Since last spring, Elizabeth Frank has carried her anti-war crusade to the hallways of several northwest suburban high schools. Once a month she sets up a table in the commons stacked with pamphlets and decorated with a shocking pink sign that reads: "Do You Know Enough to Enlist?"

So far, Frank's effort to educate students on the perils of joining the military mostly has been met by a wall of teenage indifference -- few students seem interested in having a serious conversation about the consequences of war.

"We haven't had many problems, but we've gotten a few snide comments from staff," said Frank, a longtime peace activist from Chicago. "Each time I come to Prospect [High School in Mt. Prospect], there is one kid who walks by and flips me off. He never says anything, just walks by and gives me the finger."

Despite an occasional chilly reception, Frank and other "counter-recruiters" opposed to the war in Iraq are trying to persuade one potential soldier at a time to pursue other career options. In recent months, activists say, they have visited 25 high schools in the Chicago area as they expand efforts to preach their message that life in the armed forces isn't what recruiters make it out to be.

When I've written in the recent past about Iran, I haven't had the slightest hesitation to say that Iran has the right to develop nuclear power or nuclear weapons. But I admit I didn't fully understand why they were so keen on nuclear power. This article is extremely enlightening on that point. Here's a sentence which describes what I probably thought of as their main motive: "Iranians view the development of nuclear energy as a hallmark of modernization and national pride." But the truth is, there are more concrete reasons as well:

Thousands of Scottish children, some as young as six, are wrongly being labelled hyperactive and given controversial drugs to stop anxious parents thinking they are to blame for unruly behaviour, a leading academic has warned.

Dr Gwynedd Lloyd says doctors are wrongly diagnosing ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) when many youngsters are just behaving badly as a normal part of growing up.

The Edinburgh University academic claims this is leading to "widespread abuse" of the controversial drug methylphenidate, commonly known as Ritalin, by doctors who over-rely on checklists when deciding on medication for children.

Ritalin, nicknamed the "chemical cosh", has been criticised amid claims it has dangerous side-effects, including abdominal pain, anxiety, dizziness, headaches and psychosis.

American Heroin

It oftentimes boggles the mind to try and understand the ease with which the Establishment can manipulate the American citizenry into another warmongering escapade, this time an ominous foray into the Persian lands of Iran, a nation rich in history, culture, location and most importantly to the Evil Empire, oil and gas. Yet upon further inspection it is easy to comprehend this phenomenon, for we live, as Gore Vidal has labeled it, inside the United States of Amnesia, a country where all semblance of the yesterday becomes but a haze of blatant forgetfulness and convenient whitewash, a black hole of Alzheimer's-like darkness from where no recollection of past lessons, mistakes, errors or history can be seen or touched.

We live in a nation of gluttonous stupor and comfortable surroundings, easily distracted by the cocktail of materialism that lines our homes. We are trained to live to work, not work to live, sacrificing love of life for love for the Almighty dollar, becoming worker bees and soldier ants, selling our souls to the demons of capitalism in exchange for the happiness and stress-free lives of yesteryear, needing pharmaceutical drugs to escape the depression of our daily lives, willingly choosing to indebt our present and future in order to possess the vast array of adult toys marketed to manipulate our emotions, wrongly thinking this or that product will reincarnate lost happiness. America is the land of plenty, where waistlines expand, stress increases, mental problems grow, work hours increase and vehicles get bigger and bigger, a land addicted to the devil's excrement, like a heroin user injecting black gold into its ever thirsty veins, becoming a violent, warmongering junkie when the perpetual case of cold turkey arises.

More than likely, you missed the display of public opinion on Bush's illegal wiretapping at Georgetown University, Washington, a few weeks ago. The reason you missed it is the same reason we missed it: the mainstream media more or less ignored it. Don't bother trying to find the story with a google news search either, it simply isn't there. Such is the state of censorship in modern-day America.

Thankfully, there are sites like Signs of the Times to bring you the news that your government feels you should be denied.

Princess Masako is so weighed down by the demands of imperial life that she wants a divorce, according to the Japanese press, as opposition grows against plans to allow her child, Princess Aiko, to sit on the Chrysanthemum Throne.

Several magazines say that, after 13 unhappy years in the Imperial Palace, the Harvard-educated former diplomat is looking for a way out of her marriage to Emperor Akihito's son, Crown Prince Naruhito. The Imperial Household dismisses the speculation.

The 42-year-old princess has spent the past two years largely out of public sight and has been diagnosed with a mental disorder that many blame on her struggle to produce a male heir.

The princess came under intense palace pressure to have another baby after giving birth to her only child, Aiko, in 2001. Her subsequent illness has sparked a succession crisis and forced the government to begin revising the Imperial House Law, which prevents females from ascending the throne.

Manila, Philippines -- A crowd of people awaiting entrance to a stadium in Manila stampeded Saturday, killing at least 73 people and injuring 322, an official said.

A report carried by the Associated Press quotes the Philippine Red Cross Chairman Senator Richard Gordon as saying the toll was at least 88 people.

Some of the 20,000 people who were lined up outside the arena had been waiting for days to gain access to the stadium, where a game show was to be videotaped, Philippines Congressman Robert Jaworski told CNN.

At 7 a.m., five hours before the show was to begin, people were being admitted to the stadium at such a slow pace that one member of the crowd apparently decided to hasten the process, he said.

"Someone shouted and and screamed that there was a bomb," Jaworski said.

"It was just a prank by one of those irresponsible people who wanted to get in first. Sadly, it caused a panic. It was a down-slope road and they started running down the hill ... they just started trampling each other."

Most of the casualties were women, he said.

Iran is not capable of building its own nuclear weapons, the former head of a nuclear power plant and current regional leader in southern Russia said Wednesday.

“In reality, the U.S. is provoking Iran, accusing it of aiming, along with the implementation of its peaceful nuclear programs, to create its own nuclear weapons,” Governor of the Saratov Region Pavel Ipatov was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying.

Paris: Why is all this pressure being mounted against Iran when both Washington and Jerusalem unofficially concede that there is nothing to be done to prevent Iran's government from continuing along its present course of nuclear development?

The contradictions in Western official and unofficial discourse about Iran and its nuclear ambitions are so blatant that one might suspect disinformation, but it probably is simply the cacophony of single-minded bureaucracies working at cross purposes, and the effect of the multiple lobbies involved and of US domestic political exploitation, and the paradox of the American policy itself, whose nonproliferation efforts actually provoke nuclear proliferation.

[Editor's note: This story first appeared in 1991 in Leisure Weekly, Keene, NH, USA, where the author was once managing editor.]

A good society is a means to a good life for those who compose it; not something having a kind of excellence on its own account. - Bertrand Russell

In a perfect world, there would be no soldiers, no police, no crime, no hatred, no oil spills. A ritually stabilized world population, structured so each person connected with an actualized family unit, would have behaviorally internalized integrity and civility and this was reflected in friendly social behavior and totally amiable international relations.