The Dutch want to ban Hells Angels.

Darkening and Heling seem to be direct translations from the dutch words "verduisteren en helen" which in english context are embeslement (sp?) and fencing.

Hells Angels are well known in the Netherlands and Belgium for being involved in drugs, weapons and other trafficing, drug dealing, blackmail, embeslement, fencing, theft, violence, racism, etc.

Up to now both countries have dealth with them person per person, but with them covering for eachother and creating alibi's and covering eachothers traces and loads of other stuff like that, its getting harder and harder to convict them, once you start dealing with a group like this as a gang or organized crime, them giving eachother alibi's doesn't work anymore.

[edit on 9/11/06 by thematrix]

Ahhhh, okay, so, like "Money Laundering" is probably the American equivolent of heling, and darkening would be fencing, or trafficking in stolen goods/contraband.

That'd make sense.

Wow, Hell's Angels in Europe sound pretty nasty. I think their American cousins are a bit more laid back. Here they mostly just get plowed and rev their bikes.

Ahhhh, okay, so, like "Money Laundering" is probably the American equivolent of heling, and darkening would be fencing, or trafficking in stolen goods/contraband.

No
"money laundering" is "geld witwassen" which re-translates to "money whitewashing"

"helen (van gestolen goederen)" is "fencing (stolen goods)"
--() added to show context--

"verduisteren" is "embeslement" in this context, but the word "verduisteren" can also be literaly translated to "darkening" if taken in the wrong context aka "verduisteren van de lucht" which means "darkening of the sky".

Originally posted by thelibra
Wow, Hell's Angels in Europe sound pretty nasty. I think their American cousins are a bit more laid back. Here they mostly just get plowed and rev their bikes.

I think the Hells's angels in europe just try much harder as they know the angels are an american creation. In the UK i saw a load of bikers with back patches openly carrieing a shotgun strapped down the side of their tank like you would on a horse.

Freaked me out that they would have such little regard for the law. I have been to bikers parties where there have been angels present and they all seemed pretty eloquent and not at all what i expected. I left before anyone got too drunk though.

Not even a month ago Ontario, Canada -- Hells Angels were busted and their clubhouse seized for possible sale.
Yes, it seems one of them turned coat and provided Provincial Police with the scoop of some of the plans these dudes had. Arrests were made for conspiracy to commit murder (more than one), drug trafficking and a host of other things Independents don't get involved with.

They arrested the President of the Hells Angels On Chapter in jail bigger accused crimes. New Federal Cdn Laws re Groups planning or committing crimes under Fed Criminal Laws, cuts down a lot of the red tape in investigating such.

Dallas

Originally posted by Dallas

Not even a month ago Ontario, Canada -- Hells Angels were busted and their clubhouse seized for possible sale.
Yes, it seems one of them turned coat and provided Provincial Police with the scoop of some of the plans these dudes had. Arrests were made for conspiracy to commit murder (more than one), drug trafficking and a host of other things Independents don't get involved with.

They arrested the President of the Hells Angels On Chapter in jail bigger accused crimes. New Federal Cdn Laws re Groups planning or committing crimes under Fed Criminal Laws, cuts down a lot of the red tape in investigating such.

Dallas

They took the one here in Halifax as well. It was a fairly new acquirement for the club and didn't last too long. Of course, it was in a well travelled part of the city.

Someone mentioned the Angels being 'laughable' in regards to being organized. Not sure how it works where your from, but here in Canada they are 'very' organized. In regards to them 'being left to their own devices/being left alone' .... don't all criminals & lawbreakers want to be left alone???

Originally posted by thematrix
No "money laundering" is "geld witwassen" which re-translates to "money whitewashing"

"helen (van gestolen goederen)" is "fencing (stolen goods)"
--() added to show context--

"verduisteren" is "embeslement" in this context, but the word "verduisteren" can also be literaly translated to "darkening" if taken in the wrong context aka "verduisteren van de lucht" which means "darkening of the sky".

Neat! I'll have to add these to my repertoir of quintessential language phrases.

How odd though that Hell's Angels would be charged with a white collar crime like Embezzling... I guess it's possible, but most Angels in the U.S. are either unemployed, or do part time work in construction, factories, or garages. Places where a previous conviction wouldn't be much of a deterrant to hiring.

