Democracy Now! April 18, 2003

9:00-9:01 Billboard 9:01-9:12 Headlines 9:12-9:13 One Minute Music Break 9:13-9:20: The Bush administration has awarded the Bechtel Group the first major contract for Iraq s reconstruction. The contract could be worth up to $680 million dollars over the next year and a half for the rebuilding of Iraq s electrical, water and sewage systems. Bechtel has a long history of doing business in Iraq. In the early 80s, Bechtel negotiated to build an oil pipeline from Iraq to Jordan. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad 1983 for a private meeting with Saddam Hussein. Officially, Rusmfeld was acting as then-President Reagan s peace envoy and was supposed to discus the Iran-Iraq war. But a secret State Department cable obtained by the National Security Archives, reveals Rusmfeld appears to have made little or no mention of the war, and instead discussed the pipeline proposal. The 20-year-old memo was from Rumsfeld to George Schultz who was Secretary of State. Currently, Schultz is on Bechtel s board of directors and chairs the advisory board of the pro-war Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Bechtel s senior vice-president is Jack Sheehan, who is also a member of the Defence Policy Board. US taxpayers will the initial costs of the contract. Iraqi oil is then supposed to pay for much of the reconstruction. * Jim Vallette, research director for the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network and author of "Crude Vision: How Oil Interests Obscured US Government Focus On Chemical Weapons Use by Saddam Hussein" 9:20-9:21 One-minute music break 9:21-9:40: "Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here at the dawning of Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line. That was how writer and civil rights leader W.E.B. DuBois opened his landmark work The Souls of Black Folk. The book, a collection of 14 essays, was published 100 years ago today. The Souls of Black Folk brought international recognition to DuBois who was already well known for becoming the first African-American to receive a doctorate degree from Harvard. Souls was praised for its literary merit and for its social commentary. It won the highest praise from Henry James who wrote that the collection was "the only 'Southern' book of any distinction for many a year. In Souls, DuBois also began an intense debate with Booker T. Washington. Dubois criticized Washington s philosophy of accepting the status quo in racial matters. Since the first edition in 1903, The Souls of Black Folk has gone through several printings totaling over 350,000 copies and has had worldwide circulation. After the publication of Souls, DuBois would go on to help found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He edited the NAACP magazine Crisis. All told he went on to write 20 books, two novels, a play and numerous articles and essays. He would become a leading supporter of socialism and pan-Africanism. He would be targeted by the U.S. for his political views. And he would eventually leave the U.S. for Ghana where he died in 1963 on the eve of the march on Washington when the Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King delivered his I Have A Dream Speech. Professors Cornel West and Henry Louis Gates said of DuBois, "in a sense, it would be true to claim that all black intellectuals and all of our civil rights leaders are, in some manner, his heirs. * W.E.B. DuBois, recorded in 1951 in Los Angeles from Pacifica Radio Archives * David Levering Lewis, two-time Pulitzer Prize winning historian for his two biographies on W.E.B. DuBois. In 1994 he published W.E.B. DuBois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 and in 2001 he published W.E.B. DuBois: The Fight for Equality in the American Century, 1919-1963. He is a professor in the history department at Rutgers University. Tape: W.E.B. DuBois, speaking in the early 1960s for Folkways Records on governmental charges that he was an agent of the Soviet government. * David DuBois, stepson of W.E.B. DuBois. He is a visiting associate professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He teaches courses on the press and the Third World and the history of the African-American press. 9:40-9:41 One Minute Music Break 9:41-9:54 DuBois cont d 9:54-9:58: Ten years ago LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman were given tape recorders and microphones and a little guidance on how to use the equipment. They were two 14 year old boys from Chicago s South Side Housing projects. They captured life in and around the Chicago ghetto. With National Public Radio producer David Isay they put together two radio documentaries. Ghetto Life 101 was about the projects where they lived. Remorse: The 14 Stories of Eric Morse was an examination of the murder of a five-year-old who was dropped from the window of a building near LeAlan and Lloyd's homes. For their work, the boys ended up winning broadcasting's prestigious Peabody Award. Today he joins us in the studio to read his latest work on the war. * LeAlan Jones 9:58-9:59 Outro and Credits Democracy Now! is produced by Kris Abrams, Mike Burke, Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Angie Karran, Ana Nogueira and Elizabeth Press with help from Noah Reibel. Mike Di Filippo is our music maestro and engineer.