Category: Transport

13.03.2008
The M3 Motor­way is cut­ting through one of the most beau­ti­ful ancient places in Europe.
Help is need­ed to sup­port the pro­test­ers in Coun­ty Meath, Ire­land who are cur­rent­ly sit­ting in tun­nels, after an ille­gal dawn raid on the direct action camp this morn­ing!!
UK activists going to Tara this Sat­ur­day, for more info con­tact schnews@brighton.co.uk,
Week of sol­i­dar­i­ty action starts Pad­dys Day 17th March, read more.…

The intense bat­tle between pro­test­ers and the M3 Motor­way, carv­ing through the archae­o­log­i­cal land­scape, sur­round­ing the ancient hill of Tara in Coun­ty Meath in Ire­land con­tin­ues…….
This morn­ing at 6.30am there was a dawn raid on the direct action camp on top of the Rath Lugh Nation­al Mon­u­ment, only four hours before an injunc­tion was due to be placed at 10.30am.
Dur­ing the raid clue­less con­struc­tion work­ers were act­ing like the police, throw­ing their weight around, whilst dis­man­tling the camp.
Pro­test­ers inside the tun­nel net­work are vul­ner­a­ble and need legal observers to pro­tect them, the bull­doz­ers are con­tin­u­ing to work on top of them, know­ing full well that the ground is main­ly sand and silt.
“The evic­tion is bla­tant­ly not being done with any care or prop­er train­ing to remove the tun­nel inhab­i­tants” All tun­nel vet­er­ans from the 90’s please get over to Tara to help with skills and advice ASAP!
This part of the M3 route is where Hal­libur­ton (owned by Dick Cheyney) are plan­ning to build the tolls for the motor­way, the con­struc­tion work­ers are using C.P.O’s, com­pul­so­ry pur­chase order’s to access the area, where they’ve start­ed to cut into the esker / foun­da­tion.
This will result in low­er­ing the water table, pre­vent­ing water reach­ing the roots of the for­est sit­u­at­ed on top of the mon­u­ment, grad­u­al­ly destroy­ing hun­dreds of ancient oak’s and beech trees.
The Nation­al Roads Author­i­ty and the Irish Gov’t are choos­ing to ignore the fact that Rath Lugh is pro­tect­ed under the Nation­al Mon­u­ments act 2004 and are con­tin­u­ing to break EU Laws left, right and cen­tre.

Fur­ther along the route tar­mac is being laid at Sol­diers Hill for the mas­sive three acre inter­change, as the con­crete fly­overs are going up.
Devel­op­ers have plans for the sur­round­ing area which will include shop­ping cen­tres, hotel com­plex­es and the usu­al Star Bucks and Mc Shite every­where!!

Peo­ple are des­per­ate­ly need­ed to go to Tara now, to build a new direct action camp, activists are meet­ing at Holy­head fer­ry port between 12noon ‑1pm Sat­ur­day 15th March, we have some mon­ey to con­tribute towards tick­ets, if folk want to come, get in touch with schNEWS.
If you can’t come to Ire­land but want to take action here in the UK see below SIAC com­pa­nies:

SIAC are an Irish com­pa­ny (South Ire­land Asphalt Com­pa­ny) who have a 5% stake in the con­struc­tion of the Irish M3 on it’s con­test­ed route in co Meath Ire­land, and are also involved in the con­struc­tion of an onshore gas refin­ery ter­mi­nal at Ross­port co Mayo.
along with their croneys FERROVIAL (Own­ers of Cli­mate crim­i­nal com­pa­ny BAA and. 7 U. K air­ports) They are instru­men­tal in the des­e­cra­tion and destruc­tion of the sacred Tara val­ley in Ire­land, Activists have called for sol­i­dar­i­ty against SIAC, and there will be ongo­ing actions against them and fer­rovial inter­na­tion­al­ly, with the for­mu­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al affin­i­ty groups.
Activists say there will be Actions against SIAC on and around March 17th 08, with dates for an inter­na­tion­al day of action against FERROVIAL to be announced short­ly, SIAC have oper­a­tions through­out the UK and Ire­land in many fields rang­ing from con­struc­tion to phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal research so there are plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ty to make you objec­tions to them felt, so please pub­li­cise and orga­nize in your local com­mu­ni­ty, (see link’s bel­low) TOGETHER WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERANCE!

