The South at War:
the heart of the nation’s military-industrial complex

By Chris Kromm

June 20— In 1938, President Roosevelt commissioned an investigation into conditions in the US South -- and he didn’t like what he saw. “The low income belt of the South,” the study somberly concluded, “is a belt of sickness, misery, and unnecessary death.”

Yet only six years later, the US War Production Board made its own appraisal, and saw a completely different region: “The South has rubbed Aladdin’s lamp,” they said, poised to enter “the vanguard of world industrial progress.”

Connecting these warring views of the South’s fortunes, of course, was World War II -- the moment where the US South made the devil’s bargain of getting a quick economic fix, in exchange for becoming the heart of the nation’s military-industrial complex.

Today, the South remains at the center of the US war economy. More than any other part of the country, the region is ensnared by President Bush’s anti-terror crusade, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and the expansion of US military power abroad. For example

* The South represents only a third of the nation’s population, but supplies 42% of the country’s enlisted soldiers -- and 56% of troops in the continental US are stationed in the South.

* Southern politicians are Congress’s biggest hawks, tilting US foreign policy away from peace and diplomacy.

* 62% of Southern senators scored in the bottom fifth of the legislative scorecard for Peace Action, a non-profit watchdog.

* Anchored by defense boom centers in Virginia, Texas and Florida, the South produces more weapons than any other region, landing 43% of US arms contracts in 2001.

Based on these findings and more, the Institute for Southern Studies took to the road in April-May for “The South at War” tour, drawing on the Institute’s most recent issue of Southern Exposure magazine, “Missiles and Magnolias: The South at War.” The tour visited such military hot-spots as Atlanta, Georgia, and Fort Worth/Dallas Texas.

“The costs of administering US empire have been high,” says Jordan Green, a Southern Exposure editor and Institute researcher. “Not only to victims of US aggression abroad, but also in warping social priorities here at home.”

As conflict spirals in the Middle East, a special focus of the tour was the South’s close ties to Israel’s illegal 35-year occupation and recent offensive in Palestinian territories, which has drawn widespread condemnation from the world community and human rights advocates including former President Jimmy Carter.

Of the $3 to $6 billion in financial support the US government provides to Israel each year, up to half is used to buy arms, mostly from US weapons manufacturers. Over two-thirds of the arms used by Israel come from Southern arms corporations, led by Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth, Texas, which recently landed a $1.3 billion award to build the F-16 jet fighter, one of several US weapons used by Israel against UN conventions in occupied Palestinian territory.

“Southerners and US taxpayers are not only footing the bill, but also supplying the firepower for Israeli aggression that most of the world is calling a crime against humanity,” says Rania Masri, an Institute project director who was also a delegate to the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. “Our campuses and cities must examine their relationship to corporations who profit from Israel’s illegal occupation and violence against Palestinians.

“The South is the heart of the military beast,” says Jordan Green. “The tour was a chance to not only show the deadly consequences of the war economy, but to connect with the groundswell of home-grown opposition to permanent militarism.”

Source: CounterPunch

Citizens urge Edwards to vote no on Yucca Mountain

Statement of NC WARN

Raleigh, North Carolina, June 27— Any day now the US Senate may vote on a hotly contested nuclear waste project, and many North Carolinians are hoping their senator will side with environmental leaders instead of the nuclear power industry.  As a potential swing vote, Sen. John Edwards has not shown his hand on the proposed high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

Twenty-one environmental and social justice groups representing thousands from across the state have called on Edwards to oppose the Yucca project.  About thirty members of those groups rallied at the Senator’s downtown Raleigh office June 27, repeating their call for him to keep thousands of nuclear targets off roads and rails.  For many protesters, today was not their first rally targeting Edwards; citizens rallied in June 2001 for the Senator to take action to stop high-level nuclear waste transports by Carolina Power & Light (CP&L) in NC.

Protesters posed questions about the Yucca project to a life-sized cutout of Senator Edwards, which, like the Senator, did not take a position on the dump.  Randall Gilbert of the Durham People’s Alliance asked, “Senator Edwards, how can we guarantee the safety of these shipments?  An escaped convict got onto a CP&L nuclear waste train in North Carolina!  Security breaches happened earlier this spring.”

Former National Transportation Safety Board chair Jim Hall recently deemed this the most important transportation decision of the new century, and said to go forward without “a fully secure transportation plan that takes into account terrorism threats is dangerous and irresponsible.”  Up to 100,000 nuclear shipments would pass through 44 states on the way to Nevada, and I-40, a proposed transport route, passes within miles of Edwards’ Raleigh office.

Federal studies have confirmed that transport containers are vulnerable to various weapons, and that a radiation release could injure thousands and cost billions due to contamination of property.

Last week, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle castigated Yucca as “catering to power companies,” and “a multi-billion dollar boondoggle on an earthquake fault line.”  Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy also recently came out in opposition to the dump; more and more Senators are reconsidering their position on the problematic project.  Yucca could open as early as 2010 if 293 technical problems are resolved.  The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recently admitted it might license the dump before the Department of Energy (DOE) has completed the required scientific studies.

Citizens expressed particular concern about the fact that there will be as much nuclear waste on site at reactors around the nation after Yucca is full as there is now.  Gilbert asked, “The Yucca project is going to soak the public for $58 billion. Senator Edwards, why would you allow people to be put at risk for the most expensive engineering project in human history that won’t even solve our problem?”

In 2000, the North Carolina Democrat changed his stance from opposition to support of the Yucca Mountain project after receiving a letter from CP&L executive William Orser.  “We’ve criticized Senator Edwards in the past for his inertia on the local nuclear waste issue, but we still hope he’ll stop CP&L’s trains, and we are very hopeful that he’ll make the responsible decision and oppose Yucca,” said NC WARN organizer Nora Wilson.