DAVID ROSENBERG ON ANTI-SEMITISM AND RACISM IN THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY

I am indebted to David Rosenberg, the author of the online 'Rebel Notes', for the thrust of this post. He has taught me much. Here is a link to a post he published at the end of last year on the roots of anti-Semitism - press here.

He begins with some personal biography that establishes his Jewish family background and his credentials as a lifetime fighter against racism - and his capacity to change his ideas as he reflects on issues:

'I want to start with some personal biography. My grandparents came to Britain as Jewish child immigrants from Poland and Ukraine in the early 1900s. I grew up in an economically struggling Jewish family in inner London that gradually became more comfortable.

My extended family were mostly Labour voters, plus some communist-supporting relatives. My family were traditional; not very religious, not actively Zionist. They had no family in Israel, but sympathised with Israel at a general level.

I became involved in socialist politics and antifascist activism when I was around 16 years old. My first demonstration was against the National Front, a group formed in Britain in 1967 by convinced Nazis who recruited a wider layer of supporters from all classes by condemning black immigration and promoting British nationalism.'

Battle of Cable Street - 1936 - the Jewish community fight back against the fascists

David Rosenberg continues: 

'I went to that demonstration with several Jewish friends from a Zionist youth group. I had illusions then about Israel/Palestine that I discarded long ago. Perhaps only one or two of 

THE LONDON MARATHON 2019 - RFTSA - PART THREE - MORE ABOUT NEWLYN

I promised more detail about Newlyn in Part Two and I am pleased to publish this post in response. If I may, let me take you into Newlyn through my vision as a runner. My focus begins to switch from Penzance to Newlyn by the time I'm approaching the end of the Penzance promenade and I return to the pavement and soon see a Lidl store and garage on the other side of the main road.

The south-western end of the promenade in Penzance

This road will very shortly turn into a gentle straight decline straight down to the traffic lights by the town sign for Newlyn.

The Newlyn town sign has always had a special significance for me - 57 minutes out from Marazion; 30 minutes away from Mousehole - and that's Newlyn Art Gallery facing the road behind the town sign 

Past the traffic lights, half a minute's running takes me to a complex crossroads with the main road through Newlyn turning to the left. This is generally a time to engage all the senses; the cars can

THE LONDON MARATHON 2019 - RUNNING FOR THE SALLY ARMY - PART TWO

Here's my latest update on the training schedule. Monday is my long run day; today is Wednesday - so I am reporting on what happened two days ago and illustrating the story with photographs I took yesterday when I went back in the car, parking at convenient intervals, and photographing sections of the route.

Still around a half mile from the port itself - but manna for a runner's spirit 

 I ran continuously from Marazion to Penzance on the coastal footpath, along the promenade and down into Newlyn - and then up along the coastal road for a couple of miles into Mousehole, then

JAGO STONE - THE AMERICAN CONNECTION - PART TWELVE

This post is composed from two earlier posts that I published in January about the appeal for hi-res images of Jago's artwork. I have designed it for USAF Upper Heyford veteran websites as many Americans who follow these sites will not have seen the January posts - apologies to those who have seen the material before but it's Jago and worth a second look! 


As many readers - but not all - will know, the biography of Jago Stone will be published as 'The Remarkable Life of Jago Stone' by Rob Donovan on October 1 this year. Unicorn PLG are my publishers. Their design team and I are working together to ensure that the book looks as good as it reads - and to this end I contacted recently all those who had sent me images of their Jago Stone paintings and which I then referenced and included as images within the text. Unicorn and I hoped that these contributors would respond and send me hi-res images of their Jago Stone art work which I could then add to the Dropbox to send to Unicorn. The higher the resolution, the finer the picture.

The response has been impressive. So many higher-resolution images have arrived through cyber space. In this post, I give you - the reader - the opportunity to see some of the hi-res images that have come from the United States. A taster for the book itself.