Originally posted by Documentally
I think the Hells's angels in europe just try much harder as they know the angels are an american creation. In the UK i saw a load of bikers with back patches openly carrieing a shotgun strapped down the side of their tank like you would on a horse.

Even in Texas that'd raise an eyebrow, I can only imagine how crazy it was to see that in Europe. I guess it makes sense. We have other biker gangs besides the Hell's Angels whom are downright horrible, but the Angels themselves are practically a tourist attraction in some areas.

Originally posted by Documentally
Freaked me out that they would have such little regard for the law. I have been to bikers parties where there have been angels present and they all seemed pretty eloquent and not at all what i expected. I left before anyone got too drunk though.

Yep. Disregard for the law is par for the course even among the American HAs... Most of them feel that society let them down and outcast them from a normal life, so they have little respect for its laws... but they still have a sort of...unspoken, unagreed upon code. Nothing like the Pirates Code, with "parle" or anything lame like that, but rather, they understand the difference between breaking a law, and breaking a person. Always a good idea to leave before they get drunk though.

Originally posted by Grailkeeper
Someone mentioned the Angels being 'laughable' in regards to being organized. Not sure how it works where your from, but here in Canada they are 'very' organized. In regards to them 'being left to their own devices/being left alone' .... don't all criminals & lawbreakers want to be left alone???

T'was me... I'm down in Texas. We actually have an annual "festival" of sorts where the Hell's Angels ride down through Austin, TX. That was my first encounter with them. I was working at a restaurant and the manager runs into the kitchen cussing up a storm. He asked who wanted a 30-top and all the wait-staff's hands went up (including mine), cause that's an automatic gratuity tagged onto the bill. Then the manager said it was the Hell's Angels and everyone's hand but mine went down. I didn't actually know who the HAs were, so I didn't know I was supposed to be scared of them yet.

They were sat outside. They were, um... odorous is about the right word... I would say stinky, but that's not quite the right word because not all of it was stink. Hard to describe. Some were loud, but most just wanted their food, their beer, and to get back on the road. All of them paid their tab without complaint, nothing was broken. The only thing that went wrong was that one of them slapped the rump of a passing waitress who'd come to help me bring out all the food, who then ran back inside and left me alone with them. Needless to say, they'd have rather had the female wait the table for them, but that incident aside, they were fun customers.

More recently got to hang out with them at a friend's bachelor party who works as a Harley mechanic. Again, same odor, but just a bunch of guys from the wrong side of the tracks with really close-knit bonds. Now don't get me wrong, if you mess with them, they'll kill you or hospitalize you, probably burn your house down too. But I've never seen one start a fight or cause trouble. The trouble always seems to come from people who think they'll start something with the Hell's Angels, or guys who get really defensive if the Angels make catcalls at their women.

Methinks that the Hell's Angels outside the U.S. must have started up their own chapters without really understanding what it was about here.

I wonder how many of them still ride Harley's - Harleys being extremely expensive bikes these days. Maybe they've had to expand their "enterprise" a bit to pay for the things?

Originally posted by thelibra
If you're interested in the history of the Hell's Angels, I heavily recommend the book "Hell's Angels" by Hunter S. Thompson (the columnist from Rolling Stone who was the inspiration for the character Duke from Doonesbury and the main character from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He traveled with the Hell's Angels for about 2 years. It's a fascinating book. I read it cover to cover, and it gives a lot of insight into these guys.

Actually, though it's a fascinating read, Thompson's Hells Angels is now nothing but an incredibly dated historical document. It was written in the 60's when the Angels were still a 'young' organisation. To take that book as an accurate example of the Angels today would be no different to saying that what Kerouac chronicled in On The Road is wholly representative of modern America.

You only need to read Sonny Barger's (HA president featured in Thompson's book) own book to realise that once the 60's were done the Angels became drawn into hard drugs and serious crime. Other books such as Into The Abyss (which again features Barger, albeit in transcript form taken from FBI bugging operations), further expose the brutality and crime which has sadly become an accepted norm for the club.

Most of the 'romanticism' that surrounds the HA as being nothing but harmless fun-loving outcasts, reviled by society simply for being different, stems from Thompson's book...but the 60's were a long time ago.....




[edit on 9-11-2006 by Kung Foo Fighter]

Originally posted by xmotex
I wonder how many of them still ride Harley's - Harleys being extremely expensive bikes these days. Maybe they've had to expand their "enterprise" a bit to pay for the things?

