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The Birth of Hamas
In-Extremis | November 26 | Katechon

Posted on 11/26/2012 9:40:41 AM PST by Katechon

Hamas traces its roots back to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Sheikh Hasan Ahmed Abdel Rahman Muhammed al-Banna launched the Muslim Brothers in March 1928.

The motto of the Muslim Brotherhood, which al-Banna supplied, is: "Islam is the solution, the Koran is our Constitution, Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our Leader, Jihad is our way, dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."

Said Ramadan was born in 1926 in Shibin al-Kawm, a village in the Nile delta. He encountered al-Banna and joined the Muslim Brotherhood when he was 14. After graduating from Cairo University, he became al-Banna's personal secretary. A year later, Ramadan was named editor of the Muslim Brotherhood weekly, Al Shihab, and he married al-Banna's daughter.

Ramadan became al-Banna's ambassador, amassing a network of international contacts. In 1945, he traveled to Jerusalem. Over the following years, Ramadan will spend most of his time shuttling between Jerusalem, Amman, Damascus, and Beirut to build various Muslim Brotherhood factions.

At the time, Palestine was still a British-controlled territory, a poor desert region inhabited by warring Arab and Jewish populations. Traveling to mosques and university campuses, and focusing on Muslim youth, Ramadan preached jihad and helped with the creation of paramilitary groups. By 1947, there were 25 branches of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine, with between 12,000 and 20,000 members. In 1948, Ramadan helped the Muslim Brotherhood send jihadists into battle with the Jewish armed forces that were estabmilitarylishing the state of Israel. Compared to the armies of Egypt and Syria, the Brotherhood's forces were insignificant, but the symbolic gesture would enhance the Muslim Brotherhood's prestige for decades to come.

After the establishment of the Israeli State in 1948, Said Ramadan kept recruiting followers in Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza and elsewhere, seeking to "liberate" Palestine from the occupation of the Jewish people.

Another organization aiming to free Palestine from "Zionist" control emerged in the 1950’s: Fatah. The anti-Israeli guerrilla movement was NOT a creation of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Fatah was the backbone of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which was established at an Arab Conference in 1964 as the official representative of the Palestinian people. In 1974, Arab states declared the PLO the "sole legitimate representative" of the Palestinian people.

The PLO was responsible for hijackings, bombings and other attacks against Israel.

Both Fatah and the PLO were primarily centered in the Gaza strip.

Gaza was then ruled by Egypt.

In 1967, Gamal Abdel Nasser, the president of Egypt, was defeated by Israel in the Six-Day War.

With this war, Israel took control of both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, bringing nearly one million Arabs under its control.

This defeat provided Fatah and the Muslim Brotherhood with a big opportunity ; it was a turning point for Palestinian aspirations. In light of Israel’s demonstrated military superiority, it became clear that neither organization could defeat Israel with conventional forces. Future armed struggle with Israel would have to rely more on popular support and guerrilla tactics and terrorism.

Fatah and the PLO differed from the Muslim Brotherhood in one important way. They changed their goal of the outright destruction of the Israeli state -- in order to establish of secular state in Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood never diverged from its objective of destroying Israel as a state. By 1974, the PLO began to push for the establishment of a Palestinian State in the West Bank and Gaza.

In Gaza, Israel hunted down members of Fatah and of the PLO, but it dropped the harsh restrictions imposed on jihadists by previous Egyptian rulers.

The Muslim Brotherhood, led in Gaza by Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Hassan Yassin, was thus able to spread its message openly.

Sheikh Yassin

In addition to launching various charity projects, Sheikh Yassin raised money to reprint the writings of Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian member of the Muslim Brotherhood advocating global jihad.

Sayyid Qutb was executed by President Nasser.

Sheikh Yassin formed in 1973 al-Mujamma' al-Islami (the Islamic Center), a Muslim Brotherhood front helping to set up a network of schools, clinics, kindergartens and a library. The organization was officially recognized by Israel as a charity and then as an association in 1979.

Israel also endorsed the establishment of the Islamic University of Gaza in 1978.

When Israel first encountered Islamists in Gaza in the 1970s and '80s, they seemed focused on studying the Quran, not on confrontation with Israel. The Israeli government officially recognized a precursor to Hamas called Mujama Al-Islamiya, registering the group as a charity. It allowed Mujama members to set up an Islamic university and build mosques, clubs and schools.

-- Andrew Higgins, How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas

The Wall Street Journal quoted Israeli Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev saying "our main enemy [in Gaza] was Fatah," and the cleric "was still 100% peaceful" towards Israel.

