I used to like Micheal Moore

then he made my jaw drop by
licking Wesley clarkes ass...


I have a sneaky suspician that this
is a publicity stunt...

because on his site it is stated that he is nominated for
the cannes film festival as the first doc nominated for a prize...
and how he is soo honoured etc...

now i think they might have seen the film, don't you?

don't get me wrong

his films and books are great...
to a point...

if he was such a trouble-maker why would miramax
sign the deal???

and if the film was made anywhere else it would have been
contentious anyway
this feels like a spring-loaded double whammy


a bit like janet jacksons wardrobe failure...?

or is it my wardrobe mind failing, crashing, spinning out, again?

www.nytimes.com

May 5, 2004
Disney Forbidding Distribution of Film That Criticizes Bush
By JIM RUTENBERG

ASHINGTON, May 4 — The Walt Disney Company is blocking its Miramax division from distributing a new documentary by Michael Moore that harshly criticizes President Bush, executives at both Disney and Miramax said Tuesday.

The film, "Fahrenheit 911," links Mr. Bush and prominent Saudis — including the family of Osama bin Laden — and criticizes Mr. Bush's actions before and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Disney, which bought Miramax more than a decade ago, has a contractual agreement with the Miramax principals, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, allowing it to prevent the company from distributing films under certain circumstances, like an excessive budget or an NC-17 rating.

Executives at Miramax, who became principal investors in Mr. Moore's project last spring, do not believe that this is one of those cases, people involved in the production of the film said. If a compromise is not reached, these people said, the matter could go to mediation, though neither side is said to want to travel that route.

In a statement, Matthew Hiltzik, a spokesman for Miramax, said: "We're discussing the issue with Disney. We're looking at all of our options and look forward to resolving this amicably."

But Disney executives indicated that they would not budge from their position forbidding Miramax to be the distributor of the film in North America. Overseas rights have been sold to a number of companies, executives said.

"We advised both the agent and Miramax in May of 2003 that the film would not be distributed by Miramax," said Zenia Mucha, a company spokeswoman, referring to Mr. Moore's agent. "That decision stands."

Disney came under heavy criticism from conservatives last May after the disclosure that Miramax had agreed to finance the film when Icon Productions, Mel Gibson's company, backed out.

Mr. Moore's agent, Ari Emanuel, said Michael D. Eisner, Disney's chief executive, asked him last spring to pull out of the deal with Miramax. Mr. Emanuel said Mr. Eisner expressed particular concern that it would endanger tax breaks Disney receives for its theme park, hotels and other ventures in Florida, where Mr. Bush's brother, Jeb, is governor.

"Michael Eisner asked me not to sell this movie to Harvey Weinstein; that doesn't mean I listened to him," Mr. Emanuel said. "He definitely indicated there were tax incentives he was getting for the Disney corporation and that's why he didn't want me to sell it to Miramax. He didn't want a Disney company involved."

Disney executives deny that accusation, though they said their displeasure over the deal was made clear to Miramax and Mr. Emanuel.

A senior Disney executive elaborated that the company had the right to quash Miramax's distribution of films if it deemed their distribution to be against the interests of the company. The executive said Mr. Moore's film is deemed to be against Disney's interests not because of the company's business dealings with the government but because Disney caters to families of all political stripes and believes Mr. Moore's film, which does not have a release date, could alienate many.

"It's not in the interest of any major corporation to be dragged into a highly charged partisan political battle," this executive said.

Miramax is free to seek another distributor in North America, but such a deal would force it to share profits and be a blow to Harvey Weinstein, a big donor to Democrats.

Mr. Moore, who will present the film at the Cannes film festival this month, criticized Disney's decision in an interview on Tuesday, saying, "At some point the question has to be asked, `Should this be happening in a free and open society where the monied interests essentially call the shots regarding the information that the public is allowed to see?' "

Mr. Moore's films, like "Roger and Me" and "Bowling for Columbine," are often a political lightning rod, as Mr. Moore sets out to skewer what he says are the misguided priorities of conservatives and big business. They have also often performed well at the box office. His most recent movie, "Bowling for Columbine," took in about $22 million in North America for United Artists. His books, like "Stupid White Men," a jeremiad against the Bush administration that has sold more than a million copies, have also been lucrative.

Mr. Moore does not disagree that "Fahrenheit 911" is highly charged, but he took issue with the description of it as partisan. "If this is partisan in any way it is partisan on the side of the poor and working people in this country who provide fodder for this war machine," he said.

