“
Vimes shook some lather off the blade. "Hah! I bet they have. Tell me, Willikins, did you fight much when you were a kid? Were you in a gang or anything?"
"I was privileged to belong to the Shamlegger Street Rude Boys, sir," said the butler.
"Really?" said Vimes, genuinely impressed. "They were pretty tough nuts, as I recall."
"Thank you, sir," said Willikins smoothly. "I pride myself I used to give somewhat more than I got if we needed to discuss the vexed area of turf issues with the young men from Rope Street. Stevedore's hooks were their weapon of choice, as I recall."
"And yours...?" said Vimes, agog.
"A cap-brim sewn with sharpened pennies, sir. An ever-present help in times of trouble."
"Ye gods, man! You could put someone's eye out with something like that."
"With care, sir, yes," said Willikins, meticulously folding a towel.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Thud! (Discworld, #34; City Watch, #7))
“
The absence of adult males upsets the natural order in our species and in others. For example, game wardens in South Africa recently had to kill several teenage male elephants that had uncharacteristically become violent. These young elephants behaved like a contemporary street gang—and perhaps for the same reason: There were no adult males in their lives. To solve the problem, park officials imported adult male elephants from outside the area. Almost immediately, the remaining juveniles stopped misbehaving. Testosterone ungoverned by experience is dangerous, and older males temper the craving for dominance—merely by being dominant themselves.
”
”
Gavin de Becker (Protecting the Gift: Keeping Children and Teenagers Safe (and Parents Sane))
“
The Internet is a good filter. It’s a good way to find men who share some of your values. However, your friends on message boards and on social networking sites, scattered all over the world, are not going to be there for you when the proverbial shit hits the fan. Spend more time making contact with men who are geographically close to you. If you have close friends in your area, consider moving into the same apartment complex or within a few blocks of one another. Think about the way gangs start in inner cities. Men and boys have lived and died to defend tribes with territories as small as a few blocks. Proximity creates familiarity and shared identity. It creates us. Spreading our alliances across nations and continents keeps us reliant on the power of the State and the global economy. Men who are separated and have no one else to rely on must rely on the State.
”
”
Jack Donovan (The Way of Men)
“
I cannot help think that the drug war, the war on gangs, has really been no more than a forced migration project. From my neighborhood in LA to the Bay Area to Brooklyn, Black and Brown people have been moved out as young white people build exciting new lives standing on the bones of ours. The drug war as ethnic cleansing.
”
”
Patrisse Khan-Cullors (When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir)
“
Unemployed people will use any number of excuses including discrimination for reasons such as disability, race, sexual orientation, religion, sex or age, or maybe there’s a shortage of jobs in their area. Well if that’s the case then they can travel to wherever the work is and go into digs. I work in construction management and regularly work with steel erectors from Ireland or Newcastle, electricians from Cardiff, fixers from Sheffield or Birmingham, steel fixers from Romania, carpenters from Poland, canteen girls from Romania, scaffolders from Lithuania, and concrete gangs of Indians, and they all travel wherever the work is and they all live in digs. We all do. It’s the nature of our industry.
”
”
Karl Wiggins (100 Common Sense Policies to make BRITAIN GREAT again)
“
The news filled me with such euphoria that for an instant I was numb. My ingrained self-censorship immediately started working: I registered the fact that there was an orgy of weeping going on around me, and that I had to come up with some suitable performance. There seemed nowhere to hide my lack of correct emotion except the shoulder of the woman in front of me, one of the student officials, who was apparently heartbroken. I swiftly buried my head in her shoulder and heaved appropriately. As so often in China, a bit of ritual did the trick. Sniveling heartily she made a movement as though she was going to turn around and embrace me I pressed my whole weight on her from behind to keep her in her place, hoping to give the impression that I was in a state of abandoned grief.
In the days after Mao's death, I did a lot of thinking. I knew he was considered a philosopher, and I tried to think what his 'philosophy' really was. It seemed to me that its central principle was the need or the desire? for perpetual conflict. The core of his thinking seemed to be that human struggles were the motivating force of history and that in order to make history 'class enemies' had to be continuously created en masse. I wondered whether there were any other philosophers whose theories had led to the suffering and death of so many. I thought of the terror and misery to which the Chinese population had been subjected. For what?
But Mao's theory might just be the extension of his personality. He was, it seemed to me, really a restless fight promoter by nature, and good at it. He understood ugly human instincts such as envy and resentment, and knew how to mobilize them for his ends. He ruled by getting people to hate each other. In doing so, he got ordinary Chinese to carry out many of the tasks undertaken in other dictatorships by professional elites. Mao had managed to turn the people into the ultimate weapon of dictatorship.
That was why under him there was no real equivalent of the KGB in China. There was no need. In bringing out and nourishing the worst in people, Mao had created a moral wasteland and a land of hatred. But how much individual responsibility ordinary people should share, I could not decide.
The other hallmark of Maoism, it seemed to me, was the reign of ignorance. Because of his calculation that the cultured class were an easy target for a population that was largely illiterate, because of his own deep resentment of formal education and the educated, because of his megalomania, which led to his scorn for the great figures of Chinese culture, and because of his contempt for the areas of Chinese civilization that he did not understand, such as architecture, art, and music, Mao destroyed much of the country's cultural heritage. He left behind not only a brutalized nation, but also an ugly land with little of its past glory remaining or appreciated.
The Chinese seemed to be mourning Mao in a heartfelt fashion. But I wondered how many of their tears were genuine. People had practiced acting to such a degree that they confused it with their true feelings. Weeping for Mao was perhaps just another programmed act in their programmed lives.
Yet the mood of the nation was unmistakably against continuing Mao's policies. Less than a month after his death, on 6 October, Mme Mao was arrested, along with the other members of the Gang of Four. They had no support from anyone not the army, not the police, not even their own guards. They had had only Mao. The Gang of Four had held power only because it was really a Gang of Five.
When I heard about the ease with which the Four had been removed, I felt a wave of sadness. How could such a small group of second-rate tyrants ravage 900 million people for so long? But my main feeling was joy. The last tyrants of the Cultural Revolution were finally gone.
”
”
Jung Chang (Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China)
“
Submarines are the worst. Even the largest feel cramped. The last time I was aboard one, we weren’t even allowed to work out. The gym was located on the other side of the nuclear reactor from our quarters, and we weren’t authorized to pass through the reactor area to get there. Aircraft carriers are a hell of a lot larger, but they can be just as boring. At least they have lounges where you can play video games and there are no restrictions on getting to the gym to blow off steam. In fact, on one occasion, we were specifically requested to go to the gym by the CO. We were on the Kitty Hawk when they were having a problem with gangs. Apparently, some punk sailors who were gang members were causing quite a discipline problem aboard ship. The CO of the boat pulled us over and told us when the gang used the gym. So we went down to work out, locked the door behind us, and fixed the gang problem.
