot and that other guy holding him snuggly tight. It was a dirty picture." "Stop jabbering," we said, "go write a poem about it." He did. (19 June 2004)

James B. Kane: The Peace Bridge must be our front door—not our loading dock. The regional director of the Ambassador Bridge Company's Buffalo project says the Peace Bridge Expansion Project has it all wrong. Truck traffic across the Peace Bridge does Buffalo nothing but harm, so instead of figuring out how to move more trucks across the Peace Bridge they should be finding ways to have the trucks cross somewhere else. (18 May 2004)

Elaine Cassel: The other war—one year later. What happens if the Supreme Court reads the Constitution, stands up to Bush in the three terrorist civil rights cases, and Bush thumbs his nose at the Court? Will this Republican congress impeach him? Will it be as upset by his abuse of power as it was by Bill Clinton getting his joint copped by an intern in the Oval Office? Not a chance. Kerry has been silent on the civil rights issues. Does he have any greater regard for the Bill of Rights or does he rather like Bush's expansion of White House power and privilege? More and more it looks like Bush lost the war on terrorism abroad but is winning the war against the Bill of Rights at home. (17 May 2004)

Bruce Jackson: The fallacy crippling the Peace Bridge expansion project: "old" does not equal "historically significant." Why opt for the banal and mediocre when you don't have to? (15 May 2004)

Christopher Brauchli: The reason Bush knows about US government torture in Iraq and not about US torture at home. If every torturer had a digital camera we'd know so much more about our government at work. (15 May 2004)

Peace Bridge design poll vote results. The numerical results of the recent Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority telephone and computer poll on bridge concepts. (13 May 2004)

Spectator: Keep Rumsfeld—Please! Why dump Rummy when he's walking evidence of how bad things really are? When did we start calling mercenaries "contractors"? Why is Joel Giambra suing his Halliburton buddy Jimmy Spano? Why don't Buffalo's news anchors know where the war on terror is and isn't being fought? Spectator tells all. (12 May 2004) 

Bruce Jackson: Maybe the dumbest US Senator of them all. This is a steep climb, but Oklahoma Senator Daniel Inhofe—who says (a) anybody US soldiers arrest is guilty of a blood crime else they wouldn't have been arrested, and (b) any torture arrestees suffer is deserved because of the crimes they, or somebody somewhere, did—may have what it takes.  (11 May 2004) 

Leona Czolgosz: Feeding the toll-taker: greed and planning on the NY Thruway. They're routing Niagara Falls casino traffic through Buffalo, which will cost drivers more in tolls and contribute to downtown Buffalo traffic congestion, longer commutes and more air pollution. It's called urban planning. And it's all about greed. (10 May 2004)

Diane Christian: Images & Abstractions & Genitals. Donald Rumsfeld still hasn't a clue what the Abu Ghraib torture photographs are really about. Which is one reason we are in the mess we are in. (8 May 2004)

Bruce Jackson: "I didn't know you knew Pete Seeger." The great conspirator turns 85. Remembering something that happened in a Texas prison nearly 40 years ago.... (8 May 2004)

A call for help from Manny Fried. Buffalo writer, labor activist and actor Manny Fried is 91 and his appearance in Arthur Miller's I Can't Remember Anything may be the last time he takes to the boards. He'd like you to see you there. Here are the details. (10 May 2004)

Chrysavgi Papagianni: Destination America? Not any more! Foreign students are having a far more difficult time getting and keeping US visas, and as a result, US universities are losing many of their best students. The long-term repercussions of that, particularly in the context of the current US isolationism, are profound. How different would our current situation in the world be had these restrive rules been in place when people like Kofi Annan (UN Secretary General. MIT), Xaveria Solana (Spain, former Secretary of NATO, U. Virginia), Gloria Arroyo (president of the Phillipines, Georgetown) decided to study here? Here's a description of the problem in general and details on how it is playing out at University at Buffalo. (7 May 2004)

Spectator: Rummy's unused literacy, DoD's unlocated toilet paper, Kerry's Medals, Giambra's chicanery, Wolfowitz's dislocation, & Disney's mouthpiece. It's all here. Quel homme! as we used to say in Washington before everyone started pretending they didn't know any French. With Spectator on the job, who needs CNN? (6 May 2004)

