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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (327182)	2/23/2007 9:41:02 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1575980

U.N. data show U.S. greener than EU By Jennifer Harper THE WASHINGTON TIMES February 23, 2007 Finger-pointing critics often vilify Americans as the sole cause of global warming. But the typical image of SUV-driving, energy-hogging Yankees may be bogus -- a new analysis of U.N. data reveals that U.S. efforts to reduce greenhouse gases actually beat European policies. "Despite constant criticism from environmental activists at home and across Europe claiming the U.S. government is doing nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, new evidence suggests America's efforts are more effective than those of Europe's," according to a study by H. Sterling Burnett of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research institute. The United States has spent more than any other country on research and technologies to reduce emissions, Mr. Burnett wrote, and the business-led efforts are paying off. "The U.S. is doing a far better job reining in its emissions than Europe, even though it has a faster-growing economy and population," Mr. Burnett said. "Rather than signing treaties that look good on paper but do nothing to really bring about reductions, U.S. industry has taken the lead as a business matter, reducing emissions as a matter of efficiency -- saving costs and improving the bottom line." Mr. Burnett's scrutiny of data from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report released Feb. 2 revealed that the U.S. rate of growth in carbon dioxide emissions from 2000 to 2004 was eight percentage points lower than from 1995 to 2000. The original 15 nations of the European Union increased emissions by 2.3 percentage points. From 2000 to 2004, greenhouse gas emissions from the EU countries grew at nearly double the U.S. rate. During the same time period, the U.S. economy grew by almost $1.9 trillion, "the equivalent of adding Italy to the U.S. economy," Mr. Burnett wrote in the analysis, released Wednesday. The U.S. population increased by 11.3 million people, more than the population of Greece, he found. "U.S. businesses are succeeding where European bureaucracy is failing," Mr. Burnett said. "Further, efforts like the Asian-Pacific partnership will do far more than [the] Kyoto [Protocol] to have a lasting effect on greenhouse gas emissions." The Asian-Pacific partnership is a nonbinding plan to cooperate on development and transfer technologies that would enable greenhouse gas reductions. Meanwhile, Americans may not be quick to buy into the assertions of "An Inconvenient Truth," former Vice President Al Gore's documentary that is in contention for an Oscar award Sunday. Global warming is not a "top-tier" issue, according to a Pew Research survey of 1,708 adults. Respondents ranked the issue fourth from last in a 23-item list of policy priorities for the White House and Congress. Only 19 percent expressed "deep concern" about global warming. A minority -- 47 percent -- blamed it on human activity. Among conservative Republicans, the figure was 20 percent; among liberal Democrats, 71 percent. "The issue is of relatively low priority for members of both parties," the survey said. It was conducted Jan. 10 to 15, with a margin of error of three percentage points.

To: tejek who wrote (327182)	2/24/2007 10:44:47 AM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575980

Truth about North's role in slavery By Richard G. Williams Jr. February 24, 2007 COMPLICITY: HOW THE NORTH PROMOTED, PROLONGED, AND PROFITED FROM SLAVERY By Anne Farrow, Joel Lang and Jenifer Frank, Ballantine Books, $25.95, 274 pages, illustrated The second book tackles an even more controversial subject -- slavery. In their groundbreaking book "Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery," Connecticut newspaper writers Anne Farrow, Joel Lang and Jenifer Frank explode the myth that Southerners are primarily to blame for America's national sin and that the North's abolitionist efforts during the Civil War absolved it of collusion. The authors are refreshingly frank and honest as they write of their journey in discovering the whole truth regarding the evils of slavery in America: "We have all grown up, attended schools, and worked in Northern states, from Maine to Maryland. We thought we knew our home. We thought we knew our country. We were wrong." The authors get right to their main point in the first sentence of the introduction: " 'Complicity' is the story of how the North helped create, strengthen, and prolong slavery in America." They hold nothing back as to why they wrote the book: "Slavery had long been identified in the national consciousness as a Southern institution. The time to bury that myth is overdue. Slavery is a story about America, all of America. Together, over the lives of millions of enslaved men and women, Northerners and Southerners shook hands and made a country." "Complicity" tells us "what the Northerners were shaking on." Of course, the North's motivation in perpetuating slavery was the same as the South's -- money. The South's very profitable cotton crop was made even more profitable by slave labor, but Southern plantation owners were not the only ones profiting from cotton. "By some estimates, the North took 40 cents of every dollar a planter earned from cotton," the authors say. In fact, as the authors point out, New York City's financial well-being was so dependent on cotton imported from the South that in January 1861, the city's mayor threatened to secede if the South left the Union. The book teems with other documented facts and revelations damning the North and its involvement in the slave trade and slavery itself: • "A conservative estimate is that during the illegal trade's peak years, 1859 and 1860, at least two slave ships -- each built to hold between 600 and 1,000 slaves -- left lower Manhattan every month." • c "The illegal slave trade was carried on so flagrantly that New York newspapers reported the names of ships leaving for slave voyages." • "For the half century before the Civil War, cotton was the backbone of the American economy. It was King, and the North ruled the kingdom." • "As much as it is linked to the barbaric system of slave labor that raised it, cotton created New York." • "Amalgamationists, dupes, fanatics, foreign agents and incendiaries -- that's how the North viewed its radical abolitionists." • "For 50 years, kidnappers prowled the streets of Northern cities, abducting free blacks to sell into slavery. Too few tried to stop them." One of the most ironic subjects the authors explore is in the chapter "The Other Underground Railroad." Here the book reveals how freed blacks in the North were often wrongly accused of being runaway slaves, then kidnapped and sold illegally. Things were so bad in Boston that fliers were distributed to free blacks warning them to avoid "conversing with watchmen and police officers" as they were corrupt and would abduct and sell the blacks into slavery. "Complicity" is thoroughly researched, heavily footnoted and generously illustrated with dozens of photographs, drawing, maps, charts and documents. Unfortunately, the book has been largely ignored by many in academia and the mainstream media. But perhaps the rest of America will, like the authors, soon admit they "were wrong" about who should share the blame for slavery. Richard G. Williams Jr. is author of "Stonewall Jackson: The Black Man's Friend" and "The Maxims of Robert E. Lee for Young Gentlemen" (www.SouthRiverBooks.com).