How­ell James, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, SIAC Con­struc­tion (UK) Ltd
Bond’s Mill
The Count­ing House
Stone­house
Glouces­ter­shire
GL10 3RF
Tel: 00 44 145 382 8888
Fax: 00 44 145 382 4188
Sales enquiries E‑mail: bob.abraham@siac.co.uk

Struc­tur­al Steel
Richard Coop­er, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, SIAC Tet­bury Steel Ltd
Lon­don Road
Tet­bury
Glouces­ter­shire
GL8 8HH
Tel: 00 44 1666 502792
Fax: 00 44 1666 504246
E‑mail: richard.cooper@siac.co.uk

Rus­sell Thom­son, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, Gra­ham Wood Struc­tur­al Lim­it­ed
Chartwell Road
Lanc­ing Busi­ness Park
Lanc­ing
West Sus­sex
BN15 8TY
Tel: 00 44 (0) 1903 755991
Fax: 00 44 (0)1903 755384
E‑mail: r.thomson@grahamwoodstructural.co.uk
Web­site : www.grahamwoodstructural.co.uk

FOR UP-DATES AND INFO HOW TO GET TO TARA CHK OUT :

www.tarapixie.net
www.savetara.com
www.tarataratara.net

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Approx 80 per­son­nel includ­ing sev­er­al Gar­dai not dis­play­ing their num­bers have descend­ed on Rath Lugh.

There are 3 vehi­cles on the esker and a trac­tor half way up. This is seri­ous­ly jeop­ar­dis­ing the life of the girl pic­tured above who is locked into the tun­nel by the neck. The Gar­dai are aware of this and are pay­ing no heed!!!!

There is also a trac­tor heavy laden with steel works approach­ing from the Baron­stown side and 22 jeeps have been count­ed.

The sit­u­a­tu­ion is extreme­ly del­i­cate and extreme­ly tense.

Please go there if you can. Bring video equip­ment and phone cred­it. Go Now!!!

Please spread the word, con­tact all media, ring the Dept of the Envi­ron­ment, Tans­port , Muse­um all.….

No coin­ci­dence that this is hap­pen­ing before a Court Order was made to stop them.

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3pm
A pro­test­er has been arrest­ed — she has been released. She is not the same woman as that in the tun­nel.
Straight from the protest site: things have calmed down. The Fire Brigade are well gone, will not make any attempt to remove the girl from the tun­nel.
A tent will be erect­ed at the entrance so that one oth­er pro­test­er can com­mu­ni­cate with her.
No effort was or will be made to remove her.
There are still 5 oth­er peo­ple locked on with cement.
There is a small dig­ger and steam roller as well as 18 jeeps at the site.
Noth­ing is dri­ving on the esker.
They are trip­ping over media and cam­eras!
There are flood lights being brought in.
Court case being heard again at 2pm.

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4pm
Two more pro­test­ers arrest­ed, dragged down the esker. A dump truck, a bull­doz­er in the area. Search and Res­cue have arrived, — Civ­il Defence.
They need the gar­da ombuds­man there -
They are ham­mer­ing into the esker to erect the fence .….….….….……

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4:30
The con­struc­tion work­ers with the aid of the Gar­dai have fenced off the sen­si­tive area sur­round­ing the tun­nel entrance, sep­a­rat­ing it from the rest of the camp and the pro­test­ers. They are in the process of dri­ving posts into the ground, endan­ger­ing the sta­bil­i­ty of the area. The pro­test­ers onsite have backed away as the pres­ence of Gar­dai, secu­ri­ty, work­ers and activ­i­ty around the area is also pos­ing a threat and they do not wish to add fur­ther to the human ele­ment of pos­si­ble dam­age due to an excess of bod­ies on the mound. Con­tact with the pro­test­er under­ground is being main­tained by one oth­er sup­port­er inside the fence. An agree­ment has been reached which keeps the Machines at a safe dis­tance.

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The injunc­tion was refused by the court. Watch a video of today here

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Break­ing news at www.indymedia.ie

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Back­ground & new camp wish-list:

Here’s some back­ground his­to­ry and up-dates on what’s hap­pen­ing at Tara, Ire­land.

What­ev­er you dream you can do begin it.
Bold­ness has genius,power & mag­ic in it.
Begin it now.
Goethe

The idea that the land can be owned by a few at the expense of the many, is com­par­a­tive­ly new in Ire­land, when com­pared to the lov­ing­ly sculpt­ed per­fect­ly astro­nom­i­cal­ly aligned hills of theTara/Skryne val­ley.
These are mon­u­ments from a time when the land was loved and hon­oured by the tribes that lived upon it, these days how­ev­er a few moral­ly bank­rupt indi­vid­u­als feel it more advan­ta­geous to impose a tar­mac coat­ed night­mare on the once sacro­sanct fields and hills of Tara/ Skryne.

