Dr Kaukab Siddique | Editor-in-Chief ---------------------------------------------------------
Jamada al-thani 1, 1426/July 7, 2005 #51
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Latest War News: by our media monitor

Central London Shut Down for 9 Hours after Coordinated Attacks

[This is a preliminary report which might have to be revised as more information comes in.]

July 7, 2005. At 8.30 AM London time, the British mass transportation system in the heart of the city was shut down by a series of bomb attacks. Owing to the utter chaos and breakdown which occurred after the attacks, it was not clear till 5 PM London time whether there had been 7 explosions or 4. [It now appears to be fixed at 4.] The casualty figure climbed slowly from 2 killed to 40 killed and 350 wounded.

The main British fear is that the attackers were able to penetrate the British security network which has been pursuing Muslims for three years to make such an attack impossible. If an extremely tight security system can be penetrated, it puts the British system in great danger.

CONSEQUENCES:

The British economy will suffer from this blow which seems to have been calculated towards that end. Massive new security measures will have to be taken.

British Muslims will suffer a new wave of persecution at the hands of the government. Muslims in Europe and America are also likely to suffer severe new scrutiny and related persecution.

Britain and the U.S. are militarily very powerful. Attacks like those in London create the phenomenon of the "strong man who is fearful." It creates great danger of scapegoating and "flailing" by the strong.

IF THIS IS AN AL-QAIDA ATTACK ......................

It's not clear yet who carried out the attacks [1 PM EST]. Most observers sense that this has the hallmark of Al-Qaida: coordination, disruption, soft targets difficult to defend, a new kind of war by a faceless enemy.
If this was an Al-Qaida attack, it indicates that U.S. and British estimates that they had largely put al-Qaida out of business were seriously off the mark. If this is al-Qaida, the author of IMPERIAL HUBRIS [CIA officer who studied Osama Bin Laden] was right that the U.S. is nowhere near defeating Al-Qaida and has little understanding of the Islamic enemy.

Tragically, very recently the BBC put up a THREE HOUR SHOW to claim that al-Qaida does not exist and is a figment of conspiracy theorists.

TIMING OF ATTACK: G-8 Summit

The attack was timed to coincide with the G-8 summit in Scotland. An ashen faced Tony Blair spoke after the attack, calling the attackers "barbarians" who wanted to kill people. It was a unique moment as Blair spoke, almost stuttering and near incoherence. Standing nearby was President Bush who has destroyed the cities of Baghdad, Fallujah, Karabilah, Baquba, and many other towns in Iraq along with hundreds of villages in Afghanistan. Also there was Putin of Russia, his hands red with the genocide in Chechnia [and support for the massacre of 1,000 people in Uzbekistan], and Manmohan Singh of India who has 700,000 troops holding down the people of Kashmir and carrying out atrocities against civilians on a daily basis.
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New Trend's note: Let's pray for peace. We Americans must oppose ALL human suffering. Prophet Muhammad, pbuh, could not accept even the suffering of a cat or a dog. We must be against war, whether it is carried out by Apache helicopters, tanks and F-16s or by guerrilla fighters with sticks of dynamite. Under Bush and Blair, we are facing open ended war. Israel and International Jewry are the gainers. Let's stop trying to prove that we are stronger than the enemy. We must prove that we are better in waging peace. Let us work for self-determination for the Muslim world and to put an end to all occupation, be it in Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnia, Afghanistan or Iraq.
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Thinking outside the box: by Kaukab Siddique

America's Inability to Deal with Child Rapists & Molesters

July 6, 2005. The latest horror comes from Idaho on America's north west. A White man named Joseph Duncan committed a triple murder and kidnaped two children, eight year old Shasta Groene and her nine year old brother Dylan. Shasta has been found alive and is feared to have been raped repeatedly. The rapist has been arrested. Dylan is feared dead and indications are that he was raped repeatedly and dismembered.

Child molestation in America has taken on epidemic proportions. Each city has web sites listing the addresses of child molestors who have completed prison sentences. Observers fear that much of this evil goes unreported and extends into incest and violations within the increasingly fragile family system.

