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The article by Francisca Zacarias addresses the risks of Law No. 15/2024, which criminalizes exploratory psychotherapy approaches in the context of gender identity, highlighting the concerning implications for parents and young people dealing with transgender issues. #IdentidadeDeGénero #TerapiaExploratória #PráticasDeConversão (translated)

The account REAL MADRID FANS asked to share a video from RMTV about the refereeing of Isidro Díaz de Mera in a Real Madrid-Sevilla match in 2024 and the performance of González Fuertes in VAR. It claimed that the same "thefts" were repeated year after year and encouraged people to watch the video. https://t.co/yioanGCSVT #Arbitraje #RealMadrid #Sevilla (translated)

English football reported that Manchester City had started a Premier League campaign with 18 points out of 18 possible, something that, according to the account, they had achieved for the third time in the club's history, after the 2023/2024 and 2016/2017 seasons. https://t.co/VT57oqAPmE #PremierLeague #ManchesterCity #Fútbol (translated)

The author wrote that on September 9, 2024, he was physically attacked, and the judge from Iustitia dismissed the investigation despite surveillance recordings, photos of the perpetrator, and testimony from three witnesses. He added that under Donald Tusk's government, Article 119 of the Penal Code is applied selectively. https://t.co/cId2I5F0Pz #sprawiedliwość #przemoc #prawo #PL (translated)

The GNR recorded 193 frauds committed by fake police officers and ASAE inspectors between 2024 and 2026, highlighting the simulation of authority and the use of digital disguise technologies to coerce victims, primarily the elderly, into paying fictitious compensations. #Burla #Segurança #GNR (translated)

The writer stated that the consequences were now visible as men were allowed to worsen the situation for female prisoners. They indicated that they had already pointed this out in October 2023 as a possible side effect of the proposed law on gender identity, ahead of the vote in April 2024. https://t.co/QEDZ1jyDwX #Könstillhörighet #Rättigheter #Kvinnor #SE (translated)

Henri Vanhanen wrote that Finland should take seriously Russia's alleged plans to assassinate leaders of the European defense industry. According to him, European intelligence services had warned that Russia had intensified its assassination plots targeting business executives. Possible targets included not only large arms manufacturers but also smaller defense technology companies, especially manufacturers of drones and their components. Vanhanen referred to a plan revealed in 2024 to assassinate Armin Papperger, CEO of the German company Rheinmetall. He wrote that more recent intelligence data indicated broader and more systematic actions beyond individual cases. According to Vanhanen, Russia's intention was to undermine the European defense industry, intimidate its business leaders, complicate support for Ukraine, and disrupt the strengthening of Europe's defense capabilities. Vanhanen urged an urgent assessment of whether the protection of key personnel in Finland's defense industry is adequate. He suggested that the security police, police, and defense administration work together with companies to identify individuals at special risk and ensure preemptive action against threats. He proposed, if necessary, strengthening personal protection, enhancing counterintelligence efforts against companies, and improving information sharing among authorities. According to Vanhanen, Finland should not wait for the first attack on its territory before preparing. https://t.co/xVZMYe1R7e #Puolustusteollisuus #Venäjä #Suomi (translated)

The nine progressive vowels of the General Council of the Judiciary have requested that the 2024 agreements for the renewal of the committees be respected, emphasizing the need to restore balance and internal trust in the face of the challenges of the new judicial year. #CGPJ #RenovaciónJudicial #Progresistas (translated)

Daniele Ganser wrote that Trump demanded new elections in Ukraine on October 10, 2026, in front of reporters at Joint Base Andrews. Trump said that Zelensky should hold an election and a new president should be ready to end the war with Russia. According to Ganser, Trump explained that Zelensky was causing problems for the USA and the world. Ganser pointed out that Zelensky had been in office since 2019 and that his presidency ended in May 2024. A term usually lasts five years. At the same time, Ganser wrote that Zelensky had imposed martial law and Ukrainian law prohibits presidential and parliamentary elections during that time. He asked whether Trump would now let Zelensky fall and accused the USA of fueling the war for years with arms deliveries. #Ukraine #Trump #Selenskij (translated)

