cannabisnews.com: DEA Education vs. Lobbying





DEA Education vs. Lobbying
Posted by CN Staff on August 30, 2006 at 08:14:32 PT
Editorial
Source: Denver Post
Denver, CO -- Some people who work at the Denver division of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration strongly oppose a Colorado ballot measure that would legalize possession of small amounts of marijuana. And they're speaking out about it. The question that has emerged this week is whether their efforts, which they see as educating the public, really cross the line and are prohibited lobbying.
It would seem not, according to rules written by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. But DEA officers would do well to be vigilant about keeping separate their government-paid drug enforcement mission and their personal political beliefs. The issue arose this week after the Boulder Daily Camera wrote a story that said an agent in the Denver division of the agency had sent an e-mail from a U.S. Department of Justice account, looking for a campaign manager to defeat the marijuana measure. The e-mail reportedly said the group had $10,000 to launch the campaign. Jeffrey Sweetin, special agent in charge of the Denver office, disputes many points in the story. The agent, Michael Moore, didn't write the e-mail, he said. It didn't come from a DOJ address. The group does not have $10,000. And Moore's name was used as a contact without his consent, according to Sweetin.  Snipped:Complete Article: http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_4256408Newshawk: MayanSource: Denver Post (CO)Published: August 29, 2006 Copyright: 2006 The Denver Post CorpWebsite: http://www.denverpost.com/Contact: openforum denverpost.com Related Articles & Web Site:Safer Choicehttp://www.saferchoice.org/DEA Should Keep Out of State Politicshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread22117.shtmlDenver DEA Rep: Don't Legalize Ithttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread22107.shtmlLegalizing Pot Would Hurt Kids, and Here's Whyhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread22106.shtml
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Comment #51 posted by greenmed on September 05, 2006 at 00:15:51 PT
Hope
Perhaps I understand your desire to see that structure. I had my own medicine / poison I had to take for a long time -- corticosteroids for an autoimmune disorder. The first few years, side-effects were the worst, with the higher doses. Now I'm tapered off completely. I'm glad it's over. I haven't yet found a structure file, but I want to see it. To control it for a change.
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Comment #50 posted by greenmed on September 04, 2006 at 14:03:36 PT
Hope
That's a terrible experience you went through. You are no longer taking it, I trust, Hope?Wikipedia's entry indicates that Cipro is being added to some animal feed products, for economic benefit rather than health reasons. Isn't that incredible?To see the molecular structure, the least-complicated way seems to be the Java-based site.Installing Java as a browser plugin is fairly straightforward on Windows XP with Mozilla Firefox. Click on the browser buttons:Tools -> Options -> Contentand check the "Enable Java" box. That starts an installation wizard, and has it installed in a minute or so.There are several ways of specifying a structure at the jmol sitehttp://firstglance.jmol.orgIf you enter 1oyf (that's a one, not an L) as the pdb code, you'll get the 3d model of Ciprofloxacin that you can rotate with your mouse. There are buttons for zooming and displaying various qualities of the molecule, as well.Java seems quite powerful. It's new for me, so as a precaution, I unchecked the "Enable Java" box after I was done.If you decide to try it, let's know what you think of it.
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Comment #49 posted by Hope on September 04, 2006 at 06:15:50 PT
The structure model I wanted to see most.
Ciprofloxacin.It's that stuff that nearly killed me and did overwhelm me on a flat out cellular level. It affected my perceptions DRAMATICALLY. It gave me pain unlike any I'd ever experienced before.It did put me, moaning and agonizing, on the bathroom floor. It did put me in a wheelchair (not permanently, and the doctor's office. It affected me from my skin, to every organ, to my brain, to my thoughts, to my perceptions. It likely even effected my bones. It does, I read, do it's business (a super antibiotic type thing) on every single cell in the human body. 
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Comment #48 posted by greenmed on September 03, 2006 at 22:23:57 PT
Hope
There's also a web site that displays structures:http://firstglance.jmol.orgIt needs Java to run (not just Javascript), but if you have Java enabled, you can cut and paste a structure URL:http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~arosko/PDB/CB1_THC.pdbinto the text box and see THC bound to CB1. Very cool.
