Told them. They were really worried at first, but its been five years since I started using and since I *haven't* degenerated into a drug fiend like they were fearing, they don't really care anymore.

I even got my mon (who before then was totally straight-edge) to do shrooms with me!

Alienzed: thanks for pointing out that despite the media's and others attempts to frame this story in purely black and white terms, the reality of what happened is infinetly more complex and nuanced

This is a valid point concerning Muslem fundamentalism, which by definition means that the scripture is taken literally and any modification or revision is considered to be heresy. But clearly, not all Muslems or predomenantly Muslem states are fundamentalist.

Actually, from the information you've posted, it would most likely be considered manslaughter, nor murder. Murder requires the intention to kill, which isn't implied in this case - it seems more like a physical assualt which resulted in death.

Here we go again!

Accusing religion of bigotry and intolerance, and yet behaving with the same amount of bigotry and intolerance towards people of faith is hypocracy at its worst.

Yes, most religions involve a certain amount of absurdity and delusion. Guess what, THE VAST, VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE ON THIS EARTH (whether religious or NOT) ARE FULL OF DELUSIONS and ILLUSIONS used as a buffer against the existential fears of death and aloneness. Just read some psychology.

In your case, you choose to delude yourself into thinking that religion is the root of all evil and all we need to do is convince people to be atheists and the world will be perfect. Dream on.

(And you can quote me on that)

If you really want to learn anything about Islam, don't rely on selected quotes from the Koran taken out of context or read books written by obviously anti-Islamic authors. Instead, why not actually try going to a mosque, and having a dialogue with Moslems about their faith.

Beleive it or not, they will NOT be trying to kill you for being an infidel :D

I'm speaking from experience. I've travelled in several prodeomanaly Moslem countries, including Syria, Egypt, and Jordan. I've also visited the Palestinian parts of Jerusalem and the Occupied West Bank. According to you, since i'm an "infidel" which all Moslems want to kill, I shouldn't be alive right now and typing this message. In fact, the vast majority of people I met were exetremely hospitable and friendly. I actually noticed that the more religious a person seemed (wearing traditional dress, a long beard, etc) the more likely they were to display incredible acts of warmth and kindness, and LESS likely to want to cheat you or rip you off.

So get your head out of your book of quotations and actually learn something about Islam.

Is there a battle waging between Western economic/hegemonic interests and fundamentalist Islam? Absolutely.

Are suicide bombings a weapon used by fundamentalist Islamists to target the West? Of course.

Are attacks which either target civilians, or cause excessive "collateral damage" immoral? Definetly.

However, is there anything inherent in the Islamic religion which promotes violence against the innocent? No

Let's not forget that the two greatest terrorist attacks in history didn't involve suicide bombing, or Islam. They involved atomic bombing, and cost the lives of over 160,000 civilians.

Suicide attacks have been used by the Japanese against the Allies, by Jews against the Romans, by Arabs against the United States, Israel and some European countries, etcetera.

Its not specific to any one religion or conflict.

Rather, suicide attacks are used in conflicts in which one side has vastly superior arms and technology than the other side. Obviously, if Al Qaeda or Hamas had tanks, missiles, fighter jets and so forth, they wouldn't need to rely on suicide bombing in order to fight.

Dunno if its ever resulted in death, but theres no doubt plenty of cases involving parents using violence against their kids, verbally abusing them or kicking them out of their house because of conflicts over dress and appearance.

Blaming religion for suicide bombing is about as simplistic and stupid as blaming atheism for school shootings.

^^ LMAO.

Hahahaha this joke made my day.

I don't wanna turn this into another "the rave sence is dieeeing" thread, but i will say one thing.
Sure, the scene does change. But chances are, if you're whining about how things suck compare to the way they used to be, its most likely that *YOU* have changed far more than the scene has.

Scotty, I know you're way too intellegent to actually beleive this "religion is the root cause of all evil" b/s. I'd be more sympathetic if you were 16, but you're not.

If the source is that old, I wonder if they took the effects of airbags into consideration. Of course you can die either way, but being launched through your windshield at 120 km/h doesn't sound like it would be very pretty.

