Thursday 28 October 2010
US OKs Largest-Ever US Solar Project in California
The Obama administration has approved a 1,000-megawatt solar project on federal land in southern California, the largest solar project ever planned on U.S. public lands.Interior Secretary Ken Salazar praised the $6 billion Blythe Project, to be built in the Mojave Desert near Blythe, California, as the start of a boom in solar power on federal lands.
"Today is a day that makes me excited about the nation's future," Salazar said Monday at a news conference. "This project shows in a real way how harnessing our own renewable resources can create good jobs here at home."
The Blythe project, being developed by Solar Millennium, a German solar developer, is slated for more than 7,000 acres (2833 hectares) of public land near the Arizona border, some 225 miles (360 kilometers) east of Los Angeles.
The project is the sixth solar power development approved by the Interior Department this month all in California or Nevada. Approval of a seventh project also in California is expected in the next few weeks. All could start transmitting electricity by the end of 2011 or early 2012.
At full capacity, the seven projects would generate more than 3,000 megawatts of power and provide electricity for up to 2 million homes. The projects are expected to create more than 2,000 jobs during construction and several hundred permanent jobs.
A spokeswoman for the solar industry said the flurry of announcements shows that efforts made by the Obama administration and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to promote solar power are beginning to pay off.
"We're finally going to see solar energy produced on public lands in the United States, and this is something the public wants," said Monique Hanis, a spokeswoman for the Solar Energy Industries Association, a Washington-based trade group.
The announcements come about five years after solar developers began asking the Bureau of Land Management for rights to develop hundreds of solar plants on millions of acres of federally owned desert in the Southwest.
The bureau opened federally owned lands in 2005 to solar development, but an examination of records and interviews of officials by The Associated Press showed the program operated a first-come, first-served leasing system that quickly overwhelmed its small staff and enabled companies, regardless of solar industry experience, to squat on land without any real plans to develop it.
To expedite environmental review and bureaucratic red tape, the Interior Department identified 14 of the most promising solar projects among the more than 180 current permit applications covering about 23 million acres of federally owned desert in the Southwest.
Those 14 "fast-track" projects alone would produce more than 6,000 megawatts, enough to power 4 million homes for a day at peak usage, officials said.
Hanis, the industry representative, said that even after the 14 fast-track projects are approved, solar energy will remain a tiny fraction of overall energy production on U.S. lands. The projects approved this month are the first ever approved by land management bureau, compared with more than 74,000 oil and gas permits issued in the past two decades.
Final approval by the end of the year qualifies the solar projects for federal funds under the economic stimulus law approved last year. Solar Millennium is eligible to secure $1.9 billion in conditional loan guarantees from the Energy Department for the Blythe project.
The company will be required to mitigate the project's effect on more than 8,000 acres (3,240 hectares) of habitat for the desert tortoise, western burrowing owl, bighorn sheep and Mojave fringe-toed lizard, as part of an agreement with federal officials.
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Matthew Daly@'WRBL'
Farewell Mon Amour: Prospects on Democracy's Electoral Defeat
Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth. We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society or a better world? Those used to be the political questions, even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them. -Tony Judt
In the midst of one of the greatest economic disasters the United States has ever faced, the Gilded Age and its updated "'dreamworlds' of consumption, property and power" have returned from the dead with zombie-like vengeance.(1) Poised now to take over either one or two houses of Congress, the exorbitantly rich along with their conservative ideologues wax nostalgically for a chance to once again emulate that period in 19th century American history when corporations ruled political, economic and social life, and an allegedly rugged entrepreneurial spirit prevailed unchecked by the power of government regulations. Wild West, casino capitalism, unhampered by either ethical considerations or social costs, has reinvented itself and become the politics of choice in this election year. Enthusiasm runs high as billions of dollars flow from hidden coffers into the hands of anti-public politicians, whose only allegiance is to power and the accumulation of capital.
In spite of almost unprecedented levels of inequality, hardship, human suffering and widespread public despair caused by the financial robber barons of Wall Street, the politics and values of Gilded Age excess are now celebrated by conservatives and Tea Party politicians, who define their retrograde politics as "having a flair for business, successfully [breaking] through the stultifying constraints that flowed from the New Deal" and using "their successes and their philanthropy [to make] government less important than it once was."(2) There is more at work here than a neo-feudal world view in which the future can only be measured in immediate financial gains and the amassing of colossal amounts of economic and political power. Massive disparities in wealth and power along with the weakening of worker protections and the destruction of the social state are now legitimated through a set of market-driven values in which politics is measured by the degree to which it evades any sense of actual truth and turns its back on even a vestige of moral responsibility. Under casino capitalism, politics increasingly becomes a front for the legitimation and exercise of ruthless corporate power. As politics loses its social purpose, not only does the state increasingly resort to modes of punishment, but the rules of politics are eviscerated of any moral and social responsibilities. Robber barons now decide the rules, and one consequence of such actions is that politics loses all sense of moral direction. Indeed, under such circumstances, the pathologies of inequality and injustice that cripple viable democracies are now rendered as inevitable and often celebrated as both a cleansing element and condition of politics itself.
