Respectfully, you don't have the slightest idea what I have or haven't experienced. What I haven't (and can virtually guarantee that you haven't either) is being a victim of the holocaust.

Probably best just to let this one rest. You made an idiotic comment (in what I can only assume was the heat of the moment - and I make this assumption because only a crazy person would actually believe your analogy) arguing against the war on drugs in a forum populated by drug users. Safe to say that there's NO ONE here who actually supports this policy - and yet you've managed to alienate a number of people with your insaniac dipshit rhetoric.

You, as a junky, suffering under the weight of the war on drugs, don't get to compare your persecution to that of a jew in the holocaust. Never. Ever. You just don't. If you do, you're seriously demented.

I don't give a fuck if you are a mod you need to check yourself. That's twice you have resorted to name calling. I don't give a fuck if you don't agree with my analogy. You don't decide what analogys I can and cannot use. My personal experience is that as a drug user I was regarded as sub-human, by the authorities and by society. I was regarded as no better than trash. So I stand by my analogy. I never intended to compare the drug war to the holocaust that was an interpretation you put on it. I was comparing the lack of regard for the human beings in both situation.

Uncle Knucles : Do/did you have any personal contact with holocaust victims ? I sense a lot of anger on that topic but channeling it to others won't help/revive (if that is the case) them.

Wow Art, that was really an argumentative way to convey your message.

Look:

You are drawing on one of the very darkest moments in the history of our species to illustrate your own oppression. This is wrong in so many ways that if you don't intuitively understand it already, you're probably not really capable - but in most circles where sane people congregate it's just not an acceptable view point. I don't care how many times you've had to kick in county, your suffering doesn't equate to the systematic extermination of six million people, and your comparison trivializes what was very possibly the apex of human suffering. Say (just as another example) that I'm underpaid at my job; I tell you that this is exactly like being a slave on a cotton plantation. Well, guess what? It's not. The assertion, however, does make me an asshole, and I should probably expect to be called out on it when people take offense.

Don't think that any of this means that I support the war on drugs. I don't. But it isn't even remotely comparable to life in Nazi Germany, and anyone who thinks otherwise is either desperately in need of a history lesson, some psychotherapy, or both.

To compare the criminalisation of drug users and dealers with the holocaust is far over the top. There are numerous of important things where the comparison is lacking: the jews and gypsy's didn't have the choice to become non-jews and non-gypsy's, they where brutally murdered, they wheren't given a fair trail, they didn't had any chance to escape, they where murdered because of who they where instead of for what they did, they where tortured in a sadistic manner...and i probably could go on naming things like this if i wanted to.

On the other hand, to say that the analogy is ALWAYS innapropriate isn't right either. Some people find the analogy also innapropriate for instance, when it comes to the way palestinians are treated by the state of israel.

I think it's innapropriate to say that such a comparison is innapropriate, since most people who say this find that we, humanity should have learned an important historic lesson from the holocaust.

If that comparison in thát case would be innapropriate, then what lesson could that be? Apparently not the lesson that to criminalise people because of who they are, to discriminate, is wrong. Apparently not that dehuminising people and putting them in getto's is wrong, either.

So if the comparison between the way palestinians are treated today, and how the jews where treated then, is innapropriate then...the fact that the nazi's hated the jews, that they criminalised and discriminated them and that they forced the jews to live in getto's..all those things where apparently not part of that historic lesson, all those things where then apparently not so barbaric.

So then you would say that all the things the nazi's did to the jews was not so bad anyway, except killing them??

That would be a meager lesson. Too meager, if you ask me.

The comparison of the war on drugs with the holocaust is in my view innapropriate if it comes to the way users and dealers are treated by the justice system.
It is nót that innapropriate, in my view, if you look at how the war on drugs has been fought in colombia, how many innocent people have died there because of it. It is nót that innapropriate when you look at how native american culture and all that was part of it, has been destroyed.

Native americans have been a victim of genocide.
That possesion and use of ayahuasca is being persecuted, that shamans are being incarcerated is still an echo of that genocide.
It is part of an ethnic and cultural cleansing that still goes on in the america's, and in thát sense it is a completely apropriate comparison.

