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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (May 12, 1981)
emerald Vol. 82, No. 152 Eugene, Oregon 97403 Tuesday, May 12, 1981 Photo by Erich Boekelheide A piece for peace Lane County Commissioner Jerry Rust and friends enjoy an apple pie presented to them Monday by the Citizens for Lasting Security and Citizens for Safe Energy. The groups presented pies to local notables as an alternative celebration of Mothers' Day and protest against the nuclear arms race. f Activist urges no aid for South Africans By MIKE RUST Ol the Emerald If the United States and other Western coun tries were to adopt a "moral" attitude toward South Africa, the racist Nationalist regime would collapse, says Fred Dube of the African National Congress. "We don’t believe they would last a year. A year is probably too long," says Dube. The deputy United Nations representative of the South African organization said in an inter view Monday that Western economic investment and clandestine arms shipments prop up that country’s white minority government both mater ially and psychologically. "What’s sustaining them now is that they think surely that if things come to a push, that if the ANC in particular is going to be in power, then the United States, Britain and France would come to our help. “So that psychologically it makes them re sistant to any form of change. "That’s number one. Number two is that if they were to pull out their economic investments in South Africa, South Africa would collapse." ANC, founded in 1912, is the oldest black liberation organization in South Africa and has observer status at the United Nations. At first nonviolent, the ANC has advocated armed resis tance since 1961, Dube says. Dube, 51, has been involved in the conflict in South Africa for 26 years, four of which were spent in prison. Five months of his 1963-68 prison stay were passed in “90-day detention" where the monotony of solitary confinement was interrupted only by police beatings Dube has lived abroad since 1968. However, he fully expects to return to South Africa. “The morale of the people and the support of the people for the African National Congress has grown to a point where even newspapers who Photo by Erich Boekelheide Fred Dube support the government now have been able to come out with things that three years ago would have been considered sacreligious — asking the government, and telling the government that they cannot afford not to talk to the African National Congress." ANC has organized an underground movement within the country that has carried out many acts of sabotage, Dube says. Support for the ANC is widespread among both black African countries and "non-aligned’’ countries, Dube says. ANC hopes to establish a "new society," Dube says, adding that rejection of capitalism does not necessarily mean embracing commun ism. The situation and conditions in South Africa make a racial war inevitable, but the result will be a country where blacks and whites can live together, he says. ANC action is directed "against policies,” rather than race, Dube adds. Transcendental tree talk? Humankind should communicate with trees, speaker advises By CAROLINE PETRICH Ol the Emerald Dorothy Maclean talks to trees. And they talk back But the trees don't communicate in English or with a wave of their branches. Maclean says she commun icates through mental attunement or meditation. And she doesn’t converse with the actual tree, but with an angel — or as she prefers to call it, a "deva,'' the Sanskrit word for angel. Maclean says the world may suffer dire consequences if too many trees are stripped from the land. "The trees are the skin of the earth. If the skin is destroyed, the planet perishes." Maclean is one of the co-founders of the Findhorn Garden, a successful commune in northern Scotland She spoke to a Eugene audience last week about her experiences. Maclean and several friends began the garden in 1962 after being fired from their jobs at a nearby resort. They moved to a trailer park, Findhorn, and continued their old habit of meditation. Through meditation, each would become “attuned” to the inner self, thereby becoming unified with the exterior world Maclean held her first conversation with the deva of the garden pea, the "landscape angel." The deva greeted Maclean and asked what had taken human beings so long to talk to plants. Maclean's roommate wanted to grow a garden but wasn't sure of gardening's dos and don’ts. So she gave Maclean a list of 15 questions to ask the landscape deva. Following the deva's tips, they planted the garden in dry, sandy soil. The phenomenal garden in the sand attracted many visitors who wanted to discover Findhorn’s secret. "We didn’t dare say we were talking to angels," Maclean says, “so we said we had a good compost." Maclean then began to communicate with the Monterey Cypress. "The tree said, 'Trees are not so much doers but be-ers. Man can only dream of spaces we can be,' ” Maclean says. Where do men and women fit into this cosmic pattern? "We are the consciousness of the planet," Ma clean says. And what makes us different from animals and plants is our creativity, which Maclean considers a "gift.” "We are angels Our destiny is to be conscious angels.” 4 - mt ' v1 *# t ■ W Emerald photo What do trees have to say? Plenty, says Dorthy Maclean.
