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''Fahrenheit 9/11'' finds domestic distributor GARY GENTILE, AP Business Writer Tuesday, June 1, 2004 (06-01) 17:30 PDT LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Michael Moore's award-winning documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" has picked up a U.S. distributor and will hit theaters June 25. The film will be released by a partnership of Lions Gate Films, IFC Films and the Fellowship Adventure Group, which was formed by Harvey and Bob Weinstein specifically to market Moore's film. The Weinsteins, who run Miramax Films, bought the rights to the movie from The Walt Disney Co., which owns Miramax and refused to distribute Moore's film. The Weinstein brothers...

On March 1, 2004, the Iraqi daily Al-Taakhi, the official newspaper of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), published a document of the Iraqi intelligence apparatus during Saddam Hussein's rule that was sent March 20, 2002 to an intelligence station. The document ordered the funding of the March 2002 visit of Egyptian journalist Sayyed Nassar to Iraq, including his stay at the Meridian Hotel in Baghdad. According to the paper, "the document attests to good relations between Sayyed Nassar and the Iraqi intelligence apparatuses during this time, and [attests that] his stay in Baghdad and his hosting by Saddam's intelligence [apparatus]...

A study of television news coverage of the war in Iraq says ABC’s World News Tonight was the most antiwar — far more than CBS, NBC or Fox. — USA Today, September 9 Antiwar? What are we to make of that word, exactly? For starters, it brings to mind a twelve-year-old study on press coverage of the Catholic Church by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, the same outfit that did the study mentioned above. The findings then: press coverage is anti-Catholic. The center, which works to maintain a neutral image, did not use exactly those words but did...

Letters the Troops Have Sent Me... by Michael Moore Dear Friends, As we approach the holidays, I've been thinking a lot about our kids who are in the armed forces serving in Iraq. I've received hundreds of letters from our troops in Iraq -- and they are telling me something very different from what we are seeing on the evening news. What they are saying to me, often eloquently and in heart-wrenching words, is that they were lied to -- and this war has nothing to do with the security of the United States of America. I've written back and...

Spy recently reported confusion at the BBC over what to call Harrods boss Mohamed (al) Fayed. Now, I hear that descriptions of Saddam Hussein are the latest target of a corporation diktat. "An e-mail has been circulated telling us not to refer to Saddam as a dictator," I'm told. "Instead, we are supposed to describe him as the former leader of Iraq. "Apparently, because his presidency was endorsed in a referendum, he was technically elected. Hence the word dictator is banned. It's all rather ridiculous." The Beeb insists that the e-mail merely restates existing guidelines. "We wanted to remind journalists...

Derrick Z. Jackson, one of the most left-wing columnists for the left-wing Boston Globe, wrote today: "The invasion was still a lie. The capture of Saddam Hussein changes nothing about that. There were too many forked tongues in the road to his lair. The way we removed the dictator, we became a global dictatorship." According to dizzy D.Z.: "With no weapons, no ties, and no truth, the capture of Saddam was merely the most massive and irresponsible police raid in modern times. We broke in without a search warrant. Civilian deaths constituted justifiable homicide. America was again above the law....

CAIRO, December 15 (IslamOnline.net) – Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsy Clarke expressed readiness Sunday, December 14, to act as defense lawyer for ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, with western analysts suspecting the captured leader would be given fair trial. "Certainly, why not. I am ready to act in his defense," Clarke told IslamOnline.net shortly after the U.S. confirmed the detention of Saddam near Tikrit. Clarke, currently in Cairo to attend a two-day international anti-occupation conference, stressed that Saddam – however brutal – should be give a "fair, objective and impartial trial". "Saddam must be domestically prosecuted first and - if...

TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. soldiers Monday used batons to break up a demonstration in Tikrit to protest against the capture of Saddam Hussein near his hometown, witnesses said. Chanting "We sacrifice our blood and souls for you Saddam," scores of people gathered outside Tikrit university to denounce Saturday's arrest of Saddam, who was born and captured near the town. "God is Greatest, America is the enemy of all peoples," they shouted with their fists raised. Shortly afterwards U.S. soldiers charged the protest, beating and arresting some protesters, the witnesses said. There was no immediate comment from the U.S. military.

I stood on the sidewalk in London the other day and watched thousands of antiwar, anti-George Bush, anti-Tony Blair protesters pass by. They chanted every antiwar slogan you could imagine and many you couldn't print. It was entertaining — but also depressing, because it was so disconnected from the day's other news. Just a few hours earlier, terrorists in Istanbul had blown up a British-owned bank and the British consulate, killing or wounding scores of British and Turkish civilians. Yet nowhere could I find a single sign in London reading, "Osama, How Many Innocents Did You Kill Today?" or "Baathists...

