B’Man’s Scar Watch: Mort Zuckerman Explains How Bad The Economy Is

Many people I work with are oblivious to the truth of our economic situation. I suppose they are simply hoping and wishing for the best, but please realize that wishing, hoping and/or praying will not fix this mess.

#1 Reason to NOT Elect McCain/Palin is Palin’s Total Ignorance

The “lipstick pit-bull” goes to war

Sarah Palin wouldn’t “blink” against Russia, Iran, Pakistan, “the terrorists”…

h/t missykcarr (originally found at theREALnews network).

I’m outta’ gas, how’bout’you

“Knoxville has been out of gas since Monday. We’ve been buying gas from Atlanta, North Carolina, Kentucky, anywhere we can get it,” said Bill Weigel, head of the Weigel’s chain of convenience stores in Knox, Blount, Sevier, Loudon, Anderson and Monroe counties.

Source=

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/sep/11/gas-running-low-knoxville/

The Environmental Protection Agency has temporarily waived clean-air requirements for nine Southeastern states including Tennessee in response to a shortage of gasoline.
Refinery outages along the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Gustav have created severe shortages in Knoxville and much of the Southeast as petroleum wholesalers and retailers scramble to keep their pumps flowing.
The threat of Hurricane Ike bearing down on North America’s petroleum manufacturing capital, Houston, could make matters worse.
“Knoxville has been out of gas since Monday. We’ve been buying gas from Atlanta, North Carolina, Kentucky, anywhere we can get it,” said Bill Weigel, head of the Weigel’s chain of convenience stores in Knox, Blount, Sevier, Loudon, Anderson and Monroe counties.
Weigel said about a half-dozen Weigel’s stores are out of gas and he fears that number will grow as gasoline shipments from Louisiana and Texas refineries through a network of pipelines are disrupted.
“We’re working around the clock hunting. We’re not even asking the price. It doesn’t matter right now,” Weigel said about his staff’s efforts to locate supplies. He said Chattanooga and Nashville supplies are severely restricted, too, and he is turning to Birmingham, Ala., in hopes of finding reserves.
Alan Wright, vice president of supply and distribution, for Pilot Travel Centers LLC, echoed Weigel’s concern, but said all Pilot stores in the area still have gasoline and will unless an expected shipment via Colonial Pipeline’s main line into Knoxville is further delayed.
Wright said the shipment was to arrive this Saturday but has been pushed back to Tuesday.
“It is at a critical level,” Wright said. “We’re hoping we can make it until the next batch comes Tuesday. If it is delayed, we’ll be in the same shape as Bill Weigel.”
Wright is concerned that Knoxville-area consumers could panic and create a run on gasoline retailers.
“We have built inventory to buy time in case it’s (gas shipments) late. If there’s a run, it may not last until Tuesday,” Wright said.
The EPA’s action waives Clean Air Act requirements for gasoline sold or distributed in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, allowing “winter fuel” to be used early.
“EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson determined that extreme and unusual supply circumstances exist, which are likely to result in a shortage of gasoline compliant with federal regulations,” an EPA press release states. “The federal waiver will help ensure an adequate supply of gasoline in the affected areas.”
Prices on the spot wholesale petroleum market spiked more than $1 dollar today, a harbinger of rising prices at the pump.
More news as it develops online and in Friday’s News Sentinel.

RE-Legalization Rationale #1

B’Man: I don’t smoke. Let’s get that clear. But I also recognize that the current ‘Drug War’ on cannabis is foolishly reasoned, has failed miserably and penalizes people for using this medical substance to help themselves, many times as they die from cancer. I have personally witnessed very good and wonderful friends needlessly suffer when they could have helped themselves. I know ppl right now going through cancer that won’t use because of its illegality, no matter how much it would help their constant puking from chemo.

I have studied this issue for a long time and have educated myself to the history and the many benefits of cannabis and the type used industrially, hemp. For thousands of years this plant was used for paper, rope, sails, building materials, fuel source, etc.

Is it simply a coincedence that hemp was made illegal when petro-chemicals became the main desired source for fuel oil (desired by corporate interests)? That it wasn’t until there was a monetary reason to discontinue it that it was villainized?

Are you aware that in very early America, small communities made farmers grow a small plot of hemp as a community source of materials. It was REQUIRED to be grown. Many people know that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp on their plantations and valued it as a source of income, as well as their own usage.

