Category: Wilderness Defence

Wilder­ness defence

Japanese Open Fire on Sea Shepherd Crew: Three Injured

07/03/2008
At 1545 hours (0445 GMT), a clash between the crew of the Sea Shep­herd ves­sel Steve Irwin and the Japan­ese whal­ing ship Nis­shin Maru turned vio­lent when the Japan­ese Coast Guard began to throw flash grenades at the crew of the Steve Irwin.

Paul Watson with bullet & bent badgeJapanese coast guards with flash grenades07/03/2008
At 1545 hours (0445 GMT), a clash between the crew of the Sea Shep­herd ves­sel Steve Irwin and the Japan­ese whal­ing ship Nis­shin Maru turned vio­lent when the Japan­ese Coast Guard began to throw flash grenades at the crew of the Steve Irwin.

Cap­tain Paul Wat­son was struck by a bul­let in the chest. For­tu­nate­ly, the bul­let was stopped by his Kevlar vest. The bul­let struck just above the heart and man­gled Cap­tain Watson’s anti-poach­ing badge, which was worn on his sweater under­neath the Kevlar vest.

Dr. David Page was video­taped pry­ing the bul­let from Cap­tain Watson’s Kevlar vest. “You have been hit by a bul­let,” he said.

The Kevlar vest and anti-poach­ing badge effec­tive­ly saved Cap­tain Watson’s life.

Addi­tion­al injuries were sus­tained by crewmem­bers Ash­ley Dunn and Ralph Lowe. Dunn, 35, from Launce­s­ton, Aus­tralia suf­fered a hip injury when he tried to get out of the way of the explod­ing grenades. Lowe, 33, from Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia received bruis­es to his back when one of the flash grenades explod­ed behind him.

The Japan­ese Coast Guard was retal­i­at­ing against Sea Shep­herd crewmem­bers for toss­ing rot­ten but­ter onto the decks to dis­cour­age their ille­gal whal­ing activ­i­ties. The clash came after a week long pur­suit by the Steve Irwin of the Nis­shin Maru, in an effort to stop ille­gal whal­ing activ­i­ties in the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary.

Ear­li­er in the day at 0800 hours (1900 GMT), the Steve Irwin had ordered the Nis­shin Maru to leave French ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters. The Japan­ese whaler com­plied and turned around, head­ing back west into Aus­tralian waters.

The con­fronta­tion occurred inside the Aus­tralian Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Zone at the posi­tion of 63 Degrees, 41 Min­utes South and 133 Degrees, 27 Min­utes East.

Video of the inci­dent

Japan­ese Scram­ble to Spin Shoot­ing Sto­ry

In the after­math of a con­fronta­tion between the crew of the whal­ing ship Nis­shin Maru and the crew of the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin, the Japan­ese pub­lic rela­tions flacks are work­ing over­time to get the spin right.

First, they admit­ted that warn­ing shots were fired, then they cor­rect­ed them­selves and said that only flash grenades were fired at the crew of the Steve Irwin. Then they changed the sto­ry again and described the flash grenades as “warn­ing balls.” By tomor­row morn­ing, they may have it spun it again and may be describ­ing them as “marsh­mal­lows.”

The Japan­ese Coast Guard and the Japan­ese Fish­eries Agency have stat­ed to the media that the devices were flash grenades and that warn­ing shots were fired. Only the Insti­tute for Cetacean Research is deny­ing that warn­ing shots were fired and describ­ing the flash grenades as “warn­ing balls.”

“I think the video tells the sto­ry,” said Sea Shep­herd vol­un­teer Lau­rens De Groot, a for­mer police offi­cer from Rot­ter­dam. “I’m famil­iar with the devices thrown. They are the type of flash grenade that spe­cial­ly trained SWAT teams used to com­bat armed and dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals.”

The Japan­ese claim that Cap­tain Paul Wat­son is lying about being shot was expect­ed. When Giles Lane and Ben­jamin Potts were tied to the mast of the Yusshin Maru No. 2, the Insti­tute for Cetacean Research claimed it was a lie until the video images were released.

Dr. David Page, the ship’s med­ical offi­cer, has exam­ined and ver­i­fied that there were three injuries sus­tained, all severe bruis­es. Ralph Lowe from Mel­bourne was bruised on the back by an explod­ing flash grenade, and Ani­mal Plan­et cam­era­man Ash­ley Dunn from Launce­s­ton, Tas­ma­nia injured his hip while try­ing to avoid a flash grenade. Cap­tain Wat­son has a large bruise and a cut on the upper left side of his chest.

Dr. Page pried a bul­let from Cap­tain Watson’s Kevlar vest and exam­ined the bruise where the bul­let impact­ed. Watson’s Sea Shep­herd anti-poach­ing badge took up some of the force of the impact, but it also cut the skin beneath after it was man­gled by the bul­let.

