Savannah is the home of songwriter Johnny Mercer, who wrote “Blues, virginia Crime, in the Night.” Unfortunately, these days Savannah is better known for its constant “Booms in the Night.

“

Patrice Thomas, a Savannah resident and a registered nurse, commented that “Savannah booms in the night and booms in the day. One afternoon last week, I counted, virginia Crime, 44 times that we heard bom cars invading the peace and quiet of our home–and it’s far worse at night! It’s no wonder that so many people are moving, virginia Crime, to the countryside. Any real estate professional will tell you that a quiet neighborhood adds significant value to your home. Boom car and loud exhaust thugs are robbing the value of people’s homes!”

Nurse Thomas also noted that “boom car companies sell their wares by promoting deliquency, bragging about the health risks of noise, and exploiting women.

A recent ad for Pioneer Audio states, ‘Your neighborhood could use a little wake up’ and ‘Your neighbors won’t just hear you coming; they’ll feel you, too.’ JBL speakers promise ‘bone-crushing bass’ that will ’send your neighbors running for cover.’ Corwin-Vega voasts that its speakers ’shake the living and wake the dead.’ No doubt the constant thumping and pounding disturbs the peace of Mr. Mercer and his neighbors at Savannah’s historic Boneventure Cemetery.”

Thomas also noted a religious reason to oppose thunderous noise: “The deliberate assault from cars with low-frequency noise violates the sanctity that God has given to human beings,” she said.

“My heart aches for all the people who no longer, virginia Crime, have quiet time, to pray, to rest, to meditate, and to love.”

Mark Huber, Noise Free America’s Communication Director, stated that “noise from boom cars and the deep rumble of ‘performance exhausts’ on hot rots and motorcycles disrupt the soundscape and distract attention. They drown out the sounds that could alert citizens to danger, including terrorism.”

Huber also stated that “I agree with Robert Hightower, Georgia’s homeland security task force coordinator, who said, ‘The eyes and ears of our citizens remain an invaluable weapons against any terrorist threat, anytime, anywhere.

‘ Mr. Hightower should declare a ‘zero toleranace’ policy against noise that could mask the sounds of terrorist attacks.”

Savannah, like thousands of other American communities, is up against a deeply entrenched and well-hidden network of enemies. Car stereo companies have product placement agreements with Universal Studios (producer of

“2Fast/2Furious”). Primedia Corporation promotes the “living loud” lifestyle in over 40 car stereo and hot rod magazines. The Mobile Enhancement Retailers Association (MERA) and the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) actively tamper with noise legislaiton in states and municipalities, through a netwqork of hot rod clubs and car stereo retailers.

Ted Rueter, Noise Free America’s director, commented that “President Bush recently said that ‘unwanted telemarketing calls are intrusive, they are annoying, and they are all too common.’ Bush signed legislation creating a national ‘Do Not Call’ list. I applaud his statement and his action. Now what we need,” Rueter added, “is a national ‘Do Not Boom’ list. Unwanted booms from boom cars and loud exhausts are intrusive, annoying, and all too common.”

“Only by confronting the multi-billion dollar noise-industrial complex,” said Rueter, “can the people of Savannah ever find peace and quiet.

Otherwise, boom car boys will continue to boom in the day and boom in the night.”

Noise Free America is a national citizens organization opposed to noise pollution. Past winners of the “Noisy Dozen” award include Congressman Darrell Issa, Governor Jesse Ventura, VIPER car alarms, Circuit City, Flowmaster, and Richmond, Virginia. Noise Free America’s web site is http://www.noisefree.org.

Contact information:

Carma Jackson, Executive Director

Armed Females of America, LLC

2702 E. University Dr. Ste. 103, virginia Crime, PMB 213

Mesa, AZ 85208

480.924.8202

By Nicki Fellenzer for AFA

Americans face a critical choice this November ??” a choice that could decide the direction and future of this country. This Election Year we have a chance to change the course of America for the better and to begin returning the United States to the country the Founding Fathers intended and created.