So, due to this reason, MONEY, I decided to list as my first in a series of posts regarding the RE-legalization of hemp/cannabis “RE-Legalization Rationale”, something related to money… TAXES.

The prison industry uses weed convictions as a huge money maker. Do you know that many, if not most, of our prisons are privatized and “for profit” centers. The more ppl imprisoned for weed, the more money they make. But, besides this bogus ponzi scheme that must be eliminated (much like the health insurance companies should be done away with), there is a profit center for marijuana/hemp in the USA. BIG MONEY, as a matter of fact.

Read Steve Wishnia’s article below:

Marijuana Could Be a Gusher of Cash If We Treated It Like a Crop, Not a Crime

By Steven Wishnia, AlterNet

If marijuana were legal but taxed like alcohol and tobacco, how much money could it bring in to cash-strapped state governments?

One 2006 study called cannabis the top cash crop in the nation, worth more than corn and wheat combined. It was the leading crop in 12 states, outstripping grapes in California and tobacco in North Carolina, and one of the top three in 18 others, coming in just behind apples in Washington and cotton in Georgia. So with states facing massive deficits, could reefer revenues help?

The answer is unclear, but it could be lucrative for governments, especially when combined with the savings from ending prohibition. As the U.S. marijuana market is illegal, there are no sales figures. Estimates of its size range from $10.5 billion a year to $113 billion. But three studies done by economists and policy analysts say ganja taxes could bring in anywhere from $2.4 billion to $31.1 billion in revenue, depending on how big the sales really are. About one-third of that would go to the states.

“There’s not enough really good data on it, so it’s probably best to look at it in ballpark figures,” says Jon Gettman, a Virginia policy analyst who has worked with the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and the Marijuana Policy Project. “But there’s a consensus that there’s an awful lot of marijuana out there and that it’s very valuable.”

“The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition,” a 2005 study by Harvard economics professor Jeffrey A. Miron, makes the most conservative projections of the three studies. It calculates possible pot tax revenues at $2.4 billion. That’s assuming that prices would drop about 25 percent under legalization, that pot-related economic activities were taxed at the national average of 30 percent, and that the federal Office of National Drug Control Policy’s estimate that the domestic cannabis market is worth $10.5 billion is accurate. If herb were taxed more heavily, as alcohol and cigarettes are, that could bring in as much as $9.5 billion — although excessive “sin taxes” could cause pot smokers to cut down or grow their own, diminishing revenues.

States with higher rates of marijuana use, such as California and New York, would collect a somewhat higher proportion of taxes than states with lower rates, such as Pennsylvania and Texas. Miron estimates that California would take in $105 million at ordinary levels of taxation.

However, others in the field believe that the government’s $10.5 billion figure is absurdly low. Dan Hamburg, a former congressman from Northern California’s sinsemilla belt, says the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors estimates bud production in that county alone at between $1 billion and $1.5 billion, worth far more than timber and grapes. California’s medical marijuana dispensary owners claim they pay $100 million a year in state sales taxes.

The methods used to estimate the size of the marijuana market involve a great deal of speculation. Determining the supply involves taking the amount of domestic and imported marijuana seized by law enforcement, guessing what percentage of the total amount of homegrown and smuggled weed that represents, and extrapolating from there. Additional variables include how much a single plant can yield — anywhere from less than an ounce to more than a pound — and the retail price, which can be loosely sensed from the reader-contributed snippets in High Times magazine’s monthly market quotations (“Chicago, Purple Kush, $450/oz”) and the Drug Enforcement Administration’s STRIDE index, which narcotics agents use to figure out how much to pay for the drugs they try to buy. Demand can be estimated from government and academic household surveys of drug use — but these are far from specific, especially when you use the limited data on frequency of use to try to figure out how much people spend on pot.

“It’s hard to match the supply-and-demand data,” says Gettman. “Sometimes you don’t know what it is, but you know what it’s not.” He estimates the value of the U.S. weed market at $113 billion, based on a supply of more than 14 million kilos, an average retail price of about $220 an ounce, and between 25 million and 40 million pot smokers.

