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Renan Augusto stated that it was necessary to remain calm in light of the effort that, according to him, the greatest living statesman in Latin America was making to overturn the result of his last election against a political anomaly linked to a family of militias. He said he believed the situation would change. #Política #Eleições2024 #AméricaLatina (translated)

Pau listened to Wings and wrote that, after traveling to other countries to attend concerts, he considered respect, tolerance, and a good attitude essential. He said that at the concerts in Lima, he had seen many foreign women and that 99% had been kind, but that on the second day he was near a woman who, he recounted, showed displeasure when the audience sang or mentioned Peru. As an example of how he understood the local emotion, he recalled that in Mexico he had joined in the chant "J-Hope, brother, you are already Mexican," even though he was not Mexican. He also stated that the woman, who was Latina, ended up saying that the tour was not for Latin America. Pau listened to Wings requested that those visiting another country respect the emotions of the people who were seeing their favorite artists at home. #Respeto #Tolerancia #Conciertos (translated)

Pope Leo XIV will undergo surgery in the coming days to remove a nodule from his lung, with the surgery scheduled at Gemelli Hospital in Rome and a recovery time expected to be one week, despite a planned trip to Latin America. #PapaLeãoXIV #Saúde #NotíciasInternacionais (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

Pentecostal church leaders in Brazil align with Flávio Bolsonaro in the electoral runoff, highlighting the influence of the far-right and evangelicalism in the country's politics, in a context of growing religious conservatism in Latin America. #Brasil #Evangelicos #Ultraderecha (translated)

The author noted that climate change was transforming agriculture and that Latin America could contribute to changing the future. He also wrote that the FAO and IILA were turning space science and satellite technologies into solutions to anticipate disasters and strengthen resilience. https://t.co/VyWf9Ysqms #CambioClimático #AgriculturaSostenible #TecnologíaSatélite #LA (translated)

BAS⁷ ⊙⊝⊜ cited Kim Namjoon saying that a text written by him the day before did not refer only to Peru or Latin America, but also to situations that frequently occurred in Europe and the United States and that could happen in Asia. BAS asked people to stop attributing words to them, to respect the request for privacy, and not to associate an entire continent with a minority that they considered out of touch. #Respeito #Diversidade #Identidade (translated)

On the second night in Lima, Peru, Namjoon thanked the audience and said that Peruvians were the best. He explained that his post the previous day did not refer just to Peru or Latin America: according to him, similar situations had long been occurring in Europe and the United States and could also happen in Asia. Namjoon stated that some fans pretended not to recognize the group on the street, but that using drones or pointing lasers at them was unacceptable. He said that while Tae had spoken about the subject in Europe, he was speaking for himself on that occasion. He also stated that he did not differentiate fans by nationality or continent and that, for him, everyone was equal within the ARMY and BTS. Finally, he asked fans to ignore comments he considered absurd and to maintain their love for the group. Namjoon said he believed that there were many special ARMYs and ended by thanking and declaring his love for Peru. #BTS #Namjoon #Peru (translated)

Paquita, an 83-year-old woman with Parkinson's disease and a grade III dependency, is facing eviction after almost 28 years living in her home in La Latina, while her surroundings accuse the leasing company of wanting to turn her home into a tourist apartment. #Desahucio #Vivienda #DerechosHumanos (translated)

Gustavo Petro stated that sanctioning magistrates and judges constituted an ignominy against humanity and asserted that Latin America should not allow it. He said that the OFAC list should disappear and be replaced by an effective global instrument against drug traffickers. He also called for the replacement of political lists that, according to him, promoted apartheid and segregation with guarantees for free thought and expression, and proposed to rebuild a broader and deeper international law on that basis. He added that international justice should investigate and judge international drug trafficking and pursue drug traffickers and their assets anywhere in the world. #Justicia #DerechosHumanos #Narcotráfico (translated)

Kungfu Kenny asked Pablo Moreno to also research the Brazilian anthropologist Debora Diniz. According to him, Diniz was exiled during the Bolsonaro government for conducting research on abortion in Latin America with the aim of decriminalizing it. Kenny stated that she received many threats, is part of the PPDDH, and is also in France. #DeboraDiniz #Antropologia #DireitosHumanos (translated)

The judges of Latina sentenced the agricultural entrepreneur Antonello Lovato to 16 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter, highlighting his intention to protect the company by hiding irregular work and failing to assist Satnam Singh, who was seriously injured in a work accident. #Giustizia #MortiSulLavoro #LavoroIrregolare (translated)

NotPalo wrote that Rockstar Games had revealed six radio stations for GTA VI and their descriptions: Cocotero FM, featuring modern Latin music and El Martillo and La Gata; Back Country Radio, dedicated to outlaw country and hosted by MW and Delta Dawne; and Afro Bank FM, focused on amapiano, African classics, and 3-Step, with Burna and Palmsy. He also mentioned The Warcry 106.6, with metal from the 80s to the present and DJs Kerry and DJ Tom; Flash FM, with pop and hits from Vice City, hosted by Robyn and Alex; and Dirty South Classics, featuring southern rap and hip-hop classics, presented by Trick and Trina. He added that previews of the six stations could already be heard. https://t.co/X9KPh1L8sK #GTAVI #RockstarGames #Videojuegos (translated)

However, they have some recurring characteristics, such as references to Greek and Latin literature and to the works of Emily Brontë, Gertrude Stein, Simone Weil, Virginia Woolf, and other authors that Carson has indicated among his references. #AnneCarson #NobelLetteratura #LetteraturaContemporanea (translated)

He criticized Rosalía and argued that she had based her personality and her latest album on Catholicism, despite having once wanted to visit a church of another religion. He also claimed that the singer had shifted from presenting herself as very Spanish to identifying as Latina and then as very Catholic, and concluded that she lacked her own personality. #Rosalía #Música #Identidad (translated)