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I asked for real stories about the effect of cannabis use on mental stablility. The debate on which is more harmful - alcohol or cannabis - will continue, I said, but if you have been affected let me know.

I publish the following email from Christopher Philpott without editing:

I stopped using marijuana five years ago and i now know that the effects have plagued me very much i do hear things in my head,from time to time and i do have problems with anxiety, yes i do love cannabis but no longer using it is the best for me i lived using it my whole life revolved around it but now i feel psycosis and its affects, two years ago while in london i read an article in a newspaper about marijuana and its bad mental affects,i am listening from california u.s.a

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Listener Allen Palmer suggests I ask the big question about including Hamas in any future negotiations with Israel - can you really negotiate with someone who is calling for your destruction?

This follows the interview we did with the former diplomat Alistair Crook, who advises groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. He said no progress could be made without Hamas. He compared Hamas to the ANC in South Africa - "Nelson Mandela was head of the armed wing, dedicated to violence," he said.

I pointed out that the two organisation might be judged to be quantitatively different - by which I meant that ANC was not known for suicide bombings and deliberately targeting civilians. He responded that Hamas had kept to a ceasefire, which is of course hotly debated in Israel.

So that's the background to Allen's reasonable email:

Dear Mr. Damon, I would respectfully like to request that the next time you interview someone who is in favor of including Hamas in future Middle East peace negotiations that you ask about Hamas charter seeking the destruction of Israel and their fixed position of not accepting Israels right to exist. While activities such as suspending suicide bombings and offering ongoing truces are very valuable, the more basic questions pertaining to Hamas core stance is a key issue to raise with your interviewees.

Thank you for considering this point.

Sincerely yours, Allen Palmer, M.D. Newton Highlands, MA, USA

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Prof. Akbar Ahmed helped me with two different programmes last week, explaining the fallout from the storming of the Red Mosque in Islamabad - for World Update, as I mentioned in my last posting, and for Reporting Religion on the impact of the crisis on the ongoing struggle between militants and moderates in Islam.

During our time together, we shared memories and regrets about Peshawar, the main city in Pakistan's NWFP, the northwest frontier province.

I have so many fond memories of this wonderful, fervid city - dusty, busy and really on the edge, being the last resupply stop on the way the Khyber Pass and Afghanistan.

As a reporter and later as a climber I spent many days in Peshawar meeting contacts, preparing journeys, interviewing Afghan refugees or just enjoying the atmosphere.

And wandering around the markets, where cheap hotels advertised 'flesh system' - it took me a while to work out this was a promise of flush toilets, not illicit sex.

Usually I ate in the Khyber Cafe, where the waiter had bright red dyed hair - unusual vanity, I thought, in a middle aged man in a piously Muslim town. (In fact, I learned later, the colour was probably a mark of his faith.)

Now, as the professor and I remarked with sadness, the piety has made the place almost impossible to visit. Whereas in the past a foreign visitor was a welcome source of extra income (often, as I found out from the many uninvited offers I received, assumed to be looking for cheap hashish) now it's a rather scary place for Westerners, who generally don't go there, because militantly political Islam is dominant.

"Look what they've done to Peshawar!" moaned Professor Ahmed. "It was so beautiful, now it's ugly."

I don't suppose he means the buildings, but the mood.

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One of our guests on World Update this morning, Professor Akbar Ahmed, made the worrying suggestion that the growing storm around President and General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan reminded him of what had happened to the Shah of Iran.

The American's had backed the wrong guy then and were doing it now, he said.

Read the rest of this entry

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