Japan claims there were only two Coast Guard offi­cers on the Nis­shin Maru, but Sea Shep­herd pho­tos and videos clear­ly show at least four uni­formed Coast Guards­men.

Japan­ese Chief Cab­i­net Sec­re­tary Nobu­ta­ka Machimu­ra was quot­ed as say­ing to the media, “Is it all right to hurt humans in order to pro­tect whales? I think whales are cute and impor­tant crea­tures, but even so, hurt­ing humans is unfor­giv­able.”

That is quite the spin–accusing Sea Shep­herd crew, who did not injure any­one, of hurt­ing humans after Japan­ese whalers and the Coast Guard delib­er­ate­ly injured human beings to pro­tect an ille­gal whal­ing oper­a­tion.

The Japan­ese Coast Guard admit­ted to the media only a few days ago that its offi­cers were armed with rifles and sidearms. Now they are deny­ing they have rifles.

The Japan­ese keep chang­ing their sto­ry.
The most impor­tant fact remains that the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet is ille­gal­ly killing endan­gered whales in a whale sanc­tu­ary in vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law and an Aus­tralian Fed­er­al Court order.

Eithinog and Brewery Fields victory (Bangor, Wales)

BREWERS TROOP

North Wales cam­paign­ers who have fought a four­teen year bat­tle to stop plans to devel­op a 50 acre coun­cil-owned wildlife haven and com­mu­ni­ty space on the edge of Ban­gor, Gwynedd are near­ing vic­to­ry.

BREWERS TROOP

North Wales cam­paign­ers who have fought a four­teen year bat­tle to stop plans to devel­op a 50 acre coun­cil-owned wildlife haven and com­mu­ni­ty space on the edge of Ban­gor, Gwynedd are near­ing vic­to­ry.

Rare fun­gi found recent­ly at Eithinog and Brew­ery Fields by a vet­er­an of two camps evict­ed vio­lent­ly by police in 1998 (See SchNEWS 172/173 & 178) have final­ly brought Gwynedd Coun­cil’s pro­posed hous­ing plans to a halt. This turn­about comes short­ly after their devel­op­ment had been giv­en the green light by the UDP Inquiry Inspec­tor last Novem­ber. Cam­paign­ers are now await­ing a for­mal announce­ment by the coun­cil, which would mean 83% of the orig­i­nal area being pre­served, hope­ful­ly to be man­aged as a Nature Reserve by a local com­mu­ni­ty trust.

The long cam­paign, con­duct­ed var­i­ous­ly by Gwynedd and Môn Earth First! in con­junc­tion with and oth­er groups and the local com­mu­ni­ty, has seen many twists and turns: direct action against the coun­cil and devel­op­ers, com­mu­ni­ty march­es, nature events, Ban­gor coun­cil­lors giv­ing evi­dence to under­mine res­i­dents’ town green appli­ca­tions, and use of vio­lence by North Wales police to break lock-ons and a bull­doz­er to evict a tun­nel. This cul­mi­nat­ed in a 1998 Gwynedd Coun­cil com­mit­ment to estab­lish a nature reserve being reversed in 2004 and the rein­state­ment of large-scale hous­ing plans.

How­ev­er, com­mu­ni­ty anger at this last coun­cil U‑turn per­suad­ed it to agree to con­duct an eco­log­i­cal appraisal of the site — which found that much of Eithinog & Brew­ery Fields crossed the grass­land fun­gi SSSI thresh­old. In con­se­quence, a large part of the pro­posed devel­op­ment was dropped in 2005, although sev­en acres of eco­log­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive grass­land rec­om­mend­ed for con­ser­va­tion were still ear­marked for hous­ing. The coun­cil’s own bio­di­ver­si­ty team acknowl­edged that its devel­op­ment would jeop­ar­dise the integri­ty of the whole site.

The Coun­try­side Coun­cil for Wales has now stepped in, and although some fur­ther devel­op­ment will hap­pen, it says it should be con­fined to five acres of degrad­ed land. All the open space used for gen­er­a­tions by the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ty is to be pre­served and the land pos­si­bly trans­ferred to a local trust, who — if this comes about — would man­age it in con­junc­tion with con­ser­va­tion bod­ies. A big SchNEWS thumbs up to the peo­ple con­cerned for their efforts in sav­ing Eithinog & Brew­ery Fields to be a com­mu­ni­ty asset for future gen­er­a­tions.

* For a cam­paign his­to­ry les­son, see -

http://www.eithinog.org.uk/history.html

Treesit last ditch attempt stop bushland destruction

2008–2‑29
A group of Con­cerned Inde­pen­dent Activists (CIA) have placed a plat­form occu­pied by an activist, high up a tuart tree in bush­land at Col­lege Grove in Bun­bury. It is hoped this will delay destruc­tion of this con­tentious for­est.