New Trend urges Americans to look at the ROOTS of the problem and not attribute everything to chemical imbalances. The growth of pornography, a multi billion dollar business in America, has trampled on all notions of human decency. The first step was to treat women as objects of sexual exploitation and ritual rape. After the permutations of perversion in heterosexual sex, porn moved into homosexuality and was encourged by "gay liberation's" attempts to legitimize sex of this variety.

From there, the natural progression was to the use of children as sex objects and finally to the flood of child molestation and incest.

It's time that America looked at its own backyard instead of trying to "civilize" the world. How grotesque that American groups fixated on a rape victim in Pakistan, Mai Mukhtaran, and ordered General Musharraf to have her sent out on a world tour to highlight the suffering of women in Pakistan
[which do exist but are not comparable to the horrors being perpetrated in America.]

Earlier, missionary groups brought a boy out of Sudan and paraded him across America with the claim [unproven] that he had been a slave.

How would Americans feel if Pakistan were to invite Shasta Groene's father to a tour of the Muslim world to educate Muslims about the realities of America?

It is time for the Republicans to exert some of their crusading zeal against child molestors. Evil is right here and thriving. String up a few child molestors instead of trying to "liberate" Iraq.
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Background, Early Education, Journey to Islam

African American Math Genius who Embraced Islam.
Dr. Abdul Alim Shabazz Rose to the top: Lincoln, MIT, Cornell, Nation of Islam, Sunni Islam .....

by GLORIA F. GILMER, MATH TECH, INC., MILWAUKEE, WI

Q. Tell us about your schooling.

A. I went to schools in Bessemer, Alabama, which had extremely good teachers. I first went to Sloss Junior High there. Some of my teachers had no college degree and some did not have high school diplomas. But they were excellent and dedicated to learning. I grew up in an atmosphere where working in school was more joyous than playing at home. I would rather be in school than anywhere else. I never missed a day and couldn't wait to get back to learn more. My teachers made school so exciting and such a desirable place to be!

Q. When did you become interested in mathematics?

A. From the first grade, I liked mathematics. My first grade teacher was Miss Niblett whom I will never forget!

Q. Tell us more about Miss Niblett and how she influenced your career.

A. She gave us a good beginning. I had an interesting experience in her class. We took a standardized mathematics test which consisted of adding columns of 4 digits numbers which we had not yet covered in class. I added each column and placed the totals at the bottom. The totals were correct but I didn't carry over to the next column because I hadn't been taught the concept of place value. That shows how important proper instruction is.

Q. Can you elaborate on this point?

A. We had just begun our experience in the first and second grades and she taught what is normally taught to children at that age. What she taught, she taught well. But this test contained items that she had not covered. We were not wrong: It's just that the system of recording things would say that we were wrong in that we had not learned the modifications of place value.

Q. I see! From this experience then, you were highly motivated for the study of place value. Who had the greatest influence in your development in mathematics in the early years!

A. I would say that Miss Niblett was a major influence because she gave me a good beginning. I would also say that a Mrs. King, who taught me in the sixth 7th, and 8th grades strongly influenced me.

Q. Tell us more about Mrs. King

A. I really didn't know Mrs. King that well. That was a long time ago! I recall, however, that she was a very excellent mathematics teacher. She was stern and very strict in her grading. She created competition among us. She gave us problems to solve and we raced to see who could finish them first. Wesolved problems on the blackboard and had both individual and team contests. We were taught to enjoy and love mathematics. If we had learned how to do something, we were to put it into practice at the blackboard. That was one of the ways we learned and the enjoyment provided the motivation to study more mathematics. At that time, we didn't do a lot of studying outside of the classroom but we did our homework.

Q. Tell us about your high school teachers?

A. Probably the best mathematics teacher I ever had was a Mrs. Gladys T. Wood at Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C. She taught me plane and solid geometry. A Mrs. Callaway taught me trigonometry. I had many good teachers and changed career goals many times due to their influence. At different times I wanted to be linguist, a singer, a chemist and even a psychiatrist!

Q. What was so special about Mrs. Wood?

A. Mrs. Wood was a very exacting teacher and was able to pull the very best out of her students. She taught geometry and made the course very exciting. Many students think geometry is boring and they can't understand it, but Mrs. Wood made the course alive with a lot of competition and had students eager to answer questions in class. She provided a very stimulating environment in which to learn.


