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If you’re free on Friday night and you are in Berlin, head down to the Skizum Studios, for the free screening of the Vietnam documentary “Sir! No Sir!” The movie tells the – relatively unknown – story of the underground GI resistance movement during the Vietnam War.

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When future generations are going to judge the presidency of George W. Bush, they will base their decision to a large degree on the Iraq war and the false pretenses under which it has been started. By now, it is clear that President Bush and his aides – Rumsfeld, Powell, Rize, Cheney – proved themselves wrong about the Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, about Saddam Hussein’s co-operation with Al Qaeda, about the publicly announced reasons to invade Iraq.

The following video called “Leading To War” collects TV appearances of members of the Bush administration before the American troops began their march towards Bagdad, so that they can be held accountable for their statements. It is comprised entirely of news footage, presented chronologically from President Bush’s State of the Union address in January 2002, when he proclaimed an “Axis of Evil,” and ends with the announcement of U.S. military action in Iraq on March 19, 2003. The video is completely left uncommented, which makes the cold rhetoric sound even more chilling.

The video was produced by Walden Woods, where it can also be downloaded in its entire length. Another comprehensive resource for statements of the Bush administration is The War Card; the project aims to build up a searchable database of all relevant expressions of views and facts which led to the war. All in the hope that a more informed public will make the right judgment about this administration, as well as its successors.

In the late Palezoic and Mesozoic times, a supercontinent is said to have existed, which was comprised of all the continental crust of the earth. It’s name is a composition of the Greek words for all and earth – Pangea.

Pangea Day – tomorrow – is a joined effort to turn this supercontinent into reality again. It will bring together an audience of 500 million or more people in a worldwide filmfest, which you can follow in thousands of venues around the globe, or simply on your PC screen. The festival features two dozen outstanding short films, the crème de la crème of more than 2,500 entries worldwide.

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If you are interested in American politics – of course you are, why bother reading this blog if not? – here are two dates to mark in your calendar: [Read more]

Feel like you don’t know all there is to know about the “Second Coming”? Still unsure how to categorize this newest high-rise on the Democratic block? Here’s your chance:

“Wer ist Barack Obama? Vortrag und Diskussion” featuring Christoph von Marschall, Washington correspondent for the Tagesspiegel

Time: Monday, 21. Januar, 2008 @ 18.30 Uhr
Place: Galerie der Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, Rosenthaler Str. 40/41, Berlin-Mitte
Free Entry/Eintritt frei

Excerpt from the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung’s own description (in German):
Der Vorwahlkampf in den USA ist in vollem Gange und Barack Obama ist der Überraschungskandidat mit guten Chancen auf das Präsidentenamt.
Obama gilt als der “Kennedy seiner Generation”: ein Hoffnungsträger, der einen neuen Stil einführt und die Schranken des Establishments niederreißt.
Doch welche politischen Positionen und welche Werte vertritt er? Was hat die Welt zu erwarten, wenn er als erster Afroamerikaner ins Weiße Haus einziehen sollte? Und vor welchem gesellschaftlichen Hintergrund konnte er in so kurzer Zeit so erfolgreich werden?

Christoph von Marschall begleitet seit einem Jahr Barack Obama im Wahlkampf und verfolgt die Vorwahlen aus nächster Nähe.

Fachkontakt: Barbara Assheuer assheuer@boell.de

By Peter Dahl

Yesterday, the much anticipated search engine of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has been released into the online world. The idea behind Wikia Search is to create a search engine that ranks the results according to user ratings.

But surprisingly, this core function hasn’t been enabled yet. All users can do so far is write so called “mini articles” that give a brief definition of a search term. This leads to rather limited search results, since the basic principle of this “social” search isn’t implemented yet. At least the founders know that, too.

It will be interesting to see whether Wikia Search really has the potential to turn around the way we search the internet- which by now is dominated so much by Google’s search engine that the term “to google” has come to mean any kind of internet searching. With this unseen- before power Google has come to dominate our perception of the outside world- what you can’t google isn’t really there, is it?

So far, Wikia Search has the inherent problem of any community- based project. As long as only few people use it, it doesn’t have much to offer to other potential users. But only if many people start using it, it will become better, so for right now, it’s a toss-up.

Stay tuned.

By Jessica Binsch

Bill Maher’s at it again.

The man who brought you “Politically Incorrect,” which ABC eventually took off the air in 2002 after Maher made a comment on live radio that the 9/11 terrorists were not cowards, but “we [the American government] have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away,” might just have hit home with the political right. [Read more]

Starting today, Queens’ P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center , a MoMA affiliate, will present Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 15-hour epic film version of Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz.

Orginally aired in 1979/80 as a 14-part series on German public television, Fassbinder’s masterpiece, running a total of 930 minutes, was recently restorated and released on DVD.

Apart from being able to see the episodes in 14 distinct screening rooms, visitors will have the opportunity to read the storyboard, see magnified stills and listen to audiotapes of Fassbinder dictating the script.

Fassbinder: Berlin Alexanderplatz was previously shown at Kunstwerke Berlin. P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center is located at 22-25 Jackson Avenue in Long Island City. Directions are availabe here.

Taryn Simon documents the hidden; her photos shed light on the secrets of society. Her “American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar” collects and lists places which fascinate because we either were not aware of their existence, or we did not dare to imagine them. This weekend, her exhibiton in Frankfurt opened its doors. [Read more]

Fox News claims that German officials told their U.S. colleagues that they would oppose new sanctions against Iran but “would privately welcome, while publicly protesting, an American bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear facilities.”

Certainly a rather surprising if not shocking revelation, assuming it’s true.