Gangs Together Quotes

In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Bramin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges.

You take up for your buddies, no matter what they do. When you're a gang, you stick up for the members. If you don't stick up for them, stick together, make like brothers, it isn't a gang anymore. It's a pack. A snarling, distrustful, bickering park like the Socs in their social clubs or the street gangs in New York or the wolves in the timber.

My pride shut me up, my hurt shut me down, and together they ganged up on my hope and let her get away.

If I'd managed any of these ifs-- would I have been able to avoid the inevitable fuck-up, the full-force fuck-off? My pride shut me up, my heart shut me down, and together they ganged up on my hope and let her get away.

The gang all back together . . . we should rob something!

A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment ... is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule.

School life is like being on a monkey mountain...monkeys in the same gang constantly fight and get back together again...and a hierarchy gets established.

In 1965, worked with Nite Owl bringing street gangs under control. Tackled the Big Figure together. Brought down Underboss together. Good team. Until he got soft, like rest. Until he quit. No staying power. None of them. Except Comedian. Met him in 1966. Forceful personality. Didn't care if people liked him. Uncompromising. Admired that. Of us all, he understood most. About world. About people. About society and what's happening to it. Things everyone knows in gut. Things everyone too scared to face, too polite to talk about. He understood. Understood man's capacity for horrors and never quit. Saw the world's black underbelly and never surrendered. Once man has seen, he can never turn his back on it. Never pretend it doesn't exist. No matter who orders him to look the other way. We do not do this thing because it is permitted. We do it because we have to. We do it because we are compelled.

But no matter what choices we make - solo or together - our finish line remains the same. It doesn't matter how many times we look both ways. It doesn't matter if we don't go skydiving to play it safe, even though it means we'll never get to fly like my favorite superheroes do. It doesn't matter if we keep our heads low when passing a gang in a bad neighborhood. No matter how we choose to live, we both die at the end.

But I know the one thing this city is more frightened of than the Shu, the Fjerdans, and all the gangs of the Barrel put together. And Nina, you’re going to give it to them.

you see that movie, Chicken Run, where the chickens gang up together and escape from the farm?

The gangs filled a void in society, and the void was the absence of family life. The gang became a family. For some of those guys in the gang that was the only family they knew, because when their mothers had them they were too busy having children for other men. Some of them never knew their daddies. Their daddies never look back after they got their mothers pregnant, and those guys just grew up and they couldn’t relate to nobody. When they had their problems, who could they have talked to? Nobody would listen, so they gravitated together and form a gang. George Mackey, the former representative for the historic Fox Hill community in The Bahamas.

Words want to be sampled, relished, remembered; they need breathing space in the shape of commas, colons, semi-colons and full stops. Words are individual. They are content to string along together in sentences and paragraphs, but remain mavericks, outsiders beyond the crowd, the mob, the gang. A long novel begins with the first word.

But no matter what choices we make—solo or together—our finish line remains the same. It doesn’t matter how many times we look both ways. It doesn’t matter if we don’t go skydiving to play it safe, even though it means we’ll never get to fly like my favorite superheroes do. It doesn’t matter if we keep our heads low when passing a gang in a bad neighborhood. No matter how we choose to live, we both die at the end.

My pride shut me up, my hurt shut me down, and together they ganged up on my hope and let her get away.

If marriage was a prison yard, your spouse was the inmate who had your back. Together you were a devoted Gang of Two, each making sure the other didn’t get shanked or shivved. You

So, the Scooby-Doo Gang is back together,” Kennard said.

1 The summer our marriage failed we picked sage to sweeten our hot dark car. We sat in the yard with heavy glasses of iced tea, talking about which seeds to sow when the soil was cool. Praising our large, smooth spinach leaves, free this year of Fusarium wilt, downy mildew, blue mold. And then we spoke of flowers, and there was a joke, you said, about old florists who were forced to make other arrangements. Delphiniums flared along the back fence. All summer it hurt to look at you. 2 I heard a woman on the bus say, “He and I were going in different directions.” As if it had something to do with a latitude or a pole. Trying to write down how love empties itself from a house, how a view changes, how the sign for infinity turns into a noose for a couple. Trying to say that weather weighed down all the streets we traveled on, that if gravel sinks, it keeps sinking. How can I blame you who kneeled day after day in wet soil, pulling slugs from the seedlings? You who built a ten-foot arch for the beans, who hated a bird feeder left unfilled. You who gave carrots to a gang of girls on bicycles. 3 On our last trip we drove through rain to a town lit with vacancies. We’d come to watch whales. At the dock we met five other couples—all of us fluorescent, waterproof, ready for the pitch and frequency of the motor that would lure these great mammals near. The boat chugged forward—trailing a long, creamy wake. The captain spoke from a loudspeaker: In winter gray whales love Laguna Guerrero; it’s warm and calm, no killer whales gulp down their calves. Today we’ll see them on their way to Alaska. If we get close enough, observe their eyes—they’re bigger than baseballs, but can only look down. Whales can communicate at a distance of 300 miles—but it’s my guess they’re all saying, Can you hear me? His laughter crackled. When he told us Pink Floyd is slang for a whale’s two-foot penis, I stopped listening. The boat rocked, and for two hours our eyes were lost in the waves—but no whales surfaced, blowing or breaching or expelling water through baleen plates. Again and again you patiently wiped the spray from your glasses. We smiled to each other, good troopers used to disappointment. On the way back you pointed at cormorants riding the waves— you knew them by name: the Brants, the Pelagic, the double-breasted. I only said, I’m sure whales were swimming under us by the dozens. 4 Trying to write that I loved the work of an argument, the exhaustion of forgiving, the next morning, washing our handprints off the wineglasses. How I loved sitting with our friends under the plum trees, in the white wire chairs, at the glass table. How you stood by the grill, delicately broiling the fish. How the dill grew tall by the window. Trying to explain how camellias spoil and bloom at the same time, how their perfume makes lovers ache. Trying to describe the ways sex darkens and dies, how two bodies can lie together, entwined, out of habit. Finding themselves later, tired, by a fire, on an old couch that no longer reassures. The night we eloped we drove to the rainforest and found ourselves in fog so thick our lights were useless. There’s no choice, you said, we must have faith in our blindness. How I believed you. Trying to imagine the road beneath us, we inched forward, honking, gently, again and again.

The longer someone ignores an email before finally responding, the more relative social power that person has. Map these response times across an entire organization and you get a remarkably accurate chart of the actual social standing. The boss leaves emails unanswered for hours or days; those lower down respond within minutes. There’s an algorithm for this, a data mining method called “automated social hierarchy detection,” developed at Columbia University.8 When applied to the archive of email traffic at Enron Corporation before it folded, the method correctly identified the roles of top-level managers and their subordinates just by how long it took them to answer a given person’s emails. Intelligence agencies have been applying the same metric to suspected terrorist gangs, piecing together the chain of influence to spot the central figures.

We could deal with just about any part of this new life, together, a girl gang, exclusive to the max. Bring it on, world, anything goes. Except for actual feelings. Those were left to each other to manage privately.

I suppose what I mean is, I never felt like I was part of a gang. No, that's the wrong word. Part of a MOVEMENT! That's it. It feels like there's a swirling, shining wind of change sweeping right at you, sweeping over everyone, and you're inside it. It feels like there is something that transcends you, that goes beyond whatever you are, that is great and whole and good. Great, because when it all comes together it's so much more than all its individual pieces. Whole because you're part of it and if you weren't, then both you and it would be diminished. Good because at its core is pure talent and skill, like you know you'll never have yourself.

And every day there is music. One dark voice will start a phrase, half-sung, and like a question. And after a moment another voice will join in, soon the whole gang will be singing. The voices are dark in the golden glare, the music intricately blended, both somber and joyful. The music will swell until at last it seems that the sound does not come from the twelve men on the gang, but from the earth itself, or the wide sky. It is music that causes the heart to broaden and the listener to grow cold with ecstasy and fright. Then slowly the music will sink down until at last there remains one lonely voice, then a great hoarse breath, the sun, the sound of the picks in the silence. And what kind of gang is this that can make such music? Just twelve mortal men, seven of them black and five of them white boys from this country. Just twelve mortal men who are together.

Just about every gang in America had started as a group of minorities, be they Irish, Jewish, Italian, or other, banding together for survival. It generally took a couple of years before they started doing worse than was done to them.

But the Clash as a performing band, either live on-stage, or back together in the studio: that can never happen again. It was hard enough to envisage a Clash without Mick Jones in 1983, but it is impossible to envisage one without Joe Strummer now or at any time in the future. Even if the other members of the band do get back together, and they (or Sony) choose to use the name, it won't be the Clash. Joe Strummer is dead, and irreplaceable. That's it, now. From here to eternity.

