The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

i'm not sure oh thanks ray will be with a lawyer or our apparent problem was that it was being fixed and roger rosenblatt essay tonight on the newshour fb it's

been i'm margaret warner jim lehrer has the day off on the newshour tonight a summary of today's news what the new economic growth numbers mean the making of an energy bill friday commentary by mark shields and david brooks a look at an exhibit of contemporary african art and roger rosenblatt essay about america's innocent and guilt major funding for the newshour with jim lehrer has been provided by imagine a world resources institute and by spca communication

with the high speed internet access and transport network business solutions when it comes to providing what help the world with all the fec communications this program was also the contributions to pbs stations anything concrete us economy surged in the first quarter with its biggest jump in more than two years the commerce department reported today the gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of five point eight percent from january to march we'll have more on this story in a moment president bush reacted to today's news by saying we must continue working to make sure the short term recovery is a long term recovery he urged congress to make the ten year tax cut permanent anymore and he may use its veto power to hold down spending it was widely reported today that this year's federal budget deficit could top one hundred billion dollars because tax

revenues are lagging on wall street stocks finished their worst week since the week after the september eleventh attacks for the week the dow lost more than three percent while the nasdaq was down more than seven percent the dow jones industrial average lost one hundred twenty four points today to close at ninety nine can the nasdaq index fell forty nine points to sixty and sixty three the teenage gunman went on a rampage today at a high school in germany when it was over eighteen people were dead we have a report from andrew reach of independent television news two hundred students age between ten and nineteen were trapped in the deal with the gama broken a dozen this morning the sign of a forcible says he'll for help children get anxiously out of the windows of those who escaped total amount dressed entirely in white ruling will always carry guns

and then there was that guy and he showed a teacher that means the next to me she looked me in the eye my money way we just ran one of those policemen to rush to the school was himself shot along with fourteen teachers and two children who dominate ninety three weeks old from school a few weeks earlier armed with a pistol pump action shotgun he barricaded himself into a classroom and killed himself and it was the second school shooting in two months and germany and even as it happened to moms with tighter gun controls were being debated in the parliament german chancellor gerhard schroeder expressed shock at the crime and sent the whole country must consider why it happened in the middle east israeli forces re entered the west bank town of coke he'll year before dawn today they killed a local palestinian leader and arrested more than forty others then withdrew after nightfall in bethlehem for palestinian policeman surrender to israeli troops surrounded the church of the

nativity some two hundred other palestinians remain inside yesterday crown prince abdullah of saudi arabia urge president bush to restrain israel's military action the president was asked about that today at his ranch in texas we've got a unique relationship with israel and that the one thing that the world can count on is that we all know well it grew to be crushed in two weeks since he said that israeli withdrawal often come in without delay and that i'll have you talked to what else can you say the israelis to make israelis understand my position and i've been very clear on that end there's been some progress but is now time to quit altogether as champion and in this in this well we'll see what happens and so at an early forties in new york un secretary general kofi annan agreed to delay by one more day sending a team to investigate allegations of a massacre at the geneva refugee camp the

mission will now begin sunday that's to give the israeli cabinet time to approve revisions that have been negotiated in the scope of the inquiry us forces in afghanistan have been capturing al qaeda and taliban fighters almost every day in small numbers that word came today from secretary of defense rumsfeld he warned the war will continue for some time rumsfeld spoke to us troops and kyrgyzstan the first stop on a trip to central asia including afghanistan at one point an airman asked if us forces would quote negotiate with or annihilate osama bin ladin if they find him you know in truth it's kind of his choice is it since december the reality is that he is probably not very effective right now in running the outside organization we're got so much pressure on it that it is very difficult for them to raise

money it's difficult for them to train they are not a lot of trained people so there's no question but that they can conduct other terrorist operations and they may very well in the period immediately attacked rumsfeld predicted that enemy fighters in afghanistan will launch a spring offensive against coalition forces and the intern afghan government that's it for the news summary tonight now it's on to the shape of the economy the making of an energy bill shields and brooks african art and roger rosenblatt essay an economic growth spurts ahead ray suarez looks at wise and what it means well not so long ago following the september eleventh terror attacks in the beginning of the recession the outlook for the us economy seemed dire but today's gross domestic product data the broadest measure of the economy's health