College Grove tree-sit2008–2‑29
A group of Con­cerned Inde­pen­dent Activists (CIA) have placed a plat­form occu­pied by an activist, high up a tuart tree in bush­land at Col­lege Grove in Bun­bury. It is hoped this will delay destruc­tion of this con­tentious for­est.

The bush, which forms part of a valu­able nature cor­ri­dor, is under threat of being bull­dozed by Land­corp for a hos­ing devel­op­ment. CIA spokesper­son Simon Peter­fly said “this is the last nature cor­ri­dor on the Swan Coastal Plain that con­nects the ocean to a riv­er”…
The plat­form is a last ditch attempt to save the bush, which includes a rare pop­u­la­tion of ring-tailed pos­sums. He said that Landcorp’s project was con­trary to all good sense and showed a total lack of moral stand­ing in the world of con­ser­va­tion.

“We want to expose Landcorp’s intent to destroy this vital sec­tion of the cor­ri­dor to all West­ern Aus­tralians”, he said. “This is more than just a piece of bush to be flat­tened. It con­tains the rare tuart tran­si­tion zone and pro­vides habi­tat to a pro­tect­ed species which relies upon the bush for its ongo­ing exis­tence”.

Mr Peter­fly said that the inde­pen­dent activists hoped that their remain­ing actions would help edu­cate peo­ple about the fragili­ty of the remain­ing bush­land at Col­lege Grove. “If peo­ple log onto Google Earth, they will see just how thin the nature cor­ri­dor has become… It is just so frag­ile and too valu­able to lose”.

Mr Peter­fly said that the plat­form would stay in place as long as pos­si­ble to focus people’s atten­tion on the plight of rem­nant bush­land on the Swan Coastal Plain.

CONTACT Simon Peter­fly — 0422 540756

South West Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre

Japanese Whaling Fleet Confronted By Sea Shepherd + Interview With Nottingham Activist On Board

3.03.2008 — Aboard the M/Y Steve Irwin South­ern Oceans —The crew on the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin engaged in a con­fronta­tion with the Japan­ese fac­to­ry ship Nis­shin Maru this morn­ing between 0800 and 1000 Hours. The Nis­shin Maru can­not out­run the Steve Irwin. After a 12 hour chase the Sea Shep­herd ship closed the gap and passed along­side the Nis­shin Maru. The crew deployed over two dozen bot­tles of rot­ten but­ter send­ing a stench through­out the whale killing ship that will remain for days. The crew also threw pack­ets of a slip­pery chem­i­cal onto the deck of the Nis­shin Maru. This will make it very dif­fi­cult to cut up whales. The sub­stance becomes even more slip­pery with water so it will be dif­fi­cult to wash it off the decks.

rotten butter throwing Sea Shepherd style3.03.2008 — Aboard the M/Y Steve Irwin South­ern Oceans —The crew on the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin engaged in a con­fronta­tion with the Japan­ese fac­to­ry ship Nis­shin Maru this morn­ing between 0800 and 1000 Hours. The Nis­shin Maru can­not out­run the Steve Irwin. After a 12 hour chase the Sea Shep­herd ship closed the gap and passed along­side the Nis­shin Maru. The crew deployed over two dozen bot­tles of rot­ten but­ter send­ing a stench through­out the whale killing ship that will remain for days. The crew also threw pack­ets of a slip­pery chem­i­cal onto the deck of the Nis­shin Maru. This will make it very dif­fi­cult to cut up whales. The sub­stance becomes even more slip­pery with water so it will be dif­fi­cult to wash it off the decks.

“I guess we can call this non-vio­lent chem­i­cal war­fare,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “We only use organ­ic, non-tox­ic mate­ri­als designed to harass and obstruct ille­gal whal­ing oper­a­tions.” Four armed Japan­ese Coast Guard offi­cers clear­ly iden­ti­fied in their uni­forms video­taped the con­fronta­tion.

The Cap­tain of the Nis­shin Maru played a tape over and over again with a wom­an’s voice say­ing “Warn­ing, warn­ing, this is the Nis­shin Maru cap­tain. Stop your destruc­tive actions imme­di­ate­ly. If you dare to board this ves­sel you will be tak­en into cus­tody and restrained as ille­gal intrud­ers under Japan­ese law.”

Cap­tain Paul Wat­son radioed the Nis­shin Maru to inform them that they had no author­i­ty in the Aus­tralian Antarc­tic Ter­ri­to­ry. Cap­tain Wat­son ordered the Japan­ese cap­tain to cease all whal­ing oper­a­tions and to com­ply with the Aus­tralian Fed­er­al Court rul­ing that pro­hibits the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet from killing whales in the Aus­tralian Antarc­tic Ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters.