Mr. Moore said the film describes financial connections between the Bush family and its associates and prominent Saudi Arabian families that go back three decades. He said it closely explores the government's role in the evacuation of relatives of Mr. bin Laden from the United States immediately after the 2001 attacks. The film includes comments from American soldiers on the ground in Iraq expressing disillusionment with the war, he said.

Mr. Moore once planned to produce the film with Mr. Gibson's company, but "the project wasn't right for Icon," said Alan Nierob, an Icon spokesman, adding that the decision had nothing to do with politics.

Miramax stepped in immediately. The company had distributed Mr. Moore's 1997 film, "The Big One." In return for providing most of the new film's $6 million budget, Miramax was positioned to distribute it.

While Disney's objections were made clear early on, one executive said the Miramax leadership hoped it would be able to prevail upon Disney to sign off on distribution, which would ideally happen this summer, before the election and when political interest is high.

It's not a publicity stunt, Disney refusing to distribute is a serious setback, because it means the film won't get shown in any of the cinemas they own. So less people see it, less of a buzz about it, less people get it out on dvd etc etc.

It's been seen by the Canne people, presumably because Michael Moore sent them a copy. Disney don't own the rights to the film, they are just refusing to distrubute it.

I think Harvey Weinstein has personally financed the films of some indymedia producers (if not him it was some other Hollywood mogul). Just because he's filthy rich doesn't mean he's a corrupt arsehole, just as being dirt poor doesn't make you a saint.

The Disney thing means that the film will not be distributed in the US but we will get to see it in Europe. But the imapct of the films release in the run up to the US election could be great in persuading floating voters not to vote for Bush. So i suspect that that is the reason, oh and don't Disney have some pleasure palace in Florida? Jeb's home state.
Shame on you Disney

Don't things that get banned usually sell bucket loads? When Moore finds a distributor it'll hit like nothing before. Hopefully :-o

I think i've worked out his strategy

he suspected this would happen...and leapt at the chance of miramax...
originally Gibson was going to back it...

he now has a coup on Disney, Eisner, Jeb [the executioner] Bush of Florida, and Bush [marie schroedinger killer] president

he's kept his freinds close and his enemies closer...

gauding the religious right only exposes them further

my next question is
how dumb are disney???!!!!

surely they must have known...?
i mean, Mickey moore announced the making of the film
in his after awards interveiw at the oscars...!

good for you mikey
you've played a blinder...
because while it is a publicity stunt of sorts

the truth of the American fascist junta is getting the publicity!!!

looking forward to seeing the movie...

maybe we should ask mike if he can't get distribution
whether we can all make copies and 'legitmatly' pirate it out???

am i to understand that our intrepid film-maker gave some kind of support for wesley clarks now defunct campaign ?
anyway, as much as ive admired mike moores work, ive always had my reservations and, honestly, since nobody can always get it right, nobody is above criticism. i thought moore rather ruined his case in 'bowling for columbine' in the last few seconds. we know what chartlon hestons stance is, and to sentimentalise a controversial matter like the ' second amendment ' , and embarrass a great actor, was a mistake. *

*( i read somewhere that heston, to his credit, was instrumental in getting orson welles to direct 'touch of evil', so that mitigates a lot in his favour!)

by Greg Palast, author of the New York Times bestseller, “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.” Palast is currently in LA to receive the ACLU's Freedom of Expression award.


WHEN the fattened cats at Disney put the kibosh on Michael Moore's new film, “Fahrenheit 9-11,” they did more than censor an artist. Gagging Moore is only the latest maneuver in suppressing some most uncomfortable facts: the Bush Administration's killing off investigations of Saudi Arabian funding of terror including evidence involving a few members of the bin Laden family in the USA.

I know, because, with my investigative team at BBC television and The Guardian of Britain, I wrote and filmed the original reports on which Moore's new documentary are based.

On November 11, 2001, just two months after the attack, BBC Television's Newsnight displayed documents indicating that FBI agents were held back from investigating two members of the bin Laden family who were fronting for a "suspected terrorist organization" out of Falls Church, Virginia - that is, until September 13, 2001. By that time, these birds had flown.

We further reported that upper level agents in the US government informed BBC that the Bush Administration had hobbled the investigation of Pakistan's Khan Laboratories, which ran a flea market in atomic bomb blueprints. Why were investigators stymied? Because the money trail led back to the Saudis.

The next day, our Guardian team reported that agents were constrained in following the money trail from an extraordinary meeting held in Paris in 1996. There, in the Hotel Monceau Royale, Saudi billionaires allegedly agreed to fund Al-Qaeda's "educational" endeavors.