”
”
Chris Kyle (American Sniper)
“
There were some places, and streets, where he did not venture since he had learnt that others had claims there greater than his own - not the gangs of meths drinkers who lived in no place and no time, nor the growing number of the young who moved on restlessly across the face of the city, but vagrants like himself who, despite the name which the world has given them, had ceased to wander and now associated themselves with one territory or 'province' rather than another. All of them led solitary lives, hardly moving from their own warren of streets and buildings: it is not known whether they chose the area, or whether the area itself had callen them and taken them in, but they had become the guardian spirits (as it were) of each place. Ned now knew some of their names: Watercress Joe, who haunted the streets by St Mary Woolnoth, Black Sam who lived and slept beside the Commercial Road between Whitechapel and Limehouse, Harry the Goblin who was seen only by Spitalfields and Artillery Lane, Mad Frank who walked continually through the streets of Bloomsbury, Italian Audrey who was always to be found in the dockside area of Wapping (it was she who had visited Ned in his shelter many years before), and 'Alligator' who never moved from Greenwich.
”
”
Peter Ackroyd (Hawksmoor)
“
The groups in different areas that were affiliated with us knew one thing for sure, and that is that they could trust and respect the base. When you look at it, people want to know they have someone in their corner for the worst. Scrooge, former leader of the Rebellion Raiders street gang that once boasted of having some ten thousand members
”
”
Drexel Deal (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped in My Father Book 1))
“
As much as they were concerned about the police, the Panthers also took seriously the threat of crime and sought to address the fears of the community they served. With this in mind, they organized Seniors Against a Fearful Environment (SAFE), an escort and bussing service in which young Black people accompanied the elderly on their business around the city. In Los Angeles, when the Party opened an office on Central Avenue, they immediately set about running the drug dealers out of the area. And in Philadelphia, neighbors reported a decrease in violent crime after the Party opened their office, and an increase after the office closed. There, the BPP paid particular attention to gang violence, organizing truces and recruiting gang members to help with the survival programs. It may be that the Panthers reduced crime by virtue of their very existence. Crime, and gang violence especially, dropped during the period of their activity, in part (in the estimate of sociologist Lewis Yablonsky) because the BPP and similar groups “channeled young black and Chicano youth who might have participated in gangbanging violence into relatively positive efforts for social change through political activities.
”
”
Kristian Williams (Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America)
“
He spent two years running a hospital for Chai.” Molly put her arm around the younger woman. “Which was the equivalent of working the ER in a city like New York or Chicago. He saved a lot of lives.” She made sure Max was paying attention, too. “And before you say, ‘Yeah, of drug runners, killers, and thieves,’ you should also know that his patients were just regular people who worked for Chai because he was the only steady employer in the area. Or because they knew they’d end up in some mass grave if they refused his offer of employment. Before Grady came in, if they were injured in some battle with a rival gang, they were just left for dead.”
Jones looked up to find Max watching him as he sterilized a particularly sharp knife. “Me and Jesus,” he said. “So much alike, people often get us confused.
”
”
Suzanne Brockmann (Breaking Point (Troubleshooters, #9))
“
Do you really think my feet smell?”
I don’t. I love the way he smells after a lacrosse game--like sweat and grass and him. But I love to tease, to see that unsure look cross his face for just half a beat. “Well, I mean, on game days…” I say. Then Peter attacks me again, and we’re wrestling around, laughing, when Kitty walks in, balancing a tray with a cheese sandwich and a glass of orange juice.
“Take it upstairs,” she says, sitting down on the floor. “This is a public area.”
Disentangling myself, I give her a glare. “We aren’t doing anything private, Katherine.”
“Your sister says my feet stink,” Peter says, pointing his foot in her direction. “She’s lying, isn’t she?”
She deflects it with a pop of her elbow. “I’m not smelling your foot.” She shudders. “You guys are kinky.”
I yelp and throw a pillow at her.
She gasps. “You’re lucky you didn’t knock over my juice! Daddy will kill you if you mess up the rug again.” Pointedly she says, “Remember the nail-polish-remover incident?”
Peter ruffles my hair. “Clumsy Lara Jean.”
I shove him away from me. “I’m not clumsy. You’re the one who tripped over his own feet trying to get to the pizza the other night at Gabe’s.”
Kitty bursts into giggles and Peter throws a pillow at her. “You guys need to stop ganging up on me!” he yells.
”
”
Jenny Han (Always and Forever, Lara Jean (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, #3))
“
For several months they'd been drifting toward political involvement, but the picture was hazy and one of the most confusing elements was their geographical proximity to Berkeley, the citadel of West Coast radicalism. Berkeley is right next door to Oakland, with nothing between them but a line on the map and a few street signs, but in many ways they are as different as Manhattan and the Bronx. Berkeley is a college town and, like Manhattan, a magnet for intellectual transients. Oakland is a magnet for people who want hour-wage jobs and cheap housing, who can't afford to live in Berkeley, San Francisco or any of the middle-class Bay Area suburbs. [10] It is a noisy, ugly, mean-spirited place, with the sort of charm that Chicago had for Sandburg. It is also a natural environment for hoodlums, brawlers, teenage gangs and racial tensions.
The Hell's Angels' massive publicity -- coming hard on the heels of the widely publicized student rebellion in Berkeley -- was interpreted in liberal-radical-intellectual circles as the signal for a natural alliance. Beyond that, the Angels' aggressive, antisocial stance -- their alienation, as it were -- had a tremendous appeal for the more aesthetic Berkeley temperament. Students who could barely get up the nerve to sign a petition or to shoplift a candy bar were fascinated by tales of the Hell's Angels ripping up towns and taking whatever they wanted. Most important, the Angels had a reputation for defying police, for successfully bucking authority, and to the frustrated student radical this was a powerful image indeed. The Angels didn't masturbate, they raped. They didn't come on with theories and songs and quotations, but with noise and muscle and sheer balls.
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson (Hell's Angels)
“
Through all of those different wars, we came to understand each other. The Mason’s fellas just wanted to chill in their area and be left alone. The Border Boys basically wanted the same thing. Stinky and Robert just wanted to be able to sell their drugs and make their money. But us, we were on a mission to take over the whole town. Scrooge, former leader of the Rebellion Raiders street gang that once boasted of having some ten thousand members
”
”
Drexel Deal (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped in My Father Book 1))
“
The gang leader in each area, known as a “don,” maintained a group of armed followers or “shooters” who acted as enforcers, kept down petty crime, and enforced a strict normative system of punishment and reward upon the population. The don acted as a mediator and resolver of disputes, liaised with police and city authorities to manage violence and crime, and became an intermediary for the distribution of government handouts—jobs, housing, welfare benefits, contracts—to the population.
”
”
David Kilcullen (Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla)
“
The Rebellions were the first gang in The Bahamas, to come up with a popular logo/brand in the wearing of Raiders clothing. However, other neighborhoods gave birth to their own gangs using popular sporting team images as their official colors and name. You had the Hoyas Bull Dogs out of Kemp Road; the Coconut Grove area took on the name Nike, which became their clothing of choice. Miami Street took on the name Hurricanes, and wore Miami Hurricanes clothing. However, when you look at it closely, because of the lack of involved fathers, a lot of us were simply lacking an image and a positive identity of ourselves.