The issue here is not about religion. Its about kids and their autonomy (or lack thereof) from their parents, and how parents react when their kids do something that is contrary to their parents' values.

Obviously, the father acted in a stupid way. But the kind of media salivation over this issue is a little bit inappropriate when frankly there are cases everyday of similar shit when kids come back to their parents with tattoos/piercings/alternative dress that the parents disapprove of.

Yes, they should. Unfortunately, most journalists are too damn lazy to cover more than the most superficial aspects of any given story.

That's fucking awesome.

^^ Never heard that one before, do you have a source for that?

Exactly.

Pictures *do* matter in discouraging people from engaging in unhealthy or risky activities.

Why do you think the government puts those anti-smoking pictures on the packets of cigarretes?

I'm not saying you don't have a point, but when it comes to bringing up matters of racial or religious background its a really delicate issue, because you have to provide the proper perspective and framing of the situation in order to prevent an increase in prejudice towards the community that are supposedly "responsible".

In other words, saying that the rioting is being done by North African Moslem youth can lead to one of two interpretations of the situation:

(1) The rioting is done by north african moslem youth because these people are inherently violent and aggresive and therefore don't belong in our country

or

(2) The rioting is done by north african moslem youth because these people have been discriminated against and excluded from mainstream society and hence react violently in responce to a perceived attack by the police against their community

Unfortunately, conclusion #1 is much "easier" cognitively to arrive at because its a simple, clear cut (though incorrect) explanation. Conclusion #2 takes a much greater understanding of the context of these events and is much more of an effortful conclusion to make. That's why bringing up issues of ethnicity and religion is an exetremely sensitive issue and if its done, must be done only in the proper context.

It probably wouldn't do anything different than a large dose of either mushrooms or LSD on its own.

Ya gotta admit, that would make a great anti-drunk driving ad campaign.

I have no clue how to post a video, but if you wanna see the dopest shit ever then click on this link and watch the video and/or read the article.

It's about a BASE jumper who wants to be the first man ever to jump out of a helicopter WITHOUT a parachute and live to tell about it.

[ www.nytimes.com ]

This thread is an excellent case study as to why you should NOT start raving and doing drugs at the age of 13.

Ethnicity and religion are two completely seperate things. There are white Moslems, Arab Moslems, Black Moslems, etcetera.

The fact that the protesters are immigrants *is* relevant.
The fact that unemployment rates for immigrants are astronomical *is* relevant.
The fact that many immigrants have not integrated (for whatever reasons) into French society *is* relevant.

However, the fact that many of the protesters are likely Muslim has absolutely *no* relevance whatsoever, so it would therefore make as much sense for the media to mention religion as it would to see a headline like "Christian man robs deppaneur"

Good party! Thankfully the HHC anthems were kept at a maximum and the annoying chipmunk-syle shit kept to a miniminum :P The hardcore at the end of the night was dope. Friendly peeps, strict security but understandable cuz that was a really proper venue. They even had a girl working as an elevator attendant which was hilarious. Seems like every at every party the kids keep getting younger and younger, probably cuz i'm getting old.

If this actually happens and promoters start throwing "rave"-style parties in bars instead of lofts/random spaces, it will change the party scene irrevocably. Just look at Toronto, where this has already happened. Whether that's a good or bad thing is a matter of taste.

Happy bday my man!! Don't go wandering down under the tunnel :)

Latest news: 80 cops injured in clashes, including several in serious condition.

These French kids really know how to battle with the cops.