That number seems high. It would require 40 million people to spend an average of $55 a week on weed. But Gettman cites United Nations data that has estimated U.S. cannabis cultivation at 10 million to 14 million kilos for the past several years. The federal government has reduced its estimate of domestic production from 10 million kilos in 2002 to between 2.8 million and 6.6 million kilos in 2006, but those figures, he says, are “complete politics.” They’re based on the assumption that law enforcement eradicates 30 to 50 percent of all the pot plants grown in the United States, and that plants average a pound each.

As for demand, “there is a small amount of people who go through an incredible amount of pot.” On the other hand, many of the heaviest ganja users are growers and dealers who go into the business in part so they can essentially get free pot and don’t have to pay retail prices for the amounts they smoke.

Gettman’s 2006 study “Marijuana Production in the United States” estimated the domestic crop at 10 million kilos, worth a total of $35.8 billion.

California NORML’s estimates are in that ballpark. In 2003, the group figured that if 600,000 to 700,000 people in the state smoke two cigarette-size joints every day and 1 million smoke one joint every 10 days, then the total market in the state would be $3 billion to $5 billion under legalization — at the lower end if prices dropped to the Dutch average of about $170 an ounce, at the higher end if consumption increased. State sales taxes would generate $240 million to $400 million, and a $56-an-ounce excise tax could bring in another $1 billion. If pot were taxed at the same 50 percent rate as cigarettes, total revenues would be $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion. Nationally, California NORML claims, a $56-an-ounce tax would bring in $6 billion to $13 billion.

Miron dislikes the concept of such “sin taxes,” saying it’s a bad idea to tax what’s “politically unpopular.” But he says they’re generally effective if consistent throughout a federal system, where people can’t go to a state with lower costs. If the tax is too high, however, people might try to evade it by growing their own. Miron thinks that won’t be significant. “Some people are going to buy tomatoes in a supermarket, and some are going to grow their own,” he says. “Most people will opt for convenience.”

On the other hand, given that home growing has become widespread and well-entrenched in the last 30 years, potheads fetishize strains like White Widow and Bubbleberry, and herb costs significantly more than tomatoes, it’s likely that many people would do their own gardening if the danger of prison and forfeiture were lifted.

Legislators active on cannabis issues have not investigated the revenue possibilities much. “I don’t think I could even begin to put a number on it, because there are so many variables,” says a staffer for New York State Assemblymember Richard Gottfried, who has sponsored several unsuccessful medical marijuana bills recently. Instead, they focus on the money that would be saved by not prosecuting marijuana users or that could be gained by farming industrial hemp.

Massachusetts state Sen. Patricia Jehlen, sponsor of a bill to reduce the penalty for possession of less than an ounce to a $250 fine, calls trying to project pot tax revenues “speculative,” but she says decriminalization would save the state $24 million a year.

Miron’s study estimates that “legalizing marijuana would save $7.7 billion per year in government enforcement of prohibition,” with $2.4 billion of that going to the states. Gettman’s 2007 report says “marijuana arrests cost taxpayers $10.7 billion annually.”

Northern California’s Humboldt and Mendocino counties, where marijuana is a crucial part of the economy, have been frustrated in their efforts to get direct revenues from it, according to Hamburg. Schemes proposed in Mendocino included having the county sell permits for $25 a plant and setting up a growers’ cooperative that would inspect, certify and market medical herb crops as organically and locally grown. But “anything we came up with along those lines, our lawyers said was impossible.”

Miron says potential tax income is “the least important reason to legalize” cannabis when compared with the “horrific” precedents prohibition sets for government power and the damage criminalization does to users. And even at the highest estimates, reefer revenues would not be enough to cover budget deficits the size of California’s estimated $15 billion, New York’s $6.4 billion, Florida’s $1.5 billion, or Massachusetts’ $1.3 billion. Still, the combination of reducing expenditures on enforcement and collecting taxes on legal sales could help save the states from having to lay off workers or cut health care payments.

NORML head Allen St. Pierre says that when he was lobbying in Texas last year for a bill that would let local governments decriminalize marijuana possession, one legislator told him that prohibition “is no longer a luxury we can afford.” The Austinist, noting that marijuana possession accounts for about 7 percent of arrests in the state at a cost of $2,000 each, called the bill “a money-saving effort more than anything else.”

Reading between the lines and clearly…let’s talk oil

Ok– this report leaves off at 1991. So– put two and two together– starting GB Sr..

