Chelsea Manning: "The US is a conclusion of the extreme right that began with Nixon, and with Biden nothing has changed"

The figure of former soldier and intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning went around the world after a military court sentenced her to 37 years in prison.

She had already served 36 months in preventive detention for

.

Those revelations - of which it is forbidden to speak in the interview - placed the foreign policy of the United States in the spotlight.

For Chelsea, however, they marked

.

The day after hearing her sentence, Manning announced to the judge

and thus began the process of gender transition from prison.

Since his release in 2017, his

has earned him numerous awards, such as the Life Award that he has just received in Santa Cruz de Tenerife,

that, for five years, have been in value the work of the collective in the prestigious

.

Let's start at the end.

What person were you before entering prison and what person left prison? I have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder due to prolonged exposure to solitary confinement, I am in therapy, and perhaps that is what has overwhelmed me the most since I was released.

But it was not an experience that has altered my understanding of the world and my place in it.

Maybe now I appreciate time much more.

I don't like losing it, I find it very valuable.

And I don't value money either as long as I have enough to pay for what I need.

I find all the material extremely superficial. However, she announced to the judge the decision to begin her gender transition the day after hearing her sentence and began the process in jail.

It was, perhaps, neither the best time nor the best place...

I had no choice but to turn my relationship with my body into a legal matter.

That forced me to go public with very intimate matters, but it was my way of fighting the legal system.

In this way, I claimed a series of rights in the prison environment, such as access to medical care, the ability to practice a religion or not in prison, to choose between vegan or meat options. They are fundamental rights that, suddenly, may not be so fundamental as to extend them to the prison environment, and therefore can be taken away.There will be those who think that it was a judicial maneuver.

But you didn't wake up one day and say, 'I'm a woman.'

Her gender transition started much earlier. I already knew that I was different, gender non-conforming, at 18 or 19 years old.

I knew about hormones and that they were an option, but in America you had to pay for them out of pocket.

And from then on I knew it was something I desperately needed and was going to have to tackle at some point in my life.

The circumstances occurred in prison.

I would have liked it to be different, but it happened that way. They have just awarded him the Life Prize at the Alan Turing awards, within the Culture and Business Pride of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

How do you feel in this very public role as an LGBTI activist? I find it fascinating that, as a trans person, I get an award for speaking out on issues that affect the gay or trans community.

But I am much more than that and I try to go one step further.

I am concerned about these issues, of course, but I do not stay in the small segments,

Rather, I try to examine how different communities are affected by the same institutions, but in very different ways.

For example, immigrants in the United States.

On the other hand, trans people

What if you are trans and immigrant?

These shared identities, extreme cases oppressed and excluded by the system, are what interest me.

That is where I want to put the focus. It just happened to him, for example, in the Ukraine... Yes.

I was working in Europe when the invasion started, and I volunteered to work in the field for a few days, helping the refugees who were arriving in Poland.

And I focused especially on refugees from the collective

trans people.

What if you are trans and immigrant?

These shared identities, extreme cases oppressed and excluded by the system, are what interest me.

That is where I want to put the focus. It just happened to him, for example, in the Ukraine... Yes.

I was working in Europe when the invasion started, and I volunteered to work in the field for a few days, helping the refugees who were arriving in Poland.

And I focused especially on refugees from the collective

trans people.

What if you are trans and immigrant?

These shared identities, extreme cases oppressed and excluded by the system, are what interest me.

That is where I want to put the focus. It just happened to him, for example, in the Ukraine... Yes.

I was working in Europe when the invasion started, and I volunteered to work in the field for a few days, helping the refugees who were arriving in Poland.

And I focused especially on refugees from the collective

and I volunteered to work in the field for a few days, to help the refugees who were arriving in Poland.

And I focused especially on refugees from the collective

and I volunteered to work in the field for a few days, to help the refugees who were arriving in Poland.

And I focused especially on refugees from the collective

and trans people who were crossing the border.

The problem of these people, who arrived seeking asylum at such a terrible time, is multiplied by their condition. You have said that the United States has become an almost fascist country after a long process that culminated in the arrival from Trump to the White House.

Does he maintain the diagnosis to this day? Donald Trump was the conclusion of a far-right project begun in the Nixon Administration in the 1960s, which continued under Reagan and has continued to this day. So, is Biden more than the same? I think so.

There have been some progressive foreign policy stances regarding Ukraine, or getting more and more involved in Latin America.

But beyond that

I perceive few real attempts to do anything.

And that's because liberal politics in the United States is really center-right, and the main goal is to maintain

.

There was an attempt with Bernie Sanders, who was close to being nominated, but the political

of the Democratic Party is to keep things the same. As a former intelligence analyst, you are still linked to the sector as a security consultant for the private company, but you have never hid his fierce criticism of artificial intelligence.

What is your position on the "perversion" of the system? I think there are a lot of ethical problems with AI implementations.

Why technologies like

are only used for monetary purposes, and does not encourage use for social purposes or a more participatory economy?

But one thing is that I don't like the background of this technology and quite another that I don't find it exciting. What role does the algorithm play in this ethical pessimism that permeates all your discourse? The confrontation of the increasingly radical points of view to get

has been helped by algorithms.

These have fueled the informative controversy;

any political issue is the object of shock, of discussion.

The amount of personal data that is collected from users per microsecond is crazy, and privacy, anxiety, ethics come into conflict there... It says that in 2030 we will laugh at the problems of 2022. Is it that big a deal? We are on a very dark path, dealing with issues that we have neglected that are interconnected with each other: global warming, the rise of far-right politics... Until now we have faced major crises, but they have not been global .

With the advent of technology and the information society, which has acted as an accelerator, the spread of problems is viral.

There is the example of Covid and how in a matter of weeks it impacted the entire planet, even with different strains.

Or how the war in Ukraine is affecting the supply chain.

The faster the world spins and the faster its connections, the greater the crises we face.

And that's going to mean shortages of basic products, water shortages, civil conflicts... And yes, it's really alarming.

But in spite of everything I am optimistic, because I know that we will learn from it and we will overcome it.

it is really alarming.

But in spite of everything I am optimistic, because I know that we will learn from it and we will overcome it.

it is really alarming.

But in spite of everything I am optimistic, because I know that we will learn from it and we will overcome it.

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