Word: patches
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...some ways symbolic of the resurgent German economy. For more than a decade, exorbitant labor costs, unbending union rules and an addiction to red tape--not to mention the high price of unification with East Germany--put Germany into an economic straitjacket. BMW went through its own rough patch in the 1990s after the disastrous acquisition of Britain's Rover Group, but its fortunes have changed markedly since it ditched Rover in 2000. Production has increased steadily, and profits are buoyant. Pretax earnings last year rose 25%, to $5.5 billion, despite the soaring cost of raw materials and the strong...
...Once admitted, members are "patched," with the right to flaunt the gang's emblem on clothes or in fearsome tattoos on faces, shoulders and bodies. Sociologist Jarrod Gilbert says the latter practice grew out of a combination of jailhouse tattoos and traditional Maori moko. "They would be the only street gangs in the world to tattoo a patch onto their face," he says. Members tell of one Mongrel Mob initiate whose enthusiasm so exceeded his intelligence that he used a mirror while tattooing the gang's name across his own face-backward...
...gangs hold on to traditions that originated from a desire to shock the society that had shunned them. Mongrel Mobsters bark like dogs to show appreciation or enthusiasm, and use their hands to make the silhouette of a bulldog, the totem in the middle of their patch. Some wear German World War II helmets and use the expression Sieg Heil! as a mark of approval. Black Power members, who claim closer ties to Maori culture, always wear blue, salute each other with a clenched fist and like to cry "Yo, f___in' yo!" Researchers believe the gangs were formed when...
...evening with one of the youth action teams last month shows that police still have much to do to bring the streets to heel. Gangs of teenage boys are skirmishing over a 1-sq.-km patch of turf in south Auckland. In Electra Place, officers Ott and Stevenson find a bare-chested youth holding a blood-soaked cloth to a 3-cm slash above one eye; his friend is screaming about a gang attack. The victim says the knife wielder has run off into a house a few doors down the street. "The guy with the knife could still...
...economic conditions in that area." Newbold speaks with the authority of a man who has done jail time himself for drug dealing and written a book on crime in New Zealand. "This is their excitement. This is their entertainment. This is what they live for. They live for their patch, for their gang and for their neighborhood. They are living worthless, meaningless lives without a proper future." Paea's prognosis is equally bleak: "We are in a situation where the ambulance is parked at the bottom of the cliff...