The City of the Angels
L.A. Gangs: Nine Miles and Spreading.
So what fueled this witches brew? Drugs? The War on Drugs? Illegal immigration? The destruction of the black family? Welfare? All of the above? (Hat tip: ED)
Update: The Strategy Page observes the similarity between street gangsterism and radical Islamism as memes, that is to say, as evolving and action-inspiring ideas.
The gang specialists had experienced a lot of Crips and Bloods (the two largest "national" street gangs) "wannabes" showing up in the last few years These are usually guys walking around pretending, using gang signs, and so on. Often kids from good neighborhoods get involved, because they want to seem tough. A lot of mouth, but no action. But in some other cities, groups like these have sometimes become more and more violent, as they compete for prestige. And occasionally the real Crips or Bloods show up and take over the operation, often with some casualties among the less enthusiastic wannabees.
The counter-terrorism experts are noting a similar phenomenon at work with Islamic radicals. Think about most of the frustrated, and unsuccessful, Islamic terror attacks here and in other countries. A lot of them were by guys who just started out huffing and puffing. But this led some to get more radical, and maybe hatch a plot. But because they lacked training or skills, the law busts most of them pretty quickly. Of course since there are a lot of wannabees out there, some groups may actually carry out an effective attack, by luck as much as by skill, such as the London bombers. So far, apparently, al Qaeda has never actually managed to co-opt a wannabee group, aside from those that were already independent terrorist movements before September 11, 2001, like the Algerian Islamic terrorists.
posted by wretchardthecat at 12/17/2007 10:06:00 AM
21 Comments:
Dare I draw a very politically incorrect comparison to the popularity of gangsta rap and how easily Islam's violent message appears to spread within prison communities?
Both glamorize victimization of the weak, especially women. Both extol violence as a routine problem-solving tool. Both believe in expansion and subjugation by force. Both are extremely racist and misogynistic. Both adopt criminal tactics whenever it suits their goals. Both have no problem with the sacrifice of underlings in the advancement of their respective agendas. The numerous parallels are more than coincidental. Nor is it any mystery that during incarceration Islam subsequently recruits so many previous gang members. There is significant overlap in their motivational and objective templates. Such conversions must involve the merest re-labeling of goals and methods.
One could argue with zenster on the matter of sex & drugs (street gangs vs religious fundies)--if only the troops fighting the jihadists didn't routinely find lairs-full of dope paraphernalia & porn--and if the Taliban wasn't a gigantic heroin gang.
Wretchard -- perhaps you've seen EdDriscoll.com/weblog.php links to the criminality in Oakland? It covers the same ground:
Complete breakdown of the nuclear family -- fathers involved at all.
Children passed around to various elderly relatives as mothers are in jail or on the streets.
Violence and domination get rewarded with money, and women (love and sex).
This last is instructive. Rappers constantly call women various names. They are often taken to task for that. Yet they say they only describe the actions they see in their own neighborhoods.
The illegitimacy rate for Black Women in 2006 nationwide (all births) was 70%, among urban black women it was 90%. It is not uncommon to see women in urban neighborhoods with three kids by three different fathers.
The breakdown of the nuclear family, celebrated by feminists and leftists everywhere, has resulted in predictable rule of the streets by gangs headed by the hardest of hard thugs, with a constant struggle to achieve sex and money by ... well by killing their rivals. A society built on no rules but domination ends up extremely violent.
And as a practical matter African-American leaders AND the community will defend this violent society and the gangsters. Consistently voting down policing measures, and protesting any shooting at all of gangsters. African Americans are not stupid.
IMHO they have made (though few admit it) a bald political calculation: that the extreme violence and thuggery of their street gangs are required to stave off expulsion from traditional neighborhoods by Latino gangs (with unlimited manpower from Mexico) and white assimliation. Thus the taboos about "acting White" and "not being Black enough." Along with outright celebration and defense of violence.
