When widespread protests broke out across Iran at the end of last year, US President Donald Trump warned against any violent crackdown on demonstrators, saying America would "come to their rescue."  We all know what has happened since.  The Iranian regime doubled down, employing lethal force against activists.

The number killed is contested but the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) says it has confirmed the deaths of more than 6,000 protesters, with an additional 17,000 deaths being investigated.  The Iranian government itself has admitted to 3,000 deaths though it blamed most of the killings on "rioters" who participated in what it described as an Israeli-led plot.

This did not discourage Trump from claiming that this threat - and then the decision not to intervene - stopped further bloodshed.  The consummate liar has blood on his hands.

The BBC interviewed relatives of some of the victims.  One of them, Niki Nikbakht, who lives in northwest Germany, comes from a close-knit family.  She flicked through photos of her two elder brothers, Hadi and Fazlollah, when interviewed.  Hadi, 45, and Fazlollah, 50, are just two out of hundreds of Iranian political prisoners facing execution in Iran right now.

The Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR), a non-governmental organization with members inside and outside Iran, has documented cases like theirs.  The IHR believes the regime has ramped up executions under the cover of conflict, executing at least 47 political prisoners after sham trials and forced confessions.

One cannot forget that after the US and Israel launched a full-scale war against Iran, Trump called on Iranians to "seize the moment" and "take back" their country.  "America is with you. I made a promise to you, and I fulfilled that promise. The rest will be up to you, but we'll be there to help," he said.  But as Trump and the White House tired of the conflict, and the global economic repercussions worsened, their language softened and support for Iranian dissidents waned.  When the US and Iran signed a 14-point Memorandum of Understanding on 17 June, there was no mention of protesters, persecuted dissidents, or human rights.

Trump has amply shown his duplicitous nature by treating protests in the USA itself as a threat to be suppressed with violence and retribution, not as a protected democratic activity, a right to freedom of expression.  This hypocritical stance reflects a vision of rights as something conditional.  He responds to protesters as though rights should be applied selectively: afforded to those whose cause aligns with his own objectives and denied to those who challenge the president's power.

Trump's stance toward Iran is especially dishonest. He cynically invokes the universal right to protest while making clear that he believes it is only legitimate when it serves his purposes.  

Zeus and company.  Greece is a country where the state and religious authorities are very close and where 98% of the population profess themselves to be Christian Orthodox.  Yet, another religion has been on the rise for a few decades. While it is more than 2,000 years old, Hellenism - which is the practice of worshipping ancient gods   ̶   has been growing in popularity since the 1990s.

In Athens there is a small but dedicated community of people who practise modern Greek Polytheism. The group, known as Labrys, worship the likes of Athena, Zeus, Dionysus, and Poseidon   ̶. the ancient gods we know best from classic works of art like "The Odyssey."

Christopher Nolan's summer blockbuster of Homer's epic poem is yet another retelling of the classic myth. But for some members of Labrys   ̶    named after the double-edged axe that was a sacred symbol in ancient Minoan and Greek culture    ̶     the film is further proof of how Hollywood and Western pop culture have separated modern Greeks from their ancient history.

If you think that Labrys' co-founder Christos Panopoulos is grateful to Nolan for popularising Greek Gods, you are wrong.  On the contrary, he laments the fact that the moviemaker has exploited Greek mythology but not even included one Greek in his movie.

The objections to most modern interpretations of Greek myth are motivated by the fact that for people like Panopoulos, these ancient stories continue to inform their worldview. Panopoulos came to Greek Polytheism after years of spiritual longing throughout his teenage years.  "I saw that the system suited me and explained my established beliefs and experiences of the world," he explains.

The myths and the religious acts in Greek Polytheism are like a symbolic language to do something, in order to achieve something, and that is a connection with the divine.

Labrys isn't the only organisation embracing Greek Polytheists. In fact, they split from the Supreme Council of Ethnic Hellenes, or YSEE, in 2007 over what Panopoulos describes as an overt focus on politics over religious practice.  YSEE has often been accused of a mix of aggressive anti-monotheism, far-right political ideology, and homophobia.