White people found that freedom was indeed indivisible. We had kept saying in the dark days of apartheid’s oppression that white South Africans would never be truly free until we blacks were free as well. Many thought it was just another Tutu slogan, irresponsible as all his others had been. Today they were experiencing it as a reality. I used to refer to an intriguing old film The Defiant Ones, in which Sidney Poitier was one of the stars. Two convicts escape from a chain gang. They are manacled together, the one white, the other black. They fall into a ditch with slippery sides. The one convict claws his way nearly to the top and out of the ditch but cannot make it because he is bound to his mate, who has been left at the bottom in the ditch. The only way they can make it is together as they strive up and up and up together and eventually make their way over the side wall and out.

Men love talking about women. At least then they don't have to talk about themselves. How is it that in thirty years no man has produced the slightest innovative work on masculinity? They are so expert, so voluble when it comes to holding forth about women, so why this silence when it comes to themselves? We know that the more they speak, the less they say -- of essentials, of what they really think. Perhaps they want us to talk about them instead? For example, perhaps they want to be told how their gang bangs look from the outside? Well, they look as if men want to see themselves fucking, as i they want to look at each other's dicks, to be together with their hard-ons; as if they want to get fucked themselves. It looks as if what they're scared to admit is what they really want: to fuck each other. Men love other men. They are always explaining how much they love women, but we all know they're fibbing. They love each other women. Many of them start thinking about friends when they're still inside a pussy.

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

For hierarchy, according to the anthropologist Christopher Boehm. Boehm studied tribal cultures early in his career, but had also studied chimpanzees with Jane Goodall. He recognized the extraordinary similarities in the ways that humans and chimpanzees display dominance and submission. In his book Hierarchy in the Forest, Boehm concluded that human beings are innately hierarchical, but that at some point during the last million years our ancestors underwent a “political transition” that allowed them to live as egalitarians by banding together to rein in, punish, or kill any would-be alpha males who tried to dominate the group. Alpha male chimps are not truly leaders of their groups. They perform some public services, such as mediating conflicts.28 But most of the time, they are better described as bullies who take what they want. Yet even among chimpanzees, it sometimes happens that subordinates gang up to take down alphas, occasionally going as far as to kill them.29 Alpha male chimps must therefore know their limits and have enough political skill to cultivate a few allies and stave off rebellion.

We should welcome artists to our shores because this is a haven, isn't it? It's got a big iron lady out there in the sea there saying welcome to the shore and they were trying to kick me out: it's ridiculous when you look back on it, because the most I could have done was gather a big gang of demonstrators together which the police could have shot, so what were they complaining about?

I think she’ll like me,” I said, concerned that my own mother wouldn’t like me. My fear exposed the unspoken shame of all families: if you didn’t know the people you were related to, would you befriend them? In the days when families hunted and gathered, this wouldn’t be a question worth pondering, but once butchering a mammoth stopped being a household chore, we began to suspect families are chain gangs held together by manacles of DNA.

The lobby of the Fanny Briggs Memorial Building was almost finished when she arrived. As if to distract from the minuscule and cramped philosophy of what would transpire on the floors above, the city offered visitors the spacial bounty of the lobby. The ersatz marble was firm underfoot like real marble, sheer, and produced trembling echoes effortlessly. The circle of Doric columns braced the weight above without complaint. The mural, however, was not complete. It started out jauntily enough to Lila Mae’s left. Cheerless Indians holding up a deerskin in front of a fire. The original tenants, sure. A galleon negotiating the tricky channels around the island. Two beaming Indians trading beads to a gang of white men—the infamous sale of the Island. Big moment, have to include that, the first of many dubious transactions in the city’s history. (They didn’t have elevators yet. That’s why the scenes look so flat to Lila Mae: the city is dimensionless.) The mural jumped to the Revolution then, she noticed, skipped over a lot of stuff. The painter seemed to be making it up as he went along, like the men who shaped the city. The Revolution scene was a nice setpiece—the colonists pulling down the statue of King George III. They melted it down for ammunition, if she remembers correctly. It’s always nice when a good mob comes together. The painting ended there. (Someone knocks at the door of her room in 117 Second Avenue, but she doesn’t open her eyes.) Judging from the amount of wall space that remained to Lila Mae’s right, the mural would have to get even more brief in its chronicle of the city’s greatest hits. Either the painter had misjudged how much space he had or the intervening years weren’t that compelling to him. Just the broad strokes, please.

LABOR IS A RESOURCE and TIME IS A RESOURCE are by no means universal. They emerged naturally in our culture because of the way we view work, our passion for quantification, and our obsession with purposeful ends. These metaphors highlight those aspects of labor and time that are centrally important in our culture. In doing this, they also deemphasize or hide certain aspects of labor and time. We can see what both metaphors hide by examining what they focus on. In viewing labor as a kind of activity, the metaphor assumes that labor can be clearly identified and distinguished from things that are not labor. It makes the assumptions that we can tell work from play and productive activity from nonproductive activity. These assumptions obviously fail to fit reality much of the time, except perhaps on assembly lines, chain gangs, etc. The view of labor as merely a kind of activity, independent of who performs it, how he experiences it, and what it means in his life, hides the issues of whether the work is personally meaningful, satisfying, and humane. The quantification of labor in terms of time, together with the view of time as serving a purposeful end, induces a notion of LEISURE TIME, which is parallel to the concept LABOR TIME. In a society like ours, where inactivity is not considered a purposeful end, a whole industry devoted to leisure activity has evolved. As a result, LEISURE TIME becomes a RESOURCE too—to be spent productively, used wisely, saved up, budgeted, wasted, lost, etc. What is hidden by the RESOURCE metaphors for labor and time is the way our concepts of LABOR and TIME affect our concept of LEISURE, turning it into something remarkably like LABOR. The RESOURCE metaphors for labor and time hide all sorts of possible conceptions of labor and time that exist in other cultures and in some subcultures of our own society: the idea that work can be play, that inactivity can be productive, that much of what we classify as LABOR serves either no clear purpose or no worthwhile purpose.

Some gangs of friends formed subgroups of five, mirroring us, where each friend could have a favorite Duran without stepping on the toes or desires of the other four friends, because if you were an Andy fan, clearly you could not be friends with another Andy fan. That would not work. You could be friends with a Nick fan, however, because there was no conflict of interest. Both friends could live together in harmony with Nick and Andy on that designated fantasy desert island for ever and ever, without a hint of envy.

We really had a close netted structure to rely on for anything, you could have gone by anyone house and get something to eat. Whatever they were eating, they would’ve fed you, and all the mothers would’ve treated you just like they treated their own. What the gang also did, it provided some level of protection for a lot of the working adults in the neighborhood. They knew that their houses were safe, when they went out to work and didn’t have to worry about anyone breaking in to their homes. Scrooge, former leader of the Rebellion Raiders street gang that once boasted of having some ten thousand members

The fundamental units of natural selection, the basic things that survive or fail to survive, that form lineages of identical copies with occasional random mutations, are called replicators. DNA molecules are replicators. They generally, for reasons that we shall come to, gang together into large communal survival machines or ‘vehicles’. The vehicles that we know best are individual bodies like our own. A body, then, is not a replicator; it is a vehicle. I must emphasize this, since the point has been misunderstood. Vehicles don’t replicate themselves; they work to propagate their replicators. Replicators don’t behave, don’t perceive the world, don’t catch prey or run away from predators; they make vehicles that do all those things.

When it comes to people we admire, it is in our nature to be selective with information, to load with personal associations, to elevate and make heroic. That is especially true after their deaths, especially if those deaths have been in any way untimely and/or shocking. It is hard to hold onto the real people, the true story. When we think of the Clash, we tend to forget or overlook the embarrassing moments, the mistakes, the musical filler, the petty squabbles, the squalid escapades, the unfulfilled promises. Instead, we take only selected highlights from the archive-the best songs, the most flatteringly-posed photographs, the most passionate live footage, the most stirring video clips, the sexiest slogans, the snappiest soundbites, the warmest personal memories-and from them we construct a near-perfect rock 'n' roll band, a Hollywood version of the real thing. The Clash have provided us with not just a soundtrack, but also a stock of images from which to create a movie we can run in our own heads. The exact content of the movie might differ from person to person and country to country, but certain key elements will remain much the same; and it is those elements that will make up the Essential Clash of folk memory. This book might have set out to take the movie apart scene by scene to analyse how it was put together; but this book also believes the movie is a masterpiece, and has no intention of spoiling the ending. It's time to freeze the frame. At the very moment they step out of history and into legend: the Last Gang In Town.

The high gray-flannel fog of winter closed off the Salinas Valley from the sky and from all the rest of the world. On every side it sat like a lid on the mountains and made of the great valley a closed pot. On the broad, level land floor the gang plows bit deep and left the black earth shining like metal where the shares had cut. On the foothill ranches across the Salinas River, the yellow stubble fields seemed to be bathed in pale cold sunshine, but there was no sunshine in the valley now in December. The thick willow scrub along the river flamed with sharp and positive yellow leaves. It was a time of quiet and of waiting. The air was cold and tender. A light wind blew up from the southwest so that the farmers were mildly hopeful of a good rain before long; but fog and rain did not go together.