”
”
Drexel Deal (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped in My Father Book 1))
“
Throughout the autumn and the winter activity increased in the Beaulieu area, and with it came mysteries. Lepe House, the mansion at the entrance to the river, was taken over by the Navy and became full of secretive Naval officers; it became known that this was part of a mysterious Navel entity called 'Force J'. Near Lepe House and at the very mouth of the river a construction gang began work in full strength to make a hard, sloping concrete platform running down into the river where the flat-bottomed landing craft could beach to refuel and let their ramps down to embark the vehicles and tanks. This place was about two miles from 'Mastodon'. A mile or so along the coast a country house was occupied by a secret Naval party who did strange things with tugs and wires and winches, and with what looked like a gigantic reel of cotton floating in the sea; this was 'Pluto', Pipe Line Under The Ocean, which was to lay pipes from England to France to carry petrol to supply the armies which were due to land in Normandy. On a bare beach nearby a thousand navvies were camped making huge concrete structures known as 'Phoenix', one of many such sites all along the coast. It was not till after the invasion that it became known that these were a part of the artificial harbour 'Mulberry' on the north coast of France.
”
”
Nevil Shute (Requiem for a Wren)
“
The good part about these areas that we were taking over, was that all of them had parks where a lot of guys were just hanging out playing basketball. So I used those parks to make a good first impression with my gun, then I followed up with a speech presentation. At the end of the day, we were able to win over the entire park, and eventually their community…..
It was as if these fellas from different areas were just waiting for this, because no one else was going around to them. No one else was telling them that they were needed, only us. Scrooge, former leader of the Rebellion Raiders street gang that once boasted of having some ten thousand members
”
”
Drexel Deal (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped in My Father Book 1))
“
I asked, “When the Rebellions were at its peak doing nonsense, everyone was trying to keep away from the area, yet you were going in, why were you going into that area?
Supt. Strachan answered quite frankly,
Because I was not afraid. I felt like they are my people, they are my color. I don’t know of anyone born after me that I should be afraid of, that was how I felt. I knew I could’ve walk through Strachan’s Corner, sit down and felt at home, and their parents also accepted me.
I came to the conclusion; these kids just need someone to show them some attention. They just wanted to belong, that was what a lot of them were looking for. So I said to myself, if I could assist them I would, and that was what I did. Supt. Allerdyce Strachan, the first female officer to rise to the rank of superintendent on the Royal Bahamas Police Force.
”
”
Drexel Deal (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped in My Father Book 1))
“
He spent two years running a hospital for Chai.” Molly put her arm around the younger woman. “Which was the equivalent of working the ER in a city like New York or Chicago. He saved a lot of lives.” She made sure Max was paying attention, too. “And before you say, ‘Yeah, of drug runners, killers, and thieves,’ you should also know that his patients were just regular people who worked for Chai because he was the only steady employer in the area. Or because they knew they’d end up in some mass grave if they refused his offer of employment. Before Grady came in, if they were injured in some battle with a rival gang, they were just left for dead.”
Jones looked up to find Max watching him as he sterilized a particularly sharp knife. “Me and Jesus,” he said. “So much alike, people often get us confused.”
“Mock me all you want—I’m just saying.” Molly had on her Hurt Feelings Face. It may have fooled Max, but Jones knew it was only there to mask her Relentless Crusader. She was lobbying hard for Max to be on Jones’s side if they made it out of here alive. And she wasn’t done. “Yes, Grady Morant worked for Chair for a few years—after the U.S. left him to die in some torture chamber. He’s so evil, except what was he doing during those two years? Oh, he was saving lives . . .?”
“I was practicing medicine without a license,” Jones pointed out. “You just gave Max something else to charge me with when we get home.”
When, not if. Even though he wasn’t convinced that they weren’t in if territory, he’d used the word on purpose. The look Molly shot him was filled with gratitude.
He gave her a smoldering blast of his best “Yeah, you can thank me later in private, baby” look, and, as he’d hoped she would, she laughed.
”
”
Suzanne Brockmann (Breaking Point (Troubleshooters, #9))
“
It was Warden Norton who instituted the “Inside-Out” program you may have read about some sixteen or seventeen years back; it was even written up in Newsweek. In the press it sounded like a real advance in practical corrections and rehabilitation. There were prisoners out cutting pulpwood, prisoners repairing bridges and causeways, prisoners constructing potato cellars. Norton called it “Inside-Out” and was invited to explain it to damn near every Rotary and Kiwanis club in New England, especially after he got his picture in Newsweek. The prisoners called it “road-ganging,” but so far as I know, none of them were ever invited to express their views to the Kiwanians or the Loyal Order of Moose. Norton was right in there on every operation, thirty-year church-pin and all; from cutting pulp to digging storm-drains to laying new culverts under state highways, there was Norton, skimming off the top. There were a hundred ways to do it—men, materials, you name it. But he had it coming another way, as well. The construction businesses in the area were deathly afraid of Norton’s Inside-Out program, because prison labor is slave labor, and you can’t compete with that.
”
”
Stephen King (Different Seasons: Four Novellas)
“
We lived in a safe, family-friendly area, but parts of London were rough, as you’d expect from any large city. Mark had a knack for attracting muggers. One time, we were in a train station and a little kid--no more than about eight years old--came up to him: “Oi, mate, give me your phone.” We always carried the cool Nokia phones with the Snake game on them, and they were the hot item. It was like inviting trouble carrying one around, but we didn’t care.
Mark thought the mini-mugger was crazy: “Are you kidding me? No way.” Then he looked over his shoulder and realized the kid wasn’t alone; he had a whole gang with him. So Mark handed over his phone and the kid ran off. I never let him live down the fact that an eight-year-old had mugged him.
I had my own incident as well, but I handled it a little differently. I got off the train at Herne Hill station and noticed that two guys were following me. I could hear their footsteps getting closer and closer. “Give us your backpack,” they threatened me.
“Why? All I have is my homework in here,” I tried to reason with them. They had seen me on the train with my minidisc player and they knew I was holding out on them. “Give it,” they threatened.
My bag was covered with key chains and buttons, and as I took it off my shoulder, pretending to give it to them, I swung it hard in their faces. All that hardware knocked one of them to the ground and stunned the other. With my bag in my hand, I ran the mile home without ever looking back. Not bad for a skinny kid in a school uniform.
”
”
Derek Hough (Taking the Lead: Lessons from a Life in Motion)
“
The corollary of new crimes that only some people can commit is to exempt others from punishment for standard crimes—indeed, to pro vide a license to kill. Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the British Labour Party and Minister for Women, proposes allowing women to kill their “intimate partners” with impunity if they kill while “claiming past, or fear of future, abuse from male partners.” Murder would thus be condoned if a woman claimed to have suffered “conduct which caused the defendant to have a justifiable sense of being seriously wronged.”
How the dead (and unproven) “abusers” could establish their innocence is not discussed in the proposal. “Effectively, what Harman and the ultra-feminist lobby want is a licence for women to kill,” writes Erin Pizzey, a long-time advocate for domestic violence victims, who has reacted in horror at the hijacking of the movement by ideological extremists. “Women can murder as long as their sense of victimhood is sufficiently powerful. . . . Rather than reducing violence, Harriet Harman’s proposals could become a charter for domestic chaos, as vengeful women believe they can butcher partners they come to loathe, inventing incidents of abuse or exaggerating fears of assault.”
Robert Whelan of the Civitas think-tank accused the government of introducing “gang law” into the legal system. Lyn Costello of Mothers Against Murder and Aggression described the changes as “utter madness.” “We need clear laws, not more grey areas. . . . Unless there are really exceptional circumstances, such as self-defence or protecting yourself or family, then there is no excuse for killing someone, and it should be murder.