<p>"Massachusetts' highest court ruled Tuesday that same-sex couples are legally entitled to wed under the state constitution," the Associated Press reports. But the court "stopped short of allowing marriage licenses to be issued to the couples who challenged the law." Instead it "ordered the Legislature to come up with a solution within 180 days."</p>

You might not think so from listening to me, but I like to be liked. Not only that, I like my country to be liked around the world and it isn't. I wish President Bush would try to make this country less hated. He could do it if he set his mind to it. To begin with, we should change our attitude toward the United Nations. There has to be some power in the world superior to our own - for our own sake. Iraq isn't our problem. It's the world's problem. When the president spoke at the United Nations,...

Labor leader Simon Crean has intervened to ensure his MPs do not insult US President George Bush, quelling a backbench plan for Labor politicians to turn their backs to the world leader when he addresses Parliament later this month. Labor backbencher Harry Quick was yesterday called in and reprimanded by Mr Crean for his attempts to organise a silent protest. Mr Quick is also planning to wear a white armband to the October 23 joint sitting of Parliament, and to carry the helmet of an Iraqi soldier killed in the first Gulf War. "What I'm showing is disrespect for the...

Iraq's governing council is to take action against the Arabic television networks al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya for what it calls "incitement to violence" in their reporting about Iraq. Some sources in Baghdad said the council intended to expel the two leading Arabic channels from the country for a month. Leading Iraqi officials have complained for several weeks about the tone of the coverage on the Arabic networks, particularly their decisions to air recorded messages from Saddam Hussein and threats against the 25 Iraqis who were appointed to the governing council. Samir Shakir Mahmoud al-Sumaidy, head of the council's media committee, told...

In a little noticed interview with Fortune Magazine last week, presidential frontrunner Gen. Wesley Clark defended Saddam Hussein against charges that he was engaged in crimes against his own people at the time the Iraq war started, contending instead that the Iraqi dictator should have gotten a pass because his atrocities took place ten years ago. Asked why it was right for President Clinton to use military force to halt Slobodan Milosevic's crimes against humanity in Kosovo, but not for President Bush to do the same thing against Saddam, Clark said that in Iraq, "The imminence of stopping a...

John Burns, the great New York Times reporter, offers us a brutally blunt assessment of how badly Western correspondents covered Saddam Hussein's regime. His report, excerpted by The Wall Street Journal and Editor & Publisher, is spreading rapidly on the Internet and is bound to have an impact on the public's already low respect for most journalists. The compulsively candid Burns, until recently the New York Times bureau chief in Iraq, wrote his comments for the new book "Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq" (The Lyons Press), a collection of first-person accounts by journalists in Iraq. Burns, who has...

Johnny Depp is feeling patriotic - about France. The "Pirates of the Caribbean" star slammed the United States over Iraq in an interview in the German magazine Stern this week. "America is dumb, is something like a dumb puppy that has big teeth - that can bite and hurt you, aggressive," he was quoted as saying. Depp lives in France with the French singer and actress Vanessa Paradis, with whom he has two children. He said he was delighted when he saw that French fries had been rechristened "freedom fries" in the U.S. Capitol canteen. "Nothing made me happier than...

<p>September 3, 2003 -- THE Arab satellite station Al- Jazeera re-launched an English-language Web site Tuesday, five months after hackers brought down its site at the height of the Iraq war. Susi Sirri, news coordinator and spokeswoman, said the site aims "to fill a niche for English speakers who want to get the other side of the story, the Arab perspective."</p>

french news BERLIN, Sept 3 (AFP) - Hollywood hearthrob Johnny Depp has slammed US President George W. Bush's policy on Iraq, calling him "one of the worst liars I have ever seen," in an interview with German magazine Stern to appear Thursday. Depp, who lives in France with his wife, pop singer Vanessa Paradis, and two children, told the magazine that "grown-up men and women in positions of power" in the US government had shown themselves to be "idiots" in choosing to go to war against Iraq and attacking Paris for its opposition to the war. The 40-year-old, who plays...

BERLIN - American actor Johnny Depp (news) likened his native country to a "dumb puppy that has big teeth" in an interview published Wednesday, ridiculing Washington's confrontation with France, where he lives, over the war in Iraq (news - web sites). The "Edward Scissorhands" and "Sleepy Hollow" star, who spends much of his time in the south of France with his companion, Vanessa Paradis (news), and their two small children, told the German magazine he couldn't see himself paying more than short visits to his Los Angeles residence in the present political climate. "America is dumb, is something like a...

Johnny Depp Says U.S. Is Like a 'Dumb Puppy' By REUTERS Filed at 7:48 a.m. ET BERLIN (Reuters) - Hollywood star Johnny Depp said on Wednesday the United States was a stupid, aggressive puppy and he would not live there until the political climate changed. The 40-year-old actor, who stars in the ``Pirates of the Caribbean,'' told the German news magazine Stern he was happier staying in the south of France with his wife, the French actress and singer Vanessa Paradis, and their two children. ``America is dumb, it's like a dumb puppy that has big teeth that can bite...