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Comment #47 posted by greenmed on September 03, 2006 at 22:00:26 PT
Hope
Those structures need a special viewer. There's info at this link:http://www.umass.edu/microbio/rasmol/describing several of them. I used RasMol ten years ago - the structures are displayed as 3D objects, and as I recall rotated and zoomed with a mouse. Protein Explorer is their latest - I haven't tried it out yet, so I don't know how difficult it would be to install, but it's sure to be very powerful and entertaining. The animated gif images on the page give just a hint.Chime may be the easiest option. It's a browser plug-in that displays structures on-line. 
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Comment #46 posted by Hope on September 03, 2006 at 19:06:09 PT
comment 38
Just reading about them was amazing. I couldn't get any to load. 
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Comment #45 posted by FoM on September 03, 2006 at 17:55:08 PT
Denver Post LTE: Marijuana on State Ballot
September 3, 2006Re: "Legalizing pot would hurt kids, and here's why," Aug. 27 Cindy Rodríguez column. I strongly disagree with Cindy Rodríguez's stance against Amendment 44. Maybe it's because I'm a college graduate myself and I work in the tech industry that all of the adult pot smokers I've known have been of above-average intelligence with above-average salaries. As a woman and a taxpayer, I prefer that law enforcement direct their resources toward reducing violent crimes against women and children, not waste my money chasing down otherwise non-violent, taxpaying and law-abiding adults who use marijuana. The war on marijuana has been costly and ineffective. It has resulted in the criminalization of the hemp plant, which has many uses and is a better crop for many U.S. farmers than cotton or other alternatives. 
It's time to move beyond alarmist language to focus our attention and resources on the real problems that confront us. Paulie Rainbow, Denver ...Although Cindy Rodríguez admits that the moderate use of cannabis by adults is in many ways a safer alternative to alcohol, she nonetheless argues against Amendment 44 - the Alcohol-Marijuana Equalization Initiative - because she believes that pot is inappropriate for children. In fact, there are many activities in our society that are permissible for adults but forbidden for children, such as riding motorcycles, skydiving, drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco. However, we do not condone arresting adults who responsibly engage in these activities in order to dissuade adolescents from doing so. Nor should we justify arresting adult cannabis smokers on the grounds of sending a message to children. Paul Armentano, Senior Policy Analyst, NORML, Washington, D.C. ...Cindy Rodríguez's column hit the nail right on the head. I would like to add that marijuana is also a key gateway drug for other addictive and dangerous illicit drugs like methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin. Robert K. Hoshide, Montrose ...Cindy Rodríguez's arguments against Amendment 44 are persuasive, except for one key point. Relaxing anti-pot law does not mean greater use by kids. I first heard the "kids and pot" alarm in the hype leading up to California's 1996 enactment of Proposition 215 for medical marijuana. Prop 215 would send the wrong message, I heard, and I believed it at the time. But I was wrong. Kids' pot use has been on a downward trend since 1996, based on California's latest biennial student survey. Prop 215 was not the only influence in the past eight years, but if it was as bad as many thought, kids' pot use should have at least stayed flat. John Chase, Palm Harbor, Fla. ...Re: "DEA education vs. lobbying," Aug. 30 editorial. I would like to say two things to Jeff Sweetin, special agent in charge for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency's Denver office. First, thank you for your continuing efforts to clean up the state of Colorado. Despite the resistance you face from liberal mountain communities for your enforcement efforts, most citizens sleep better knowing your agents are up there too. Second, how can the general public make donations to help you keep marijuana illegal in Colorado? I can only hope the general public is smart enough to see the campaign by SAFER for what it is. \ SAFER is clearly a bunch of losers with barely the ambition to put on a suit and come up with a misleading acronym. There are many people in our state whose dangerous drug knowledge comes solely from what they see on television. Thankfully, the DEA is being responsible and exercising its role as non-partisan experts on the subject. Matthew Hayes, Aurora http://www.denverpost.com/letters/ci_4274789
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Comment #44 posted by lombar on August 31, 2006 at 23:44:27 PT
It's short
About 3 minutes but it is taking me many hours. I had written the piano over a decade ago. Very simple as I have not formerly studied music aside from band in High School. I know rudiments, major scales, time... I don't keep as good a time as the computer. I played in 3 lines but now I am correcting the harmonies, moving a note here, cutting a note there, putting in a note, here a note, there a note, everywhere note notes... :) Inspiration becomes obsession, hours pass, hoping it sounds good, but I am biased.I have a pile of stuff to re-master in the apple. A years worth of work at least! If anyone here wants a sample send me an email at:lombar83 trashmail.net 
;)
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Comment #43 posted by greenmed on August 31, 2006 at 19:42:58 PT
computers
Sounds like you have an ambitious project going there, lombar. I often wish I had learned a musical intrument. Music always has a way of lifting me up when I'm down. Thank goodness for musicians and poets - I wouldn't want to imagine a world without that kind of inspiration.