Armed Females of America is a Second Amendment organization. Our focus and mission is to preserve the right of all Americans to keep and bear arms. And our choice to endorse a politician for the highest office in the land is based primarily on the candidate’s respect for the Second Amendment.

Why?

Because the right to keep and bear arms is the last line of defense against government infringement of your other rights. The respect a politician has for the right to keep and bear arms is an accurate gauge of his potential to become a tyrant.

A politician who does not trust those who elected him with arms has no business trying to represent them. A candidate who does not understand the pure, rudimentary phrase ??????shall not be infringed,?? has no business in the White House. And a presidential contender who cannot, or will not, respect the Constitution because he’s too cowardly, arrogant or ignorant, has no business pretending to be the primary defender of the Law of the Land.

The right to keep and bear arms is black and white.

Any politician who attempts to convince you otherwise is a petty tyrant who does not deserve your vote. Any politician who attempts to tell you how, when, where and under what circumstances you can exercise your Second Amendment rights either has no understanding of the right to keep and bear arms or no respect for it.

Either choice is unacceptable.

For years, the two major parties ??” the Democrats and Republicans ??” have been gradually shredding your rights. The Democrats are completely candid when they promise to relieve you of your right to keep and bear arms, while the Republicans do it by stealth, while pretending to be the protectors of your freedoms and giving lip service to the sanctity of the Constitution.

It is time for, virginia Crime, a change.

We know and understand where John Kerry stands on the issues. He will push for a permanent ???Assault?? Weapons Ban. He promises to enforce all federal gun control laws, the vast majority of which are unconstitutional and do nothing to prevent crime. He promises to close the nonexistent gun show ???loophole.?? And he wants to force you to pay for a child ???safety?? device with every firearm you purchase, whether you want one or not.

But what about George W. Bush?

Unfortunately, President Bush apparently has no idea what the Second Amendment is really about.

Here’s George W. Bush on the issues:

Q: Do you support the Brady Bill?

BUSH: Law-abiding citizens ought to be allowed to protect their families. We ought to keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. That’s why I’m for instant background checks at gun shows. I’m for trigger locks. I think we ought to raise the age at which juveniles can have a gun.

I also believe that the best way to make sure that we keep our society safe is to hold people accountable for breaking the law. If we catch somebody illegally selling a gun, there needs to be a consequence. The federal government, virginia Crime, can help.

Bush also supports stronger enforcement of existing (unconstitutional) gun laws, the current ban on automatic weapons and the ban on the importation of foreign made, ???high-capacity?? ammunition clips.

So what is America to do?

The time has come to support a candidate who will respect your rights as absolute ??” not as privileges to be granted by the government and taken away at whim.

We, at Armed Females of America, believe that candidate is Aaron Russo.

I had the pleasure of meeting Aaron Russo a few months ago in Virginia. I found him to be charming and wholly committed to freedom. This is a man who understands the importance of preserving and protecting your rights ??” rights that our founders fought and bled for when our land was born.

Aaron Russo stands against any infringement on our Second Amendment rights ??” without reservation and without compromise.

During a recent telephone conversation, he made it perfectly clear to me that he understands and respects the right to keep and bear arms the way our Founding Fathers intended it ??” as the last line of defense against tyranny. ???Why do we need so-called ???assault’ weapons??? he quipped. ???To protect ourselves from the government itself.??

Aaron Russo ???gets?? it. He understands that ??????shall not be infringed?? means exactly that. He respects freedom.

And he understands that forcibly disarming a populace is rendering them vulnerable not only to armed criminal thugs, but also to government tyranny.

Aaron Russo is not running for President for power, for glory or for the money. He is running for President to make a difference. He is saddened by the state of America. He is appalled at the squalid state of our liberties. And he is wholly committed to protecting our freedoms and restoring our rights ??” the rights Republicans and Democrats, virginia Crime, squandered and abused for so many years.

A few months ago, I warned America about voting for the lesser of two evils. I spoke of Bush’s appalling record of endangering and eroding your rights. And I asked you to think very carefully about who will get your vote this November. Upon careful, virginia Crime, reflection, I have decided that my candidate this year will be Aaron Russo, and I’m proud to say that the staff of Armed Females of America supports this decision.