show an economy that says old in the first quarter of the year and suddenly it seems the downturn that began in march of two thousand one may be the mildest in history we sort through the numbers and their meanings now with and wenzel principal partner at econo systems and economic and market research firm in california mark vitner senior economist at work only a securities the banking company based in north carolina and margaret since an economist for the joint center for economic and who for political and economic studies a washington research organisation what star guests with an overview of the number and wenzel was it mean to you i was actually really shocked by the large number i went to bed last night the good i was gonna get up this morning read about how the us economy was moving sideways i had been optimistic earlier in the year and when i saw that number i was surprised once i looked more closely and i found there that final purchases filed a massive purchases actually increased only two point six percent which is a moderate member there was a lot of

inventory investment and apparently that caused a large jump in the number along with an increase in residential investment and of course the federal defense purchases so it's a lot of inventory investment businesses in the first quarter of this year started building up your stocks again yes and that's actually good sign if it is a one time jump in the number and i really think we'll go back to moderate growth rate that two point six percent growth in final purchases is probably more indicative of what we'll see in the following where it does get pie increase in inventory investment means that businesses think they gonna be able to sell them huge recorders ones that narrow moving sideways are charging ahead well we were certainly improving and the economy is clearly on the mend the recession is behind us but it's not quite the economy is not quite a strong as some people thought it was in january february what we think happened is that we have a lot of factors come together in the first quarter which which tended

to pull some economic activity and at the start of the year things like the tax refunds which are coming in much larger than expected lower energy prices and warmer weather which which cause a lot more housing activity occurring january february than usual and also easter came in the first quarter and that really gave spending for our non durable goods a huge boost the rows of better than eight percent annual rate will now are seeing the payback for that quarter and analysts off note and we're likely to see growth fall back a little bit in the second quarter we're still looking for growth in the second quarter but just not quite as at the strong pace that we saw an end of the first quarter margaret censor an annualized rate of five twenty percent growth though in the middle of what we're told is a recession pretty eye popping number well surely it is an eye popping number and they can distract this is the other guests have indicated that this john is caused in part by businesses looking ahead expecting sales to pick up on what their other work places where the economy is still weak

as would be normal even as recovery and undergoes began a i'll for example our unemployment remains high or higher certainly than last year and we don't expect that that will come down anytime soon barrage robertson's by numbers that measured various the streets and alleys of the economy one number maybe up another one maybe down what would you want us to look at in assessing the overall health well the npr for example eye when he calls an end to the recession won't look just that the gdp but will look at numbers like employment growth that is actual job increases increases in the number of jobs it will look at income growth and it will look at numbers relate to since pacific industries like manufacturing and it will be a while before we see some of that in a

silent way in the end the er is the national bureau of economic research they are the organization that calls official beginnings an insecure recession what those measurements of the economy do you look at and wenzel to work to give us a more nuanced look them in the fairly a gross gdp figures i've been looking primarily at employment and that's been going nowhere employment is down slightly from december levels and the only area that's increases government and climates also some in the lower paid services industries and i don't really think that americans will feel that a recovery is going on and so when it starts to increase again especially until we see a decrease in the unemployment rate what has happened in the first quarter is that output has increased keeping employment levels stable so there's been an increase in productivity and if these increases continue eventually as the year goes on the start hiring again and i think that really is a lack of state recovery

workers back to work but there was that their butt about that idea of people feeling that the recession is over was this a pretty awesome black and white recession to lead to the extent that if you had a job because inflation was low it was still i'm in pretty good shape as that is that would help keep spending so strongly in the last year we have a lot of things that kept spending strongly for one thing the tax cuts that we got were were just perfectly timed ending with a work plan that way but take those tax rebate checks started flowing right when the economy needed them most and then we had exceptionally low interest rates which allows people to refinance their mortgages at lower rates and freed up a lot of income weeks away and we also got the brake on energy prices which put more money in people's pockets so again there were a lot of factors that came together that that didn't that lessen the blow from this recession for people who didn't lose their job but more than two million people could lose their jobs and for them the recession is not over yet but we have to say is that we have to get those gains in

