From the West Australian government’s police force comes this story of a team of government cops using tasers to haze and punish other cops. Because there’s nothing like hazing to reinforce a culture of hypermasculine violence, and nothing like electrical torture to brutalize your victims into unit cohesion:

Two senior West Australian police officers have been stood down and two others sidelined amid allegations they Tasered junior officers as part of an initiation ritual at the Rockingham Police Station south of Perth. . . .

It’s understood the unlawful practice had become part of subculture within a team of uniformed officers at the Rockingham Police Station. Tasers were being used as a punishment or initiation ritual. Officers, some of them senior, were drive stunning other staff with the guns delivering a shock without deploying the probes.

It’s believed there were multiple victims, some of them female officers, over a number of months.

— Sue Short, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (2010-07-14): Police investigate reports of taser initiation ritual

Russell Armstrong, a rep from the pigs’ union, has this to say:

We’re disappointed that it’s happened, it’s an isolated incident, but we are supporting the officers and we are cooperating with internal investigators.

After all, nothing says isolated incident like multiple victims and part of a subculture within a team of uniformed officers. Anyway, while the Incident is being Internally Investigated, Armstrong wants you to know that, when an investigation uncovers a gang of abusive government cops who get their jollies by torturing victims with high-voltate, paralyzingly painful electric shocks, he would certainly hope that [the Police Commissioner] doesn’t sack any police officer over this incident.

See also:

• GT 2007-11-20: Ho ho.

• How we talk about the president: A quick exploration in Google Books. John Mark Ockerbloom, Everybody's Libraries (2010-06-20). On The Online Books Page, I've been indexing a collection of memorial sermons on President Abraham Lincoln, all published shortly after his assassination, and digitized by Emory University.  Looking through them, I was struck by how often Lincoln was referred to as "our Chief Magistrate".  That's a term you don't… (Linked Friday 2010-07-09.)

• Nibbling Away. Daily Brickbats (2010-07-09). The War on the Informal Sector (Cont’d.): $2,000 to sell salsa. (Linked Friday 2010-07-09.)

• Leave It to the Professionals. Daily Brickbats (2010-07-09). Government Vs. Public Safety and Human Decency (Linked Friday 2010-07-09.)

• Unity and Fragmentation. Ranil Dissanayake, Aid Thoughts (2010-07-08). I was in Cape Town last week for the World Cup, and watched the Ghana – Uruguay quarterfinal in the FIFA Fan Fest there, together with several thousand supports from South Africa and abroad. For those who have missed it, Ghana lost in controversial circumstances, and the trend of blatant… (Linked Friday 2010-07-09.)

• Ideas That Stick With You. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-07-10). Under the feudal system, rights to one's person were alienable (swearing fealty to a lord was irrevocable) while rights to land often weren't (a feudal lord couldn't sell his estate, as it belonged in perpetuity to his heirs) – the exact reverse of the rights system that most libertarians advocate…. (Linked Saturday 2010-07-10.)

• {takebacktheland.org} ONE DC Liberates Land in Nation's Capital. Max Rameau, takebacktheland (2010-07-10). VIEW FULL STORY PICTURES AND NEWS CLIPS ON TAKEBACKTHELAND.ORG http://www.takebacktheland.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=newsstory&newsletterID=162Metro DC police plan to evict community from Tent City on Monday July 12 Community organization ONE DC "liberated" a vacant lot in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington, DC on the afternoon of Saturday, July 10, 2010. The contentious Parcel 42,… (Linked Saturday 2010-07-10.)

• We agree it's WEIRD, but is it WEIRD enough? gregdowney, Neuroanthropology (2010-07-10). The most recent edition of Behavioral and Brain Sciences carries a remarkable review article by Joseph Henrich, Steven J. Heine and Ara Norenzayan, !!!@@e2;20ac;2dc;The weirdest people in the world?' The article outlines two central propositions; first, that most behavioural science theory is built upon research that examines intensely a narrow… (Linked Saturday 2010-07-10.)

• SISTERSONG, SPARK, and SisterLove Defeat SB 529. INCITE! Blog (2010-07-11). Victory in Georgia. (Linked Sunday 2010-07-11.)