THE BEGINNING THERE WERE many of us, and we were all different. You could be Aryan Nations but not a Skinhead, depending on whether or not you bought into Christian Identity theology. White Supremacists were more academic, publishing treatises; Skinheads were more violent, preferring to teach a lesson with their fists. White Separatists were the guys buying land in North Dakota and trying to divide the country so that anyone nonwhite would be kicked over the perimeter they created. Neo-Nazis were a cross between Aryan Nations and the Aryan Brotherhood in prisons—if there was a violent street gang criminal element to the Movement, they were it. There were Odinists and Creationists and disciples of the World Church of the Creator. But in spite of the ideology that split us into factions, we’d all come together one day of the year to celebrate: April 20, the birthday of Adolf Hitler

We'll stick close together, but make no sign we are acquainted. The girls should go ahead so that they get through first. We'll follow close behind to be there for any trouble." "Don't worry, my dears," said the professor gallantly, "I'll rescue you from any difficulties." Yelena laughed and kissed the old man on the cheek. "Of course you will. I don't know why we bother with these other men, do you, Tashi?" "But they are decorative, aren't they?" the Princess replied archly. It was fun to have a girl with whom she could gang up against the boys--she'd never had a friend like that before. "They give us something to look at on the boring stretches of the road." She let her eyes linger on Ramil, who appeared very warm all of a sudden. Yelena swung herself into the saddle. "My, my, Princess, I didn't know you could flirt." "I'm learning from a master--or should I say mistress--of that art," Tashi said with a bow.

When I was on the streets thugging, I wanted loyal people around me. I made my crew aware if you’re going to bleed, I will bleed, too. If we have to go to prison, then we are going to prison together. But one thing about us: if someone is locked up in prison, whatever it takes, we gon’ get that person out. Scrooge, former leader of the Rebellion Raiders street gang that once boasted of having some ten thousand members Thugging, loyalty, prison, Rebellion Raiders, gangbanging, street life, gang life, support, togetherness, unity, lock up, When I was on the streets thugging, I wanted loyal people around me. I made my crew aware if you’re going to bleed, I will bleed, too. If we have to go to prison, then we are going to prison together. But one thing about us: if someone is locked up in prison, whatever it takes, we gon’ get that person out. Scrooge, former leader of the Rebellion Raiders street gang that once boasted of having some ten thousand members

NATIONAL ANTHEM OF AZAD HIND May Good Fortune, Happiness and ease rain down upon India; On Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha on Orissa and Bengal, On the Indian Ocean, on the Vindhya Mountains, On the Himalayas, the blue Jamuna and the Ganges. May thy ways be priased, from Thee our life from thy body our hope. May the rising sun shine down upon the world and exalt the name of India In every heart may thy love grow and thy sweetness take shape. So that every dweller in every province. Every faith united, every secret and mystery put aside. May come into thy embrace, in plaited garlands of love. May the rising sun shine down upon the world and exalt the name of India. May the early morning with the wings of a bird praise Her. And with all the power and fullness of the winds bringing freshness into life. Let us join together and shout: ‘Long Live India’, our beloved country. The rising sun shines upon the earth, exalting the name of India. Victory! May India’s name be praised. Translated by C.H. IVENS

As associate beauty editor, it was my job to represent the magazine at get-togethers like these: to rub elbows and be pleasant and professional. Seriously, it was the easiest gig in the world! And yet it wasn’t always so easy for me. “I’ll take one of those.” I stopped a dude with a tray of champagne. “Thanks, honey.” “Hi, Cat!” a beauty publicist with a clipboard said. “Thanks so much for coming!” “Good to see you,” I lied. Thunder clapped outside. “The gang’s over there,” she said. The publicist was referring to the usual group of beauty editors—my colleagues. They were from every title you’ve ever heard of: Teen Vogue, Glamour, Elle, Vogue, W, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, O, Shape, Self. I attended events alongside them every day, and yet I never felt like I belonged. I’d spent years trying to get into their world: interning, studying mastheads, interviewing all over town. But now that I was one of them, I felt defective—self-conscious and out of place in the dreamy career I’d worked so hard for, and unable to connect with these chic women I’d idolized.

Thus it appears that the sweltering inhabitants of Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay and Calcutta, drink at my well. In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat–Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Bramin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges. With favoring winds it is wafted past the site of the fabulous islands of Atlantis and the Hesperides, makes the periplus of Hanno, and, floating by Ternate and Tidore and the mouth of the Persian Gulf, melts in the tropic gales of the Indian seas, and is landed in ports of which Alexander only heard the names.

Before he became Pope Francis, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio faced many problems as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina. High poverty rates, massive drug addiction, and powerful gangs all concerned him, but one problem seemed to root all the other issues. He noted in a 2013 interview: “The biggest problem we face is marginalization of the people. Drugs are a symptom, violence is a symptom, but marginalization is the disease. Our people feel marginalized by a social system that’s forgotten about them and isn’t interested in them…. Marginalization is the mother of our problems, and unfortunately she has many children…. Basically, what society is telling these people is, ‘We don’t want you to exist.’ The work we’re doing here is to try to tell them instead, ‘It’s good that you exist.’”21 That response — “It’s good that you exist” — carries great power. To someone struggling with alcohol, who drinks away his loneliness, we say, “It’s good that you exist.” To someone who loathes her body and thinks she’s too fat, too skinny, too short, or not good enough, we say, “It’s good that you exist.” To the addict, the slave, the homeless man, even the murderer, we say, “It’s good that you exist.” This phrase reminds people that they have intrinsic value, regardless of what they produce, or how they look, or if they have it all together. It echoes what God said immediately after creating the first man: “[He] looked at everything he had made, and found it very good” (Gn 1:31). Next time you want to uplift someone’s dignity, remind them of that wonderful truth: “It’s good that you exist.

Hillary rode her husband’s success to become first lady of Arkansas, then first lady of the United States. Then she won an easy race in liberal New York to become its junior senator. As a senator she accomplished, well, nothing. Then she ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, losing to Barack Obama, who appointed her secretary of state. Despite extensive travels, Hillary’s achievements as secretary of state are essentially nil. As with Benghazi, most of her notable actions are screwups. In an apparent confirmation of the Peter Principle, however, Hillary is now back as the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016. Hillary is fortunate, not merely in her career path, but also in being the surprise recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars that have been rained on her and her husband both directly and through the Clinton Foundation. The Clinton Foundation has raised more than $2 billion in contributions. A substantial portion of that came from foreign governments. Some sixteen nations together have given $130 million. In addition, through speeches and consulting fees, more than $100 million has ended up in the pockets of the Clintons themselves. The foundation, although ostensibly a charitable enterprise, gives only one dollar out of ten to charity. It has also been disclosed that the Clintons have developed a penchant for traveling in high style, and use a substantial amount of donation money on private planes and penthouse suites. The rest of the loot seems to have been accumulated into a war chest that is at the behest of the Clintons and the Hillary presidential campaign.

This book consists not only of my stories of mistakes, rather it’s all our stories of mistakes and heart aches. It’s the plight of all of us who were rebelling, and kicking against the social messes we found ourselves in. Yet there are so many others who are not alive today, and I feel obligated in not allowing the lessons of their mistakes to lie in the grave with them. It was the United States Senator, Al Franken, who stated, “Mistakes are a part of being human. Precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.” I’m revealing all of those mistakes and more, sadly a lot of them are fatal. In an attempt to have these real life lessons obtained in blood, prevent the blood-shedding of so many others. These stories are ones that young people can understand and identify with. While at the same time empowering them, to make better decisions about their choice of friends, the proper use of their time and how one wrong move can be fatal. I guess the major question that we all have to ask ourselves at the end of the day would be: how could I and so many others have been prevented from becoming monsters? You be the judge. I now extend my hand to you, and personally invite you to take a journey with me into the heartlands of innocence to menacing, from a youngster to a monster, and the making of a predator. I will safely walk you down the deserted and darkened street corners which were once my world of crime, gang violence and senseless murders. It’s a different world unto itself, one which could only be observed up close by invitation only. Together we will learn the motivation behind hard-core gangsters, and explore the minds of cold-blooded murderers. You will discover the way they think about their own lives, and why they are so remorseless about the taking of another’s life. So, if you will, please journey with me as we discover together how the fight of our lives were wrapped up in our fathers.

