Alfred de Zayas - Countering Mainstream Narratives

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. Dont weep, read and then act.

RICHARD FALK, Former UN Special Rapporteur and Professor 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 Countering Mainstream Narratives: Fake News, Fake Law, Fake Freedom is a coherent and powerful pushback against manipulation by the media, which mirrors largely corporate hegemony, if not racist and xenophobic tendencies, which he meticulously and effectively documents. De Zayas calls inter alia for a global commitment to the spiritual principles undergirding the UDHR, a Magna Carta for humanity, mirroring the values of major philosophical and belief systems. A must read for anyone wanting to create a socially just world constructed from a holistic vision of the interdependency and indivisibility of human rights, this book is truly a tour de force.

DR. JOSEPH WRONKA, Professor, School of Social Work and Behavioral Sciences, Springfield College, and Representative to the UN in New York, International Association of Schools of Social Work

A book every peace and human rights activist needs. The intrepid de Zayas beats new paths and, showing honest media as essential to democracy, he at the same time brilliantly illustrates how indispensable academic courage and freedom are to democracy.

FREDRIK S. HEFFERMEHL, Norwegian jurist, former vice-president of the International Peace Bureau (IPB), founding member of the Lay Down Your Arms Association

Alfred de Zayas empowers readers to consume the mainstream media wise as serpents (Jesus Christ, Matthew 10:16) and to see through Fake News, Fake Law and Fake Freedom. This immaculately documented book is at the same time informative, philosophical, concise, clever and amusing.

PROF. HARRO VON SENGER, Ph.D., D.J., Swiss jurist

An honest book that appeals to reason in dealing with diplomacy, peace, and war. Erudite and endlessly quotable, even aphoristic, this book champions academic freedom and the right to seek and impart information.

PROF. DR. ALEXANDRE LAMBERT, Geneva, expert in multilateral organizations and international security

ALFRED DE ZAYAS

Clarity Press, Inc.

2022 Alfred de Zayas

ISBN: 978-1-949762-66-2

EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-949762-67-9

In-house editor: Diana G. Collier

Book design: Becky Luening

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: Except for purposes of review, this book may not be copied, or stored in any information retrieval system, in whole or in part, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022939592

Clarity Press, Inc.

2625 Piedmont Rd. NE, Ste. 56

Atlanta, GA 30324, USA

https://www.claritypress.com

To all who strive for peace and freedom, whistleblowers like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, who open our eyes to our gradual descent into Orwellian dystopia; to those who push back against mainstream indoctrination and brainwashing; to those who promote disarmament for development and human dignity

Like Julia and Winston in George Orwells dystopian novel 1984, we all live in a particular socio-economic environment that imposes a value system, influences the way we think, how we perceive the world around us, how we interrelate with others.

Human beings are social animals who want to belong. Accordingly, it is normal to go with the flow, to think inside the box, to evaluate facts and events in the light of a moral compass which has been suggested to us through education and group-think. We utilize those analytical tools we are familiar with and generally trust. Only a few lateral thinkers make an effort to test societys premises and venture to think outside the box, to look at things from different angles and perspectives.

Julia and Winston lived in a world of propaganda and indoctrination, manufactured consent, manufactured dissent, skewed narratives, cognitive dissonance, institutional intolerance and instinctive fear. While the world of 2022 is not that of Orwells projections, doubtless there are parallels, compromising trends, peer pressure that merit our consideration if we want to avert chaos, avoid nuclear war, and survive as free agents capable to shape the world of 2050.

Some observers would claim that our ostensibly democratic governments have already equipped themselves with institutions that function like Oceanias Ministry of Truth, namely governmental narrative management, press conferences, white papers and other pronouncements, frequently lacking sufficient substantiation and empirical evidence, which are dutifully und uncritically echoed by the mainstream media and compliant think tanks, which are often the source of same.

In the United States the Department of Homeland Security created in April 2022 a so-called Disinformation Narrative on freedom of opinion and expression. Indeed, it appears that the U.S. government is more at war with dissent than with what it chooses to call disinformation.

Meanwhile the U.S. is equipped with what could be seen as a branch office of Orwells Ministry of Peace, which we like to call the Department of Defense (not the War Department, as it was called until 1949), which over the decades has engaged primarily in sabre-rattling and military aggression against other nations, entrusted to its executive arm, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. As Orwell warned us: Peace is War.

We have become accustomed to newspeak, doublethink, the thought policewhat the Germans call Denkverboteareas that our brains prophylactically tell us that it is better not to explore. Yet, our ubiquitous political correctness is a kind of soft power, not so scary, not too oppressive. It is more like 1984 Light. Somehow it does not hurt. On the contrary, it even makes us feel more or less safe.

We feel comfortable and comforted when we listen to empty rhetoric. We tend to trust our governments because we have been taught since grammar and high school that, of course, we are by definition the good guys and that our democracy is the best in the world. We do not readily see that imperial arrogance and narcissism masquerade as benevolent concern, that our sense of a mission drives us to aggress against other nations and deny others the right to self-determination, to have their own set of values and beliefs. Only a few thinkers like Noam Chomsky have warned us that international law, humanitarian values and human rights have been quietly hijacked, instrumentalized for geopolitics, weaponized against the enemies of choice.