Xico Graziano criticized Lilia Schwacz for a video in which, according to him, the professor said she would use Pix as much as possible because Flávio Bolsonaro could end the system by order of Donald Trump. Graziano classified the statement as false and questioned whether Schwacz knew this or truly believed that a victory for Bolsonaro would leave Brazil subservient to the United States. The author highlighted that Schwacz was a professor of Anthropology at USP, a Global Scholar from Princeton, an award-winning writer, and the owner of the publishing house Cia das Letras. He also stated that she was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Letters in March 2024 for chair 9. Graziano compared the video to her inauguration speech two years earlier, in which, according to him, Schwacz had advocated for the strengthening of institutions and citizenship. Graziano questioned whether the professor had used her prestige to deceive the public and speculated about the reasons for the publication, mentioning the possibility that she had consumed alcohol or was out of touch with reality due to living in an academic bubble. He also associated the episode with what he described as an old ideology of the Brazilian intellectual left, formed in the 1950s and 1960s and still linked to the class struggle. #FakeNews #Cidadania #Antropologia (translated)

ElEconomista.es stated that employment in Argentina had increased by 510,000 during the government of Javier Milei, driven by the private sector and self-employment, while political employment in the public sector was reduced. It also noted that in 2024, 29,553 new companies were established, one of the highest figures for gross registration. #Empleo #Argentina #Economía #AR (translated)

Zoey wrote that she had finished watching *LaAcademia* (2024) on Prime Video and described it as more than just a show about football. She noted that the pressure to succeed, the ambition, and the rivalry between Jairo and Adrián from Apolo FC had kept her hooked. She also said that the series displayed the sacrifices needed to pursue dreams and questioned whether talent was enough to withstand the pressure and reach the top. #LaAcademia #Fútbol #Sueños (translated)

Michael van der Galien wrote that a household that burned about 1,000 cubic meters of gas annually would spend about 500 euros extra this winter. According to him, Minister Stientje van Veldhoven (D66) had lowered the filling target for gas storage from 74 to 64 percent at the request of Brussels. According to Van der Galien, the storage level was at just over 62 percent and would be empty around February 10 if a winter like that of 2024 occurred. He added that there was still about 550 billion cubic meters of gas beneath Groningen, while the field remained closed. According to him, FVD had been pointing to gas extraction as a solution for years. Van der Galien described the policy as a risk for the heating of households. https://t.co/NcofsYy1Dr #gasprijs #energiecrisis #verwarming (translated)