productivity we did get very strong gains in productivity in the first quarter at least it looks like we have once that happens profit margins will begin a pretty improve and companies will feel more comfortable the hiring more workers for most consumers and for many businesses i don't think they're going to feel that the recession is over until we get into the second half of this year i then will seasonal season more stronger gdp numbers from the fundamental basis for not just improve upon on inventories like we saw on the spot if you lost your job in the last couple of course margaret's sense we are you well placed both geographically and so whether you're a manufacturing or services where you well the well placed as far as what you do for a living to to benefit in common as well it's in any recovery those with the higher skills tend to get their jobs back first so we would expect that those at the end of the cue ah will not get picked up until later in the

recovery and there is some recovery in the tourism and travel industry and that good news hopefully for people who felt that they get brought from september eleventh people in hotel and travel interest related industries about generally speaking it will be those with good skills with adaptable skills who will be able to move into the jobs that will recover more quickly no said that low wage workers were among the last to be able to take advantage of the long boom of the nineteen nineties though they also be the last to feel the recovery well that would be expected and not just during the nineteen nineties but in previous recessions it's low wage in low skilled workers who've been at the back of the line and wenzel what is the business cycle look like from california will will california will cover as the nation well as it on a different time to work california's actually i experience it differently and southern california versus northern california apparently in this

recession southern california is doing much better back in the early nineties they had a lot of base closures and they're doing much better than northern california that spending hit the it sector here in silicon valley is still being hit there are a lot of startups in the area they're running out of funding they will be running out within the next year or so and i have three quarters of them probably won't receive any more funding and they're either going to have to go or more slowly or most likely a lot of them are gonna die and so unemployment is going to be an issue here in silicon valley for at least another six months at nine year it was so good when downsizing of the military base closures or the shrinking of the department of defense over all came california was one of the places hit hardest in the country now that we're in a war now the defense spending is up will this help either california wore a discreet regions of the nation more than it helps the overall american icon it not defense

companies that there was a large contracts awarded here in the valley what happens with the ninety one recession is that was a lot of merging of companies so there are fewer defense companies left that they won't benefit it security too will benefit so there are little pockets that will benefit from that increase in security and also defense expenditures that the valley overall is concentrating primarily on computers networking equipment and software some of them are benefitting from this which to security but overall it's so soft and burma here mr vitner back to the other coast has new york doing and new york is is it doing a little bit better new york lost more jobs any other metro area in the country during the recession and and if it seems to be leveling off or seeing some games end of the travel and tourism industry coming back a little bit the airlines a call back

some of their workers financial industry is is he's pretty slow right now and there's not a lot of growth in there are not saying a whole lot of job losses either our businesses coming back that we were beginning to see the ipo business come back a little bit so it's doing a little bit better when you get away from new york the northeast looked pretty good at held up in the recession very very well the south was hit very hard though manufacturing count for a much larger share of the cells work force particularly text was an apparel and i believe tackles an apparel can for about forty percent of all the job loss in the manufacturing sector the good news is that text or girl beginning to recover text allow that grew to fifteen percent annual rate during the first quarter the strongest growth were seen there over two years a parallel close up ten percent and fracturing should coming back along that i'm down in florida and disney world is his beginning to hire some temporary staff for the summer burleson saying that that charisma charisma convention business is coming back in in

south florida by and large floor that would have missed a recession if it wasn't for nine eleven but the cutbacks in tourism really hit the state hard toward the tail end of last year and finally margaret sims does the news itself or a growing consensus that the worst maybe over become a factor itself in people's individual behavior and the willingness of businesses to spend and willingness of consumers to spend i think god in one sense because one thing consumers have confidence that the economy is on the right road they'll be more likely to spend but they didn't stop spending as much as was expected in the anti recessionary period and so there may not be anything for them life devices be they went out bought new vehicles the zero percent financing so they've gotten some purchases in that they might have normally done in the front and the recovery because that's usually what people do they

hunker down and then when times were good they got and they buy those different purchases like automobiles and housing but some of that held up in the fourth quarter in the first quarter of this year is was indicated so that's not going to give us the quite the boost that we thought it would bother to use gas leaking well now the long and contentious road for an energy bill coming home and reports last night when the senate finally passed a democratic backed energy bill after two months of on again off again today it did so overwhelmingly eighty eight to eleven but the final measure reflected losses on major issues by both democrats and republicans leading members of both parties less than happy alaska's frank murkowski spent much of the last two months pushing his colleagues to allow oil drilling in alaska's arctic national wildlife refuge or anwar we're not very few days ago

