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The corruption-plagued Cyprus government is tearing up textbook pages and seeking to censor artist Giorgos Gavriel.

Dr. Miranda Christou is a Senior Fellow at CARR and Associate Professor in Sociology of Education at the University of Cyprus.

The far-right party of ELAM is growing in Cyprus, the government is mired in corruption scandals and the Ministry of Education is tearing up textbook pages because they mention Atatrk. The artist and teacher, Giorgos Gavriel, has been capturing the spirit of the times in his provocative art, only to face disciplinary action for offending national figures. His artwork is featured in this article

The National Popular Front in Cyprus (Ethniko Laiko Metopo) ELAM doubled its representation in the Cyprus Parliamentary elections in May 2021, with a share of 6,78% (4 MPs). ELAM, an offshoot of Golden Dawn in Greece, is an ultra-nationalist, nativist and anti-immigrant party that maintains a hardline opposition to the bizonal, bicommunal federation as a solution to the division of Cyprus despite this being the official, established framework since the 1970s. More importantly, it has kept itself under the radar by avoiding the brazen neo-Nazi symbolism and violent outbursts of Golden Dawn, focusing instead on building an image of the good kids as the Cyprus Archbishop once called them.

This serious Golden Dawn of Cyprus is now heading an ad hoc parliamentary group on the demographic problem after tipping the scale to help the centre-right party of Democratic Rally (DISY), currently in power, win leadership in the Parliament. This move reflects a mainstreaming of ELAMs alarmist rhetoric on the arrival of refugees and asylum seekers whom they refer to as illegal migrants.

In their Fascism is website article, ELAM claims that: Fascism is when your country is in danger because of low fertility rates, when citizens are deprived of basic things but you continue to accept illegal immigrants, and, on top of that, to give them money when you have clearly exhausted the limits of your hospitality.

This twisting and upending of words by ELAM pushes further to the right the boundaries of public discourse on human suffering in a country that has constructed its ethnic identity around the pain and trauma of 1974 refugees. Recently, the Minister of Interior rushed to defend the government amidst reports that the authorities have been illegally pushing boats of asylum seekers back to the Lebanon shores or callously endangering children and minors by keeping them waiting at sea, under the harsh Cyprus sun. This same Minister had dabbled in apartheid politics and the Great Replacement language when he issued a decree that asylum seekers were not allowed to settle in a village area because their arrival caused social problems and demographic change.

Moments like these require unrelenting truthtelling. We take pride in being reader-funded. If you like our work, support our journalism.

The hypocrisy of those who proclaim faith in Christian values but maintain racist posturesELAMs slogan is country, religion, familyis called out by one of Giorgos Gavriels paintings which shows Christ in a refugee holding facility. Much of his work is provocative: a painting of Christ naked or a dog urinating on the Archbishop.

In September 2021, the Ministry of Education and Culture announced that Gavriel had to appear before the Educational Service Committee to apologize for an array of disciplinary charges, including insult to civil-religious institutions, religious symbols and historical-national figures of Cyprus. Following intense public outcry, the Presidents cabinet called off the investigation. The government was already exposed since the issue went all the way to the European Parliament and the Chair of the Committee on Culture and Education had raised concerns about violations of Gavriels freedom of expression.

Around the same time, officials at the Ministry of Education spotted a blurb in the English Language Textbooks (Oxford University Press) for Lyceum which read Turkeys greatest hero, and included a photo of Atatrk. This apparently rattled some high-ranking officials who issued a memo to schools to tear off that particular page. As the Ministry scrambled to save face, they decided to withdraw the book and order an investigation into decision-making procedures. Throughout all of these, ELAM insisted on censuring Gavriel and ridiculed those who condemned tearing off the pages of the book.

In Al-Jazeeras scathing video The Cyprus Papers, the (now former) head of the Cyprus Parliament was secretly recorded raising his wine glass and winking to seal the deal as a prominent lawyer explains in another scene: This is Cyprus! The context was the orchestration of a fake backroom deal where undercover journalists investigated whether Cypriot lawyers and officials would break the law in order to provide a passport to a shady billionaire character through the so-called Cyprus Investment Program. The answer was: absolutely.