Jim Holstun: Buffalo United Against Bush: April 20, 2004. George W. Bush's Kleinhans Hall performance on behalf of his reelection campaign and the PATRIOT Act before a group of political allies and law enforcement personnel was well covered by the local and national press, but the vigorous anti-Bush, anti-PATRIOT Act demonstration across the street was pretty much ignored. Here's a report on what the Times stringer didn't notice. (21 April 2004) 

Bruce Jackson: Not this time, Carl. Buffalo investor and real estate developer Carl Paladino is threatening to sue the Senecas because they're not putting a casino where he stands to make the most money. Nothing in the Compact between the Seneca Nation and NY State obligates them to do that. Is Paladino just blowing smoke? If so, why? And why are Buffalo Mayor Anthony Masiello and Erie County Executive Joel Giambra joining Paladino's parade? (18 April 2004)

Diane Christian: Blood Spilling. Bin Laden, Bush and Sharon use exactly the same argument to justify killing. They are wrapped in a cycle of endlessly justified vengeance. Where does that leave us? (18 April 2004)

Bruce Jackson: Bush, Ashcroft, Rice: Gott mitt uns. Before he put himself at risk in his April 14 press conference Bush made a 17-minute campaign speech defending his invasion and occupation of Iraq. He then took questions from about 15 reporters and answered almost none of them. Instead, he seemed to follow the dictum of Franz Hippler, Hitler's chief of propaganda film: "Simplify and repetition, that's the secret of modern propaganda." (14 April 2004)

Joan LoCurto: The Children Left Behind. Many charter schools get to pick which students they'll teach and which of those they've picked will be allowed to stay. That simplifies operations and makes for good success reports in the charter schools. But what about everybody else? Here, a Buffalo public school teacher writes about the effect of all that careful selection and considered rejection on Buffalo's other children. (14 April 2004)

Jesse Levine: Dear Editor.  Buffalo Report gets 25 to 100 email letters every day, occasionally more. Many are from readers who have come across something elsewhere on the web they think would be of interest to BR's readers. Some contain articles for publication. Some contain friendly, or at least polite, criticism. A few are venomous. And some, like this one from violist Jesse Levine, are what make it all this worthwhile. (14 April 2004)

Diane Christian: The Passion Story. What the blood really says, and what that story is really about. Finally. (Easter Weekend 2004)

Citizens Against Casino Gambling in Erie County Vow to Fight Casino Plan. Buffalo real estate developer Carl Paladino is throwing a huge hissy-fit and threatening harassing lawsuits because the Senecas decided to put their second Erie County casino in Cheektowaga rather than downtown Buffalo, where Paladino, because of his huge clout with the mayor, stood to make a lot of money on the deal. Now somebody else will make the money. But CACGEC says nobody should be making it, because the fact that a few developers and owners get rich running gambling joints doesn't justify the great harm they do to everyone else. (10 April 2004)

Bruce Jackson: Michel Foucault: Buffalo 1971, Paris 1975. Four photographs (10 April 2004)

Bruce Jackson: Killer entropy, or Triumph of the Will at the Peace Bridge. The public involvement aspect of the Peace Bridge design project has fallen apart. Attendance drops and the voting is stacked. Only Buffalo's City Hall stands between us and a huge construction project that does the city more harm than good. Have we any cause for hope or did the champions of dullness win out after all? (8 April 2004)

Peyton Randolph: Back in the Big Muddy. If you're old enough to remember Vietnam, the news is seeming more and more like a rerun. (8 April 2004) Pete Seeger: Waist Deep in the Big Muddy. Pete wrote this song back in 1967, by which time it was apparent to a lot of us that our Texas president's Asian War was a stupid and fatal enterprise, one justified by bad intelligence and fueled by inability to admit error. Lately, the words keep running through my head. (8 April 2004)

Bruce Jackson: Parsons 1, Cannon 0. How come the PBA hired Parsons as bridge engineering consultants last week when several months ago it told Cannon Design it was far too late to join the Peace Bridge design process? What's that smell? (Peace Bridge Chronicles #82) (4 April 2004)

