Manning: the voice of subversive truths

An Apache helicopter flies over the outskirts of Baghdad. It is 2007 and the conflict in Iraq has been going on for four years. The helicopter flies over the houses and notices a group of people. Shortly afterwards he will fire, killing a dozen, including two journalists and those who had rushed to the scene to help the victims. We know this event because one whistleblower revealed in public a video, shot right from the helicopter’s cockpit, in which these events are seen. In the video, which later became known as Collateral Murderyou can also hear the voices of the pilots and soldiers involved. The video is part of 600 thousand and more confidential or secret documents published in 2010 from WikiLeaks and provided by a former soldier, determined to report “the true face of war“.

This fourth installment of the podcast Revolutionaries in code is dedicated to Chelsea Manningthe whistleblower responsible for one of the biggest leaks in the history of journalism. It is thanks to the documents that Manning passed on to WikiLeaks and that the Assange organization published in collaboration with some of the major newspapers in the world that we learned of the events immortalized in Collateral Murder, like many others. THE 600 thousand and more documents that Manning passed to WikiLeaks, taking them directly from the digital archives of the US army and intelligence are still today a crucial document for analyzing the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and much of contemporary geopolitics and, in 2010, they actually opened the it was big leaks, inspiring many other similar leaks, starting with the one generated by Snowden, which we talked about in the previous installment of this podcast. At the time, Chelsea Manning was a soldier and was based in Iraq, where she worked as an intelligence analyst.

His whistleblowing act, however, cost Manning dearly and held her in jail for over seven years, years in which Manning literally disappeared from public view and was detained in particularly harsh conditions. For three years specifically, at the start of her detention, Manning also simply waited for the trial against her to begin. In 2013 Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison, still the most severe prison sentence ever imposed to someone responsible for a whistleblower act. The day after the sentence, Manning came up with her female identity for the first time, saying that she was a woman and wanted to be called as Chelsea Elizabeth Manning. At that moment he also began his battle for access to therapies necessary for his gender transition.

The life of Chelsea Manning and her struggle for survival in prison is a story that holds many more together, all the stories from all of Chelsea Manning’s previous lives before she became Chelsea Manning, whistleblower, activist, free trans woman. Manning, guest in 2018 of the Wired Next Fest in Milanis perhaps the story of the person who has dreamed most dangerously in the last decade, trying to end two wars by downloading the most secret files of a superpower on rewritable CDs with the above written Lady Gaga. A story of courage and affirmation. The story of a whistleblower.

Revolutionaries in code is written by Philip Di Salvo and told together with Federico Ferrazzawhile the production is edited by Giulia Rocco And Luca Zorloni. Revolutionaries in code is a podcast that examines, through extraordinary biographies, the future of democracy, a theme at the center of the Wired Next Fest in Milan scheduled for 7 and 8 October.

Have a good listening.