FAMILY LIFE

Q. Where were you born?

A. I was born in Alabama. I spent the first 14 years of my life in a little town called Bessemer, Alabama which was then 12 miles from Birmingham.

Q. Tell me about your parents.

A. My mother only went to the 7th grade but she was wise and brilliant! She used to read to us on the floor. But she didn't realize the significance of the use of "color" within the book - where the devil was always black and looked down upon and angels were always white and looked up to. My step father was a coal miner and illiterate but very smart. He could really manage his money. I taught him how to sign his name.

Q. Were you an only child?

A. We had a large family. In the house where I grew up, there were five children and my father had six other children. Nine of us were very close.

Q. What was your childhood community like?

A. We grew up in a community that was predominantly African American. And while I didn't know it then, now I can look back and see the influence of the adults. We respected them and they respected us. They corrected us when we were wrong or reported us to our parents. We loved ourselves and respected our teachers since we were an extension of them.

Q. Did you ever get married?

A. Yes. I got married many years ago. I'm divorced now. We had three children - two boys and one girl - one of whom was adopted. They are all married now and live on their own. I also have an adopted son who is Ethiopian. He is twenty years of age and a student of mathematics and engineering at Clark-Atlanta University.

Q. Did the three older children also attend college?

A. My sons attended college but dropped out before earning their degrees. My daughter got married after she finished high school but never attended college. My oldest son has an Associate of Arts degree but never completed the academic requirements for the Bachelor of Arts. He was at Wayne State University at the time he got serious with the woman he married. He dropped out of college while I was in Saudi Arabia. I pushed him to complete his education. That was many years ago. Now he tells me that he wants to return to the university to complete his work in the areas of economics and accounting.

Q. Given your interest in education, why do you think your children did not complete college?

A. In 1975 when I left Washington to go to Chicago, my family did not accompany me. At that time, the children were in Junior High School. In 1979 when I bought the family together again, the children had become true adults. They were as tall as I and looked me straight in the eye. We were together for about a year and for a while we were happy. When I cracked the whip about them doing this, that and the other in my house, they all left!

Q. What are some of your views on male-female relationships?

A. Black men in America have a very, very hard time if they do not have a good, solid educational background. Women are able to do more with less education than men. For example, when my oldest son got married, his wife was earning $40,000 as an executive assistant in a large company in the Midwest with only a high school education. So I told him that he would have problems with his wife as long as she was bringing in the 'long bread' and he was bringing in the 'short bread.' Sure enough, after about a year they separated and still are but they are not divorced. They separated, however, over the issue of who was going to wear the pants and that he should be doing the work she was supposed to be doing!

Q. Did your siblings attend college?

A. My oldest half sister was the first one of us to go to college. She attended Knoxville College and later went to the Stillman Institute where shestudied nursing. My youngest brother and I were the only other ones in our family to become educated professionals. All of the others have done well and have good jobs but were not college educated.

Q. What is your youngest brother's profession?

A. He is a teacher. Now he is the principal of a school in Birmingham, Alabama. His academic field was special education.

Q. Where are your children now?

A. My older son is married and lives in Detroit, Michigan. He works in the post office. My younger son is in Washington, D.C. now and is a salesman. My daughter is married and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Q. Have you any grandchildren?

A. Yes. I think about 4. That was at last count!


UNIVERSITY YEARS

Q. Where did you earn your undergraduate degree in mathematics?

A. At Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.

Q. Why not Howard University, since you were already in Washington, DC?

A. I didn't want to go to Howard University because of color prejudices which were prevalent there in those days. I didn't like that because it was demeaning and I always rebelled against demeaning things. I felt that we needed all of our strength to overcome the demeaning treatment we received on a regular basis in white institutions.

Q. How did you finance your education?

A. I had a scholarship to attend Lincoln. After one semester, I was drafted into the army. After a year, I returned to Lincoln and my undergraduate cation was financed then under the G.I. Bill of Rights.

Q. Had you selected mathematics as a major before entering college?

A. No, at first I was interested in abnormal psychology and wanted to be psychiatrist. I was constantly trying to analyze myself. I became interested in mathematics while I was taking algebra at Lincoln. My teacher who was caucasian had PhD's in mathematics and chemistry and invited me to join his analytic geometry class. I did this but I stayed in the algebra class too in order to review it. I became known as a "heavy weight" in mathematics while still a first semester freshman. When I returned to college, after my army experience, I was still a freshman and was placed in Calculus I.