• the politics of apology. bfp, flip flopping joy (2010-07-09). i read this post by macha at VL, and just about threw up. i'm just sick, sick, watching those videos. (long story short, a woman was attacked by men for talking shit about men she slept with). the videos show the attacks on this woman—one is of men slapping her,… (Linked Sunday 2010-07-11.)

What is the right size for a clitoris? Pharyngula (2010-06-30):

I don’t know. They seem to come in a range of sizes; when they’re as large as a small male penis, I suppose it might be unexpected, perhaps a little confusing, perhaps a little ambiguous to people intolerant of the idea that the human form is found in intermediate shapes….

Dr. Dix Poppas has attracted special notoriety for his sexually abusive experiments on the girls that he sexually mutilates. Of course, the more basic issue here is the non-consensual surgical sexual mutilation forced on girls by doctors and anxious parents, in the name of patriarchal Genital Correctness exercised at the point of a scalpel. Which is alarmingly common, and a far wider problem than the special case of Dr. Dix Poppas. There’s every reason to say something about the special awfulness of this child rapist in scrubs; but the notion that mutilating girls’ clitorises for seeming “too big” (for what purpose?) to adult observers could ever possibly be ethical medicine — rather than what it is, pointless medical torture in the service of carving patriarchy into a girl’s skin and flesh.

So, as you may have noticed, it’s June 27^th; I don’t know if you know this, but it’s quite a day for radical birthday parties. To-day take some time to say:

• Happy birthday to Emma Goldman, revolutionary Anarchist organizer, agitator, speaker, writer, and publisher — born June 27, 1869, in Kaunas, Lithuania (then occupied by the Russian Empire).

  The STATE IDEA, the authoritarian principle, has been proven bankrupt by the experience of the Russian Revolution. If I were to sum up my whole argument in one sentence I should say: The inherent tendency of the State is to concentrate, to narrow, and monopolize all social activities; the nature of revolution is, on the contrary, to grow, to broaden, and disseminate itself in ever-wider circles. In other words, the State is institutional and static; revolution is fluent, dynamic. These two tendencies are incompatible and mutually destructive. The State idea killed the Russian Revolution and it must have the same result in all other revolutions, unless the libertarian idea prevail….

  … There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another, This conception is a potent menace to social regeneration. All human experience teaches that methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim. The means employed become, through individual habit and social practice, part and parcel of the final purpose; they influence it, modify it, and presently the aims and means become identical. —My Disillusionment in Russia (1923).

  At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause. I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things. Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal. —Living My Life (1931)

• Happy birthday to FW Helen Keller, the Alabamian author, scholar, lecturer, and radical agitator — born June 27th, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Remembered today mainly for being blind and deaf and an inspirational example for the moral uplift of the young, what didn’t make it onto stage or screen was how, in her adult life, Keller won fame and infamy as a radical agitating for worker’ freedom, feminism, peace, anti-militarism, and the revolutionary unionism of the Industrial Workers of the World, which she joined in 1912.

  I became an IWW because I found out that the Socialist party was too slow. It is sinking in the political bog. It is almost, if not quite, impossible for the party to keep its revolutionary character so long as it occupies a place under the government and seeks office under it. The government does not stand for interests the Socialist party is supposed to represent. … The true task is to unite and organize all workers on an economic basis, and it is the workers themselves who must secure freedom for themselves, who must grow strong. Nothing can be gained by political action. That is why I became an IWW.

  –Helen Keller, interviewed by Barbara Bindley, Why I Became an IWW, New York Tribune (January 16, 1916)

  [Bindley:] What are you committed to–education or revolution? [Keller:] Revolution. She answered decisively. We can’t have education without revolution. We have tried peace education for 1,900 years and it has failed. Let us try revolution and see what it will do now. … Again the advisability of printing all this here set forth. And this finally from the patience-exhausted, gentle little woman: I don’t give a damn about semi-radicals! –Helen Keller, interviewed by Barbara Bindley, Why I Became an IWW, New York Tribune (January 16, 1916)

  The future of the world rests in the hands of America. The future of America rests on the backs of 80,000,000 working men and women and their children. We are facing a grave crisis in our national life. The few who profit from the labor of the masses want to organize the workers into an army which will protect the interests of the capitalists. You are urged to add to the heavy burdens you already bear the burden of a larger army and many additional warships. It is in your power to refuse to carry the artillery and the dread-noughts and to shake off some of the burdens, too, such as limousines, steam yachts and country estates. You do not neet to make a great noise about it. With the silence and dignity of creators you can end wars and the system of selfishness and exploitation that causes wars. All you need to do to bring about this stupendous revolution is to straighten up and fold your arms.

