The Horrors of Gaza Keep Mounting

The above photos reveal the criminality of the Zionist regime in Tel Aviv as it insists on being immune from any form of censure and projects itself as a "civilized" state. These pictures surely reflect something far worse and only add to the other crimes that Israel has committed over the years throughtout the Holy Land.

The pictures above reveal attacks on UNRWA buildings by the Israeli Offense Forces and the wanton use of Phosphorous Gas bombs against civilian positions, mainly women and children.

The New President Gets His First Term Launched

Common Sense
Issue No. 1227
January 22, 2008

Barack Hussein Obama's Inauguration
A Refreshing Turn of the Page in US History

Notwithstanding the long and churned eight year past history of the United States and the really tragic topping of the George W. Bush Presidency with the approved massacre in Gaza, if not the directed one by the Bush Administration, Barack Obama launched his Presidency of the United States with a very carefully constructed speech that said very little about how he would deal with the issues that confront his first term of office. On the other hand, it should be borne in mind that Obama was now not compelled to give any promises, nor predict the outcomes of his tackling of the awesome tasks that lie before him, starting Wednesday morning. He was nevertheless unfailing at attempting to tie America's future with what was once an idyllic almost comprehensible past that had clearly almost predictable directions and understandable defined ideals. This was indeed a necessity after his predecessor had drowned the United States in failures both in the domestic front and in mesmerizing calamities in the foreign front. This was an effort to tie his campaign rhetoric with pragmatic appeals for Americans to get back to showing off what America is really all about, for that is the only way America could ever regain its leadership of the world. For people like Barrack Obama and Bill Clinton their understanding of America is tied with a movement of people dedicated to doing good and righteous deeds rather than imposing ludicrous ideals that tended to bring prosperity to a select group, albeit at the expense of the overwhelming majority of the American people, and even if by bringing damage to any sort of international harmony that may have been achieved by previous American administrations.
President Barack Obama will be forced to bring about his vision of a rehabilitated America that will not only rebut the blunders of the G W Bush Administration, but seek to set America on a responsible superpower role, with its power relegated to the projection of an America as its founders had envisioned and which the remembered great leaders that followed sought to personify.
Leading big nations has not always been easy and successful as the former Soviet Union clearly has shown us. But failure and success are outcomes of human actions and efforts. Surely, Barack has personified the insurmountable capacities of man to harness his intellect and rapidly developed political intuitions to make an extraordinary success story, which one must admit can only happen in the United States. The ability to harness a well organized grass roots following by using the most modern developments in communications has certainly been at the root of his success to make it to the White House. Mind you this was done amidst the challenges presented by more experienced and refined political adversaries, who already had well established political machines, while Obama then at the start of his drive to the White House had not even been known beyond the streets of Chicago.
Many analysts and observers were rather perplexed by Obama not having made any statements about the recent situation in Gaza. Surely, one should not expect Obama to fall for the "test" that may have been put before him just to see how he would react, even though he has not even sat behind his Oval Office desk. The rather coincidental timing of the ending of the Gaza Assault with the beginning of the Obama Presidency may be a signal that the Israelis realize that Israel will simply not have same leeway that it had enjoyed over the last eight years, with its hands rendered free to unleash its deadly American weaponry anyway it likes as it continues to systematically pursue its sky is the limit Zionist agenda. One is not gullible to the point of believing that Washington will now be turning to Mecca rather than Jerusalem as Middle East policy is shaped and executed. However, at least Obama is free from the vice of the powerful Zionist lobby, although the lobby will work tirelessly to seek the points of penetration that will enable the lobby to exploit to the fullest its influence to ensure that Israel maintains its position of "alliance" with the United States. With the rather weak presence of a poor Arab lobby and a poor Arab regional regime in the Arab World, one would be foolish to think that Israel will have it tough over the next four years. However, Israel may be wise after being successfully challenged twice by relatively small organized anti-Israel resistance movements, when compared with the awesome force of the Israel "Defense" Forces (which has been mostly on the offensive in its sixty years of history) to begin thinking about pursuing a more resilient course that will reflect a more fervent desire to live peacefully with its neighbors, recognizing that they are worthy of being considered as civilized folk, with children who should be spared the frightful nights of screaming F-16s and heavily armed Apache helicopters and deadly drones.
For Obama the challenges are tremendous, but he is opting to enter the roll of America's finest Presidents. The observer is bound to believe that he just might make it against all these tremendous odds. With a name like Hussein in the middle there is a strong taint of goodwill that might make it to the Presidency. Imam Hussein was one of the most utopian and idealistic Moslem leaders in Moslem history (Seventh Century AD). A Christ-like figure, Hussein believed that freedom and civilized government are indeed worth sacrificing one's life for. Hussein and his few followers were ambushed by a force that was almost 30 times their number and armed to the teeth, which was under one of the most tyrannical rulers that came after the death of Hussein's father Ali Bin Abu Talib, cousin of the Prophet Mohammed (PABUH).