I'll start with a story that I have already outlined in a Christmas 2018 post called: MORE AMERICAN LINKS - THE JENNY JANZEN COLLECTION. Here's the link to that post: Press here. Jenny has one of the largest collections of Jago's watercolours in the United States and we have been fortunate enough to be gifted images of fourteen of them. Four of these, I included in that Christmas 2018 post. Here is another:

Tysoe Fire Station, Warwickshire - Jago Stone (1976)

In the order the American hi-res images came, first the story behind those from Jessica Raber, nee Pue. Jessica is an artist in Bloomington, Indiana - press here for a link. Jessica was five years old when Jago painted a watercolour of her parent's home in Bicester, Oxfordshire in 1984 during the time they were on tour, stationed

TRUMP, FEAR, AND BOB WOODWARD - PART TWO

Bob Woodward is very good at capturing the instinctive Trump style and explaining why he was the winner in the presidential campaign of 2016. Here are some extracts from an early part (p.16) of 'Fear':

'Politicians like Hillary (Clinton) can't talk naturally, (Steve) Bannon said … not from the heart or from deep conviction - not angry. Trump said okay, you become the Chief Executive Officer of the campaign ...
               
They agreed that Kellyanne Conway - a feisty, outspoken Republican pollster who was already helping the campaign - would be designated campaign manager. (Bannon continued) "We're going to put her on television every day as the female-friendly face on the thing … people like her. And that's what we need is likeability … I'll never be on TV."

Fear (2018) by Bob Woodward

Conway had never run a campaign either. That made three of them - the shiny neophyte candidate, the campaign CEO and the campaign manager'.

Woodward was shaping my understanding as I read his words. Trump, Bannon, and Conway - trading as political virgins: a new passport to popular success. And Conway knew her man, her boss - Donald Trump. An unreconstructed septuagenarian. Here is Woodward recording the moment of her appointment:

"Do you think you can run this thing? he asked.
"What is 'this thing'? she asked. "I'm running this photo shoot."
"The campaign," Trump said. "The whole thing. Are you willing to not see your kids for a few

THE LONDON MARATHON 2019 - RUNNING FOR THE SALLY ARMY - PART ONE

When I had come to the end of my 26 miles and a few hundred yards in the London Marathon in April 2017, I spent a few minutes with the Salvation Army officers who were around at the end of the race welcoming their runners as they finished. I had just achieved a personal best marathon time in this, my third marathon - 05:37:29 - aged 68. Three years before, I had completed the Edinburgh Marathon in  05:42:10 and five years before, in 2012 - the year of the London Olympics - I had my first marathon under my belt in 05:40:55. So nearly 3.5 minutes faster in 2017 and five years older. It was like defying gravity but then running has always been a counter-intuitive activity for me - see my background story and the galleries featuring me as a runner by pressing here.

Running for the line in the Mall - London 2017

I was proud to run wearing the Salvation Army vest in 2017 and raise £3000 towards the development of the Sally Army's rehabilitation unit in Swindon for former drug users. I remember

VENEZUELA - THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY

The president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, is the bad guy. He's the one with the bandit moustache. Millions are leaving the country because it's in such a mess. All due to the socialist beliefs of Maduro and his government. The good guy is Juan Guaido who has recently become the president of the national assembly as a leading member of the opposition Popular Will Party. There's an informal agreement to rotate this position of president between the different political  parties in Venezuela. He's the fresh-faced one. No bandit moustache. As soon as he became the president of the national assembly, he declared himself the rightful president of the country. The bad guy, Maduro, was no longer the president. He was.

President Maduro

The president of the United States, Donald Trump, soon announced that Maduro was no longer the president of Venezuela. Juan Guaido now held that position. A few days later, our foreign secretary, James Hunt, declared that Britain does not regard Maduro as Venezuela's "legitimate leader". Instead, opposition head Juan Guiado is "the right person to take the country forward". That's a special relationship in action - Trump leads; the Tory government follows.

self-declared president - Juan Guaido

Listen to our media and the Trump/Tory line rules the airwaves and fills cyberspace. But there is another side to the story.

There is an evident link between Guaido and his actions on the one hand and Trump's support. According to Associated Press, Guaido had secretly visited Washington, Colombia and Brazil in the