BOOK: UN expert Alfred de Zayas / COUNTERING MAINSTREAM NARRATIVES

COUNTERING MAINSTREAM NARRATIVES

Fake News, Fake Law, Fake Freedom

Faced with the startling and blaring unity of global Western mainstream messaging, the public has become ever more distrustful of the MSM narratives—and with good reason. Authoritative sources have begun pushing back and offering cogent challenges to these proclaimed truths—and in turn, the digital gatekeepers have been increasingly cracking down on what they regard as unwelcome alternative views—irrespective of the stature of the persons providing them.

In this collection of essays, former UN Independent Expert on International Order, Professor Alfred de Zayas, takes mainstream disinformation, fake news, censorship and self-censorship head-on. Stressing the importance of access to information and to a genuinely pluralistic spectrum of views as indispensable to every functioning democracy, de Zayas provides an insightful counter-narrative, shedding light on the key issues facing humanity today.

AMONG THE KEY ISSUES

• The need to overhaul the human rights apparatus

• The weaponization of human rights against geopolitical rivals

• The instrumentalization of domestic and international law for purposes of “lawfare”

• Disarmament for development

• The information war, what and whom to believe

• The persecution of whistleblowers Julian Assange and Edward Snowden

• The destructive role of the military-industrial-financial complex,

• The elevation of NATO to cult status

• The demonization of Russia and China and the consequences of incitement to hatred in escalating tensions world-wide

• The evidence-free allegations of “genocide” in Xinjiang, and not least,

• The war in Ukraine

“Alfred de Zayas is a precious resource of humanity as displayed in this wonderfully lucid collection of essays on the afflictions of our time. With the wisdom of a seer and the knowledge of a world class jurist de Zayas is an authoritative voice of reason and equity in this precarious period of dangerous warmongering untruths. Don’t weep, read and then act.” RICHARD FALK, former UN Special Rapporteur, Prof. Emeritus, Princeton University

"The ugliness of official lies and suppression of truth in our times is a serious threat to the possibility of a democratic society. Alfred de Zayas' book is a vigil for a society where press freedom means more than the freedom to buy the press and to lie without restraint." VIJAY PRASHAD, Professor of International Studies, Trinity College, Executive-director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research

ALFRED DE ZAYAS

Alfred de Zayas is a former UN Independent Expert on the Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order (2012-18), former senior lawyer with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Secretary of the UN Human Rights Committee and Chief of the Petitions Department (registrar).For more than two decades he interacted with experts, diplomats, and civil society. De Zayas holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School. and a Ph.D., modern history from University of Gottingen, Fulbright Graduate Fellow in Germany. He is author of 9 books and more than 200 scholarly articles, including the 2022 award-winning BUILDING A JUST WORLD ORDER.