After Al-Jazeera dropped the video, Anastasiades government scuttled to cancel the program and run an investigation. While the President distanced himself from the fiasco, his Golden Passports connections through the family law firm have been called out by anti-corruption groups.

But Anastasiades remains fully exposed: a European Parliament draft resolution on the Pandora Papers deplored his specific naming in the papers which provide financial documents linking political leaders to fishy transactions. The depth of the corruption problem in Cyprus has been duly recorded in Makarios Drousiotis book The Gang. An investigative journalist, Drousiotis had a front seat at the 2013 Eurogroup deals and argues that Anastasiades prioritized the interests of his Russian oligarch clients instead of the well-being of his own people.

Drousiotis was scheduled to appear on a national TV program after the Pandora Papers revelations strengthened his argument in The Gang which is still curiously ignored by the local mediahis appearance was canceled at the last minute due to scheduling conflicts.

Interestingly, in the summer of 2020, a few months before publication of The Gang, Drousiotis reported that he had been the victim of years-long surveillance into his documents and home security system. Drousiotis upcoming book Crime in Crans-Montana seals the deal: it argues that Anastasiades tanked the talks and that he was the one who proposed the two-state solution; an anathema to Greek Cypriots.

These revelations are not your average type of clientelism that has been battering Cypriot life and politics for centuries. They put Cyprus squarely on the level of a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government the way Sarah Kendzior describes USA politics in Hiding in Plain Sight. Notably, ELAM voted with Anastasiades party against registering the issue of Pandora Papers for Parliamentary discussion.

There have been glimpses of hope: Os Dame, (meaning enough!) a loosely connected network of progressive youth groups, organized rallies condemning government corruption and racist politics. In February 2021, the police used a water cannon to disperse their peaceful protest causing severe injuries and the partial blindness of a singer. Gavriel captured the scene: the Minister of Justice and Public Order (until recently, a close friend of Anastasiades daughters) standing over the singers wounded body.

All of these find ELAM in prime position: their rhetoric infiltrates the highest levels of government while they maintain their opposition to Anastasiades handling of the Cyprus problem. In the meantime, they can continue feeding off of the nihilism and disillusionment that has been eroding Greek Cypriot society that comes with the realization that the national interest is secondary to some politicians own self-interest.

This article is brought to you by the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR). Through their research, CARR intends to lead discussions on the development of radical right extremism around the world. Rantt has been partnered with CARR for 3 years. Weve published over 150 articles from CARRs network of PhDs, historians, professors, and experts analyzing extremism and combating disinformation.

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The Rise Of Far-Right Educational Censorship And Corruption In Cyprus - Rantt Media

Denmark says it will take measures to protect teachers' freedom of expression and prevent the risks of "self-censorship".

The Danish government has stated that teachers should be able to speak about certain subjects, including cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, the Holocaust, women's rights, and LGBT+ issues.

The ruling Socialist party said it would begin discussions in parliament on "freedom of expression" in January.

"It is unacceptable for violence and threats to create self-censorship and censorship in schools," said Danish Justice Minister Nick Hkkerup.

"All teachers must feel free and safe in their teaching, and Parliament has an obligation to ensure this," he added.

Last week, Denmark's opposition had a majority support its proposal for school teaching on cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

The cartoons -- which were first published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005 -- triggered an unprecedented wave of anti-Danish sentiments in several Muslim countries. Islam strictly forbids any depiction of Mohammed.

The cartoons were also connected to the 2015 terror attack on the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris, which killed 12 people.

Last year, French history teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded after showing cartoons of Mohammed during a lesson on freedom of expression.

Denmark has said that many teachers in the country fear "violence or threats of violence" related to their work.