The dispersion of the daimonic by means of impersonality has serious and destructive effects. In New York City, it is not regarded as strange that the anonymous human beings secluded in single-room occupancies are so often connected with violent crime and drug addiction. Not that the anonymous individual in New York is alone: he sees thousands of other people every day, and he knows all the famous personalities as they come, via TV, into his single room. He knows their names, their smiles, their idiosyncrasies; they bandy about in a “we're-all-friends-together” mood on the screen which invites him to join them and subtly assumes that he does join them. He knows them all. But he himself is never known. His smile is unseen; his idiosyncrasies are important to no-body; his name is unknown. He remains a foreigner pushed on and off the subway by tens of thousands of other anonymous foreigners. There is a deeply depersonalizing tragedy involved in this. The most severe punishment Yahweh could inflict on his people was to blot out their name. “Their names,” Yahweh proclaims, “shall be wiped out of the book of the living.” This anonymous man's never being known, this aloneness, is transformed into loneliness, which may then become daimonic possession. For his self-doubts—“I don't really exist since I can't affect anyone” —eat away at his innards; he lives and breathes and walks in a loneliness which is subtle and insidious. It is not surprising that he gets a gun and trains it on some passer-by—also anonymous to him. And it is not surprising that the young men in the streets, who are only anonymous digits in their society, should gang together in violent attacks to make sure their assertion is felt. Loneliness and its stepchild, alienation, can become forms of demon possession. Surrendering ourselves to the impersonal daimonic pushes us into an anonymity which is also impersonal; we serve nature’s gross purposes on the lowest common denominator, which often means with violence.

The attachment voids experienced by immigrant children are profound. The hardworking parents are focused on supporting their families economically and, unfamiliar with the language and customs of their new society, they are not able to orient their children with authority or confidence. Peers are often the only people available for such children to latch on to. Thrust into a peer-oriented culture, immigrant families may quickly disintegrate. The gulf between child and parent can widen to the point that becomes unbridgeable. Parents of these children lose their dignity, their power, and their lead. Peers ultimately replace parents and gangs increasingly replace families. Again, immigration or the necessary relocation of people displaced by war or economic misery is not the problem. Transplanted to peer-driven North American society, traditional cultures succumb. We fail our immigrants because of our own societal failure to preserve the child-parent relationship. In some parts of the country one still sees families, often from Asia, join together in multigenerational groups for outings. Parents, grandparents, and even frail great-grandparents mingle, laugh, and socialize with their children and their children's offspring. Sadly, one sees this only among relatively recent immigrants. As youth become incorporated into North American society, their connections with their elders fade. They distance themselves from their families. Their icons become the artificially created and hypersexualized figures mass-marketed by Hollywood and the U.S. music industry. They rapidly become alienated from the cultures that have sustained their ancestors for generation after generation. As we observe the rapid dissolution of immigrant families under the influence of the peer-oriented society, we witness, as if on fast-forward video, the cultural meltdown we ourselves have suffered in the past half century. It would be encouraging to believe that other parts of the world will successfully resist the trend toward peer orientation. The opposite is likely to be the case as the global economy exerts its corrosive influences on traditional cultures on other continents. Problems of teenage alienation are now widely encountered in countries that have most closely followed upon the American model — Britain, Australia, and Japan. We may predict similar patterns elsewhere to result from economic changes and massive population shifts. For example, stress-related disorders are proliferating among Russian children. According to a report in the New York Times, since the collapse of the Soviet Union a little over a decade ago, nearly a third of Russia's estimated 143 million people — about 45 million — have changed residences. Peer orientation threatens to become one of the least welcome of all American cultural exports.

She tilts her head to the side after taking a sip of her tea, studying us. “You know, I can’t get over how beautiful you two are together. One of those couples you love to follow on Instagram, you know, the really cute ones that are so sickening in love that you can’t get enough of them.” Way to drop the love bomb, Mom. Jesus. Thankfully Emory doesn’t show any kind of hatred for the term but instead says, “Like Jennifer Lopez and A-Rod?” “Yes,” my mom answers with excitement. “Oh my gosh, I’m obsessed with watching their stories. The little videos they do together, I just can’t get enough of them. J-Rod,” my mom says dreamily. “Oh gosh, what would your couple name be?” She thinks about it for a second. “Emox . . . or Knemory. Oh I love Knemory. Sounds so poetic.” “Knemory does have a nice ring to it,” I add. “I don’t know, what about Emorox?” “Ohhh, that sounds like a name that belongs in The Game of Thrones.” Taking on a more masculine voice, my mom says, “Look out, Jon, Emorox is coming over the hill, with her fire-spitting dragons, Knemory and George.” “George?” Emory laughs out loud, covering her mouth. “Why George?” “Well, look at the names they have in that show? They’re all exotic names you’ve never heard before—Cersei, Gregor, Arya—and then in waltzes good old Jon Snow. It’s only fair that the dragons have a lemon in the bunch as well.” “Uh, Jon is anything but a lemon, Mom,” I defend. “He was raised from the dead.” My mom’s mouth drops, pure and utter shock in her face. “Jon Snow dies?” Shit. Emory elbows my stomach. “Where the hell is your GOT etiquette? You never talk about the facts of the show until the air is cleared about how far someone is in watching. You are one of those people who spoils everything for someone just catching up to the trend.” *Ahem* “I mean . . . uh . . . he doesn’t die.” “You just said he is raised from the dead,” my mom says. Feeling guilty, I reply, “Well, at least he’s still alive, right?” She slumps against the cushion of the couch and mutters, “Unbelievable.” “I’m sorry, Mrs. Gentry, that your son is a barbarian and broke your GOT trust.” Pressing her hand against her forehead, my mom says, “You know, I blame myself. I thought I taught him a shred of decorum, I guess not.” “Don’t blame yourself,” Emory coos. “You did everything right. It comes down to the hooligans he hangs out with. There’s only so much you can control after they leave the nest.” “You’re absolutely right,” my mom agrees and leans across the couch to smack me in the back of the head. “Hey,” I complain while rubbing the sore spot. I look between the two women in my life and I say, “I don’t like this ganging up on me shit.” “You wanted us to get along, right?” Emory asks. “Well, I happen to like your mom, especially since she complimented my bosom.” “Ah, I see.” I continue to look between the two of them. “You’re okay with my mom catching you with your shirt off now, moved past the embarrassment?” Emory’s eyes narrow. “With that kind of attitude, it might be the very last time you see me topless.” My mom raises her fist to the air, as if to say, “Girl Power.” And then she says, “You tell him, Emory. Don’t let him push you around.” “I wasn’t pushing her around—” “You keep that beautiful bosom under lock and key, and if you have a temptation to show anyone, just flash me.” “Mom, do you realize how wrong that is?” “Want to go to the bathroom right now, Mrs. Gentry?” “I would be delighted to.” They both stand but before they can make a move, I pull on Emory’s hand, bringing her back down to my lap. “No way in hell is that happening. Jesus, what is wrong with you?

The Kharijis who had repudiated ʿAli after the battle of Siffin formed small bands, usually of between thirty and a hundred men. Each group was at once an outlaw gang and a fanatical religious sect. They were held together by the conviction that they were the only true Muslims and that their rebellions had profound religious justification. A group of Kharijis (called Najda) controlled a good part of Arabia – including Bahrain, Oman, Hadhramaut, and Yemen – before they were finally crushed. These Khariji bands were most likely formed by uprooted individuals looking for communal affiliation through sectarian movements. The second civil war, then, was a crisis for the cohesion of the Arab-Muslim elite, for its political authority, and for its concepts of true belief and communal leadership.

The children and young people upon whom came this outpouring of the Holy Spirit and through whom came these visions and revelations were members of the Adullam Rescue Mission in Yunnanfu, Yunnan Province, China. For the most part, these children had been beggars in the streets of the city. In some cases they were poor children with one or both parents dead and had been brought to the Home. There were also some prodigals who had run away from their homes in more distant parts of this or adjoining provinces. But from whatever source they came, these children, mostly boys ranging in ages from six to eighteen, had come to us without previous training in morals and without education. Begging is a sort of "gang" system in which stealing is a profitable part. The morals are what would be expected of a "gang" in a godless land. The Bible is carefully and daily taught in the Adullam Home, and the gospel is constantly preached. Since the children coming into the home have always been open to the teachings given, before the outpouring of the Holy Spirit recorded below, some of them were doubtless converted, while many had a very good knowledge of the main themes of the Bible. All who received the Holy Spirit knew enough to believe in one God and to trust in the blood of Christ for salvation. They also prayed for the fullness of the Holy Spirit. They sought Christ. We did not see any one seeking visions or any of the manifestations that were received day by day as all single heartedly prayed and praised the Lord Jesus. He alone was sought and magnified throughout all the weeks of the Spirit's outpouring. In this visitation from the Lord all were treated impartially. The oldest and the youngest, the first arrivals and the latest comers, the best and the worst, all sitting together around their common Father's table were alike treated to His heavenly bounties. This giving of the Promised Spirit was clearly a love gift of grace "apart from works" or personal merit. It was not something that was worked

Not a big intellectual, he’d nevertheless spent an entire summer reading an English translation of Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust’s À la recherché du temps perdu while knitting together the web of a major crack gang that spread over the Twin Cities. He couldn’t read French, but the book had made him want to learn the language; he’d just never had time.

