Rachel Leingang
Sun 27 Apr 2025 10.00 EDT

"A 50501 subreddit remains an active organizing space, where people discuss ideas for local protests, messages they should put on posters, strategies for getting more people involved. The movement is active on nearly all social media channels, and local offshoots have their own pages as well.

The group is planning its next day of mass protest on 1 May, which will be focused on workers’ rights and immigrant rights. 50501 is far from the only group organizing around May Day, a frequent day of action for labor groups around the world."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/33304557

Archived

China Mobilizes Museums for Propaganda: Museum directors are told they should focus on documenting that “border regions” such as Tibet and Xinjiang were always Chinese

Now, museums are also mobilized for Chinese propaganda. The [Chinese Communist Party] CCP’s primary interest is telling what Xi Jinping calls the “China story” and emphasizing that “border regions” such as Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, or Tibet were “always part of China.”

Pan Yue, director of the National Ethnic Affairs Commission, presided in Beijing on April 16 at the First National Training Session for Museum Directors. Museums, he said, should counter “incorrect historical interpretations,” including those that “attempt to position the Central Plains against border regions, the Han against non-Han groups, and Han culture against those of ethnic minorities.”

Each cultural artifact and historical account should be framed within “the overall development of the Chinese nation,” according to Pan, who emphasized that the country’s representation should be “diverse yet unified.” Pan also mentioned Xi Jinping’s thought on archeology, highlighting the alleged ancestral unity of Chinese culture within the present borders of the People’s Republic. Xi also believes that the earliest Chinese populations practiced a form of communism.

The training session was especially focused on Tibet and Xinjiang, which museums should (falsely) present as part of China from ancient times.

Pan visited Xinjiang in 2024, lecturing on Western and Uyghur critics’ “ignorance of history” and insisting that “a large amount of archaeological evidence tells us that Xinjiang has been an important part of the Chinese cultural sphere since ancient times.”

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/42805711

Rwanda

https://archive.ph/F0i4m

President Trump said he pushed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week on the aid blockage to the Gaza Strip, telling him “We’ve got to be good to Gaza.”

“Those people are suffering,” Trump told reporters Friday on Air Force One as he revealed what he said to Netanyahu during a phone on Tuesday.

Trump, in his first public comments about the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the region, said there’s a “very big need” for food and medicine in the region. “We’re going to take care of that,” he added.

Other third-party Bluesky apps, which make up the larger open social web known as the ATmosphere, don’t have to follow these same rules. At least, not for now.

https://archive.ph/rc2sX

Summary

London talks aimed at securing a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia have been downgraded and will no longer include US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff.

The US state department blamed logistical reasons, but it was clear the decision was last-minute and left the Foreign Office wrongfooted.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has ruled out recognising occupied Crimea as Russian territory, after reports suggested this was being considered by the US and the Kremlin. "Ukraine does not legally recognise the occupation of Crimea. There's nothing to talk about," said Zelensky.

Ukraine's ministry of strategic industries said it was "naïve" to expect Ukraine to change its position on "non-negotiable" issues such as Crimea.

An ashen pallor and an eerie stillness all that remains where there should fluttering fish and vibrant colours in the reefscape, one conservationist says

The world’s coral reefs have been pushed into “uncharted territory” by the worst global bleaching event on record that has now hit more than 80% of the planet’s reefs, scientists have warned.

Reefs in at least 82 countries and territories have been exposed to enough heat to turn corals white since the global event started in January 2023, the latest data from the US government’s Coral Reef Watch shows.

Coral reefs are known as the rainforests of the sea because of their high concentration of biodiversity that supports about a third of all marine species and a billion people.

But record high ocean temperatures have spread like an underwater wildfire over corals across the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans, damaging and killing countless corals.