The con­fronta­tion took place at 63 Degrees 17 Min­utes South and 126 Degrees and 20 min­utes east. This is 175 miles off the Ban­zare Coast inside the Aus­tralian Eco­nom­ic Exclu­sion Zone. The Steve Irwin has fall­en half a mile off to the star­board side of the Nis­shin Maru. “It stinks too bad to remain any clos­er,” said Todd Emko 32, of New York City.

Not a sin­gle whale has been killed since the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin returned to harass the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet in the Aus­tralian Whale Sanc­tu­ary. “They will not be get­ting their quo­ta this year and that is a cer­tain­ty,” said Jeff Han­son 35, from Fre­man­tle, West­ern Aus­tralia. “In fact I don’t think they will be get­ting half their quo­ta.” In total the Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety has shut down ille­gal Japan­ese whal­ing oper­a­tions for over four and a half weeks.

=======

Inter­view With Not­ting­ham Activist In South­ern Ocean On Board Sea Shep­herd Ship

Dan is an activist from Not­ting­ham who has joined the crew on board the Sea Shep­herd ves­sel Steve Irwin in a bid to stop the ille­gal whal­ing activ­i­ties of the Japan­ese near Antar­ti­ca. The mis­sion, named Miga­loo, start­ed last Decem­ber and after refu­elling in Mel­bourne last month, the Sea Shep­herd crew is back in the oceans, have man­aged to track down the whal­ing fleet and have been in hot per­suit of its main ves­sel, the Yushin Maru No. 2 for the last week. Accor­ing to one of the crew onboard the ship “the weath­er is get­ting cold­er and we are get­ting many hours of dark­ness now. The Antarc­tic win­ter is creep­ing up on us. The seas are get­ting rougher and we are get­ting bliz­zards.” We joined Dan via sat­telite phone to ask him about his adven­tures..

Inter­view 28/02/08

Dan: Hel­lo?

Q: Hel­lo?

Dan: Eh up, how is it going?

Q: Yeah, I’m fine, how are you?

Dan: Good mate.

Q: And you thought you’d get away with not doing an inter­view with us? 🙂 (Dan left ear­li­er than antic­i­pat­ed)

Dan: I knew you’d catch up with me even­tu­al­ly..

Q: So how is it going?

Dan: Yeah, I’m alright. We’re in the mid­dle of the south­ern ocean right now. In a big storm at the moment with things fly­ing around every­where..

Q: I read some stuff about the seas being real­ly rough, var­ied at times it would be like sun­ny and then bliz­zards and things..

Dan: Yeah, I mean we’ve got about 4 meter waves and I’m not sure what the wind­speed is..

Q: But you’re all cop­ing with it?

Dan: Yeah, we did­n’t expect it to be this bad, from the weath­er reports we were get­ting. But its here now..

Q: Could you explain a lit­tle bit about what it is that you guys are doing there at the moment?

Dan: Right now we are chas­ing the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet around the coast of Antar­ti­ca. We’d like to catch up with them and stop them. By con­stant­ly chas­ing them we’re hop­ing to reduce their abil­i­ty to whale. […] They’re cer­tain­ly not whal­ing in this weath­er. The last cou­ple of days they haven’t killed any whales at all.

Q: You’ve been on the chase for a num­ber of days. Is there an end in sight? How long is this gonna go on for?

Dan: I mean depend­ing on the weath­er and stuff we will car­ry on until our fuel runs out. Thats still a good few weeks yet, which should bring us to the end of the whal­ing sea­son actu­al­ly. We should be leav­ing the same time as the [whal­ing] fleet.

Q: Whats your job on the ship?

Dan: Every­one has their set role on the ship. I’m in charge of the deck depart­ment. I am also in charge of all the ships clean­ing duties, mak­ing sure the toi­lets are clean. Also look­ing after all the equip­ment on deck, like the crane and the anchors. I’m also in charge of the inflat­able boats which we use on our actions. Mak­ing sure they are in good work­ing order and get­ting peo­ple trained up to use them. So thats my job. We’ve got nav­i­ga­tors, we’ve got peo­ple in the gal­ly cook­ing, we got peo­ple in the engine room mak­ing sure we have the pow­er and [there is] also a com­mu­ni­ca­tions offi­cer, who keeps us in touch with email etc, lots of dif­fer­ent jobs.

Q: Why did you decide to join the Sea Shep­herd more than any oth­er organ­i­sa­tion, for exam­ple Green­peace?

Dan: I’m inter­est­ed in the Sea Shep­herd because of its direct action angle. We don’t do any protest­ing. We actu­al­ly phys­i­cal­ly try­ing to stop [the whal­ing fleet]. Not real­ly inter­est­ed in just protest­ing, done that before.. I’m con­cerned with sav­ing [ani­mals] from the seas and end­ing whal­ing for­ev­er. Its the Sea Shep­herd direct angle I’m attract­ed to..

Q: Because at the moment there are a lot of laws pro­tect­ing whales.. A lot of laws have been passed, inter­na­tion­al treaties and all sorts which basi­cal­ly pro­hib­it the whal­ing, but no one to enforce them and that that is the task that the Sea Shep­herd has tak­en on.