"Teaching in primary schools must, of course, include teaching about democracy and freedoms, and the Muhammad crisis -- as a major event in Danish history -- is a natural part of that teaching," the justice ministry said in a statement.

"We must not and will not accept teachers being met with threats when they do their work."

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Denmark pledges to protect teachers from threats against free speech - Euronews

By Michael Gryboski, Christian Post Reporter | Thursday, December 16, 2021Unsplash/Souvik Banerjee

A conservative pro-family group is accusing Twitter of suspending one of its leaders after posting a tweet denouncing the surgical mutilation of minors suffering from gender dysphoria.

Jon Schweppe, director of policy and government affairs with the American Principles Project, reportedly had his Twitter account suspended over the tweet posted on Tuesday. The major social media site accused him of engaging in hateful conduct.

Twitters hateful conduct policy states that accounts may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.

Schweppes now-deleted tweet came in response to South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem championing efforts to ban biologically male trans-identified athletes from competing in girls sports in her state.

Now we hope that governors will likewise be emboldened to continue the fight against the evil gender ideology being forced on Americas children by joining Arkansas and Tennessee in banning the chemical castration and surgical mutilation of minors suffering from gender dysphoria, tweeted Schweppe.

On Wednesday evening, according to the APP, Twitter suspended Schweppe and would not reinstitute his account until he deleted the tweet, which he did.

Schweppe filed an appeal of the decision, arguing that he is advocating for protecting children from violence. However, his appeal was rejected because the Twitter support team found that a violation did take place.

In a statement emailed to supporters, APP President Terry Schilling denounced Schweppe's temporary suspension as the work of would-be dictators in Silicon Valley.

Throughout most of the country, there would be little controversy in saying that children should not be the subject of procedures that sterilize and mutilate their young bodies. In fact, advocating on behalf of those procedures would be considered hateful, stated Schilling.

But in the screwed-up world of Twitters woke censors, trying to protect young kids actually constitutes hateful, violent speech. Inside their impenetrable, left-wing bubble, they cannot imagine how any reasonable person would hold these views.

Schilling believes that it is terrifying that people with such views hold so much power over our national discourse. He called on Republicans in Congress to commit to reining in the unaccountable influence of Big Tech should they regain the majority next year.

Twitter has come under fire from conservatives and Republican elected officials for censoring right-wing views on the platform.

In August, Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado sent a letter to then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey denouncing the websites troubling double standard for banning former President Donald Trump but allowing the Taliban to have accounts.

It is clear that the Taliban is a violent organization, wrote Lamborn, adding that he did not find a single fact check on any of their tweets, nor any warnings for false or misleading content.

It is impossible to see how the accounts of [Taliban members] Zabihullah Mujahid and Yousef Ahmadi do not violate your policies.

In late May, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law that allows private citizens to sue major social media companies if they believe they were wrongfully censored on a platform.

Many in our state have experienced censorship and other tyrannical behavior firsthand in Cuba and Venezuela, stated DeSantis earlier this year.

If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable.

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Twitter suspends conservative activist who criticized 'surgical mutilation of minors' - The Christian Post

SLJ rounds up censorship news around the country, withreports of books threatened withremoval in Arizona, Iowa, Missouri, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Scottsdale, AZ: The Paradise Valley Unified School District Governing Board voted December 2 to not renew an employment contract for Horizon High School principal Linda Ihnat after parents from the school raised concerns about an AP English summer reading assignment. Parents notified the school district in November that they opposed the decision by the school last summer to give students the option of reading So You've Been Publicly Shamedfor an AP English class. The 2015 book by British journalist Jon Ronson contains interviews with internet personalities who have been publicly shamed online and compares it to how public shaming was popular in Colonial America as a state-sanctioned punishment. Parents complained that some of the quotes and references in the book were inappropriate for high school students, 12 Newsreported. The book, which was one of the options for the AP English summer reading assignment, contains references to orgies and bestiality.

