when the "official truth" is a game of deception.............

The US State Department is funding a video game with an anti-populist message aimed at teaching kids to recognize “disinformation,” according to documents published by the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO) on Thursday. The game, 'Cat Park', is being rolled out globally, with US embassies asking employees to push it through schools and community organizations.

In a memo sent on October 31 to all US diplomatic posts worldwide, the State Department encouraged staff to “promote,” “publicize,” and “organize special rollout events” for ‘Cat Park’, a game developed by a Dutch studio and funded by the State Department’s ‘Global Engagement Center’ (GEC).

The game demonstrates “how sensational headlines, memes, and manipulated media can be used to advance conspiracy theories and incite real-world violence,” read the memo, which was obtained by America First Legal and made public by the FFO.

Players take the role of a social media user leading a popular campaign against the construction of a park for cats, spinning conspiracies about the park being an elitist project for the city’s upper class. When it’s revealed that the campaign is covertly funded by a billionaire, players must then correct the “fake news”that they earlier spread on the sponsor’s behalf.

The memo states that ‘Cat Park’ draws on “inoculation theory” research by the University of Cambridge’s ‘Social Decision-Making Lab’. By virtually exposing players to “disinformation,” the game builds “cognitive resistance” to it “in the real world,” the State Department explained.

Research papers published by the Cambridge lab have explored techniques aimed at shutting down dissent on topics such as climate change and Covid-19, and “nudging” US conservatives into accepting liberal viewpoints.

‘Cat Park’ is the second game that the GEC has developed with US taxpayer money. ‘Harmony Square’, released after the US presidential election in 2020, sees players become “Chief Disinformation Officer,” stoking divisions in a neighborhood “obsessed with democracy.”

READ MORE: Western disinformation about Iran is the kind that starts wars

‘Harmony Square’ was promoted in British schools with the help of the UK Cabinet Office, and in Ukraine, Latvia, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia “as a strategic educational tool to counter disinformation,”the memo read.

Both games are designed to be deployed and redeployed as the US sees necessary. “In the lead-up to local elections, US missions…could encourage people to get their disinformation booster shot by playing [these games],” the documents stated.

https://www.rt.com/news/566787-fake-news-disinformation-game/

disarming the truth......

Disinformation is one of the WHITE HOUSE’s most important and far-reaching weapons. THE USA has operationalized the concept of perpetual adversarial competition in the information environment by encouraging the development of a disinformation and propaganda ecosystem. This ecosystem creates and spreads false narratives to strategically advance the US’s policy goals. There is no subject off-limits to this firehose of falsehoods. Everything from human rights and environmental policy to assassinations and civilian-killing bombing campaigns are fair targets in AMERICAN’s exceptionalist playbook.

UNFORTUNATELY Truth disarms AMERICAN disinformation weapons. The WHITE HOUSE creates and spreads disinformation in an attempt to confuse and overwhelm people OF Russia’s real actions in Ukraine, Georgia, and elsewhere in Europe. Because the truth is not in AMERICA'S favor, THE CIA AND OTHER intelligence services create, task, and influence websites that pretend to be news outlets to spread lies and sow discord. Disinformation is a quick and fairly cheap way to destabilize societies and set the stage for potential military action. Despite having been exposed for engaging in these malign activities countless times, THE USA continues to work counter to international norms and global stability.

ADAPTATION OF

Disarming Disinformation: Our Shared Responsibility

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FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW: HE TELLS THE TRUTH........

By Gus Leonisky at 20 Nov 2022 - 4:44am
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empire of lies......

The Twitter CEO draws establishment media outrage for criticizing a NATO state propaganda outfit.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has triggered headlines by claiming that the website Bellingcat, a trusted source for establishment US media outlets, engages in “psyops.”

Musk invoked Bellingcat’s role in “psychological operations” while expressing skepticism about the group’s claims that the mass shooter in Allen, Texas was motivated by white supremacist views. Prominent voices came forward to defend Bellingcat as a “a great journalistic organization” (CNN anchor Jake Tapper), and “a treasure trove of hugely important investigative journalism” (Yale professor Timothy Snyder).

While the available evidence supports Bellingcat’s findings about the Allen gunman, Musk is correct about the group overall. With complete uniformity, Bellingcat’s media cheerleaders omit that the group is funded by NATO states and their contractors. And just as Musk suggested, Bellingcat has regularly promoted propaganda that advances its backers’ foreign policy objectives.

Since 2017, Bellingcat’s top financial donors have included the National Endowment for Democracy, a U.S. government organization founded by Ronald Reagan’s CIA chief, Bill Casey. From its inception, the NED has served as a front for US intelligence operations, including destabilization and regime change in targeted states. “A lot of what we do today was done covertly twenty-five years ago by the CIA,” the NED’s first director, Allen Weinstein, told the Washington Post in 1991. NED board members have included veteran neoconservative bureaucrats Elliott Abrams and Victoria Nuland.

The NED conceals its funding for Bellingcat, to the point where a search of its database does not return any results. For several years, Bellingcat also refused to specify its NED funding, until finally admitting that the US government organization was its highest “non-profit” donor: more than €112,000 in 2020 and €212,000 in 2021. (Bellingcat has potentially received more NED funding via other conduits, according to Declassified UK).

Bellingcat takes in more money from other Western governments and cut-outs, including the Dutch Postcode Lottery. Bellingcat was a founding partner in the Open Information Partnership (OIP), which is funded by the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office, FCDO. Another OIP partner, Zinc Network, which is funded by the UK and US governments, has given Bellingcat at least €160,000.

Bellingcat also rakes in donations from firms that profit from from NATO-backed regime change operations. These include the scandal-plagued foreign aid profiteer Adam Smith International (ASI), one of the largest recipients of UK government contracts abroad. In 2017, a UK government agency suspended all future contracts with the company over what it called “inappropriate” conduct and “serious lack of judgement”, including fabricating glowing testimonials about its aid services. As The Grayzone has reported, ASI and another private Bellingcat donor, Chemonics, have received Western contracts to aid and abet sectarian insurgents in the regime change war against Syria.

A number of Bellingcat’s staffers and contributors have NATO intelligence and military backgrounds, including the UK army, the GCHQ, the Royal United Services Institute, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and the Pentagon.

Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins spent several years as a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, the arms industry and government-funded think tank that serves as NATO’s de-facto lobbying arm in Washington. During his tenure, Higgins encouraged the US government to make better use of open-source data, which happened to become Bellingcat’s professed specialization. Higgins’ collaborators at the Atlantic Council included John E. Herbst, the former US Ambassador to Ukraine; Frederic Hof, a former US special envoy to Syria who has vocally advocated regime change there; and Ben Nimmo, a former NATO press officer who now serves as “Global Lead for Threat Intelligence” at Facebook’s parent company Meta.

While partnering with a network of NATO state sources and receiving their lavish funding, Bellingcat’s own state partners have privately raised doubts about the group’s credibility. A leaked assessment produced for the UK Foreign Office by Zinc Network concluded that: “Bellingcat was somewhat discredited, both by spreading disinformation itself, and by being willing to produce reports for anyone willing to pay.”

When I shared Zinc’s leaked assessment on Twitter this week, Higgins responded by characteristically blaming Russia.

https://thegrayzone.com/2023/05/19/elon-musk-bellingcat-western-psy-op/

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