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Comment #42 posted by lombar on August 31, 2006 at 13:15:52 PT
Linux and Windows
Linux is like a hobby, windows is for games but I want to get serious work done, I use my iMac. I just discovered I have been writing score the hard way. I have been fixing string section harmonies(4part -will have a bassline making it 5 string parts, two piano lines(one part)) in one program that does not allow multiple simultaneous lines of score to be view ed. Logic Express does! It makes fixing and quantizing that much easier! Now if only I could have multiple monitors!..(but I need powermac for that ... big $)
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Comment #41 posted by greenmed on August 31, 2006 at 00:57:10 PT
#38
Credit for the structures at the link I gave goes to Andrew Rosko. The web page is entitled "My Protein Structure Files" and I didn't want to give the false impression that they are mine. Creating .pdb files is way beyond me.
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Comment #40 posted by greenmed on August 30, 2006 at 21:27:44 PT
lombar
I googled and found this article:http://www.technologyvault.co.uk/geforce/faq.php?lang=en&navframe=1&layout=def&catnr=2&faqnr=220&prog=gef&display=faqthat explains a problem with the GeForce FX card fan slowing down when displaying 3-D graphical screensavers. That would probably fry a card in short order. The article is from 2003 - might that be about the time your card failed?
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Comment #39 posted by lombar on August 30, 2006 at 20:55:49 PT
Some Screensavers
I had one die simply because of the screen saver. I dunno in Linux but in ms windows, sometimes the power off thing does not work and the monitor stays on. My mac turns the screen off consistently but I have left windows and come back after an hour, still on. I work on the mac.
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Comment #38 posted by greenmed on August 30, 2006 at 18:13:14 PT
Re. Screensavers
I've not heard about screensavers killing video cards. And I do have an NVidia card. *Gasp*. I've had no problems so far, but I'll keep that info in mind. Thanks.Anyway, I have the screensaver display the images for just 10 minutes as eye-candy after 15 minute of system inactivity, then have the monitor power-off.Here's the location of some nice .pdb files if you would like to check it out some time:http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~arosko/structures.html
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Comment #37 posted by lombar on August 30, 2006 at 17:41:55 PT
Screensavers
... kill video cards, particularly nivida cards. I use the most effective screen saver of all... the off button. ;) Sounds cool, Ill have to look at it!I keep coming back to linux when MS does something new. Unable to get updates, unwilling to pay for broken software. IF I could get all my apps to run, I would leave ms behind. Linux is stable, OSX is easy... windows works but always breaks somehow over time... For now its dual booting!
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Comment #36 posted by greenmed on August 30, 2006 at 16:48:53 PT
lombar
Congrats on getting your OS up and running. I went through a similar experience several months ago. It is amazing what a reboot will accomplish, isn't it?Do you have XScreenSaver with your distro? If so, you might want to check out the Molecule mode - there are several molecules of interest there. Also, there are PDB (protein databank) files for CB1 and CB2 receptors (bound to their favorite ligands) available on the internet. It's quite entertaining to watch them spinning slowly on the screen.
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Comment #35 posted by global_warming on August 30, 2006 at 16:29:36 PT
that is nice
ubuntu and all the distros are small changeif you are in a prison for smoking marijuanaif you have a vision of this worldthe blood of jesuscan change your soulthe starsthe Infinite UniverseEnd Cannabis prhibitionthe world is so fucked upgood people and bad peopleChristians Jews Muslims Buddhists HindusPeople who smoke cannabisPeople who want more FreedomGather and Demand a better worldA better worldThere are so many peopleWho demand a better world
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Comment #34 posted by whig on August 30, 2006 at 16:22:19 PT
lombar
Cannabis is not necessary to individual enlightenment, given time and meditation.Cannabis is necessary to societal enlightenment, in time before the human race destroys itself or commits us to another thousand years of darkness.