Dan: In this sit­u­a­tion the Sea Shep­herd is actu­al­ly play­ing the role of the Aus­tralian navy or coast­guard. We’re in Aus­tralian waters and Aus­tralian ter­ri­to­ry. The Aus­tralian [Fed­er­al] Court ruled [recent­ly] that the Japan­ese whal­ing [oper­a­tions] inside their ter­ri­to­ry is ille­gal and that it should be restrained. There just isn’t the polit­i­cal will to do that. Japan and Aus­tralia are impor­tant trad­ing part­ners. There are numer­ous laws which are pro­tect­ing the whales down here, I’m not an expert on all of them, but there is the Con­ven­tion Inter­na­tion­al Trade In Endan­gered Species, the UN World Char­ter for Nature, which is actu­al­ly empow­eres [ordi­nary] peo­ple to enforce these laws, the Inter­na­tion­al Whal­ings Com­mis­sion Mora­to­ri­um on Com­mer­cial Whal­ing, and the Antarc­tic Treaty pro­tects whales. So they are real­ly bla­tent­ly break­ing a whole bunch of laws. So it is a case of law enforce­ment, more so that protest­ing.

Q: Yeah, because I guess there could be a whole load of laws, but if there is no one to enforce them..

Dan: Yeah, its only worth as much as the piece of paper its writ­ten on.. These treaties should either not be agreed on or be enforced.

Q: You’re obvi­ous­ly doing a great job down there, is there any­thing peo­ple can do on land to sup­port the stuff you’re doing down there?

Dan: When you go to the Sea Shep­herd web­site there are numer­ous peo­ple you can con­tact to [con­front] them about their inac­tion. There is Sea Shep­herd UK who are con­stant­ly rais­ing funds. This ship con­sumes huge amounts of diesel and then the main­te­nance and repair. Peo­ple can be sure that any mon­ey they donate will be used direct­ly to [con­front] the whalers.

Q: Is there any­thing you’d like to say to the peo­ple in Not­ting­ham, some who you know and will be read­ing this?

Dan: Hel­lo to every­one I know. Take care of your­selves back there. I’m a bit cold and wet, but yeah, safe so far and I’ll see you all in a few weeks.

Q: Well we wish you all the best, you’re doing a great job down there and there are tonnes of peo­ple who real­ly sup­port the stuff you’re doing and we all know its very impor­tant so keep up the good work!

Dan: Yeah, cheers mate, take care.

Operation Migaloo (Sea Shepherd)

Sea Shep­herd Aussie Crew Pre­pared to Be Tak­en as Pris­on­ers to Japan

On site reports from the trenches at Rath Lugh

Mon­day 25th Feb­ru­ary:
There are fences across the pro­posed route each side of the Rath Lugh woods. At around 8am this morn­ing a mem­ber of the Rath Lugh camp heard machin­ery pass­ing by the rath. 6 of us went out and saw 2 dump trucks and 2 dig­gers out­side the fence, com­ing from the Baron­stown direc­tion. Each dig­ger was 40 tonnes, and want­ed to dri­ve though at the same time! A large crowd of SIAC, Fer­rovial and Wills Bros work­ers were present, 2 mem­bers of the Gar­da Siochana were also present, both in incom­plete uni­forms; they did­n’t wear hats, one of them was­n’t dis­play­ing his ID num­ber on his shoul­der. We explained no machin­ery would be pass­ing by Rath Lugh, that the area is pre­served and it is a crim­i­nal offence to inter­fere with or dam­age a nation­al mon­u­ment. The weight and vibra­tions of the machin­ery will affect the mon­u­ment on the esker, and so endan­ger all of Rath Lugh. The work­ers took absolute­ly no heed of any­thing we told them.

Rath Lugh destructionMon­day 25th Feb­ru­ary:
There are fences across the pro­posed route each side of the Rath Lugh woods. At around 8am this morn­ing a mem­ber of the Rath Lugh camp heard machin­ery pass­ing by the rath. 6 of us went out and saw 2 dump trucks and 2 dig­gers out­side the fence, com­ing from the Baron­stown direc­tion. Each dig­ger was 40 tonnes, and want­ed to dri­ve though at the same time! A large crowd of SIAC, Fer­rovial and Wills Bros work­ers were present, 2 mem­bers of the Gar­da Siochana were also present, both in incom­plete uni­forms; they did­n’t wear hats, one of them was­n’t dis­play­ing his ID num­ber on his shoul­der. We explained no machin­ery would be pass­ing by Rath Lugh, that the area is pre­served and it is a crim­i­nal offence to inter­fere with or dam­age a nation­al mon­u­ment. The weight and vibra­tions of the machin­ery will affect the mon­u­ment on the esker, and so endan­ger all of Rath Lugh. The work­ers took absolute­ly no heed of any­thing we told them.