Those stories ran at the top of the nightly news in Britain and worldwide but not in the USA. Why?

Our news teams picked up several awards including one I particularly hated getting: a Project Censored Award from California State University's school of journalism. It's the prize you get for a very important story that is simply locked out of the American press.

And that hurts. I'm an American, an L.A. kid sent into journalistic exile in England.

What's going on here?

Why the heck can't agents follow the money, even when it takes them to Arabia? Because, as we heard repeatedly from those muzzled inside the agencies, Saudi money trails lead back to George H.W. Bush and his very fortunate sons and retainers. We at BBC reported that too, at the top of the nightly news, everywhere but America.

Why are Americas media barons afraid to tell this story in the USA? The BBC and Guardian stories were the ugly little dots connected by a single theme: oil contamination in American politics and money poisoning in the blood of our most powerful political family. And that is news that dare not speak its name.

This is not the first time that Michael Moore attempted to take our BBC investigative reports past the US media border patrol. In fact, our joke in the London newsroom is that if we can't get our story on to American airwaves, we can just slip it to the fat guy in the chicken suit. Moore could sneak it past the censors as 'entertainment.'

Here's an example of Moore's underground railroad operation to bring hard news to America: In the Guardian and on BBC TV, I reported that Florida's then Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, removed tens of thousands of Black citizens from voter rolls just prior to the 2000 election. Her office used a list of supposed 'felons' - a roster her office knew was baloney, filled almost exclusively with innocents.

I printed the first installment of that story in the Guardian papers while Al Gore was still in the race. The Washington Post ran my story seven months later. By then, it could be read with a chuckle from the Bush White House.

The Black voter purge story would have never seen the light of day in the USA, despite its front-page play over the globe, were it not for Moore opening his book, “Stupid White Men,” with it.

So go ahead, Mr. Mickey Mouse mogul, censor the guy in the baseball cap, let the movie screens go dark, spread the blindness that is killing us. Instead, show us fake fly-boys giving the "Mission Accomplished" thumbs up. It's so much easier, with the lights off, for the sheiks, who lend their credit cards to killers, to jack up the price of oil while our politicians prepare the heist of the next election, this time by computer.

Let's not kid ourselves. Tube news in the USA is now thoroughly Fox-ified and print, with few exceptions, still kow-tows to the prevaricating pronouncements of our commander in chief.

Maybe I'm getting too worked up. After all, it's just a movie.

But choking off distribution of Moore's film looks suspiciously like a hunt and destroy mission on unwanted news, even when that news is hidden in a comic documentary. Why should the media moguls stop there? How about an extra large orange suit for Michael for the new Hollywood wing in Guantanamo?

---------------------------------------
so now you know...
love captain wardrobe

Analysis: Michael Moore's salesmanship
By Pat Nason
UPI Hollywood Reporter
Published 5/6/2004 6:57 PM


LOS ANGELES, May 6 (UPI) -- The Walt Disney Co. may be washing its hands of the upcoming Michael Moore documentary, "Fahrenheit 911," but Moore is not likely to feel much, if any, of the mortification filmmakers customarily experience when a studio throws the product of their labor over the side.

More likely, if Moore does shed any tears, they will not outlast the trip to the bank.

"Fahrenheit 911" is Moore's follow-up to the Oscar-winning documentary "Bowling for Columbine." It questions President George W. Bush's actions prior to and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and examines business dealings between the Bush family and prominent citizens of Saudi Arabia, including the family of Osama bin Laden.

Disney issued a statement saying it informed its Miramax subsidiary in May 2003 that it would invoke its contractual prerogative to prevent Miramax from distributing "Fahrenheit 911" in the United States. Moore's critics suggest he is only now making a public issue of Disney's decision so he can promote the movie ahead of the Cannes Film Festival, where it will be screened in competition later this month, but Moore said he only received final word from Disney last Monday that the company will not distribute the movie.

Moore's agent, Ari Emanuel, told the New York Times that Disney CEO Michael Eisner had asked him to pull out of the distribution deal with Miramax. Emanuel said Eisner expressed concern that the movie might jeopardize Disney tax breaks in Florida, where the company operates entertainment resorts including theme parks, hotels and a cruise line -- and where President Bush's brother Jeb is the governor.

Disney issued a statement saying that Moore "has had and continues to have every opportunity to either find another distributor or distribute the film himself." Eisner told CNBC Moore shouldn't have any trouble finding a distributor for the movie.