Yes, there is no doubt that a third party candidate winning the presidency is a long shot.

But it’s time for gun owners to take a stand and have the courage to vote their conscience, not their fears. If you are afraid of giving the presidency to John Kerry by voting for Aaron Russo this year???

???if you believe that voting for the lesser of the two evils is a way to preserve and protect America???

???I leave you with an apt analogy that Aaron Russo gave me during our recent telephone conversation.

“If you were on death row, and you had a 45 percent chance of being put to death with a lethal injection, a 45 percent chance of being electrocuted and a 10 percent chance for freedom, which would you choose?”

Would you choose an easier way to die, or would you fight for freedom no matter how small the chance of you attaining it? Make no mistake, friends.

That’s what this election is really about.

Nicki Fellenzer

http://www.ArmedFemalesofAmerica.com

http://www.KeepAndBearArms.com

Nicki is a US Army veteran, who spent nearly four years in Frankfurt, Germany on active duty at the American Forces Network. She is a former radio DJ and news anchor and a Featured Writer and Newslinks Director for Keepandbeararms.com. She is also a former contributing editor to the National Rifle Association’s newest monthly magazine, Women’s Outlook and she is currently the contributing editor to Concealed Carry Magazine and writes occasionally for the Libertarian Party.

She resides in Virginia with her family. We are also proud to have Nicki as regular contributor to Armed Females of America.

U.S. deportation policies aggressively send undocumented gang members back to their home countries in Central America. They export U.S. gang culture and hardened criminals to countries whose internal security forces are ill-equipped to deal with the new threat. The street gangs have rapidly grown beyond being just a neighborhood problem to presenting a real national security threat in these countries.
Criminal deportees bring tactics, organization, and other criminal skills, virginia Crime, learned in U.

S. prisons. These abilities translate into more sophisticated networks that have created a web that spans across Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Over time this network has made some links with organized crime, acting at times like foot soldiers to help with smuggling, assassination, and other duties.
Street gangs remain distinct from organized crime. But they have become a leading cause of insecurity in Central America. The region’s history with clandestine death squads, drug and gun smuggling, corruption, and violence during the U.

S.-supported “dirty wars” provided a propitious culture for the gangs’ insertion into society. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation as well as national police in three Central American countries actively seek solutions to break this 20-year-old cycle, but U.S. authorities and their Central American colleagues face a difficult game of catch-up.
Born in the USA
The civil wars that ravaged Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador in the 1980s displaced tens of thousands of Central Americans from their homes into Mexico and the United States.

Many of these families settled in cities in the United States close to the Mexican border. Cities such as Los Angeles absorbed large communities of Central Americans who sought to carve out a space in the city’s poor neighborhoods that had been controlled by Mexican street gangs since as early as the 1950s.
The word “mara” loosely translated from Spanish means group or gang. Salvatrucha, in Salvadoran Spanish slang, means a streetwise Salvadoran. Mara Salvatruchas is a term that refers to Salvadoran immigrants who formed gangs in the 70s and 80s to protect themselves from their rivals in the street gangs that dominated Los Angeles at that time.

The number 13 marks the position of the letter “m” in the alphabet and is a nod to the Mexican Mafia, a gang that controls the prisons in Southern California. Put together, the name “MS-13″ states membership of a gang, primarily made up of Salvadorans, that holds allegiance to the Mexican Mafia in Southern California.
The MS-13 formed in California, but over the years has spread into Central America due to transnational movement of gang members through choice or deportation. Since the mid-90s, the U.

S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has actively deported tens of thousands of convicted criminals back to their countries of birth in Central America.
After September 11, 2001, INS was absorbed into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), under the umbrella of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). ICE, working with the other DHS components, presents a more comprehensive approach to tackling transnational gang violence. However, years of questionable deportation policies have left the organization with a formidable challenge.

