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?
Committment to Justice: A Lifestyle Choice
by: Ben Zimmerman - printed on 11-15-2000
Some of my buddies from back home got together last weekend. I wasn’t able to be there, so one of these old friends asked another, whom I currently live with, how I was doin’ and what I was up to. My housemate’s response included my plans to return to the School of the America’s protest in Georgia, my nagging efforts regarding recycling around the house and my general anti-“corporate America” attitude.
Golden Rice Biotechnology: A controversial approach to improving nutrition in the developing world
by: Annie Senner - printed on 02-06-2002
The Golden Rice project recently celebrated its one-year anniversary at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Banos, Philippines. Scientists, who received the seeds in January 2001, continue to spend countless hours in the lab working to advance the project through the required testing for widespread production. At the same time, critics are working equally as hard to discourage the public acceptance of this technology.
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.
A vision of peace
by: Hank Smith - printed on 03-27-2002
People who win the Nobel Prize for Peace are considered individuals of special talent and passion. They are seen as builders of a new world free of hate and war and murder. Books are written about them, television programs chronicle their lives, and their words are studied in classrooms throughout the world. These peacemakers, we think, are truly special people.
Yet do these Nobel laureates think of themselves as having more influence than other individuals? Do they see themselves as unique people with a special talent for peace building? The answer, gathered from their words, is a resounding no.
El Salvador: Liberating the poor, liberating ecology
by: Jessica M. Jenkins - printed on 01-23-2002
Raul's family has no rice this year. As peasants in the northern mountains of El Salvador they live off the land, so when the land suffers so do they. In good years, they can eat corn, beans, rice, and vegetables, and have just enough left over to sell in order to purchase tools, clothing, medicine. The problem is that the good years have been few and far between as of late. Within the past ten years, both drought and hurricanes have struck Central America with extreme agricultural instability, bad for any farmer but devastating for subsistence growers like Raul.
Living a life of nonviolence
by: Karen Shea - printed on 02-28-2001
Before he was brutally assassinated, Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador said: “Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity. It is right and it is duty.”
It is in this spirit that I have dedicated myself to living a life of nonviolence.