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Comment #33 posted by lombar on August 30, 2006 at 16:12:22 PT
If I thought..
that cannabis would for sure enlighten, I would push for it, fill the atmosphere with it!"yet consider that some of the human beings who are employed as an agent for the DEA-NIXON Agency, may actually be experiencing this same awakening."I hope so...one cannot undo the past but one can attempt to improve the now and thus the future. Cease to do ill, turn to the good, control ones own mind...I just spent 1/2 hour trying to fix a computer problem that quietly solved itself when I was out. I just installed a 64-bit version of Ubuntu Linux on a dual core amd 64. The trouble was that it was not recognizing both cores only one.So, handy-dandy google, I search up a solution. They say I am to use a specific kernel (SMP -symmetric multiprocessor) so I get it, and boot it and ... it works except... my network interface does not work .. Linux without network is just about pointless.. so I spent an hour earlier looking for the solution.I did not find anything. I decided to do a full distro upgrade and I left for a bit of excerise while it upgraded. I came back, sat down, rebooted then started to find more info.Trouble was that when I upgraded the distro, I also updated to a much newer kernel. I did not notice until about 5 minutes ago that BOTH processors were showing in my monitoring program WHILE I WAS searching forums! DOH! It is running spectacularly. Very snappy.. now too bad you have to have a degree in GEEK to get it working sometimes!Sometimes one tries to solve problems that do not exist!
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Comment #32 posted by global_warming on August 30, 2006 at 15:48:40 PT
can you find
your handyour place in Eternityrecive justice and embrace your soulforever is such a long placemake 'we a gardenfilled with herbsand goodnessto the God of this UniverseAnd "All the Children and Slaves,End this wicked and demonized fear of CannabisBe Free, reach for EternityWith clean clothes
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Comment #31 posted by global_warming on August 30, 2006 at 15:31:50 PT
it was your hand
twinkle, twinkle,into Eternity Where is your hand?
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Comment #30 posted by global_warming on August 30, 2006 at 15:11:05 PT
re:< comment 17
Mat 7:29 because He was teaching them like one who had authority, and not like their scribes.In my mind, the scribes were the lawyers of that time and place, and some carpenter was saying the Kingdom of God is Within, a rough handed carpenter was advocating a message, his vision, that we are all endowed with the ability to receive a mind correction, that can hear the whispers of the angels, that can aspire to connect to the cosmos.I think that we' are all on the same page, that rough hand of the carpenter is 'transformed into Christ, not the flesh of Jesus, but your mind has grown to become the Christ his mind, soul and consciousness.The DEA is in an uphill battle to save our souls and their high government tax dollar jobs, they will not sit idly by as 'we those people are cranking out the democratic process, yet consider that some of the human beings who are employed as an agent for the DEA-NIXON Agency, may actually be experiencing this same awakening.End the prohibition on Cannabis, so that we all can come to the table and start to re-build the world.
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Comment #29 posted by whig on August 30, 2006 at 15:08:05 PT
lombar
This has to be the last time because humans have now become powerful enough to destroy their entire race. We have to learn peace and study war no more.