to debate this issue about reducing our dependence on foreign oil what's called substantial was defeated some republicans and president bush say allowing energy exploration and the arctic refuge could produce a million barrels of oil a day and be accomplished in an environmentally safe manner but last week senate democrats and some republicans refuse to make the idea part of their bills and last month senators voted down a hotly debated plan to raise fuel efficiency standards for cars by fifty percent when you look at why we are continuing to import more moral it's part where war were convened import more more all the main reason is that we have stalled out on improving efficiency in the in the mortgage sector the remaining items in the energy bill that senators this week embroiled in battles over other ways to cut down on the use of fossil fuels and the pollution they call one was whether to mandate that ethanol derived from corn the added to gasoline to reduce auto emissions

senators from large urbanized states argued blending ethanol with gasoline is complicated and expensive and they're states should be allowed to develop other additives to reduce tailpipe emissions is california's dianne feinstein moisture causes ethanol to separate from gasoline so the fuel additive cannot be shipped through traditional gasoline pipelines ethanol needs to be transported separately by truck by boat by barge by rail and then blended into the gasoline at the refinery site after it's a ripe yellow not be so easy to transport ethanol by truck by boat or by rail from the midwest and blended once it's transported and less adequate facilities can be built feinstein said mandating ethanol use was the work of senators from corn producing states including majority leader tom desolate south dakota whose aim is to force corn based ethanol on the big states he characterized their

attitude half of that spikes your cost of gasoline tough if you don't have enough refinery capability that's your fault line for the farmers in the midwest and all the rest of you the dam i resent that as public policy and i have every right to i represent thirty four and a half million people the fifth largest economic engine on earth and we're being told it's good for corn farmers so you were you guys lay down and take it and i got every right to stand on the senate floor and say i have a problem with that and say i think this is unfair and say i think it's done in the dark of night and say i don't think anybody who's really affected by it has been led into that secret dark room yes you better deal you got closer than a server closet more access corn from ben nelson's nebraska it would be converted into ethanol under the mandate well let's raise the price of gasoline because of the

cost of ethanol quite frankly by reducing the amount of gasoline used because of the it will drive down the supply of gasoline which i think will also if you will and the use of ethanol as a part of that will and will not increase the cost of gasoline but will in fact decrease the cost of gasoline and the evidence really exist that this is what the marketplace has been doing over the last ten to twenty years in many states across the country most senators agreed with nelson and voted to require refiners to add five billion gallons of ethanol to gasoline by the year twenty twelve the us consumes one hundred eighty billion gallons of fuel per year in addition to the ethanol mandate the senate energy bill would require the federal transportation department to mandate higher fuel efficiency standards for cars within two years the house passed a similar standard the senate bill provides about fourteen billion dollars in tax credits to encourage conservation renewable fuels cleaner coal and safer nuclear technology the house bill

gives about twice as much in tax credits mostly to increase oil and natural gas production finally the senate bill would require utility companies to generate ten percent of their electricity using renewable fuels by twenty twenty democrat john breaux as from major oil and gas producer louisiana support for car renewable portfolio standard now in anguish a renewable portfolio standard violent ways than a dried ants play it by saying it's a requirement of the federal government that power companies have to look more renewable sources of energy and producing energy in this country would remain by a windmill power for instance bile mayor's power are renewable alternative forms of endless energy that should be encouraged in this country and i am for that but another oil state senator republican don nickles of oklahoma said electric utility customers were paying higher bills unless the senate adopted his plan for a

less stringent mandates on the use of renewable fuels if we don't pass this and that you had a significant head on writers to happen and maybe it was you know what they should know we're voting on whether or not women have electric rates go up seven every morgue in fact the senate did vote for the stricter renewable fuels requirement work on molding the energy bills passed by the house and senate will occur over the coming weeks still to come on the newshour tonight shields and brooks african art and roger rosenblatt essay anthony now our weekly analysis from syndicated columnist mark shields and the weekly standard's david brooks welcome back he dated this energy bill was supposed to be the centerpiece of president bush's domestic agenda yet but flourish in the house the senate sent the senate for some are miles apart