Massacre in Gaza (3): By all means, it is genocide

The pictures here belie much of the hogwash released by the sophisticated Zionist machine about the “defensive nature” of the Israeli genocide being perpetrated in the tragic enclave that Gaza has come to personify. Yet even these horrible pictures of the venue of death this last assault in Gaza has become do not even tell half the full story of the horrors that the powerful Israeli genocide machine is carrying out. There are the four thousand plus wounded, half of whom are civilians (mostly women and children, since males are perplexingly lobbed as “military” casualties) many of whom will be debilitated for life, if not disabled; there is of course the tight siege; there are the hundreds of homes that have been destroyed; there are the thousands of acres of good arable productive agricultural land, which once provided a meager living for its owners; there are the many facilities (“infrastructure of terror”, as the Israelis misleadingly call it – they seem to ignore the fact that the biggest infrastructure of terror lies in what was once the peaceful Holy Land, which was blessed with relative calm and peace for close to a millennium until the Zionist trespassers began to trek on its pure grounds), which were built with the handouts of the international community, as the latter has forgotten that it is now an accomplice in the horrible misdeeds now being perpetrated in Gaza, either by its silence, apathy, or outright support of this devilish Zionist bloodbath; and there are the horrific sleepless nights for the children, who are bound to be affected for the rest of their lives by the loud continuous explosions of the live nightmare the Israeli assault on Gaza is to these children and their mothers, not to mention the deprivation of normal children’s lives, devoid of the merriment and the glee that children are entitled to by Divine and civil doctrine.

It is probable from the above that either the gung-ho right wing establishment leaving the White House (and the Democratic Party puppets of AIPAC) in the United States are beset by the belief that the madness unleashed by the Israeli War Machine (misleadingly labeled the Israeli Defense Forces) is revenge for the “Baghdad shoe” that was thrown at President Bush – which was a mild reaction to a previous blunder by the White House in Iraq. Maybe it is also a means of preparing for some possible strong initiative by the new Barack Obama to bring the situation in the Middle East to a conclusive end – a very strong gullible wishful thinking held onto by many naïve observers, who fail to recognize that the very existence of Israel depends on a perpetual war venue that is continuously nurtured by ongoing Israeli massacres and destruction of well-being and sustenance of the entire indigenous population the Israelis have forcefully replaced. This is reinforced by the welfare gift of 350 containers or so of weaponry recently shipped to Israel by the Bush Administration. But then again, it is Israel exercising its cause d’être to serve the interests of an international conspiracy to maintain total domination of the region that controls well over a quarter of the vital crude oil that has become and will continue to be the lifeblood of the modern economic order of the world for some time. This prognosis is becoming stronger day by day in the minds of many analysts.

Needless to say, for most of the Arab and Moslem citizens of the world, notwithstanding the submissive positions of their governments in most cases, this is clear genocide, based on ethnic chauvinism and arrogance that comes with the laxity in the reactions displayed by most of these governments and the international community, as a whole. This is further strengthened by the very carefree attitude of the international community towards its own resolutions, such as the latest United Nations Council resolution calling for an “immediate cease fire” in Gaza. In other words, Israel has a mandate to override all religious, moral codes and human statutes, duly ordained or Heavenly revealed or embedded in the minds and hearts of all civilized men and women. God have mercy on the people of Gaza and on the rest of humanity when the latter eventually are held to account by the Al-Mighty for the failure of an entire world to bring an end to the Holocaust of Gaza.