Ian Gillan: Reasons to Cry. Ian Gillan writes an occasional letter to his friends about things happening to and with Deep Purple and his own reflections about the various things caring people talk and write about to try and reintroduce some measure of sanity and decency into public affairs gone quite crazy and mean. The letters are always personal and fascinating. He offered to let us share them with BR readers, which we happily now do. (2 April 2004)

The Gemini Papers (Bill Sylvester/William Sylvester): Rage. Joined in the brain at birth, they're still arguing the Big Ones. (2 April 2004)

Peter D. Smith: Why I am not giving any money to the Democratic Party. He's found something better to do with it. (30 March 2004)

Korean Students at State University of New York at Buffalo: A Statement of Our Position on the Impeachment of President Roh Moo-hyun by the National Assembly of South Korean (27 March 2004)

Bruce Jackson: The Peace Bridge Now: approaching endgame. There are only a few steps left before this long process is over. So where are we, and was it all a scam? (23 March 2004)

Spectator: NFTA & the waterfront, Tony & the Senecas, Regime change keeps on keeping on, and Haliburton keeps on being Haliburton. The latest from our resident scourge of governmental foolishnesses and ineptness. (16 March 2004).

Bruce Jackson: The Shrinking Buffalo News. They say size doesn't matter. Well, sometimes yes, sometimes no. (14 March 2004)

Robert Oscar Lopez: The Camel and the Gnat (War & Gay Marriage) or How George Bush has condemned U.S. Christianity in the court of history. "While blood soaked the land of Abraham, those Christian leaders were worried about that?" (13 March 2004)

Citizens Against Casino Gambling in Erie County: It's still a bad idea. Buffalo Mayor Anthony Masiello and State Senator Byron Brown want a gambling joint in the heart of the city, even though all expert and sane opinion says a casino would be the last twist of the knife in a city barely getting by on life support now. The latest news is that the Senecas may have settled on a site near the Buffalo Airport in Cheektowaga. In this statement, the major citizens group lobbying against casino gambling says why that's a lousy idea too. (13 March 2004)

March 20 antiwar demonstration. There will be a massive antiwar demonstration in NYC March 20. Here's information on busses from Buffalo to the NYC event and on the alterative demonstration in Buffalo that day. (9 March 2004)

Diane Christian: On The Politics of Anti-Semitism. Is it possible to criticize Israel without being anti-Semitic? The contributors to a new book edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair show how it's done. (5 March 2004)

Stephen T. Banko III: A Sixties Tale. Two Buffalo kids tried to get into the National Guard. The father of one was a minor political figure in Buffalo; the father of the other was a steelworker. One of the kids got into the National Guard; the other went to Vietnam and got wounded six times. (2 March 2004)

Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The UN General Assembly asked the International Court of Justice (the World Court) to consider Sharon's apartheid wall. Here are links to the Court's press releases, UN documents, streaming videos of testimony given 23-25 February, and other materials from the hearings. (2 March 2004)

Ed Franks: Gibson's Passions. If Mel Gibson's new torture and baattery movie isn't anti-Semitic, how come nearly all his Jews are so awful? And how come Protestants are lining up for a film grounded in Catholic ideology? (2 March 2004)

Elaine Cassel: I hate to say "I told you so," but I told you so. Two years ago Cassel wrote that the USA-Patriot Act had the potential to let a repressive government define ordinary non-violent protest as a terrorist act, which is exactly what has happened. Don't you wish that someone in Congress had bothered to read it before voting to approve it? (1 March 2004)

Bruce Jackson: Homeland Security to Senator Charles Schumer: Screw Buffalo. Ordinary people, politicians, saints and scoundrels have spent the past 5 years warring over and thinking about the Peace Bridge expansion project. Now the Washington bureaucrats have entered the process and they've told us all to go to hell. (1 March 2004)

Diane Christian: Ideals and Sex Rules. Bush has a new crusade: gay marriage. "...The President may find sexual terror as tricky as terrorism. He promised us a humble foreign policy and became an arrogant warrior, believing God on his side. He promised us compassionate conservatism and can’t speak beyond his narcissistic righteousness. He’s promising an ideal now which sounds narrowly prescriptive and intolerant." (1 March 2004)

