In fact, when it comes to terrorism, strangers are, generally, the ambit of their activities.
There have been some activities, however, that have targeted innocent civilians and the motives and actions, in these cases, have ominously paralleled terrorist stratagems and motivations. A case in kind occurred in December, 2004, when an intercity bus in Honduras, Central America was intercepted and sprayed with machine gunfire and 28 passengers, mainly women and children, were killed first by the gunfire then by the assailants climbing abroad the bus and methodically executing the passengers17. The objective was a protest against the Honduran government who had recently reinstated the death penalty.
Another similarity is in their pattern of operation where, like al-Quida, they operate in a form of loose, unstructured cells that form a global dispersed network. Similarly, too, their individual ceils are devoted to similar activities and some are quite sophisticated. These include activities such as intelligence gathering, recruitment, and logistics, as well as operation of their regular activities. According to Sullivan 18, this is the representation of third-generation gangs where "because of their attributes.. they can be considered net warriors" 19 which are a "key factor to the rise of non-state or criminal-solders" (ibid).
Street gangs employ children as 'warriors' too just as terrorists organizations do 20
Their greatest parallel come from the fact that they shatter state cohesion in physical, moral, and cognitive means just as terrorist organizations do. Physical means, for instance by preventing police patrols or physically causing fear within the country; moral means by exposing inequalities (such as MS-13 does in LA) about which the state cannot / will not address; and moral means by questioning the state's commitment to a given population (here it is to Central American immigrants by deporting them which only caused intensification of their membership).
The main difference is that whilst terrorism, allegedly, has the country's welfare as its ideological puropose and serves a political purpose, MS-13, on the whole, is driven by causeless and arbitraray cruelty and egotism. Revenge is a necessary factor of its existence and deliberate and irrational disregard of law is part of its makeup. Yet, this irrational disregard of the law is not fueled by ideological reasons but rather by pragmatic, selfishness-based considerations. Even their abettence...
On the contrary societies treatment of certain racial and ethnic groups based on the color of skin or the language spoken also contributes greatly to the formation and proliferation of gang violence. Conclusion The purpose of this discussion was to explore race and ethnicity as it pertains to gangs. The research found that from a historical perspective, immigrant communities formed gangs as a reaction to living in a new world and
This becomes further complex as economic ties blur between the poor and middle classes and the expectations each has about the definition of materialistic success. By belonging to a subculture, however, one can feel part of something larger, insulated a bit from the criticisms and unattainable messages of the upper middle class, and certainly a way to belong and feel important with one's own environment (Siegel and Welsh, 2009,
S. (MS-13, 2012). More specifically, the gang's code is: "First is God, then your mother, then your gang. You live for God, you live for your mother, you die for your gang" (Lineberger & Padgett, 2011, p. 188). Prison where gang is strongest and weakest (geographically). The State of California in general and the Los Angeles region in particular (MS-13, 2012). Recent trends in membership. The gang's membership has swelled in recent
However, some gang members specialize in multiple criminal activities such as street robbery, human trafficking and drug trafficking. Street Gangs Street gangs are the major concern to parents, school administrators and the communities because they recruit students and the youths across the United States to enhance the growth of gang memberships. Street gangs are the most prevalent type of gangs in the United States because they influence a strong control in
Gangs in Prison Although the United States prison system remains extremely dangerous due to overcrowding, guard and administrator abuse, and widespread detention and isolation practices that would be considered torture by the United Nations, they also serve as fertile breeding grounds for dangerous gangs, and in fact, American prisons have given rise to some of the most dangerous prison and street gangs of the twenty and twenty-first century. Of these, five
In the end, the capacity for gangs persist throughout history has shown that they are not merely one-dimensional juvenile delinquents, as they are often portrayed in media. They are also well-organized groups that have the ability to serve social purposes. This also shows that a reason why society still allows them to exist is because of these social functions (Branch 1997). Nevertheless, media is also responsible for glamorizing the life of
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