If Hamas Did Not Exist

The following article was written by a great scholar and human rights activist and deserves serious contemplation, when looking at the incredible merciless bloodletting being unleashed in Gaza:

Israel Has No Intention of Granting a Palestinian State
If Hamas Did Not Exist
By JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN
Let us get one thing perfectly straight. If the wholesale mutilation and degradation of the Gaza Strip is going to continue; if Israel’s will is at one with that of the United States; if the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and all the international legal agencies and organizations spread across the globe are going to continue to sit by like hollow mannequins doing nothing but making repeated “calls” for a “ceasefire” on “both sides”; if the cowardly, obsequious and supine Arab States are going to stand by watching their brethren get slaughtered by the hour while the world’s bullying Superpower eyes them threateningly from Washington lest they say something a little to their disliking; then let us at least tell the truth why this hell on earth is taking place.
The state terror unleashed from the skies and on the ground against the Gaza Strip as we speak has nothing to do with Hamas. It has nothing to do with “Terror”. It has nothing to do with the long-term “security” of the Jewish State or with Hizbullah or Syria or Iran except insofar as it is aggravating the conditions that have led up to this crisis today. It has nothing to do with some conjured-up “war” – a cynical and overused euphemism that amounts to little more the wholesale enslavement of any nation that dares claim its sovereign rights; that dares assert that its resources are its own; that doesn’t want one of the Empire’s obscene military bases sitting on its cherished land.
This crisis has nothing to do with freedom, democracy, justice or peace. It is not about Mahmoud Zahhar or Khalid Mash’al or Ismail Haniyeh. It is not about Hassan Nasrallah or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. These are all circumstantial players who have gained a role in the current tempest only now that the situation has been allowed for 61 years to develop into the catastrophe that it is today. The Islamist factor has colored and will continue to color the atmosphere of the crisis; it has enlisted the current leaders and mobilized wide sectors of the world’s population. The primary symbols today are Islamic – the mosques, the Qur’an, the references to the Prophet Muhammad and to Jihad. But these symbols could disappear and the impasse would continue.
There was a time when Fatah and the PFLP held the day; when few Palestinians wanted anything to do with Islamist policies and politics. Such politics have nothing to do with primitive rockets being fired over the border, or smuggling tunnels and black-market weapons; just as Arafat’s Fatah had little to do with stones and suicide bombings. The associations are coincidental; the creations of a given political environment. They are the result of something entirely different than what the lying politicians and their analysts are telling you. They have become part of the landscape of human events in the modern Middle East today; but incidentals wholly as lethal, or as recalcitrant, deadly, angry or incorrigible could just as soon have been in their places.
Strip away the clichés and the vacuous newspeak blaring out across the servile media and its pathetic corps of voluntary state servants in the Western world and what you will find is the naked desire for hegemony; for power over the weak and dominion over the world’s wealth. Worse yet you will find that the selfishness, the hatred and indifference, the racism and bigotry, the egotism and hedonism that we try so hard to cover up with our sophisticated jargon, our refined academic theories and models actually help to guide our basest and ugliest desires. The callousness with which we indulge in them all are endemic to our very culture; thriving here like flies on a corpse.
Strip away the current symbols and language of the victims of our selfish and devastating whims and you will find the simple, impassioned and unaffected cries of the downtrodden; of the ‘wretched of the earth’ begging you to cease your cold aggression against their children and their homes; their families and their villages; begging you to leave them alone to have their fish and their bread, their oranges, their olives and their thyme; asking you first politely and then with increasing disbelief why you cannot let them live undisturbed on the land of their ancestors; unexploited, free of the fear of expulsion; of ravishment and devastation; free of permits and roadblocks and checkpoints and crossings; of monstrous concrete walls, guard towers, concrete bunkers, and barbed wire; of tanks and prisons and torture and death. Why is life without these policies and instruments of hell impossible?
