Seven members of a Christian biker gang remained in custody on $1 million bail late Wednesday after their arrest on charges of attempted murder in connection with a bloody barroom brawl in Newport Beach late last month. Three members of a rival gang were also arrested.
More than 150 officers descended on neighborhoods across the county at dawn Wednesday, serving search and arrest warrants on members of the Christian gang and the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, police said. Four search warrants were served at four homes here in the 300 block of South Archer Street, near Brookhurst Street and Broadway, belonging to members of the Set Free Soldiers – a biker gang allegedly masquerading as a church, said Anaheim police Sgt. Tim Schmidt.
Authorities obtained search warrants for residences of members of both motorcycle gangs, including two residences in Costa Mesa, one in Rancho Santa Margarita and four in Anaheim, said Newport Beach police Sgt. Evan Sailor. A large number of weapons and ammunition were seized in Anaheim and Costa Mesa, he said.
Overall in the case, 10 have been arrested, with police hunting for an 11th suspect, authorities said. Of these 10, seven are Set Free Soldiers arrested for alleged conspiracy to commit murder; each of the seven was being held on $1 million bail. - ocreg
Friday, August 8, 2008
Attempted murder among Christian bikers' charges
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4 comments:
Wait a second!
"Set Free Soldiers" is a biker gang allegedly masquerading as a church.
What's this "masquerading" stuff?
They sound very Christian to me. They're in line with the spirit of Medieval Crusades and witch-hunts, the near, if not actual, genocide but always ethnocide of native peoples of the Americas and just about everywhere else in the world. Certainly they're aligned with the recent Christian Evangelical approval of the latest bloody war in the Middle East. So, what's the big deal? Give these guys a break, I say.
Ann,
Why not leave Christian bashing to the people who actually know what they're talking about?
I've had periods in my life where I blamed one religion or another for the massive cruelty within our species... but now I think the problem is one of human nature, independent of religion. Religion may be the flag under which the fighting happens, but if you take that away, humans will still cluster into groups and fight those who they perceive as outsiders. Gang wars are built in to our biology. The trick is to see everyone as part of our group of Earth Humans. Go Earth Humans! That's my team! Yeah! Kick the butts of those non-Earth humans.... sigh.
Well, then, Bruce say something. Don't just criticize. Be a bit Christian and teach me!
Of course, I was being facetious, Xeno, but still I was making a point. I studied the Christian bible from the best Protestant scholars. I studied other religions from different perspectives as well. I am not so naive as to think religion cannot be evil - and very evil. The one thing I enjoyed studying from the Jesuits is that I can be very critical of my religion and yet still be devoutly, lovingly Catholic.
For me to be religious is not being a continuous "Amen sister" (or brother) type of follower. To blindly follow a religion is, I think, dehumanizing, lowering ourselves to something like cows who silently graze on the hillside waiting for the farmer to herd us back into the barn.
Ok, then, historically have the Buddhists, Taoists or Shintoists, as examples, been very good at genocide, terrorism or just plain killing as have been Christians? For that matter, who sends their missionaries throughout the world to convert others into what they think is the only true and right way of believing, if not Christians? How can they justify that when they are so responsible for so much harm? Can you name another religion, other than a Judeo-Christian, who is responsible for so much bloodshed throughout all of history?
Anthropologists have studied cultures where the amount of violence is far less than which occurs in others. So, it can't be just human nature. Violence is not a universal.
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