I understand and respect your concerns. However, there is nothing else I can tell you to do but not take the risks you feel are inappropriate to take.

I know personally many hundreds of medical cannabis patients. I know that there must be thousands that feel as you do. They have both the right and responsibility to protect themselves as they see best. I can not and would not suggest that anyone take risks they are not willing to take.

On the other hand, I have gone with patients, real patients with considerable fears, also, who risked all to express their outrage. Wheelchair treks across Ohio and Wisconsin to their state capitols to protest. Demonstrations. Very high profile exposure. Great risks for what they believe in.

I am sure that some of them will be at the chat.

We will try to make a copy of the discussion available on the web soon, so you can see what happened without actually going to the chat.

That is the best we can do.

I'm not delusional or unnecessarily paranoid. I'm a realist who was born and raised in a country that's turned friends against friends and families against families. That's the truth, at least where I come from. People get probation for arson and murder, but get lengthy mandatory minimum sentences for trumped up "conspiracy to distribute" charges just because they have an ounce of cannabis in the same house as a box of sandwich bags.

It would take a bit of work to find out who I am, not just typing /finger.

No, I won't go to the Chat. I've managed to avoid going to prison for 40 years and I'm not going to make it easy on anybody to take my family and my life.

On the other hand, what does anybody have to fear? Are you going to admit to illegal acts? If not, I do not understand the concern.

All that you do on the 'net is traceable if someone or some agency really has the desire. Your email. Your website visits. There is no way to be sure something you say will not be traced back to you.

I know of activists who discussed court tactics they had plans to use on an email list only to find out in court that the DA had joined the list.

So the choice is yours, don't participate if you fear folks possibly finding who you are and where you are from.

For six years now some of the best known activists in the world have been participating in the DrugSense Chat http://www.drugsense.org/chat without fear. Same software, same host as the CNEWS chat.

All I can say is that if you really are that worried, the best advice I can give is to destroy your modem and never visit the web again. Harsh, yes. But realistic!

Richard

p.s. Just to show you how easy it is for any webmaster to keep track of who visits their site, here is a list of the visitors in just the first nine days of this month to the www.mapinc.org website from government addresses, followed by the number of visits. While none of the DrugSense hosted sites is in the U.S. making it much harder for US LEOs to get this kind of information when you visit CNEWS, you should know that every website records who visits, period. You either trust the site not do give up the data, or you don't.

Top 50 Government Visitors This Month: Host followed by Hits vance002.net.gov.bc.ca 258 vicce003.net.gov.bc.ca 144 chescat.gsfc.nasa.gov 118 sseop101.eop.gov 63 burleson.rtp.epa.gov 55 thompson.rtp.epa.gov 51 gatekeeper.bop.gov 35 gov-2-254.gov.nf.ca 32 res2.gtwy.uscourts.gov 27 deptvass-cp.va.gov 27 s3abab9.ssa.gov 26 sseop102.eop.gov 25 tias-gw6.treas.gov 24 s00dab8.ssa.gov 22 frontdesk.wwb.noaa.gov 21 pix-a-20.gov.calgary.ab.ca 21 gw1.cs.nsw.gov.au 17 ocswall4.fda.gov 17 s00dad2.ssa.gov 15 gao-cp.gao.gov 15 p2-209-202-90-87.govital.net 13 protea.ccsu.nsw.gov.au 13 s00ded0.ssa.gov 12 p2-209-202-90-77.govital.net 11 wwwcache.lanl.gov 11 amcproxy.jccbi.gov 11 iusr4.gov.ns.ca 10 gateway101.gsi.gov.uk 10 doegate-1.doe.gov 10 wcfc.ocio.usda.gov 10 p2-209-202-90-67.govital.net 9 dns1.shoalhaven.nsw.gov.au 9 tias-gw2.treas.gov 9 pat.fwhq2nat.dot.ca.gov 8 res3.gtwy.uscourts.gov 8 ptohidea.uspto.gov 8 gateway.dhs.vic.gov.au 8 dgoldwater.arc.nasa.gov 8 deptvachi-cp.va.gov 8 deptvasf-cp.va.gov 7 rch7.gtwy.uscourts.gov 7 p2-209-202-90-70.govital.net 6 27106.ftw.nrcs.usda.gov 6 deptvabed-bh.visn1.med.va.gov 6 housegate1.house.gov 6 p5-209-202-90-205.govital.net 6 cen-ce4.tco.census.gov 6 gk-east-6.usps.gov 6 fw1-b.osis.gov 6 tcs-gateway13.treas.gov 6