Operation Dark Clark – Russia built a real organisation around a false identity Most influence operations create fake people, fake websites or fake news stories. Operation Dark Clark appears to have gone considerably further: Russian operators built what looked like a functioning research organisation in Latin America, employed real people to produce genuine research and concealed from those employees who was ultimately directing their work. OpenAI disclosed the operation on 8 October after banning a cluster of accounts originating in Russia. The actors used ChatGPT while targeting countries across Latin America, principally to damage Ukraine’s reputation, manipulate domestic political debates and manage a self-described research organisation called the Social Research Center, or SRC. OpenAI assessed Dark Clark as Category Five on the six-level Breakout Scale, the first operation it has disrupted since beginning its influence-operation reporting to reach that level. A front organisation with real employees The SRC presented itself as a research platform studying subjects including Latin America’s relationship with India and the Indian diaspora. OpenAI found more than 60 articles on its website, most of them apparently original rather than plagiarised. Internal reports produced by the Russian operators discussed hiring, dismissals, salary scales, staffing and unfinished research projects, strongly suggesting that the operators controlled the organisation rather than merely collaborating with it. At the centre of the structure was “Mia Clark”, a fictitious identity reportedly used to manage social-media activity and communicate with staff. According to OpenAI, the available evidence indicates that employees working for SRC in Latin America were probably unaware that the organisation was being directed by Russian actors. They interviewed experts, conducted research and wrote papers in what appears to have been good faith. The deception therefore existed primarily at the organisational level: much of the work was real, but the identity and strategic purpose of the institution commissioning it were not. OpenAI This is one reason Dark Clark differs from the familiar model of a troll farm. A reader encountering an SRC paper might be looking at research genuinely written by a Latin American employee based on genuine interviews. The manipulation lies further upstream, in who built the institution, selected its direction and controlled its infrastructure. From forged emails to real events The operation also appears to have attempted something more ambitious than online persuasion: inducing real people to produce events that could later be turned into propaganda. In May 2026, according to the operators’ internal reports, they created an email address impersonating Lima’s regional education authorities and instructed schools to organise activities about Ukraine for a cultural-diversity event. The instructions included references to Stepan Bandera, whose historical legacy remains particularly contentious in Poland and parts of Eastern Europe. The operators claimed that some schools complied, replied to the false address and sent photographs of the events. OpenAI could not independently verify every claim contained in the operators’ reports. It did, however, find Peruvian reporting matching the story, followed by publications in Poland and an English-language outlet in Hungary. Some coverage included comments from a Polish MEP calling for people displaying what he described as anti-Polish attitudes to be declared persona non grata. OpenAI therefore concluded that the fabricated starting point appears to have entered genuine political debate across national borders. The mechanism is unusually effective because the final photographs need not themselves be fabricated. If people can be tricked into staging a real event on the basis of a forged instruction, the operation creates authentic visual evidence of something that was artificially initiated. The same method in Ecuador and Bolivia Dark Clark’s internal reports describe similar efforts elsewhere. In Ecuador, the operators claimed they used a fake education email to encourage schools to stage ceremonies involving President Daniel Noboa and Erik Prince, the former head of Blackwater. Ecuadorian media subsequently covered a matching controversy, and the country’s education minister issued a detailed denial. Other Ecuador-focused material included fabricated audio attributed to Ukraine’s consul and a false television report alleging that Noboa’s government was recruiting Ecuadorians to fight in Ukraine. Local fact-checker Lupa found that the supposed Teleamazonas report had never been broadcast, that images had been taken from Instagram, that the audio was AI-generated and that a company named in a supposed recruitment contract did not exist in Ecuador’s corporate registry. In Bolivia, an internal report described a fake audio recording supposedly made by an employee of state water company EPSAS during anti-government protests. It claimed that water supplies to La Paz would be cut and a state of emergency declared. The allegation produced a fact-check and an official denial. OpenAI says the operators explicitly described their objective as worsening the political crisis surrounding the demonstrations. Possible links to the post-Wagner influence machine Dark Clark did not emerge in a vacuum. The operators repeatedly asked ChatGPT about Politology and La Compania, names associated in previous investigations with the Russian influence apparatus that developed from structures once connected to Yevgeny Prigozhin. Forbidden Stories and its partners obtained 1,431 pages of internal documents describing a network known as “The Company”, which they reported had grown to almost 100 operatives and was conducting influence projects across roughly 30 Global South countries. Their investigation found that the organisation moved under the supervision of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, after Prigozhin’s death. Its documented budget for ten months of activity in 2024 was approximately €7.3 million. Two older Argentina campaigns claimed in Dark Clark’s internal reports — a false story about Javier Milei buying Cartier collars for his dogs and the staging of anti-Milei graffiti — had already been independently attributed by investigative journalists to Politology/La Compania. That is significant corroboration, but it is not enough to prove that every Dark Clark activity was run by the same organisational structure. AI was the back office, not the mastermind Perhaps the most important finding concerns artificial intelligence itself. In most documented cases, the Russians were not using ChatGPT to generate the propaganda seen by the public. Their principal use was administrative: drafting reports for an unknown superior, summarising operations, translating material and recording the supposed success of campaigns. Those reports also expose a weakness in the operators’ own measurement. OpenAI found instances in which they tried to claim credit for developments they had probably not caused, suggesting that they were not only attempting to manipulate Latin American audiences but also presenting an inflated picture of their effectiveness to whoever was supervising them. Dark Clark nevertheless broke further into the real world than any influence operation OpenAI had previously disrupted. Under the Brookings framework, Category Five means that an operation has escaped its original network and been amplified by high-profile individuals such as politicians. Dark Clark crossed that threshold because fabricated narratives appear to have provoked governmental denials, mainstream reporting and political comment in several countries. Its most important innovation was therefore not a particularly convincing deepfake. It was the construction of a partly genuine institution around a concealed foreign controller. The research could be real. The employees could be real. The interviews could be real. What was false was who they were ultimately working for. Sources OpenAI — Disrupting AI-enabled “false front” operations https://openai.com/index/disrupting-ai-enabled-false-front-operations/ Forbidden Stories — Propaganda Machine: Russia’s foreign influence strategy across three continents https://forbiddenstories.org/propaganda-machine-secret-documents-reveal-russias-foreign-influence-strategy-across-three-continents/ Forbidden Stories — Ghost Journalists, Cash and Kremlin Scripts: Argentina https://forbiddenstories.org/ghost-journalists-cash-and-kremlin-scripts-how-russian-operatives-tried-to-influence-argentinian-media/ openDemocracy — Russian influence operation in Bolivia https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/russia-bolivia-south-america-putin-evo-morales-wagner-prigozhin-covert-operations-propaganda-disinformation-foreign-interference/ Lupa Media — Fake Teleamazonas report about recruiting Ecuadorians for Ukraine https://lupa.com.ec/verificaciones/noboa-mercenarios-ucrania-ecuador/ Brookings Institution — The Breakout Scale https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-breakout-scale-measuring-the-impact-of-influence-operations/ Keywords: #DISINFORMED #Episode17 #OperationDarkClark #DarkClark #Russia #LatinAmerica #RussianInfluence #RussianDisinformation #Disinformation #InformationWarfare #InfluenceOperations #ForeignInterference #FIMI #FalseFront #FrontOrganisation #FakeInstitution #SocialResearchCenter #SRC #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #GenerativeAI #ChatGPT #OpenAI #NarrativeManipulation #SourceLaundering #InstitutionalManipulation #ForgedDocuments #FakeAudio #PoliticalInfluence #CovertInfluence #Peru #Ecuador #Bolivia #Argentina #Ukraine #Politology #LaCompania #TheCompany #SVR #WagnerLegacy #PropagandaMachine #GlobalSouth #BreakoutScale #OSINT #MediaManipulation #WRLD

