The James Logan Courier

By Zohal Sharif, Courier Opinion Editor

When 17-year-old Travyon Martin decided to make a quick run to 7/11, he asked his little brother what he wanted from the store. His brother told him that he wanted Skittles. Who would have fathomed that this would be the last exchange that the pair would have?

While returning home from the store, Martin was spotted by a resident in his father’s gated community in Sanford, Fl. 911 was called an alerted to a suspicious person by George Zimmerman, leader of the neighborhood watch. By the time the police arrived to the scene, the teenager was dead from a single gunshot wound to the chest.

By Tierra Negra, Courier Correspondent

Probably everyone heard how Adam and Eve lost the Garden of Eden. Many theories have tried to explain the metaphor contained in the act of eating the forbidden apple that resulted in expelling us from paradise. Was it the discovery of agriculture, sexuality, consciousness or evolution?

I believe that the prohibited fruit must have been a drug (coffee or cocoa beans) which forced us to create the new way of communicating and originated the first language per se but nobody would say now days that drinking coffee is sinful -even if abusing it may produce bursts of energy that must be paid later on by calcium deficiency, sleeplessness, cramps and, osteoporosis at an elder age. Just as the views regarding our sexuality, times have changed and we are free to do unimaginable things considered taboo barely fifty years ago!

By Tierra Negra, Courier Special Correspondent

I first heard of Ayn Rand in the mid nineties when I read “The Fountainhead” and, “Atlas Shrugged” came along after I looked for more of her material. I found “The Romantic Manifesto” five years later when I decided to take Catholicism out of the picture. I was in dire need of counteracting the negative effects of an upbringing immersed in altruism and it proved very helpful explaining nothing else but virtues of egotism.

The ideas from the last book worked wonders rebuilding my self-esteem until I became aware of her private love life and how Alan Greenspan, one of her original adepts, aided effectively to hand out the country to corporations while blindly pursuing Rand’s ideals on Capitalism. Although he faithfully preached the benevolence of a “free market” system, how was it possible for him to err so badly as to bestow this freedom in a way that could only manage to produce evil?

By Zohal Sharif, Courier Staff Writer


The KONY 2012 campaign is a tremendous feat of social media, an unarguably impressive achievement in spreading the word and gaining public awareness about an important issue. Joseph Kony, head of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a radical militant group in Uganda guilty of horrific crimes against civilians, must be dethroned. The problem is, no one knows about Joseph Kony. Take 30 minutes of your time and watch this video about the KONY 2012 campaign.

Genocide is nothing new to human history, and for many of us this isn’t the first call to action we’ve heard in regards to the terrors afflicting Africa. To many privileged first-world citizens it is difficult to understand what the people of Uganda have endured. What strikes many most about this campaign led by Invisible Children is its use of social media and the potential that an effort like this demonstrates. To my knowledge, there has never before been an online humanitarian effort so accessible and well organized.