The only way I'd touch a Funk Pill is if I couldn't find a decent source of MDMA. Just because the chemicals in the Funk Pill are legal, doesn't mean they are any safer than illegal drugs. It just means that the chemicals haven't yet attracted sufficient govenment attention to be made illegal. All drugs, including cocaine, MDMA, heroin, and LSD, were legal at one point in time or another, until alot of people started using/abusing them and lawmakers decided to do something about it. Furthermore, there isn't much research to gauge how safe BZP is in the long term, and I haven't heard anything to suggest that BZP is any better than MDMA - some people get vicious comedowns off it. The following is an except from an article about legal highs from the New Scientist:

[ www.newscientist.com ]

Among the most popular legal highs are "party pills" made from compounds called piperazines, which are chemically similar to Viagra but with an amphetamine-like action. Known by various brand names such as PEP and Bliss, their main active ingredient is BZP (benzylpiperazine) - the "Z" pronounced US-style to rhyme with the "B". Originally developed as a drug to treat parasites in livestock, piperazines have been sporadically used on the dance scene for many years but began to seriously take off about three years ago - though not in the US, where they have been strictly illegal since 2002. Anand started selling them in January 2006 and says that every month they grow more popular.

The BZP story started in the late 1990s, when the drug was "discovered" by New Zealand entrepreneur Matt Bowden. The former musician and recreational drug user became hooked on illegal amphetamines in the 1990s during an epidemic of methamphetamine - "crystal meth" - addiction that swept the country. He had already lost a family member to ecstasy when, in the mid-1990s, he witnessed a friend on meth commit a horrific suicide - disembowelling himself with a samurai sword - at a party.

Bowden became determined to kick the habit. His efforts to quit led him to experiment with legal alternatives and he sought out a professor of neuropharmacology to tutor him and work alongside him on the project.

"I said, let's find something which is like methamphetamine but non-addictive and has an extremely low risk of overdose or death," Bowden says. They searched through the scientific literature and came across a piperazine which occasionally cropped up as an ecstasy alternative called A2.

"We looked at a US study and found that one part of the molecule caused liver damage in rats, but the other part appeared to be perfectly safe. That part was BZP," he says.

In 2000, Bowden used the compound to break his addiction to methamphetamine and then began giving it out for free to friends. By 2002, companies had begun making and selling BZP. The move led Bowden to set up his own company, Stargate, to market safe, legal alternatives to street drugs.

Stargate now produces and sells a range of pills based on piperazine blends. BZP is often combined with another piperazine, TFMPP (trifluorophenylmethylpiperazine), which gives the pills a relaxing, euphoric effect that has been compared to ecstasy.

Both drugs activate the 5HT serotonin receptor in the brain - the same receptor targeted by amphetamines and MDMA - and cause the release of dopamine (Neuropsychopharmacology, vol 30, p 550). This is responsible for the "high" associated with the pills, though it can also lead to anxiety, overheating and dehydration. In one survey, only half of people who had used BZP said they would describe its effects as "good"; 16 per cent said it was "good early but bad later", 10 per cent "bad" and 14 per cent "neither good nor bad". My own experience of using BZP was mixed, with some enjoyable effects but also a bout of paranoia, insomnia and a bad hangover the next day.

Worldwide, Bowden sells a million pills a year and, all told, New Zealand's legal party pills industry is worth around NZ$50 million a year. As these figures suggest, a lot of New Zealanders take BZP. In June, researchers at Massey University in Auckland released the results of a survey of more than 2000 people, commissioned by the New Zealand government. "We expected that no more than 5 per cent of those questioned would have tried BZP, but we actually found that 20 per cent of people had tried the drug, and 1 in 7 of 15 to 45-year-olds had used BZP in the past year," says study leader Chris Wilkins.

Wilkins says that the highest usage was by those in their 20s, as he had expected, but he also discovered high levels of use by people in their 30s and 40s.

A separate survey of around 1000 people carried out in Hamilton, New Zealand's seventh-largest city, yielded similar figures. It found that 12 per cent of the city's total population, and 30 per cent of 14 to 25-year-olds, had taken BZP at some point (Emergency Medicine Australasia, vol 18, p 180).

The popularity of BZP, along with anecdotal reports of adverse reactions, withdrawal symptoms and psychotic episodes, has led some politicians and doctors to start campaigning for a ban. Bowden, however, argues that his products are "harmless fun" and actually reduce demand for street drugs and the damage they cause; the pills are even labelled as "drug-harm minimisation solutions". He and other vendors have an agreement to sell them only to adults and in outlets where alcohol is not available.