Q. How interesting! They are the same majors that your first professor had! What was your minor in college?

A. I had two minors - French and Physics.

Q. Did you have a mentor in math at any level?

A. No, I really didn't have one!

Q. Do you think you missed out on some opportunity by having no mentor?

A. What do you mean by 'mentor'?

Q. Someone who really encouraged you, guided you, and influenced your professional and career decisions.

A. No, I had no one like that. I think that was very unfortunate.

Q. What was your social life like at Lincoln University?

A. Lincoln University was an all male school out in the country so there was not much social life. We talked to each other, argued about issues, participated in campus activities, studied together and that was about it. Sometimes we would go to Philadelphia, Baltimore or Washington to athletic games or choir concerts and there were social activities connected with them. But there was little else on the campus.

Q. Was there a strong scholarly atmosphere there?

A. Oh, yes. There was a lot of competition there and we were certainly inspired to pursue excellence.

Q. When did you graduated from Lincoln University?

A. I graduated in the class of 1949. I completed the 4 years in 3, which was the first time in the history of the school that that had happened.

Q. Where did you do your graduate work?

A. First, I went to the University of Michigan for graduate work. I started in chemistry, since I had undergraduate majors in both chemistry and mathematics. I loved them both but on my first day in one chemistry class, the teacher assigned 300 pages to read. I had bad eyes and could not cope with this, so I changed my major to mathematics which required a lot more thinking but not so much reading.

Q. Did you earn a degree from Michigan?

A. No. After I got to the University of Michigan. I learned that I had received a scholarship to attend MIT. But, because of a mix-up, I didn't know about it until 4 weeks into MIT school year. I knew I could not start the school year that late, so I didn't go to MIT until the next semester. I earned my masters degree from MIT in 1951 with a major in mathematics and a minor in philosophy.

Q. What was your life like at MIT?

A. At MIT I learned much of what I know about mathematics. I did some work there with Professor Dirk J. Struik, who helped me because I was African America and he knew I wouldn't get much help from anyone else. I assisted him in writing a book entitled "Analytic Projective Geometry." While I didn't share in the authorship, my contributions were acknowledge in the Preface. The book was published in '51 or '52 by Addison Wesley. I found it used as a textbook, when I went to Cornell sometime later.

Q. Where did you earn your Ph.D. and in what area?

A. I earned my Ph.D. at Cornell University in 1955 under Professor Mark Kac - originally from Poland. Later, he went to Rockefeller University.

Q. Why did you select Cornell?

A. In the summer of 1952, I got a summer job in Buffalo, N.Y. at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory, and was encouraged to apply for a fellowship from the Lab to Cornell, which I did. While I did not get that fellowship, with the assistance and encouragement of a Dr. Purnas, the laboratory director, I was able to get a teaching fellowship to pursue the PhD at Cornell. This gave me great joy because it relieved me of the difficulties of trying to raise money with which to pay living expenses while pursuing the degree.

Q. What was it like being a teaching fellow at Cornell?

A. It was quite novel since in those days there were really very few African Americans in schools like Cornell. In fact, all of the other teaching fellows were white. I taught several recitation sections and was well liked on the campus. In one of my sections, every student got an "A". I guess that was due to the thoroughness with which I dealt with the material. I really enjoyed that aspect of my experience.

Q. What was it like being a student at Cornell?

A. I was the only African American student in the program. I usually studied alone, but sometimes I worked on problems with other students and at the blackboards. I got along well with them but I had no bosom friends. I did get together here and there with other African American students but I really didn't have much time.

Q. What kinds of grades did you get?

A. The highest grade was an "S" and I got all "S"s. In fact, in one class that I just visited occasionally, they gave me an "S" even though I was not enrolled for credit. That was because I was very active and contributed much to the class.

