Brasil

Doctor Baptiste Andre aboard the ship #Madeleine:
• Drones have been flying over our heads for hours at high altitude
• We are in continuous communication with various parties including the French Foreign Ministry
• We are carrying a ton of medical aid and this is a symbolic amount
• We demand an end to the siege imposed on #Gaza
#FreedomFlotilla #Genocide #Israel #activism #Starvation #FoodAsWeapon @palestine@lemmy.ml @palestine@a.gup.pe @israel

Now, teams of government scientists are reporting widespread coral death, which they say is the worst bleaching to hit the state. There are still areas of live coral, and some bleached coral will recover, but as scientists gather data, the scale of mortality has left many shocked.

Dr Thomas Holmes coordinates the marine science program at the WA government’s Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions. [...] “I’m not afraid to use the word unprecedented,” he says.

Due to the unfortunate down-time of slrpnk.net we are currently researching possible blockers for creating a Lemmy to Piefed migration guide or script for a relaunch in 1-2 months.

I have never done such a migration before, but generally it seems possible, although migrating image uploads from Pict-rs adds additional complexity (that might not be worth it).

I have created an issue on Codeberg about possible blockers here, but additional input on possible issues or examples of similar migration scripts would be appreciated.

If anyone else has similar plans, please let me know so that we can work together on this.

crosspostato da: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/36248806

Archived

It was framed as a purge of “counter-revolutionary” elements, but at its core, it was a campaign to reassert Mao’s authority by turning the population, especially the youth, against the country’s own institutions, intellectuals, and even families.

Millions of students became Red Guards, emboldened by Mao’s rhetoric to dismantle the old world. Schools shut down, libraries were burned, and educators were beaten in the streets. Temples, artworks, and ancient traditions were destroyed in the name of ideological purity.

The upheaval lasted a decade and led to the persecution of millions, the death of hundreds of thousands, and the psychological trauma of a generation. In the short term, it left China culturally and economically paralyzed. In the long term, it created a vacuum where trust in knowledge, civility, and progress had been deliberately destroyed.

It would take decades for China to repair even a fraction of the damage, and some consequences, such as its demographic collapse from later policies like the One Child Rule, were seeded in that same era of authoritarian absolutism.

Fifty years later, in the United States of 2015, Trump accelerated the simmering Culture War created by Republicans in a similar fashion.

[...]

Under Trump, America abandoned not just institutions but ideals. Loyalty to the Constitution became conditional, subordinated to a total allegiance to Trump. Religion became a political tool, hollowed of compassion and reduced to performative wrath.

Education was vilified. Science was mocked. Bureaucrats were demonized. The judiciary was packed, not for fairness but for toxic ideological gain. And every setback, including pandemics, protests, and lost elections, became fuel for conspiracies, each more fantastical than the last.

Much like Mao’s Red Guards, fanatical MAGA loyalists turned against their neighbors, their teachers, and their cities. Facts became “fake news.” An alternative history was rewritten in real time, changing the obvious narrative of what people witnessed with their own eyes.

Paranoia supplanted patriotism. And a cult of personality emerged, not by accident, but as the core mechanism of control. In Trump, millions saw not a leader, but a messiah. He was a flawed, erratic, and cruel little man, but he was theirs.

[...]

In Mao’s case, the revolution became indistinguishable from the man. His image adorned every wall, his quotations were sacred text, and to question his authority was to reject the very identity of the new China. People starved, struggled, and suffered, but they still chanted his name.

Trump’s MAGA cult may not involve Little Red Books, but it carries the same fanaticism. For millions of Americans, no crime is too egregious, no lie too big, no failure too obvious to shake their faith.

[...]

Where Mao promised revolution, Trump promises revenge. And like all personality cults, the truth is irrelevant. Only belief remains.

What the Cultural Revolution did to China is a warning, not a historical footnote. Even long after Mao’s death, the emotional scars, broken families, and lost knowledge continued to haunt the nation. In the U.S., even if Trump were removed from power today, the legacy of Trumpism and its anti-intellectualism, authoritarian yearning, and contempt for civic life has metastasized.