"If we accept that people have the right to experiment with their minds, just as they try paragliding or drag racing, then it is the responsibility of governments to ensure that they have access to well-designed drugs," Bowden says.

There is some evidence in support of Bowden's argument that BZP reduces the demand for street drugs. In the Hamilton survey, 44 per cent of the 15 to 45-year-olds who had tried BZP said they had stopped taking illegal drugs as a result. In 2005, the head of the New Plymouth Criminal Investigation Branch, Grant Coward, said that the use of ecstasy had dropped after BZP became available. It also appears that the relatively low price of BZP diverts people away from illegal drugs. An ecstasy pill in New Zealand costs up to NZ$80; the same amount will buy you up to 12 BZP tablets. "Most users said that they would rather take ecstasy than BZP because the effect is preferable and the hangover not as bad, but they're priced out of it," Wilkins says. What is not clear, however, is whether BZP acts as a gateway to illegal drugs among people who would otherwise never have taken them.

Wilkins also points out that the drug seems to have less abuse potential than amphetamines. "It gives you quite a bad hangover, so people tend to limit their usage of it," he says. Overall, however, Wilkins says it is too early to conclude that BZP reduces harm.

Health worries
Worries are also emerging about the health effects of the drug. According to emergency doctor Paul Gee from Christchurch Hospital, BZP-related admissions were almost unheard of two years ago but are now commonplace. Between April and September 2005, his team dealt with 80 users complaining of nausea, vomiting, anxiety and palpitations. Some had seizures; two cases were life-threatening (The New Zealand Medical Journal, vol 118, p U1784). And while there have been no deaths directly attributed to BZP, in 2001 a woman died in Zurich after taking it with MDMA.

One of the biggest worries is that, because BZP is advertised as a "safer alternative", it fosters the belief that it is completely harmless and encourages people to take more than the recommended dose (about 200 milligrams). In the Hamilton survey, around a third of 14 to 25-year-olds who had taken BZP said they did not read the instructions on the packaging. Nearly half took more than the recommended number of pills, and 66 per cent drank alcohol at the same time, which is not advisable as alcohol exacerbates the dehydrating effects of BZP.

The non-addictiveness and limited abuse potential of BZP have also been called into question with a study showing that rhesus monkeys will intravenously self-administer the drug at rates as high as they would for cocaine (Drug and Alcohol Dependence, vol 77, p 161). What's more, work due to be published in the journal Neurotoxicology and Teratology shows that adolescent rats given BZP grow up into anxious adults.

With the doubts about BZP growing, it is no surprise that governments are sitting up and taking notice. In 2002 the US temporarily placed the drug on its schedule 1 rating, the same category as MDMA and heroin, and confirmed this in 2004. BZP has recently been made illegal in Japan, Denmark, Greece, Sweden and, as of 1 September, Australia. In the UK, BZP remains legal but is on the agenda for discussion at the government's advisory council on the misuse of drugs meeting on 2 November, where a decision will be taken as to whether BZP needs to be monitored further.

New Zealand, however, has taken a different and arguably more enlightened approach. In 2001 Bowden approached the government to ask for its help in regulating the new industry. In response the government introduced a new class of drug called "non-traditional designer substances", also known as class D. This class is a repository for new and little-researched drugs, such as BZP, pending further information. Class D drugs are legal, though there are some restrictions on them; in BZP's case that means a ban on sales to under-18s and in places that sell alcohol.

The government also commissioned three studies into BZP. One, the Hamilton prevalence study, has already been published. The other two concern the drug's health effects and are due out in November; Wilkins expects both to be critical. The outcome of these studies will heavily influence the legal status of BZP in New Zealand.

Whatever the fate of BZP, party pills won't be the last legal high to occupy government time. Thanks to the efforts of Bowden and like-minded individuals, new psychoactive substances - both natural and synthetic - continue to enter the market.

PARIS, Nov. 26 — Angry youths clashed with the French police in two suburbs north of Paris overnight, burning down a police station, wounding more than two dozen police officers, including one whose lung was punctured.

The clashes began when two teenagers traveling on a motorbike died in a collision with a police car.

