Wise Monkey News is here to provide young people an opportunity to discuss the issues that affect their lives. We hope that, through your participation, this website serves as a forum for the development, exchange, and expression of ideas that will prepare us to assume our positions as the leaders of tomorrow's world. Have something to say?

Spain struggles to close economic gap in a changing Europe

by: Hank Smith - printed on 01-31-2001

The final descent of my flight from Atlanta to Madrid was an amazing stress reliever. Gone were the common annoyances of any flight: the crying babies, the tiny seats, the airplane food. In their place grew my excitement for what was to come. Finally I had arrived in the land of Don Quixote, of bullfighting, the land of passion described by Hemingway. I stared out my window at the land below. Olive trees!

I spent my first week in Madrid with friends in Moncloa, a trendy, university-dominated neighborhood, experiencing the young, exuberant culture of a country catching up after 40 years of a repressive dictatorship.

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Tribal treaties

by: Isaac Vanderburg - printed on 10-10-2001

Without being there, it’s hard to picture. There were some fifty-seven chiefs, headmen and delegates with names recorded phonetically: Pee-oo-pee-u-il-pilp, Wat-ti-wat-ti-wah-hi, Kole-kole-til-ky, or with names translated to Spotted Eagle, Red Wolf, George and Jason. And there were eleven U.S. delegates, politicians and translators, whom was named James Doty, another, William Craig,all eleven had names like that.

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Protecting Freedom

by: Steve Groke - printed on 03-28-2001

STAR’s ongoing campaign to stop weapons training on campus, as well as its questioning of the image ROTC gives to a Catholic University, makes me reflect on why I joined the ROTC program. Why do I want to make a career out of serving our country? Why would I sacrifice my life and possibly the happiness of my family by joining the military?

All my life I’ve wanted to be part of something big—to stand for something I think is right.

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Kenji-san ni shoten o atteru - A focus on Kenji

by: Teresa Abbene - printed on 04-11-2001

“The biggest difference between the U.S. and Japan is that Americans describe every single detail. I have a friend living in Japan who is from the U.S. and every time we talk he drives me crazy! He’ll ask me, How’s it going? And I’ll answer, Fine. OK. And he’ll ask again, How?”

Aside from Americans’ insistent focus on details and feelings, Kenji Ishikawa likes living in the U.S. Kenji is a 23-year-old senior majoring in sociology.

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Wage peace, not war

by: Matt McAuliffe - printed on 09-11-2002

War is terror. This reality was made horrifyingly real to all Americans a year ago when members of al-Qaeda flew airplanes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania.

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Nagasaki to Portland: the Hanford nuclear reservation connection

by: Isaac Vanderburg - printed on 03-28-2001

When I was young, I would make parachutes by connecting the four ends of a bandanna to a fishing weight using four pieces of red yarn. Somehow the unfolding corners and the perfect billow and the gravity of it all produced a phantasmagoria of wonder, so much so that I would bunch the whole thing together and dart it back into mid-air, just to see if it all happened again.

Today I imagine that if I had looked up as a boy and saw the parachute that Katsuji Yoshida saw, with its impeccable aerodynamics and noble descent, I would have been excited just as he was.

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