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srecko horvat
'Manufacturing Obituaries': Media Falsely Reports Noam Chomsky's Death
"Shameful and sad that Valéria Chomsky had to deny news of Noam Chomsky's death," said one Brazilian academic who spoke to the renowned leftist's wife.
Jun 18, 2024
Some popular media outlets and international political figures came under fire Tuesday for falsely reporting the death of U.S. academic and social critic Noam Chomsky, who is fighting to recover in Brazil after suffering a massive stroke last year.
"Chomsky did not die. I just spoke to Valéria, his wife," said Brazilian journalist Cauê Seigner Ameni.
"He is well," Valéria Chomsky confirmed to ABC's Chris Looft.
Beneficência Portuguesa de São Paulo, a hospital in Brazil's largest city, said in a statement that Chomsky was discharged on Tuesday to continue his treatment at home, according toThe Associated Press.
The New Statesman ran—and subsequently deleted—a Chomsky obituary Tuesday following rumors of the 95-year-old's passing. Other outlets including Jacobin kept or tweaked Chomsky obits, with telltale signs like the word "obituary" in their URLs belying their inaccuracy.
Commentators from across the political spectrum also posted reaction—from mournful on the progressive left to gleeful among liberals and right-wingers—to false reports of Chomsky's death.
"Shameful and sad that Valéria Chomsky had to deny news of Noam Chomsky's death over the phone here in Brazil, because a bunch of places decided to publish pre-written obituaries and posts at the first online rumor," Brazilian academic Sabrina Fernandes said on social media.
"Since no outlet that reported the death decided to post an errata, it only got worse," she added, condemning "the online scoop and attention industry... waiting... like vultures."
Responding to numerous reports of Chomsky's death in the Latin American corporate media, Andrew Kennis—a journalism and social media professor at Rutgers University whose book Digital Age Resistance contains a foreword co-authored by Chomsky—told Common Dreams that "it is both a fitting and cruel irony that the fundamentally flawed, trillion-dollar-valued, conglomerate-owned, mainstream news media system has once again erred in its ways."
"No, Noam is not dead. Instead, he's struggling to recover with the unflagging dedication of his partner, who transported him the first chance Noam's health permitted her to do so to receive top-rate medical care in Brazil," Kennis added.
Some observers worked the title of one of Chomsky's more than 100 books—Manufacturing Consent, which he wrote with Edward Herman—into their commentary on the false reports.
"Chomsky is NOT dead. If Chomsky was dead, he would be turning in his grave to see how quickly rumors spread and how social media functions," said Croatian philosopher and Chomsky collaborator Srećko Horvat. "He might as well still call it: 'manufacturing obituaries'."
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'Do the Right Thing,' Say Assange Defenders as Biden Mulls Dropping Case
"This would be the best decision Biden ever made," said one supporter of the jailed WikiLeaks publisher.
Apr 10, 2024
U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday said his administration is weighing the Australian government's requests to drop charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been deprived of his freedom since 2010 and is currently jailed in London's notorious Belmarsh Prison while fighting extradition to the United States.
Asked by reporters at the White House about requests from Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and members of the country's Parliament for the U.S. and United Kingdom to drop the extradition effort and charges against Assange—an Australian citizen—Biden said that "we're considering it."
Stella Assange, Julian's wife, responded to Biden's remarks on social media. "Do the right thing," she wrote. "Drop the charges. #FreeAssangeNOW."
Srećko Horvat, a Croatian philosopher and co-founder of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 pan-European progressive political party,
said that "this would be the best decision Biden ever made."
British journalist Afshin Rattansi
asked, "Why has Julian Assange been put through this ordeal in the first place?"
Assange—who is 52 years old and suffers from various health problems—faces multiple U.S. charges under the Espionage Act and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for his role in publishing classified government documents, some of them revealing war crimes and other misdeeds. Among the files published by WikiLeaks are the "Collateral Murder" video—which shows a U.S. Army helicopter crew killing a group of Iraqi civilians—the Afghan and Iraq war logs.
Three U.S. administrations have pursued charges against Assange. During the administration of former President Donald Trump—who is the presumptive 2024 Republican nominee—officials including then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo allegedly plotted to assassinate Assange to avenge WikiLeaks' publication of the "Vault 7" documents exposing CIA electronic warfare and surveillance activities. In 2010, Trump called for Assange's execution.