Broadly speaking, there seem to be two methods for developing combat forces-for successfully cajoling or coercing collections of men into engaging in the violent, profane, sacrificial, uncertain, masochistic, and essentially absurd enterprise known as war. The two methods lead to two kinds of warfare, and the distinction can be an important one. Intuitively, it might seem that the easiest (and cheapest) method for recruiting combatants would be to...enlist those who revel in violence and routinely seek it our or who regularly employ it to enrich themselves, or both. We have in civilian life a name for such people-criminals...Violent conflicts in which people like that dominate can be called criminal warfare, a form in which combatants are induced to wreak violence primarily for the fun and material profit they derive from the experience. Criminal armies seem to arise from a couple of processes. Sometimes criminals-robbers, brigands, freebooters, highwaymen, hooligans, thugs, bandits, pirates, gangsters, outlaws-organize or join together in gangs or bands or mafias. When such organizations become big enough, they can look and act a lot like full-blown armies. Or criminal armies can be formed when a ruler needs combatants to prosecute a war and concludes that the employment or impressment of criminals and thugs is the most sensible and direct method for accomplishing this. In this case, criminals and thugs essentially act as mercenaries. It happens, however, that criminals and thugs tend to be undesirable warriors....To begin with, they are often difficult to control. They can be troublemakers: unruly, disobedient, and mutinous, often committing unauthorized crimes while on (or off) duty that can be detrimental or even destructive of military enterprise.... Most importantly, criminals can be disinclined to stand and fight when things become dangerous, and they often simply desert when whim and opportunity coincide. Ordinary crime, after all, preys on the weak-on little old ladies rather than on husky athletes-and criminals often make willing and able executioners of defenseless people. However, if the cops show up they are given to flight. The motto for the criminal, after all, is not a variation of "Semper fi," "All for one and one for all," "Duty, honor, country," "Banzai," or "Remember Pearl Harbor," but "Take the money and run."... These problems with the employment of criminals as combatants have historically led to efforts to recruit ordinary men as combatants-people who, unlike criminals and thugs, commit violence at no other time in their lives.... The result has been the development of disciplined warfare in which men primarily inflict violence not for fun and profit but because their training and indoctrination have instilled in them a need to follow orders; to observe a carefully contrived and tendentious code of honer; to seek glory and reputation in combat; to love, honor, or fear their officers; to believe in a cause; to fear the shame, humiliation, or costs of surrender; or, in particular, to be loyal to, and to deserve the loyalty of, their fellow combatants.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, the definition of the word ‘rebellion’ is ‘an act or a show of defiance toward an authority or established convention. Extensions of the expression include to fly in the face of danger and to fly in the face of providence, both of which carry a sense of reckless or impetuous disregard for safety.’ Because we did not grow up with our fathers, we became reckless with our lives and disregarded the lives of others as well. Therefore, the problem is not the gangs, so to speak; rather, it’s the conditions that create them. It is the dismantling of our homes and marriages that create the right conditions for gangs to flourish. If homes could be put back together or prevented from falling apart, then these symptoms could be, root cause eradicated.

Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Eric Holder, and Lois Lerner are all part of this crime organization, but so are hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, the envious, the resentful, the hateful, the entitled. These are the people who still have the Obama-Biden signs on their vehicles and are now eagerly anticipating Hillary. Together, they are “the criminals next door.

Hillary is fortunate, not merely in her career path, but also in being the surprise recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars that have been rained on her and her husband both directly and through the Clinton Foundation. The Clinton Foundation has raised more than $2 billion in contributions. A substantial portion of that came from foreign governments. Some sixteen nations together have given $130 million. In addition, through speeches and consulting fees, more than $100 million has ended up in the pockets of the Clintons themselves. The foundation, although ostensibly a charitable enterprise, gives only one dollar out of ten to charity. It has also been disclosed that the Clintons have developed a penchant for traveling in high style, and use a substantial amount of donation money on private planes and penthouse suites. The rest of the loot seems to have been accumulated into a war chest that is at the behest of the Clintons and the Hillary presidential campaign. How

Your sons born from your mouth are looking up at you With their hands joined together, entreating: “With your wonderful voice, Explain all this as it really is!”   As many gods and dragons As there are sands in the River Ganges, And the eighty thousand Bodhisattvas Who are seeking Buddhahood, And the wheel-turning-holy-kings Of billions of worlds Are joining their hands together respectfully, Wishing to hear the Perfect Way.

What really matters is that never before in history has America had a con artist as its chief executive and commander in chief. And we may be getting ready to anoint another in immediate succession. One is bad enough; two con artists in a row may be our undoing. These con artists are, just like their Boston counterparts, part of a crime network. This crime network is the Democratic Party, and its leaders are the progressives. For decades now the progressives have assailed theft in America, blaming it on the greedy capitalists. They have claimed a virtual monopoly on political virtue, declaring themselves the champions of justice and equality. Not only is that wrong, but the truth is the very opposite. The progressives are the real thieves, masquerading as opponents of theft. They are the criminals posing as the Justice Department. And they have, for the past seven years, actually controlled the Justice Department, turning it into an accessory of their crimes and an agency for going after whistle-blowers and crime fighters. Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Eric Holder, and Lois Lerner are all part of this crime organization, but so are hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, the envious, the resentful, the hateful, the entitled. These are the people who still have the Obama-Biden signs on their vehicles and are now eagerly anticipating Hillary. Together, they are “the criminals next door.

Ashima feels lonely suddenly, horribly, permanently alone, and briefly, turned away from the mirror, she sobs for her husband. She feels overwhelmed by the thought of the move she is about to make, to the city that was once home and is now in its own way foreign. She feels both impatience and indifference for all the days she still must live, for something tells her she will not go quickly as her husband did. For thirty-three years she missed her life in India. Now she will miss her job at the library, the women with whom she's worked. She will miss throwing parties. She will miss living with her daughter, the surprising companionship they have formed, going into Cambridge together to see old movies at the Brattle, teaching her to cook the food Sonia had complained of eating as a child. She will miss the opportunity to drive, as she sometimes does on her way home from the library, to the university, past the engineering building where her husband once worked. She will miss the country in which she had grown to know and love her husband. Though his ashes have been scattered into the Ganges, it is here, in this house and in this town, that he will continue to dwell in her mind.

His father in law, who was as old as the century, had just retired and was living in a country house in Gelderland. He would be coming by car. Saskia called and suggested that he pick them up--then they could get coffee together first. A typical country dweller, he replied that he wouldn't be caught dead in Amsterdam; what did they think, that he wanted to be attacked by a gang of hippie Provos? He laughed as he said it, but he didn't come, though God knows he'd faced worse dangers in his life.

Here he met Judith Tholon, the woman who was to become the love of his life, but who was married to the keeper of the cemetery. [...] After closing the heavy wrought-iron gates at night, they would wander together amidst the graves under the moonlight.

Around the same time Abdul Khader’s men were mourning their leader, another assault was being planned on a nearby Arab village. About 150 men of the rightist dissident militia groups, the Irgun and Stern Gang, joined together on the morning of April 9 to attack the last Arab village not yet under Jewish control. The men began the assault with high hopes; it was the first time they had ever participated in a formal military operation. Their target was an important one, for if the village of Deir Yassin were taken, the heights above the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem Highway would firmly be in Jewish hands, securing the Holy City.

For the first time, the Haganah and its right-wing counterparts, the Irgun and Stern Gang, joined together. They blew open a British detention camp, letting out two hundred illegal immigrants. They sabotaged the railroad in Palestine and blew up a British coast guard vessel. The largest operation came on the night of June 17, 1946, when the Haganah’s strike force—the Palmach—simultaneously blew up eleven bridges connecting Palestine and the surrounding territories. The Jews hoped that these measures would convince the British to allow more refugees in.

Another creak of the door, and there was Ruby. He beckoned her over. “Come on, Rubes, group hug, room for another small one.” She smiled her brightest smile, and came over, flung her arms around all three of us, and there we stayed, four broken people who hadn’t realised they were broken, not until they were put back together again. I hugged Ruby and Mia, and Darren hugged all of us. I felt safer than I’d felt in years. More complete than I’d felt in years.