First off I apologize for the tone of my previous post. I was (justifiably I think) upset about being repeatedly disrespected and insulted. But incomprehensibly, Art, you have decided to make a third insulting post, this time insinuating that I am an asshole and once again questioning my sanity. I get it dude. You don’t think I made an appropriate analogy. But you may well want to take a look at the appropriateness of your responses. There is a respectful and tactful way to say you disagree and you have come nowhere near that.

I am not going to bother creating a laundry list to try and justify the analogy, but you may want to consider that an analogy is meant to show likeness between two things, not necessarily equivalency. I have already conceded that the drug war (at least in most countries) does not compare to the atrocities of the holocaust but I have also repeatedly pointed out that I never intended to directly compare those things. My intent was to compare the way in which human beings are regarded, or in this case disregarded. The way they are marginalized and dehumanized. Yes I also admit that you cannot do so without discussing the behavior of the holocaust itself and the drug war but that is not my primary intent.

Perhaps I have misunderstood you polytrip and if so I sincerely apologize if this is a misrepresentation of what you said, but it would seem that if I am unable to draw this comparison, if due to the very severity of the atrocities committed in the holocaust I am not permitted to ever compare anything to it, then we are saying that we cannot learn from this event. If I am unable to point out where the comparison is accurate and where society allows and even condones similar mistreatments today, then we have learned nothing from what happened then.

Let me also address what I think is a relevant point. I did not choose to be an addict. I discovered it. You may well say that I chose to use drugs, at least the very first time, and that may well be true, but that decision was made when I was 11 and I question the ability of an 11 year old to make a truly informed decision. I was addicted from the very first use. After that very first taste, it was the only thing I wanted. In fact it seemed to me that I had, by virtue of getting high, discovered that the world was, and always had been broken, and only through getting high was I able to “fix” it. This was my direct experience. And later when I was suffering horrendous consequences as a result of this I could not choose to not be addicted. So yes I take it very personally that I was ridiculed, judged, caged, psychologically and physically tortured, and basically made to feel utterly and completely worthless as a result of a condition that I had apparently been born with. What’s more is that I still suffer the consequences every time I go to get a job. Drug arrests may as well be rape or murder arrests when it comes to looking for anything above a minimum wage job.

Thanks to ibogaine I am no-longer addicted. With the handful of different entheogenic substances I consume today, I get to choose when I will consume them, and more importantly, when I will not. So now it is entirely true that it is something I choose to be involved in and if I were, through some horrendous bad luck to wind up having the same kinds of repercussions I used to have with drugs of abuse it would literally be all my own fault. But I as I said, I get to make choices around these substances, choices I did not get to make back then. My exposure as far as criminal behavior is practically nil. I protect myself now in ways that I could not have back then. But when I see this violent and dehumanizing oppression, perpetrated by the government, with the tacit approval of society, directed at my fellow addicts, my fellow human beings, that shit disturbs me. A lot.

All the back and forth aside, trying to use that analogy to help people to the side of the war of drugs that we are on is a bad idea. There is so much, rightly so, emotion attached to everything related to Nazi Germany and the treatment of the Jewish people that even if you do have valid points it will not win people to our side and will most likely do harm. So I would advise against using that analogy to any "norms" that you are trying to argue about the war on drugs with no matter how strongly you feel about it.

It's funny how people talk about the Jews but no one talks about the gypsies, the homosexuals, Srebrenica, Rwanda, Tibet, Darfur, Native Americans, Aborigines, ...

Genocide that happened to the Jews is neither holy, neither unique and if people can't debate about it without anger then they should stay away.

Well, there is always a way in wich you can compare things. But comparisons are supposed to be instrumental, usefull.

If you aren't allowed to compare the holocaust with anything, then no lesson could ever be learned from it.
If you constantly compare ANYTHING with the holocaust, the comparison becomes meaningless and the lesson will be forgotten.

Well, his comments didn't reference homosexuals, Srebrenica, Rwanda, Tibet, Darfur, Native Americans or Aborigines - but if they had, I likely would have gone on record with the opinion that comparing his pain to ANY instance of genocide is trivializing and naive. They were specifically about jews in Nazi Germany (and how his own situation, as a drug user, is "in a very real sense" comparable).

Just for the record, though - you can count on the likelihood that I'm going to post wherever and whenever I want to, and if I read something that pisses me off, I'm probably going to weigh in with angry opinions. If that doesn't suit you, you may want to consider staying away yourself.

So I am beginning to see. I have never made this analogy before, just something I had thought about when hearing or reading about the holocaust. Through my own suffering I identified in some small way with their suffering. But I think you are right. I am not likely to ever say this thing again.



