The Blue Monkey Review

I regularly receive commentary on events and developments in Israel from Yaacov Lozowick, who is the director of the archives at Yad Vashem and author of Right to Exist (reviewed on the Blue Monkey Review). Yesterday he sent along the following. The text is entirely Yaacov. The links are mine, so don't blame Yaacov for them. A general primer on Israel parties can be found on the BBC.

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As you may know, we've got an election coming up soon. Me, I already know what the result will be, and indeed, even published them in the paperback edition of Right to Exist. However, I've decided that prudence is an admirable virtue, so I ain't saying, not till after the results roll in and I've had the opportunity to airbrush my version a wee bit as necessary.

Continue reading "Israeli Politics for Dummies" »

Posted by at 9:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lately I’ve been following Argentina’s struggle to recover from the economic collapse of its economy in 1999. With ballooning external debts, corruption in high government, and the worldwide economic downturn at the end of the century, Argentina could no longer sustain the open-ended subsidy of consumerism that had flourished for years when the Argentine peso was pegged to the U.S. dollar. During the last couple of weeks the Argentine and international press has paid close attention to efforts by Argentine President Nestor Kirchner to renegotiate the country’s external debt. In 2001 Argentina defaulted on its privately held debt, and more recently forced the International Monetary Fund to offer new conditions in response to Argentina’s default on its public international debt. During this last week Spanish President José Maria Aznar told his Argentine counterpart that Argentina lacked the support of Argentina, apparently meaning that the Latin American country had to do much more to pull itself out of a problem of its own making. Kirchner responded, saying that Argentina was helping itself by defending its own interests. But his minister of the Interior, Aníbal Fernández commented much more bluntly that "los presidentes serios de los países serios, nunca advierten a los presidentes de otros países.”

Continue reading "The Global Economy" »

Posted by at 2:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Religion and the Middle East? I guess you could say there is a connection. Although this does not deal with Right to Exist, I offer another perspective on conflict in the Holy Land.

Continue reading "Children of Abraham" »

Posted by at 9:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)