In many cases, deported individuals were brought to the United States at a young age. So when they are deported to Central America, they have little to depend on in their home countries, outside of gang connections.
The MS-13 is now an established presence in Central America. It actively recruits young men and women, who in turn eventually find themselves back in the United States as illegal immigrants. This cycle, fed in part by U.S. deportation strategies, has increased MS-13 numbers in both Central America and the United States, where there is now a significant, virginia Crime, MS-13 presence on both the east and west coasts.

Over the years, the MS-13 grew and members moved beyond Los Angeles into other U.S. cities. MS-13 presence has been spotted in over 33 U.S. states as well as the District of Colombia. There are an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 MS-13 members in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
As the MS-13 grew throughout the United States their clashes with rivals from the M-18 gang, as well as other street gangs, earned MS-13 members a strong reputation for brutal violence. It is widely known that the MS-13 weapon of choice is a machete.

Recruitment is often self-selective, targets pre-adolescents, and more often than not leads to a life of crime where the only escape is through serious injury or death.
Gang Life
When he was nine, Luis, a former member of the Mara Salvatrucha street gang, started hanging out with gang members in Southern California. By the time he was 13 he was considered an unofficial member of the MS-13. His official membership began when he was “jumped in.” This process is part of gang law that requires that new members be jumped by a small group of peers who punch, kick, and otherwise pummel the new member for the duration of the initiation ceremony.

Enduring the beating is a show of toughness and loyalty to the gang.
” When it became law that everybody had to get jumped in, my homeboys said, ‘Hey, you want to keep chillin’ with us, you’re gonna have to get jumped in’,” Luis told the IRC Americas Program. “I was 16 or 17 when I got jumped in,” he said.
Once young men and women pass through this tough initiation, they join a large group of peers who provide support, protection, financial stability, and companionship. Luis explained that, although in the United States he has never seen kids as young as seven or eight jumped in, he has seen 7-year-old kids already covered with MS-13 tattoos in Central America.

“They’re basically homeless children,” he said.
Street gangs create social networks that rely on crime to finance what is essentially a lifestyle that allows youths to survive in a world where there are limited opportunities, a lack of parental presence, and little to no hope for a chance at a better life.
Luis lived for a time in Virginia with his mother, and then eventually moved back to California to live with his father and aunts, but there was no central parental figure in his life. So his chosen family became his street gang.

“When I grew up and everything I joined the gang, I felt as though I owed something to them, because they were there for me when I actually needed someone,” Luis explained.
“They showed me love; they bought me shoes, clothes, stuff like that. So I felt comfortable with them. I didn’t sense any danger, or any fear that they were going to get me in trouble. I only had positive thoughts. I knew what they did, but they explained to me why they do what they did.”
In the slums of Los Angeles and other cities in California, the kids that come from broken or separated families in marginal immigrant communities quickly fall into gangs.

It’s unavoidable, according to Luis.
“If you walk down the block, there is another gang there. Every block is a different gang, so people who live over there, especially in neighborhoods where there are gangs, it’s not like you really have a choice,” he said.
Getting Out
During a high speed car chase with police about five years ago, Luis lost his left leg after he flew through the front windshield of his car in a head-on collision. While recovering in the hospital, family members pleaded with him to see his survival of the crash as a miracle, and a reason to consider if staying in MS-13 was worth dying for.

“It did, virginia Crime, work. That’s when I decided to chill, and I did chill for a while because I was in recovery. But then I ran into some friends at a party a few months later, and they wanted me to come back into the game. I couldn’t say no, because I knew if I didn’t do something to prove I was still chillin’ with them, they would try and mess me up, even stab me, for not being loyal to them.”
When the other members of MS-13 asked Luis to do a car-jacking to prove he was still in the gang, they left him alone at the scene when a local cop approached and caught Luis stealing the car, landing him in jail.

After being betrayed by his friends, “the last thing I wanted while in prison was to hear from MS . I was so angry, and felt like I had been betrayed, almost like I had been set up,” he explained.
Back on the streets after serving some time for the car-jacking, Luis continued to question what kind of friends his gang buddies really were, guys who had forced him to commit a crime, and then abandoned him in the face of police heat. Even though his mind was now filling with thoughts of leaving MS, he continued to run with the gang, and was eventually arrested again, this time for possession of cocaine.