”
”
Stephen Baskerville
“
Victims of treachery find ways of deluding themselves that they are not being betrayed. Sexually, for example, but I assume in other areas too. Business, politics, friendship. We are good at fooling ourselves in order to preserve our trust. But it isn’t only the victims who do it. The traitors, too, convince themselves that they are not committing treason. At the very moment of their deepest betrayals they assure themselves that they are acting well, even that their deeds are in the best interest of the betrayed person, or of some higher cause. They save us from ourselves, or, like Brutus and his gang, they save Rome from Caesar. They are the innocent ones, the good guys, or, at the very least, not so bad.
”
”
Salman Rushdie (Quichotte)
“
The newer tactic of scattering bodies on city streets, as happened when Joaquín Guzmán’s goons pushed thirty-five bloody corpses (twelve of them women) off two trucks on Manuel Ávila Camacho Boulevard, near a shopping mall in the prettier part of the port city of Veracruz one day in September 2011, to terrorize their adversaries...
Guzmán, known as El Chapo (Shorty) for his small stature, ran the largest airborne opera- tion in Mexico; he owned more aircraft than Aeromexico, the national air- line. Between 2006 and 2015, Mexican authorities seized 599 aircraft — 586 planes and 13 helicopters—from the Sinaloa cartel; by comparison, Aeromexico had a piddling fleet of 127 planes....
One Zeta atrocity I knew nothing about took place in 2010, in the small town of San Fernando, south of Reynosa. A roaming band of Zetas stopped two buses of migrants—men, women, and children from Central and South America, who were fleeing the violence in their countries. The Zetas demanded money. The migrants had no money. The Zetas demanded that the migrants work for them, as assassins or operatives or drug mules. The migrants refused. So they were taken to a building in the village of El Huizachal, blindfolded, their hands and legs bound, and each one was shot in the head. Seventy-two of them died. One man (from Ecuador) played dead, escaped, and raised the alarm...
The gory details of this massacre became known when one of the perpetrators was arrested, Édgar Huerta Montiel, an army deserter known as El Wache, or Fat Ass. He admitted killing eleven of the migrants person- ally, in the belief (so he said) that they were working for a gang hostile to his own. A year later, near the same town, police found 47 mass graves containing 193 corpses — mostly migrants or passengers in buses hijacked and robbed while passing through this area of Tamaulipas state, about eighty miles south of the US border...
But in the early 2000s headless bodies began to appear, tossed by the roadside, while human heads were displayed in public, at intersections, and randomly on the roofs of cars. This butchery was believed to be inspired by a tactic of the Guatemalan military’s elite commandos, known as Kaibiles.
A man I was to meet in Matamoros, on my traverse of the border, explained how the Kaibiles were toughened by their officers. The officers encouraged recruits to raise a dog from a puppy, then, at a certain point in their training, the recruit was ordered to kill the dog and eat it....
When the Kaibiles became mercenaries in the Mexican cartels, the first beheadings occurred, the earliest known taking place in 2006: a gang in Michoacán kicked open the doors of a bar and tossed five human heads on the dance floor. Decapitations are now, according to one authority on the business, “a staple in the lexicon of violence” for Mexican cartels....
”
”
Paul Theroux
“
sadly. “I founded Dead Bush, and I thought it would be a fresh start — a place where I could safely raise a family. But then Mad Mulligan and his gang arrived. They took over the entire area, forcing all the towns and villages to pay them ‘protection money,’ as they called it. At first, a few people tried to fight back, but I’d seen what fighting back against criminals could do, so I kept Dead Bush out of the conflict. Maybe if I’d helped to rebel against Mad Mulligan back then, things might have been
”
”
Dave Villager (Dave the Villager 34: An Unofficial Minecraft Novel (The Legend of Dave the Villager))
“
Some might respond to the last point by claiming that, despite the obviously finite magnitude of both the human and nonhuman resources used by government forces, national defense nevertheless does represent equal protection for all in the sense that there is a perpetual commitment to resist aggression against any part of the nation. But that is false, and the American Civil War is clear evidence of this error in reasoning. Union forces would have done nothing to protect the Confederate states if, say, the government of France had attacked them. Instead, the French would have been viewed as allies in the subjugation of the Southern "traitors.” Intervention from abroad would only have been resisted by the North if it was accompanied by a demand that the Southern states, once defeated, would become a possession of that foreign power. And one cannot escape by claiming that the Confederacy was viewed as a separate nation and therefore was not owed protection. The North consistently maintained that the Confederacy was an unlawful entity along the lines of a criminal gang, not a sovereign nation. In short, governmental protection against aggression is never guaranteed, but instead may change with political conditions. In no sense, then, does national defense necessarily imply equal protection for all areas and all persons. True defense, though its effects may be widespread, is microeconomic in nature.
”
”
Hans-Hermann Hoppe (The Myth of National Defense: Essays on the Theory and History of Security Production)
“
A farmer’s crops weren’t doing well. He had tried everything he could with the land and soil he had, but no matter what he did, year after year, his harvest grew smaller, his bounty less plentiful. So, he up and moved, searching for a new land, a new beginning. After a long journey, he came upon the most ideal, freshest, nutrient-rich soil on earth. Living there in prosperity, he felt the urge to plant something to pass onto future generations so they could see what he was blessed with. He tilled the soil, and with tender love and care, he planted an acorn. He watched as the tree broke the soil, making its way upward. Young, healthy, and free. Year after year, he saw it expand, stretching its branches in all directions, letting it be, never pruning it, never tending to it. Under its own direction, it took off, soaring upward and outward, becoming the mighty oak seen from all directions. “People traveled from far and wide to admire the tree, wanting one for themselves. They all asked the farmer, ‘What did you do to grow such a majestic oak tree?’ “His answer, always the same. ‘I don’t do a thing, I just let it grow on its own.’ “Most turned away, perplexed by his explanation, convinced he was hiding something from them. Others, however, listened, reproducing the same results. “Time passed and eventually the farmer was no longer, but the tree remained a steadfast fixture on the farmer’s land. Eventually, more people moved into the area. They were different from the man. They considered themselves to be more educated, more advanced than a simple farmer. They disliked his gigantic symbol of individual success. “So they hatched a plan. They conspired with each other and decided to stop making it about the tree. Why don’t they turn the people’s attention to the branches? Brilliant. So, year after year, they would rev up the citizens over a blemish on a branch. One was crooked, another’s bark was too thick, some had too many leaves, others didn’t have enough. The people who cared passionately about more foliage fought with those who wanted less. Citizens who wouldn’t stand for crooked branches ganged up on those who only wanted them to be straight. All the while, the elites stood back, stirring the pot, and achieving their plan to eliminate the tree. Every once in a while a side would win, and a branch would be cut off. Others would chop one off from spite and anger. As the years passed, branch after branch not escaping the scourge of the bickering groups, the tree finally was nothing more than a trunk. The people who were so used to fighting with each other gazed upon one another from either side of the pathetic, devoured symbol. They realized they had destroyed the once extraordinary, grand oak. But it was too late. The elites got what they wanted.
