October 7, 2020

Election Interference in Latin America: A Growing Danger

SEPTEMBER 30, 2020

BRETT HEINZ

Many people in the US first became aware of the problem of election interference on social media when allegations emerged of Russian attempts to influence the 2016 US elections through the dissemination of “fake news” on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. But as we learn more about the phenomenon, it is becoming increasingly clear that dishonest social media campaigns are a global issue, and that many private and government actors are now routinely using disinformation campaigns to influence elections. Indeed, in Latin America, such tactics have already become a go-to strategy for many right-wing movements and governments.

Earlier this month, Buzzfeed reported on a memo written by a Facebook data scientist-turned-whistleblower that provides new details on Facebook’s haphazard approach towards identifying manipulative political campaigns on their platform. The whistleblower, Sophie Zhang, noted that when Facebook did enforce its rules, it focused on “harm and priority regions like the United States and Western Europe” where political interference campaigns were most likely to spark public issues for the company. When these campaigns were spotted in smaller countries with less Western news coverage, Facebook “simply didn’t care enough to stop them.” One manager at Facebook joked to Zhang that “most of the world outside the West was effectively the Wild West with [her] as the part-time dictator.”

Zhang’s memo also points to a number of concrete examples of political manipulation campaigns from around the world, including particularly salient examples from Latin America. During Brazil’s 2018 election, millions of “fake reactions and fans” supporting “major politicians of all persuasions” were taken down. Following the disqualification of popular former President Lula de Silva due to dubious and politically-driven corruption charges, far-right nationalist Jair Bolsonaro won the 2018 Brazilian presidential election. His victory was aided by a large-scale fake news operation which sent out hundreds of millions of WhatsApp messages to Brazilian voters. Pro-Bolsonaro businessmen illegally funded the operation to the tune of over $3 million USD. Thus, even in an instance where Facebook did take action, campaigns still continued elsewhere.

In Honduras, the marketing team for conservative President Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH) “openly admitted” to operating hundreds of fake accounts supportive of him. Despite this, it took Zhang over a year to have the profiles removed, only for them to reemerge “within two weeks”; she adds that “the activity is still live and well.” JOH won Honduras’ 2017 elections by a narrow margin, but widespread allegations of electoral fraud led to protests which were met by state violence that resulted in dozens of killings, as well as a ten-day national curfew. In the brief period following this election, research found that a majority of Tweets which tagged JOH were sent from TweetDeck, a type of software used to send Tweets automatically. Despite domestic and international calls for a new election due to the statistical impossibility of the results and clear evidence of manipulation, the US government recognized JOH – a Trump ally – as Honduras’ legitimate leader and pressured other conservative allies in the region to follow suit. He has since been implicated by US prosecutors in drug trafficking activities.

More:
https://cepr.net/election-interference-in-latin-america-a-growing-danger/?fbclid=IwAR0_v7mLk4pJmg3v4Te_DOIXzihho5AJ548TdH3aJfODZZceINnqm8gtePw

October 7, 2020

Why a DC Public Relations Firm Pretended to Be Bolivian on Facebook

OCTOBER 7, 2020

BY BRETT HEINZ

The Americas Blog featured a post last week about the growing wave of election interference and misinformation campaigns sweeping Latin America, especially as a tool of right-wing governments and political movements. As these digital operations have grown in popularity, so has the market for firms to organize them. In particular, new details about the recent Latin American operations of a US public relations firm called CLS Strategies illustrate that Americans are not just on the receiving end of manipulative social media campaigns, but are participants in them as well.

There is a long history of “crisis public relations (PR)” firms taking contracts with foreign governments or opposition movements, lobbying on their behalf or otherwise helping them “improve their image” in Washington. But on September 1st, Facebook announced its removal of “55 Facebook accounts, 42 Pages and 36 Instagram accounts” which were linked to the DC-based CLS Strategies, the first time that such action has been taken against a US PR firm.

