Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 9, 1978)
—————editorials— Thai power The Eugene Water and Electric Board has discovered a new source of steam-producing fuel bound to be more important in the future than nuclear, coal, solar, wind, geothermal and tidal sources put together: “Thai stick pot. Nobody disputes the high quality of Thai pot, but a further demonstration came when EWEB burned about eight tons of the weed in its steam plant. Unfodunately, someone in the EWEB offices forgot to turn on the steam turbines to test the energy efficiency of the weed. But the Eugene police have held several hundred pounds of the material, apparently for further study of energy-producing potential. EWEB sources said the burning of the pot was so complete that the characteristic marijuana odor was unde tectable even a short distance from the steam plant. That leads one to the conclusion that its combustion might pro duce more steam than many of the combustibles EWEB now uses. The EWEB board should consider, however, that the material may be expensive to use if it is ever legalized, possibly more expensive than nuclear power. But as long as the material remains illegal, EWEB, in conjunction with the police, can obtain large amounts of pot at no cost above that of investigations and raids. So to do your bit for energy source exploration, toss your dope into a steam furnance. Oops... Because of a typographical error and an oversight, the Emerald editorial of Friday, Jan. 6, mistakenly reported an error in the incidental fee expenditures of the ASUO gov ernment. Here is how the table of IFC expenditures for 1977-78 should have read: EMU .$784,037 Athletics.?222’?I? ASUO programs ..$215,587 ASUO government.$91,087 Emerald .$65,785 OSPIRG.$43,000 Oregon Student Lobby .$14,975 V editorial CIA school of journalism Ever since the revelation that the CIA uses American and foreign journalists for information and “news” plants, a running debate has been going on among American journalists. In U.S. House intelligence subcommittee hearings late in December, four veteran reporters from the N.Y. Times, The Washington Post, U.S. News and World Report and Fortune Magazine told the committee that the CIA should not be al lowed to use American journalists. But only one, Ward Just of the Times, said the CIA shouldn’t use foreign journalists. Thursday, three prominent newspaper editors told the same subcommittee that the CIA should not be able to use either American or foreign reporters. We agree with the editors' view. Thp case against using American jour nalists is obvious. The CIA essentially deals in propaganda, a force which had at least a sig nificant part in the longevity of the cold war. Unfortunately, the American press has often (and perhaps rightly in the event of war) cheered the “home team” in foreign relations. The sports analogy serves well. Often sportscasters let out a holler when a home team scores a point, but we’ve never seen an an nouncer run down to the field to inform a coach of what he ought to be doing or what he thinks the other team is likely to do. We’ve never seen a sports photographer at a Duck game jump up, dangling cameras, film and other parapher nalia, to score a crucial tip-in. Similarly, the press should remain apart from involvement in worldwide events. In many cases, the press has opted not to report about events, which is in itself a form of propaganda. (One press critic, Bernard Rubin, claims the N.Y. Times had the story of the Bay of Pigs invasion plan before that fiasco occurred, but suppressed it as the request of Pres. Kennedy. Apparently, Kennedy later said if the Times had broken the story, the invasion may never have occurred.) If the press had been reporting about the excesses of the CIA years ago, perhaps many of the damaging items we know about today would never have happened. In the foreign press, we can assume the CIA’s goal is to inject some propaganda into nations which are already subject to prop aganda from other sources. The CIA claims if it cannot use foreign journalists, it hands will be tied. But many of the nefarious CIA activities which have surfaced in recent years damage the U.S. world image more than any amount of propaganda from Soviet sources. The CIA, Watergate and the Vietnam War are all too recent and too indicative of the facade of American altruism. If we are to be presented to the world as altruistic, maybe the best way to get the mes sage across is to be altruistic. Letters Odd trip An old barometer salesman who often must instruct pupils in school on the evaluation of barog raphs recorded by our instru ments, I’d been forced to stop to change a tire as I was leaving downtown Portland. A lad wearing a red beard, a sou’wester and a backpack ap proached, stopped, laid his pack on the hood of my vehicle and helped me, saying: “I hope I can live until my hair is white, but with the rise of terrorism and crime, I doubt that I wilt.” I asked the laddie where he was headed. “Eugene,” he said. “I’m in the University.” So I gave him a lift southward. Though I have no college degree, I had some empathy for the boy. I hadn’t seen his like for almost 50 years; since I’d been a young “col lege hobo”. My young friend told me that “While my major is math, I’m ac tually a ‘history buff .” He worked weekends for an uncle as a tool and diemaker in Portland but felt the work to be less than futile be cause so much of it led only to ward increasing the sophistication of death-dealing weapons and said he wished he could earn enough as a farm boy to pay his tuition. He told me something about the University of Oregon I had not known. “It was just a struggling little re ligious school," he said, “back in the days when religion, like athle tics, hadn’t become just big busi ness'. There was a financier named Henry Villard, who was to the Northern Pacific Railway what James Jerome Hill was to the Great Northern and Leland Stan ford to the Southern Pacific. The school had few facilities until Vil lard built Villard Hall — and the reason he did that was his wife, Helen Garrison Villard, who was the daughter of William Lloyd Gar rison, whose anti-slavery paper, The Liberator, had been de stroyed in Boston. For many years" he added, “their son, Os wald Garrison Villard, who had become editor and publisher of The Nation, had made regular vis its and often lectured, at the Uni versity of Oregon." I The lad, who shall be nameless here, because, as he said, he was somewhat unpopular because of his “radical ideas", took me to dinner at his fraternity house. “I keep urging my brethren to go into politics,” said my friend. "My roommate, here, for example!” “And we tell this red-head that in these corrupt times, a politician gets nowhere unless he is crooked.” “He need not be," retorted my friend. “Was Alexander Hamilton crooked? Was Lincoln crooked? Was Mahatma Gandhi, who won independence of India with utter non-violence, crooked?” “Perhaps not — but look what happened to them? Could you spare a few thousand dollars for my parents to pay the undertaker, buy my plot in The Park of Per petual Peace with a fitting tomb stone? You still owe the House Manager last month’s board bill!” “He’ll pay it," interjected the House Manager. “He got behind last year and when we got some pressure from the Savings & Loan Association that holds our mort gage, your roommate borrowed from a finance company and paid off the loan last summer. He’ll do it again!” “Brother mine," said my friend, softly, “You have often kept me awake by professing your concern for our society and its unfortunate drift. But this can only be addres sed through active participation in the political process. “Of course,” he added, even you and I might fail, even with such active participation, to arrest the Decline and Fall of the Ameri can Republic. However, by virtue of making the effort, we shall know in our own hearts that it does not apply to ourselves should some future historian write an epitaph for our free society as Gibbon's for ancient Athens: “ When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society, but for society to give to them....when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free! David Welch San Bruno, California at so.ooo Feet i -[uooatfr. *A FRA0(7 IS RVIUS AU AIRPlAue." so J rocK A ^ spmc shot TO TH6 HCOU. %w •ip, none i THOUGHT Ff&UP HAS CMxep THe „ MCOU mtHsu> & r TOOK A PJU, PK£ SV 10 THE (Ue»)y>AR92 AW? „ „ COOFB5H? T&THe' IOORLP THAT IW*6 A H3*UP? fttfRCATV sev The Atlantic iwx&n?'*aTi^H^^i^tsos-sep ttc&ttc /m a«*»*« im? w tV AUP I niOUSttT; •A FRAOP ^ffieraxw t> ee taiesr." ©R7T JU£%0G&2.- l-f