Luis is still in the United States, working to stay there and break out of the cycle that has trapped so many other gang members.
Deportation Policy Exacerbates the Problem
U.S. immigration authorities began aggressively targeting illegal immigrants within the U.S. prison system in 1996. Many prisoners were deported back to their home countries upon completion of their prison terms.
In many cases, young men who were arrested for assault, drug dealing, or other relatively low-level profit-making criminal activity entered the prison system.

U.S. immigration authorities then identified them as not having proper documentation and tagged them for deportation.
Many of these young men came to the United States as children in the 1980s with their parents to flee the civil wars in Central America. They do not have strong familial connections in Central America, and in some cases do not even speak Spanish well. Often their “return” to their homeland is like arriving alone in a foreign country.
The growing problem of the MS-13 in Central America highlights inadequate immigration controls and poor deportation policies.

To effectively tackle the problem requires binational efforts that combine immigration reform, changes in deportation policies, as well as domestic security measures. It also requires U.S. policies to effectively handle the realities of immigration as well as manage foreign nationals, both legal and undocumented, living in, virginia Crime, the United States.
In fiscal year 1997, the INS deported 111,794 illegal foreigners. Over half had been convicted of a crime in the United States. It was the first time the INS had deported over 100,000 illegal residents in one year.

“In that process [the United States] has managed to export U.S. gang-style culture, customs, and contacts,” said Geoff Thale, a Senior Associate for Central America at the Washington Office on Latin America.
Gang members that are sent back to their home countries bring with them more sophisticated methods, organizational strategies, and contacts in the United States-all facilitating a more aggressive and organized criminal enterprise. These factors combine to create a loosely-tied network of street gangs that have complete control over towns and suburban areas in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

Their often illegal status in the United States has thrust the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s section of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the forefront of U.S. authorities’ strategies. This national security and international staging approach has caused some friction with local officials who would prefer to deal with it within their own security strategies.
Central American Security
Meanwhile, Central American governments have taken a zero-tolerance approach to dealing with street gangs.

While many observers agree that the gang problem is a symptom of large-scale social problems rooted in poverty, unemployment, and limited opportunity, government officials have harnessed popular support among voters through promoting policies commonly referred to as “hard hand” and “iron fist” or mano dura in Spanish.
Mano dura policies specifically target street gangs, also referred to as pandillas. In El Salvador, the Super Mano Dura policy is made up of four axes, Salvadoran spokesman for the Ministry of Government, Porfirio Chica, told the Americas Program.

They are: prevention, rehabilitation, combating crime, and reinsertion. Yet the policy, when implemented, often leads to national police officers targeting young men and women for arrest based on tattoos, loitering on certain street corners, or simply association with known gang members. Cops who arrest gang members see many of them released within 24 hours due to lack of evidence pertaining to real crimes. “Of the 10,000 street gang members currently located in the Salvadorian criminal database, over 3,000 currently reside in prison,” Chica said, adding that “because of a tendency for criminals to organize themselves in prison we have taken the leaders and placed them in separate maximum security prisons.

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These policies have spurred an unofficial war between gang members and the police. Politicians and other members of Central America’s elite social classes have also been accused of paying individuals, including off-duty police officers, to hunt down and assassinate gang members. The retaliation to these street vigilante actions from MS-13 members has been brutal, violent, and widespread.
Carmen Aida Ibarra, a researcher with the Guatemala-based Myrna Mack Foundation, told the Americas Program that “corruption plays an important role because it is the principal factor that impedes the deconstruction of clandestine groups.

” Private individuals or interests perpetuate the illegal violent activities of these groups by paying them not to kill communists but young gang members.
Five years after El Salvador’s civil war ended in 1991, the country boasted the world’s highest death rate per capita, with over 150 deaths for every 100,000 inhabitants. Polls showed that during this time, some 46% of the population believed that citizens retained the right to deliver justice with their own hands.
While authorities have been targeting gang and criminal violence, the success of polices like mano dura remains debatable.