The two teenagers who died last night were identified in the French news media merely as 15-year-old Moushin and 16-year-old Larami, who were riding on a small motorbike, or “dirt-bike,” in Villiers-le-Bel in the Val d’Oise department, north of Paris.

Within an hour of the teenagers’ deaths, bands of youths began to throw stones at the police car. They also burned more than 28 cars and four private buildings, including a garage, the police said.

Attackers set the police station in Villiers-le-Bel on fire, destroying it, the police said. Twenty-five police officers were wounded in the incidents, including two seriously, the police said. Nine arrests were made, mainly in Villiers-le-Bel.

The violence spread to nearby Sarcelles, and some damage was reported in other towns.

Patrick Trotignon, a local representative for the police union Synergie Officiers, said one officer sustained a punctured lung and took blows to the face from an attacker with a metal bar.

The circumstances are reminiscent of the accidental deaths of two teenagers in 2005 in another Paris suburb that sparked a three-week wave of unrest across much of France. Those two teenagers, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, were electrocuted in a power station in another suburb, Clichy-sous-Bois, in October 2005. The youths thought they were being chased by the police, although initially the police determined the deaths were an accident.

A later investigation found that police officers indeed chased the two youths on foot, though not as far as the power station. That incident led to the unrest, which eventually spread to many urban areas in France. Thousands of cars were burned and dozens of public buildings were set on fire.

The police authority for the Val d’Oise area described the accident today as a rather ordinary crash at an intersection. “What is almost entirely sure is that it wasn’t a chase with the youths, but that they crashed into each other at the intersection,” said a police spokeswoman for the Val d’Oise region. “There is a theory that the youths ignored the right-of-way.”

Mr. Trotignon of Synergie Officiers said the kind of motorbike that was involved was not approved for road use. The damage to the patrol car was extensive but consistent with the car traveling within the speed limit when it met the collision, he said.

Since the 2005 unrest, the authorities have poured in funding to help the suburban areas, which tend to suffer high unemployment rates.

In France’s largely ethnic ‘banlieues’, as they are called, youth unemployment is sometimes close to 50 percent.

Earlier this month the police found three gas cylinders loaded with screws and bolts in the troubled suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois, north of Paris. One had been placed in a trash container which was later set ablaze, in what was considered to have been a trap for the police.

“There’s an escalation,” said Mr. Trotignon, speaking about the discovery of the gas cylinders in Aulnay in light of the events in Villiers-le-Bel. “It wasn’t just to scare us off, it was to kill. And now we’ve got an officer who’s got a perforated lung.”

Mr. Trotignon said he expected “that tonight we’re going in for more,” with the chance that violence will spread to nearby towns. "We’ve been saying for eons that we’re sitting on a powder keg," he said.

till 3am or all nite jam?

Feeling awkward on the dance floor? This video shows you how to bust some awesome moves...

[ www.youtube.com ]

Back when it was cool to be an e-tard... [ www.rave.ca ]

Bwhahaha does Neoform still post these days? I remember those epic flame wars with Ben.

Fred just gimme a crowbar n shit and we'll find a dope loft somewhere

Sup y'all...

I remember joining this site (then Ravewave) back in 2001 and watching it grow enourmously over the years. At the time, it was like a big circle of friends/acquantances where everybody know eveyone and shared the good times together. Of course, being just a small community it was also a bonfire of gossip and stories, and you could always count on finding some juicy drama on Ravewave!

I've been away for awhile and members have come and gone, nowadays I don't know 95% of the people posting here but theres always a few oldskoolers that have stayed on from the early days (you know who u are). So in celebration of times gone by, this thread is for you to reminiscene about some of your times on this site, so post PICTURES, STORIES, LINKS TO OLD THREADS, whatever as long as its more than few years old

happy bday :)

Soyfunk....if all goes to plan I should be teaching english in Phnom Phen at that time. That would be awesome if we were both there. keep in touch

To all the people who we've partied together - this post is just to let you all know that I'm taking off again to spend another year in Asia. We've had some pretty crazy moments together that I'll never forget :) Keep on livin' it up and take care of yo mind, body and soul.

PEACE!