"I think it's a totally appropriate film, and I can think of about 11 people who would love to have it," he said.

In a message on his Web site, Moore characterized Disney's decision not to distribute the movie as an attempt "to kill" it.

"For nearly a year, this struggle has been a lesson in just how difficult it is in this country to create a piece of art that might upset those in charge," he said.

On the other hand, as liberal commentator Marc Cooper pointed out in L.A. Weekly, Disney has some political cover against that sort of claim.

"Publicity-hound Moore's allegations about Disney ring false," wrote Cooper. "The very same Disney Company, through its Hyperion division, just published Pacifica Radio host Amy Goodman's new book, 'The Exception to the Rulers,' a volume brimming with just as much lefty fringe politics and anti-Bush theorizing as contained in Moore's films."

Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris told United Press International he was concerned about what he called increasing talk of censorship in the media.

"What is unnerving is this feeling about the general erosion of civil liberties in this country," he said, "and that's why something like this creates so much news."

Morris won the Oscar for "The Fog of War," based on interviews with Robert McNamara in which the Vietnam-era secretary of defense conceded that that war had been a mistake and apologized for his part in it. Morris said he's sure that Moore will find a distributor for his movie, but political calculations always enter into distributors' decisions.

Morris said he was glad that Sony Pictures Classics took on "The Fog of War," but he said it is routine for movie distributors to try to avoid political controversy.

That, essentially, is Eisner's point. He told CNBC that his company "did not want a film in the middle of the political process where we're such a non-partisan company and our guests, that participate in all of our attractions, do not look for us to take sides."

But then, that's central to Moore's argument, too.

"Our media companies are invested with the public trust," Moore told CNN. "That trust states that they're there to allow all voices to be heard. We live in a free and open society where dissent is not to be stifled or silenced. They have violated that trust."

In some important ways, the "Fahrenheit 911" controversy resembles the current imbroglio over indecency on the nation's airwaves.

Broadcasters have generally pulled back from the wild and woolly content that -- with a significant push from political pressure applied by the public -- led to a crackdown by federal regulators. Whether the broadcasters' retrenchment resulted from a new sense of responsibility or a fear of losing their licenses remains an open question.

Eisner's observation about the bottom-line risk of distributing a politically polarizing documentary stands out as a comparatively candid acknowledgement in the contemporary corporate media culture.

Moore may be an Oscar-winning filmmaker and a best-selling author, but he is also a world-class provocateur. If he had not capitalized on the Disney distribution deal to promote his movie, that would have been news.

 http://www.investigate911.com/pre911.ram

more resourses

 http://www.twin-towers.net/tt_video.htm

love cw

FAIR-L
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and activism

 http://www.fair.org/activism/disney-moore-update.html

ACTIVISM UPDATE:
Eisner's Fantasyland Excuse for Censorship

May 7, 2004

On the television network that his company owns, Disney CEO Michael Eisner
dismissed the idea that forbidding Disney subsidiary Miramax to distribute
a controversial new documentary by Michael Moore was a form of censorship.
"We informed both the agency that represented the film and all of our
companies that we just didn't want to be in the middle of a
politically-oriented film during an election year," he told ABC World News
Tonight (5/5/04), referring to Moore's Fahrenheit 911, which examines the
connections between the Bush family and the House of Saud that rules Saudi
Arabia.

On its face, Eisner's statement will have a chilling effect. A major
movie studio with an announced policy of only releasing apolitical films,
in an election year or any other year, will discourage filmmakers from
tackling important themes and impoverish the American political debate.
(That Moore and Miramax were given advance warning of this policy hardly
mitigates its censorious impact.)

But Eisner's statement cannot be taken at face value, because Disney,
through its various subsidiaries, is one of the largest distributors of
political, often highly partisan media content in the country-- virtually
all of it right-wing. Consider:

* Almost all of Disney's major talk radio stations-- WABC in New York,
WMAL in D.C., WLS in Chicago, WBAP in Dallas/Ft. Worth and KSFO in San
Francisco-- broadcast Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Indeed, WABC is
considered the home station for both of these shows, which promote an
unremitting Republican political agenda. (Disney's KABC in L.A. carries
Hannity, but has Bill O'Reilly instead of Limbaugh.) Disney's news/talk
stations are dominated by a variety of other partisan Republican hosts,
both local and national, including Laura Ingraham, Larry Elder and Matt
Drudge.