You are exactly right. But just because one or more people vehemently object and gain nothing useful from the comparison, does not mean that another person cannot find something useful in the comparison. If it inspires a single person to greater compassion or sympathy for the plight of others than I could care less what people like Art think and would consider it worthwhile.



Which is precisely the real problem here. I invited you to refresh your understanding of the attitude statement a few posts back and you declined to do so. As a moderator on this forum you are a voice and face of the nexus, you represent the nexus to an extent. And yet your representation in this thread is a denial, a contradiction of the very attitude statement that the nexus claims to hold important. For this reason, your posts are hypocritical. It is this hypocrisy which so inflamed me to swear a few posts back. My experiences in this world have hyper-sensitized me to injustice and you are exhibiting a form of that right here. It is another form of the “do as we say, not as we do” mentality that people with more power than sense display. You are demonstrating by the confrontational and insulting nature of your posts that you have neither the tact nor the maturity to handle the responsibility of the role you have taken in this community.

See, I don't really find this kind of hyperbole to "inspire people to greater compassion or sympathy for the plight of others". Quite the opposite, actually; it lowers the bar on the definition of suffering and desensitizes people to real inhumanity. You've had it just as bad as a genocide victim, after all, so why shouldn't the jews stop whining already? This holocaust stuff all happened a long time ago, right? There's nothing so special about their pain. Ask Shaolin. He'll break it down for you.

If I had been acting as a moderator, I would have deleted your post. I wasn't. You expressed an idea that I found to be ignorant and offensive, and I (as a member of the forum, not as a moderator), responded to you insultingly. You still believe you were acting as some kind of ambassador of good will or something, "inspiring sympathy for the plight of others" - and as I said previously, if you can't intuitively understand what was wrong with your initial comment, you're probably never going to. You removed the post because you didn't care for some of the replies it inspired, not because you think there's a flaw in your thinking. You would rather focus on me instead (an uber powerful internet forum moderator) and the "injustice" you feel I've done you. Hell, the pain I've inflicted in this thread alone must nearly qualify you to identify as a holocaust victim.

If enough people don't care for my style and prefer I relinquish the badge, I'll be happy to give it back anytime. I'm not so attached to it, quite honestly.

I am not at all sorry that dealers like this are caught and punished.
The types that distribute DMT along with Cocaine, Speed and Meth clearly are without any sense of moral.
And so they bring injust harm to the reputation of DMT.

If Earning alot of Money is more important to you than just sharing Entheogenic experiences, then Entheogenic experiences never really got through to you and thus I don't suppose you'd be the most suitable person to be sharing and guiding this experience.

IF you're going to extract DMT then keep it to yourself and a close circle of trusted friends who are interrested.
Guide people new to DMT through their experience. Brief them on roughly what to expect and instruct them how to undergo the experience when it is troublesome.

Instead of having friends pay money for individual hits or grams of DMT, you and your friends could order the nececities online and split the costs together.
This can significantly reduce costs. Better still would be to invest in a patch of land with a large house on it to grow your own mimosa.

Well, I better keep my incense locked up...

So if I provide people with various non-DMT substances I don't have morals ?

Also Uner didn't get them caught. "from two other students living at the apartment in April and May". Plus they dealt marihuana not cocaine/speed/meth ?

So you are saying that the attitude statement doesn't apply to you if you are insulted? Does that mean I am entitled to respond in kind with intentionally offensive and degrading comments directed at you since you insulted me? No doubt you or someone else would have deleted my comments if I had directed the same kinds of insults at you. And if they hadn't then it would essentially just lower the nexus to the same level as any other moronic flame-fest on the internet.

You have expressed multiple sentiments which are directly offensive and your inability to recognize the abuse of authority is an expression of your own ignorance.

Since the nexus is not the real world and I can leave as I please I choose not to subject myself to the double standard that you represent any longer.

Please don't let the proverbial door hit you in the ass on your way out.

Better luck elsewhere.

That completely derailed the thread.
Art, stop bullying the noobs.

I'm sooooo happy I don't live in N-America
Where I come from you have to be busted with quite a lot of drugs to go to jail. A friend of mine was once busted with 2 kilos of hashish and didn't go to jail.
And other friends been busted with around 100gr. of speed and just got some probation and a fine.