In Venice for the festival screening of Embedded Live (the film version of his play about the US march to war in Iraq), Oscar-winning actor-director Tim Robbins has again launched a ferocious attack on the Bush administration. Speaking yesterday to the international press, Robbins expressed his fears that George W. Bush may "steal another election" and warned that another Bush term would be disastrous for US democracy.

"People (in the US) are fed up. They know that they are being lied to," Robbins said. "They also know deep in their hearts that those lies told in Iraq, the deceptions used to justify the war and the amount of that corruption certainly has to equal a man (Bill Clinton) lying about a blow-job."

Robbins paid tribute to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 and expressed his anger at attempts to discredit Moore's film. "I thought it was a great movie he (Moore) knew what was coming, but I find it curious that we are holding documentary makers up to a higher standard of truth than we are willing to apply to our President."

He denied that the Academy Awards he and Sean Penn won for Mystic River were a tacit sign of Hollywood approval for their attacks on the Bush administration. "If anything our views were a little unpopular. I've had people come up to me and say they voted for me but also made a point to say that they disagree with me."

He stated that there is now "a more motivated resistance in the United States than there has been since the Sixties."