A marketing hook, as opposed to a logline, is anything that entices an audience into a theater. In Transformers, Toy Story, and G.I. Joe, the marketing hooks were the toys themselves. In Spider-Man and Iron Man, the marketing hooks were the familiarity many moviegoers would have with the comic books. The marketing hook for West Side Story could be “A modern day Romeo and Juliet set among the gangs of New York.” Sometimes a marketing hook puts together two successful elements, so if you did a film about a predatory lion in Africa that kills people, you might say it’s “Jaws meets Out of Africa.

eggs and curried chicken salad and double fudge brownies. That was all she was good at: eating. In the summer the Castles, the Alistairs, and the Randolphs all went to the beach together. When they were younger, they would play flashlight tag, light a bonfire, and sing Beatles songs, with Mr. Randolph playing the guitar and Penny’s voice floating above everyone else’s. But at some point Demeter had stopped feeling comfortable in a bathing suit. She wore shorts and oversized T-shirts to the beach, and she wouldn’t go in the water, wouldn’t walk with Penny to look for shells, wouldn’t throw the Frisbee with Hobby and Jake. The other three kids always tried to include Demeter, which was more humiliating, somehow, than if they’d just ignored her. They were earnest in their pursuit of her attention, but Demeter suspected this was their parents’ doing. Mr. Randolph might have offered Jake a twenty-dollar bribe to be nice to Demeter because Al Castle was an old friend. Hobby and Penny were nice to her because they felt sorry for her. Or maybe Hobby and Penny and Jake all had a bet going about who would be the one to break through Demeter’s Teflon shield. She was a game to them. In the fall there were football parties at the Alistairs’ house, during which the adults and Hobby and Jake watched the Patriots, Penny listened to music on her headphones, and Demeter dug into Zoe Alistair’s white chicken chili and topped it with a double spoonful of sour cream. In the winter there were weekends at Stowe. Al and Lynne Castle owned a condo near the mountain, and Demeter had learned to ski as a child. According to her parents, she used to careen down the black-diamond trails without a moment’s hesitation. But by the time they went to Vermont with the Alistairs and the Randolphs, Demeter refused to get on skis at all. She sat in the lodge and drank hot chocolate until the rest of the gang came clomping in after their runs, rosy-cheeked and winded. And then the ski weekends, at least, had stopped happening, because Hobby had basketball and Penny and Jake were in the school musical, which meant rehearsals night and day. Demeter thought back to all those springs, summers, falls, and winters with Hobby and Penny and Jake, and she wondered how her parents could have put her through such exquisite torture. Hobby and Penny and Jake were all exceptional children, while Demeter was seventy pounds overweight, which sank her self-esteem, which led to her getting mediocre grades when she was smart enough for A’s and killed her chances of landing the part of Rizzo in Grease, even though she was a gifted actress. Hobby was in a coma. Her mother was on the phone. She kept

Kids were being sent away simply for being alive in a place where war had been declared against us. And the propaganda, the rationalizing of how much we needed to be destroyed, we the generation called super-predators, was promoted by people who were Republican and Democrat, and, save for a few, Black as well as white. It was such convenient reasoning: the hoisting of responsibility on the narrow, non-voting shoulders (and after too many busts, never-voting shoulders) of 13 year olds, 14, 15 and 16 year olds, thereby absolving grown people of any responsibility themselves. As soon as you said drugs, as soon as you said gangs, you didn’t have to talk about what it meant to throw a bunch of adolescents together in a community with no resources, no outlets, no art classes, no mentorship, no love but from their families who were being harmed, cut daily, themselves.

The fat, puffy, wattle-faced man of forty-five who has turned asexual is the greatest monument to futility that America has created. He’s a nymphomaniac of energy accomplishing nothing. He’s an hallucination of the Paleolithic man. He’s a statistical bundle of fat and jangled nerves for the insurance man to convert into a frightening thesis. He sows the land with prosperous, restless, empty-headed, idle-handed widows who gang together in ghoulish sororities where politics and diabetes go hand in hand.

From up here, you couldn't see that people were starving. Couldn't see the ancient wall with the armed sentries stationed along it. Couldn't see the mothers' hands reaching, begging for a scrap of something to give their children as armored trucks rolled through the gate with just enough food to keep most of their families alive and hungry. From here, it was almost like quivering-chinned teens weren't probing for a place to sneak their younger siblings across, just hoping not to be gunned down or sent back. Like big men with knives and a little scraped-together power weren't taking more than their fair share, ganging up on the already downtrodden until they were forced to do something desperate and dangerous just to survive.

Christopher walked back home with Albert padding calmly beside him. For some reason the dog seemed improved after meeting Beatrix Hathaway. As Christopher gave him a damning glance, Albert looked up at him with a toothy grin, his tongue lolling. “Idiot,” Christopher muttered, although he wasn’t certain if the word was directed at his dog or himself. He felt troubled and guilty. He knew he’d behaved like an ass to Beatrix Hathaway. She had tried to be friendly, and he had been cold and condescending. He hadn’t meant to be offensive. It was just that he was nearly mad with longing for Prudence, for the sweet, artless voice that had saved his sanity. Every word of every letter she’d sent him still resonated through his soul. “I’ve done a great deal of walking lately. I seem to think better outdoors…” And when Christopher had set out to find Albert, and found himself walking through the forest, a mad idea had taken hold of him…that she was nearby, and fate would bring them together that quickly, that simply. But instead of finding the woman he had dreamed of, craved, needed for so long, he had found Beatrix Hathaway. It wasn’t that he disliked her. Beatrix was an odd creature, but fairly engaging, and far more attractive than he had remembered. In fact, she had become a beauty in his absence, her gangly coltish shape now curved and graceful… Christopher shook his head impatiently, trying to redirect his thoughts. But the image of Beatrix Hathaway remained. A lovely oval face, a gently erotic mouth, and haunting blue eyes, a blue so rich and deep it seemed to contain hints of purple. And that silky dark hair, pinned up haphazardly, with teasing locks slipping free. Christ, it had been too long since he’d had a woman. He was randy as the devil, and lonely, and filled with equal measures of grief and anger. He had so many unfulfilled needs, and he didn’t begin to know how to address any of them. But finding Prudence seemed like a good start.

With that, I follow my little chem partner out of the room and down the hall. “Stop following me,” she snaps, looking over her shoulder to check how many people are watching us walk down the hall together. As if I’m el diablo himself. “Wear long sleeves on Saturday night,” I tell her, knowing full well she’s reaching the end of her sanity rope. I usually don’t try to get under the skin of white chicks, but this one is fun to rattle. This one, the most popular and coveted one of all, actually cares. “It gets pretty cold on the back of my motorcycle.” “Listen, Alex,” she says, whipping herself around and tossing that sun-kissed hair over her shoulder. She faces me with clear eyes made of ice. “I don’t date guys in gangs, and I don’t use drugs.” “I don’t date guys in gangs, either,” I say, stepping closer to her. “And I’m no user.” “Yeah, right. I’m surprised you’re not in rehab or juvie boot camp.” “You think you know me?” “I know enough.” She folds her arms across her chest, but then looks down as if she realizes her stance makes her chichis stand out, and drops her hands to her sides. I’m doing my best not to focus on those chichis as I take a step forward. “Did you report me to Aguirre?” She takes a step back. “What if I did?” “Mujer, you’re afraid of me.” It’s not a question. I just want to hear from her own lips what her reason is. “Most people at this school are scared that if they look at you wrong, you’ll gun them down.” “Then my gun should be smokin’ by now, shouldn’t it? Why aren’t you runnin’ away from the badass Mexicano, huh?” “Give me half a chance, I will.” I’ve had enough of dancing around this little bitch. It’s time to fluff up those feathers to make sure I end up with the upper hand. I close the distance between us and whisper in her ear, “Face the facts. Your life is too perfect. You probably lie awake at night, fantasizing about spicin’ up all that lily whiteness you live in.” But damn it, I get a whiff of vanilla from her perfume or lotion. It reminds me of cookies. I love cookies, so this is not good at all. “Gettin’ near the fire, chica, doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get burned.

The Bechuanan know not the story of the Zungu of old. Remember him, my people; he caught a lion’s whelp and thought that, if he fed it with the milk of his cows, he would in due course possess a useful mastiff to help him in hunting valuable specimens of wild beats. The cub grew up apparently tame and meek, just like an ordinary domestic puppy; but one day Zungu came home and found, what? It had eaten his children, chewed up two of his wives and, in destroying it, he himself narrowly escaped being mauled. So, if Tauana and his gang of brigands imagine that they shall have rain and plenty under the protection of these marauding wizards from the sea, they will gather some sense before long. ‘Shaka served us just as treacherously. Where is Shaka’s dynasty now? Extinguished, by the very Boers who poisoned my wives and are pursuing us today. The Bechuana are fools to think that these unnatural Kiwas (white men) will return their so-called friendship with honest friendship. Together they are laughing at my misery. Let them rejoice; they need all the laughter they can have today for when their deliverers begin to dose them with the same bitter medicine they prepared for me; when the Kiwas rob them of their cattle, their children and their lands, they will weep their eyes out of their sockets and get left with only their empty throats to squeal in vain for mercy. ‘They will despoil them of the very lands they have rendered unsafe for us; they will entice the Bechuana youths to war and the chase, only to use them as pack-oxen; yea, they will refuse to share with them the spoils of victory. ‘They will turn Becuana women into beasts of burden to drag their loaded wagons to their granaries, while their own bullocks are fattening on their hillside and pining for exercise. They will use the whiplash on the bare skins of women to accelerate their paces and quicken their activities: they shall take Bechuana women to wife and, with them, bread a race of half man and half goblin, and they will deny them their legitimate lobolo. With their cries unheeded, these Bechuana will waste away in helpless fury till the gnome of offspring of such miscegenation rise up against their cruel sires; by that time their mucus will blend with their tears past their chins down to their heels. Then shall come our turn to laugh. [178 – 189]