Indeed, Sheikh Yassin and Israel shared in Fatah a common enemy.

After a failed attempt in Gaza to oust Fathi Arafat (Yasser Arafat's brother) from the leadership of the Palestinian Red Crescent, Mujamma stormed the Red Crescent building. Then the islamic movement tried to burn down his house.

The Muslim Brotherhood front also attacked shops selling liquor, as well as cinemas.

In 1984, the Israeli military received a tip-off, raided a mosque and found a cache of weapons. Sheikh Yassin was jailed. He told Israeli interrogators the weapons were for use against Fatah, not Israel. The cleric was released after a year and continued to expand Mujamma's reach across Gaza.

In December of 1987, several Palestinian Arabs were killed or wounded in a traffic accident involving an Israeli driver. It triggered a series of riots and ultra-violent confrontations that became known as the First Intifada. The accident happened in the Jabalya refugee camp and the riots quickly spread from there throughout Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It lasted until 1993.

Jabalya is the largest refugee camp in Palestine

Down the path trudged three Palestinian women dressed in long black robes and beating two dozen sheep with canes. It was a scene straight from the Bible or Koran, the shepherdesses and their flock walking past mud huts framed in palm trees and cactus plants. It easily could have been 1888, or 1288, or 1088 BC. Nothing much had really changed since the days of Isaac and Ishmael — not the stones and certainly not the passion; only the car and the fancy rifle were new.

-- Thomas Friedman, From Beirut to Jerusalem

On the 8th of December 1987, an Israeli semi-trailer truck driver turned onto the crowded main road leading into Jabaliya and ended up hitting several vehicles, killing four Palestinians and wounding seven others. Rumors spread throughout the Jaliya camp that the Israeli man had purposefully swerved into the oncoming lane of traffic to avenge the recent murder of a Jewish shopper. Was he the slain man's brother? His cousin perhaps? Anyway, Palestinians did not think this was an accident. The following day, a group of Palestinian kids threw rocks at a truck full of Israeli soldiers, who in turn chased them around the camp on foot. When they returned to the vehicle, it was surrounded by an angry Palestinian mob. Two burning bottles were thrown at the vehicle, and the Israeli officer in charge shot his weapon twice at a seventeen year old Palestinian, killing him on the spot.

A riot involving as many as 30,000 Palestinians broke out in Gaza that evening when the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) tried to take the body back for an autopsy. Israeli checkpoint soldiers were overrun by the rioters. Here's Thomas Friedman describing the pains:

Armed with bottles, rakes, stones, and tree limbs, [they] devoured the army's tear-gas grenades and rubber bullets, which seemed only to nourish their rage. Israeli soldiers said they heard shouts of "Itbach al-yahud" - murder the Jews. By the next day, Thursday, December 10, 1987, the nearby town of Khan Yunis joined in the demonstrations, then the Balata and Kalandia refugee camps in the West Bank, then small Palestinian villages and city neighborhoods: there were more confrontations with Israeli troops, more casualties, and more burning tires smudging the skies of the West Bank and Gaza for days on end. Before anyone knew it, virtually all the Palestinians under Israeli occupation were engaged in a spontaneous primal scream that would be heard around the world.

It was during this turmoil that Sheikh Yassin and six other Mujamma militants launched Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement).

Hamas's charter, released a year later, declares "Allah is its goal, the Prophet is the model, the Koran its constitution, jihad its path, and death for the sake of Allah its most sublime belief."

Hamas' Chart, Article Two: "The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine."

In 1989, Hamas carried out its first overt attack on Israel, abducting and killing two soldiers. Israel arrested Sheikh Yassin and sentenced him to life. It later rounded up more than 400 suspected Hamas jihadists, and deported them to Lebanon, where they hooked up with Hezbollah.

The "military" wing of Hamas, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades

Many of the deportees later returned to Gaza.

Hamas built up its arsenal and escalated its attacks, while maintaining and expanding the network that underpinned its support in Gaza.

Meanwhile, Hamas's foe, Fatah, started negotiating a two-state settlement. When Hamas accused Fatah of treachery, the accusation found increasing resonance in Gaza, as Israel kept developing settlements on occupied Palestinian land, particularly the West Bank, which was dotted with Israeli military checkpoints and a growing number of Israeli settlers.

Unable to uproot a now entrenched Hamas that had replaced Fatah as its foe, Israel started targeting Hamas leaders.