Make special notice of>
“United Arab Emirates – Oil and Natural Gas
Dubayy’s oil reserves in 1991 were estimated at 4 billion barrels, which will
run out by 2016 if 1990 levels of production continue. … “

Abu Dhabi became a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 1966. When the amirates federated in 1971, membership was transferred to the UAE. Although Abu Dhabi officials represented the other amirs, the officials exercised no power over the amirs because each maintained control of his amirate’s underground wealth. Each ruler oversaw arrangements for concessions, exploration, and oil field development in his own territory and published limited information about such arrangements. Thus, the federal Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources has limited power to set policy and engage in overall planning. In 1988 a presidential decree abolished the Department of Petroleum and dissolved the board of directors of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC). The functions of these bodies (administration and supervision of the country’s petroleum affairs) were taken over by the newly formed Supreme Petroleum Council, whose eleven members were led by Shaykh Khalifa ibn Zayid Al Nuhayyan.
Discoveries in the 1980s and 1990s greatly increased the UAE’s oil and gas reserves. By 1992 the four oil-producing amirates had total estimated proven crude oil reserves of 98 billion barrels and natural gas reserves of 5.2 trillion cubic meters, with the majority of both reserves lying within Abu Dhabi.
Based on the relative size of their reserves and on their long-term development plans, Abu Dhabi and the other oilproducing amirates have pursued differing policies. Abu Dhabi, with massive reserves, has on the whole based its production and economic development plans on long-term benefits, occasionally sacrificing production and price to meet this end. The other amirates, less well endowed with oil and gas, have sought to exploit their meager resources to produce short-term gains.
In the early 1980s, Abu Dhabi adhered to OPEC production ceilings while Dubayy routinely exceeded them. After 1987, however, both Abu Dhabi and Dubayy habitually produced above OPEC levels. In early 1987, for example, when Abu Dhabi’s OPEC quota was set at 682,000 barrels per day and Dubayy’s at 220,000 bpd, Abu Dhabi produced 1,058,000 bpd (64 percent above quota) and Dubayy produced 365,000 bpd (60 percent above quota). As a result, OPEC established a committee to promote greater adherence to quotas by chronic overproducers such as the UAE. For its part, the federation argued that its quotas were too small in relation to its large reserves and to the quotas of other producers.
The UAE’s quota was raised several times by OPEC, and it was at almost 1.1 million bpd in March 1990. Not recognizing the OPEC figure, UAE production at the time was 2.1 million bpd. By July 1990, oil prices had fallen to US$14 per barrel, and the UAE agreed to a compromise proposal that raised its OPEC quota to 1.5 million bpd. Meanwhile, among Iraq’s public accusations was that both Kuwait and the UAE had deprived Iraq of much-needed revenues by driving down world oil prices through production above their OPEC quotas.
After Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, OPEC suspended quotas to allow member states to compensate for the lost production of Kuwait and Iraq. Producing an average of 2.1 million bpd, the UAE earned US$15.0 billion in oil revenues in 1990. In the following year, producing an average of about 2.4 million bpd, the federation earned US$14 billion. In March 1992, OPEC raised the UAE’s quota to slightly more than 2.2 million bpd, which the UAE appeared to be observing. In March 1991, the UAE announced that it would expand its oil production capacity to 4 million bpd by the mid-1990s as part of a multibillion dollar development program.
Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi granted its first oil concession, covering its entire territory, in 1939 to the Trucial Coast Development Oil Company (renamed the Abu Dhabi Petroleum Company, or ADPC, in 1962). Oil was discovered in 1960; production and export commenced in 1962 offshore and in 1963 onshore. ADNOC acquired 60 percent of ADPC in the early 1970s. In 1978 ADPC was reconstituted as the Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations (Adco). In the late 1980s, the remainder of Adco’s shares were divided: British Petroleum (BP), Royal Dutch Shell Oil, and Compagnie Française des Pétroles (CFP) received 9.5 percent each; Mobil Oil and Exxon, 4.75 percent each; and Participations and Explorations (Partex), 2.0 percent. The principal onshore fields were Bu Hasa, Bab, and Asab. Onshore production totaled 267 million barrels in 1980.
In 1953 the amirate granted a concession to the D’Arcy Exploration Company of Britain to look for oil in offshore and submerged areas not covered in the ADPC concession. Abu Dhabi Marine Areas (ADMA), a multinational consortium, took over this concession in 1955. The company made its first commercial strike in 1958, and production and export started in 1962. In 1977 ADMA and ADNOC agreed to form the Abu Dhabi Marine Areas Operating Company (ADMA-Opco) for offshore work. In the late 1980s, ADNOC owned 60 percent of ADMA-Opco; Japan Oil Development Company, 12.0 percent; BP, 14.7 percent; and CFP, 13.3 percent. Offshore fields included Umm ash Shayf, Az Zuqum, Sath ar Ras Boot, Dalma, and Umm ad Dalkh. The island of Das, northeast of the island of Dalma, became the center for offshore operations.
