#Library Rebellion

[obscureanimeoftheday]

Obscure Anime of The Day:

Library Wars

Aired: 2008

Genres: Action, Comedy, Drama, Military, Romance, SciFi, Shoujo, Violence

[padawansuggest]

JediTok

Obi-Wan: *filmed walking but on 2x speed with a destination in mind and fairly quiet*

Caption: ‘I told master I was bored and he gave me some great suggestions for what I can do’

Obi-Wan: *walks past training salles with padawans working on saber forms*

Obi-Wan: *walks past a large cafeteria with doors open to show lots of different species eating together*

Obi-Wan: *walks past a room with a sign in ten different languages saying ‘aquatic rooms ahead, if you didn’t know that, you are lost, please find someone to guide you if you cannot guide yourself’*

Obi-Wan: *passes a training room with obstacle courses and rock climbing walls and mats for learning force jumps with a few kiddos tumbling and others safely learning to slow their falls with indulgent masters helping them, pauses, stays a good 15 seconds on 2x speed to watch them before leaving again*

Caption: ‘that was always the funnest training type when I was little, I remember falling on my friend and we both had bruises for a week’

Obi-Wan: *walks past what looks like the entrance to a library, noting a stern looking master flirting/arguing with a black and red Mandalorian, who keeps trying to get past her into the room*

Caption: ‘that’s master Nu, she’s very protective over her archives, and that’s her not-boyfriend that keeps trying to get in to see them even though the senate says he’s really not supposed to be in the temple’

Obi-Wan: *walks past what looks to be a temple summer garden with masters and littles all meditating and playing*

Obi-Wan: *spends a whole minute of the video walking around the room of a thousand fountains*

Caption: ‘my friends and I ‘camp’ here sometimes, and sometimes master Yoda catches frogs in here but we aren’t allowed to encourage him to eat them in front of the younglings 😂’

Obi-Wan: *walks past an amused adult at the creche entrance, waves, walks past multiple classrooms and playrooms, occasionally sidestepping a little while they giggle at him because he’s filming himself*

Obi-Wan: *eagerly bouncing on his toes as he gets further into the creche, till a laughing master lets him into a nursery*

Obi-Wan: *sets the camera down in a way that he can film himself settling back into a rocking chair, letting the master carefully hand him one of the babies swaddled up*

Caption: ‘yeah. The temple has a lot of things to do if one is bored. This one is my fave’

[pink-lemonade-rose]

Reading is not as insignificant as we claim. First we must steal the key to the library. Reading is a provocation, a rebellion: we open the book's door, pretending it is a simple paperback cover, and in broad daylight escape! We are no longer there: this is what real reading is. If we haven't left the room, if we haven't gone over the wall, we're not reading.

Helene Cixous, Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing

[voluptuarian]

I love trying to do historical research, you want an answer to a simple question like "could Jews serve in the British army in the 1880s" and you get back

Jews in the American Revolution

Jews in the American Civil War

Jews in World War I

Jews who fought for Nazi Germany

Thanks, that absolutely covers the time period and country I specifically asked for, couldn't have done it without you

[13reasonstoeatthatcake]

I really want to know how Lilith Sorrengail feels about trying her best to get her youngest daughter away from whatever it was that her dad supposedly found in the Archives after Brennan 'died', just to get said daughter even more involved with the tyrrish rebellion two: electric boogaloo.

[detroitlib]

Chrysler cray

View of a woman posing for a Dodge automobile advertisement. "The Dodge rebellion wants you" is painted on wall in background. Label on sleeve: "Chrysler Corporation, Dodge advertising, 1967."

View of a woman, holding a paintbrush, posing with a 1967 Dodge Coronet 500 coupe. "Enlist" is painted on wall in background. Label on sleeve: "Chrysler Corporation, Dodge, 1967."

View of a woman, holding a bomb, posing with a 1966 Dodge Coronet 500 coupe. Label on sleeve: "Chrysler Corporation, Dodge Coronet 500, 1966."

Mickey McGuire and Jim Northmore Boulevard Photographic Collection

National Automotive History Collection, Detroit Public Library

[ventsesh24]

Welcome back to….

