Crapaud blow
A CRAPAUD puffed some air on a man in Georgetown the other night and word on the street is that he is blaming his distress on the government.
Many people are complaining about the increase in mosquito attacks since the rains began and some are pinning the blame on the government, although I read this week that a rise in the mosquito population is also causing concern in Jamaica.
I suppose it is to be expected that a government in power gets blamed – rightly or wrongly – for all the ills affecting the people they were elected to govern, much like so many are trying to take it out on United States President Barack Obama for the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Mr. Obama is a target in the U.S. because the spill happened under his watch; and so it is that that man in Georgetown, who unfortunately happened to be the target of a good puffing and blowing from a crapaud that felt threatened when he approached its territory, is fingering the government for his misery.
Most people fear crapauds (toads) but they live on mosquitoes, other insects and other small creatures and those complaining about the current rampages by those blood suckers should be complimenting the crapauds — and the frogs and geckos crawling on their walls and around their houses.
But that’s how it goes. A crapaud on the hunt for mosquitoes, swells up and blows to keep off a man it thinks is threatening it, and the upset man blames the government for a crapaud doing its job.
It’s amazing how contrived some people in this country have become and if you want to believe them, the government has let loose hordes of crapauds and swarms of mosquitoes around the country to terrorise innocent people.
It seems that Guyana, in their eyes, has become a hell hole that no sane person would want to be in.
The self-styled high priests and priestesses in the media and other places claim it has never been so rough for hard-working, honest, decent journalists seeking to fairly and accurately present the news and their unbiased views to the rest of the public.
If you are to believe them, local journalists just doing their job are under threat and are living in truly dangerous times so much so that if they only slip, crapaud eat their dinner.
There may be some excesses and every care must be taken against any authoritarian tendencies, but people should not be asked to run for their lives because some people feel crapaud blowing on them or mosquitoes biting them are part of an official evil campaign.
Look at what has happened to veteran American journalist Helen Thomas for speaking her mind on the Israeli occupation of the land of the people of Palestine who have for so long been refugees in their own country.

“The Jews should get the hell out of Palestine”, the legendary White House reporter, 89 years old, said to a rabbi at a Jewish Heritage Month celebration on May 27.
Mark LeVine, a professor of history at UC Irvine and senior visiting researcher at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden, in an article published on Al Jazeera’s website, has an interesting take on what happened to Thomas because she spoke her mind.

“This might be the US, the home of free speech, where The New York Times editors see no threat to journalistic integrity in having as their Israel bureau chief a reporter whose son serves in the Israeli army (to his credit, The Times’ public editor did argue against such a move, but was ignored), but should a reporter with half a century of distinguished reporting, make one anti-Israel statement she can no longer be considered capable of reporting honestly on any issue.

And sure enough, after profusely apologising for her remarks and declaring her belief that `peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognise the need for mutual respect and tolerance’,” Thomas retired, he notes.

Thomas paid a rather heavy price merely for speaking her mind and it is clear that she had to go not merely because she may have been deemed unable to no longer report unbiasedly. Far more powerful factors were in play here and I doubt anybody will be trying to finger President Obama for her removal.

Those here who try to puff up crapaud stories should remember the price some Guyanese have paid for speaking out and for doing their job.

Sunday marks the 30th anniversary of the assassination of the brilliant historian-politician, Dr. Walter Rodney, the victim of a well-orchestrated and centrally-directed plot in which a remote-controlled bomb exploded in his lap as he was sitting with his brother Donald in a car.
Dr. Rodney was a bitter critic of the previous government who was targeted and hounded because he was the magnet of mounting opposition to the excesses of that administration.

When Rodney had to flee from police who were beating people gathering to hear him speak at a public meeting in Kitty, former President Forbes Burnham sneeringly publicly remarked that Rodney may do well in an Olympics sprint because of his agility in escaping from the police.

Some may be also forgetting that Father Bernard Darke, a Jesuit priest, teacher and photographer for the Catholic Standard, was in July, 1979 knifed to death in broad daylight on Brickdam, Georgetown, not far from the Brickdam Police Station.

He was merely taking photographs of vicious thugs linked to the state and the then governing party ruthlessly attacking a group of people on the street.

Those were the days when thugs were let loose on people daring to attend public meetings and when journalists were often exposed to extreme danger for doing their job.

Journalists and photographers covering the opposition-organised street protests in Georgetown even in the late 1990s and up to the early years of this decade were often beaten up and camera and other equipment stolen from them.
We have thankfully moved along the road from those terrifying days and those running scared of crapauds blowing should remember the crocodiles of the not so distant past.