Khaled Mashal is now viewed as the leader of Hamas

In 1997, Israel's Mossad spy agency tried to poison Khaled Mashal, as retaliation to the 1997 Mahane Yehuda Market Bombings.Two Mossad agents carrying fake Canadian passports entered Jordan, where Mashal was living. As Mashal walked into his office, one of the agents came up from behind and held a device to Mashal's left ear that transmitted a poison. But Mashal's chauffeur saw what was happening. A security guard began to chase the Mossad agents and boarded a passing car to pursue them. With the help of a policeman, he managed to overpower them and place them under arrest. Mashal was given the antidote. But to get the Israeli agents out of a Jordanian jail, Israel had to agree to release Sheikh Yassin. The cleric then set off on a tour of the Islamic world to raise gold and guns. He returned to Gaza to a hero's welcome.

Sheikh Yassin, the day he was released from jail in 1997.

When Hamas turned to suicide bombings in 1994, Israel cracked down the jihadists with ferocious force. But each military assault seem to have increased Hamas's appeal to Palestinians.

Hamas kept perpetrating numerous suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks. At first in order to sabotage the Oslo Accords and peace process, and then as part of the Second Intifada (2000-2004).

When Israel assassinated Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 2004, and then Sheikh Ahmed Rantissi, it forces the Hamas leadership to go underground or abroad.

In 2004, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was killed by an Israeli air strike.

Hamas ultimately trounced Fatah and the PLO in the 2006 Palestinian legislative election.

In June of 2006, Hamas captured an Israeli soldier by tunneling across the border between Gaza and Israel.

In February of 2007, Hamas, Fatah and other factions entered a unity government with Hamas in a deal brokered by Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Hamas then formed the Executive Force, a combination of police force and political force to be used against opponents.

In June of 2007, Hamas ousted Fatah forces from Gaza in a bloody coup, throwing Fatah members off the roofs of buildings after shooting them in the knees. The Muslim Brotherhood front then took control of Gaza.

And because Gaza had been totally evacuated by Israel in the unilateral disengagement plan of 2005, Hamas became able to rule over Gaza as a de facto state government. And to use Gaza as a base for launching rocket attacks against Israel.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Israel; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: bloggersandpersonal; egypt; erdogan; gaza; hamas; hamashistory; historyofhamas; historyofmb; ikhwan; islam; israel; mbhistory; muslimbrotherhood; qatar; vanity; waronterror
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1 posted on 11/26/2012 9:40:47 AM PST by Katechon
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To: Katechon
My objective here is to frame the discussion about the future of Gaza.

Recently, Hamas lost its traditional political ally, the Assad regime, and relations with a principal weapons supplier, Iran, has soured.

Khaled Meshaal has openly backed his Sunni brethren in their jihad against the Assad regime. And Hamas is increasing coordination with Egypt. Those two things are putting Hamas at odds with Iran and Hezbollah, which have been critical financiers and weapons suppliers in the past.

The question for Hamas now is how well its new partners -- the Turkey of Erdoğan, the Qatar of Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, and the Egypt of Mohamed Morsi -- will fare, and whether their assets -- regional political weight, material resources and international legitimacy -- will prove more useful than those possessed by the Assad regime, Iran and Hezbollah.

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Gaza and Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammed Morsi of Egypt

Hamas is now trying to ally with Cairo, Doha and Ankara ever more closely and to set itself clearly as the more active and relevant Palestinian party, more relevant than Fatah.

Its goal is probably to normalise economic conditions in the Gaza Strip, open up the Rafah crossing with Egypt and solidify relations with the Egyptian hinterland.

Regarding the longer-term Israel’s strategy toward the Palestinian movement: could the conflict result in an outcome in which Egypt, Israel and Hamas reached an understanding normalising the economic situation in Gaza and solidifying its links to Egypt -- while providing security assurances to Israel?

If such a deal could link Gaza ever more tightly to Egypt, it could also entrench the division between Gaza and the West Bank, and thus marginalize further Fatah.

By achieving a de facto deal with Hamas, Israel woud signal its preference for dealing with the Muslim Brotherhood front rather than with President Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah.

The central Palestinian address increasingly could be viewed as Gaza, and the central Palestinian player as Hamas.

Abbas is probably the most significant political casualty of the last weeks. He seems doomed either way: should he forego the U.N. General Assembly to seek an upgrade in status, he would be discredited; Or should he go to the U.N. General Assembly, then Israel will retaliate in ways that could only further damage the Palestinian National Authority’s economic situation, thereby accelerating the very process that is weakening Abbas and strengthening Hamas.