Des Moines, IA: Two Iowa Republican leaders want to pursue legislation that would make it a felony offense for school officials, including teachers, to provide "obscene materials" to students. Iowa Senate President Jake Chapman (R) posted on Facebook in November that he plans to introduce legislation that penalizes teachers and librarians for providing what he views as "obscene material" in schools, according to an Axiosreport. The Facebook post followed a Johnston Community School District meeting he attended where a committee reviewed two award-winning books that deal with race: The Hate U Giveby Angie Thomas and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indianby Sherman Alexie, the Des Moines Registerreported. Chapman, who was joined by Republican state Sen. Brad Zaun, told school district committee members, "I don't know why the school thinks that they're above the law, but I intend to do something about it.

North Kansas City, MO: Two books about LGBTQ+ experience George M. Johnsons All Boys Arent Blueand Alison Bechdels Fun Home were removed from four high schools in North Kansas City in October. The North Kansas City School District removed the books from its four high schools after Jay Richmond, president of the Northland Parent Association, objected to the books at North Kansas City Schools board of education meeting in October, according to the Kansas City Star. The Northland Parent Association, a nonprofit representing parents in Clay and Platte counties, MO, has been on the frontline of the local book ban push. The group, which has also sued over enforcing district mask and quarantine mandates, has encouraged parents to protest the books at local school board meetings, deeming some to be pornographic. At a November 22 school board meeting, high school students in the school district condemned the group'sefforts.At the same meeting, the North Kansas City School District agreed to return the two books to high school library shelves in the district, the New York Daily Newsreported.

Wake County, NC: Parents and community activists filed criminal complaints on November 30 with the Wake County Sheriffs Office, accusing the Wake County Public School System of keeping books they claimed were obscene and pornographicin high school libraries. Thebooks targeted includeGender Queer: A Memoirby Maia Kobabe, All Boys Arent Blueby George M. Johnson, George (now titled Melissa)by Alex Gino, and Lawn Boyby Jonathan Evison. The parents and activists opposed the sexual language and image in the books. Any decision on whether to file criminal charges against the school system will be up to Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman, the Charlotte Observerreported. Julie Page, one of the Wake County parents who filed a complaint, told the Charlotte Observer that the books have no educational value. Page also filed a grievance with the Wake County school system.

Fairfax County, VA: Fairfax County Public Schools removed two booksGender Queer: A Memoirby Maia Kobabe and Lawn Boyby Jonathan Evisonfrom its high school libraries after public comments during a Fairfax County School Board meeting in September, WUSA9 reported. Both of the targeted books were then submitted to a book challenge under thecounty school system's processfor challenging school materials. Stacy Langton, a Fairfax City resident, was one of the speakers at the county school board meeting in September, arguing that the books contained pedophilia and pornographic material. On November 23, Fairfax County Public Schools announced it would reinstate the two books that were pulled from high school libraries. The school district determined the challenges were "found to be without merit" and the two books could return to the shelves of its high school libraries. Two committees formed by Fairfax County Public Schools to review Gender Queerand Lawn Boy found that neither book includes pedophilia nor material that qualifies as obscene, under the definition in Virginia law.

Spotsylvania County, VA: At a November 8 meeting, the Spotsylvania County School Board directed staff to begin removing books that contain sexually explicit material from library shelves after a parent raised concerns at a board meeting about books available through the Riverbend High Schools digital library app. The parent expressed particular concern about the book, 33 Snowfishby Adam Rapp, which tells the story of three homeless teenagers attempting to escape from pasts that include sexual abuse, prostitution, and drug addiction. The board voted 6-0 to order the removal. Two board members, Courtland representative Rabih Abuismail and Livingston representative Kirk Twigg, said they would like tosee the removed books burned, the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star reported. A week later, the Spotsylvania County School Board voted to reverse its decision to remove "sexually explicit" books from school libraries after hours of public comment. Abuismail and Twiggcontinued to opposekeeping the books in school libraries, WUSA9 reported.