Q. What were your areas of concentration at Cornell?

A. My major was mathematical analysis and my minors were geometry and algebra.

YEARS AS A PREACHER

Q. Did you grow up as a Black Muslim?

A. As I grew up, I guess I was a Black Christian since that's all I knew. My mother took us to Sunday school and church and we grew up with Christian or religious values. We knew the difference between right and wrong and we always wanted to be in the right! We respected our parents, elders, teachers, preachers and the people of the church.

Q. Then what caused you to become a Black Muslim?

A. Very simply, I came to know the truth.

Q. I have a friend who recognized you as Lonnie Cross from Dunbar High School in Washington, DC. When did you change you name?

A. It was changed in 1964 to Lonnie Shabazz and in 1975 the first part of my name was changed to Abdulalim. This was done by Imam W D Muhammad, the son of Elijah Muhammad. He gave me two choices, Abdulalim or Rushiddin. Abdulalim means 'the slave of the all knowing God' while Rushiddin means 'one guided by the faith'. Both seemed to fit me but I preferred the one with the knowledge rather than one guided by faith.

Q. Are your children Muslims?

A. Yes, we all are.

Q. I understand that you spent nineteen years as a preacher in the Nation of Islam. What can you tell us about those years?

A. I left Atlanta University to become the minister in Washington, D.C. over the mosque called Mosque No. 4. I was also Director of Education. That experience lasted 12 years from'63 to'75. When the Honorable Elijah Muhammad died in '75, I was transferred to Chicago where I remained for 4 years. There I was the Director of Education and later Director of Adult Education for the Nation of Islam. From there, I went to Detroit where I remained for three and one-half years and was Imam of the Detroit mosque. That's a minister of the Islamic faith. I was also Imam for the Midwest region and the state Imam. In other words, I was leader of the Islamic community for the State of Michigan and the 13 Midwest states. I was the Imam of the largest mosque in the state of Michigan. In fact,our mosque became the largest in the Midwest region because of the leadership and progressive things we were doing, like education and business development. We were really moving business-wise in Detroit.

Q. What was different about your educational program?

A. Education in the Nation of Islam is very innovative and nurturing. It is rapid and very thorough, even all consuming. It is highly disciplined but alive. We enjoyed going to school. This discipline guides children so that they don't have to guess at where they are going or what they are doing. We show them as well as tell them and they know what to do. Education is highly directed and students are encouraged to develop themselves individually and collectively.

Q. Were the schools divided into grade levels?

A. Yes, but it was not strictly regulated such that a student remained at each level for a year. If a student could do 2 grades or more in a year, he was encouraged o do so. Students moved at their own pace and were encouraged to move ahead n their own. In Washington, we compacted the 12 grade levels into 9 levels of learning. Students came in at the age of 4, age 3 if they could dress themselves and behave properly. Because they came in so young, they could often complete high school by the time they were 12 or 13, sometimes younger.

Q. Where did they usually study following completion of high school?

A. We had set up our own college division in Washington. When I left in '75, we had the first Islamic college division in America. With our emphasis on education and business development, our students developed a sense of independence in their thinking, in business operations and in communications. At that time, we had our own newspaper which circulated 1,000,000 copies per week. That represented a lot of power.

Q. Does the newspaper still exists?

A. No. It was called Muhammad Speaks. It became known as the 'Bilalian News' under Imam Muhammad. It is called the 'Muslim Journal' now and has a small circulation under 20,000, compared to over 1,000,000 under Elijah Muhammad. The 'Final Call' of Louis Farrakhan has a larger circulation than the Muslim Journal. Minister Farrakhan's paper is like a replacement for 'Muhammad Speaks.'

Q. How many children did you serve in the schools?

A. In Washington, we started with a student body of about 135 which grew to a little over 400 students. This was over our capacity. The school was separated into a school for girls and a school for boys. Girls and boys attended school at different times of the day. Classes were very small and students received a lot of individual attention.

Q. Why were the sexes separate?

A. This was for religious reasons and it cut down on distraction. After they reached puberty, there was less mixing.

Q. How large were your classes?

A. In the lower grades the class size was about 20. At the upper levels, class sizes were around 10 or 15, depending on the number of teachers we had.

Q. Where did you get your teachers?

A. We got them from the Muslim community. All of them were Muslims.

Q. What kind of training did they have?

A. Some had training similar to mine. We had a Muslim brother with a PhD in musicology from Harvard and an architect from Howard University. Most of them were people I recruited from the Washington area.

