On the strategic level, Israelis lose hope. They should be told honestly and clearly that they must not lose hope for peace – because they must not harbor any such hope in the first place. There will be no peace here, ever. Muslims will be always hostile, defense has to be always maintained, and Palestinians will engage in terrorism and sabotage. We shall lose no hope because there is no hope. This is the way of living here, among the sea of Muslims.
On the political level, Israelis lose the very Israel-ness, patriotism. Not surprisingly. Patriotism is attachment to the land of our ancestors. But media brainwashes the Israeli that Judea and Samaria is not our land and the Arabs’ (therefore not our) ancestors lived here. Patriotism cannot base itself on the meek “but we, too, need a place to live.” Israeli identity can only survive by becoming assertive – at the Palestinians’ expense. We cannot have peace, we don’t want peace, and we want this land in its entirety – as much as we can circle with our tanks. This is the only patriotism in existence among human beings.
On the economic level, Israel is a complete disaster. It took ingenious Jewish socialists and Jewish bureaucrats to defeat Jewish entrepreneurs. Jews are the best in good and evil alike, and evil Jews have prevailed. No patriotism can stand economic deficiency. Russians are extremely patriotic, but capitalism’s riches lured many of them to America. Israeli patriotism cannot stand the trial of net wages being four times lower than in America. Israeli government lobbies America, Canada, and Australia frantically to enforce immigration restrictions. The lousy economy threatens the very existence of Jewish people in Israel, as they would steadily emigrate and assimilate. There is no issue of reforming Israeli economic framework – it must be demolished. Trade unions must be banned, a flat figure of 99% of bureaucrats fired, and regulation abolished rather than changed. This objective is immensely more urgent than the worthless peace with Palestinians or useless peace with Syria.
Mumbai/Hyderabad: A
charity run by discredited Satyam Computer Services Ltd former chairman B.
Ramalinga Raju has come under scrutiny as two non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) have said in court that the charity was used to grab land and overcharge
the government, which funded it through its National Health Mission. The
emergency ambulance service, called Emergency Access Foundation (Emri) is
modelled on the 911 service provided in the US during medical emergencies. Emri
owns 1,500 ambulances and employs 12,000 people, according to its CEO Venkat
Changavalli.
The registrar of the
Supreme Court on Wednesday directed the Union of India, 12 state governments
and Emri to respond by 18 February to a petition filed by Ambulance Access
Foundation Ltd and Transparency in Contracts. This happened even as some state
governments, who deal with Emri, told Mint that they are mulling whether
to terminate existing contracts, rivals allege that the charity has violated
several official rules and its bankers say that they are keeping a close watch
on its accounts.
Quite unlike the US
911 service, Emri was dependent on generous government funding. The petitioners
say that 95% of the costs incurred by Emri— including both capital and
operating costs—were borne by government agencies. The two NGOs add that most
contracts were given out to Emri without proper tendering, while in some cases
tenders were tailor-made to benefit Emri. The public interest litigation (PIL) was filed
on 24 October based on information running into 25,000 pages collected with the
help of 504 applications using the Right to Information Act. Notices were issued
by the Supreme Court on 17 November, well before the Satyam accounting scandal
came out into the open.
“Why does Emri
require 20 acres of land in Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar or Bangalore to run a
control centre?” asks Subrato Das, executive trustee and CEO of Lifeline
Foundation, a Vadodara-based non-profit ambulance service that began in 2002
and now operates in six states. “Every asset that Emri uses, including the real
estate, is owned by the government,” counters Changavalli.
Even as other
charities running ambulances bristle at what they perceive as unfair deals to
benefit Emri, other stakeholders are responding to the questions raised by the
two petitioners in court.
Mint learns that a few
states —including Maharashtra, Punjab and Meghalaya—are now thinking of
withdrawing from contracts they had awarded to Emri, especially after the 7
January admission by Raju that he had fudged Satyam’s accounts.
In a phone
interview with Mint, Changavalli denied that any of the eight states
that use Emri services are backing out. “We are operating in eight
states—Assam, Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Goa, Maharashtra
and Orissa,” he reiterated.
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