* Disney's Family Channel carries Pat Robertson's 700 Club, which
routinely equates Christianity with Republican causes. After the September
11 attacks, Robertson's guest Jerry Falwell (9/13/01) blamed the attacks
on those who "make God mad": "the pagans and the abortionists and the
feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make
that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all
of them who try to secularize America." Robertson's response was, "I
totally concur." It's hard to imagine that anything in Moore's film will
be more controversial than that.

* Disney's ABC News prominently features John Stossel, who, though not
explicitly partisan, advocates for a conservative philosophy in almost all
his work: "It is my job to explain the beauties of the free market," he
has explained (Oregonian, 10/26/94). No journalist is allowed to advocate
for a balancing point of view on ABC's news programs.

Given the considerable amount of right-wing material distributed by
Disney, much of it openly promoting Republican candidates and issues, it's
impossible to believe that Disney is preventing Miramax from distributing
Fahrenheit 911 because, as a Disney executive told the New York Times
(5/5/04), "It's not in the interest of any major corporation to be dragged
into a highly charged partisan political battle." Disney, in fact, makes
a great deal of money off of highly charged partisan political battles,
although it generally provides access to only one side of the war.

So what is the real reason it won't distribute Moore's movie? The
explanation that Moore's agent said he was offered by Eisner-- that Disney
was afraid of losing tax breaks from Florida Gov. Jeb Bush-- is more
persuasive than Eisner's obviously false public rationale. But more
relevant may be Disney's financial involvement with a member of the same
Saudi family whose connections to the Bush dynasty are investigated by
Moore. Prince Al-Walid bin Talal, a billionaire investor who is a
grandson of Saudi Arabia's King Fahd, became a major investor in Disney's
Eurodisney theme park when it was in financial trouble, and may be asked
to bail out the troubled project again.

It's not unprecedented for Disney to respond favorably to a political
request from its Saudi business partner; when Disney's EPCOT Center
planned to describe Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in an exhibit on
Israeli culture, Al-Walid says that he had personally asked Eisner to
intervene in the decision. That same week, Disney announced that the
pavilion would not refer to Jerusalem as Israel's capital (BBC, 9/14/99).

Whatever the true motive of Disney's decision to reject Moore's film, it's
not the one that Eisner and other company spokespersons are advancing in
public. Journalists covering the issue should go beyond Disney's
transparent PR stance and explore the real motivations involved.

**

See "Michael Moore Film Faces Disney Censorship" (FAIR Action Alert,
5/5/04)
 http://www.fair.org/activism/disney-moore.html

the big article below is from 2001

now why would that year be important?

A Saudi Flying Instructor Who Died Mysteriously On May 8 Had The Same Name as Two 9/11 Hijackers Who Lived At The Same U.S. Naval Air Base
 http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0208/S00085.htm

White House Won't Declassify Saudi Material in 9/11 Report
WASHINGTON, July 29 - Hours before President Bush was scheduled to meet with the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia today, the White House rejected a request by the Saudi government and some members of Congress to declassify sections of a document that deal with the link between some Saudi officials and the terrorists involved in the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
In his meeting with Mr. Bush, the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, who arrived in Washington on Monday, was expected to raise his country's concerns about the report, a Congressional study about the terrorist Sept. 11 attacks that was released last week. The study reportedly found that senior Saudi officials had funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to organizations that might have helped pay for the attacks.
 http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/073003A.shtml

Salem bin Laden, Osama's oldest brother, is later described by a French secret intelligence report as one of the two closest friends of Saudi Arabia's King Fahd. As such, he often performs important missions for Saudi Arabia. The French report speculates that he is involved in secret Paris meetings between US and Iranian emissaries this month. Frontline, which published the French report, notes that such meetings have never been confirmed. Rumors of these meetings have been called the “October Surprise” and some have speculated Bush Sr. negotiated in these meetings a delay to the release of the US hostages in Iran, thus helping Ronald Reagan and Bush win the 1980 Presidential election. All of this is highly speculative, but if the French report is correct, it points to a long-standing connection of highly illegal behavior between the Bush and bin Laden families (see also Mid-1980s and 1988). [PBS Frontline 2001]

Mid-1980s
Salem bin Laden, Osama's oldest brother, is allegedly involved in the Iran-Contra affair. Quoting a French intelligence report posted by Frontline (see October 1980), The New Yorker reports, “During the nineteen-eighties, when the Reagan Administration secretly arranged for an estimated thirty-four million dollars to be funneled through Saudi Arabia to the Contras, in Nicaragua, Salem bin Laden aided in this cause, according to French intelligence.” [New Yorker 11/5/01; Frontline 2001]
 http://www.cooperativeresearch.net/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&theme=saudi



