According to some little noticed 2010 press releases on the KKK's main website, which turned up this week on Reddit, it seems as if America's most famous hate group is actually very concerned about being mistakenly lumped in with other zealots on the right, including Koran-burning churches, the Westboro Baptists, and the Tea Party.
Japan, which has no oil or gas of its own, gets about a third of its electricity from nuclear power as a result of a government push to build nuclear reactors after the energy price spike of the 1970s. The ratcheting up of petroleum prices because of the instability in Libya and elsewhere in the Middle East shows that the need for an alternative to hydrocarbons is still there. (And in addition to price considerations, we now know that the world faces a dire threat from carbon dioxide-caused climate change). But the answer in 2011 is different than it was in the 1980s. Now it is possible to replace hydrocarbons with renewable energy.
Germany generates 17 percent of its electricity from renewable sources such as wind and solar, in both of which it is a leading innovator. The achievement is largely owed to government policies giving incentives for use of alternative energy, policies implemented when the SPD/ Green Party coalition was in power.
In contrast, Japan’s government has done little to promote alternative sources of energy such as wind, an area in which the country has fallen behind leaders such as Germany and China. Projects at harnessing the power of ocean waves are planned off Scotland and Oregon, but apparently not Japan (surely a natural in this regard).
Portugal gets 45% of its electricity from renewables, mostly because of government policy and investments in a smart grid. Lisbon has demonstrated that renewables are practical sources of a majority of a country’s electricity even now.
The Japan crisis has renewed fears among environmentalists in India about that country’s plans for 21 nuclear power plants. Given that solar energy is now reaching grid parity in some markets, at $4 per watt, sun-rich India is daft to subsidize expensive and dangerous nuclear plants.
Congressman Peter King, who has rationalised his past defence of IRA terrorism without a hint of self-awareness or irony, is now the self-appointed protector of America from future terrorist attacks by holding a congressional hearing on the "Extent of Radicalisation in the American Muslim Community and that Community's Response." King presiding over this hearing would be like asking Mel Gibson to chair an impartial session on Jewish American loyalties. King has in the past claimed there are "too many mosques" in America and that 85% of American mosques and its religious leaders are radicalised, a statement that has been thoroughly discredited.
Despite a recent study showing that 40% of all extremist plots in America were thwarted as a result of Muslim American help, King ignores this evidence and stubbornly asserts there is a "lack of cooperation" by Muslims with law enforcement. The intent, scope and framing of King's hearing have been criticised by law enforcement officials, counter-terrorism professionals, civil rights organisations, interfaith leaders and political commentators as being misguided, ineffective and potentially dangerous
Some are comparing King’s witch hunt against American Muslims to McCarthyism. But I would argue that it is to Richard Milhaus Nixon that we should look for the precedent here. King is appealing to ethnic bigotry (and yes, because of intermarriage and lifeways, American Muslims are best seen as an ethnic group). And arranging the world in the terms of ethnic bigotry was the hallmark of Nixon’s career.And so it goes.