A hand­ful of Fian­na Fail (the Irish rul­ing par­ty) sup­port­ers and local prop­er­ty devel­op­ers have brought land along an area that has SINCE become the route of the planned four lane M3 motor­way, which would dis­sect 44 ancient sites, com­pris­ing a com­plex of pre-his­toric mon­u­ments, hill­forts, and henges which make up one of the rich­est
archae­o­log­i­cal sites any­where in the world.

The high­ly respect­ed world mon­u­ments fund have placed the entire val­ley on its list of one hun­dred most endan­gered world her­itage sites, all this is bad for busi­ness you might think?

Espe­cial­ly if you’re one of the cor­rupt politi­cians or builders who want to destroy this val­ley with their devel­op­ments so these peo­ple have become stub­born in there refusal to lis­ten to a few aca­d­e­mics, much less 70% of the Irish peo­ple who wished to see the road re-rout­ed, the mil­lions of euros the devel­op­ers are going to make on the back of their dodgy deal­ing must have blocked their ears to the calm voice of rea­son. And so the dig­gers moved in attempt­ing to build a mas­sive 52 acre inter­change at the foot of Tara hill itself.

On the 16th Octo­ber 07 the last of the sites that exist on the pro­posed route of the M3 was report­ed to cam­paign­ers by a wor­ried anony­mous local, so con­cerned cit­i­zens on the ground went to see if there was any sub­stance to reports that poor­ly trained pol­ish archae­ol­o­gists had been work­ing in secret over pre­vi­ous weeks to exca­vate some­thing at a site near sol­diers hill (itself a site of major his­tor­i­cal impor­tance) relat­ing to a deci­sive bat­tle from the Irish 1798 up-ris­ing which was recent­ly bull­dozed.

It would be nigh on impos­si­ble to express the his­to­ry and sig­nif­i­cance of every site men­tioned as the area Sur­round­ing Tara/Skryne is so steeped in His­to­ry so rich in archae­ol­o­gy that it would take page upon page to give an out­line of each one and their rela­tion­ship to one anoth­er.

There are ten sites of impor­tance at the pro­posed inter­change alone, only one oth­er inter­change of this size and type exists in Europe (it’s in Lithua­nia) the sheer size of it has prompt­ed great fear amongst locals that more and more motor­ways are planned to criss-cross the area around Tara. (Tara hill it’s self is a site equiv­a­lent to Stone­henge in UK as a focus for the neo-pagan com­mu­ni­ty).

Of course there’s been an out­cry nat­u­ral­ly there would be, after all through suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions of Irish his­to­ry Tara hill has stood as one of the most emblem­at­ic geo­graph­ic sym­bols of the strug­gle that every­day peo­ple have had to over­come in order to secure a life not dom­i­nat­ed by the greed of the few oppress­ing the hap­pi­ness of the many.

Time and time again through the pages of Ire­lands his­to­ry Tara and her envi­rons emerge as the stage for an epic play that has mir­rored the strug­gle of all the peo­ples of the Earth to live a life of worth and mean­ing.

In ancient times the high king or Ard Ri’ was cho­sen from amongst the Irish tribes, the Ard Ri’ lived at Tara and although their imme­di­ate lands were com­par­a­tive­ly small it fell to the Ard Ri to have the final say in mat­ters of judge­ment between the var­i­ous trib­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives of ancient Ire­land.

Some may dis­agree with the notion of Kings and rulers impos­ing their will on the land and peo­ple from some dis­tant hill,but notions of King­ship landown­er­ship and chief­tain­ship where in entire­ly dif­fer­ent under bre­hon law, than those that we in the UK have inher­it­ed as a result of near­ly a thou­sand years of sub­ju­ga­tion by a small elite of Nor­man rob­ber Barons and their decen­dents.

St Patrick first preached his Gospel at Tara to the then Ard Ri’ (leoghi­aire son of Na’ial) in mid 400 AD and Bri­an Mac Ken­nady (Bri­an Buru) was the last Ard Ri’ at Tara until 1041

In 1798 three hun­dred poor­ly armed “unit­ed Irish men” were mas­sa­cred there, at site now called sol­diers hill (the pro­posed loca­tion of the Blun­dell­stown inter­change) It’s also where O’con­nell addressed a crowd believed to be up to a mil­lion sup­port­ers from the top of tara hill when he led the move­ment for catholic eman­ci­pa­tion in the 1830s from the laws penal­is­ing Catholics that had been passed by Cromwell in the 1650’s.