Unlike most gulf countries, as of the end of 1992 Abu Dhabi had not claimed 100 percent ownership of its oil industry. ADNOC was established in 1971 and, in addition to holding majority shares in Adco and ADMA-Opco, was involved in producing, refining, distributing, and shipping gas. ADNOC owned 51 percent of the Abu Dhabi Gas Liquefaction Company, whose Das facility has sent most of its liquefied natural gas (LNG) and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to Japan since 1977. In 1988 the Das facility produced nearly 2.5 million tons of LNG from offshore fields. ADNOC also holds 68 percent of Abu Dhabi Gas Industries, which extracts propane, butane, and condensate at the Ar Ruways plant from associated gas produced by the onshore Bu Hasa, Bab, and Asab fields.
Abu Dhabi’s refining, at plants in Umm an Nar and Ar Ruways, is also controlled by ADNOC. Total refining capacity in 1991 was 185,000 bpd, of which 100,000 bpd was available for export. Marketing and distribution are carried out by the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company for Distribution, an ADNOC subsidiary. To buy refineries and gas stations in Europe and Japan, ADNOC and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority formed a joint venture, the International Petroleum Investment Corporation (IPIC). In 1989 IPIC held a 20 percent share in a Madrid-based refining company.
The amirate’s exports are pumped through terminals at Jabal az Zannah and on the island of Das. There is a smaller terminal at Al Mubarraz.
Dubayy
The Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) held a concession for Dubayy from 1937 to 1961. CFP and Compañía Española de Petróleo (Spanish Petroleum Company–Hispanoil) obtained an onshore concession in 1954 and formed Dubai Marine Areas (Duma). Continental Oil Company acquired the IPC concession in 1963 and formed the Dubai Petroleum Company (DPC). That same year, DPC acquired 50 percent of Duma and released some of its shares to other companies. Oil was discovered offshore in 1966, and production commenced in late 1969. The Dubayy government acquired a 60 percent share in DumaDPC in 1975.
Dubayy’s oil reserves in 1991 were estimated at 4 billion barrels, which will run out by 2016 if 1990 levels of production continue. Dubayy’s production policy has been to ignore OPEC quotas for the most part, concentrating on exploiting the amirate’s fields as efficiently as possible. This has meant producing at or near capacity most of the time. The principal fields are Fath, Rashid, and Falah offshore, and Margham onshore. The amirate has two refineries, with a third planned for the mid1990s .
The Dubayy government established the Dubai Natural Gas Company (Dugas) in 1975 to process gas from offshore oil fields. By the early 1990s, the company also planned to process associated gas from the onshore Margham field. Dugas’s foreign partner was Scimitar Oils (Dubai), a subsidiary of Canada’s Sunningdale Oils. The Dugas processing facilities at Mina Jabal Ali came on-line in 1980 with a capacity of 20,000 bpd of natural gas liquids (propane, butane, and heavier liquids) and 2.1 million cubic meters of dry gas (methane) a day. The dry gas is piped to the Dubai Aluminum Company (Dubal), where it fuels a large electric power and desalination plant. A small part of the natural gas liquids is locally bottled and consumed, but most is exported to Japan. A special gas terminal at Mina Jabal Ali that can handle tankers of up to 48,000 tons opened in 1980. The amirate’s gas reserves are estimated at 125 billion cubic meters.
Sharjah
In 1969 the amir of Sharjah granted a forty-year concession for offshore exploration and production to a consortium of small United States oil companies known as Crescent Oil Company. Oil was discovered in 1973 in the Mubarak field off the island of Abu Musa, and production began in 1974. Because of conflicting territorial claims, Sharjah has production and drilling rights but shares production and revenue with Iran (50 percent), Umm al Qaywayn (20 percent), and Ajman (10 percent). By about 1984, Iran reportedly ceased transferring to Sharjah its half-share of oil revenues, presumably because of the financial drain of the war with Iraq, as well as Arab support of Iraq. In 1988 Iran attacked the facilities at Mubarak, causing their closure for two months.
In 1980 the American Oil Company (Amoco–later Amoco Sharjah) announced a major discovery onshore of oil and gas in the Saghyah field. By late 1983, output reached 35,000 bpd of condensate, which was exported. In 1984 total production reached 62,000 bpd. In the same year, the Emirates General Petroleum Corporation completed a 224-kilometer pipeline to supply dry gas to power plants in the northern amirates. The pipeline had a capacity of 60,000 bpd of condensate and 1.1 million cubic meters per day of gas. After Dubayy and Sharjah settled their border dispute in 1985, a pipeline was built to supply gas from the Saghyah field to the power and desalination plant of the Dubai Electrical Company at Mina Jabal Ali. An LPG processing plant that came online in 1986 was producing 11.3 million cubic meters of wet gas per day in 1987. The amirate’s outlook was optimistic in 1992, with Amoco Sharjah announcing a new onshore gas and condensate field and increased reserves at existing fields.
Other Amirates
Ras al Khaymah has limited oil and gas reserves, which were initially exploited in the early 1980s. By 1986 production was about 10,000 bpd, with most of the revenues plowed back into exploration and development. In that year, the amirate had completed pipelines from its offshore As Sila field to the mainland and had established separation and stabilization facilities, storage facilities capable of holding 500,000 barrels, and a 1,000-bpd LPG plant. By 1991 production had plummeted to 800 bpd.
Exploration and drilling in Ajman, Umm al Qaywayn, and Al Fujayrah have not yielded significant finds. Some of this activity has been funded by the federal American government.