If the first rule of robber baron politics is to make power invisible, the second is to make it unaccountable and the third rule is to give as much power as possible to those who revel in barbaric greed, social irresponsibility, unconscionable economic inequity, corrupt politics, resurgent monopolies and an unapologetic racism (parading as an attack on political correctness no less). The mainstream media and its rarely changing talking heads may wax endlessly about the populist anger fueling the current political climate, but it is a tragic mistake to overlook the fact that populism driven by authoritarian politics, while supplying an unmistakable enthusiasm to the current phase of electoral politics, is distinguished by and should be analyzed critically for the threat it poses to a democratic society...
Continue reading
Henry A. Giroux @'Truthout'
Wednesday 27 October 2010
HA! Housing Benefits
David Cameron believes that housing claims of over £20,000 a year are unfair.
He has a point. I can think of one benefits scrounger who has repeatedly claimed more than this, despite having a perfectly adequate home in London.
David Cameron Second Home Expenses
2003-04: £20,328
2004-05: £20,902
2005-06: £21,293.86
2005-06: £21,293.86
2006-07: £20,563
Sources: Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph
"Remotehkontrollinghifiddlety!"
HAIRSTYLE OF THE YEAR
Not exactly sure which year but...
(Thanx (?) Stan!)
Gaspar Noé Interviews Kenneth Anger
ANGER: No, neither one. I've read about them, but I've never tried them. I don't go out of my way to seek that sort of thing. But yage is from South America, isn't it? I tried peyote, which makes me kind of ill before it clears up. But that takes all night.
NOÉ: Have you tried it many times?
ANGER: A few times. I haven't taken any drugs, of any kind, in years. It was an experimental period in an earlier part of my life.
NOÉ: They open your mind, if you don't lose your mind.
ANGER: Well, one thing you cannot do—once, I tried to film when I was on LSD. And I had very good LSD in the early days, because I was a friend in San Francisco of Owsley Stanley, the famous chemist. And in the early days, it was just a drop of it on a sugar cube. So I had very good LSD, but the problem was—I tried making a film, or doing some filming, when I was on LSD, and it's impossible. I couldn't focus. I tried focusing, but when I looked through the lens, I'd see all different layers of focus, and I couldn't find which was the real one behind the camera. And I just thought, this does not work, and I never tried that again."...
MORE
@'Interview Magazine'
RIP - Paul the Octopus
Paul, the famous psychic octopus who shot to fame after predicting the outcomes of World Cup this summer, died Tuesday. He lived just two and a half years.
After passing away peacefully during the night of natural causes, Paul will be remembered for predicting the winners of all Germany's World Cup clashes, and then the final by selecting Spain over the Netherlands. Just before each game, the Octopus would choose one of two boxes, each loaded with a mussel food treat and marked on the outside with one of the teams. (He also made an enemy in Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.)
Staff at the aquarium center where he lived said his death was not entirely unexpected, since common octopuses generally only live a few years. Paul's body is now in cold storage while the aquarium decides "how best to mark his passing." "We may decide to give Paul his own small burial plot within our grounds and erect a modest permanent shrine," said Stephan Porwell, manager of the Oberhausen Sea Life Centre in Germany.
However, Paul's fans need not despair–his aquarium is said to be grooming a successor, also to be named Paul. (Even though, chances are, he won't be psychic.) And on a commercial note, the iconic octopus lives on in iPhone apps and clothing lines devoted to his soothsaying ways. NewsFeed salutes you, Paul. May you predict World Cup outcomes in octopus heaven.
Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/10/26/r-i-p-paul-the-world-cup-psychic-octopus/#ixzz13TvHg1pd
Tuesday 26 October 2010
Scuba - Triangulation (Interpretations)
HFCD003i - Triangulation (Interpretations)
Release date: November 15
01. Before (After)
02. Latch (Will Saul & Mike Monday Remix)
03. On Deck (FaltyDL Remix)
04. You Got Me (I Got You)
05. Tracers (Deadbeat Remix)
06. So You Think You're Special (Joe Remix)
07. Before (Deadboy Remix)
Released by: Hotflush Recordings Ltd
Release/catalogue number: HFCD003i
Release date: Nov 15, 2010
Divide and Conquer
I've never been a fan of shooting the messenger. I like to believe that people are capable of making their own minds on the information they've been given, but I'm starting to have second thoughts. In the currently polarized climate of American politics, it is increasing difficult to have a civil discussion on current events unless one is preaching to the choir. In recent conversations where I'm speaking with an avowed republican, I notice they all say the same talking points that are aired on Fox News on a daily basis. When I ask if they get their news from other sources, 9/10 times they say no. The excuse is they don't "trust" other outlets. What has resulted is cause for concern. One out of five Americans mistakenly believe Obama is Muslim. Many Americans mistakenly believe Obama's raised taxes. Recently, NPR fired Juan Williams. What I find amazing is Fox News signed Williams to a contract the next day. Apparently, $2 million is the going price for Islamophobia.
Former Fox Newser Major Garrett admits that Fox News is in the business of keeping America divided. So, between the outrageous sums of money pumped into Fox and now the newly allowed unlimited anonymous campaign contributions (thanks to Bush appointees on the Supreme Court), the truth doesn't stand a chance.
Monday 25 October 2010
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