Exodus (by Leon Uris, 1958.)

This eminent text has to do originally with the refugee status of many Hebrew people everywhere after the end of the world war more than fifty years ago.  Many were in sordid and sub – standard conditions even for the poorest of the poor in the day due to their having been first pursued by the Axis powers that then sought to eliminate them completely.  The victorious Allies at the time as supervised by the Americans were given the dubious task of resettling these people wherever they could find a home and doubtless due to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, many of them preferred Palestine but could not or did not make it there.  In 1945, when the world war ended, Hebrew people from everywhere, especially in what were the final battlegrounds from the war, made their way to Palestine the best they could, often traveling by train and then by boat, both modes of transportation that at the time had become rickety and risky for passengers given the battleground military’s having taken most working infrastructure equipment for itself at the time and thus having left only some working transport for civilians there in Europe and neighboring territories. 

 

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The text in any event gives rich encapsulations for the reader of deportations, conditions in the camps, methods used by the Nazis to eliminate the Jews, the situation in the Warsaw Ghetto and related uprising, the situation of Jews in Russia, and that in the other major camps in Southern Poland and Germany, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere at the time.  The text uses these details as a backdrop for personal stories of many different personalities, all fictitious, and their lives as they unfold after the Allied victory.  The plot even goes into the first Arab – Israeli war in 1947, and examines the plight of Palestinian Jews making the attempt to emigrate to Israel at the time as well.  “Exodus,” the title of the book, is taken from a passenger ship with 300 Jewish children at the time making its way from Cyprus to Israel.  A highly recommended read for anyone. 

American "Soccer" - Not Just for Juveniles Anymore.

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Story:  U.S. International Football Selection - 2013.

"Safe Haven."

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This new film starring (Nicolas Sparks written) Julianne Hough and Josh Duhamel has a strange European flavor brought about by its being set in a part of the U.S. where many foreigners vacation, for starters, and then where many of the local people by this media production are at a loss to determine why while getting going and getting on with their lives.  The film is about relationships and any viewer needs to know that while it has been critically panned, there are indeed some reasons for it leaving other such films, even those like "Ordinary People," "Terms of Endearment," or a little like "Cape Fear," or any number of other, similar productions in their proper places as Hollywood productions (maybe except for "Cape Fear,") that were somewhat unsung and in all very good.  The plot as it starts tugs at the heartstrings showing a gruesome scene of abuse and violence and the flight of a victim from justice.  With this in mind, the production proceeds in very charming fashion to depict the victim in this film to be one of accidental and moral high ground, and with good features in a world that is quite unhandsome. 

No Steve McQueen here, or Robert De Niro, or any of the players that would just draw people.  Now people like me know Hough and Duhamel are serious about their work and have acted in movies about the Carolinas area before, at least Duhamel has.  If you can get through the initial scene, much can be said about this production and its approach to showing the ordinary and simple, strongly rooted care and concern people have for each other.  Old - fashioned romance is out of the question, as that does not really exist anymore for the players here, nor would it help given the circumstances.  But the setting of the film in a temperate climate, cinematography, the character dialogues, gestures and consideration scripted into the this show the straightness and practicality of family relationships despite what are threats that catch up in dramatic fashion.  The plot is also about the trades and the restaurant business, and involves a dragnet and occasional violent confrontations by the antagonist, an obsessed and alienated (and stupidly violent) vigilante whose character style is so far out in left field that this is undoubtedly what the critics seized upon in putting a damper on this film.  As usual, the good guys are supposed to "win," though this is hardly clear as this happens, but lives are destroyed that are outside the social net and again, care and concern and action and sanctions that would ordinarily govern.  What's the point of such productions?  The audience in this case needs to sit back in the comfort of the screening chair and at least try to take seriously the chaos, vicissitudes and occasional criminal confrontations that make up the features of the film not to mention the intermittent scenes for the concerned couple and their families:  A dramatic portrayal and illustration, again, of complex and unpredictable issues that despite excellent acting do not make for magazine covers.  Nonetheless worth seeing for the matinee crowd at least.

the new socialist regime and the french republic.



