Blatant Reality

Take a look at this and tell me this isn’t the US Government helping subsidize Europe’s self imposed high oil prices.

The scam — as Shadegg and others call it — is known as “splash and dash.” It stems from an existing $1 subsidy for every gallon of biodiesel fuel blended with regular diesel in the United States.

 

Here’s how it works:

 

Biodiesel is produced abroad using South American sugar cane or Asian palm oil and shipped to the United States, where it’s blended with just a “splash” of regular diesel.

 

A typical tanker-load of about 9 million gallons of biodiesel requires just 9,000 gallons of American diesel to make it qualify for the subsidy. But every gallon in the shipment garners a buck. The ship then makes a “dash” for Europe, where its fuel is sold below market rates.

 

That means each tanker-load that makes the dash nets importers about $9 million dollars in tax credits from the IRS. Lawmakers have estimated its cost to Americans at tens — or even hundreds — of millions each year.

 

And while Congress and the National Biodiesel Board say they know the loophole is being exploited — as America is exporting much more biofuel than it’s producing — they’ve been unable to identify the guilty companies.

 

“Ultimately when you dig down it gets to the point that you would have to have access to IRS information,” said Manning Feraci, vice president of federal affairs at the National Biodiesel Board. “Taxpayer information is confidential, so we can’t have access to it.”

Luckily, Europe is mad about this too because it is hurting European biofuel producers and they demanding that the US stop this subsidy. Rep. John Shadeg, R-AZ is leading the charge to close this loophole. Hopefully he succeeds because the thought of us subsidizing another countries energy when our prices are outrageously high is completely asinine.

If you aren’t already aware of this, the United State’s Military has outsourced the production of the Air Force’s new generation of tankers to two European companies (some history on this here and here). These two companies, EADS and Northrop, are going to be receiving this contract that is worth billions of dollars. Normally, globalization is a very good thing that ends up saving everyone money. However, with the current state of the economy and the respective national security implications, this contract should have been awarded to a domestic company.

In fact, Boeing had bid on this contract and was only outbid because these foreign companies are receiving such large subsidies from their respected governments. This, in itself, should be grounds for the US government to not grant this contract to either EADS or Northrop.

Luckily, the US Government Accountability Office will be looking into Boeing’s formal complaint against this decision and should have a ruling towards the end of this month. The Center for Individual Freedom has taken up the fight by launching AmericasTanker.com. This site not only provides updates about this issue, it also allows visitors to send emails to their respective Representatives and Senators.

If you would like to voice your complaint against EADS and Northrop receiving this contract, go here to send an email to your legislator.

One question we must ask ourselves is that in this time of war, do we really want some of our important military technologies in the hands of foreign companies(definitely if it is the French who haven’t been that supportive of us)?

Boeing has been there for us since before World War II and I think that they deserve our support.

I have probably stated this fact before but the French get roughly 75% of their energy from nuclear power. They have been operating on a mainly nuclear power since the 70s and the lack of media attention this has received should be a sign of just how successful they have been in this respect.

A recent news article by CNN makes the argument that the US should follow the France’s example in order to end our dependency on foreign oil.

When Goldman Sachs analysts suggested last week that oil could hit $200 a barrel, I expected someone somewhere to express horror at the possibility. But the reaction was a tiny, resignation-filled sigh. Relentless fuel-price increases have so exhausted consumers that we don’t have the energy to be outraged anymore. So we feel helpless as we watch oil sprint past the $130 mark on its way to price-prohibitive territory and wonder whether it’s too late to bring back the horse and buggy. Our sense of helplessness is an illusion: There are things we can do. We got ourselves into this mess, mostly through multiple administrations of politically comfortable but shortsighted decision-making. And inasmuch as we’re willing to stand a little political discomfort, we can get ourselves out.

