But Moore, who now lives in New York, was not invited and his latest film, the anti-Bush documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, will not be shown, Fiedler said.
Organizers "wanted this to be about local filmmakers and not about one famous one who has a way of bringing all the attention on himself," Fiedler said. Moore could have offered to submit something, but he didn't, he added.
Via WindsOfChange's terrorism coverage, Alphabet city has a long, interesting article trying to sort through the mess that was the al-Khobar terrorist attack, not to mention all the contradictory reports. Big question: How the hell could three out of four terrorists get away from a heavily cordoned building?
The more details come out, the more obvious that Saudi security forces and the government is incompetent almost beyond comprehension, and that al-Qaeda is winning on every front. Their regional commander Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin is either an extremely cunning man, or he is made to look good by inept opposition.
If the Saudi front in the war on terror continues like this, al-Qaeda will rule Saudi Arabia in a few years. Better get finished in Iraq before then, because those troops will be badly needed.
Update: On the other hand, a bit of good news, as the Saudi government tries to crack down on the money flow to terrorism:
The Saudi government yesterday outlined plans to dismantle all international charity organizations operating in the kingdom and place their holdings under a new commission in what officials said is an effort to stop the flow of funds to terrorist groups.
The charities to be dissolved include the al Haramain Islamic Foundation, one of the largest and most influential Saudi charities, whose chairman is the Saudi minister of Islamic affairs.
Never give up hope.
Update 2: Oh, Alhamedi is really on a roll! You can either laugh or cry at these stories, but since crying doesn't help, we can just as well laugh.
Ralph Peters writes In Praise of Attrition. This is compulsory warblogger reading assignment. You could cheat and read Stephen's summary instead if you were lazy.
Would not, in case, asking Google to answer this question give us a distorted answer?
Is it even conceivable that there exists a view of the web that is not somehow distorted? Or, put another way, is there a pure, "real" view of the web?
American officials said that about six weeks ago, Mr. Chalabi told the Baghdad station chief of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security that the United States was reading the communications traffic of the Iranian spy service, one of the most sophisticated in the Middle East.
According to American officials, the Iranian official in Baghdad, possibly not believing Mr. Chalabi's account, sent a cable to Tehran detailing his conversation with Mr. Chalabi, using the broken code. That encrypted cable, intercepted and read by the United States, tipped off American officials to the fact that Mr. Chalabi had betrayed the code-breaking operation, the American officials said.
American officials reported that in the cable to Tehran, the Iranian official recounted how Mr. Chalabi had said that one of "them" — a reference to an American — had revealed the code-breaking operation, the officials said. The Iranian reported that Mr. Chalabi said the American was drunk.
Contrary to a few jokes passed around about the identity of the drunk American, it is not as if everyone or anyone is in on what codes US intelligence has broken. Code-breaking is clearly among a nation's most tightly guarded secrets, so if this is true, somebody with very exclusive information was talking too much to Chalabi over a drink or ten (who else has this guy been talking to???). Well, Bush is a teetotaller, so look elsewhere...
"Government officials" have had a busy weekend leaking to journalists, because Newsweek has more details about what Chalabi is supposed to have told journalists. He is also suspected of having leaked information on US war plans for the Iraq invasion to Iran. And the headline "tip of the iceberg - questionmark" opens up for more revelations about what Chalabi did. And what's his connection with Jimmy Hoffa anyway?
Joking aside, Chalabi may or may not be a shady character, and of course if he really betrayed the US as alleged he is a treacherous asshole, but I have a strong suspicion there is far more to this story than we see now. And the rest of the iceberg may not look like what we've seen so far.
PS: Chalabi's fall from favour is a great relief for the UN and Benon Sevan in particular, who now uses the connection with Chalabi to pretend UNSCAM is just Chalabi's ploy to smear the UN.
Federal investigators have begun administering polygraph examinations to civilian employees at the Pentagon to determine who may have disclosed highly classified intelligence to Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi who authorities suspect turned the information over to Iran, government officials said Wednesday.
The polygraph examinations, which are being conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, are focused initially on a small number of Pentagon employees who had access to the information that was compromised. American intelligence officials have said that Mr. Chalabi informed Iran that the United States had broken the secret codes used by Iranian intelligence to transmit confidential messages to posts around the world.
"A small number." As I said. But then there is this:
But a wider circle of officials could have inferred from intelligence reports about Iran that the United States had access to the internal communications of Iran's spy service, intelligence officials said. That may make it difficult to identify the source of any leak.
Hmm. Well, I still suspect there is some big name being passed around in whispers, and we're all waiting for the first press outlet to drop it, if it isn't discredited first.