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Comment #28 posted by whig on August 30, 2006 at 15:01:59 PT
lombar
I agree with you and that is a good way of explaining. Flatland itself, by Edwin Abbott, was meant to express a religious idea, not just a mathematical construct.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlatlandBy the way I wasn't criticizing you in #20. You are saying exactly what I think. But my point is that each time someone writes the truth down, it gets misunderstood by people who haven't experienced it, and worse, it is entirely possible to experience it part of the way and get lost along the twisty paths of selfishness.My point in mentioning the Pharoah is that whoever started that (Akhenaton, I believe) was expressing a religious truth, much as Jesus, but got too material and then, in the succeeding generations, there was no longer even understanding because you had his descendents being raised as if they and only they were the living God. One way to express Monotheism, and maybe it was a necessary part of our social evolution anyhow. Maybe Akhenaton could have expressed and preserved his truth in no other way. Just as perhaps Jesus had to die on the cross, to undo what Akhenaton had done the last time someone tried to bring the message that We Are All God And God Is One.He said he was a human aspect of God, and God has multiple aspects but only One Consciousness. Most importantly that we are all to love one another and treat others as you would be treated. And he said he'd be back to teach us more.[ He's always come back. But this time I don't think I want to have to do it again. ]Cannabis was not written out, because it was prohibited, and any scriptures which contained it were destroyed, their authors or speakers fed to the lions, their very memories damned.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnatio_memoriae
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Comment #27 posted by lombar on August 30, 2006 at 13:59:50 PT
Religion
The 'love' of David and his faith are epitomized by Psalm 23. That is why I do not simply discard the Old Testament. Moses and the ten commandments do not conflict with my personal beliefs about faith but the primitive concepts of justice rankle for certain. The law of that day was barbarous, hard and savage, in keeping with the times.I don't know how much math you folks have studied but consider:Consider an apple. Now consider a drawing of an apple. The apple is a 3 d object, the drawing is a projection of the 3-d object in 2-dimensions. What does the flatworlder see when he looks at a 3-d object? A cross section, not the whole, he is incapable of percieving the whole. Likewise, spiritual teachings are 'projections' of 'mindspace' into ideas and concepts to be communicated to our fellow beings. The truths they represent, however good or bad, can also only be realized in 'mindspace'.Unfortuneatly some people become obsessed with the source of the ideology rather than embracing the actual meanings which can only be realized. Language does not contain a method of relaying 'mental formations' without reference points. Reading the 'Path of Purification', the author mapped out every mental formation (searching for self/vispasanna(sp? - my sanskrit or whatever is pretty horrid) analytical meditation) but these maps are VERY hard to read and comprehend unless you have experienced them.Likewise with the parables of Jesus. The kingdom of heaven is like leaven in bread, when it rises, it spreads evenly througout. Love without attachment is unconditional and in equal measure(equinamity). The kingdom of heaven is like a pearl of great worth that when the merchant saw it, he sold all that he had to posses it. More valuble than gold/jewels. These describe mental states, particularly the state of his enlightenment.When you pare away all the supernatural which may be 'belief' you are left with a man that said "I love you, this is what love is, it is from God" and got killed for it by the powerful and greedy of the day. It can only be compassion that says "I forgive...". The miracles, the supernatural, may be true but I have seen no evidence of it. I have read references to such things but I have never seen a levitating monk or one who can 'dive in and out of the earth' or any of the various other 'powers' that have been mentioned. It may not be possible for many people, it may just be tales to attempt to inspire faith in those who worship power...
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Comment #26 posted by ekim on August 30, 2006 at 13:51:18 PT
Great Warming movie offering climate change soluti
-- today on NPR Market Place wind farms will be the topic. 
the show will come on at 6:30 PM est Nationl Public Radio.Now info on new movie to be released at end of Oct.Re: http://www.thegreatwarming.comNarrated by Alanis Morissette and Keanu ReevesFor those of us interested in supporting our climate stabilization 
activism with an income, by offering a way for individuals to 
help address the problem, by saving money on their energy bills 
while at the same time "greening" their homes and vehicles 
with products that also cut pollutions and carbon dioxide emissions:You can also join the Green Energy Revolution Yahoogroup 
for latest updates on this campaign, also in public archives at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Green-Energy-Revolution
http://www.thegreatwarming.com
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Comment #25 posted by museman on August 30, 2006 at 13:09:07 PT
testaments
"the doctrines that Christ teaches are not the scripture. He was a Jew and he did not teach by reading from the Old Testament, he gave a new one."The institution of Xtianity is a stumbling block to this awareness and truth. Even though they supposedly based the doctrines and the church infrastructure on the "New Testament" their fundamental logic and 'reason' is wound tightly in the vagueries of the Old Testament.I don't think that occidental, western man (in general) has never understood the Jews. They've been villified since way before Y'shua. They were a people in slavery, bondage, and misery in ancient times. People who were quite willing to die for the principles of peace, rationality, and The One God - history. The fact that Y'shua did what He did, the way he did makes so much more sense when one realizes that His actions were VERY 'Jewish' or Hebrew in nature. This understanding sheds a whole new light on the subject. The Xtian myth of Y'shua's "Godhead" for example. -I don't want to stir anything up by that statement - but I believe differently than contemporary Xtians on this matter.Keep it up whig, I'm right there with ya.