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Eula McGrevey (Progatory (Book 2 of The Progtopia Trilogy))
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had a good courtship story because it started with friendship—we found each other in eighth grade, in a rough city school in an even rougher neighborhood. Now the place boasted a Starbucks on every corner, but in the ’80s and ’90s, gangs ran the area—Polish and Puerto Rican, and they
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Loretta Nyhan (Digging In)
“
I met Jesse for the first time when I was twelve, and I thought he was a bit of a dork. He had long, skinny legs and twiggy arms. His hair was a blond mess, and he spent all his time playing football with Hunter, and mostly ignoring me and Georgia.
When I saw him on Saturday morning, in my living room, hair ruffled from him falling asleep on the sofa, my mouth felt like it was filled with sawdust, and I could barely choke out a ‘hello.’
He’d got kind of … gorgeous over the years. He’d grown into his gangly arms and legs, and developed muscles, and the kind of chiselled jaw you think only exists in romance novels, not in the real world.
Right away, his looks put him way out of my league, but when you threw in the fact he was on his way to being a football legend in America, he was obviously a guy who wouldn’t look twice at plain old Isabelle Mills. He tried really hard to make conversation with me, I guess because he felt sorry for me. I appreciated his efforts, and I think I may have even flirted with him a little over lunch before reminding myself I definitely wasn’t going to get his attention. Boys were Georgia’s area of expertise. She already had a boyfriend, Elliott, but that didn’t stop the other guys at college from checking her out. She was just so confident, whereas I preferred to sit in the background.
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Kyra Lennon (Blindsided (Game On, #2))
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And the rest of us? We should grasp the basics of math and statistics-certainly better than most of us do today-but still follow what we love. The world doesn't need millions of mediocre mathematicians, and there's plenty of opportunity for specialists in other fields. Even in the heart of opportunity for specialists in other fields. Even in the heart of the math economy, at IBM Research, geometers and engineers work on teams with linguists and anthropologists and cognitive psychologists. They detail the behavior of humans to those who are trying to build mathematical models of it. All of these ventures, from Samer Takriti's gang at IBM to the secretive researchers laboring behind the barricades at the National Security Agency, feed from the knowledge and smarts of diverse groups. The key to finding a place on such world-class teams is not necessarily to become a math whiz but to become a whiz at something. And that something should be in an area that sparks the most enthusiasm and creativity within each of us. Somewhere on those teams, of course, whether it's in advertising, publishing, counterterrorism, or medical research, there will be at least a few Numerati. They'll be the ones distilling this knowledge into numbers and symbols and feeding them to their powerful tools.
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Stephen Baker (The Numerati)
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Anglos dominated the prisoner population in 1977 and did not lose their plurality until 1988. Meanwhile, absolute numbers grew across the board—with the total number of those incarcerated approximately doubling during each interval. African American prisoners surpassed all other groups in 1988, but by 1995, they had been overtaken by Latinos; however, Black people have the highest rate of incarceration of any racial/ethnic grouping in California, or, for that matter, in the United States (see also Bonczar and Beck 1997). TABLE 4 CDC PRISONER POPULATION BY RACE/ETHNICITY The structure of new laws, intersecting with the structure of the burgeoning relative surplus population, and the state’s concentrated use of criminal laws in the Southland, produced a remarkable racial and ethnic shift in the prison population. Los Angeles is the primary county of commitment. Most prisoners are modestly educated men in the prime of life: 88 percent are between 19 and 44 years old. Less than 45 percent graduated from high school or read at the ninth-grade level; one in four is functionally illiterate. And, finally, the percentage of prisoners who worked six months or longer for the same employer immediately before being taken into custody has declined, from 54.5 percent in 1982 to 44 percent in 2000 (CDC, Characteristics of Population, various years). TABLE 5 CDC COMMITMENTS BY CONTROLLING OFFENSE (%) At the bottom of the first and subsequent waves of new criminal legislation lurked a key contradiction. On the one hand, the political rhetoric, produced and reproduced in the media, concentrated on the need for laws and prisons to control violence. “Crime” and “violence” seemed to be identical. However, as table 5 shows, there was a significant shift in the controlling (or most serious) offenses for those committed to the CDC, from a preponderance of violent offenses in 1980 to nonviolent crimes in 1995. More to the point, the controlling offenses for more than half of 1995’s commitments were nonviolent crimes of illness or of illegal income producing activity: drug use, drug sales, burglary, motor vehicle theft. The outcome of the first two years of California’s broadly written “three strikes” law presents a similar picture: in the period March 1994–January 1996, 15 percent of controlling offenses were violent crimes, 31 percent were drug offenses, and 41 percent were crimes against property (N = 15,839) (Christoper Davis et al. 1996). The relative surplus population comes into focus in these numbers. In 1996, 43 percent of third-strike prisoners were Black, 32.4 percent Latino, and 24.6 percent Anglo. The deliberate intensification of surveillance and arrest in certain areas, combined with novel crimes of status, drops the weight of these numbers into particular places. The chair of the State Task Force on Youth Gang Violence expressed the overlap between presumptions of violence and the exigencies of everyday reproduction when he wrote: “We are talking about well-organized, drug-dealing, dangerously armed and profit-motivated young hoodlums who are engaged in the vicious crimes of murder, rape, robbery, extortion and kidnapping as a means of making a living” (Philibosian 1986: ix; emphasis added).
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Ruth Wilson Gilmore (Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (American Crossroads Book 21))
“
The media is doing quite a job of scaring people. A recent 2014 study in the journal Pediatrics received massive media attention, including extensive coverage in USA Today and an entire hour on ABC News’s 20/20.40 Here’s how ABC’s World News Tonight reported the findings:41 Looking at children and guns, the most recent statistics from 2009. And take a look tonight, they are eye-opening. The new numbers are arresting. . . . 7,391 children rushed to the hospital every year because of those gun injuries, so often accidents in the home. Four hundred and fifty-three of those children die at the hospital. The vast majority of these “children” are actually young adults. These are not little kids who accidentally hurt themselves by firing their parents’ gun. Consider these facts: • Seventy-six percent of these injured “children” were seventeen, eighteen, or nineteen years old. • Sixty-two percent of injuries were the result of criminal assaults. • The injuries are overwhelmingly concentrated in large, urban areas. These deaths are clearly tragic. But they are largely a result of gang violence, a problem that won’t be solved by scaring law-abiding Americans into not owning guns.
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John R. Lott Jr. (The War on Guns: Arming Yourself Against Gun Control Lies)
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Damn it. Why didn’t the United States know when to declare a real war? Those running the country he loved were making a mockery of it. Misusing the word war had become a joke, like The War on Drugs or The War on Women. What was taking place in Guatemala was being run the same way as the fake War on Terror. Similar to Afghanistan, it didn’t take long before he realized he was in a no man’s land where the dead piled up in silence and the living had nothing to say. Hordes of beggars and gang members roamed the area seeking food, money or young women to rape. Life was cheap. People were killed for a pair of shoes or a handful of pills.