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The recent regime change in France amid renewed socialist fervor in that country, mostly due to the same economic and political conditions that brought Francois Mitterand to office in that country some years ago, poses a threat to political realities everywhere given the, again newfound, positivism in French politics these days.  Socialism in France has a different flavor than that fostered by the soviet communists in the old days:  Whereas the soviets relied primarily on principles close to strict Marxism, French socialism is an effort in theory to build, or re – build a utopia using the principles of liberalism that appear to its own socialists to be the best means to accomplish this end.  Remember France has a quite popular anti – conservative and anti – royalist tradition that is bounded by ordinary civilized politics and administration including frequent instances of civil disobedience, activism, and administrative rabble – rousing and ‘stirring the pot.’  What does this mean?  The first thing to remember is the French socialists, not their communist party that no longer really exists; but their socialists believed in more sterilized and scientific approaches to ousting conservatives than the sort of bank – robbing and gun – slinging many soviet communists favored even in more modern times.  This had American administrations believing for a long time that it was possible to live with a strongly socialist French president Mitterrand, though it is well – known Mitterrand so loathed the right he was willing to embrace the right in the USSR at the time more than the Americans, though this ideal fizzled with the end of the soviet system in 1991 or so.  

 

The socialists in France have already proven to be more glamorous than their conservative predecessors as subsequent to their troop reductions in the Afghanistan war they have far – flung operations in Mali in the conflicts there at this point.  Mitterrand concentrated on Tchad for a while and New Caledonia as well as places to send troops to fight.  The French socialists regimes almost rely as heavily on the military for security and self - assurance than their soviet analogs had done in the day given the emphasis in soviet times on the intrigues and unwinding plots and plans of the state organs.  The French federal constitution allows for more political and civic freedoms for its citizens than the old soviet one did, and thus the willful demonstrations of security forces and the military are less stark under French socialism than in the former soviet times.  The reasons for this are palpable and evident to anyone who has visited the French capitol where any number of ethnicities have their territories and social cliques, and where there are many conflicted interests as a result, not to mention the ordinary operations of the police bureaus and Interior Ministry personnel.  What do socialist French regimes, as that of Francois Hollande that follows the regime of Nicolas Sarkozy, invite and engender besides a varietal form of liberal regime in Western Europe?  It is difficult to speculate, though every Marxist for years has pointed to the leftist regimes in France, and their capitalist – compatible form of socialism despite the open admiration of some officials there for the soviets, as a successful form of liberalism in which the state provides a social net, education, military readiness, a well – trained police force, rule of law administration, and other principles un – characteristic of typical socialist regimes.  These principles nonetheless apply to those within the party, as the French socialists appear to depend upon widespread party support for success in elections and do not necessarily reach across party lines for votes, nor for moral nor financial support.  Informally mentioning the closely knit socialist elite in France as a candidate for the actual mantle of worldwide Marxism after the end of the USSR is a possibility, and with an internal French will to a utopic view of a liberal regime, again, instead of one that emphasizes the cult of personality and secrecy, and machinations of the organs under what was soviet Russia and its satellites.  This is no apology for either soviet regimes, nor at all for the utopic socialists in France and elsewhere (including in places like P.R.C., Southeast Asia, South America, the Middle East and Africa, … .)  It is a writing purposefully and briefly proposed to bring issue awareness to a new type of leftist politics that muddies the political / economic waters that were cleared by the end of the cold war and the abandoning of communism.  Remember one attraction of this is upon the end of the USSR, considerable numbers of communists and leftists, some of whom were very accomplished people under the old regime, were cast out and they have been waiting in the wings for their fortunes to rise again through a resurgence of any liberal regimes in Europe or anywhere.  Such individuals and their associates and families have eked out a bitter existence for years since the early 1990’s despite their respectability under the leftist values of old.  A question proposed by this writing as well is what should be done with these parties who were cast aside and who have found a resurgence in new liberal regimes in Europe and elsewhere.  How should they be treated, and should they be legitimized anew by their values as subscribed by regimes such as the current one in France and the important place of that now leftist country in the community of nations, and in the world opinion that is formed commonly starting in the villages and hamlets yearning for a better life everywhere.