Have you ever heard of the rabbit hunter’s nightmare? A guy dreams that he and a few of his buddies have fanned out across some brushland to scare-up and shoot a few hares. They kill a couple, but then, one of the hunting buddies who’d headed down a slope into a thicket on the right suddenly comes bolting up the slope, all wild-eyed and screaming at the others: “Run, run – the rabbits have guns!”
I thought of this recalibration of the hunting equation when I read that an outfit called the “Dallas Safari Club” had come up with a truly-novel idea for saving Namibia’s rare Black Rhinoceros, which is teetering on the edge of extinction. Several hundred thousand of these unique animals existed a century ago, but only 1,800 remain in this African nation today.
So, thinking waaaay out of the box, the safari club says it will contribute to the Black Rhino conservation cause by auctioning off to one of the club’s lucky members the chance to [WARNING: The following could make your head explode] go to Namibia with a really big gun, and shoot one of the magnificent, endangered creatures dead. Yes, to save the black rhino, kill it.
The safari club’s chieftain says that both the Namibian government and our own Fish & Wildlife agency have okayed the kill. He claims that safari enthusiasts will bid as much as a million bucks to be the one to pull the trigger. And, yes the head of the deceased will be severed, stuffed, mounted, and shipped back to the US as a trophy for the shooter’s den. To the club’s credit, every dime from the auction will go to – oh, the irony! – Namibia’s Black Rhino Conservation Fund.
Back to the rabbit scenario, wouldn’t the club’s big game safari be fairer if high-powered guns were barred, and the winning bidder had to try executing the rhino with a Swiss Army Knife?

“Hunt a Rare Rhino So You Can Save Rare Rhinos,” www.yahoo.com, October 24, 2013.
“The Dallas Safari Club Will Save the Endangered Black Rhino By Auctioning Off the Chance to Shoot One,” www.dallasobserver.com, October 22, 2013.

NSA and DHS defend us against LibertyManiacs.com

It’s a scary world out there, with global terrorist plotting to kill us.
That’s why we must be grateful to the National Security Agency and our Department of Homeland Security. They’re constantly on watch, poised to spring to our defense, no matter from what hellhole the threat emanates. Some homegrown cynics say the billions a year we spend on these two agencies of eternal vigilance is wasted. Yeah? Well let me rub the noses of those cynics in the dangerous mess right in our own midst that was uncovered and efficiently (dare I say “heroically”?) dealt with by the proud patriots of NSA and DHS.
I speak of LibertyManiacs.com, a diabolical website run by a fiend named Dan McCall. Yes, McCall is an American, but apparently he has been recruited to the dark side, for he’s issuing communistic-style propaganda that hurts the efforts of our “anti-terror” heroes – or at least it’s hurting their feelings.
Specifically, Dan’s been selling t-shirts, coffee cups, and other paraphernalia with slogans that mock the two massive spook agencies. For example, one calls DHS the “Department of Homeland Stupidity.” Another says: “NSA: The Only Part of Government That Actually Listens.” And one even alters the NSA’s official logo to read: “Peeping While You’re Sleeping.”
Top spooks at NSA and DHS were outraged, and both agencies took legal action to try stopping McCall from... well, from making fun of them. Technically, though, that’s not against the law (not yet), so the agencies had to go after him for “mutilation… or impersonation of government seals.”
It turns out that McCall’s politics are not at all leftie, but, instead, way out in right field. However, who cares? When two huge, secretive, and powerful agencies try to outlaw parody, that’s neither left nor right – it’s straight-up stupid.

“DHS and NSA Threaten to Sue Man for Selling “Department of Homeland Stupidity” T-Shirts and Coffee Mugs!” www.alternet.org, October 30, 2013.

The highly-educated working poor: Adjunct professors

There’s a growing army of the working poor in our USofA, and big contingents of it are now on the march. They’re strategizing, organizing, and mobilizing against the immoral economics of inequality being hung around America’s neck by the likes of Walmart, McDonald’s, and colleges.
Wait a minute. Colleges? You go there to get ahead in life. More education makes you better off, right? Well, ask a college professor about that – you know, the ones who earned PhDs and are now teaching America’s next generation.
The sorry secret of higher education – from community colleges to brand-name universities – is that they’ve embraced the corporate culture of a contingent workforce, turning professors into part-time, low-paid, no-benefit, no-tenure, temporary teachers. Overall, more than half of America’s higher-ed faculty members today are “adjunct professors,” meaning they are attached to the school, but not essentially a part of it.
It also means that these highly-educated, fully-credentialed professors have become part of America’s army of the working poor. They never know until a semester starts whether they’ll teach one class, three, or none – typically, this leaves them with take-home pay somewhere between zero and maybe $1,000 a month. Poverty.
Adjuncts usually get no benefits, no real chance of earning fulltime positions, no due process or severance pay if dismissed, no say in curriculum or school policies… sometimes not even office space. Like their counterparts at Walmart and McDonald’s, adjunct college professors are not treated as valuable resources to be nurtured, but as cheap, exploitable, and disposable labor.
Unsurprisingly, this contingent of the low-wage army is organizing, too.

For information, contact New Faculty Majority: www.NewFacultyMajority.info.
“Adjunct Project Reveals Wide Range in Pay,” www.chronicle.com, January 4, 2013.
“Adjunct Project,” www.adjunct.chronicle.com 2013.
“Adjuncts at ACC face cut in hours School seeks to avoid paying health care for some faculty,” Austin American Statesman, November 26, 2013.
“Adjunct professors in dire straits with low pay, lack of full-time jobs,” www.aljazeera.com, October 15, 2013.
“Adjunct professors are the new working poor,” www.cnn.com, September 25, 2013.