Labrys and similar groups are, of course, anathema to Greek Orthodox Christianity, long the predominant religion in Greece.  Although Emperor Theodosius I prohibited pagan sacrifices and closed temples near the end of the 4th Century AD, some modern-day Greeks insist all he did was to borrow heavily from the ancient traditions and refashioned Gods as religious icons.

It was thus that Poseidon became Saint Nicholas, the patron of sailors, while Perseus, who famously rescued Andromeda from a sea monster, became Saint George.   In another twist, the initiation rites of the Eleusinian and Dionysian Mysteries were transformed into the rites of early Christian worship, specifically the progression through Baptism, Catechesis, and the Eucharist.

Thank God (Zeus for Labrys), in modern western society, religion is a personal choice and people of different faith are at liberty to worship whoever they want, without fear of being offered as a sacrifice on somebody's altar.  So far, at least.  I'm praying that the likes of somebody like shopkeeper Edwin Vassallo and his odious National Democratic Union do not garner support from some religious zealots.

Fake through and through.   It is a well-known fact that social media users can form strong opinions after viewing only a few social media posts on a topic.  This trait has been exploited by many self-proclaimed experts and influencers to plug a gap arising from declining public trust in traditional experts.  Surveys indicate that only about a third of the Maltese population trusts the media, with over 60% expressing a lack of confidence

Just a couple of social media posts can lead people to form strong, lasting opinions on topics they know nothing about.  Crucially, those opinions are largely unaffected by whether the information is true or false. Researchers from Trinity Business School in Ireland and NEOMA Business School in France, report that, after seeing as few as three to five consistent social media posts, users form an initial opinion that stabilises so rapidly that it is not influenced by additional information.

"We found that the most trusted source people have is a celebrity expert," Professor Ashish Kumar Jha from Trinity Business School told Euronews. The second most trusted social media sources identified by researchers were people who had professional titles in their biographies, such as "Dr."  But the thing is, anyone can have any title on Instagram or can call themselves a professor or doctor nowadays.  

Even worse, millions of people have become self-professed experts on anything sand everything.  Many of them are poorly educated, if not illiterate.  Yet many others have no journalistic or investigative skills.  Yet others can't even write a short sentence properly.  So how does it happen? How do people become experts overnight?  We have them in Malta too: thousands of people who have suddenly become able to speak about economics, health, science, medicine and a thousand other subjects when they simply have no idea what they are talking about.

Researchers found that early opinions were largely insensitive to factual accuracy. Once formed, these initial opinions persisted with time. The study also found that people tended to engage with information that matched their initial views, while contradictory content was less likely to be believed, shared, or engaged with.

Kumar Jha says the threshold for people to start believing they are experts on a topic is "very low," adding that "this leads to the next phase of information dissemination, which is misinformation and disinformation. People disseminate information when they believe in it."

The problem is that, once one starts believing he is an expert and thinking like that, he will believe that any fact-checking or questioning of his views is an attack on his personality and his core beliefs.  As a result, his own beliefs get stronger and stronger, not weaker.

We have seen the power of the social media misinformation trends in a number of cases recently.  Perhaps the most notorious was the unfortunate accidental death of DJ Ryan Spiteri and social worker Jessica Camilleri.  The story had barely broken that hundreds rushed to the social media to advertise their particular version of what had happened.

Needless to say, they knew nothing about the realm facts, but simply invented them or twisted what others were saying to suit their own interpretation.  When the real facts started coming out, it was too late: the poor couple had committed suicide, DJ Spiteri had suffered a mental breakdown and had lost hope, Jessica Camilleri had thrown all her training to the wind and joined him, they had been found in compromising circumstances, the Police and the authorities were conspiring to cover up the two deaths.  None of these assertions were supported by real facts.

Unfortunately, social media posts are increasingly driven by AI-generated deepfakes and algorithmic amplification.  Over three-quarters of internet users now encounter false information daily on platforms like Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, X, and blogs as automated systems prioritise emotionally charged, polarising content to maximise user engagement.  The influencers become rich with every click. 

Quote of the week.  "You're my best friend. Let's take it step by step and we'll get there. We have your back." -  Former deputy police commissioner Silvio Valletta to Yorgen Fenech.