Could this be viewed as the last chapter of ex-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s unilateral disengagement plan-- with the Israeli government closing Israel’s borders with Gaza forever and re-opening Rafah? That would de facto make Gaza part of Egypt. And since Hamas belongs to the Brotherhood, Morsi and Hamas have shared interests in Sunni islamic rule...

Former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Major General: Israel should end Gaza blockade and recognize Hamas’ government in return for cessation of rocket fire (source)

The eventual reintegration of Gaza into Egypt is probably what former head of the National Security Council Giora Eiland had in mind when he urged Israel to treat Gaza as a Hamas-dominated state, lifting the sea blockade in exchange for a long-term ceasefire. Eiland argued that such an agreement should be accompanied by Egyptian guarantees – maintaining the peace and preventing the entry of weapons to Gaza – and would allow European Union member states to send dinghies to Gaza’s port to ensure that Hamas has something to lose were it to breach the ceasefire. The re-integration of Gaza into Egypt also cohere with Ehud Yaari's speculation: "How to End the War in Gaza: What an Egypt-Brokered Cease-Fire Should Look Like."
Avigdor Lieberman, the current Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, also came out in support of “completing the Gaza disengagement," as early as 2010.

2 posted on 11/26/2012 10:41:03 AM PST by Katechon
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To: Katechon
MAP OF GAZA


3 posted on 11/26/2012 11:16:48 AM PST by Katechon
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To: Katechon

http://www.sikhtimes.com/bios_032404a.html

...Sheikh Yassin was set free by no less than that law-and-order right-wing Likudist Benjamin Netanyahu when he was Prime Minister of Israel. King Hussain wasn’t a ‘broker’ between two sides. Two Israeli Mossad secret agents had tried to murder a Hamas official in Amman, the capital of an Arab nation which had a full peace agreement with Israel. They had injected the Hamas man with poison and the late King Hussain called the U.S. President in a fury and threatened to put the captured Mossad men on trial if he wasn’t given the antidote to the poison and if Yassin wasn’t released.

Netanyahu immediately gave in. Yassin was freed and the Mossad lads went safely home to Israel. So the ‘head of the snake’ was let loose by Israel itself, courtesy of the Israeli Prime Minister - a chapter in the narrative of history which was conveniently forgotten yesterday...


4 posted on 11/26/2012 12:36:28 PM PST by jjotto ("Ya could look it up!")
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To: jjotto
Many thanks for the link.

Yes, it coheres with what I've read. This dude -- Khaled Mashal -- was the target of the Mossad agents:

And you know what's funny?

He said that of Prime Minister Netanyahu on the sixth day of the November 2012 conflict:

"now he’s threatening a ground operation. He can launch it, but he knows it will have a price, and Netanyahu knows it will be fatal for him; he will lose the election and lose his place in Israeli politics. That’s why he’s hesitating and why he’s asking the entire world to pressure Egypt and Turkey to pressure Hamas."

[I've read however that Bib refused first to provide the antidote of the poison, and that it took Bill Clinton to insist upon it!!]

5 posted on 11/26/2012 12:47:54 PM PST by Katechon
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To: jjotto
"the head of the snake"

-- I had this in my files...


6 posted on 11/26/2012 12:51:00 PM PST by Katechon
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To: jjotto
Can you guys guess who's the snake-head on the right side of the pix?

I'm beginning to map the MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD. Man, that is HUGE!! I will need help.

It could be awesome to work on that with a bunch of Freepers.

7 posted on 11/26/2012 1:02:14 PM PST by Katechon
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To: Katechon; Fred Nerks
I'm beginning to map the MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD. Man, that is HUGE!! I will need help. It could be awesome to work on that with a bunch of Freepers.

See the work of FRED NERKS, much of it here:

Obama, the African Colonial

8 posted on 11/28/2012 9:32:11 AM PST by thouworm (.)
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To: thouworm

!


9 posted on 11/28/2012 9:50:22 AM PST by skinkinthegrass (Anger a Conservative by telling a lie; Anger a Liberal by telling the truth....RWR 8-)
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To: thouworm; Katechon

Most of the material on the African Colonial thread deals with communist and/or muslim members of the black community in the US.

So, who IS the man shown on the right of the pix in #7?