So- given the new push [which looks like they actually care about 'us' in the sence of us, the citizens and U.S. the country]– and all the big-wigs stating ‘we need to end our dependence on foriegn oil– well hells, they aren’t talking about the ‘non-kiss-ass-friends-oil, they are talking about the ‘friends oil’ they KNOW is coming to an end… AND they already must of had plans for alternatives already in the making, and well invested into [geeeece] and now just need the citizens up and under this thing for ‘their’ reasons.

Right now Knoxville and surounding areas are OUT OF GAS!!! I have none, and have not a clue how I am getting to work next shift!

The King of Cannabis

h/t misskcarr

The Ultimate US Power Is Our Moral Legitimacy… Not Military

And the powers-that-be have squandered this power and have caused what I estimate to be irrepairable harm. Howard Zinn offers an interview to Al Jazeera that is posted at Alternet (posted for your convenience below):

Howard Zinn: American Empire Is ‘Crumbling’

Al Jazeera. Posted September 11, 2008

Editor’s note: Al Jazeera speaks to Howard Zinn, the author, American historian, social critic and activist, about how the Iraq war damaged attitudes towards the US and why the US “empire” is close to collapse.

Where is the United States heading in terms of world power and influence?

Zinn: America has been heading — for some time, and is heading right now — toward less and less world power, less and less influence. Obviously, since the war in Iraq, the rest of the world has fallen away from the United States, and if American foreign policy continues in the way it has been — that is aggressive and violent and uncaring about the feelings and thoughts of other people — then the influence of the United States is going to decline more and more.

This is an empire which is on the one hand the most powerful empire that ever existed; on the other hand an empire that is crumbling — an empire that has no future because the rest of the world is alienated and simply because this empire is top-heavy with military commitments, with bases around the world, with the exhaustion of its own resources at home.

[This is] leading to more and more discontent and home, so I think the American empire will go the way of other empires and I think it is on its way now.

Is there any hope the US will change its approach to the rest of the world?

Zinn: If there is any hope, the hope lies in the American people. [It] lies in American people becoming resentful enough and indignant enough over what has happened to their country, over the loss of dignity in the world, over the starving of human resources in the United States, the starving of education and health, the takeover of the political mechanism by corporate power and the result this has on the everyday lives of the American people.

[There is also] the higher and higher food prices, the more and more insecurity, the sending of the young people to war.

I think all of this may very well build up into a movement of rebellion.

