Author: admin

For what’s the underlying implication of the "neocons über alles" meme? It’s that hard-core, down-and-dirty inside operators like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld – who have spent their entire adult lives at the dark heart of the government-corporate-warbiz-spygame power nexus – are actually innocent lambkins led astray by the wicked blandishments of Richard Perle. It’s that the world-striding oil barons, Wall Street dynasts and CIA scions of the Bush Faction are just wide-eyed rubes bamboozled into acting against their own interests by the dazzling sophistry of William Kristol and Michael Leeden. It’s that no U.S. administration would ever undertake the kind of rapacious policies we’ve seen in the last five years – unless they’d been tricked into it by wily Zionists and their ideological outriders. It is, in short, our old friend "American exceptionalism," decked out in dissident drag.

Shakespeare pegged the neo-cons’ true place in the scheme of things more than 400 years ago in Julius Caesar. Listen to Marc Antony dismissing his fellow triumvir Lepidus, and you will hear the authentic voice of Great Gamesters like Cheney, Rumsfeld and James Baker, dicing for world empire and using anything at hand – neo-cons, evangelicals, Caucasian despots, Arab tyrants, Israeli proxies, British lapdogs, Shiite death squads – to further their ambitions:

"This is a slight unmeritable man, meet to be sent on errands…and though we lay these honours on this man, to ease ourselves of divers slanderous loads, he shall but bear them as the ass bears gold, to groan and sweat under the business, either led or driven as we point the way. And having brought our treasure where we will, then we take down his load and turn him off, like to the empty ass, to shake his ears and graze in commons." Or at the World Bank, as the case may be.

Again, this is not to deny that neocon fingerprints are all over the various shivs and bludgeons that the Bush Regime has used in its whack jobs on the Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter, the Magna Carta and the Ten Commandments. After all, the veritable blueprint for the whole godawful shebang – the infamous "Rebuilding America’s Defenses" document of September 2000 – was concocted under the aegis of that quintessentially neocon think tank, the Project for the New American Century….But without the presence of long-time Establishment power players like Cheney and Rumsfeld on the PNAC board, the plan would have remained the pipe dream of a few curdled academics and comb-licking policy wonks. Indeed, it was the Great Gamesters themselves who set the neocons to work on devising ways to extend the "unipolar moment" of unchallenged American power that arose after the collapse of the Soviet Union; the first version of the PNAC plan was drawn up at Cheney’s order by Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter "Leaker" Libby in 1992, in the last months of the Bush I administration.

Under Bush II, the neocons were brought in as shock troops; their mindless zealotry was a perfect tool for implementing the plans drawn up by the real players in the new regime: Cheney’s notorious "Energy Task Force" and the much lesser-known "Joint Task Force on Petroleum" formed by the Council on Foreign Relations and – who else? – the James Baker Institute at Rice University. It was here that the final solution for Iraq was hammered out…

These are dark days, serious times. The whiff of apocalypse is in the air. For it will be virtually impossible for the Gamesters to carry off their next immediate goal, subduing Iran – much less their long-range aim of dominating the world throughout a "new American century" – without the use of nuclear weapons. So let’s be done with the comforting fairy tale that the vast crimes we are witnessing are the work of a few cranks who have somehow hijacked the noble U.S. government and are using it for their own purposes, or Israel’s purposes, or whatever.

The reality is that Iraq was invaded because a powerful faction of the old-line American Establishment wanted to do it and the rest of the Establishment – the Democrats, the media, the "respectable" intelligentsia – countenanced the crime. The belligerence and oppression that the Israeli government is inflicting in Lebanon and Palestine are receiving unquestioned – and armed – support from the United States because this suits the larger strategic purposes of the "global dominance" faction of the Establishment, and the domestic political purposes both of the Democrats, heavily reliant on Jewish-American backing, and the Republicans, dependent on their rabidly pro-Israel evangelical base. [As many others have pointed out, whenever the Israelis try to do something that the American elite don’t like — such as sell sophisticated military technology to the Chinese — they are called on the carpet and forced to back down. ]

Don Soderberg, chairman of the Nevada Public Utilities Commission, said the project is significant both for the solar energy industry and for Southern Nevada.

"It’s a big coup for Nevada because of its size, but also because of the technology," he said. "The generating unit is not dissimilar from what has been producing electricity today with fossil fuels plants and geothermal plants. That’s why we’re pretty excited. It’s not only large in size but it’s also a technology leap."