10 posted on 11/28/2012 11:49:53 AM PST by Fred Nerks
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To: Fred Nerks

Civilization jihad:

Andrew McCarthy
http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2012/08/09/our-government-and-the-muslim-brotherhood-my-speech-in-washington/


11 posted on 11/28/2012 12:22:48 PM PST by thouworm (.)
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To: thouworm
That's a very important piece of work, needs to be saved to harddrive and maybe printed out in it's entirety if this is going to be a serious research thread. You know my interest. I got this far, will read the remainder later:

That is the sharia system. As interpreted by many of Islam’s most influential thinkers — including organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and academics like the faculty of ancient al-Azhar University in Cairo — classical sharia rejects basic principles of American constitutional democracy.

Got that? It was at al-Azhar that Malcolm X spent something like 18 weeks being instructed in islam before he was allowed to make the hajj in 1964. And it was at al-Azhar that the POTUS made his first overseas speech in 2009.

12 posted on 11/28/2012 1:33:11 PM PST by Fred Nerks
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To: thouworm

Obama Hosted By al Azhar Islamic University

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXXgGtMIpok

Uploaded by TruthRMe on Jul 10, 2009

Shiekh Tantawi of al Azhar Islamic University has consistently ruled that killing Jewish civilians, including women and children does NOT violate the Koran. Many would say only a Muslim who hates Jews could feel at home at al Azhar.


13 posted on 11/28/2012 1:45:12 PM PST by Fred Nerks
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To: thouworm

http://www.coreis.it/Testi/500_MUSLIMS.pdf

THE MOST IMPORTANT 500 MUSLIMS (pdf, good resource)

TANTAWI IS NUMBER 8 ON THE ‘TOP FIFTY’:

THE TOP 50
=
1. His Majesty King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, King of Saudi
Arabia, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques

2. His Eminence Grand Ayatollah Hajj Sayyid Ali Khamenei,
Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran

3. His Majesty King Mohammed VI, King of Morocco

4. His Majesty King Abdullah II bin Al Hussein, King of the
Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

5. His Excellency Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister of the
Republic of Turkey

6. His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Sa’id al Sa’id, Sultan of Oman

7. His Eminence Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hussein Sistani, Marja
of the Hawza, Najaf

8. His Eminence Sheikh Al Azhar Dr Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi,
Grand Sheikh of the Al Azhar University, Grand Imam of Al
Azhar Mosque

9. etc...through to 50.


14 posted on 11/28/2012 2:00:54 PM PST by Fred Nerks
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the al azhar mosque was in Cairo during the time of Napoleon, it was supposedly established over a thousand years ago, they call it a university...it's simply a mosque that teaches sunni islam. That's the brand of the cult that Malcolm X brought to the US to convert the blacks and the congregation of the NOI. The same brand of the cult that the POTUS praises in the video.

15 posted on 11/28/2012 2:37:29 PM PST by Fred Nerks
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for the record:

WHO IS WHO IN EGYPT’S MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD

http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/whos-who-in-the-muslim-brotherhood


16 posted on 11/28/2012 4:31:50 PM PST by Fred Nerks
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In the early years of the 20th Century the Ikhwan (brotherhood) movement began to emerge among the beduin. The Ikhwan movement spread Wahhabi Islam among the nomads. Stressing the same strict adherence to religious law that Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab had preached, Ikhwan beduin abandoned their traditional way of life in the desert and move to an agricultural settlement called a hijra (pl., hujar). The word hijra was related to the term for the Prophet's emigration from Mecca to Medina in 622, conveying the sense that one who settles in a hijra moves from a place of unbelief to a place of belief. By moving to the hijra the Ikhwan intended to take up a new way of life and dedicate themselves to enforcing a rigid Islamic orthodoxy. Once in the hijra the Ikhwan became extremely militant in enforcing upon themselves what they believed to be correct sunna (custom) of the Prophet, enjoining public prayer, mosque attendance, and gender segregation and condemning music, smoking, alcohol, and technology unknown at the time of the Prophet. They attacked those who refused to conform to Wahhabi interpretations of correct Islamic practice and tried to convert Muslims by force to their version of Wahhabism.

SOURCE

17 posted on 11/28/2012 5:02:19 PM PST by Fred Nerks
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Hamas Growth In Gaza.The presence of the Ikhwan in mid-twentieth century Gaza foreshadowed the conception of Hamas.

TRACKING TERRORISM

18 posted on 11/28/2012 6:40:22 PM PST by Fred Nerks
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To: Fred Nerks
Many thanks for that link. I've begun mapping the MB as well.

I'm not far, but I've completed its genesis, its birth. See here.

19 posted on 11/29/2012 10:27:01 PM PST by Katechon
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To: thouworm

thank you !!


20 posted on 11/29/2012 10:28:38 PM PST by Katechon
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