Monika’s Pensieve

Reviewing every single film I watch is a bit impractical time-wise (and this has been on my mind for a long time now despite appearances ;-P). The reason I keep doing it is that I like having a record of what I watched and how I felt about it.
I’ve finally decided that while I want [...]

The Day After Peace is a film that had a huge impact on me. Ever since I watched it (which was in October last year), I promised myself that I would somehow support the efforts of Peace Day.
The 21st of September is a very special day because it aims to be a day of global [...]

Afghan elections will take place on the 20th of August, the Taliban are naturally already trying to use force to stop people from voting. I wonder if, ironically, their call to boycott elections isn’t why the two main contenders are both very moderate and eloquent people. If Taliban supporters were voting that might not be [...]

I found it hilarious how tendentious the report is (but hey, Indian media just is like that, I’ve sort of gotten used to it now). SRK was really trying to play it down, while they were trying to get maximum scandal out of it. It was kind of funny ;) Still, the main facts seem [...]

This sort of thing has happened before (SRK has spoken about being frisked and checked at US airports before), but unless the Indian media is misrepresenting what happened, it’s just been taken to new levels…
Apparently, Shahrukh Khan was detained for 2h at Newark airport yesterday. He was only released after the Indian embassy interfered. The [...]

Below is a long, but very interesting interview with Zainab Salbi, an activist who works with women in post-conflict areas. What I really loved about it was that she explains the situation so simply and practically. There are some issues there that I’ve never heard of before (for example I never knew that Saddam Hussain [...]

Just a short Al Jazeera news report on the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy and how Barack Obama has promised gay men equal rights to serve in the military, but still hasn’t delivered on it.

Below is a report on how the statistics from Guantanamo have been skewed by the media. It gives a whole new perspective on statistics like “1 in 7 of the prisoners released from Guantanamo have returned to terrorism” :]

This is an article about those who fled the Swat valley, but from a very different angle:
There are about seven barbers in Rangmala, a camp for displaced people which is a couple of kilometres from Malakand Top.
Although they want to go back home once the Taliban have gone they are relishing the chance to work [...]

This is the story of an Afghan boy who was imprisoned by US authorities at the age of 12. He is still in Guantanamo today. While most of the cases of prisoners who were underage at the time of capture have been resolved by now, his was not the only such case.