According to Facebook, CLS Strategies oversaw coordinated social media campaigns in which sockpuppet accounts, often pretending to be locals, “posted content in support of the political opposition in Venezuela and the interim government in Bolivia, and criticism of Morena,” the party of Mexico’s current President. Their pages, which violated Facebook’s policy against “coordinated inauthentic behavior on behalf of a foreign entity,” had been followed by roughly 509,000 Facebook accounts and 43,000 Instagram accounts. $3.6 million was spent on Facebook ads for the campaigns, far more than the roughly $150,000 reportedly spent by Russian operatives on ads on the same platform.

In Bolivia particularly, the impact of this campaign may have been severe. CLS received a contract to “provide strategic counsel to the government of Bolivia” just one month after former President Evo Morales was ousted in a coup. Allegations of electoral fraud levied by the Organization of American States have provided a political justification for the ouster but have been repeatedly shown to be baseless. In the time between the coup and CLS accepting the contract, the de facto government of Jeanine Áñez repeatedly opened fire on protesters, resulting in numerous deaths. During the length of the contract, the far right Áñez government engaged in a stunning array of human rights violations.

While the government’s political repression of those associated with Morales intensified, the firm oversaw 11 fake Bolivian Facebook pages which promoted inflammatory content, such as ads alluding to Morales as a “mobster” and “coward.” One now-locked page sought to spread confusion in Bolivia by selling itself as a fact-checking page while actually just posting content in support of Bolivia’s de facto government; in fact, it once even shared fact-checks from legitimate organizations and contradicted them, labelled their findings “fake news.” CLS Strategies’ official slogan is “Unexpected Solutions.”

More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/07/why-a-dc-public-relations-firm-pretended-to-be-bolivian-on-facebook/

October 6, 2020

Protests erupt in Chile after police throw 16-year-old off bridge

Mauricio Saavedra
5 hours ago

Protests and demonstrations erupted over the weekend in Chile after video footage surfaced showing a Carabinero Special Forces police officer pushing a 16-year-old youth off the Pio Nono Bridge in Santiago.

On late Friday afternoon, nurse technicians, who have been protesting for a month for professional recognition, improved working conditions and salary increases, were joined by a spontaneous demonstration of hundreds of youth, indigenous and other social groups in the lead-up to a referendum to discard the military dictatorship’s constitution, scheduled for October 25.

By 7 p.m., the Carabineros and a squadron of Special Forces set upon the protesters with water cannon and tear gas, and made dozens of arrests. At about 7:30 p.m., as Special Forces were chasing a section of the protesters over the bridge, an officer rushed 16-year-old Anthony Araya with such force that he pushed him over bridge’s railing. The youth fell head first into the shallow Mapocho River, 5 meters below. Suffering severe head trauma, he remains in critical but stable condition.

For minutes the officers looked down upon the seemingly lifeless body lying face down in the riverbed but made no attempt to lend aid to the critically injured youth. Even while the health brigade, firemen and emergency services were initiating a rescue, police continued to fire tear gas, hindering their work.

More:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/06/chil-o06.html



Anthony Araya



Shocking moment Chilean police officer is caught on camera throwing a 16-year-old protester off a bridge

By ASSOCIATED PRESS and ADRY TORRES FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 13:10 EDT, 4 October 2020 | UPDATED: 13:17 EDT, 5 October 2020

A Chile police officer has been charged with attempted murder after he was captured on video apparently throwing a 16-year-old boy off a bridge during a protest.

At least two videos show the moment Anthony Araya was running with a group of anti-government protesters Friday in Santiago when officer Sebastían Zamora approached the teen from behind and tossed him over the Pío Nono Bridge. Araya crashed to the Mapocho river bed, at least 22 feet below the bridge.

The teenager was listed in stable condition with head trauma and a wrist fracture following the incident in the South American nation's capital.