Pro­test­ers climbed onto the machin­ery to peace­ful­ly block­ade their path. The rest of us stood in front of the machines. The Gar­dai took our names and address­es. acThe pro­test­ers on the machin­ery climbed off the machines, because one con­struc­tion work­er tried to for­ca­bly pull a male pro­test­er off the dig­ger. The female pro­test­er was walk­ing towards the Rath, when she was man­han­dled by the Gar­da with no hat, car or ID num­ber on his shoul­der. The Gar­dai did­n’t give her a cau­tion but arrest­ed her straight away. He hand­cuffed her and when we ques­tioned him, he men­tioned OPERATION BEDROCK. He then attempt­ed to drag her to Mark Cleary’s jeep, as there was no squad car to be seen. We imme­di­ate­ly object­ed to this ille­gal arrest, but the Gar­dai kept pulling her, even through she was vis­i­bly upset. There were no female Gar­dai present, we expressed our con­cerns about a young female being tak­en off site by 2 extreme­ly unpro­fes­sion­al Gar­dai and dri­ven off in a vio­lent man’s jeep (Mark Cleary’s. Pho­tos of this man can be seen on this site, or Indymedia.ie, his dri­ves a white jeep and his reg­is­tra­tion plate is 07 D 60531).

The Gar­dai final­ly seemed to under­stand our wor­ries about this ille­gal arrest, and decid­ed to walk her off the site and take her to Navan Gar­da Sta­tion in their squad car, which for some unknown rea­son was parked down the route near Baron­stown. I walked with the female pro­test­er and the 2 Gar­dai towards Baron­stown. She was hand­cuffed behind her back, and when the wind was blow­ing dust in her eyes, they would­n’t free her so she could wipe the dust out. It’s worth not­ing that this site has had its top­soil removed and is com­pact­ed earth with lime to dry out the ground. They joked rather insen­si­tive­ly I should wipe her eyes instead! When I asked the Gar­da with no ID why he men­tioned OPERATION BEDROCK, he refused to com­ment. Final­ly we arrived at their squad car, but a Pad­dy Wag­on was there, and around 8 men in plain clothes wear­ing Gar­da Siochana wind cheater jack­ets. When I asked them why they weren’t in full uni­form they explained they were plain clothes Gar­dai. I again expressed my con­cerns about this dodgy crowd tak­ing one of our young female pro­test­ers away, and request­ed I come with her, for her own health and safe­ty. They refused imme­di­ate­ly, one Bean Gar­da was extreme­ly snap­py, explain­ing the female pro­test­er would be safe with her. I said this was exact­ly what I was wor­ried about and asked would they hand­cuff me so I could accom­pa­ny my col­leage. The same Bean Gar­da said I have often made my own way to Navan in the past when need­ed be. The Gar­da did­n’t uncuff my col­leage in the back of the car, so when they braked sud­den­ly she hurt her back and now needs med­ical atten­tion.

We made our way back to the front line at Rath Lugh and were about to head into the Gar­da Sta­tion in Navan when we got an urgent phone call from the front line. A doz­er was at the left fence, com­ing from Baron­stown direc­tion. A small­er dig­ger was work­ing on a spoil heap a few feet away from the esker. We imme­di­ate­ly block­ad­ed the machin­ery peace­ful­ly to pre­vent them work­ing. All of the SIAC, Fer­rovial and Wills Bros were sit­ting in their jeeps as it was hail­ston­ing and extreme­ly windy. A Gar­da jeep approached from Lis­mullen, with the same 2 Gar­dai who arrest­ed my col­leage an hour ear­li­er. The bald Gar­da with­out his ID num­ber ear­li­er now had his ID dis­played, obvi­ous­ly he realised he made an ille­gal arrest ear­li­er. We hand­ed them the Rath Lugh Preser­va­tion Order, which they accept­ed. The Gar­da who dis­played his ID num­ber explained the doz­er would be pass­ing throught to Lis­mullen, but he was stop­ping the dig­ger from work­ing until the mat­ter of the Preser­va­tion Order is clear­er. We blocked the esker from being harmed as the doz­er passed by s to the Lis­mullen site. When asked about the plain clothes Gar­dai, the Gar­da denied their exis­tence. When I remind­ed hiym I spoke to the plain clothes Gar­dai myself, he cor­rect­ed him­self. He said they were on stand­by. On stand­by for what we asked, explain­ing our own health and safe­ty is of para­mount impor­tance. He refused to com­ment fur­ther.

6 con­struc­tion work­ers approached the front line ben­der, took mea­sure­ments around the perime­ter fence of the ben­der, using sur­vey­ing equip­ment. Con­struc­tion work­ers in jeeps attempt­ed to dri­ve past Rath Lugh again from Baron­stown to Lis­mullen, but the Gar­dai refused them per­mis­sion, until the Preser­va­tion Order mat­ter is clear­er.