To be honest, I have no idea what percentage ride Harleys, but from what I understand, it's still the majority bike brand. However, you'd be hard pressed to find any Hell's Angel bike configuration in a store. Typically, they'll buy a base stock model depending on their tastes, and that's pretty much where the resemblence ends. No one fixes a Hell's Angels member's bike. They are expected to be able to pretty much strip the whole thing down to it's base components, and rebuild it, by hand, with little more than a standard toolkit.

Moneywise, the bike gets first priority in a Hell's Angel's life. A HA might literally have no place to live, and be crashing on a bench on someone's doorstep, because what money would normally go to something like rent, or a mortgage, or bills, instead goes to the bike. The bike symbolizes everything they have left, materially and mentally, in the whole world. Jobs, family, friends, homes, wealth, and health will all ebb and flow as time passes, but the bike... the bike is their rock, their constant, in what is often a very nomadic and uncertain life.

As for their U.S. operations to pay for their bikes, again, it's largely an individual thing. HA members aren't rich enough to pay for someone else to have a bike. If they were, they wouldn't be a Hell's Angel, they'd be members of the AMA. You could almost say that their base standard is that, as low as they may be in society's eyes, at least they have their bike. The HAs as an organization aren't out there slingning crack rock on the street to provide their newest n00bs with a row of shiny new bikes to choose from, with someone filling out expense reports and keeping books. The HAs hate paperwork, they don't buy each other bikes, and if they can be technically affiliated with a profit-maker like drug running, it's more of a local arrangement, where, for instance, a group of HAs might each toss a little cash into a pile for someone to buy a sack of weed.

HAs, for the most part, don't even hang out in very large groups. Motorcycle shops (especially Harley dealerships) typically don't allow more than two at a time into the shop. Though they will know most each other in their chapters, the only time they really all get together is for a run, otherwise if HAs hang out together it's either because they're genuinely friends with each other, are at a party, or are making a point. They don't even like going to most motorcycle events because the AMA ( American Motorcyclists Association ) consider them to be scum, and always start trouble with the HAs, and guess who's side the cops will pick?

When they do hang out in groups, most consumables are community property, including whatever alcohol, drugs, smokes, food, and..ahem..partners (though of course, there are some whom are spoken for that you just don't try with). No one really keeps track of who brought what. It's assumed if it's there, someone could afford it, and doesn't mind it being used.

Sooo... this is why the whole concept of "an organized criminal enterprise" just seems to me like an alien concept when talking about the Hell's Angels... the whole philosophy of the group is just too...unorganized, poor, and immaterial... to warrant the sort of corporate attitude that is needed for a successful criminal enterprise on any sort of grand organized scale.

Well, congrats to the Dutch either way. Hopefully they can be added to the list of terrorist organizations if they refuse to disband cooperatively, and be dealt with to the full extent of military justice.

Well the Hell's Angels in the US are not racists across the board. I was saved from a pair of muggers by a black man who was a Hell's Angel.

Originally posted by Kung Foo Fighter
Most of the 'romanticism' that surrounds the HA as being nothing but harmless fun-loving outcasts, reviled by society simply for being different, stems from Thompson's book...but the 60's were a long time ago

I can definitely see where you're coming from, but my own personal experiences with them has been more along the lines of that 1960's HA's that Thomson describes. However, I'll admit it's entirely possible that my own personal exposure is more likely to be to their friendly side than the criminal side.

Still, though, even back in the 1960's, the popular misconception among both the media and the law enforcement, was that they were a rampaging group of criminal hellions bent on rape, pillage, and destruction... and they really weren't. So I also have to take the alleged reports about them being an organized structure of hardened criminals with a grain of salt. The simple fact of the matter is that they've never had a good rep with anyone who hasn't known them firsthand.

However, I had no idea Sonny Barger wrote a book on them. I'll have to pick it up and read it, he was quite a character. If anyone would know about them, it'd be him. He used to be the ex Frisco prez, right? Or was it Berdoo?

I bought a copy of HST's Hells Angels on ebay only to find he had signed it in the front. (Just a 'HST' in pencil) the shop that sold it to me wanted it back as they hadn't seen it before they priced it.

Needless to say.. I still have it.