it's actually seem to satisfy almost no one want have but it's shrunk sir alec a lincoln navigator with all these extra features analysis on the civic with an am radio mostly diseases struggling to create because what you have was to lobby is on either side right or left who want to terminate the other side's pet projects on the environmental side get rid of mr trillin on the industry side get rid of cafe standards fuel efficiency standards that would apply this to me is another cars and trucks so they each were very successful it's striking out each other's ideas and they got smaller and smaller and smaller and our done something that you know this last election your pocket nobody's satisfied actually think this issue is coming back john kerry something other presidential candidates have begun it is about energy it's an issue that strikes a lot of people both politically left of energy independence and technologically because there are new things coming on board so the small bill what is a precursor to some later the market and why i mean the rising oil prices given the

unrest in the middle east why wasn't there any political will of the white house from the health to override these you know you always have these industry an interest group to describe opposition whether that the president is a fiercely resisted two volumes of the legislative process a mini some some conservative some protection people in the senate were upsetting about mcallen and why the drilling and then the yale alaska national natural wildlife reserve and my writing has been another dynamic to it and that is the division in the house and the senate republican leadership in the house to say to pass a bill and a dentist each time they do it they force it through their own discipline they get their own troops lined up there's very little collaboration across the aisle stand up passing a bill with a very few votes that has in it what they want the soul of the senate's essentially the president's residence build mostly because the senate and they don't have the votes for the senate gets together and they put together a different piece of legislation which they passed a da to love and now you have a gourd conference with us surrogacy was ironed out and you get entirely different conflicts

i mean you get that that the people from the house billy tauzin is the chairman of the committee says he wants to put anyone going back in and that the senate resistance to what is real because according to get a majority for the senate i wear what was most revealing to me politically was the the bat packers the birkenstocks the green these viral was actually beat up big oil the white house the republican party and the teamsters and the building trades union senate only on dandelion i know that market it will know david burstein right so it just up the west coast three senators three senators come to stand in the way of a white pack of white judd gregg of new hampshire who voted to increase production by going in and walk and for tougher standards while everybody else was here for a tougher on the status quo bar for girl and then there was nobody that there were three surveys the great consensus the senate floor for both

production and conservation i left them on the foreign affairs seem to start a rocky week for the president there today which yesterday crown prince abdullah saudi arabia made clear everyone made sure everyone knew that he told vice president bush to rein in israel today israel goes into yet another forward realtors another west bank town that did withdraw i'm is this undercutting the president's clout were pretty imagery has clocked the perception has crowded foreign policy i think he had a pretty good week and this ability is a really could've been a fiasco is a guy who was one of the many yasser arafat walk out of camp david cost of the oslo peace process is a guy his regime surrounding the madrassas all over the world from entering anti american violence is about you the last couple weeks the side of saddam hussein more than a body comes to washington as you say really with the baseline which in their time slips the maritimes and the threat to the us if they don't do what we want them to

do it really good in a week where either bush we've done without a lot of dung so the saudis to go jump intervene which would've been unhelpful was the diplomats say or it could a cave than i am really moved in and virulently anti israel direction from my perspective anything to release these carefully he did neither he stuck with a long term plan which is we're focusing on iraq focusing on al qaeda or not to get deeply involved in the middle east than what we tried that a couple weeks ago so i think it was it was a period of relative stability and long term sobriety for the bush administration yes the president did not have a good week and has not looked sure footed the least as i describe my colleague out with the enormous affection and respect that it does not mean that if in fact the war against terrorism to find george w bush gave in the sense of mission gave a sense of purpose in clear view of the world that their presence has been clouded in the middle east and you're right he said right now it's

three weeks ago are now quite that means now that mean immediately then i understand exactly what he's doing he's denied his timetable is a man of peace now expect there i think there was another statement that he wants about now aren't they should have and if they have privacy and so there is and there isn't a sense of your footage as and you can see for the first time the fault lines emerging in the administration publicly affection for going public high and has said there's open tension open not hostility that certainly enmity between them and the state department colin powell and defense department and other folks in his administration so i think the president it doesnt look like he's exercised that sense of command which is what projected him to position a dominant political the political landscape that he seemed desert and organized resolute determined commander in chief which he does it in the middle east will marks for and i think to a of the eye popping store and washing poster which led the washington post and it was