I am now on going to bring the female pro­test­er who got released to hos­pi­tal for med­ical atten­tion.

————-

Update lunchtime:

Sit­u­a­tion Crit­i­cal as more machin­ery is arriv­ing. 4 machines were allowed pass Rath Lugh in sin­gle file ear­li­er en route to Lis­mullin. They have cho­sen this route to enter onto the Henge. Now 3 machines are sta­tioned at Rath Lugh threat­en­ing to begin work in that area. There has been no reply from Gorm­ley’s office despite sev­er­al requests this morn­ing in regard to the Tem­po­rary Preser­va­tion Order and for con­fir­ma­tion of the bound­aries of same ‚which seem now to be unclear.

Please sup­port , BE PRESENT, con­tact all inter­est­ed bod­ies, make com­plaints, spread the word, do what you can but do it Now!

The female Pro­tec­tor has been released. No details of charges yet.

Rath Lugh Camp Phone : 0861537146

Vig­il Camp Phone: 0861758557

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Video of Stand­off at Rath­lugh today and the arrest of a pro­tes­tor.

Paddy´s Day of Action Against Shell

This year´s St Paddy´s day, 17th March, has been called as an Inter­na­tion­al day of action against shell, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Ross­port.

Peo­ple from all over Ire­land are set to join forces and show their unit­ed strength by going all the way to Lon­don to demon­strate on shell´s front door step.

This year´s St Paddy´s day, 17th March, has been called as an Inter­na­tion­al day of action against shell, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Ross­port.

Peo­ple from all over Ire­land are set to join forces and show their unit­ed strength by going all the way to Lon­don to demon­strate on shell´s front door step.

Glu­aiseacht, the Irish envi­ron­men­tal net­work organ­is­ing the trip, are call­ing for peo­ple to join them at the shell head office in Lon­don, or there is also a call out to take sol­i­dar­i­ty actions at shell garages and offices, St Paddy´s day parades and Irish embassies all over the world to coin­cide with the vis­it from 15th-17th March.

The shell cen­tre is locat­ed on the South Bank in front of Jubilee Gar­dens (SE1)
right next to Water­loo train sta­tion and across from the Lon­don Eye.

What´s Wrong With shell? — The Cor­rib Pipeline Project

Since 2000 the small rur­al com­mu­ni­ty of Ross­port, Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land have been engaged in an epic bat­tle try­ing to pre­vent Shell, Sta­toil, and Marathon from build­ing a poten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing tox­ic onshore gas refin­ery and high pres­sure pipeline in their remote and envi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive region.

Shell are the biggest stake­hold­er and ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the project, so have there­fore been the main tar­get of protest.

Com­mu­ni­ty Strength

From the sum­mer of 2005 mass pick­ets shut down the refin­ery con­struc­tion site after five Ross­port res­i­dents were impris­oned for refus­ing to allow Shell’s
sub-con­trac­tors access to their and their neigh­bours’ small farms which the pipeline is to go through. But in Octo­ber 2006 the Irish state came to the aid of shell by bring­ing in a mas­sive two hun­dred strong police unit to phys­i­cal­ly force a path for Shell to com­mence work. A large police pres­ence, con­sist­ing of Gar­dai (Irish police) from all over Ire­land, has stayed at the site to aid the work to con­tin­ue undis­rupt­ed.

The costs to the Envi­ron­ment, Com­mu­ni­ty & Health

Since shell start­ed build­ing the refin­ery, Car­row­more Lake, which is a Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion as well as the local water sup­ply to 10,000 peo­ple, has been pol­lut­ed with dan­ger­ous­ly high lev­els of alu­mini­um com­ing from the build­ing site.

The gas pipeline is to oper­ate at such high pres­sure that accord­ing to the
government’s safe­ty study if rup­tured could poten­tial­ly kill peo­ple and destroy build­ings for hun­dreds of metres around.

The waste from the refin­ery is to be dumped into Broad­haven bay, where 220 sight­ings of sev­en whale and dol­phin species, plus sight­ings of two seal species have been record­ed.

This is all not to men­tion the irrepara­ble dam­age fos­sil fuels, like gas, are hav­ing on desta­bil­is­ing the glob­al cli­mate.

Although the resis­tance to shell in Coun­ty Mayo is strong, the Irish state & shell´s tac­tics of bru­tal­i­ty, repres­sion and intim­i­da­tion has paid a price on the peo­ple fight­ing the pipeline project.

So mark St Paddy´s day by show­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty with their fight!