  … They know that if the government dresses them up in khaki and gives them a rifle and starts them off with a brass band and waving banners, they will go forth to fight valiantly for their own enemies. They are taught that brave men die for their country’s honor. What a price to pay for an abstraction–the lives of millions of young men; other millions crippled and blinded for life; existence made hideous for still more millions of human being; the achievement and inheritance of generations swept away in a moment–and nobody better off for all the misery! This terrible sacrifice would be comprehensible if the thing you die for and call country fed, clothed, housed and warmed you, educated and cherished your children. I think the workers are the most unselfish of the children of men; they toil and live and die for other people’s country, other people’s sentiments, other people’s liberties and other people’s happiness! The workers have no liberties of their own; they are not free when they are compelled to work twelve or ten or eight hours a day. they are not free when they are ill paid for their exhausting toil. They are not free when their children must labor in mines, mills and factories or starve, and when their women may be driven by poverty to lives of shame. They are not free when they are clubbed and imprisoned because they go on strike for a raise of wages and for the elemental justice that is their right as human beings.

  … Strike against all ordinances and laws and institutions that continue the slaughter of peace and the butcheries of war. Srike against war, for without you no battles can be fought. Strike against manufacturing scrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder. Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human being. Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction. Be heroes in an army of construction.

  — Helen Keller (January 5, 1916), Strike Against War, speech at Carnegie Hall on behalf of the Women’s Peace Party and the Labor Forum

• And while we’re on the subject, let’s also wish happy birthday to the Industrial Workers of the World! The IWW’s founding convention began 105 years ago today in Chicago, on June 27, 1905.

If the workers of the world want to win, all they have to do is recognize their own solidarity. They have nothing to do but fold their arms and the world will stop. The workers are more powerful with their hands in their pockets than all the property of the capitalists. As long as the workers keep their hands in their pockets, the capitalists cannot put theirs there. With passive resistance, with the workers absolutely refusing to move, lying absolutely silent, they are more powerful than all the weapons and instruments that the other side has for attack.

— FW Joe Ettor, in the Bread and Roses textile strike of 1912

• And happy birthday to the radical gay and trans liberation movements! Late at night, 41 years ago today, on June 27th, 1969, and early in the morning on June 28th, the Public Morals Squad [sic] of the New York City government’s police force infiltrated and then assaulted the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, believing that they would use violence, prison, and social shaming yet again in their ongoing campaign on behalf of the Basher State. But something happened that night that they didn’t expect — when the poorest and most marginalized in the queer and trans community said no more, began to resist, and then fought back against the cops. When people dressed as women refused to be taken back to the bathroom to have police verify their sex, men began to refuse to show their IDs, and cops started bullying and groping lesbians during frisks, the police shoved the people in the bar outside. Those who hadn’t been singled out for arrest refused to leave, and stayed to witness in solidarity. People began to shout Gay Power! and sing We Shall Overcome. When a cop smashed a stone butch over the head with a billy-club for complaining that her handcuffs were too tight, the crowd finally erupted, turned on the police, and freed the prisoners from the police wagon. The police, humiliated and massively outnumbered, barricaded themselves inside the bar until the NYPD’s Tactical Police Force arrived to pull them out and beat a hasty retreat. Running battles with police in Greenwich Village streets continued the next night. Witnessing the example of street kids, gay men, lesbians, drag queens and trans folks rise up, fight back, and win against the government violence of the Morals Police brought about a new urgency, a new daring, and effectively a new movement. Within a few months, the Gay Liberation Front, Gay Activists Alliance, and Gay Pride organizing committee had sprung up in New York, with the first Gay Pride march in New York City’s history being held on June 28, 1970, in honor of Christopher Street Liberation Day. As Frank Kameny, a longtime organizer for the Mattachine Society put it, By the time of Stonewall, we had fifty to sixty gay groups in the country. A year later there was at least fifteen hundred. By two years later, to the extent that a count could be made, it was twenty-five hundred.