The Spainish com­pa­ny Fer­rovial along with small­er oper­a­tors, Wills Broth­ers and SIAC have tak­en on the Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ship along­side the nation­al roads author­i­ty to build this road along it’s ridicu­lous crooked route through this com­plex of world her­itage sites , and although they have been repeat­ed­ly ordered by the E U com­mis­sion to stop all work on the site, all three com­pa­nies and the Irish Gov­’t have stub­born­ly refused to cease the work they have been com­pared by local MEP Kathy Sin­not to a small child who when asked to share a desert with a sib­bling, stub­born­ly stuffs the whole thing in their mouths and petu­lant­ly replies ” I can’t it’s all gone” except this is noth­ing so triv­ial as that of course, because the land in ques­tion is one of the most archae­o­log­i­cal­ly rich land­scapes any­where on earth , with an unbro­ken record of 6000 years of human habi­ta­tion, the mind bog­gles at the poten­tial sig­nif­i­cance of the archae­ol­o­gy in the area.

Inci­dent­ly multi­na­tion­al giant Fer­rovial help­ing to car­ry out this attack was found­ed (cir­ca 1953) to poro­vide hard­ware for the Spainish rail sys­tem but was soon in finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ty and was even­tu­al­ly bailed out by Spain’s fas­cist dic­ta­tor Fran­co, these links and oth­ers with­in Fer­rovials board of direc­tors have led many peo­ple to believe that its vin­dic­tive actions have been prompt­ed by the right wing Span­ish Catholic cult “Opus Dei” who inci­dent­ly have their head­quar­ters in Ire­land, right in the cen­tre of the ancient tem­ple com­plex of the Tara/ Skryne val­ley.

Some things how­ev­er, we can be absolute­ly cer­tain of, Fer­rovial were involved in a project (suc­cess­ful­ly resist­ed by locals) that had been intend­ed to bull­doze a moun­tain, ances­toral grave­yard, and sacred precinct,in Mex­i­co, not to men­tion sim­i­lar attroc­i­ties in Chile.
They also own 7 U.K air­ports, and are involved with with the forth­com­ing planned expan­sion of Dublin air­port, plus the on going attempt to expand Heathrow etc, hav­ing pur­chased the British avi­a­tion author­i­ty for £10.31billion ster­ling last year.

At present they are try­ing anoth­er route to get there grub­by lit­tle ten­ti­cles in the till by obtain­ing a slice of Lon­don’s under­ground sys­tem.

Of course there was out­cry in Ire­land when the idea of putting a motor­way through Tara was first vaunt­ed, but as Aldous Hux­ley once said “in the future it will be pos­si­ble for the pow­ers that be to con­troll the mass­es by pro­vid­ing end­less amounts of dis­trac­tion and pro­pa­gan­da” the Irish spin machine has shown it’s self to be as manip­u­la­tive as any oth­er in the devel­oped world.

First word went out that a motor­way was pro­posed at Tara, then as you would expect there was an uproar, so the Irish nation­al roads author­i­ty put mass­es of fund­ing into an aware­ness cam­paign “explain­ing” that they were not after all propos­ing a road through Tara, in fact they had mere­ly sug­gest­ed putting a road “around” Tara, an obvi­ous ploy one might think, but one the Irish peo­ple have been expect­ed to swal­low hook line and sinker.

As the peo­ple of Ire­land breathed their ini­tial col­lec­tive sigh of relief it was expect­ed by the NRA that the pub­lic would over­look all the things that were not men­tioned, issues like the 52 acre inter­change at the foot of tara hill, the bull­doz­ing of 44 (yes 44) archae­o­log­i­cal sites, the demo­li­tion of a wood­en henge with can­nine and human intern­ments in its orig­i­nal con­text (believed to be unique) the human buri­als include a high sta­tus female intern­ment (which with prop­er analy­sis may well have pro­vid­ed use­ful com­men­tary on the pos­si­ble bias of the ear­ly chris­t­ian scribes toward male king­ship etc) the par­tial demo­li­tion of a unique hill­fort, the bull­doz­ing of a grave­yard full of 60 french “celtic” style intern­ments, the list goes on and on and on graves and sites and tem­ples all sacred to the liv­ing soul of the land and her peo­ple, torn out so a hand­ful of greedy self­ish philistines can make a quick buck.

Mean­while with the ongo­ing and whole­sale destruc­tion under­way the Irish pow­ers that be repeat their mantra, it’s not going through Tara hill they say, the liv­ing are more impor­tant than the dead and the liv­ing need that motor­way, and on and on they repeat their patron­s­ing over­sights as if the peo­ple are so stu­pid as to not know that there is a bet­ter route to the west of Tara hill, that route would fol­low the flat lev­el gra­di­ent of a dis­used rail­way track, or that all the best devel­op­ment land of the linked towns lays to the west, or that the short­est and best cross­ing of the Boyne riv­er is to the west, in fact the only log­i­cal rea­son why any­one would build a road on the present pro­posed route is because a few crony’s of the Irish rul­ing par­ty have brought up mass­es of land in the Tara/skryne val­ley and they alone stand to prof­it from this route.