Newton Garver: Heraclitus's Reply. A poem, notes and an appendix, from BR's chief moral philosopher. (1 March 2004)

Patricia Maloney: Oops, he did it again: Secretary Paige and the Foot in his Mouth. President Bush keeps saying how much he values education. Then how come he funds education on the cheap and keeps the orapedical Paige in his cabinet? (1 March 2004) 

Emanuel Fried: Theatre and Labor. One reason so many Americans are so passionate in their opposition to the potential incursions on civil rights in the Patriot Act and to Attorney General John Ashcroft is they remember a time, not very long ago, when the Department of Justice spent a huge portion of its resources trying to suppress and punish free speech in America. Here, Buffalo playwright and labor activist Emanuel Fried recalls some of what they did to him. (1 March 2004)

Elaine Cassel: Happy Birthday, Buffalo Report. Comments on the job of BR and the rest of the digital alternative press from the writer of Civil Rights Watch. (1 March 2004)

James Reiss: Tex-Mex and Speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Two new poems from the author of Riff on Six. (1 March 2004)

Bruce Jackson: An open letter to the 94 people who have thus far written me to express displeasure with my article about Ralph Nader’s announcement on "Meet the Press" that he was again running as an independent candidate for president. (27 February 2004)

Hevesi and Spitzer call for major reform of public authorities. New York State has a fourth branch of government almost nobody sees: authorities, which are run by appointed boards with virtually no public accountability (the Thruway is run by an authority and so is the Peace Bridge). NY Controller Alan Hevesi and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer want to let the daylight in. (26 February 2004)

Halt high-speed cross-border chases, MPs urge Ottowa (Globe and Mail). Last week's Niagara Falls (NY) cowboy cops chase that resulted in the death of a Niagara Falls (Ontario) woman wasn't the only recent incident in which armed US cops went into Canada illegally, and the Canadians don't like it one bit. (25 February 2004)

Michigan races NY to build Canada span: Buffalo plan targets limited fed money; jobs are at risk. (Detroit News). A lot of people think Detroit transportation mogul Manuel Moroun's Ambassador Bridge Company never intended to build anything here in Buffalo, that all they were doing with that noise about a bridge at the International Railroad Bridge crossing was trying to slow things here so they could increase their foothold in Detroit. This article suggests what Moroun may have hoped to gain with his small Buffalo investment. (24 February 2004)

Niagara Falls cowboy cops endanger critical Peace Bridge negotiations. They followed a suspect right across the Rainbow Bridge in a high speed chase, just like in the movies. One problem: it was totally illegal and the Canadians didn't like it one bit. (23 February 2004)

Bruce Jackson: Ralph Nader and George W. Bush. That pissant monomaniac Ralph Nader is back. Bah. (22 February 2004)

Bridge Out of Nowhere Leads a Town to Its Future (NY Times). The single-pylon, cable-stayed, glass-floored footbridge Santiago Calatrava built for a small California town is not only beautiful but doubly-functional: you can use it to cross the Sacramento river and, since its pylon is also a sundial, you will know approximately what time you crossed. But what is a $23.5 million sundial bridge built by Santiago Calatrava doing in a small California town? (19 February 2004)

Charles Bowman: New York gives judicial misconduct a suspended sentence. Over the past quarter-century New York has cut the budget of the agency assigned to investigate judicial misconduct by more than a third. This is an economic move that serves everyone except the citizens of New York State. (11 February 2004)

Spectator: Bush buffaloes Russert on National Guard issue. The fact that Bush got an honorable discharge doesn't mean he showed up; it only means that the same clout that got him into the Guard ahead of a lot of other people got him out of it. (9 February 2004)

Christopher Hume: Toronto Firm's Work Borders on a Statement (Toronto Star). The Canadians have decided that their side of the Peace Bridge should be neither paranoid nor grim. How unAmerican. (9 February 2004) 

Ratification of the Scoping Document/Alternative Screening Report 5 February 2004. The Town of Fort Erie, the City of Buffalo, and the Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority (the "Partnering Group") have accepted the terms of the draft environmental study for the Peace Bridge expansion projetct—the Scoping Document/Alternative Screening Report (29 October 2003)—with the added condition contained in Addendum #1 (26 January 2004) that the full EIS consider shared border management as much as possible. These PDF files contains the texts in question and the signed ratifying documents. (8 February 2004)