Cohen said that has raised Nevada Power Company’s comfort level with Nevada Solar One, which uses technology that mimics traditional power generation techniques except that it uses the sun as fuel rather than a fossil fuel.

"To have something this advanced in our own backyard definitely puts us on the map," Soderberg said.

Unlike photo voltaic solar technology common on roofs throughout the valley, the solar thermal technology being used at the plant uses parabolic solar collectors to heat to 750 degrees an oil-based liquid in pipes running throughout the complex. The heated liquid is then run through the pipes into a power generation complex, similar to a traditional power plant, and used to create steam which runs a turbine to create electricity.

"They’ve been pretty confident that it works like any of the other power plants that they have," Cohen said.

He said the project is also important for Nevada Power Co. because it will help the utility meet its renewable portfolio standard, a minimum percentage of energy generated from renewable sources set by the state.

Nevada Power Co. has contracted to purchase Nevada Solar One’s 64 megawatts and will use about 68 percent of the power in Southern Nevada and 32 percent in Northern Nevada. The northern part of the state is powered by Nevada Power’s sister Sierra Pacific Power Co.

A spokeswoman for the utility said the company is very excited for both the Nevada Solar One project and a solar project at Nellis Air Force Base to come online this year.

"Once both of these solar facilities are completed in 2007, Nevada will be the number one state in the nation on solar watts per capita and solar as a percentage of retail sales," said Sonya Headen, public information officer for the utility. "We’re very pleased that we’ll be able to diversify our portfolio and increase our percentage of renewables."

Cohen said an official opening ceremony is being planned for some time in June, but that power generation should begin by late April or early May.

The remaining work on the site is being done in the power generation area, where 400 people are still working two shifts per day. The oil, which will be heated by the sun and then used to heat steam to run the plant, was scheduled to be delivered this week.

Cohen said he also expects an occupancy permit to be granted this week.

Construction on the site began in February, 2006.

Once the plant is up and running, 28 people will staff it full-time.

The plant is located on 400-acres near the intersection of U.S. 95 and State Route 165 south of downtown Boulder City in the Eldorado Valley.

Kyocera Solar Europe s.r.o., which produces solar modules for the European market, will also increase capacity to 150MW. By the end of March 2011, Kyocera will likewise invest approximately 4 billion yen (about $33 million) at this site in the Czech Republic, adding equipment and a new manufacturing facility to double the present production area.

Kyocera (Tianjin) Solar Energy Co., Ltd., which serves the Chinese market, will increase its manufacturing capacity to 90MW by the end of March 2011. In the process, the company will invest approximately 1 billion yen (about $8.3 million) to add equipment and increase its existing production area by 50 percent.

Kyocera Corporation, Ise Plant, which produces solar modules and systems for the Japanese market, will expand capacity to 110MW with an investment of approximately 1 billion yen (about $8.3 million). In addition, Kyocera Corporation, Yohkaichi Plant, which produces all of the raw solar cells used by the other four production sites for their local assembly into finished solar modules, will increase its capacity to 500MW, with an investment of approximately 20 billion yen (about $165 million) by the end of March 2011.

"The U.S. is experiencing phenomenal public interest in, and acceptance of, solar electricity," said Steve Hill, president of Kyocera Solar, Inc., the operating headquarters for Kyocera’s solar energy business in the Americas and Australia. "The majority of Americans want clean energy developed into an affordable, mainstream resource. Kyocera, with its 32-year commitment to this effort, is aggressively adding capacity both at our North American facilities and globally to meet this ever-increasing demand. We are all proud to be a part of the solution to our global climate and energy crisis."

Increased solar energy production will help offset the negative effects of electricity generated by fossil fuels including carbon dioxide, a suspected contributor to global warming; nitrous oxide, which has been linked to the destruction of the Earth’s ozone layer; and sulfur dioxide, the principal contributor to acid rain.

Solar energy is Kyocera’s fastest growing business. As a measure of growth, the combined output of all Kyocera solar energy manufacturing from 1975 to 2006 totaled approximately 760 megawatts of solar modules. This result, in terms of "greenhouse gases avoided," is equivalent to the environmental impact of approximately 220 square miles of healthy forest.1 While that achievement took 32 years to attain, Kyocera’s planned production capacity by 2011 will be comparable to giving the Earth 220 new square miles of forest about every 18 months.