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Ava Armstrong (Hard Man to Kill: Dark Horse Guardians Series Book 4)
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When I look at it carefully, by examining the interviews and the various social scientists’ studies, it becomes easy for me to see that we all were just rebelling. Regardless of the area we grew up in or the gang we were affiliated with, or which part of the Western world we found ourselves in, we all were rebelling. We were rebelling and crying out for our fathers. We were rebelling against the home conditions that existed in our communities. We needed our fathers, but above all we wanted to be loved and accepted by them. Since we couldn’t find it at home and in our respective communities, we created it for ourselves.
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Drexel Deal (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped in My Father Book 1))
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The geography of the land described in the Vedas extended from as far west as the Oxus river in Afghanistan (Vakshu in Sanskrit) to the Ganga (Ganges) river in India in its easternmost extent. The area was frequently referred to as Sapta-Sindhu which means “seven rivers”. In the Vedic period people who lived in modern-day Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and eastern Iran were all considered to be known tribes living in areas called Balkh, Gandhara (5.01) and Madra. In the lands beyond the Oxus river were the Scythians known to the Vedic people as Sakas.
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Shiv Sastry (Aryan Invasion: Myth or Fact?: Uncovering the evidence)
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princes continued walking in the forest with the sage. They stopped at a place where the rivers, Saryu and Ganges met. They crossed the river in a boat. After that they reached another dense forest. They could only hear the sounds of animals and birds. The sage said, “The forest is essentially a peaceful area except from the danger of Tadaka and her sons. Suketu, a powerful Yaksha, performed a penance for a son. Pleased with him, Lord Brahma offered him a boon that he would have a child. Suketu brought up Tadaka like a son as she was blessed with the strength of thousand elephants. Since he wanted a son, Tadaka married Sunda and had two sons, Maricha and Subahu. Once, Sunda irked Sage Agastya so the sage cursed him to death. Angered with this, Tadaka and Maricha troubled the sage, who cursed them too that she and Maricha would become demons. Since then, Tadaka, Maricha and Subahu began to destroy the beautiful forest and frightened those who came there.
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Maple Press (Ramayana Tales (Illustrated))
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Although such an organized criminal gang may enter into many fields, organized crime finds its basic support in black market activities. A black market is any area of the market which is legally prohibited. If left unprohibited, it would be an area of trade involving peaceful, willing exchanges between sellers and buyers. But when government initiates force by forbidding this area of trade to honest men, it throws it open to men who are willing to take the risk of violating bureaucratic dictates and the statutory laws of the politicians. The violence and fraud associated with any black market do not spring from the nature of the good or service being sold; they are a direct result of the fact that entrepreneurs have been legally forbidden to deal in this area of the market, leaving it open to men who dare to ignore prohibitions and who are willing to resort to violence in order to do business without getting caught. Unless prohibited, every market activity is operated on the basis of willing exchange, without the initiation of force, because this is the only way a business can be operated successfully, as force is a nonproductive expenditure of energy.
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Morris Tannehill (Market for Liberty)
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The war against the crime syndicate in Chicago never ends. Those who attended the wedding of Tony Accardo’s kid were inspired after they saw how the battle is being waged. Long before the wedding began, dozens of law enforcement agents poured into the area around St. Vincent Ferrer Church on North Avenue, a few blocks west of Harlem. Veteran crime syndicate observers were quick to spot the FBI, the Secret Service, the Chicago Police Undercover Unit, the Crime Commission, and the Quickie Credit-Check Service. This phase of the never-ending battle against the gang-lords is fought, not with guns, but with notebooks and cameras. Nobody knows if this is effective against the mob, but at least no cops got shot in the foot.
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Mike Royko (Early Royko: Up Against It in Chicago)
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Not all persons who came to the New World under such circumstances were brought legally, even by the loose standards prevailing at the time. Not all children who found themselves in a ship’s hold outward bound for Charleston were orphans. Gangs of thieves prospered in the sordid business of stealing or “nabbing” children for the plantations. In the parlance of their day they were called “kidnabbers,” a term later converted by Cockney English to “kidnapers.
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Harry M. Claudill (Night Comes To The Cumberlands: A Biography Of A Depressed Area)
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My primary concern is the area’s crime stats. Half a dozen stabbings a week, not to mention the monthly shootings and annual homicide rate. Gang activity mostly, but predators are predators and as a middle-aged woman I’m not particularly intimidating.
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Lisa Gardner (Before She Disappeared (Frankie Elkin, #1))
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He was head of one of the more important street gangs in the area, but never stabbed people too badly when he mugged them and was polite with the people he extorted. He was practically a model citizen.
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Brandon Sanderson (Shadows of Self (Mistborn, #5))
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Have the strength to realise what’s happening and ensure that you define yourself. Meet that
negativity with positivity, every single time.
Fear of taking action is fear of the unknown. True leaders don’t underestimate the potential
destructive power of what lies behind that door, but neither do they let that stop them bursting
through it, as long as it’s done carefully and intelligently.
You have a choice. Allow that negativity in, and let it obsess you and
eventually poison you. Or turn it around. If you’re smart, these enemies become a gift – a battery that
never runs out.
A part of the reason I struggled at Pre-Para was the length of my legs. Rather than throw my
hands up, which I very nearly did, I realised I could compensate in another area. We all have reasons
to make excuses for failure. Most people use them. Be the exceptional person – find the route around.
There’s an
expectation, especially when you’re new, that you’ll ‘join in’ and become one of the gang. You need
to hit that balance. If you completely separate yourself, you won’t win trust. But never forget – if you
have your sights set at the top, you need to resist coming across as just another dog in the pack.
Every group you’ll ever belong to will tell themselves they’re the best.
As a leader, you need to let that myth flourish, because it creates motivation. But you should also be
constantly on guard not to believe it yourself.
Do what you have to, even if people judge you for it. I know some of the lads probably found
my attitude to letters and calls to my family harsh or unfeeling. But I had my reasons, and I wasn’t
going to let their preconceptions bully me into not doing what I knew was best for me.
It’s allowing that mistake to take you over
that’s the real problem. When you make a mistake you should accept that it’s happened, push all the
self-recriminations aside and calmly make a new plan.
Don’t be intimidated by all the people you have to beat to get to the top. It was a dizzying
moment for me, in Sennybridge, when I saw the amount of bodies in that room, knowing that only a
handful would pass. The numbers are irrelevant. The only thing that counts is you.
You can’t trust your body. It tells you it’s got nothing left when
it’s still a hundred miles from breaking. And when it does actually break, it heals. The only true war
you’ll ever fight is with your own mind.
Wins are rarely clean. Life is complex, people are dangerous, and real fights usually cause
damage to both sides. I was furious when I discovered that Khalida’s mother had been assaulted, but
I also knew that there was nothing I could have done about it.
. I guarantee that life will offer you the opportunity to prove why you’re the leader. And
when it does, it’s all up to you.
”
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Ant Middleton (First Man In Leading from the Front & SAS Who Dares Wins Leadership Secrets from the Special Forces By Anthony Middleton 2 Books Collection Set)
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It was an issue for leaders across the area, in and out of government, so there was a lot of activity and concern about what we should do to address it. When we studied the data, we learned that more than 80 percent of prisoners were high school dropouts. I went to see the school district superintendent, a wonderful woman named Arlene Ackerman, to ask her about the high school dropout rate. She told me that a significant percentage of their habitually truant high school students had missed their elementary school classes, too—for weeks, even months at a time. That, to me, was a call to action. The connections were so clear. You could map the path for children who started drifting away from the classroom when they were young. The truant child became the wanderer . . . who became the target for gang recruiters . . . who became the young drug courier . . . who became the perpetrator—or the victim—of violence. If we didn’t see that child in elementary school, where they belonged, chances were we’d see them later in prison, in the hospital, or dead.
