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Spilling the beans
When I was growing up there was one thing you did not do: tell tales.
I suspect the reasoning behind it was that adults didn’t want to become embroiled in children’s squabbles.
Times have changed – and brought a greater realization of the harm done by putting secrecy (and often loyalty) above addressing wrongdoing. The recent coming to light of sex-abuse cases, going back decades, has made this explicit.
So common is the term ‘whistleblower’ today that it’s easy to forget its relative newness. It only became a household term in the 1970s, popularized by US activist Ralph Nader. Whistleblowing tends to come in waves – and it’s fair to say we are witnessing a tidal one right now. Necessary it most certainly is, as revelations show the extent to which we – the public – are being infantilized by the states that rule us and their so-called security apparatus.
All is not lost, though, as the courage of whistleblowers testifies. One of the contributors to this month’s Big Story, David Morgan, drew my attention to this poem by Emily Dickinson: We never know how high we are/Till we are asked to rise/ And then if we are true to plan/Our statures touch the skies.
As usual, she says it best, with fewest words. Also in this month’s issue, Tim Gee travels to Yasuní in Ecuador to see how local people and environmentalists are still determined to resist oil interests intent on drilling into the heart of one of the world’s most ecologically valuable troves of natural biodiversity.
And finally, Louise Gray catches up with Angélique Kidjo, the dynamic and fearless musician from Benin who makes archbishops dance and speaks truth to tyrants. ■
vanessa baird for the New Internationalist Co-operative newint.org
B r a n d
This month’s contributors include: R e u b e n
Patience Akumu is a freelance journalist based in Kampala, Uganda, specialising in social issues. She is the winner of the David Astor journalism award 2013.
Nadja Wohlleben is a documentary photographer, adventurer and modern-day gypsy. Her photographic work focuses on concerned cultural and social issues, portraying them in a new, unseen light
Sandhya Srinivasan is a freelance journalist and is consulting editor of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics and of public health for Infochange News & Features.
Tim Gee is an activist and grassroots trainer. He is the author of two books: You Can’t Evict an Idea (2013) and Counterpower (2011). He is currently working on a documentary film about South Africa.
Coming next month
Organ trafficking The illicit trade in human organs – mainly kidneys – is a multimillion-dollar business. Spanning continents, bringing together for a brief period the medically desperate with the desperately poor, it is portrayed by the pushers as helping out people in extreme need. But this illegal, exploitative trade remains firmly in the hands of criminal networks.
With gangs taking the major cut of the vast sums paid out by buyers, the seller gets a raw deal. Rarely properly briefed about the reality of organ removal, often coerced or unable to change their minds, sellers are often cheated out of the money promised to them, and dumped with no thought for aftercare: for them, the transaction remains fraudulent, unequal and dangerous.
Next month’s New Internationalist features the work of medical anthropologist and activist Nancy Scheper-Hughes, a world authority on the subject, with first-person accounts from across the entire spectrum of the trade. Exploring the mass of ethical issues involved, it brings to light why the traffic in human organs is so difficult to stamp out.
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