The U.K. High Court ruled last month that Assange could not be immediately extradited to the U.S., where he faces up to 175 years behind bars if convicted on all counts. The tribunal gave the Biden administration until April 16 to guarantee that Assange won't face the death penalty. Absent such assurance, Assange will be allowed to continue appealing his extradition.
Last month, Assange's legal team denied reports that a plea deal with the U.S. government may have been in the works.
Assange has been imprisoned in Belmarsh since 2019. Before that, he spent nearly seven years in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he had been granted political asylum under the government of leftist former President Rafael Correa.
The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention
found in 2016 that Assange had been arbitrarily deprived of his freedom since his first arrest on December 7, 2010. In 2019, Nils Melzer, then the U.N.'s special rapporteur on torture, said Assange had been subjected to "psychological torture."
Following the High Court's decision last month, Amnesty International legal adviser Simon Crowther said that "the U.S. must stop its politically motivated prosecution of Assange, which puts Assange and media freedom at risk worldwide."
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DC Belmarsh Tribunal Urges Biden to Drop Assange Charges
"How is it acceptable that perpetrators of the illegal invasion of Iraq are the ones who get to decide if the man who exposed their crimes is a journalist?" asked Abby Martin.
Dec 11, 2023
Seeking to pressure the Biden administration into dropping charges against jailed Australian WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, human rights and press freedom defenders gathered in Washington, D.C. over the weekend for the second U.S. session of the Belmarsh Tribunal.
The tribunal—organized by Progressive International in partnership with the Wau Holland Foundation—was held Saturday at the National Press Club, where Assange first premiered "Collateral Murder," a video showing a U.S. Army helicopter crew killing a group of Iraqi civilians and then laughing about it.
"As long as the Espionage Act is deployed to imprison those who expose war crimes, no publisher and no journalist will be safe. It is time to free the truth."
The Belmarsh Tribunal was first convened in London in 2021. The event is inspired by the Russell Tribunal, a 1966 event organized by philosophers Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre to hold the U.S. accountable for its escalating war crimes in Vietnam.
Saturday's gathering was co-hosted by Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and The Intercept D.C. bureau chief Ryan Grim.
"Believe it or not, there are only two persons in the world who have been punished for the war crimes that were revealed by WikiLeaks: Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange," Grim told attendees.
Srećko Horvat, the Croatian author, philosopher, and activist who co-founded the Belmarsh Tribunal,
said that "the pressure is mounting on the Biden administration to free Julian Assange."
"More than one man's life is at stake, but the First Amendment and freedom of the press itself," he added. "As long as the Espionage Act is deployed to imprison those who expose war crimes, no publisher and no journalist will be safe. It is time to free the truth."
Rebecca Vincent, director of campaigns at Reporters Without Borders, warned that "if the U.S. government succeeds to extradite Julian Assange to this country, he will become the first publisher imprisoned under the Espionage Act—but he will not be the last."
According to Progressive International:
U.S. congresspeople from both parties are lobbying U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and President Joe Biden to stop pursuing Assange under the Espionage Act. At the same time, Australian members of Parliament are making a major bipartisan push to demand the U.S. Justice Department end its legal campaign against Australian national Assange.
Assange—who suffers from physical and mental health problems including heart and respiratory issues—published classified materials, many of them provided by Manning, exposing U.S. and allied nations' war crimes, including the Afghan War Diary, the Iraq War Logs, and "Collateral Murder."
Since Assange's apprehension 13 years ago in London, he has been confined for seven years in the Ecuadorean Embassy while he was protected by the administration of former Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, and jailed in the U.K. capital's maximum-security Belmarsh Prison. He's currently being held on remand in the notorious lockup pending extradition to the United States after the U.K. High Court rejected his final appeal earlier this year.
If fully convicted, Assange—who is 52 years old and is married with two children—could be sentenced to up to 175 years behind bars.
"How is it acceptable that perpetrators of the illegal invasion of Iraq are the ones who get to decide if the man who exposed their crimes is a journalist?" asked American journalist Abby Martin during the event.
Pivoting to Israel's current war on Gaza—which many experts and observers around the world are calling a genocide as over 70,000 Palestinians have been killed, maimed, or left missing and 80% of the strip's population has been forcibly displaced—Martin asserted that "the people of Gaza have risked and lost their lives to expose the war crimes of the U.S. and Israel."
"The people of Iraq did not have that chance," she added. "They had WikiLeaks."
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