Actors in the US who express their anti-war opinions are being antagonized, and may lose their jobs. An article about Martin Sheen.

An article by Martin Amis on the threat of war, and the new world order.

In the US the pledge of allegiance, said by all students every morning, contains the phrase 'under God'. A civil action questioned that, on the basis that it violates the separation between State and Church. Check out an article in the Guardian about it.

Hans Blix: I was smeared by the Pentagon.

The UK government launches a study into the benefits and risks of nanotechnology.

The previous posting has been withdrawn by the Guardian. I'm curious about what Wolfowitz actually said. Unfortunately the only available text now is the correction that appeared today in the Guardian:

Paul Wolfowitz
A report which was posted on our website on June 4 under the heading "Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil" misconstrued remarks made by the US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, making it appear that he had said that oil was the main reason for going to war in Iraq. He did not say that. He said, according to the department of defence website, "The ... difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq." The sense was clearly that the US had no economic options by means of which to achieve its objectives, not that the economic value of the oil motivated the war. The report appeared only on the website and has now been removed.

Wolfowitz has confirmed publicly: the Iraq war was about oil. I hope the naive US citizens and politicians who supported the war because of the false WMD propaganda will stand up and protest about this, as is happening in the UK.

An article by Gary Younge on dissent in the US media.

Specialists removed questionable evidence about weapons from draft of Powell's speech to UN. Basically, it appearse that Powell was extremely unconfortable and skeptical about 'evidence' of WMD in Iraq provided to him by Wolfowitz.

Transcripts of a private conversation between Jack Straw and Colin Powell expressing serious doubts about the reliability of intelligence on Iraq's banned weapons programme are being circulated in western government circles where there is a growing feeling that officials were deceived into supporting the Iraq war.