Harrisonburg, VA: In November, two Harrisonburg City Public Schools parents expressed concern about the graphic novel Gender Queer: A Memoir.One parent expressed concern at a school board meeting and one via email to superintendent Michael Richards. Neither parent followed the proper protocol for objecting to books or course material. Despite the school systems policy for the review of challenged materials, Richards ordered the bookpulledfrom the shelves of Harrisonburg High School, the Daily News-Record reported. Richard then formed a committee to review not only Gender Queer: A Memoirbut to establish criteria for dealing with similar books in the future. Richard expects the committee will make its recommendations on pulling the book by winter break in December, according to the Daily News-Record.

Waupaca County, WI: The book review committee of the Manawa School District has decided to retainLooking for Alaskaby John Green in the districts middle school and high school libraries. Resident Stacey Trinrud told the district's book review committee in November that the book contains detailed sexually explicit encounters andbad language and normalizes dishonesty, hazing, underage drinking, and smoking, the Waupaca County News reported.District library media specialist Jen Krueger spoke at the review committee meeting, saying that a pluralistic society is a diverse one where the people in it believe all different kinds of things and tolerate each others beliefs, even when they do not match their own. After reading the novel, committee members voted 9-0 to retain the book as an option to students, according to a post on ParentSecurityOnline.

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'Looking for Alaska' Gets a Reprieve in WI; Scottsdale Principal Loses Job After Assigned Reading Controversy | Censorship Roundup - School Library...

There is a new scourge befouling the media landscape, one that our self-appointed mandarins have declared themselves eager to combat: misinformation.

The Aspen Institutes Commission on Information Disorder recently released a report that blamed misinformation for a range of social problems: Information disorder is a crisis that exacerbates all other crises Information disorder makes any health crisis more deadly. It slows down our response time on climate change. It undermines democracy. It creates a culture in which racist, ethnic, and gender attacks are seen as solutions, not problems. Today, mis- and disinformation have become a force multiplier for exacerbating our worst problems as a society. Hundreds of millions of people pay the price, every single day, for a world disordered by lies.

With $65 million in backing from investors such as George Soros and Reid Hoffman, the newly organized Project for Good Information also vows to fight fake news wherever it roams. As Recode reported, the groups marketing materials claim, Traditional media is failing. Disinformation is flourishing. Its time for a new kind of media. The project is run by Democratic operative Tara Hoffman, whose company ACRONYM created the app that spectacularly bungled the Iowa Democratic caucus vote in 2020.

And as Ben Smith reported in the New York Times, the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University has been hosting a series of meetings with major media executives to help newsroom leaders fight misinformation and media manipulation. Even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has apologized for his platforms role in spreading misinformation.

The origin of this new wave of portentous declarations and hand-wringing can be found in the Trump years. In an insightful piece in Harpers, Joseph Bernstein labels this effort Big Disinfo.

Its a new field of knowledge production that emerged during the Trump years at the juncture of media, academia, and policy research, he writes. A kind of EPA for content, it seeks to expose the spread of various sorts of toxicity on social-media platforms, the downstream effects of this spread, and the platforms clumsy, dishonest, and half-hearted attempts to halt it.

As Bernstein argues, As an environmental cleanup project, it presumes a harm model of content consumption. Just as, say, smoking causes cancer, consuming bad information must cause changes in belief or behavior that are bad, by some standard.

Big Disinfo has gained in popularity in mainstream media outlets in part because it claims to solve the problem of bad information while placing blame for it on anyone other than mainstream media. In fact, those diagnosing our illness and prescribing the cure are themselves purveyors of the infodemic they claim is upon us.

The Aspen Institutes commission, for example, includes several people who have actively engaged in misinformation efforts. As the Washington Free Beacon reported, one of the commissions advisers, Yoel Roth, was the Twitter executive who blocked his sites users from sharing the New York Post story about Hunter Bidens laptop just before the 2020 election.

Adviser Renee DiResta is something of a misinformation wunderkind as well: She was an adviser to American Engagement Technologies, which, the Beacon reports, is a tech company that created fake online personas to stifle the Republican vote in the 2017 special Senate election in Alabama.