Human Rights Developments
 http://www.hrw.org/wr2k1/mideast/saudi.html

"It is absurd to impose on an individual or a society rights that are alien to its beliefs or principles," Saudi Arabia's deputy premier and effective head of state Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz told the U.N. Third Millenium summit in New York on September 6. He warned of "the ramifications of unbridled globalization and its use as an umbrella to violate the sovereignty of states and interfere with their internal affairs under a variety of pretexts, especially from the angle of human rights." The kingdom's fourteen million citizens and six to seven million foreign residents thus continued to be denied a range of basic rights guranteed under international law.

Freedom of expression and association were nonexistent rights, political parties and independent local media were not permitted, and even peaceful anti-government activities remained virtually unthinkable. Infringements on privacy, institutionalized gender discrimination, harsh restrictions on the exercise of religious freedom, and the use of capital and corporal punishment were also major features of the kingdom's human rights record.

There were some encouraging developments, however, such as greater official sensitivity to international criticism of the country's human rights practices, recognition of international standards with respect to women's rights, and public pledges to establish human rights monitoring bodies. On September 7, Saudi Arabia became a party to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), although on August 21 the Council of Ministers, in announcing the government's intention to sign the treaty, said that it would not comply with "any clause in the agreement that contradicts Islamic sharia [law]."

Freedom of expression remained strictly circumscribed and there was no independent press. The eighth Arabic-language daily newspaper in the kingdom, al-Watan, was launched in September, joining other Saudi newspapers and media bankrolled by the royal family, including the influential pan-Arab daily al-Hayat. The Royal Decree for Printed Material and Publications, promulgated in 1982, contained a list of prohibited topics covering any material that was printed, published, or circulated in the kingdom. Violations of the law were criminal offenses, punishable with up to one year of imprisonment and/or fines.

The number of independent licensed Internet service providers (ISPs) in the kingdom increased to about thirty, with some 100,000 subscribers. Capacity reportedly could not meet demand, and there was evidence that the kingdom continued its efforts to monitor and restrict Web access in the country. "The Saudi government has a right to protect its society," Saudi Telecommunications Company (STC) president Abdel Rahman al-Yami said. "We would like to be not open, but selective in what content comes in....[T]he fast growth in the customer base has created challenges for the network." The STC was responsible for the backbone network inside the country while the King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) controlled content as the sole gateway to the Internet. In August, KACST blocked the Yahoo "Clubs" site, which contained some 250 Saudi clubs with over 60,000 members. "The Clubs site was blocked because most of the material was against the kingdom's religious, social and political values," said KACST official Khalil al-Jadaan. In April, the government closed an Internet cafe in Mecca that was popular with university students. The action came as a result of a court complaint that the women-only cafe was being used for "immoral purposes," the BBC reported, citing Arab News. "What was uncovered was against both our religion and our traditions," charged Brigadier Yousef Matter of the civil police, adding that the court had empowered him to shut down other cybercafes in Mecca.

Capital punishment was applied for crimes including murder, rape, armed robbery, drug smuggling, sodomy, and sorcery. In most cases, the condemned were decapitated in public squares after being blindfolded, handcuffed, shackled at the ankles, and tranquilized. By late September 2000, at least 104 Saudis and foreigners had been beheaded, exceeding in nine months the total of 103 that Amnesty International recorded in 1999. Two of the foreigners beheaded in 2000 were women: a Pakistani in July for heroin smuggling, and an Indonesian in June for murder.

Saudi courts continued to impose corporal punishment, including amputations of hands and feet for robbery, and floggings for lesser crimes such as "sexual deviance" and drunkenness. The number of lashes was not clearly prescribed by law and varied according to the discretion of judges, and ranged from dozens of lashes to several thousand, usually applied over a period of weeks or months. A court in Qunfuda sentenced nine Saudi alleged transvestites in April. Five drew prison terms of six years and 2,600 lashes, and the other four were sentenced to five years and 2,400 lashes. The floggings reportedly were to be carried out in fifty equal sessions, with a fifteen-day hiatus between each punishment. In August, the daily Okaz reported that a court had ordered the surgical removal of the left eye of an Egyptian, Abd al-Muti Abdel Rahman Muhamed, after he was convicted of throwing acid in the face of another Egyptian, injuring and disfiguring his left eye. The operation was performed in a hospital in Medina. In addition to this punishment, Abdel Rahman was reportedly fined U.S. $68,800 and sentenced to an undisclosed prison term.

