A plague on both their houses - CIRA claim drug war murder

The dangerous, murky world of drug gangs building and protecting their empires is hardly an environment where integrity and honesty are everyday characteristics. Competition is cut-throat, literally and metaphorically, and dominance is the objective, rather than integrity. Add to that explosive mix the dangerous delusions of those who style themselves as ‘dissident republicans’ and you have a heady cocktail of the insane and the dangerous.

Yesterday’s claim from the Continuity IRA that it was responsible for Friday’s very public murder of gangland figure David Byrne and the wounding of two men at a boxing weigh-in in Dublin must be seen through that bizarre prism. A CIRA spokes man told the BBC: “A unit of the Continuity IRA was authorised to carry out an operation in Dublin at the weekend, and others throughout Ireland... more drug dealers and criminals will be targeted... and the Continuity IRA has been retraining and rearming in recent years.”

You may as well, as the scribes of old warned, try to teach the mandolin to a spaniel as to challenge these fantasists about their legitimacy, their ‘authorisations’ and plans, which are no more than a criminal gang trying to assert its authority. There is hardly a measure that should not be taken to confront these drug gangs and the self-appointed vigilantes threatening them. A plague on both their houses, especially those who imagine themselves ‘good republicans’.