 

One uncomfortable way to mitigate the energy crisis has been under our nose since the 1950s: nuclear energy. It’s one of the cleanest and most efficient alternatives to coal- and natural-gas-based electricity production, and it’s responsible for less than 20% of domestic electricity production. The most recent numbers (2006) indicate that coal-based production was the largest contributor, at 48%. Increasingly expensive petroleum and natural gas account for 22%. All three are replaceable.

 

It may not be fashionable to suggest that the French know what they’re doing with regard to anything but wine and cheese, but spend some time in Provence and note the remarkably clean air and cheap electricity, 75% of which is produced by nuclear power plants. Most of the plants were built after the 1970s oil shocks that sent France’s economy into a tailspin because it was almost completely dependent on foreign oil, as we are now. Nuclear energy doesn’t produce the air pollution that burning coal does, and even waste products are recyclable, though it hasn’t been done thanks to an also potentially shortsighted Carter-era decision to ban it over fears of nuclear terrorism.

I don’t normally say this but the French have a good idea here and I think we just might to emulate them this one time.

Today, two men were stopped from entering a nuclear power plant in Sweden after they were discovered to be carrying small amounts the same highly explosive material used by suicide bombers in Israel.

“They told us a welder who was going to perform a job there had been stopped in a random security check. He had been carrying small amounts of the highly explosive material TATP,” Karlsson said.

 

TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, is a high explosive which is extremely unstable, especially when subjected to heat, friction and shock.

 

The compound can be prepared in a home laboratory from easily available household chemicals. It has been employed by suicide bombers in Israel and by Richard Reid, the thwarted British “shoebomber” who attempted to blow up a transatlantic airliner in 2001.

Weird how the article doesn’t mention anything about how these men might be terrorists because it sure sounds like it could be one.

If you didn’t know this already, the French like to protest a lot. These aren’t the same kind of protest we are used to where only a few, sporadic groups might participate; These are nationwide protests that can potentially shut down the country and force a lot a people to upgrade their cars.

What might the French want to protest about this time? Well it seems that President Sarkozy wants to modernize France which has led to whispers of revolt in the streets.

While past Presidents have caved to this “street democracy”, Sarkozy will not follow his predecessors examples.

n the same breath, he has made clear that he will not back away from a five-year program for modernizing France - or a showdown in the streets. “I was not elected to bow down in front of all the special interests and everything and everyone opposing change,” he said last week.

 

With this, Sarkozy can marshal arguments - although with little success in penetrating French public opinion - that purchasing power actually increased last year by 3.3 percent (the best figure in five years), and that growth in France 2008 will be around 2 percent (on target and better than the often-cited models of Britain and Spain).

Finally, a French president with some guts and some past successes already under his belt to back up his position. It’s about time. Too bad the French don’t seem to like him too much because, quite honestly, I would probably like him more than whoever is in the White House come January.

Recently, British Airways has stopped serving beef on board their flights partly to ensure they do not offend their Hindu customers. Many people are all up in arms about how this is outrageous and that they shouldn’t do this. I, however, feel that British Airways should be able to do whatever they want.

Lets look at the facts. According to the article, British Airways wasn’t doing this because of a government regulation, a court order, a complaint or anything else for that matter. They decided to institute this change on their own free will.

Now there are two reasons that I see they could be doing this. 1) According to the article, one of their larger markets is India. Therefore, British Airways obviously feels that whatever customers they will lose from not serving beef will be replaced with customers that see BA as “Hindu friendly.” 2) Even though the article says that the airline isn’t discontinuing beef because of its increasing cost, that could very well be the case.

Either way, the bottom line the company is doing this is because of the potential increase in profits. Without anything other than the market influencing the company’s choices, I really don’t see why people are complaining about this so much.

If you want to eat beef on your flight, just change airlines. It’s not like it is going to taste that great anyways.

(Hat tip Drudge Report)

Yeah, you remember Kosovo? The country that declared its independence back in February? Well its still independent and now Britain is sending roughly 600 troop battalion to strengthen the NATO peacekeeping mission there.

