Drug Crime, Greed, and Community Destruction
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Thursday December 14, 2006 14:36
by Libertarian Socialist
RIP Anthony Campbell
The Site of Another Drugs Related Death in the Blanch last year
Anthony Campbell, a 20-year-old apprentice plumber who lived in block F of the flats, at St Michan's House flats complex, near the Four Courts in Dublin was gunned down as he went about his work in a house at Scribblestown Park, Finglas, north Dublin yesterday morning.
Such was the swift, indiscriminate and chilling nature of the attack that he probably never realised why he was being killed. The cruel twist of circumstance that led to his death saw him shot in the house of a relative of a major crime boss because he would have been a witness to the killing of that criminal. Gardaí said he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Dealing with the nightmare: how inner city communities organised in the 90's to stop drug dealing |
Rethinking the War on Drugs - A Public Forum |
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Dolphins Barn And Drugs: The State Of Play Today? | A look at life, work, drugs and death in Blanchardstown |
Police harassment of COCAD members in 2002
As he left for work yesterday, he would have had no idea that he was about to become the latest victim of a violent feud in the criminal underworld he would only have read about in newspapers.
Anthony was from St Michans flats in the inner city, just off North Kings Street. He had recently been let go from his job and was doing a nixer to earn some extra cash for the Christmas in order to help his young family. The wider family are well known and respected throughout the close knit community as being honest, humble and hard working. He had recently helped establish a football club in his local community which has been wrecked over the years from hard drugs and criminal activity.
A young working class lad trying to make a life for himself in an area that has been marginalised with the roar of middle class Ireland's Celtic pup. A lad brimming with hope and determination to succeed in a grisly world where education is none and state support minimal.
The Real Impact of Drugs
The reality of the use of hard drugs: crack cocaine in particular has yet to hit home for middle class Ireland. As our consumer youth snort lines from the toilets of Tripod whilst spending excessive amounts of money on clothes, mortgages etc they fail to see the filth whom they are feeding huge amounts of money.
In working class communities an attitude of get rich or die trying has become the norm. As the youth stare at MTV's cribs and watch folk walking out of Brown Thomas with the latest Gucci bag they pry on a lifestyle that can only be given to them through the selling of drugs or other parts of this industry within their communities: running, watching, scaring locals, building a system of fear through cut throat authority until hopefully they will rise to the top and work with their drug lords
The dogs at the top don’t give a damn about anything except for their own excessive greed and authority. A lad killed through the greed of others, a microcosm perhaps of the larger reality of cut throat business. Men in suits armed with legal weapons or men in hoodies armed with cheap guns. Neither gives a shit about others, particularly those most affected by their deeds: ordinary working people.
Whilst these communities fall apart the rest of Ireland and the middle class 'Popes Children' continue to live in a bubble, working class communities self destruct. The death of Anthony is a horrible tragedy. An innocent victim whom I cry bitter tears today.
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Comments (14 of 14)
Jump To Comment: 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1Agree all round.
Well done jock, kicking the scag is real accomplishment.
Pride in yourself and our countries heroes is a real motivator.
Cant imagine anyone kickin drugs by being inspired by Bertis and co.
Jock, have to say hats off to you for overcoming the problems in your life. That was a very touching story and is indicative of the very real and spirit crushing difficulties faced by many in this country.
It is not just the youth who have forgotten the sacrifices made both by the gallant men of 1916 and the sheer bravery of those in the H-Blocks.
The current spate of opportunistic gangsters sitting on leinster house have forgotten as well.
We have adopted the very essence of our past oppression and made it our own.
Just look around, we have been conquered more invidiously than any british monarch would have dared dream.