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Kamala Harris (The Truths We Hold: An American Journey)
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As countries move from fossil fuel power generation to cut carbon dioxide emissions, solar power is gaining market share around the world. Germany, thanks to a decade of generous subsidies, has more installed solar power capacity than any other country. But large coal- and gas-fired plants still have at least one big advantage over solar panels — they cannot be uprooted and carted away. As German solar supply has increased, so has the theft of panels, cables and inverters. “Solar theft continues to increase, despite the measures taken to prevent it,” says Frank Fiedler, chief executive of SecondSol, an online trading platform for solar products that has documented scores of such cases on a website. “Thieves are able to escape with thousands of euros worth of equipment.” Although panels sometimes disappear from residential rooftops, large solar parks are the main target. These tend to be situated outside built-up areas where organised gangs can pull up in lorries, work unobserved overnight and then make their escape. Losses sometimes reach as much as €500,000, Germany’s federal criminal police office says. It warns that solar panels are “often insufficiently [protected] or not secured at all”.
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Anonymous
“
She always said she’d already lost one child to gangs and she was not losing another. We were surrounded by gangs and kids getting in trouble blaming it on the area they lived in, but Memo and I are living proof of what my mom always said to us. You are who you choose to be. You’re only a victim of your environment if you allow yourself to be.
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Elizabeth Reyes (Felix (5th Street, #5))
“
In some areas of London and Manchester the gangs were becoming more of a cultural transmission of America’s Crips and Bloods.
”
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Angela Marsons (Lost Girls (DI Kim Stone, #3))
“
Inside, the tent was sectioned off by cloth walls. In the main area where they entered, there was a table with four chairs and an arming stand that held the knight’s chain mail, helm, and sword.
“Ioan?” Christian called. No one answered. As they turned to leave, they were confronted by what appeared to be a young archer who was surely no older than the boy who had led them here. Several inches shorter than Adara, he was gangly and thin, with raven-black hair and brown eyes that watched them warily. He held his bow at the ready with an arrow already nocked. “Who are you and what business have you with Lord Ioan?” he asked in a gruff, low tone.
“We are old friends,” Christian said calmly.
Phantom moved toward him. The archer turned quickly and let fly the arrow. Phantom caught it midflight, but before he could take another step, the archer swung the bow and caught him upside his head with it. Phantom staggered back from the force of the blow. The archer struck again and knocked him to the ground. Christian moved toward them. Before Adara could blink, the archer had another arrow nocked and ready to fly into Christian’s chest.
“Corryn, cease!” The Welsh-accented voice rang through the room like thunder. Adara looked at the entrance to see a tall, well-muscled man there who bore a striking resemblance to the archer. His wavy black hair fell to his shoulders and a full beard covered his cheeks. He looked wild and untamed as he put himself between the archer and Christian.
“What has gotten into your head, Spider?” he asked the archer in his thick, rolling accent.
“They came here looking for you,” the archer said brashly, as if the larger man’s anger didn’t concern him at all. He finally unnocked the arrow. “After the message from Stryder saying there were assassins out to kill you, I thought I was protecting you, brawd.”
The man she assumed must be Ioan made a disgusted noise at him. “God save me from your protection. Did it never occur to you that an assassin wouldn’t bother to come into my tent and announce himself?” He said something in a language Adara didn’t understand, but by Corryn’s reaction, it must have been a curse or reprimand of some kind. “Now apologize. You almost took the head off the Abbot, and it’s the Phantom who you’ve knocked to the ground.”
The archer’s face went pale at that. Ioan stepped away from the boy to offer his hand to Phantom, who took it. He helped him back up to his feet. “You’ll have to forgive my brother, Phantom. He’s a damned fool.”
“Are you the Abbot?” Corryn asked Christian.
“Aye.”
The boy’s lips quivered before he threw himself into Christian’s arms. “May the saints guard your blessed soul throughout all eternity!” Christian looked awkward as he frowned at Ioan. “Brother?”
Ioan’s gaze turned dark, dangerous as he pulled Corryn back. Still Corryn stared at Christian with hero worship. “Thank you, Abbot, for bringing my brother back to me.”
“Get out of here, scamp,” Ioan said gruffly, “before I skin you.”
Corryn curled his lip at Ioan. “I spoke too soon, Abbott. Curses to you, that you brought his surly hide home. Methinks you should have left him there to rot.” He turned to Phantom. “My apologies to you, sir. I hope you’ll forgive me.”
Phantom shook the boy’s arm. “I admire anyone who can get the better of me. It doesn’t happen often.”
“Corryn!”
“I’m leaving,” he snapped. “To the devil with your hoary hide.”
-Christian, Corryn, Ioan, & Phantom
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Kinley MacGregor (Return of the Warrior (Brotherhood of the Sword, #6))
“
night it didn’t seem like anything could stop me from enjoying the walk. It had not yet occurred to me that the path I had chosen to walk to Penn Station would lead me through some less desirable areas. Just as I was passing by a burned out building, I noticed a large gang watching me from across the street. There was no one else around and the seriousness of the situation quickly became apparent. The gang crossed the street at an angle clearly intended to cut me off. I felt fear flow through me. My pulse quickened. Everything told me that this wasn’t going to be good. But then something shifted inside me. I remembered who they really were; intrinsically powerful beings playing the part of thugs because they had forgotten their own true power. The gang surrounded me matching my pace. I focused on the leader who had moved in and was walking beside me. Looking him
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Nanice Ellis (The Infinite Power of YOU!)
“
It had not yet occurred to me that the path I had chosen to walk to Penn Station would lead me through some less desirable areas. Just as I was passing by a burned out building, I noticed a large gang watching me from across the street. There was no one else around and the seriousness of the situation quickly became apparent. The gang crossed the street at an angle clearly intended to cut me off. I felt fear flow through me. My pulse quickened. Everything told me that this wasn’t going to be
”
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Nanice Ellis (The Infinite Power of YOU!)
“
Obama’s only connection with phones was to label them Obamaphones and hand them out for free through his community organizer network. Now millions of Americans and illegal immigrants have cell phones paid for by the U.S. government and funded through one of those obscure charges that appear on your phone bill, the “lifeline” tax. Obama undoubtedly hopes you never notice the charge, or ask about it. It’s so much better to rip people off when they don’t even know they are being ripped off. Obama has no experience in starting a business or running a business; the only business he has ever run—the U.S. government—is $18 trillion in debt, a full one-half of that accumulated during Obama’s two terms. Any CEO with that record would certainly be fired; any private enterprise losing money at that pace would long have gone out of business. Obama didn’t discover his lack of entrepreneurial talent at the White House; he’s known it for most of his life. That’s why he decided, at a young age, to go a completely different route. Envious of the entrepreneur, he would become the anti-entrepreneur. He would put his talents to use in taking from the entrepreneurs and getting away with it. So Obama’s lack of entrepreneurial talent doesn’t mean that he is untalented. He is talented, but his talent lies in other areas. Driven by envy and resentment toward entrepreneurs, Obama specializes in fostering and mobilizing the resentment of others. He’s not a community organizer; he’s a resentment organizer.