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Comment #24 posted by FoM on August 30, 2006 at 13:05:17 PT
Lombar
I agree with Hope. That's how I see it too.
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Comment #23 posted by Hope on August 30, 2006 at 13:03:39 PT
Lombar...sounds right to me.
"Nor can cannabis, crucifixes and rosary beads 'enlighten' without the will to seek truth/light."
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Comment #22 posted by lombar on August 30, 2006 at 12:57:33 PT
Everything and Nothing.
"And we're still trying to make this understandable but it really isn't for most people without cannabis."It is contradictory but I believe it is not cannabis that is needed but understanding of love and compassion. This understanding does not require props but they do help, that is why people keep using them.I never said God was one person. A person is too small and imperfect anyway. Maybe if I had the power to spawn whole universes I might believe a person could be 'god' but the evidence suggests otherwise. I said that the 'truth' is the same for all of us, that religions are different attempts at representing 'reality' by ancients. Buddhism is a 'path' to realizing the truth within onself(and they disagree somewhat too .. not self/no self)Why create a hell when God has a perfectly entropic physical universe? Samsara/hell is our own suffering, created by the three roots desire,aversion, delusion (ignorance) and their effects in the world.A weapon does not kill without the will behind it. Nor can cannabis, crucifixes and rosary beads 'enlighten' without the will to seek truth/light. The mental formations precede the physical actions. Towers of LifeLike spiral stairs,In a round tower,Our love affairs,Are full of power.Empty of life,When empty of love,The tower does fall,At the touch of a dove.Truly overfilled,With great joy,Love is never killed,It is no toy.It drives ones life,The only foundation,To live free of strife,With no expectation.Most walk in hell,Instead of up the stairs,In this fleshly shell,They have too many cares.All rights reserved to the source. :)
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Comment #21 posted by Hope on August 30, 2006 at 12:57:08 PT
Just to throw another log on the fire...
metaphorically speaking. I believe that you can know God if you are out in the middle of no where and all by yourself...even without cannabis or a Bible or anything but yourself and the ability to notice what's going on around you.But that's just me.
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Comment #20 posted by whig on August 30, 2006 at 12:39:37 PT
lombar
If you go back far enough, you see the cycles.In Egypt, Pharoah proclaimed himself God. And it was monotheism of a kind, but one where the arrogant leader believes himself special and everyone tells him so to curry his favor.So Moses said look, this is what I learned from my ancestor Abraham, and God is not just one person, but please don't forget that God is One. And so the Hebrews established their kingdom and generations went by and nobody believed that anyone human could be God because God is not just one person.And we're still trying to make this understandable but it really isn't for most people without cannabis.
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Comment #19 posted by runderwo on August 30, 2006 at 12:20:26 PT
LA's Dopest Lawyer
http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=hamilton/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1156888232037&call_pageid=1020420665036&col=1112101662670
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Comment #18 posted by lombar on August 30, 2006 at 12:11:58 PT
Actually...
The 'truth' never changes, it is simply restated, over and over again, different cultures, different 'beliefs', the only commonality is that we are all human. I used to believe that Jesus was telling us something new but really:Deuteronomy 6:55And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.Which is the key to understanding IMO, all religion. One must understand oneself, ones own mind, ones own mental conditioning. I believe Jesus was re-iterating the 'law' of Moses: "I come not to destroy the law but to fulfil." it is just that the people had wandered from it, and was never truly understood.Moses was 'enlightened' for his time, had to lead a nation after a struggle for emancipation, but it was 'love of God' that inspired his life.Language and ideas were far less detailed then, knowledge was scarce, education was for only for the very elite, the boundaries of knowledge were small. The limits of language and ideas also limits the descriptions that have been passed down to us. The burning bush is a metaphor for the fire of passionate love of deity.
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Comment #17 posted by whig on August 30, 2006 at 11:37:19 PT
Hope
What it means to me is that the doctrines that Christ teaches are not the scripture. He was a Jew and he did not teach by reading from the Old Testament, he gave a new one. The scriptures which are written for us are to guide us and inform our understanding, but our words are not to simply recite those ones but to explain in our own.Jesus did not teach the Bible. He taught to love God, and he taught that to love God you must love your neighbor, and do unto others as you would have them do unto you. At the same time he did not reject the Bible (Old Testament), he used it as his metaphor.Some of these modern preachers think that even Jesus' sayings are proof that the Old Testament is true in all its ways, when it was precisely to correct the misunderstandings of this text that he spoke. He spoke in parables and metaphors. And his words are still parables and metaphors.