  We all had a collective feeling like we’d had enough of this kind of shit. It wasn’t anything tangible anybody said to anyone else, it was just kind of like everything over the years had come to a head on that one particular night in the one particular place, and it was not an organized demonstration. It was spontaneous. That was the part that was wonderful.

  Everyone in the crowd felt that we were never going to go back. It was like the last straw. It was time to reclaim something that had always been taken from us…. All kinds of people, all different reasons, but mostly it was total outrage, anger, sorrow, everything combined, and everything just kind of ran its course. It was the police who were doing most of the destruction. We were really trying to get back in and break free. And we felt that we had freedom at last, or freedom to at least show that we demanded freedom. We didn’t really have the freedom totally, but we weren’t going to be walking meekly in the night and letting them shove us around—it’s like standing your ground for the first time and in a really strong way, and that’s what caught the police by surprise. There was something in the air, freedom a long time overdue, and we’re going to fight for it. It took different forms, but the bottom line was, we weren’t going to go away. And we didn’t.

  –Michael Fader, quoted in David Carter (2004), Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution, p. 160.

Here’s to many happy returns.

• i just want to express my support for what julian assange is. Captain Capitulation, eye of the storm (2010-06-17). i just want to express my support for what julian assange is doing with wikileaks. listening to the msm, you'd think it was obvious that videos of america's heroes slaughtering civilians should be kept secret. um, why exactly? i guess i could see how some information should be kept secret, though… (Linked Saturday 2010-06-19.)

• There is no libertarian case for restricted immigration. Less, Anarchy Without Bombs (2010-06-19). It is almost 30 years to the day since Libertarian Party Presidential Nominee Ed Clark set off a firestorm of criticism within the party for indicating that he didn't think free immigration should be immediately adopted.  One of the strongest criticisms came in a post-mortem of that campaign by Mr…. (Linked Saturday 2010-06-19.)

• Bobbing Along on the Beautiful Briny Sea. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-06-19). From the "you can't make this stuff up" department: [BP CEO Tony] Hayward took a break from overseeing the energy giant's efforts to contain the undersea leak so he could watch his 52-foot yacht "Bob" participate in the J. P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race. If you put… (Linked Saturday 2010-06-19.)

• The Machinery of Freedom now online! Less, Anarchy Without Bombs (2010-06-18). More than 30 years ago, the first edition of David Friedman's The Machinery of Freedom was the book that first made me comfortable calling myself an anarchist. The second edition, from 1989, has been out of print for a while, but David has just put online a complete copy of… (Linked Saturday 2010-06-19.)

• Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto. Kevin Carson, Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism (2010-06-15). The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto is now available in hard copy format. The eBook version is here. (Linked Saturday 2010-06-19.)

• Three more officers fired – Burbank Leader. police excessive force – Google News (2010-06-18). Three more officers fired / Burbank Leader / All of the officers were fired for allegedly acting improperly or using excessive force. While some of the alleged misconduct occurred during the robbery … (Linked Saturday 2010-06-19.)

• Louis Armstrong death metal version of “What a Wonderful World” Mark Frauenfelder, Boing Boing (2010-06-16). (Thanks, Adam!) (Linked Sunday 2010-06-20.)

• What We Read When We Don't Read the Internet PRESENTS! Au Revoir, Pretty Horses; Or, Why I Don't Read Man Books Any More. Tiger Beatdown (2010-06-20). “Some more telling characteristics of Manfiction: … 2. Male characters cannot communicate with their sons, brothers, and fathers. Or anybody else, really; but they are particularly hampered in inter-man relationships (this is important to emphasize regularly, because the only men who are capable of talking in polysyllabic phrases to other men are gay, and the only thing less manly than writing thoughtfully about women is writing about gays. An inability to communicate is the literary equivalent of the empty seat between two dudes in a movie theater). Instead of communicating the men will drink a lot, commit random acts of violence, beat their sons or pets, and drive around in trucks without speaking. These men do not have daughters.” (Linked Sunday 2010-06-20.)