The answer is because Israel has no intention of allowing a viable, sovereign Palestinian state on its borders. It had no intention of allowing it in 1948 when it grabbed 24 per cent more land than what it was allotted legally, if unfairly, by UN Resolution 181. It had no intention of allowing it throughout the massacres and ploys of the 1950s. It had no intention of allowing two states when it conquered the remaining 22 per cent of historic Palestine in 1967 and reinterpreted UN Security Council Resolution 248 to its own liking despite the overwhelming international consensus stating that Israel would receive full international recognition within secure and recognized borders if it withdrew from the lands it had only recently occupied.
It had no intention of acknowledging Palestinian national rights at the United Nations in 1974, when –alone with the United States—it voted against a two-state solution. It had no intention of allowing a comprehensive peace settlement when Egypt stood ready to deliver but received, and obediently accepted, a separate peace exclusive of the rights of Palestinians and the remaining peoples of the region. It had no intention of working toward a just two-state solution in 1978 or 1982 when it invaded, fire-bombed, blasted and bulldozed Beirut so that it might annex the West Bank without hassle. It had no intention of granting a Palestinian state in 1987 when the first Intifada spread across occupied Palestine, into the Diaspora and into the spirits of the global dispossessed, or when Israel deliberately aided the newly formed Hamas movement so that it might undermine the strength of the more secular-nationalist factions.
Israel had no intention of granting a Palestinian state at Madrid or at Oslo where the PLO was superseded by the quivering, quisling Palestinian Authority, too many of whose cronies grasped at the wealth and prestige it gave them at the expense of their own kin. As Israel beamed into the world’s satellites and microphones its desire for peace and a two-state solution, it more than doubled the number of illegal Jewish settlements on the ground in the West Bank and around East Jerusalem, annexing them as it built and continues to build a superstructure of bypass roads and highways over the remaining, severed cities and villages of earthly Palestine. It has annexed the Jordan valley, the international border of Jordan, expelling any ‘locals’ inhabiting that land. It speaks with a viper’s tongue over the multiple amputee of Palestine whose head shall soon be severed from its body in the name of justice, peace and security.
Through the home demolitions, the assaults on civil society that attempted to cast Palestinian history and culture into a chasm of oblivion; through the unspeakable destruction of the refugee camp sieges and infrastructure bombardments of the second Intifada, through assassinations and summary executions, past the grandiose farce of disengagement and up to the nullification of free, fair and democratic Palestinian elections Israel has made its view known again and again in the strongest possible language, the language of military might, of threats, intimidation, harassment, defamation and degradation.
Israel, with the unconditional and approving support of the United States, has made it dramatically clear to the entire world over and over and over again, repeating in action after action that it will accept no viable Palestinian state next to its borders. What will it take for the rest of us to hear? What will it take to end the criminal silence of the ‘international community’? What will it take to see past the lies and indoctrination to what is taking place before us day after day in full view of the eyes of the world? The more horrific the actions on the ground, the more insistent are the words of peace. To listen and watch without hearing or seeing allows the indifference, the ignorance and complicity to continue and deepens with each grave our collective shame.
The destruction of Gaza has nothing to do with Hamas. Israel will accept no authority in the Palestinian territories that it does not ultimately control. Any individual, leader, faction or movement that fails to accede to Israel’s demands or that seeks genuine sovereignty and the equality of all nations in the region; any government or popular movement that demands the applicability of international humanitarian law and of the universal declaration of human rights for its own people will be unacceptable for the Jewish State. Those dreaming of one state must be forced to ask themselves what Israel would do to a population of 4 million Palestinians within its borders when it commits on a daily, if not hourly basis, crimes against their collective humanity while they live alongside its borders? What will suddenly make the raison d’etre, the self-proclaimed purpose of Israel’s reason for being change if the Palestinian territories are annexed to it outright?
The lifeblood of the Palestinian National Movement flows through the streets of Gaza today. Every drop that falls waters the soil of vengeance, bitterness and hatred not only in Palestine but across the Middle East and much of the world. We do have a choice over whether or not this should continue. Now is the time to make it.
Jennifer Loewenstein is the Associate Director of the Middle East Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She can be reached at amadea311@earthlink.net