The Serbs in Bosnia and Kosovo reacted in the same way. For much the same reasons. I am not unsympathetic to the view that the sacrifice of those who suffered under first slavery and then Jim Crow means that any dissolution of Blacks into the larger society (as largely happened in Mexico) would be a "betrayal" of those long struggles.
But I don't see the society built on dominance and violence ending well for much of anyone.
I'll add that the parallels of a society based on "winner take all" domination of women, money, and social standing is pretty recognizable among Urban Black society and say, that of Pakistan, particularly in tribal areas of the NWF.
Another add -- nor should others sneer in superiority over the "primitive" peoples.
Der Spiegel reports young men are joining the Neo Nazis in droves in East Germany. Reason? Women all left (young, pretty women can always find work as secretaries even without skills in the most expensive places) and there are no jobs. In some regions their are only 40 young women for every 100 young men.
The decline in marriage in the West across the board, and illegitimacy rates of say, UK Births (50% illegitimate) along with "Chav" culture, seems driven by the same factors.
Women have more income than ever before, demand a "premium" of men with "more" than they have, either wealth/status, attractiveness, or testosterone related status.
The men who's fathers could easily marry and have children, ala the 1970's when the average working man in the US could buy a house, now find themselves largely priced out of the marriage market and often the mating market.
Unless of course they pursue the "Chav" route of extreme thuggery which does of course work when the normal Western routes of income/stability no longer work.
PC, Multi-culturalism, etc. are mere indicators of the larger social changes that leaves again the structure of most resources (including yes women) hoarded by the Big Men in one form or another.
In that sense, Western Society is becoming more "Islamic" rather than the other way around.
buddy larsen: One could argue with zenster on the matter of sex & drugs
You've already covered the drugs angle. Pornography does not even begin to encompass the sex angle. Just in case you missed it, here's an excerpt about that Taliban proclamation regarding fighters taking preadolescent boys into their tents:
Just recently, the Taliban issued a new set of 30 rules to its fighters.
Many of the instructions were to be expected: rule No. 25 commands the murder of teachers if a warning and a beating does not dissuade them from teaching. No. 26 outlines the exquisite delicacy of burning schools and destroying anything that aid organizations might undertake -- such as the building of a new road, school or clinic. The essence of the other rules are easily left to the imagination, basically involving what militant Islam is about: vile hate, death and destruction.
But there is a curious rule that the Western media has typically ignored. Rule No. 19 instructs that Taliban fighters must not take young boys without facial hair into their private quarters.
Right.
(Cough and clearing of the throat).
Aside from the question of what is permitted if a young boy does happen to have facial hair, this new Taliban commandment brings light to a taboo pathology that underlies the structures of militant Islam. And it is crucial to deconstruct the meaning of this rule -- and the horrid reality that it represents -- because it serves as a gateway to understanding the primary causes of Islamic rage and terror.
Rule No. 19 obviously indicates that the sexual abuse of young boys is a prevalent and institutionalized phenomenon among the Taliban and that, for one reason or another, its widespread practice has become a problem.
The fact that Taliban militants’ spare time involves sodomizing young boys should by no means be any kind of surprise or eyebrow raiser. That a mass pathology such as this occurs in a culture which demonizes the female and her sexuality -- and puts her out of mind and sight -- is only to be expected. To be sure, it is a simple given that the religious male fanatic who flies into a violent rage even at the thought of an exposed woman’s ankle will also be, in some other dysfunctional and dark secret compartment of his fractured life, the person who leads some poor helpless young boy into his private chambers.
Many people are unaware of how boys without facial hair are not regarded by Islam as being men. Therefore, penetrating one of these young lads does not (technically) qualify as homosexuality for most Islamic males. In reality, many Muslims regard only the male being penetrated as homosexual.
Sex and drugs find a home with Islamic terrorists. It is only through elaborate mental gymnastics that they convince themselves otherwise.
whiskey_199: And as a practical matter African-American leaders AND the community will defend this violent society and the gangsters.
At the risk of making yet another rather politically incorrect observation ...
Please take not of how Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton seek more stringent gun control laws even as they do little, if anything, to actually reduce violence within the black community.