We have seen movements of rebellion in the past: The labour movement, the civil rights movement, the movement against the war in Vietnam.

I think we may well see, if the United States keeps heading in the same direction, a new popular movement. That is the only hope for the United States.

How did the US get to this point?

Zinn: Well, we got to this point because I suppose the American people have allowed it to get it to this point because there were enough Americans who were satisfied with their lives, just enough.

Of course, many Americans were not, that is why half of the population doesn’t vote, they’re alienated.

But there are just enough Americans who have been satisfied, you might say getting some of the “goodies” of the empire, just some of them, just enough people satisfied to support the system, so we got this way because of the ability of the system to maintain itself by satisfying just enough of the population to keep its legitimacy.

And I think that era is coming to an end.

What should the world know about the United States?

Zinn: What I find many people in the rest of the world don’t know is that there is an opposition in the United States. Very often, people in the rest of the world think that Bush is popular, they think ‘oh, he was elected twice’, they don’t understand the corruption of the American political system which enabled Bush to win twice.

They don’t understand the basic undemocratic nature of the American political system in which all power is concentrated within two parties which are not very far from one another and people cannot easily tell the difference.

So I think we are in a situation where we are going to need some very fundamental changes in American society if the American people are going to be finally satisfied with the kind of society we have.

Do you think the US can recover from its current position?

Zinn: Well, I am hoping for a recovery process. I mean, so far we haven’t seen it.

You asked about what the people of the rest of the world don’t know about the United States, and as I said, they don’t know that there is an opposition.

There always has been an opposition, but the opposition has always been either crushed or quieted, kept in the shadows, marginalised so their voices are not heard.

People in the rest of the world hear the voices of the American leaders.

They do not hear the voices of the people all over this country who do not like the American leaders who want different policies.

I think also, people in the rest of the world should know that what they see in Iraq now is really a continuation of a long, long term of American imperial expansion in the world.

I think a lot of people in the world think that this war in Iraq is an aberration, that before this the United States was a benign power.

It has never been a benign power, from the very first, from the American Revolution, from the taking-over of Indian land, from the Mexican war, the Spanish-American war.

It is embarrassing to say, but we have a long history in this country of violent expansion and I think not only do most people in other countries [not] know this, most Americans don’t know this.

Is there a way for this to improve?

Zinn: Well you know, whatever hope there is lies in that large number of Americans who are decent, who don’t want to go to war, who don’t want to kill other people.

It is hard to see that hope because these Americans who feel that way have been shut out of the communications system, so their voices are not heard, they are not seen on the television screen, but they exist.

I have gone through, in my life, a number of social movements and I have seen how at the very beginning of these social movements or just before these social movements develop, there didn’t seem to be any hope.

I lived in the [US] south for seven years, in the years of the civil rights movements, and it didn’t seem that there was any hope, but there was hope under the surface.

And when people organized, and when people began to act, when people began to work together, people began to take risks, people began to oppose the establishment, people began to commit civil disobedience.

Well, then that hope became manifest it actually turned into change.

Do you think there is a way out of this and for the future influence of the US on the world to be a positive one?

Zinn: Well, you know for the United States to begin to be a positive influence in the world we are going to have to have a new political leadership that is sensitive to the needs of the American people, and those needs do not include war and aggression.

[It must also be] sensitive to the needs of people in other parts of the world, sensitive enough to know that American resources, instead of being devoted to war, should be devoted to helping people who are suffering.

You’ve got earthquakes and natural disasters all over the world, but the people in the United States have been in the same position as people in other countries.

The natural disasters here [also] brought little positive reaction — look at [Hurricane] Katrina.

The people in this country, the poor people especially and the people of color especially, have been as much victims of American power as people in other countries.

Can you give us an overall scope of everything we talked about — the power and influence of the United States?

Zinn: The power and influence of the United States has declined rapidly since the war in Iraq because American power, as it has been exercised in the world historically, has been exposed more to the rest of the world in this situation and in other situations.

So the US influence is declining, its power is declining.

However strong a military machine it is, power does not ultimately depend on a military machine. So power is declining.

Ultimately power rests on the moral legitimacy of a system and the United States has been losing moral legitimacy.

My hope is that the American people will rouse themselves and change this situation, for the benefit of themselves and for the benefit of the rest of the world.