Gaza Massacre: Where Death is the Aura of Life

Massacre in Gaza:
Where Death is the Aura of Life!

When for close to a century, a people become subjected to death, injury, imprisonment, continuous relocation, agony, separation from loved ones and a perpetually ominous threat of war, one is amazed more at the rather lackluster concern of an international community that is complacent more with the perpetrator of all these misdeeds rather than it is at showing any compassion and mercy towards the helpless victims of these Godless acts. The daily and nightly displays of unchallenged military prowess in Gaza used for the total annihilation of a people, who never sought more than to be left alone in peace raising their olives, sheep and oranges, only adds more to the disgust the observer is bound to feel for a regional community that has forgotten the meaning of blood linkage and an international order that has forgotten that it was mainly set up to protect the victims of "holocausts" and ethnic cleansing. Yes, the current massacre being unleashed in Gaza is a stain in the history of Mankind. Massacres like these are never erased by any "efforts" of polished politicians "seeking a truce" or even a "temporary cease fire". The efforts of theses luxuriously attired seekers of press coverage and a quick handshake appearance before the TV camera with impotent power brokers in a disguising philanthropic prodding are fooling no one as they jump from capital to capital enjoying the gourmet of the places they shuttle to and fro, while the people they are supposedly "rescuing" are not even allowed to drink at least one glass of pure clean water a day, and the infants of the latter are denied the right to silent slumber to digest their already sour milk, if they are lucky enough to get even that. It is not easy for infants to find sleep amidst the high screeching sound of F – 16s and the ongoing buzzing of drones and Apache helicopters, not to mention the ongoing booms of the lethal ordnance they unleash in every direction of the city of Gaza. Let it not be forgotten that Gaza is indeed one of the most densely crowded cities in the world.
On the first day of Israel's shameless "ground incursion", after its already unforgivable ten days of air, sea and artillery pounding, the casualties reached some 70 dead or injured people, mostly women and children. All those "menacing rocket of Hamas did not injure one Israeli trespasser (What else can one call the Israeli citizens?)! Oh sure, the Zionist death machine has exonerated itself by telling the world that they have already dropped hundreds of leaflets, telling the people of Gaza that "they have nothing against them" and that the Gazans should leave their homes, apartments and tents and seek shelter. The fact of the matter is that there are no civilian shelters in Gaza; the people of Gaza do not have the unlimited backing of a United Arab Appeal, AIPAC or an Anti Defamation League – funds for the construction of a sophisticated shelter system enjoyed by the displacers of the original inhabitants of the land that was theirs for centuries prior to the advent of the Zionist uprooters of the indigenous Palestinians. All the people of Gaza have is the hope that God will not abandon them as the rest of humanity has. They have no choice but to read these leaflets with some feeling of ridicule and despair at the rather helpless fate that they are subjected to under the observing eyes of the world. The leaflets are supposedly enough to render the horrible Zionist death machine innocent of all crimes as whole families – fathers, mothers, offspring of all ages are wiped out of existence by a humanless drone or a distant Apache helicopter, whose operator and crew haven't the slightest idea who they are eliminating from existence, or even have the slightest care as to the military value of their target. No, these death machine operators have been scientifically reared to believe that the elimination of human life is a noble cause. In fact they regard the death of Palestinians as an essential luxury of Zionist existence and a source of pride as they distort the true sense of justice God intended for this world and wish to convince all of mankind that they are only carrying out God's "promise". If that is the promise God has granted to murderers, assassins, thugs and outright criminals, then what are they leaving for the good people of the earth, who these modern mobsters kill, even as the victims are leaning with their foreheads on the ground in total submission to Him in his houses of worship. On the eve of the ground excursion an Israeli air attack killed 13 worshippers of the Sunset prayer in a mosque as they devoutly seek relief from God Almighty, following that with a similar attack that killed nine worshippers as they are bowing in prayer at Dawn of the following day. No, it is for certain that this is not done rightly in the name of the Almighty; those who are still willing to risk their lives to show their faith in Him and undertake their rites of prayer, even with the possibility that death is more likely than the hope of drinking their morning breakfast coffee know that their Lord is much more merciful than that.
How can one express the agony and disgust that one feels at the epitome of human justice, when it renders an entire people as not worthy of humanity's pity and concern? No, agony and disgust would be praise for such abominable justice. Heartbreak is more the right way of describing the sadness within the chests of those who really hoped that humanity could be far more sensitive to the suffering of their own kind. But then, we live in an age where the power of aluminum drones and black Apache helicopters and Markova tanks kill all sense of humanity within the human spirit.

