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?
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.
Do animals feel pain?
by: Peter Singer - printed on 11-07-2001
Excerpted from Animal Liberation, Peter Singer, 2nd
Edition, New York: Avon Books, 1990.
Do animals other than humans feel pain? How do we know? Well, how do we know if anyone, human or nonhuman, feels pain? We know that we ourselves can feel pain. We know this from the direct experience of pain that we have when, for instance, somebody presses a lighted cigarette against the back of our hand.
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.
Their flesh is the playbill
by: Isaac Vanderburg - printed on 02-20-2002
In the Pacific Northwest, salmon are their own force of nature.
They exist in cycles, like seasons.
They affect change, like hurricanes.
The cycle of an individual, for example, begins at birth when the wriggling infant is swept tail-first toward the ocean. It ends 2-5 years later when the salmon returns?strengthened by ocean fodder and force?to slice through rapids and impossible distances, and eventually to spawn and die.
Children of Abraham Need to Return to Common Faith
by: Fr. Gary Ruzicka - printed on 11-03-2000
The situation in the Holy Lands is sad because all of the people involved consider themselves the Children of Abraham. Each considers Abraham their “Father in Faith.” As tragic as it may be, religion is the source of the conflict. For Israel, the sign of being chosen as the Children of Abraham is the sign of the Land. Therefore they cannot relinquish it. The solution to the whole problem might be to return to that common heritage as “Children of Abraham” and concentrate on what they have in common.
‘That’s the thing about Christmas in Ghana’
by: Isaac Vanderburg - printed on 01-31-2001
It is an organic story, really. In 1969 two Peace Corps volunteers went to Ghana, West Africa. They taught English to the Twi-speaking children of villages called Aducrom and Laarte. They ate fufu and banku and redred and nkatiekwein. They did all the things that volunteers do: teach, travel, work, wander, laugh and cry. Of course, they couldn’t help but to love the kids they taught, love the work they did, and love most of Ghana in general.