Spectator: Real Obscenities, Bush & Russert, Bush's commission, Bush v.  Rummy, Sacramental hostages. Our man-on-the-ground comments on the ways Janet and Dubya exposed themselves this week, and other key stories in the week's news. (8 February 200

Bruce Jackson: Janis Joplin at Newport 1968. Five photographs. (6 February 2004)

Bruce L. Fisher: The ECMC deal. The recent change in status of Erie County Medical Center has drawn heat and praise. Some say it's the county once again cynically profiting at Buffalo's expense; others say it provides an opportunity to improve medical care at less cost to everybody. In this letter, County Executive Joel Giambra's chief of staff, who engineered the deal, tells how it looks from his point of view. (30 January 2004)

Leonard Peltier: Never, never give up. Every year on the anniversary of his incarceration Leonard Peltier sends a message to his friends and supporters. This is his 28th message. (25 January 2005)

Spectator: Griffin is still grifting...conservative confusion in Amherst...and Bush is still AWOL. The chief of  BR's undercover operation updates what the scoundrels have been up to. (24 January 2004)

Jack Wilson: To Die for a Lie. In a recent editorial, the Buffalo News said we went to war in Iraq because we'd been misled. "Little outrage appeared in the words of the editorial. The best writers could manage was a bit of finger-shaking, proclaiming that 'the use of false reasons to justify a war should remain troubling.' Troubling? My arthritis troubles me. This enrages me." We've been harmed not just by the moral failure of the Administration, but by the complicity or failure of nerve of the mainstream press. (23 January 2004) 

Emanuel Fried: Bush's Intentions. Dubya isn't the first US president who lied to the American people about why he manipulated us into a war, but he's the president doing it now and who will continue doing should he get more time in office, which voters should think about that as this election year unfolds. (23 January 2004) 

Elaine Cassel: Supreme Court Sanctions Secret Arrests. The Court found nothing wrong with Ashcroft's detention of hundreds of Muslim men without charge of wrongdoing or access to attorneys or families. You're next. (16 January 2004)

Peyton Randolph: Judging the Future. The Massachusetts supreme court has decreed that gay marriages are legal. The Republican holy-roller deep-south is in a tizzy. How hard will Bush and Cheney work to pretend that's an issue of substance while avoiding discussion of their failure to prevent 9/11 and the real reasons for the oil war in Iraq? (15 January 2004)

Stephen T. Banko: An Open Letter to the American Soldier from an American Veteran. Time Magazine named The American Soldier its Person of the Year about the same time the VA stepped up its aggressive in cutting veteran's health benefits. Glory and praise are nice—but memory is short and politicians' attention spans are even shorter.  (13 January 2004)

Bruce Jackson: Making war, making movies: the collaboration of Robert S. McNamara and Errol Morris on Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. He was more hated than Rumsfeld, and now he's trying to make sense of his life. Lotsaluck. Sometimes the best documentaries get us asking questions that can't be answered. (Fog of War begins screening at the Amherst Theater in Buffalo on January 31) (11 January 2004).

Diane Christian: Lying. Colin Powell held a press conference last week and tried to justify the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, even though the weapons of mass destruction he, Bush and Rumsfeld assured the world were in Iraq and were poised to cause universal havoc now turn out not to have existed. Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara stars in a new Errol Morris film in which he too tries to justify his life. How does truth play in all of this? Can these guys get off with "Aw shucks, we thought we were telling you the truth?" When is it self-deception and when it is lying and how does anyone tell the difference between the two? (10 January 2003) 

Frankenstein in Buffalo.  (No, I'm not talking about the Common Council.) The Buffalo and Erie County Public Library, in cooperation with University at Buffalo Libraries and Just Buffalo Literary Center, is bringing a dynamic traveling exhibition, called Frankenstein: Penetrating the Secrets of Nature, to Western New York in January 2004. There will be displays, lectures, and three of the best Frankenstein movies ever made. (10 January 2004)










 

 

 

 


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