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Comment #16 posted by Hope on August 30, 2006 at 11:26:54 PT
Try again...
explaining to me what you mean.
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Comment #15 posted by Hope on August 30, 2006 at 11:25:51 PT
Matthew 7:29
Ok...I'm dense here. I know you're using that as a metaphor to explain a thought to me...but I missed it, completely. 
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Comment #14 posted by whig on August 30, 2006 at 11:12:08 PT
Hope
Matthew 7:29.
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Comment #13 posted by whig on August 30, 2006 at 11:04:33 PT
Hope
I crossposted this to cannablog.http://cannablog.wordpress.com/2006/08/30/letter-to-hope/I know what I said about the pulpit. And it is, sometimes. I don't even know how I feel about this whole thing with the blog because I never like promoting myself.
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Comment #12 posted by Hope on August 30, 2006 at 10:39:53 PT
Over my head.
I can jump high though...and I have a big glove.
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Comment #11 posted by Hope on August 30, 2006 at 10:35:15 PT
Whig
"Also I don't know whether you are able to use cannabis where you are." For sure...I'm not. I'm in Texas!I think I'm mostly grasping what you are saying. I think. I'm trying to, anyway.
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Comment #10 posted by whig on August 30, 2006 at 10:22:21 PT
Hope
How do you Guard the Guards? That's always the question.Or who Polices the Police?We the people do, but only if we the people are able to think clearly about it.How are people educated? Usually by the state or by the church.How do we wake them up and get them to listen to the truth and understand it?Smoke pot.The hippies know. They've forgotten, some of them. A long time away in the little boxes far from their little garden that they used to know. Getting themselves integrated in the system. So when it's time to wake up, we're all here and ready to go, everywhere.I believe in conscious evolution, by the way. The difference from intelligent design is pretty clear if you think about it. Each of us has a spark of divinity, even the lowest creatures, and each has a mating strategy -- a conscious, divinely inspired unfolding process by which we are all created here and now. Creation is not false, but it is a metaphor and not a literal description of how God does it.Frankly these idiots who think the Bible is a complete description of God, really limit God to some pretty small box don't they?So when you and I disagree about an interpretation or you think I'm saying something you don't understand, it's a metaphor. It's not literal by some textual understanding. The need to write it in a form that could be preserved required compromises, not clear and unambiguous language which told us everything directly. We need to have our own eyes and ears and rely upon them. We need to think for ourselves. If we are just following someone else's interpretation, then we are following that person and not God.Besides, my own metaphors change. I could speak words out of other divinely inspired texts. The Bhagavad Gita. The Tao. It doesn't really matter which metaphor I use if I am speaking from my own understanding and using those texts only to convey the larger paradigm in which my shorter statements can be understood.I choose a Christian context because it is a good metaphor, which was written by people who I believe meant the same things by it as I do when I understand them properly. I believe in the indwelling divinity, and I am a monotheist. There is only one God and there is not a separate Devil, there is no separate Christ, these are aspects. As are we, our own consciousnesses, they are God. We are God and Christ and the Devil if we choose to be. It's just the aspects we wear. As men and women we were created in God's image, we are God's own children.Now I chose this metaphor, it was never forced on me. I was raised as a Reform Jew. I was not a Christian until I took cannabis.But you were raised in a different environment, and the context is different, the metaphor that works for you might be different. Also I don't know whether you are able to use cannabis where you are. I couldn't say or understand things the same way without it.
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Comment #9 posted by Hope on August 30, 2006 at 09:58:17 PT
Right on, Freewillks
I'm anxious to hear what the Camera will say about this. Are they going to back down on their story? Let's hope they have verification that this happened...and I assume they did or they wouldn't have printed the story.
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Comment #8 posted by Hope on August 30, 2006 at 09:54:07 PT
Sam Comment 3
Right on again...all the way.This is truly a "Dark Age" in so many ways. I just hope we're coming out of it instead of going deeper into it.Religion mixed with politics only creates chains and explosives. A very bad chemical combination.