Massacre in Gaza: Israel as we know it
Hassan Al-Haifi



In recalling the history of the Zionist state of Israel, embedded in the indigenous territory historically and biblically known as Palestine, one would find that the ongoing massacre in Gaza is no more than one of a series of slaughters and massacres inflicted on the Palestinians and other Arabs by the military wing of the international Zionist movement.
The insistence of putting the responsibility of this reliance on the mass killings of the very people this unholy movement has evicted from their ancestral homeland since time was gauged is enforced by the seemingly hogwashy coverage by the western press of the terrible crimes now being inflicted in Gaza. From Deir Yassin in 1948 to Qana (1996 and 2006) to Gaza, and the many villages in between in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Sinai Peninsula, the so called Israeli Defense Forces and their various death squad manifestations (including so called "deranged" Zionist extremists of the likes of Menahim Begin and the murderer of the Ibrahim Mosque in Hebron) have relied on the flagrant use of organized and legitimized terrorism.
By using the most lethal and modern killing tools generously supplied to it by the United States the terrorist state of Israel has sought to inflict the maximum spilling of bloodshed possible with merciless impunity. For obvious reasons, the Zionist machine knows well that its very presence in the Holy Land is not based on any meaningful legal pretext whatsoever and certainly disdained by the very victims of this unholy presence. The major victims of this ongoing sadistic disregard for human life have mostly been civilians of the likes of the residents of Gaza, who are already subject to the most unbearable living conditions.
Of course the issue in all these criminal acts in the land of the olive tree – the symbol of peace – is not simply the firing of harmless firecrackers into illegal Israeli residences, or the throwing of pebbles by the very people forcefully evicted from the land where those settlements now exist. After all these illegal settlements are usually as a result of the several massacres inflicted by the Zionists over the past years of Israel's illegal existence and ongoing illegal occupation and siege of the Palestinians in the remaining territory that has not been walled in, illegally settled, or under siege or occupation. This is the hogwash that the western press has used as the "justification" for the mad sadism now being inflicted in Gaza.


Needless to say, the people of the region and most civilized and knowledgeable westerners and easterners know full well that the massacres in Gaza are no more than Israel just being the Israel they have always known. The very existence of Israel and its sustainability is reliant on mass bloodshed (see this link for a detailed list of all the massacres that Israel has inflicted before and after its existence until 1999: http://www.soundofegypt.com/Palestinian/adult/massacres.htm ). The indiscriminate shedding of Arab blood is the only method which Israel can use to instill its non-bona fide raison d'être. The Zionist machine cannot ever feel safe except if the victims of its very existence are left in mass prisons like Gaza, deprived of the basic minimum essentials for sustenance and deprived of any freedom of movement to seek brighter lives anywhere in the world that will still be considered as a haven of mercy from Zionist persecution. It is this ongoing oppression that is the only vehicle for assuring the sustainability of this criminal experiment in nation building.
After all, what is the reason for the Zionist machine possessing well over 200 nuclear warheads and the most state of the art killing machine in the world? This is Israel's vehicle to terrorize not only the Arabs, but the rest of the world as well, isn't it? However that is another issue to be discussed some other time in CS.
The fact of the matter is that Israel's very existence will not find any acceptability until the Zionist mentality is rehabilitated to realizing that its desire for peace can never be ascertained by the excessive reliance on excessive murder and bloodshed. Especially if this sadistic craving is inflicted on the victims of the manifestation of a bogus Zionist dream of conquering the land of Zion ("Eretz Israel"), which supposedly extends from the Nile to the Euphrates (as illustrated by a map in the wall of the Israeli Knesset).
In reality, Israel is the manifestation of terror. The fact is that is that no modern state has so systematically and inhumanely relied on terror by using all the modern killing technology freely available to the IDF. Why? Because Israel must use its military hardware indiscriminately against those who only seek to be granted justice and to be free from an inhumane occupation, siege and ongoing oppression that continuously defies comprehension by any civilized observer.
The western press is a part of this heavy reliance on "state" terrorism as it resorts to "Big Brother" media techniques to distort the issues by persistently pointing out the Palestinian rocket attacks as the real reasons for the flagrant mass killings in Gaza [to moment of writing this: 350 dead and well over a thousand five hundred injured Palestinians, (1 Israeli dead – how disproportionate can one get?) with the bombs still falling on Gaza and the Israeli armor divisions ready to recopy (magnified several times) the Jenin massacre, in which it was reported that at least 56 Palestinians, half of whom were civilians, were mercilessly slaughtered].
As far as most objective observers are concerned, this is Israel being Israel as they have known it all along its blood stained history.