“We are … well prepared to meet NATO’s request and I have agreed to deploy our Operational Reserve Force battalion until June 30, 2008,” Defense Secretary Des Browne said in a written statement to parliament.

 

“The deployment will demonstrate our commitment to the security of the region and will provide NATO with extra flexibility in maintaining peace and stability for all communities within Kosovo,” he said.

 

The soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, The Rifles, will spend about a month in Kosovo, from late May until the end of June, a Ministry of Defense spokesman said.

 

The battalion had been on standby since January to go to Kosovo, where they will supplement 16,000 NATO-led peacekeepers.

And these troops may very well be needed quite soon considering the large weapon’s cache discovered near Kosovo’s border with Macedonia.

The Kosovo Police Service (KPS) said on Monday (April 28th) that it arrested four people after stopping a car carrying weapons near the Kosovo-Macedonian border.

 

“We suspect that the weapons and ammunition were meant for the Macedonian market,” KPS spokesman Veton Elshani told the DPA.

 

The arsenal seized in a village near the town of Gnjilane on Sunday night reportedly included rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds, anti-aircraft machine guns and ammunition of different calibres. Police delivered the seized munitions to the NATO-led force operating in this part of Kosovo.

 

Police believe the intended recipients were ethnic Albanian extremists in Macedonia. The country endured a seven-month inter-ethnic conflict in 2001.

Remember where World War I was started? Yeah, they call this area a powder keg for a reason.

You might as well just add this to the long list of other disturbing trends that are happening in England.

With Russia about to experience “leadership” from two sources (Putin and Medvedev), some are predicting that the power sharing won’t last too long.

Russia is heading for a crisis if President Vladimir Putin and his successor, Dmitry Medvedev, try to share the country’s leadership, the leader of the biggest opposition party said on Tuesday.

 

Putin, whose presidency ends next month, has said he will serve as prime minister under his protege Medvedev. This will create a power-sharing arrangement unusual for a country accustomed to having a single, strong leader.

 

“I find it hard to imagine a Russia in which there are two tsars,” Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov told a news conference.

 

Russian history showed that when there was no clear leader, “feuds and serious disorder always began, so we need to understand how they are going to divide up power between them,” he said. “If they rule together it will not work out.”

Well you know what they say about trying to serve two masters. There very well may come a day when the Russian people have to pick a side.

In a new book by Switzerland’s Ambassador to Argentina claims that several of Kosovo’s current leaders were responsible for kidnapping Serbians and selling their organs.

Carla del Ponte, a former prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague, now Switzerland’s Ambassador to Argentina, made a sensational announcement. Her autobiographical book “The Hunt” reveals that Serbian men have been kidnapped and their organs were sold to international traffickers.

 

Carla del Ponte’s announcements have already caused the criminal case institution in Serbia. District Court of Belgrade has already started the hearing of 300 young Serbians being kidnapped in the summer of 1999, who as del Ponte claims, were transported to Albania and had there their internal organs removed.

 

These villainous crimes, compared just to the horrors of Third Reich, were held by the leaders of Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) whose co-leader was the present-day prime minister of Kosovo Hashim Thaci. His profile, gathered by his opponents, contains the evidence of dozens of crimes made by him as a field commander against the Serbians in Kosovo.

 

According to Simo Spasich, the head of the Missing in Action Families Union, he met Carla del Ponte several times and gave her the documents, containing evidence of Kosovo’s Serbians kidnapping and killing in concentration camps. However even after the prosecutor visited the house where the organs have been removed, in the town of Burel in the north of Albania, to see herself medical equipment and blood that proved del Ponte was right, no further investigation was proposed.

Hmmm…. Who would buy organs off the black market and is near enough to Kosovo to make it happen? The Russians! Well, I really have no evidence for that but wouldn’t that be a twist of fate if it were true?