It would seem to me as though their true agenda is one of disarming those that their supporters most frequently prey upon. A rather not-nice proposition but I've yet to see anything that contradicts such a vicious agenda on the part of either Jackson or Sharpton. Both are Poverty Pimp Race Warlords.
Without having read the article, I need to let commenters know that in LA, *everyone* hates the Mexicans, not just the blacks. We also have Asian and Armenian gangs and when they rumble, they're going at it with the Latino's.
The Mexicans have been doing an attempted genocide thing the last few years, and deliberately going into neighborhoods and staging hit and run killings of black men. LAPD is starting to crack down on this particular activity, but when you have the Armenians/Russians AND the Asians AND the American blacks all after the Mexicans, I sort of wonder if the cops really need to involve themselves that much.
Oddly enough, one never hears about white or skinhead gangs in Los Angeles. I wonder why not, if there aren't any white gang members any more -- or maybe they're the more sophisticated Hells Angels types.
Here in Tucson there is lots of gang activity, how much is real Crips and how much is wannabes is anybodys' guess. The one indisputable fact is there are lots of shootings. The great equalizer is if Monster Kody of the Hoover Crips or Tyrone Shoelaces of Troop 99 shoots you, you're still dead.
Nahncee asked why there aren't any white or skinhead gang bangers. Are there any white people left in LA?
Last census I remember seeing from several years ago, Latino's were about a third to half the population in LA. Everyone else made up the other half, including about equal parts white, black, Asian, and then a final equal part of everything else like Armenian.
Whites are NOT a majority in Los Angeles, which means you warp speed through certain sections of the city on the freeways, and scramble back to Beverly HIlls, Pasadena or Burbank. The general attitude among taxpayers is if they want to kill each other, so sad, too bad, not my problem to be teaching them manners until they learn how to speak English.
Please to note also that the hospitals that served non-white communities in Los Angeles are now all closed because they couldn't afford the free health care provided to those communities by their emergency rooms. Remaining hospitals still open are in Beverly Hills, Burbank, Santa Monica and Pasadena, as well as the big UCLA/USC facilities that *have* to take anyone who shows up whether or not they have insurance. People found in a pool of blood on the streets have a much longer trek to get to a hospital now. So sad, too bad.
As a white man in LA, I wonder what you've been smoking. I live in a predominantly hispanic neighborhood and the only grief I get is from the white guy across the street who hates my dog almost as much as she hates him. There are places I would not want to go at night (South Central for sure), but I don't worry about it during the day. Earth to loonies: take a chill pill and come in for a landing.
Everything's fine, Nahncee:
Who needs hospitals or high-school graduates anyway? Who's to say a third-World way of life might not be better?
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Bill guts border fence requirement
Republican presidential hopeful Duncan Hunter is blasting a Democrat-sponsored bill that would eliminate the requirement passed by Congress to build a double-layered fence covering 854 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Massive spending bill will alter fence law
"By eliminating the double fence requirement, the Democratic Congress is going to make it easier for drug and human smugglers to cross our Southern land border," said Hunter. "This goes against the interests of any family that has been touched by illegal drugs or any American who has seen their job taken by an illegal alien."
The Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations bill would specifically eliminate the mandate of the Secure Fence Act of 2006.
As WND reported last week, an amendment submitted by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and co-sponsored by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, for the Department of Homeland Security 2008 budget was aimed at gutting the already-approved Secure Fence Act, which was adopted with the promise hundreds of miles of physical fencing would help secure the U.S. border with Mexico.
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. The recent arrest of a man tied to Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) may portend growing trend of incursions into other U.S. cities by the extremely violent gang.
Death in a seaside paradise
A murder suspect's family speaks publicly for the first time
A gang in La Jolla?
Longtime locals laugh off the idea of the Bird Rock Bandits as a gang. They dismiss its half-dozen or so members simply as privileged bullies. "The La Jolla do-nothing club," as surfboard shaper Tim Bessell puts it.