the state's farm people saying our policies in shambles the defense partners winning they don't say it explicitly but you understood the white house is waiting in beating up on the cia the state department were in one service can listen though state department had their chance what happened is bush's two different approaches in his administration one which is really the white house pentagon approach one in which cia statistical approach one that says american leadership one emphasizes partnership and polish a lot about the place market making that whichever side you think has the right policy is this help also the president to have this creative tension or is this actually undercutting his affect its creative tension i think it's useful to have different approaches industry should as long as the president makes up his mind and i think the president did make a semi colon powell took that trip to the middle east george bush was beaten up about it because it's in the cloud or moral objectives did not help pacifier rally around the arab countries so bush really crack down on the prowl approach and that's what has the state balance so upset local one thousand men of character who would not question

bush when decisions go against him he does not leak the leaks are often post today it must have come from lower level they were incredibly self destructive as if there's one thing she's not like it's gonna wash and post with their complaints i think first of all just a bit of time a principal it was against us law either which fits in the great company of ariel sharon and bibi netanyahu political revenge for being gone there so this was an important meeting for the president there was no joint communique at the end of it margaret which i think is revealing itself end and that the president in a wooden there for five hours this week the biggest consumer of oil to the biggest producer of oil were not there because we share a lot of traditions together and won values but it was an important meeting and i don't think much came out of it and i think i think right now which are you seeing is an administration that has lost its beer it has certainly lost its sense of absolute self confidence leslie samuel

comeback new topic the car not meeting at the vatican last week david you said a little look at your quote your faith that you would somehow get some initiative some control over this process in the sex abuse scandal that the cartels and she dressed like quotas already in bartlett's quotation i think that's a great note that i read in on the catholic but i read the document from the us cardinals and incredibly disappointed by one because there was no sign of being shocked by what happened suddenly there was no mention of empathy for what the kids with the victims went through it was just like legal pad a fiery between notorious molesters and non notorious molesters summit really was still an organizational response without empathetic response and religious books props response to what happened i thought it was really a dud others work last week you said you have this meeting it would restore trust the trust of catholics have didn't think it did i know

i think the place david make a very valid points but i it i guess i was astounded i mean as a catholic for a long long time like my entire life i was astounded to see cardinals answering questions from cnn report is an npr reporters and it was just amazing at that so the sense of openness from where the news from talking about to doing something about it which i think as with david makes the very good point that was missing was that sense of me aching whole making healthy helping those who were were victimized and most of all i think what was missing was any sense of accountability for the hierarchy that move these predators around to prey upon to play point children and i think that was that that was not provided i n roll and i think now the focus shifts to the dallas me angel of the big all american bishops but i'll say the time is short and i think patience is running out and i think american catholics are remain at the main disappointed and our

time is short a brief final comment karen hughes a long time aide to president bush announced this week she's leaving the white house says a big loss it is a big loss that most powerful woman was be refined and others was paul for women not married to a president in the history of the american waitress i happen not under oath enlightened liberated democrat happened under a conservative traditional values republicans in their caring he was held at this is all saying why should they never go back to pocatello which means when she was a congressional seat you hang around the sea she's gone back to pocatello which tends to be austin a hundred and seven degree temperatures for many she says she's doing volunteer way she wasn't pushed and that's a story what will show that there was some sort of diffusion some conspiracy and it turns out there wasn't really actually family reasons yeah and there you see this over again and again in republican administrations they're afraid of washington they don't like washington since the moment annandale virginia which is a normal american community bigger northwest washington dc where the rabbit is a

lawyer the senate it's the same old things we've achieved a carver when the president declares president campaigns culture shock i will move them they'll virginia next year at them next modern africa revealed through its art our arts correspondent jeffrey brown reports oh no i caught him on his way to a family though i'm going back to the congo in nineteen sixty a momentous part of twenty century history africa's move from colonialism to independence the newsreel footage and much more are part of the unique exhibition called the short century now at ps one contemporary arts center in new york but the focus here is the

