Theories of “everyday resistance” offer useful ideas to explain varied acts of “poaching” and institutional disruption that range from uploading copyrighted media to dissent expressed by whistle blowers and hacktivists such as Wikileaks, Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, Edward Snowden, and Anonymous. What of the impulse to speak out against regimes of social domination? How does YouTube and the internet facilitate critical public discourse?
London Happy Birthday Vigil for Chelsea Manning
17 December 2013
Readings:
1. John Fiske. (1989) Everyday Life, in Understanding Popular Culture, pp. 32-33, 40-41. Boston: Unwin Hyman.
2. Peter Walker. Amnesty International hails WikiLeaks and Guardian as Arab spring ‘catalysts.’ The Guardian. May 12, 2011.
3. About Chelsea Manning. Chelsea Manning Support Network.
4. Jonathan Schell. Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, the New Dissidents? The Nation. September 23, 2013.
Reading questions:
1. Briefly summarize and then offer your perspectives on the ideas of “everyday resistance” outlined in reading #1?
2. Do you observe such practices among young people? Examples of online and in-real-life practices in popular culture?
3. What are your perspectives on the revelatory actions of Wikileaks, Manning, and Snowden, disclosing classified government documents that U.S. officials claim threaten national security? What do you think motivated
these players to take stands that have severely curbed their daily freedoms? In what, if any circumstances might you take such risks?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0[/youtube]
Wikileaks has obtained and decrypted this previously unreleased video footage from a US Apache helicopter in 2007. It shows Reuters journalist Namir Noor-Eldeen, driver Saeed Chmagh, and several others as the Apache shoots and kills them in a public square in Eastern Baghdad. They are apparently assumed to be insurgents. After the initial shooting, an unarmed group of adults and children in a minivan arrives on the scene and attempts to transport the wounded. They are fired upon as well. The official statement on this incident initially listed all adults as insurgents and claimed the US military did not know how the deaths ocurred. Wikileaks released this video with transcripts and a package of supporting documents on April 5th 2010 on http://collateralmurder.com