Angelina, I adore you...," crooned Louis. Then the New Orleans Gang picked up the beat and King Louis sang, "I eat antipasto twice, just because she is so nice, Angelina..." Fresh pasta time. Angelina cracked three eggs into the center of a mound of 00 flour, in time to the music, and began teasing the flour into the sticky center. With a hand-cranked pasta maker, she rolled out the dough into long, silky-thin sheets, laid them out until they covered the entire table, then used a 'mezza luna' to carefully slice wide strips of pasta for a new dish she wanted to try that she called Lasagna Provencal, a combination of Italian and French cheeses, Roma and sun-dried tomatoes, Herbes de Provence, and fresh basil. It was a recipe for which she had very high hopes. Angelina started assembling her lasagna. She mixed creamy Neufchatel, ricotta, and a sharp, grated Parmigiano-Reggiano in with a whole egg to bind it together. She layered fresh pasta sheets in a lasagna dish, coated them with the cheesy mixture, ripped in some fresh basil and oregano and sun-dried tomatoes. She worked quickly, but with iron concentration. "I'm-a just a gigolo, everywhere I go...," sang King Louie. For the second layer, she used more pasta topped with Gruyere and herbed Boursin cheese. The third layer was the same as the first. For the fourth layer, she used the rest of the Boursin and dollops of creme fraiche, then ladled the thick, rich tomato sauce from the stove on top and finished it with a sprinkling of shredded Gruyere. She set it aside for baking later and felt a flush of craftswomanly pride in the way it had all come together.

Thinking back, I guess one of the reasons our gang all hung out together was that none of our families was exactly 'normal'.

We are fundamentally social creatures - our brains are wired to foster working and playing together. Trauma devastates the social-engagement system and interferes with cooperation, nurturing, and the ability to function as a productive member of the clan... People who feel safe and meaningfully connected with others have little reason to squander their lives doing drugs or staring numbly at television; they don't feel compelled to stuff themselves with carbohydrates or assault their fellow human beings. However, if nothing they do seems to make a difference, they feel trapped and become susceptible to the lure of pills, gang leaders, extremist religions, or violent political movements - anybody and anything that promises relief.

What we are saying is that every conspiracy regards itself as an affinity group — men and women who share the same goals and work together well. When you and I do it, it is just an affinity group. When that gang over there does it, it is a damnable conspiracy.

Looking back, I think that was the last time we were all together like that. Relaxed, friends, still a gang, before things started to splinter and crack.

Racial scapegoating about “illegals,” drugs, gangs, and riots undermines public support for working together. Our research showed that color-blind approaches that ignored racism didn’t beat the scapegoating zero-sum story; we had to be honest about racism’s role in dividing us in order to call people to their higher ideals.

Wherever caste lives, wherever class power exists, whether it be on the Thames or on the Seine, whether on the Ganges or on the Danube, there the South has an ally.… Never until we welcome the Negro, the foreigner, all races as equals, and melted together in a common nationality, hurl them all at despotism, will the North deserve triumph or earn it at the hands of a just God.

The town is attracting a whole load of yobs who just want to roam around picking fights and getting into trouble. I’m not surprised Russell’s dad was really worried about him being out late.’ ‘Russell can look after himself, Dad. He’s not some sad little wimp.’ ‘He could be Mr Muscles Macho Man. It wouldn’t make any difference if a whole gang started in on him.’ ‘You’re getting totally paranoid, Dad.’ ‘Maybe. I don’t know. But how about if you and Russell met up after school and then he went back home around nine?’ ‘Dad! We’re not Eggs’s age!’ ‘I know, I know – but you’re as precious to me as Eggs and I don’t need another night like Thursday. Look, you’re still supposed to be in the doghouse for that. I’ll let you see Russell, but I’m going to stick to this nine o’clock curfew for the time being. I think that’s more than fair.’ ‘I don’t!’ ‘Well it gets dark by nine – so you couldn’t do any sketching then, could you?’ says Dad, smiling. I smile back weakly. I don’t know who’s bluffing who. But at least I can see Russell – even if it’s only in daylight! I go up to my bedroom and read his letter again. Several times more. Then I go downstairs and ring Nadine and tell her that it’s all OK and that Russell walked round and round the town looking for me, practically knocking at every house door. Nadine isn’t quite as impressed as I’d hoped. She’s got her Claudie album playing full blast (her family are obviously out) and she’s singing along instead of concentrating fully. I need to ask her something. ‘Nadine, do you really think Russell looks seriously shifty?’ Nadine herself sounds as if she’s doing some serious shifting the other end of the phone. ‘No, no, Ellie, not at all. I was just, you know, saying stuff to comfort you. I don’t think his eyes are too close together either. I think it was just his intense expression when he was sketching you.

...but just four years later, in June 1977, I was to find a pair of Buff-collared Nightjars on territory in the lower canyon... By the time that happened, the Tuscon Five would be only a memory. Ironically, it was I, the transient, who was the only one to wind up living in Tuscon later. The other four scattered to the four different states, and after that May of 1973, never again would all five of us get together. But the brief life span of our little gang was a golden time - a time of discovery and wonder, a time when so many of the birds were still elusive and mysterious to us, a time that would never come again.

Some short sellers, feeling the pressure, will begin to gang up together to attack a company—through the media, online investor forums, and, increasingly, on Twitter—all as part of an effort to change the narrative of a company, to highlight the negatives around its business or reveal a failing that normal investors may not recognize. Essentially, they’re trying to scare investors and drive a targeted stock price down.

hated to admit it, but she was right. She’d risked her job standing by me last time, and if nothing else, I prided myself on paying my debts. I usually avoided conflict, but there was something about my family that fired me up every time. Though if I was back in the sleuthing game, I knew I couldn’t do it alone. Guess it was time to go next door and beg forgiveness so we could get the gang back together.

I have the power to heal myself. You have the power to heal yourself. Together we have the power to heal the world.

It is a strong proof of the antiquity of this belief, and of these practices, to find them at the same time among men on the shores of the Mediterranean and among those of the peninsula of India. Assuredly the Greeks did not borrow this religion from the Hindus, nor the Hindus from the Greeks. But the Greeks, the Italians, and the Hindus belonged to the same race; their ancestors, in a very distant past, lived together in Central Asia. There this creed originated and these rites were established. The religion of the sacred fire dates, therefore, from the distant and dim epoch when there were yet no Greeks, no Italians, no Hindus; when there were only Aryas. When the tribes separated they carried this worship with them, some to the banks of the Ganges, others to the shores of the Mediterranean. Later, when these tribes had no intercourse with each other, some adored Brahma, others Zeus, and still others Janus; each group chose its own gods; but all preserved, as an ancient legacy, the first religion which they had known and practiced in the common cradle of their race.

I had wanted a tribe, a girl gang, a thing to which to belong, as if that association would magically make me a more secure person. Alas. But the nice thing about taking down your idols is that you realize that no one actually has it figured out. Everyone is a hot mess, even, perhaps especially, the people who seem to have it all together.

Funny thing about words. Regarded individually or encountered in newspapers or books (written by other people), they are as lovely and blameless as talcum-sweet babies. String them together into a sentence of your own, however, and these cooing infants become a savage gang straight out of Lord of the Flies.

Before she could open her camera, she noticed a notification and swiped to open it. Elle had tagged her in a photo on Instagram. She frowned because she wasn’t in the photo. Elle had snapped a picture selfie-style of her, Margot, Darcy, and Brendon seated around the coffee table, where Monopoly was spread out. Annie tapped the photo and pressed her lips together, her eyes watering viciously. Elle had tagged her on the empty cushion beside Brendon. His arms were resting casually on his knees and his smile was the brightest thing in the photo. She could hear his throaty chuckle when she shut her eyes, knew exactly how his lips felt curving against her mouth in that same grin. The caption read, The gang’s all here minus @anniekyriakos. We miss you!

Here is my theory about progressivism: it is a “Relationship Built on Self Interest.”​ It is exactly what Alinsky says it is: a way for people who want power to organize.​ It brings them together around the oldest human pleasure other than sex: ganging up on your enemies.​ It lets them rationalize this ruthless, carnivorous activity as a philanthropic cause.​ But the real attraction is the thrill of power and victory—sometimes with a little money thrown in.