Eire Nua?
im a 28year old who grew up in the sprawling estates of tallaght,and unfortunatly got involved at a very young age,i watched my older brother and all his friends whom i looked up 2 fall in 2 the trap that is the drugs underworld,thinking back i realise hpw many have died in the past few years,i watched as my ma found my brother in his room with syringes hanging out of his arms.i seen the heartache it brought 2 my family,at this time my brother has been in and out of places like lomans and other psycyiatheric hospitals,and doubt will ever have a normal life,he is 34 and still lives in family home and will be on medication the rest of his life,but back to me now.after wittnessing all this rip my family apart,i unbelivabley followed down the same destuctive path.i smoked cannabis at first and then the usual path of acid,ecstasy,cocaine and finally start smoking heroin at a very youngage.and for the next ten years fell in to a drug hazed life.i cared for nothing or no one.i had no beliefs and had no meaning in life.i simply didnt care although i tried many times 2 turned my life around,until finally i moved 2 live in the netherlands, i came off everything finally and thought about bringing some meaning in 2 my life.i shared a caravan on a campsite with an old republican friend who i met over there.the storys he told me kind of how do i say this,opened my eyes 2 how many wasted years i spent not acring about my country or people.my friend gave me books 2 read on irish history and the irish leaders of yesteryear,writings of the great leaders of the 1916 rising pearse,connelly and then also the books on the last 35 years of the troubles,books on joe cahill,ruairi obradaigh and many others,but the ones who had the most profound effect on me was reading about them ten brave young men my own age who gave up there lives,and truely showed the brits what true strength was,2 think about how people are afraid 2 go through diffrent things,and then 2 think about how the ten hunger strikers gave the ultimate sacrafice for their country and beliefs.and on this year,the 25th anniversery of that historic time in irish history,i truely believe the storys of them ten men and of other irish heros have changed my life so much for the better and made me realise the terrible waste of irish life going on on the streets of our beautiful country,and makes me think how many of our young people know nothing of the heroic people who gave their lifes so the people of this land could have abetter chance of a decent life,but instead there is a large portion who if you asked could not name the leaders of the 1916 rising or the hunger strikers.they no nothing of these things,but they no the names of the scum who flood this country full of drugs and they look up to,and try to emulate these gangsters.it just makes me dam sad.i just wish people could open there eyes and for young people to make a change and stop destroying there lives and those of there familys because it is not only their own lives they crush.thank you 4 taking the time 2 read my thoughts,yours faithfully joc
I don't believe that anyone advocating the legalisation of all drugs has seriously considered what it would be like living in such a society ....
As one aside ... would we provide treatment for addiction or does that go by the wayside as well? And if we do who would pay for it ?
Lines like this
"As the youth stare at MTV's cribs and watch folk walking out of Brown Thomas with the latest Gucci bag they pry on a lifestyle that can only be given to them through the selling of drugs or other parts of this industry within their communities"
You are implying that consumerism is the real killer here. That is adding 2 and 2 together to get 12. The poor unfortunate young man who was murdered I imagine would have disagreed, he was an apprentice plumber, if he hadn't been killed he would have gone on to make a very good living, as anyone whoever needed a plumber in Dublin will tell you.
it was always going to get worse once the paramilitaries put down their arms and concentrated on raking in the cash instead by selling them guns, protection and the like, the shinners stay quiet as mice on this as they may bleet at some stage but everybody knows the truth which is why they will never amount to anything in this republic
I read 'string em up' Johns contribution and then read on down to Joes contribution which stands in sharp contrast to the shrill lock them up and throw away the key type argument of Johns, which as we have seen countless times, doesnt work.
It always amazes me how the sane solution of the legalisation of all drugs makes some people take leave of their senses and throw all common sense to the four winds to defend the bankrupt prohibition stance.
Billions are spent every year on the current jaded and useless approach to drug abuse. When will common sense and pure logic prevail? How can we have sent man to the moon and still have this idiotic backward approach in the modern world?
On a similar vein I see a parallel between the state of the 6 counties and the 'war on drugs'. The blindingly obvious solution to the problems of the secterian statelet is a united Eire. You can have all varieties of agreements you want, but all are equally doomed to failure as we have seen. Unite or die, that simple. Anyway, why dont they call the next mutation of the GFA the Cadburys agreements and state 'the bleedin obvious' for once and for all.