Carine Knapen wrote that in 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025, billions of euros worth of gas and oil were purchased from Russia, sometimes through indirect means. According to her, the EU publicly complained about the sanctions against Russia while prices continued to rise for its own population. Knapen stated that people were being seriously misled by this. https://t.co/K9VkWCv9gi #Rusland #EU #Energieprijzen (translated)

The author contrasted statements attributed to Donald Trump, saying he had promised in 2024 to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours, but said in 2026 that Russian diesel was being bought, allowing attacks on Ukraine to continue. https://t.co/WTjmNttzmR #Trump2024 #UkraineWar #PoliticalCommentary #UA #RU

Emanuel Boeminghaus wrote that the eco-friendly energy provider Grüüün will cease supply to around 200,000 private customers nationwide by October 31, 2026. The company only started in 2024 and had advertised price guarantees of up to ten years. Affected customers will need to find a new provider. Grüüün cited planned changes to the Renewable Energy Sources Act and new regulations for power grid expansion as reasons. The company fears that this will lead to fewer wind power and solar installations in the future, making it impossible to maintain long-term price guarantees. Negotiations with the federal government have been unsuccessful, Boeminghaus wrote, referring to a BILD report from October 10, 2026. He explained that this case illustrates how political and regulatory uncertainty can jeopardize long-term business models in the energy sector. https://t.co/NINMEcNkUS #Energiewende #Strompreise #Deutschland (translated)