cultural crossroads of africa and the west pulled the paintings and pop music and books building models political posters and photography the exhibitions name is about marking time the long nineteenth century of european domination running all the way through world war through the short twentieth century of liberation movements an independence beginning for this exhibition in the mid nineteen forties ending with the election of nelson mandela south africa in nineteen ninety four and while the africa of poverty and war sometimes makes the evening news this modern cultural africa is rarely seen in the west as the exhibitions curator oakley and wiser learned when he first came here from nigeria coming to the letter says in

the moment more than twenty years ago i was really confronted with the complete absence off you know what i consider to be a history of the third belongs to this is i was really astonished to find out that there was absolutely no space for you know people of my generation to america's attention one was a sense of africa that you found when you first came here the size of africa was completely empty in a modern and contemporary in the space that you know that in the form of human tribal and primitive you know in the arts they're very extent to which africa joined in modern art movement says one key piece of the show paintings from ethiopia sculpture from sudan photography from mali and on out to contemporary styles like room sized installations and video are so much of the work that you put together is unknown to most people give us a way and what we're really trying to do gunderson africa has really been

on lists and simply move through different off and the kinds of appeals which in the continent but to really to look very deeply into the car for a particular artist that come out of the kind of constant also that up also contributed in shipping and what a lot of much more complex view with the continent has been able to produce is the second world war the story of how so called primitive african art influence artists like picasso in the early twentieth century is fairly well known art in the west what came to be known as modern art was never the same this exhibition shows how the influence doubled back to africa unchanged art there as well you can see it an abstract painting by south african ernst man copa in the late nineteen forties or these representational artist ai is country manager are also four years ago her support is really one of the most

significant mother south african artist of the twentieth century they brought this about with it i'm just tired of this really quite controlled disciplined and obviously in a very very much interested in the very profitable thing to itself siegel joe was trained and worked in a black township of johannesburg subject we're always this deep south african townships the inhabitants of the entire ship and of his sons was really trying to render us complicit where it's possible to do quality of the people who occupied the states and this is at a time when that particular subject was not well it has not been undertaken that will consider that to be very conscious of that that like teenage on the outside that could be seen as almost like a political act indeed another key point of the exhibition is to show africa's culture and art have been wrapped up in its politics videos and films

document pieces of history political posters show a world of struggle often violent photographs capture the almost surreal encounter of whites and blacks the trials and triumphs of emerging african leaders another approached the history is this cycle of paintings by ship whom a condiment to look from the nineteen seventies the paintings show scenes from the epic of the congo the brutal colonial period under belgium the creation in nineteen sixty of an independent state led by poetry's la mama you only months later la mama was toppled and killed in a military coup rapped congo later called zaire today's democratic republic of the congo has lived through oppression and civil war for decades la la mama has become an almost mythic figure

this is not so much about a representational of the overpass us what it was it was intuition of what remains a very very active and stronger in the us the president said this is an artist creating memory yeah that's what makes a remarkable these various interviews there's very committed attempt to manage its history in all its guises and i think it's really quite remarkable given the very limited visibility is housecleaning service the nexus of art and politics runs throughout the exhibition especially in works by south african artists a piece called south african coloring book with its bitter and ironic captions a slideshow of lost family portraits that asked pointed questions and a powerful film mixing animated drawings and documentary video by william country he has been

a nice discussion called butcher boys from the mid nineteen eighties by jane alexander british animal like figures whites deformed by their complicity in the apartheid system this is about as in your face as you can get this is half human half animal mouth your mouth it's a manifestation of all of our all of the scenarios in a position of all the horrific what is something also a very very odd you know that this fix is because you want to say that it's not me of course not everything here is so laden is the foot tapping fun highlights news and photos of the young people of play the strutting their stuff

a contemporary artist to create works of great scope and beauty like this are you pushing a bar called one hundred years they've also done words that require a bit more explanation and got amir's art is political but the focus is the politics of being a woman in today's islamic society in a mattress with two figures carved out in an embroidered canvas and a curious that the fabric panels inspired by fashion magazine for veiled women i didn't want to do less because i was an african i didn't want because i am calling from my agents i was the latest findings at his history in fact for me i wanted to do the thirty eight to be involved in the mother to all we and waste or it's another example of the wide diversity of african art to talk about what is african and one of the conductor's to confound our