The inherent cruelty of such sentences was heightened by due process concerns about the fairness of legal and administrative procedures. Under the 1983 Principles of Arrest, Temporary Confinement, and Preventative Regulations, detainees had no right to judicial review, no right to legal counsel, and could be held in prolonged detention pending a decision by the regional governor or the minister of interior. Suspects had no right to examine witnesses, or to call witnesses of their own, and uncorroborated confessions could constitute the basis for conviction and sentencing.

Hani `Abd al-Rahim Hussain al-Sayegh, a Saudi citizen deported from the United States on October 11, 1999, after the U.S. Attorney General's Office stated that it lacked sufficient evidence to charge him in connection with the 1996 Khobar Tower bombing in Dhahran that killed nineteen American troops, was held in virtual incommunicado detention without charges and without access to legal counsel for at least three months after his arrival in the kingdom. The U.S. did not make public guarantees it claimed to have sought and received from Saudi Arabia prior to his deportation that he would not be maltreated and would receive a fair trial.

The government heavily restricted religious freedom and actively discouraged religious practices other than the Wahhabi interpretation of the Hanbali school of Sunni Islam. Officially, non-Muslims were free to worship privately but in October 1999 and January 2000, according to the U.S. State Department, two Filipino Christian services were raided by the mutawwa'in, the state-financed religious police known as the Committee to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice. Thirteen people were arrested the first time and another sixteen persons in January; all were deported. Saudi officials reportedly said that the services had too many participants to be considered private.

The mutawwa'in also policed public display of religious icons and public worship or practice of religions other than Wahhabi Islam, and had the authority to detain Muslims and non-Muslims for up to twenty-four hours for offenses such as indecent dress and comportment. Official intolerance extended to alternative interpretations of Islam, and members of Saudi religious minorities continued to be harassed or detained for the peaceful practice of their faith. Shia Muslims, who constitute about eight percent of the Saudi population, faced discrimination in employment as well as limitations on religious practices. Shia jurisprudence books were banned, the traditional annual Shia mourning procession of Ashura was discouraged, and operating independent Islamic religious establishments remained illegal. At least seven Shi'a religious leaders-Abd al-Latif Muhammad Ali, Habib al-Hamid, Abd al-Latif al-Samin, Abdallah Ramadan, Sa'id al-Bahaar, Muhammad Abd al-Khidair, and Habib Hamdah Sayid Hashim al-Sadah-reportedly remained in prison for violating these restrictions.

Several incidents during the year punctured the kingdom's stability. These included violent clashes between Ismaili Shiites and security forces in the southwest province of Najran in April; the August 9 shooting by a Saudi university student at a housing complex for foreign defense workers in Khamis Mushayt near the King Khalid air base in southwest Asir province in which authorities said one Saudi Royal Air Force police officer was killed and another two seriously injured; a two-day uprising at al-Jawf prison in the north, also in August; and the hijacking of a Saudi Arabian Airlines plane flying from Jeddah to London on October 14 by two armed Saudis whom the government identified as first lieutenants in the security forces.

There were conflicting accounts about the unrest in the southwest city of Najran where Ismaili Shiites confronted security forces and the provincial governor in April. The unrest was variously attributed to public Shi'a observance of Ashura for the first time in many years, the closure of an Ismaili mosque, the arrest of an Ismaili cleric, and tensions along Saudi's border with Yemen, where Ismailis have strong links. Between April 14 and 16, according to the London-based Committee to Protect Legitimate Rights in the Arabian Peninsula, three Isma'ili religious scholars, Haythim al-Sayyid Muhammad al-Shakhs of al-Ahsa, Abdullah al-Sayyid Hussain al-Nahwi of al-Mabraz, and Jud Juwwad al-Nahwi of al-Mabraz, were arrested for their involvement with the outlawed Islamic Action Movement. The same source named eleven religious scholars forbidden from preaching and religious activities, and another twelve scholars who remained imprisoned for such activities, some for as long as five years. Ahmad bin Muhammad al-Khayat, a Shi'a Isma'ili cleric and according to Saudi authorities an illegal Yemeni immigrant, was arrested on April 23 for "practicing sorcery" while teaching in al-Mansura mosque in Najran. No details were available on theprecise nature of his alleged offense, or whether his activities were connected with Isma'ili religious practices deemed idolatrous by Wahhabi doctrine. An associate of al-Khayat reportedly shot and injured a policeman who was searching the cleric's home.