I await the entry of reason and logic to the world, maybe before I die, I can hop.....
Slán
S
I'm not sure there is a single 'Libertarian position' but personally I'd say these murders are a good argument for decriminalisation.
Instead what we are hearing from the media are lots of law and order solutions. The law and order solution is one that our friends in the USA have tested out for us, not once but twice.
The first time out was in observing the harmful effects the drug alcohol has on people they came up with the idea of banning it. This resulted in the rise of a class of gangsters able to make a lot of money out of peoples wish to get alcohol. In fact there was so much money to be made that before long the gangsters started to fight with each other over who could sell this drug in which location. Lots of gangsters were shot as were lots of innocent bystanders before the decision was made that decriminalisation of alcohol under controlled conditions would remove the market for the illegal trade the gangsters depended on.
The second time out was the launching of the 'War on Drugs' by Reagan in the 1980s. This has seen the introduction of 20 year minimum sentences, 3 strikes and your out life sentences and even the potential of a death sentence for posession of large amounts of drugs. Under the war on drugs the prison population of the USA has bloomed to over 2 milllion. But of course as we all know the US is now drug free so it makes perfect sense that Ireland adopt such a successful policy.
Gangsters deal drugs and are willing to shoot each other (and whoever else is in the way) to do so for one reason and one reason only. They make vast amounts of money out of doing so. Taking out one dealer normally just opens up a space that smaller dealers will fight to occupy. I don't think its rocket science to suggest the only way to remove this motivation is to get rid of the prohibition that makes it profitable to deal drugs in the first place.
That deals with the criminality but not the fact that many of these drugs are extremly harmful and none are exactly good for you. In the case of the two socially accepted drugs, alcohol and tobacco we have tried to limit this harm by restricting who can sell them, who can buy them and where they can be consumed. This doesn't eliminate the harm as a walk through town late at any night will demonstrate or a visit to the cancer ward at a hospital. But it does limit access in a way that does not result in people being gunned down on the streets.
Just curious as to what the libertarian position is on drugs (seeing as how this piece was written by one). I am under the (perhaps mistaken) impression that it was to legalise them all. Enlighten me.
Regarding the consumption of coke, every democratic takes coke. It's so cheap these days anyone and everyone can afford it, be it from 'working class' areas or so called posh areas. you're just as likely to find it 'tripod' which is only open two weeks, as a working class pub in some estate.
overly simplistic argument.
It so easy to kill someone and get away it in Ireland, which i think is one of the reasons they are to prevalent.
Awful callous killing, beyond comprehension
John
Did you know that 99percent of heroin users had eaten white bread in the past.
Clearly the only way to stop these scumbags is to ban white bread and mandatory sentences for possesion of sliced pan,loaf or even the 'middle-class' ciabatta.
No disrespect meant to the thread itself, only John:->
In a recent interview Christy Moore made the point that we have become 'overcome with apathy' in this country and up until yesterday's murder of Anthony Campbell I would have agreed with him. His cold blooded murder has filled me with emotion and outrage. It is time that we stopped being bullied by these power hungry monsters who hide behind weapons and kill our innocent children. I believe the country should take to the streets to put pressure on the justice system to act now and to show these cowards that we are not going to let them continue to intimidate or destroy our freedom to live our lives in peace.
The guy shot this evening in town is dead. Was killed at the scene. Related to the shooting of Ray Collins for anyone that knows that story... that feud is far from over...
the response by the government to this recent henious crime is nothing new. The dogs in the streets know who these criminals are paul williams and others like him list their crimes past and present, the law is an ass! It constantly troubles me when reading these sensationalist articles about our current crop of career criminals the law appears to protect these people and innocents are suffering. I think its no use blaming the gardai as i,m sure their just as frustrated as the general public. It is time communities organise together to rid our streets of these vermin i,m not suggesting vigilantes but some other form of protest suggestions anybody?