The commissions co-chair, Katie Couric, is also familiar with manipulating facts to yield favorable outcomes. She admitted in her recently published memoir that she had removed and edited statements made by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg about athletes protesting the playing of the national anthem. Ginsburgs criticism of the practice might have angered her fellow liberals, Couric feared.

Commissioner Rashad Robinson, head of the activist group Color of Change, also helped spread misinformation by promoting the hate-crime hoax of actor Jussie Smollett even after it was clear Smollett, who last week was convicted on criminal charges related to the staging of the attack, was lying. And then there is commission member Prince Harry, an expat British ex-royal with few qualifications but a lifetime of evidence of his own questionable judgment (such as dressing up as a Nazi and, more recently, whining to Oprah about the family that funds his lavish lifestyle).

Earlier this year, Harry declared the First Amendment bonkers.

The Aspen Commissions report says there is no such thing as an arbiter of truth, and yet our media gatekeepers have claimed that mantle for themselves with decidedly mixed results for some time.

Consider the fact that Russiagate, a yearslong effort to prove that Donald Trump was being blackmailed and controlled, proved untrue yet was given constant media attention, while the story of Hunter Bidens laptop and its contents, which proved true, was actively suppressed with the explicit purpose of protecting Joe Bidens chances of becoming president. We live in a surreal information moment when the lie was given ample airtime and featured prominently in print, while the truth was smothered and labeled disinformation.

And yet our self-appointed misinformation warriors have proven unwilling to engage in self-reflection. Harvards Shorenstein Center used the New York Posts story on Hunter Bidens laptop computer as the basis for one of its case studies during its recent misinformation sessions.

The lesson that the centers leaders drew, however, was not the one anyone who values the truth should follow. According to the Times, the Shorenstein Center claimed that the Hunter Biden story offered an instructive case study on the power of social media and news organizations to mitigate media manipulation campaigns. In other words, the suppression of information deemed by experts to be misinformation was precisely the kind of Good Information objective we should be pursuing. The research director of the center, Joan Donovan, told the Times that the Hunter Biden case study was designed to cause conversation its not supposed to leave you resolved as a reader.

But what is there to resolve about the fact that the Fourth Estate eagerly embraced the role of chief information censor on behalf of a Democratic candidate for president?

Misinformation and disinformation are nothing new. Propaganda, political dirty tricks, and deliberate lies have been with us a while and have often been a point of pride for their practitioners. It was not that long ago that Ben Rhodes, then a top aide to President Barack Obama, boasted about creating an echo chamber in the media to spread falsehoods about the details of Obamas Iran nuclear deal.

It is true that misinformation has taken on greater significance thanks to the scale and speed of the social-media platforms that spread it. But the new sanctimony about misinformation should be leavened with some healthy skepticism about the movements major actors.

As Bernstein noted, in some sense the disinformation project is simply an unofficial partnership between Big Tech, corporate media, elite universities, and cash-rich foundations. The crusade against misinformation is an approximate mirror image of Donald Trumps war against fake news.

Control of information is control of one of the most valuable commodities in the developed world: peoples attention. And people want their confirmation biases affirmed. But scholars and commissioners studying misinformation also suffer from confirmation bias. Contra the proposals made by panels and commissions on misinformation, the most radical thing we could do right now isnt to give more power to elites or the federal government to control information.

Their record of late Russiagate, Hunter Biden, the Covington kids, the Wuhan lab-leak hypothesis, Border Patrol officers with whips, the Kyle Rittenhouse trial has not been stellar. It would be far better for the health of the information ecosystem that these supposed experts are always invoking if reporters focused on shoring up what were once unassailable tenets of journalism balance, iron-clad sourcing, and critical independence from and skepticism about the powerful. Instead, they are powers handmaidens.

From Commentary

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Inside the hypocrisy of media manipulators, censors who claim to fight misinformation - New York Post