By some accounts, Saudi religious police raided an Isma'ili mosque, closed it down, and confiscated its books. Protesters then assembled in front of the home of Najran's provincial governor, Prince Masha'al bin Saud bin Abd al-Aziz. According to Agence France-Presse, the Interior Ministry deployed forces overnight amidst warnings that the protesters were liable to be "arrested, questioned, and tried in keeping with Islamic law." According to the Saudi Press Agency, citing the Interior Ministry, security forces raided not a mosque but the home of an "illegal resident" who was practicing "sorcery." During the search and after the sorcerer was arrested, the SPA said, one member of the security forces was shot and injured. At a demonstration at the governor's headquarters calling for the release of the alleged sorcerer, protesters fired guns and burned vehicles, killing one member of the security forces and injuring others. There was no independent confirmation of the numbers killed, injured and arrested in the days that followed, and official government statements clearly sought to downplay the incident.

On August 11, some 400 inmates at the central prison in al-Jawf went on a two-day rampage. According to an unnamed Saudi security official cited in press reports, the prisoners attacked a guard, burned bedding in their cells, and then rioted, causing extensive damage. Calm was reportedly restored the next day, after police and special security forces were airlifted to the area to assist the guards. The inmates reportedly were frustrated at the lack of response to repeated complaints about prison conditions and sought a meeting with the provincial governor. According to the Saudi official, demands included the provision of newspapers, doors on bathrooms, and improved food, sanitation and recreation.

Saudi women continued to face severe discrimination in all aspects of their lives, including the family, education, employment, and the justice system. Religious police enforced a modesty code of dress and institutions from schools to ministries were gender-segregated. This year a princess and distant cousin of the king was appointed assistant under secretary at the Ministry of Education-the highest position ever held by a Saudi woman-in charge of girls' education. Saudi businesswomen continued to be active through their own associations, including the Businesswomen's Forum in the Eastern Province. According to one report, of the 76,000 members of the Jeddah, Riyadh and Eastern Province chambers of commerce, some 5,500 were women.

Interior Minister Prince Nayif bin Abdelaziz said in August that the kingdom's high population growth rate and the large number of job-seeking graduates presented "an economic, social, security and cultural problem." Unemployment among Saudi citizens was an estimated 14 percent, and 20 percent among workers aged twenty to twenty-nine years old, according to the chief economist at the Saudi American Bank in Riyadh. The government therefore continued to take steps to reduce its reliance on foreign workers, a process described as "Saudiization," which Prince Nayif declared a "top priority."

The large population of foreign workers included some 1.2 million Egyptians and 1.2 million Indians, according to the U.S. State Department. Undocumented workers included those who remained after entering the country to perform the haj or umra, and those who stayed after the expiry of their work visas. Migrants have long been subjected to restrictions such as the surrender of passports to Saudi sponsors, limitations on freedom of movement, prohibitions on trade union organizing, and lack of access to legal representation in cases of arrest. Overstayers and violators of the iqama (residency permit system) were given a July 2 deadline to obtain the proper authorizations or leave the country, which authorities later extended to August 29, after which date all penalties were to be "firmly implemented," the Interior Ministry said. Prince Nayif said that iqama violators included those who left or fled their Saudi sponsors or who were carrying out business activities on their own. Anyone without a residence permit after the deadline faced fines of over U.S. $25,000, prison sentences of six months, and deportation. Special police squads searched work places and homes for violators, including both foreign workers and their Saudi employers. Thousands of foreigners left or were expelled. For example, the Nigerian press reported on July 20 that 1,000 Nigerians had already been rounded up and deported, and Pakistani media said on September 27 that 2,441 Pakistani workers had been deported, in addition to thousands of undocumented workers who left the country voluntarily. In September, the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs reportedly wrote to private firms with over twenty employees, instructing them to increase by 25 percent the number of Saudis on their payrolls.

Saudi Arabia continued to provide refuge and financial support to Idi Amin, the exiled Ugandan leader whose regime was responsible for a reign of terror that left an estimated 300,00 dead in the 1970s. After fleeing Uganda in 1979, Amin arrived in the kingdom at the invitation of the late King Faisal and reportedly has since been protected by government-paid Saudi guards. A journalist with Uganda's New Vision newspaper interviewed Amin in Jeddah in 1999 and reported that he had moved from his home in the city center "to a more exclusive area...mainly occupied by powerful oil sheikhs."



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