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Comment #7 posted by whig on August 30, 2006 at 09:52:17 PT
Sam Adams
Since this article is on the Colorado (SAFER) approach, I want to say something about that too. It's massively important. As important as the California (MMJ) approach is to get cannabis to the ill, we cannot create a dictatorship of the doctors.
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Comment #6 posted by Hope on August 30, 2006 at 09:50:27 PT
comment 3
or "Guarding our children from living in a police state"?
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Comment #5 posted by whig on August 30, 2006 at 09:47:31 PT
Sam Adams
What is happening in my opinion is the New Enlightenment is beginning and it was very obvious in the 1960s, but then the Old Elites realized it meant the end of their way of life and they reacted. They are trying to stop the train and flip it into reverse.We're right on schedule and everything. Everything they do is making our movement more aware, more conscious of their evil. We have been sleeping. We are waking up. Cannabis will be everywhere in a few years, and I don't mean just within the loose networks of people that know people. There will be cannabis for the treatment of illnesses both physical and mental, and the Doctors are going to line up on either side.The real doctors, who want to heal people, will be with us.
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Comment #4 posted by freewillks on August 30, 2006 at 09:44:48 PT
Sweetin Quoted saying they had $10,000
Jeff Sweetin, the special agent in charge of the Denver office of the DEA, said voters have every right to change the laws. And the law allows his agency to get involved in that process to tell voters why they shouldn't decriminalize pot. "My mantra has been, 'If Americans use the democratic process to make change, we're in favor of that,'" he said. "We're in favor of the democratic process. But as a caveat, we're in favor of it working based on all the facts." Sweetin said the $10,000 the committee has to spend came from private donations, including some from agents' own accounts. He said the DEA isn't trying to "protect Coloradans from themselves" but that the agency is the expert when it comes to drugs. This dog don't hunt! either the Boulder newspaper made it up or the DEA (Sweetin) is lieing. which is it? Funny that this could be used in a court of law to impeach a witness for the state. It publicly shows that a DEA agent when backed into a corner will lie to get his way. 
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Comment #3 posted by Sam Adams on August 30, 2006 at 09:19:16 PT
Guarding our children
Why is there no Guarding Our Children from Adderall and Ritalin?  Speed-in-a-pill so you can pass your standardized test. Why aren't we guarding against Prozac? How about "guarding our children from mental illness"? "guarding our children from poverty"? Remember, the under-18 murder rate, crime rate, and alcohol usage by under 18's all jumped up during Prohibition. I saw an article on Intelligent Design recently, many people brought up the Enlightenment. The political class is bent on un-doing the Englightenment in the US right now. After the Greeks and Romans fell, two very intellectual cultures, Europe fell into the Dark Ages for a thousand years. Why? Because the Church ruled by ignorance. Church decrees were the rule of law, and scientists were tortured or killed.Civilization was made possible again by the Enlightenment, when enough educated leaders began to stand up to the backward Church bullies. Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers were direct products of the Enlightenment.Right now, Karl Rove and company and trying to turn back the clock as hard as they possibly can.  The truth is, most human beings are dumb enough so that you can control them with scary phrases like "children" and "marijuana", a ridiculous Spanish slang term.  We've transformed into a society where it's once again easier to keep your cushy job and rich lifestyle by fear-mongering and scapegoating than by working hard and doing a good job. Just substitute in the American political class for the medieval Church.It's not hard to see where this road leads: back to the Dark Ages. But there were many priests and kings that were quite happy to see 99% of humanity starving, stupid, and living in squalor so that they could be rich and powerful.
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Comment #2 posted by Truth on August 30, 2006 at 08:53:11 PT
Dear DEA
Dear DEA,What's more harmful to a person.1. A small amount of marijuana
2. A cage
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Comment #1 posted by HempWorld on August 30, 2006 at 08:24:24 PT
DEA(th)
DEA
DEA means Drug ENFORCEMENT Agency, it is an agency created to enforce (pharmaceutical) drugs on us! It is not a law enforcement agency. Get it?DEA is a rogue agency. Its directors are appointed not elected. DEA is the ennemy of the American People and of societal progress. DEA has no principles or morals. DEA is a cancer growth on American society. DEA was invented during the Nixon era, need I say more? 
DEA acts out of selfpreservation.
DEA is as much out of control as is the executive branch of the American Government currently, no controls are in place.
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