Q. How many schools did you have?

A. We thought of ourselves as one school, the University of Islam which had a college division and a grade school/high school division.

Q. Did you develop any outstanding mathematics students in the Black Muslim Mosque?

A. Oh, yes! All students were good in mathematics and English. When they left our school, they were a delight for teachers wherever they went. At the colleges and junior colleges around Washington, they were the superstars of education. They were really quite good.

Q. Do you recall the names of any students you developed then?

A. Not really. I had a number of good students, both boys and girls. But many had a last name of "X" so I don't really know who they were. One boy whom I particularly remember was named Hussein but I don't know his last name. We taught him in high school and college. When he left us, he was a real superstar in the local university that he attended. He "aced" all of his courses.

Q. Since your students were good in mathematics and you emphasized business development, did you integrate the business curriculum with the mathematics?

A. Yes!

Q. Did you encourage and develop entrepreneurs?

A. Yes. Our children worked part time in the community and they learned how the sciences that they learned in school fit in their lives. Those that were going into engineering or into business could see how the things they learned went into the businesses that we owned and they could be a part of that development.

Q. Why did you leave the Nation of Islam?

A. I didn't. I only left the community of Imam W D Muhammad, after we came to a 'parting of the ways.' There are times when people are threatened by the talent of other people, and this was one of those times. One of my friends told me it was the wisest thing I could have done, for he indicated that I could have been killed. But I have so much faith and no fear of human beings that they were afraid to carry out the mandate that they thought they had. When I went away, it caught them by surprise and I was elevated far above the pettiness in which they were immersed. When I came back after the first year, Malcolm's oldest brother -Wilfred Shabazz went with me to Belle Island in the Detroit River where he told me that he had advised his brother to leave this country until the heat cooled down. Malcolm went away for a while but when he returned he was killed.


YEARS IN SAUDI ARABIA

Q. Why did you select Saudi Arabia for refuge?

A. I had a friend, Dr. Muhammad Rashid - at the University of Makkah who had invited me years before to remain in Makkah as a professor in mathematics at the University. When I met him, he was head of the Makkah branch of King Abdulaziz University which later became the University of Makkah around 1979 or 1980. I was there in 1978 on a special educational mission in a training class for Imams and I was one of the star students in that group. He was very much impressed with me and my character and my knowledge of mathematics. He invited me to stay there to continue my Islamic studies and studies of the Arabic language. I could work at the University to take care of myself and extend my knowledge of Islamic culture.

Q. What did you do in Saudi Arabia?

A. I was a professor of mathematics at the University of Makkah. Its name was Umm Al Qura University. I was there for four years from '82 to '86 and it was one of the high points of my life. I taught undergraduate women and men but not together since the women were taught through closed circuit television while the men were in the room with me. I never saw the women and they never saw me but I got to know them by their voices. It didn't bother me but it would have been easier if we could have seen each other.

Q. Did that interfere with what you thought was proper respect for women?

A. No. It really gave them protection, since it cuts down on rape, fornication and adultery in a society where women may be disrespected. In the United States, television and movies use women in very demeaning ways - as toys and sex objects.

Q. How large was the school and its mathematics department?

A. The University had about 10,000 students in all - both men and women. Our faculty had about 17 assistant, associate and fill professors and several lecturers.

Q. What courses did you teach there?

A. Abstract algebra, non-Euclidean geometry, Foundations of Mathematics, Real Analysis, Complex Analysis, Mathematical Physics, and Calculus II and III.

Q. How did your students there compare with your students at Clark Atlanta University?

A. About the same. Some were excellent and some poor but with potential.

Q. In what language did you teach?

A. I taught in English, but I used Arabic to explain certain mathematical concepts that gave them difficulty in the English texts. All of my students were undergraduates since the mathematics department didn't have a graduate school. We were getting a graduate school program when I left.

Q. You mentioned having an undergraduate minor in French, do you read or speak any other languages?

A. I read, write and speak Arabic. I read and speak French fluently, and I read German.

Q. Why did you leave Saudi Arabia?

A. I wanted to come back and help with the serious problems in this country in mathematics education.

To be continued, inshallah
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2005-07-07 Thu 18:25ct
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