Meaningful Reads Monday

⋆˙⟡🪶.✦⊹₊ ݁.୨୧‧₊˚ 🕯️𓍯๋࣭ .𖥔 ݁ ˖ 𓍢ִ໋🦢˚ 🕰 𓍢ִ໋🀦 𓍢ִ໋☕️✧˚ ༘ ⋆

──────── · · 𓅛 · · ────────

This week’s selected books explore the following themes:

✶ Feminism

✶ Solidarity

✶ Self-improvement

✶ Historical Fiction

✶ Introspection

Quote of the Week:

“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.” – Mahatma Gandhi

[dailyanarchistposts]

Extinction Rebellion (XR) have risen from nothing to global movement in record pace, pushing environmentalism to the forefront of the public’s mind and demanding action from governments. In this, they have achieved some success.

As well as vague declarations of a “climate emergency” by local councils and public bodies, the UK government has been forced to accept the findings of the Committee on Climate Change’s report and set a target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The report was commissioned before XR started, but perhaps XR’s most visible success is the fact that when then Chancellor Phillip Hammond started to brief against this report he was opposed by others within his party.

The climate skeptics and those who suggest a transition would hurt the economy too much were silenced by XR’s actions on the streets and the weight of public opinion.

Within this movement, I’ve been inspired by the actions of many individuals who have worked to promote environmentalism as more than a fringe issue: the parents who formed a climate change play date group to educate kids and other parents; the trade unionists pushing for a just transition for workers.

Behind these actions has been a core XR organizing team operating in a “holocracy”, an organizational structure in which groups are able to self-organize but are still directed by a central circle. This structure attempts to increase autonomy for individual groups whilst maintaining a hierarchical decision-making structure.

Holding on to this hierarchy, whilst speeding decision-making, also brings about the emergence of leaders who inevitably will be far from perfect.

The leadership of XR are committed to nonviolence. More than this, they have convinced many others of this method by frequent quoting of statistics which prove nonviolence to be correct and all other forms of struggle to be counterproductive.

These impressive figures stem from academic papers read by their leadership which have become the touchstone of the movement. Sadly, although presented as scientific, this is a classic case of confirmation bias.

We have all done this: the problem is solved, the solution is found and the search begins to find papers and studies that agree. XR’s method of organizing rests on the assertion that nonviolent protest is more effective than struggles adopting a diversity of tactics. To back this up they point to a study that clearly shows this — and, even better, with data!

This is where a social scientist is supposed to critically engage with a text, to understand the flaws in a methodology and basically to read the whole paper rather than just looking at the figures. Sadly, this has not happened and instead a whole group of people has been convinced by a half-read paper which has been debunked many times.

In this study from 2008 by Maria Stephan and Erica Chenoweth, which XR quote for proof, a “nonviolent” protest movement is defined as one in which fewer than 1,000 people were killed. Let that sink in. I could go out tomorrow and murder 999 people in the name of any given cause and this study would still classify me as a nonviolent protester.

Glib hypotheticals aside, this has led to some serious rewriting of history by XR. They frequently claim to draw inspiration from nonviolent movements such as the suffragettes. Let us be clear: the suffragettes were arsonists. They undertook a bombing campaign. They learned martial arts to fight the police. They were not nonviolent, they used a diversity of tactics and to claim otherwise is damaging to the collective memory of struggle.

This misreading of history is something which seems to happen regularly with XR as they also claim to draw inspiration from the anti-apartheid movement which they say was nonviolent. I imagine this will come as a surprise to the families of the thousands of people who died during that armed struggle.

Furthermore, the paper that is frequently referenced by XR clearly states that it does not include campaigns such as the civil rights movement because it looks specifically at regime change or ending foreign occupations and not “social and economic campaigns.”

Unless I have misread the objectives of XR, it does not advocate regime change and so falls into this category. It seems odd to generalize the results of a study that states that it specifically does not apply to your movement’s objectives, unless of course you are searching for data to justify the opinion you always held.

Sadly, the quoting of statistics from this paper adds an air of scientific rigor to XR’s claims which has convinced a lot of people of their validity. These statistics are treated as gospel despite the paper acknowledging that their dataset on nonviolent campaigns is biased towards success because campaigns crushed through repression in their infancy are not reported.