I would never call myself a “survivor.” I’m just—I’m not one of these trauma people. OM: What’s a trauma person? FEW: Someone who can’t stop saying the word “trauma.” Trauma people are almost as unbearable to me as Trump people. If you try suggesting that they let go of their suffering, their victimhood, they act retraumatized. It’s like, yes, what happened to you is shitty, I’m not denying that, but why do you keep rolling around in your own shit? If they stopped doing that for two seconds and got over themselves, even a little, they might actually become who they were meant to be. “Whoa,” Greta said. “Hello.” OM: So, suppose someone has been gang-raped at gunpoint and can’t seem to pull themselves together, stop drinking, return to work, or find meaning in their lives, would you tell them to just “get over themselves”? FEW: Well, there is a hierarchy, isn’t there? OM: I don’t think so. FEW: If you didn’t think there was, you wouldn’t have used that example. You would have said, “Suppose someone has been molested by a neighbor” or “neglected by their mother” or “bullied all their lives.” But there is a hierarchy. Trauma people don’t like to hear that. To them, all trauma matters. OM: Where would you place your trauma on the hierarchy? FEW: All I’m saying is that trauma doesn’t get you a lifelong get-out-of-jail-free card. It also doesn’t necessarily confer wisdom, or the right to pontificate, which I realize I’m doing right now. OM: Well. I’m willing to concede that life handles some people more roughly than it does others, and that you do have a choice in how you deal with it. You can decide what you want to do with it, but not until after you address it, which—I’m sorry to say—involves talking about it, for as long as it takes, identifying fears and triggers— FEW: Triggers. God. This is why I’m not crazy about therapy. I really hate the language.

Respect and loyalty go together and gang members, like the formal military, hoplites, Yanomamo warriors, and chimpanzees on patrol, will risk and give their lives for one another.

In high summer males can be very common. They sit around on flowers drinking nectar. They prefer flowers with big sturdy heads such as thistles and natweeds and gangs of males can often be seen clustered together, reminiscent of a group of men propping up the bar in a pub.

How strong must love be to persist in the face of a powerful evil that has named it hate? How resolute must love be when its enemy uses the mass media to convince the world that it is hate? How courageous must love be to raise its banner and sound its trumpets in an age that would purge it—as hate. Of this we can be sure: at some point in the distant past, Whites were a single tribe, a single people. They were alone against a hostile world, a frosty star in the depths of an ancient darkness, ringed by the ferocity of the natural world, besieged by alien tribes and animal predators. But they were a people, together, united, and possessed by an indomitable spirit. Before us, the world’s darkness receded. Its nightmares withered in the light of our coming. Its monsters fled for the darkling holes that brooded in the shadows. We built civilization and in our victory over that which sought victory over us, we fell from grace. In our triumph, we turned to folly. We renounced our brotherhood and rejected our unity. As ungrateful children of our ancient sires, we turned to separate paths, following petty rulers who put their insignificant lives before the fundamental importance of our people, and in so doing we spilled our brothers’ blood. The darkness that we conquered is once again crawling from its thorny lairs, creeping across the world under many fair-seeming guises, now as cancers upon our civilization, now forming gangs and armies, now devouring us in our disunion. It was a song that called us from the darkness long ago, and once again that mysterious music is beckoning. We will reunite as a single people, a great ring that will circle the globe for our wellbeing, or we will perish, and the Western Light of the world will go with us. These people are my people, my nation, and even as I type, even as I ponder how today decides tomorrow a new spirit rises within us, a spirit that refuses to yield to those who seek our undoing. I have always loved our people, their heroism, their genius, their spirit, and though my heart is filled with concern for them, it sings now, it sings with the coming of the dawn. These are my people, and I love them. I was born for this; it is my destiny.

- Today we hire a Paki, this was it, she made her bets, a huge Pakistani guy will beat her, rob her and rape her, tonight, Tommy!! Fu…ing bitch she is going to die now!! – Ready made (premeditated) or instant: plans. (Solicitation of murder for hire.) Organized crimes. Mafia. Gang. Mob. “Coincidence.” (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) International. Juicy ideas and plans. Murder. Revealed. Slipped out. Family. Business. Drugs. Past. Nazi. Emotional. Reaction. True. Rare. Impression. Eyes. Blazing. Evil. No Mask. - No way Martina, calm down Lil Kim! That's out of question. Are you out of your mind? - Nononono, f..k you too why do you defending her?! - What, Martina!?!? What are you talking about?! And stop moving, stay still!! Hold your hand up! - We hire a paki! - No we don’t! Stop moving your arm!! Let me stop the bleeding! Martina I am not defending her, she just got me lynched for no reason with a lie, I am pretty mad at her, trust me, I’m in pain. - So we hire a paki! - No we don’t!! - So I hire a paki! I don’t need your money! F..k her! I hire two pakistani guys!! She gets it now, Tommy! - Nooo! - What no? F..k you too, Tommy!!! I hire a paki or two! - What?! No, you don’t do shit! Stop!! Stop calling me Tommy! Who the f..k told you to call me the way my mother called me when I was a kid and you weren’t born yet? - Pakis will rape her and rob her and beat her up!! - Jesus Christ, you are crazy!! Get back to Earth! Right now! Martina!! Maybe Sabrina is a f…g nasty criminal, a bad person but she deserves a lawyer she can stick up in her butt, she is going to rot in jail this time finally or she can pay us, a lot! - No no no this was it, it was enough of her, no more court house, f…g joke!!! – There was lethal rage in her eyes. I felt like if I convince her to not hire a Pakistani or two to kill Sabrina then she will kill me on the spot instead just to calm her rage. It was so absurd. - Don’t you move your f…g hand! I am not telling you again to calm the f..k down and stop moving around. And listen to me. I am not telling you again to forget about hiring Pakistanis, you idiot!! Are you this f…g stupid? She will be held accountable for her crimes, Martina, soon, on court. Finally. - No court, this was it, she is done!! - No Martina, we can’t do that, we are not criminals, Martina to hire to kill!! “Were you this f…g stupid before” we got together?! Forget the Paki hitmans!! - I know a lot of Pakistanis don’t you worry about that. – She almost had cut open her veins above her wrist and she began to realize it but she was still raging. - Jesus Christ. What the f..k are you talking about? Get back to reality young lady before I smack you once really to save your f…g life from yourself! - You are defending her! - No! F..k her! You are just f….g stupid Martina!! You listen to me before I smack you instead of three of your weak parents and your big brother. The cops catch the Pakistani in this tiny town so quickly you won’t have time to blink, you go down with him. Think. Use your f…g head finally. Do you really want to revenge something? Think then. Before you get yourself killed or jailed you idiot and me as well. Time for you to listen to me finally in Europe, young lady after an entire f…g year of trouble!!

Nobody tells you when you graduate college that getting the gang back together is like extracting troops from a war zone

progressivism: it is a “Relationship Built on Self Interest.”​ It is exactly what Alinsky says it is: a way for people who want power to organize.​ It brings them together around the oldest human pleasure other than sex: ganging up on your enemies.​ It lets them rationalize this ruthless, carnivorous activity as a philanthropic cause.​ But the real attraction is the thrill of power and victory—sometimes with a little money thrown in.

Lenox had been to the Rookery on cases. It was no place to be caught even in broad daylight: narrow streets with tenements on either side; a foul smell mixed with sulfurous coal of people who couldn’t wash and lived close together; prostitutes in threadbare dresses laughing ostentatiously and offering their business, while they sipped penny pints of gin; gangs of children roaming here and there, picking pockets

Morty: Hey, gang, come on! Look it, just `cause we're losing doesn't mean it's all over. Phil: Cut the crap, Morty. I mean, the Mohawks have beaten us the last twelve years, they're gonna beat us again. Tripper: That's just the attitude we don't need. Sure, Mohawk has beaten us twelve years in a row. Sure, they're terrific athletes. They've got the best equipment that money can buy. Hell, every team they're sending over here has their own personal masseuse, not masseur, masseuse. But it doesn't matter. Do you know that every Mohawk competitor has an electrocardiogram, blood and urine tests every 48 hours to see if there's any change in his physical condition? Do you know that they use the most sophisticated training methods from the Soviet Union, East and West Germany, and the newest Olympic power Trinidad-Tobago? But it doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER. I tell you, IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER! IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER! IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER! The group: IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER! IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER... Tripper: And even, and even if we win, if we win, HAH! Even if we win! Even if we play so far over our heads that our noses bleed for a week to ten days. Even if God in Heaven above comes down and points his hand at our side of the field. Even if every man, woman and child held hands together and prayed for us to win, it just wouldn't matter, because all the really good looking girls would still go out with the guys from Mohawk cause they've got all the money! It just doesn't matter if we win or we lose. IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER!

He later remarked at the end of his Royal Institution lecture-demonstration in May 1901 that ''It was when I came on this mute witness of life and saw an all-pervading beauty that binds together all things - it was then that for the first time I understood the message proclaimed on the banks of the Ganges thirty years ago - 'they who behold the One, in all the changing manifoldness of the universe, unto them belongs eternal truth, unto none else, unto none else.' Such statements caused as much of a stir as did his painstaking results. Geddes described Bose's interaction with Sir Michael Foster, a veteran Cambridge physiologist, who asked why the Indian showed him a graph with the 'curve os muscle response' to electrical stimulation, something he already knew about. Delighted, Bose replied, 'Pardon me; it is the response of metallic tin.

their Big Chief, Bo Dollis, would marshal them all together and they would start off down Dryades, with Chief Bo chanting one of the Indian songs accompanied by drums and tambourines, and the whole gang shouting back the antiphonal response.