[...]

Where does it end? If history is a guide, it does not end cleanly. It ends in exhaustion. China’s Cultural Revolution collapsed under the weight of its own extremism, but only after immeasurable damage. It took the better part of two generations for Chinese society to begin reconciling with what was lost. Trust in institutions. Respect for scholarship. Hope for a unified future.

For the United States, the cost is already mounting. A generation of children is growing up in classrooms stripped of accurate history, civics, and science. Climate change is dismissed. Gun violence is endemic. Health care remains broken. Economic inequality deepens. And the solution offered by MAGA is not reform but revenge against the educated, the diverse, the compassionate. Against the very idea of shared purpose.

What made the Cultural Revolution so destructive was not just Mao’s power. It was the willing participation of the people. Students who turned in their teachers. Neighbors who reported families. Millions who became perpetrators of a system they thought would elevate them.

The same pattern is emerging in the United States, but with even darker intent. China’s revolution was born out of desperation, a people broken by war, famine, and colonialism, yearning for justice, even if it was misdirected.

[...]

Every rollback of rights, every act of state censorship, every stunt of political theater is done with pride because it hurts the perceived enemy. The victims, who are immigrants, LGBTQ people, the poor, the non-White, the non-Christian, are not collateral damage. They are the targets.

This is how cultural revolutions work. They are not about culture, they are about control. And they do not end when the leader falls. They end when the people stop believing the lie.

[...]

Archived

Russian leaders have increasingly used museums and their digital collections to show propaganda about Slavic unity and deny Ukrainian identity since the 2022 invasion, analysis shows.

The research shows the increasing ideological indoctrination of Russian museums and digital spaces, a tightening of access to digital collections, and using copyright to limit and control how online collections are accessed and reused.

Russian museum websites and online collections have portrayed Ukraine, its history, and culture as inseparable from Russia before 2022. During the past three years they have hosted exhibitions which represent occupied territories as historically and culturally Russian, framing the invasion of Ukraine as a fight against Nazism and NATO, and glorifying the invasion and individuals who served in the Russian Army.

Ksenia Lavrenteva, from the University of Exeter, examined activities organised by Russian museums before and after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, as well as legislation, cultural policies, and museum practices.

This included four museums – Russian Museum, State Hermitage Museum, the State Historical Museum, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, and the State Catalogue, a national database of digitised museum objects, as well as 25 Russian museum websites.

[...]

“This study underscores the need to scrutinize who controls access to cultural data and for what purposes. There is a need for a more critical and context-sensitive approach to open access —one that balances its potential for inclusivity with safeguards to prevent the amplification of oppressive ideologies.”

[...]

During the first year of the invasion, Russian museums hosted 58 events on “Nazism,” with some focusing on World War II and others drawing parallels with contemporary issues, specifically discussing “Ukrainian neo-Nazism”. Exhibitions such as “Evidence of Crimes by Ukrainian Nazis in Donbas” and “Ordinary Nazism,” trace the “history of Ukrainian Nazism” and portray Ukraine as a Nazi state, thereby justifying the Russian invasion as a fight against Nazism akin to World War II. Exhibitions such as “NATO: History of Lies” and “NATO: Chronicles of Cruelty” aim to present the Russian war in Ukraine as a war against NATO.

[...]

The Russian Ministry of Culture has launched the 2023 Guidelines for Creating Exhibitions on the History of the Special Military Operation. These exhibitions are expected to focus on the occupied regions of Ukraine from 2022, emphasize these regions’ historical significance as integral parts of Russia, highlight alleged anti-Russian sentiments in Ukraine, and present the purported reasons for Russia’s invasion. These reasons include the “ongoing terrorist shelling of Donbas” and “NATO’s involvement in enhancing the combat capabilities of the Ukrainian Armed Forces”.

[...]