The "Finger" option appears to show the actual IP number of anybody in the chat room, even when using an anonymous proxy on my browser.

Pigmonkey didn't work as the applet wouldn't load, regardless of whether I was connecting to pigmonkey directly or through an anonymous proxy.

If everybody could be "fingered" by any unscrupulous slime wad that enters the chat room, the question of trust regarding the actual host of the website becomes a moot point.

Although ISP logs would have to be analyzed to determine who was logged on using a certain IP number, the ISP itself can easily be traced, leading not only to a determination of the exact geographical area one of us is located, but also allowing any local yokel to get a search warrant or just threaten a small ISP to divulge the information.

http://www.bloodjournal.org/cgi/content/abstract/100/2/627

The results of the aforementioned research seem to parallel that of the melanoma research released this past week, except that this study was limited to the CB2 receptor and the melanoma study examined both the CB1 and CB2 receptors.

This was Dr. Russo's post re: the melanoma study:

As far as I am concerned, I still have an appeal to the lawyer police, I am up to some 470 exhibits and counting. I also have a federal lawsuit still filed here in Chicago to force the FBI to investigate mail fraud in the system. Next Monday we get a new Governor, his "deputy" gov is going to be Doug Scofield, former aid to Congr. Guitierezz who sounded sympathetic a few years ago when I spoke to him about that federal law thing. Remember that Illinois right now STILL has the best MM law in the nation, still a virgin law, of course. Maybe with a 2 billion deficit they might start to look at creative ways to reduce costs of government.

Also, of course, Illinois has passed two HEMP BILLS that were vetoed by the outgoing gov, maybe Illinois will get something done this year?

I did a google search on "marijuana lymphoma" and it turned up some interesting links. It appears that most people have typically used marijuana to counteract the effects of chemotherapy. If you want to breach the subject to him, printing out some of the testimonials may help.

Dear sir:

I am a person interested in seeing the subject of medical cannabis being presented to the American people by a real doctor that is an expert in the field. The government's side that cannabis has no medical value is insulting to anyone that reads about the subject on the Internet. There is an expert in the field named Dr. Russo from Missoula, Montana. Do the American people a favor and let the expert tell them about cannabis. The governments Schedule One Lie is killing people and inflicting unwarranted harm to others.

Dr.Ethan Russo regularly contributes to cannabisnews.com and because the website is promoting his participation in a chat session this Friday night, I can copy some of his credentials from this link: http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread15143.shtml

Copy follows

Thanks for the link. There's a bunch I'm going to want to learn. I watched my natural father die of cancer in 1978 and I was too scared to offer my cannabis even though I knew that it might help him. I swore I'd never let a loved one suffer that way. Now I just wonder how to approach my stubborn step-father with cannabis, knowing what I know, but also knowing what the propaganda has made him think.

Here is the basic note I will be spreading around the lists, etc.:

Friday, Jan. 10th, at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific Ethan Russo, MD will be the special guest in the CannabisNews chat room at http://cannabisnews.com/chat/

Dr. Russo is the medical advisor for Cannabis Health magazine http://www.cannabishealth.com/ , editor of The Journal of Cannabis Therapeutics http://www.cannabis-med.org/science-international/JCANT.htm and was a Primary Investigator for the study Chronic Cannabis Use in the Compassionate Investigational New Drug (IND) Program: An Examination of Benefits and Adverse Effects of Legal Clinical Cannabis http://www.freedomtoexhale.com/ccu.pdf

Please help spread the word! Thank You!