So the politi­cians and road builders keep their heads in the sand, vain­ly repeat­ing their mantra against real­i­ty, my hands are tied, we need a road, it’s not going through Tara, etc etc.
The Rath Lugh direct action camp was evict­ed yesterday,and peo­ple are still locked on in the tun­nels we need peo­ple to come and help build a new camp along the M3.
Every vis­i­tor makes a dif­fer­ence to the protest.

Activ­i­ties so far have includ­ed lim­it­ed use of tripods, most recent­ly at an iron age fort com­plex dis­cov­ered in octo­ber near sol­diers hill where pro­test­ers locked on to to obstruct the shod­dy prac­tices of bad­ly trained and unpro­fes­sion­al pol­ish archae­ol­o­gists draft­ed in, to rush the dig through in secret, also tree hous­es have been placed on route, but work has been main­ly stopped spo­radicly by con­cerned E.U cit­i­zens uphold­ing the law by phys­i­cal­ly stand­ing in front of bull­doz­ers,.

“The tac­tics and actions vary as we con­tin­ue to shut down all work on this road once and for all” said one pro­tes­tor ” the one thing that will nev­er change is that we will defy this road to the last sod, and con­tin­ue to protest as long as those respon­si­ble try to destroy our sacred land”

But greater num­bers are urgent­ly need­ed, any­one who cares is urged to vis­it and lend phys­i­cal, moral or oth­er sup­port, every­one has some­thing they can offer, the main thing is just to go to Tara hill and meet oth­er peo­ple who care, it’s not about “pro­test­ers” or “activists” doing their demo , it’s about YOU car­ing enough to do some­thing before it’s too late, don’t leave it to some­one else.

HOW TO GET THERE.
Nation­al express fun­fares from £15 one way from the U.K (inc fer­ry) or £52 for a months open return on the train from most U.K rail sta­tions.
Once you get to Dublin city cen­ter, get a 109 bus from Busaurus (cen­tral bus sta­tion) going north to Navan, and ask to be let off at Tara. It’s a short well sign­post­ed walk from the bus stop to Tara hill and the vig­il site, this should cost about 11 euros return.

WISH LIST FOR THE NEW CAMP BEING SET UP!!!
Tarps, car­pets, dig­i­tal cam­eras and mem­o­ry cards, old C.B. Rigs aeri­als etc, Mobile phones and cred­it, Large tents and tar­pau­lins, rope, climb­ing equip­ment and har­ness, Locks, chains, water­proof warm dry and durable cloth­ing, ser­vice­able welly boots and wax jack­et, and all oth­er types and sizes of ser­vice­able boots, clean and warm blan­kets and bed­ding, Light­ing equip­ment, secu­ri­ty lights, and 12volt spot­lights, scaf­fold­ing bars and clamps, weld­ing equip­ment, pic’s shov­els, mic’s and record­ing equip­ment, pic’s shov­el’s etc, etc, but espe­cial­ly we need indi­vid­u­als with their own inni­tia­tive, the protest belongs to no one„ it’s up to you, if not you then who? If not now then when?

There are big events planned for may 1st, june 21st, aug 1st, sept 21st, oct 31st dec 21st feb 1st and march 31st,
The resis­tance will be ongo­ing against fer­rovial regard­less, and against the road until it is re rout­ed, and let’s face it there’s noth­ing like a sur­prise vis­it to cheer folks up, so come on down to Tara and cel­e­brate our love of the land and the strength of our uni­ty and defi­ance.

Dona­tions toward direct action grate­ful­ly received at www.tarapixie.net (direct action web­site, excel­lent films and up to the minute info from the ground)

And legal costs direct action and cam­paign­ing at www.savetara.com
Ongo­ing cam­paign­ing and cor­rup­tion info and refs can be found at www.tarawatch.org

WEEK OF ACTION AGAINST SIAC STARTS MON 17th MARCH 2008

CONTACT: HEADMEN AT SIAC

Coun­try code (0035)
Mark Cleary 08681 90323
Liam Short­hall 0868274419
Wills Head­man 0879101759

Cia­ran Feiegh­ery Chair­man of SIAC
Hank Fugar­ty is the direc­tor of SIAC Oper­a­tions

GRUPO FERROVIAL S.A.
Principe de Ver­gara 135
28002 Madrid Spain
Tel no.+34–91 586- 2500
Fax no. +34–91-586‑2677