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Dinesh D'Souza (Stealing America: What My Experience with Criminal Gangs Taught Me about Obama, Hillary, and the Democratic Party)
“
Starting in the Clinton era and continuing through George W. Bush’s two terms, progressive activists mounted direct pressure—either in the form of public protest or lawsuits—against banks. This was aimed at intimidating banks to adopt new lending standards and also to engage the activist groups themselves in the lending process. In 1994, a young Barack Obama, recently graduated from Harvard Law School, joined two other attorneys in suing Citibank for “discriminatory lending” because it had denied home loans to several bank applicants. The case was called Selma S. Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank. Citibank denied wrongdoing, but as often happens in such situations, it settled the lawsuit to avoid litigation costs and the negative publicity. Selma Buycks-Roberson and two of her fellow plaintiffs altogether received $60,000, and Obama and his fellow lawyers received nearly a million dollars in legal fees. This was a small salvo in a massive fusillade of lawsuits filed against banks and financial institutions in the 1990s. ACORN, the most notorious of these groups, had its own ally in the Clinton administration: Hillary Clinton. (Around the same time, ACORN was also training an aspiring community activist named Barack Obama.) Hillary helped to raise money for ACORN and also for a closely allied group, the Industrial Areas Foundation. The IAF had been founded by Saul Alinsky and continued to operate as an aggressive leftist pressure group long after Alinsky’s death in 1972. Hillary lent her name to these groups’ projects and met several times with their organizers in the White House. ACORN’s efforts were also supported by progressive politicians like Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Jon Corzine, Chuck Schumer, and Harry Reid. These politicians berated the banks to make loans easier to get. “I do not want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness,” Frank said at a September 25, 2003, hearing. “I want to roll the dice a little more.
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Dinesh D'Souza (Stealing America: What My Experience with Criminal Gangs Taught Me about Obama, Hillary, and the Democratic Party)
“
big cities nurture subcultures much more effectively than suburbs or small towns. Lifestyles or interests that deviate from the mainstream need critical mass to survive; they atrophy in smaller communities not because those communities are more repressive, but rather because the odds of finding like-minded people are much lower with a smaller pool of individuals. If one-tenth of one percent of the population are passionately interested in, say, beetle collecting or improv theater, there might only be a dozen such individuals in a midsized town. But in a big city there might be thousands. As Fischer noted, that clustering creates a positive feedback loop, as the more unconventional residents of the suburbs or rural areas migrate to the city in search of fellow travelers. “The theory . . . explains the ‘evil’ and ‘good’ of cities simultaneously,” Fischer wrote. “Criminal unconventionality and innovative (e.g., artistic) unconventionality are both nourished by vibrant subcultures.” Poetry collectives and street gangs might seem miles apart on the surface, but they each depend on the city’s capacity for nurturing subcultures.
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Steven Johnson (Where Good Ideas Come From)
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Manson robbed the LaBiancas first, taking Rosemary’s purse from her. Next, he collected Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten from the car and brought them into the house, giving Tex the horrifying instruction to “make sure everybody does something.” Then Manson got back in the car and drove away from the LaBianca home with Linda Kasabian, Susan Atkins, and Clem Grogan inside. Inside the house, Tex Watson killed Leno LaBianca by stabbing him in the throat multiple times with a bayonet. He then used his bayonet on Rosemary who was trying to fight off Patricia and Lesley. Patricia stabbed Rosemary again when Tex, heeding Manson’s instruction that everyone should take part in the murders, told Leslie to take over. Leslie stabbed Rosemary LaBianca 16 times. Tex carved the word “WAR” into Leno’s stomach before all three murderers wrote the words “Rise,” “Death to pigs,” and “Healter Skelter (sic)” on the walls in blood. As a parting gesture, Patricia stabbed Leno’s corpse with a carving fork, which she left jutting out of his stomach alongside the steak knife she left in his neck. While all of this had been going on, Manson was driving the other family members around Los Angeles. Manson bought them chocolate milkshakes with Rosemary LaBianca’s money then had Linda ditch Rosemary’s wallet in the hope that a black person would find it and incriminate themselves in the LaBianca murders. But the killing still wasn’t over. Manson pressed the others to find out if they knew anyone in the Venice Beach area they were driving through. Linda Kasabian admitted to knowing an actor who lived nearby. Manson handed Linda a knife and told her to knock on this actor’s door and stab him. Manson also gave his gun to Clem, instructing him to shoot the actor if Linda was unable to stab him to death. Faced with the task of murdering an innocent man, Linda balked and told the others that she couldn’t remember where the actor lived. Manson drove back to Spahn Ranch, and the rest of the gang hitchhiked back.
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Hourly History (Charles Manson: A Life From Beginning to End)
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Illegal sand mining runs a wide gamut. At one end, it includes legitimate businesses overstepping the boundaries of their permits. In 2003, for instance, California filed a lawsuit41 against Hanson Aggregates, a global mining outfit, for unauthorized dredging of sand from the San Francisco Bay. “These sand pirates have enriched themselves by stealing from the state and ripping off taxpayers,” the state’s attorney general declared at the time. Hanson eventually settled, paying the state $42 million. At the other extreme are outright criminals, from petty thieves to well-organized gangs willing to kill to protect their sand business. In 2015, New York state authorities slapped a $700,000 fine on a Long Island contractor who had illegally gouged thousands of tons of sand from a 4.5-acre patch of land near the town of Holtsville and then refilled the pit with toxic waste. These “scoop and fill” operations have become common as the area’s legitimate sources of sand have been increasingly depleted, according to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.42 In other countries, the black market takes more dramatic forms. One of Israel’s most notorious gangsters, a man allegedly involved in a spate of recent car bombings, got his start stealing sand from public beaches. In Morocco, fully half the sand used for construction is estimated to be mined illegally; whole stretches of beach in that country are disappearing.
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Vince Beiser (The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization)
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Government is, and of necessity must be, a coercive monopoly, for in order to exist it must deprive entrepreneurs of the right to go into business in competition with it, and it must compel all its citizens to deal with it exclusively in the areas it has pre-empted. Any attempt to devise a government which did not initiate force is an exercise in futility, because it is an attempt to make a contradiction work. Government is, by its very nature, an agency of initiated force. If it ceased to initiate force, it would cease to be a government and become, in simple fact, another business firm in a competitive market. Nor can there be any such thing as a government which is partially a free-market business, because there can be no compromise between freedom and brute force. Either an organization is a business, maintaining itself against competition by excellence in satisfying customer wants, or it is a gang of thieves, existing by brute force and preventing competition by force when it can do so. It can’t be both.
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There were plenty of times during that period where I’d leave my school—which was in an established Crip area—at the end of the day and there’d be, no exaggeration, thirty dudes surrounding the school, waiting for certain people to leave. I had friends in gangs who would always be leaving school an hour early to avoid getting jumped when the bell rang. One night I got word that a friend of mine who sat next to me at school had been shot and killed. I remember going to class the next day and looking over to see his textbook, pencil, and papers and shit still on his desk like everything was normal. I suppose in a way it was.
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