"They are not a bunch of gang guys talking about whose knife is sharper," says Osuna's stepfather, Scott Wright. "They're just a group of guys having a good time."
Elmer Heap Jr., a former prosecutor and family friend, insists there is "a goodness in Seth. There are great qualities in him."
Same for House. The mother of his girlfriend, a straight-A student now in medical school, writes that "if he has any fault, it is that he is too good of a person."
Prosecutors were unmoved. Act like a gang, get treated like one. And they had ammunition. The four suspects had barely been fingerprinted when police received two dozen calls alleging that some of these same guys had been terrorizing the town for years.
Homicide detectives investigated, and in September a slew of assault, battery, intimidation and "gang enhancement" charges were added to the murder counts.This meant prosecutors could introduce the earlier cases of alleged violence during trial to prove that the Bird Rock Bandits fit the legal definition of a gang and that its members should be subjected to stiffer sentences.
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Mom, and Girlfriend--
The Perp, having already beaten up many innocent victims, including women.
Doug, I looked at the pix--that skinny surfer, if he'd been here in Texas (with the so-called "castle doctrine"), when that truckload of oversized thugs came to his house that night, he could've walked outside with a 12 gauge shotgun and eliminated the La Jolla gang problem in about five seconds.
That 9-11 call is amazing, esp the audio!
Joe Horn, Texas Danger
Like those La Jolla lads, these folks were sweet, loveable, and innocent:
Marling Quiñonez, a 30-year-old Colombian native, said she lived with Diego Ortiz for six months before his death and described him as quiet ''and a very good guy, a sweet man."
Both burglars were illegal aliens from Columbia and believed to be a part an organized crime home burglary ring.
Angels All:
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Quanell X disagrees with you:
But Horns actions have also been condemned by community activists Quanell X and his followers, who have staged a pair of marches in front of Horn’s home.
Last weekend the planned protest ran into Horn supporters on motorcycles in a clash that has homeowners in the neighborhood seeking to prevent more protests from being held in the subdivision.
But then again, who is Quanell X?
Riascos Torres had been deported to Colombia in 1999, after a cocaine-related conviction.
Mom has moved to Oahu with her youngest son, where he will likely be safer.
Not so for some Japanese Tourists, however:
Tourist dragged when suspects snatch purse
Honolulu police are looking for two men who dragged a woman about 30 feet during a purse-snatching robbery yesterday in Haleiwa.
At around 12:45 p.m. a 45-year-old Japanese tourist was placing packages in the trunk of her rental vehicle at the North Shore Market Place, 66-250 Kamehameha Highway, police said. A dark Honda Accord four-door sedan drove up and the passenger grabbed her handbag through the window. The woman was dragged until she was able to release her bag.
The suspects' vehicle sped off on Kamehameha Highway toward Waialua.
The purse snatcher is described as a man in his early 20s, with short blond spiked hair, clean shaven, wearing sunglasses. The car's license plate number ends in "572."
Touching the lives of others:
Renowned local playwright and performer Lisa Matsumoto was drunk when she crashed while driving the wrong way on the H-1 freeway early Friday morning, an autopsy revealed.
Matsumoto, 43, died Friday of blunt force injuries to the neck due to a motor vehicle collision, the city Medical Examiner's Office said. "Acute alcohol intoxication" was a significant condition that contributed to the death, the office said.
The car she was driving crashed head-on into a car driven by a 36-year-old woman.
The other woman was in serious condition with head and lower leg injuries.
"In the short time she has been alive, she has touched more people with such incredible joy, and she has accomplished more in her short 43 years than most people will ever do in a lifetime," Catracchia said.
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Given the option, I think the 36-year-old woman might rather not liked to have been touched.
well, if blond spikey hair was in Saudi Arabia, they'd fix that grabbing hand of his--at the wrist.
Gotta give credit where credit is due.
this was an excellent and chilling article. i read the whole thing. and absorbed it.
thank god bill cosby and others are starting to address
the elephants in the black communities' living room.
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