This is not to say we should be advocating for violent insurrection, we just need to keep to one of XR’s core demands: tell the truth. Some campaigns have been won by peaceful means alone but most, including the civil rights movement in the USA and Indian independence, were achieved through a diversity of tactics having been adopted.

I for one am unwilling to condemn activists who do adopt violent methods, just as the suffragettes did, in defending the environment, particularly when environmental activists are being murdered at record rates around the globe.

Although XR’s model is based on the PhD research of one of its founders, Roger Hallam, it seems he never completed it because he managed to convince so many people of his findings before he finished, despite the shaky foundations of his research.

We do know, however, that before founding XR he was involved in organizing a student rent strike at University College London as well as an occupation at the London School of Economics in support of their cleaning staff. I have spoken to people involved in both of these campaigns.

During the actions Hallam convinced often teenage co-organizers to take actions that he wanted to include as part of his PhD research without informing them this was part of his motivation. He even went as far as lying to co-organizers about having consulted the cleaners the campaign was acting on the behalf of.

The result? Hallam was asked to leave both campaigns, although this did not stop him claiming to have led them when he ran for MEP or in his sales pitch for consultancy work.

Claiming collective victories as your own, particularly when you were asked to leave the campaign, perhaps speaks to a broader willingness in XR’s leadership to push their own narratives above anything else. The decisions have been made and we know we are right — who cares if the statistics are dodgy or the cleaners have not actually been consulted?

As a result, XR is trying to deal with some key contradictions — what if, like the civil rights movement, the police do not turn out to be our friends and instead are used to repress us? How do we continue selling a narrative to new recruits when claims about the suffragettes and anti-apartheid movement are so easily debunked? In a holocracy, how do those on the periphery change the structure or move on if they no longer want to follow directions from the core group?

This is not intended as a personal attack on the XR leadership, who, by setting their research out in public and expecting us to act on it, must anticipate it being critiqued.

XR have achieved a lot and should be thanked for their efforts, but we cannot allow flawed leaders, flawed theories of change and false historical narratives to dominate.

This is instead a call to those in the environmental movement who want to continue our varied history of struggle, acknowledging what has and has not worked in an honest fashion instead of abiding by dogmas passed on to us by a leadership we have no say in picking.

Struggles are varied and messy. Now is the time to embrace action on all fronts, not demand others stick to our moral assertions in order to receive our solidarity.

[occvltswim]

‘Toussaint L'Ouverture (1870)’ — George DeBaptiste (American, 1815-1875), chromolithograph ; 74.5 x 58.6 cm, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

[babyb3lls]

Robert Downey Jr.'s upcoming Marvel projects:

• SPIDER-MAN: KING IN BLACK

• AVENEGRS: DOOMSDAY

• FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS

• AVENGERS: SECRET WARS

[booksandteaandstuff]

“Become so very free that your whole existence is an act of rebellion.”

Albert Camus, The Rebel

https://bookshop.org/a/12010/9780679733843

[nobodieshero-main]

things just came together even better i love when this happens

[soft-cookie-aka-aquadrop]

Lately the job coaches at my special ed program have been taking my coworkers and I to the library as an after-work treat. It has a whole shelf full of Japanese comics, and just out of curiosity I decided to give Code Geass a read. As of my latest library visit, I’ve read almost to the end of the third volume. The fact that it’s about a guy who uses morally questionable means to rebel against a corrupt government seems particularly relevant nowadays, given our current hostile political climate.

[l-e-perry]

my writing software isn't working and I casually want to throw my computer in the trash

[tianshiisdead]

Funny review on jstor of a book about how Chinese people may have benefited from colonialism that basically tries to say 'good work but I don't think they benefited from colonialism' in as gentle and nonargumentative a way as possible

[brunhielda]

We are one of the last true “public” spaces- no fee, no restrictions, space is made for everyone.

If we go, and I do not exaggerate, society crumbles and capitalism finally destroys us all.

Like, it is a very proud, but very tiring moment to be a Librarian.

Help us quietly fight the powers that be. Use our resources. Step into the Library.

Or just go to browse and hang out! I promise it will be inspiring :)