early in oprah determination that has often been hatched to africa now what is a relative of the experiences of approaches and that the relative narratives i think this is really their authentic social wanted to focus on to look at the ways in which artists writers musicians and photographers cell phone makers have really you know a lot of the sort of the cultural richness of the continent to tell you no news to resort to create new ideas that short century exhibition runs through may fifth much more on this exhibit including an interactive forum with the curator and other experts is available on our website at pbs dot org chevis but aaron do we close tonight with some thoughts from essayist roger rosenblatt about the state of america's innocence people said that we were shocked by the

attacks of september eleventh because were an innocent country except in the nose definition of innocence being taken by surprise by aerial attack there's never been anything it isn't about us what more we know it we consistently and justifiably beat ourselves up over history of indian slaughter slavery the crushing of workers the abandonment of the poor child labour black list's poll taxes segregation but hausman of homosexuals anti everyone behavior the internment camps the suppression of women meal i shall i go on a nation with a history that includes such events only regards itself as innocent as a bit of a convenient folklore but we use the word nonetheless to reestablish the vision of the ideal state like the untrammeled virginal american landscape that

allows us to think of ourselves as a better people than some of our history might indicate this in fact was a very good idea out of a yearning for a more leading the forward motion of other writer history is born recall brown versus the board of education in the early nineteen fifties linda brown an african american fifth grader in topeka kansas was denied admission to a white elementary will the case was ruled on by the supreme court nineteen fifty four the ruling simply and clearly was that the separate but equal clause in plessy vs ferguson at ninety six which sanctioned segregated schools violated the children's fourteenth amendment rights and with that decision that law was made good rounded not simply write the wrong law it expose and that's held up the content a widespread assumption that blacks were inferior people that had been a guilty not so secret american secret

did not arise out of innocence but neither could've been obliterated by innocence only because the country was made aware of its lack of innocence could last through the right thing there is a different group of nations can take and i want to make up for guilty episodes they can make public apologies transfer that what it owned up to its collaboration with the nazis against its jewish citizens the vatican through the ok julie has acknowledged its history that japan has apologized sort of for its treatment of koreans and chinese all of which is very nice and commendable but also a little silly in a hole you about that the most effective apology for something in the past is to correct something in the present dust brown that's title nine which gave women a level playing field for us the loss concerning the

handicapped bus miranda and the notification of the suspects' rights none of these corrections would have been necessary in a truly innocent nation but one nation can possibly be innocent either not going to dwell on brown is an example of our being cleansed on the spot and instantly reborn but rather the opposite after brown there was selma it was birmingham there were church bombings and civil rights workers murdered and children clothed in the streets forty years after brown the country has a very long way to go and race relations but the impulse to clean up our act could never derived from a state of innocence america has been through the mill often one of our own man a factor innocence is a preposterous and useless condition first because it makes people vulnerable second because no improvement can come of it the test of a civilization is not that it struggles against poverty and meet the test of the civilization is that it

struggles against itself it's guilty simple human self the balance of power is created by the constitution was a clear statement of low expectations we have frequently lived up to them which is how we see them i'm roger rosenblatt ants but again the major developments today economic growth surged at a five point eight percent rate in the first quarter the biggest jump in more than two years and teenage gunman went on a rampage at a high school in germany killing seventeen people before committing suicide a reminder that washington we can be seen on most pbs stations later this evening we'll see you online and again here monday evening i'm margaret warner thanks for being with us tonight fb major funding for the newshour with jim lehrer has been provided by imagine a world that would not diminishing resources

made a call and by spca communication with the high speed internet access and transport network business solutions when it comes to providing what it takes to help the world where all the fec communications pbs stations like anything's been it's been

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pbs video call one eight hundred three to eight pbs won out oh yeah it's b it's the same also every radio stations on the same rate us to lose control your doctor fortunate than the station fb i'm margaret

warner jim lehrer has the day off on the newshour tonight a summary of today's news what the new economic growth numbers mean the making of an energy bill friday commentary by mark shields and david brooks a look at an exhibit of contemporary african art and roger rosenblatt essay about america's innocent and guilt major funding for the newshour with jim lehrer has been provided by imagine a world without diminishing resources and by ftc communication with the high speed internet access and transport network business solutions when it comes to providing what it takes to help the world with all the fec communications pbs

station to have plenty