“El Salvador still holds the region’s number one spot for per capita homicides,” Ricardo Montoya, analyst with the Research Foundation for the Application of Law, a Salvadoran research organization, said in a recent interview. Montoya explained that crime, particularly homicide, has increased in El Salvador since the first application of mano dura politics in 2003.
In 2005 there were 3,812 homicides, the highest figure in seven years. This is an average of ten to 12 murders a day in a county of some 6.

7 million people. According to the Legal Medical Institute, over 80% of those killed were shot in the head.
Guatemala currently registers over 100 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, and many of those killed are young men believed to be associated with street gangs. In 2004 some 5,553 youths were killed in Guatemala, according to Emilio Goubaud, director of the Association for the Prevention of Crime, a Guatemalan organization.
Perhaps the most public display of street gang activity happened in Honduras in December 2004 when a group of MS-13 members attacked a bus with automatic rifles.

They killed 28 civilians and wounded 12 more. Their attack is considered to be retaliation for mano dura policies promoted by the Honduran government. Specific death threats, left in a note found at the scene of the crime, were made to Honduran President Ricardo Maduro and Congressional leader Lobo Sosa.
Transnational Cooperation
“When [gang members] came out of the prison systems of the United States and went back [to their home countries], that’s when they became more formalized. Then what happened is that the environment down there was right for these kinds of criminal activities and it just spread,” Stanley Stoy, acting director for the FBI’s MS-13 National Gang Task Force, told Americas Program.

Stoy explains that the FBI began looking at the MS-13 more closely in late 2004 due to its level of violence and transnational presence. The FBI has been active in Central American countries, especially El Salvador, assisting with intelligence gathering and promoting professionalism in the national police. On Sept. 7, 2005 the FBI participated in a day-long, large transnational operation that included more than 6,400 federal agents and other officers in 15 U.S. states, Mexico, and Central America.

The operation netted 659 arrests of MS-13 and other transnational gang members: 77 in the United States, 232 in El Salvador, 162 in Honduras, 98 in Guatemala, and 90 in Mexico’s Chiapas state, which shares a border with Guatemala.
The operation’s success demonstrated the benefits of transnational cooperation, but some analysts warn that there are still over 100,000 street gang members in Honduras. Other estimates show that there are as many as some 600,000 street gang members in El Salvador.
While these numbers may be inflated, they illustrate the extent of the problem.

On Sept. 1, 2005, El Salvador even took the step of deploying 1,000 soldiers to reinforce police efforts to contain street gangs there.
Experts like Geoff Thale, virginia Crime, agree that military involvement is likely to exacerbate the problem, as other heavy-handed actions have done, rather than bring a rapid solution. Increased professionalism among Central American police officers is perhaps the quickest route to improving security there. U.S. deportation practices should be more sensitive to Central America’s street gang problems.

But root causes based in poverty and limited opportunity in Central American countries must be addressed before this endemic security problem can be adequately combated.
The FBI says that there is no link between MS-13 and al-Qaida or other terrorist groups, but experts believe that the MS-13 and other street gang groups have become more and more involved with the elite organized crime groups that traffic guns and drugs in the region.
If this is the case, then what used to be a regional problem could very well stretch into a hemispheric phenomenon, where Colombian and Mexican organized crime elements outsource their dirty work to Central America’s street gangs.

The recent efforts by U.S. authorities and their Central American counterparts represent a good start in tackling this complex, multi-faceted transnational problem. What remains to be seen, however, is whether this new concerted, multi-national approach can undo two decades of problematic, uncoordinated efforts.
“It may develop into something much greater if we didn’t address the problem,” said Stoy of the FBI. “We realize that if we didn’t do anything toward this problem or to prevent its entrenchment here in the United States it would overtake us.

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Sam Logan (http://www.samuellogan.com) is an investigative journalist who has reported on security, energy, politics, economics, organized crime, terrorism, and black markets in Latin America since 1999.