Lead prosecutor Ximena Chong said: 'The cop approached the young man behind his back, lunged diagonally at the adolescent, grabbing and propelling him, raising him over the railing of the Pío Nono Bridge, making him fall more than seven meters to the river bed.' He also accused the cops at the scene of falsifying the scene report.

More:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8804065/Police-officer-Chile-accused-throwing-teen-bridge.html



https://twitter.com/MegafonoPopular/status/1313114458189946880

Protesting in solidarity with Anthony Araya.



- click for image -

▶️ https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EjX1TeBWsAEJFHg?format=png&name=small

Comparison of Ayala's injury to the grim imagery from the dictatorship of U.S.-supported Augusto Pinochet, this photo taken in 1973. During Pinochet's dictatorship, Chileans stood on the sidewalk along the Mapoche River in Santiago, and witnessed bodies of dissenters who had been tortured and murdered by federal police, as they floated through the city.

▶️ https://twitter.com/hashtag/ChileViolatesHumansRights?src=hashtag_click

October 4, 2020

OPINION - US keeps complicit silence on Cuban Embassy attack in DC

With double standards, manipulation, opportunism and selectivity, terrorism cannot be defeated
Luis Amorós Núñez |
03.10.2020

ANKARA

On Sept. 22, the Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez highlighted in the online General Debate of the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly that despite “every week, the US government issues statements against Cuba or imposes new restrictions; paradoxically, however, it has refused to term as terrorist the attack that was carried out against the Cuban embassy in Washington, DC on April 30, 2020, when an individual armed with an assault rifle fired over 30 rounds against the diplomatic mission and later admitted to his intent to kill”.

It is a reality that terrorism continues to be a great challenge for international community. It cannot be eradicated if double standards, manipulation and political opportunism and selectivity prevail.

The armed aggression against the Cuban diplomatic headquarters with the intention to kill is a direct result of the aggressive policy of the United States government against Cuba and the tolerance and instigation of violence by anti-Cuban politicians and extremist groups.

Cuba does not forget the long history of terrorism against its diplomats. The Cuban foreign service has 11 martyrs, murdered violently by terrorist groups, one of them in 1980 on a downtown avenue in Queens, New York City.

More:
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/opinion-us-keeps-complicit-silence-on-cuban-embassy-attack-in-dc/1994349

October 2, 2020

Bolivian women skateboard in traditional Aymara garb to showcase their culture

The traditional bowler hats, bright blouses and long, plaited “pollera” skirts of the young women contrast with the skateboards under their feet as they swoop back and forth on the skate ramp in Bolivia’s largest city.

ART-AND-CULTURE Updated: Oct 02, 2020 10:34 IST

Associated Press | Posted by Jahnavi Gupta
La Paz, Bolivia

The traditional bowler hats, bright blouses and long, plaited “pollera” skirts of the young women contrast with the skateboards under their feet as they swoop back and forth on the skate ramp in Bolivia’s largest city.

The girls of the collective “ImillaSkate,” a mixture of Aymara and English meaning girl and skateboarding, wear the Indigenous dress of their grandmothers to showcase their culture and promote the sport among women.

“I love this sport, I love my culture and I love being a woman, and that is what motivates me to continue,” said Ayde Choque, while tying the laces of her black Vans shoes and donning the face mask required amid the new coronavirus pandemic.

The group of five young people in La Paz joined a movement that was born in the central Bolivian region of Cochabamba last July. There, more than a dozen young women drew attention with a video posted on Facebook showing them skating through the streets of Cochabamba dressed in Indigenous garb.

Before, the skateboarding women in La Paz wore tight jeans, loose t-shirts and caps when they skated. Aymara women traditionally wear ankle-length layered skirts, embroidered blouses and shawls with a bowler hat perched atop their long black braids.

More:
https://www.hindustantimes.com/art-and-culture/bolivian-women-skateboard-in-traditional-aymara-garb-to-showcase-their-culture/story-6c6cJvXjob61tS6wbTX2RN.html