Public Enemy No. 1

A news article today reminded me of Aryan, name of my childhood buddy Som's cute little son. It is unfortunate that some radical elements in the West managed to tag a negative connotation to this sweet name.

According to Wikipedia:

Aryan (/eərjən/ or /ɑːrjən/) is an English language word derived from the Sanskrit and Iranian terms ārya-, the extended form aryāna-, ari- and/or arya- (Sanskrit: आर्य, Persian: آریا). Beyond its use as the ethnic self-designation of the Proto-Indo-Iranians, the meaning "noble/spiritual one" has been attached to it in Sanskrit and Persian.

According to an article on Court TV, Public Enemy No. 1, a White supremacist gang, is gaining clout after forging alliance with Aryan Brotherhood. Here are some excerpts from this article.

The white supremacist gang Public Enemy No. 1 began two decades ago as a group of teenage punk-rock fans from upper-middle class bedroom communities in Southern California. Now, the violent gang that deals in drugs, guns and identity theft is gaining clout across the West after forging an alliance with the notorious Aryan Brotherhood, authorities say.

Law enforcement officials trace the gang's rise to shifts in the power structure inside prisons. The Aryan Brotherhood has long been the dominant white supremacist gang behind bars, with the Nazi Low Riders acting as its foot soldiers on the outside for drug dealing and identity theft. In 2000, officials reclassified the Low Riders as a prison-based gang and began sending its members to solitary confinement as soon as they were imprisoned.

In the past three years, its ranks have doubled to at least 400, but authorities suspect there could be hundreds of other members operating under the radar. They said heavy recruiting is taking place throughout California and Arizona, and members have been picked up by police in Nevada and Idaho. "They move around. We find them everywhere," said Lowell Smith of the Orange County Probation Department.

Public Enemy is now involved in identity theft. Booth said the gang has gone from swiping personal information from mailboxes and trash to stealing entire credit profiles with the help of girlfriends and wives who take jobs at banks, mortgage companies and even state motor vehicle departments. Money from those operations is used to fuel its methamphetamine business, he said.