For more info:

http://www.indymedia.ie/mayo — Reports of news and actions about the pipeline
http://www.struggle.ws/rsc — Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp set­up to aid the cam­paign against shell
http://www.corribsos.com — Cam­paign group Shell to Sea

http://gluaiseacht.nologic.org/wordpress — Glu­aiseacht web­site

Sea Shepherd Finds Japanese Whaling Fleet: They Are On the Run Again

The Japan­ese whal­ing fleet is on the run again. The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety ship Steve Irwin re-locat­ed the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet at 0600 hours this morn­ing, Feb­ru­ary 23, 2008.

Sea Shepherd in pursuitThe Japan­ese whal­ing fleet is on the run again. The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety ship Steve Irwin re-locat­ed the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet at 0600 hours this morn­ing, Feb­ru­ary 23, 2008.

A few hours ear­li­er, the Steve Irwin had been side tracked when it chased a ves­sel that turned out to be a Namib­ian Tooth­fish ves­sel. The Antalles Reefer reg­is­tered in Walvis Bay was found at 0200 Hours. The ves­sel refused to give a fish­ing per­mit num­ber and threat­ened the Steve Irwin by report­ing that it was armed. The Cap­tain of the Antalles Reefer claimed to speak only Russ­ian. The Steve Irwin has a Russ­ian speak­ing crewmem­ber and dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tion the Cap­tain said he would resist with force if there was any inter­fer­ence with his oper­a­tions.

Cap­tain Paul Wat­son relayed the infor­ma­tion to the Aus­tralian Cus­toms ves­sel Ocean­ic Viking and report­ed that a sus­pi­cious tooth­fish fish­ing ves­sel was oper­at­ing inside the Aus­tralian Eco­nom­ic Exclu­sion Zone. At 0600 Hours, the Steve Irwin encoun­tered the Fukuyoshi Maru No. 68 which imme­di­ate­ly head­ed east­ward to lead the Sea Shep­herd crew away from the whal­ing fleet. The Steve Irwin con­tin­ued west and the Fukuyoshi Maru No. 68 turned and began to pur­sue the Steve Irwin. It is believed that the Fukuyoshi Maru No 68 car­ries armed Japan­ese coast guard offi­cers.

The Steve Irwin is now pur­su­ing the Nis­shin Maru and two har­poon ves­sels with the Fukuyoshi Maru No. 68 in pur­suit of the Steve Irwin. “The great South­ern Ocean whal­ing ship chase is on again,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “I don’t think any whales are going to be dying today. Our goal is to keep the har­poons qui­et for the next three weeks.”

The weath­er is good, the seas are calm and the chase is thread­ing its way south­west through an obsta­cle course of ice­bergs, growlers, and bergy bits. The Steve Irwin has plen­ty of fuel, water and pro­vi­sions and a crew that is com­mit­ted to shut­ting down the ille­gal whal­ing oper­a­tions of the Japan­ese fleet. “I can’t think of a place I would rather be right now,” said Jeff Hansen from Fre­man­tle, West­ern Aus­tralia. “See­ing the Japan­ese whalers run­ning like cow­ards from the Steve Irwin is a very sat­is­fy­ing expe­ri­ence.”

The chase is tak­ing place some 80 miles north of the Shack­le­ton Glac­i­er off the coast of Queen Mary land, well inside Aus­tralian Antarc­tic Ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters.

On Jan­u­ary 15th, 2008, an Aus­tralian Fed­er­al Court ordered that Japan­ese whal­ing be “restrained” in Aus­tralian ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters. The Sea Shep­herd crew is act­ing to enforce that court order and to uphold numer­ous inter­na­tion­al reg­u­la­tions that the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet has and con­tin­ues to vio­late.

For pre­vi­ous cov­er­age on the Sea Shep­herd see the UK Indy­media fea­ture arti­cle.

http://www.seashepherd.org

Sabotage against the Glensanda Quarry Expansion

An aggre­gates pro­cess­ing plant on the edge of the York­shire Dales Nation­al Park has been sab­o­taged. The Plant is owned by Bar­don Aggre­gates a mem­ber of Aggre­gate Indus­tries, part of the Hol­cim Group. Aggre­gate Indus­tries own the Glen­san­da Quar­ry on the north west coast of Scot­land. The quar­ry is europes biggest coastal quar­ry and has it’s own port. Aggre­gate Indus­tries plan to expand the quar­ry from 125 ha to 206 ha giv­ing reserves of 814 mil­lion tonnes of gran­ite. They cur­rent­ly extract 7–8 mil­lion tonnes a year and can increase this to 15 mil­lion tonnes. The expan­sion plan includes remov­ing the peaks “The Mam” and “Lag a ‘mhaim” from the sky­line. This would be vis­i­ble from the Scot­tish islands and will effect the ecol­o­gy of many species includ­ing otters, seals, and gold­en eagles. 20% of the stone extract­ed will go to major road net­work con­struc­tion across europe.

An aggre­gates pro­cess­ing plant on the edge of the York­shire Dales Nation­al Park has been sab­o­taged. The Plant is owned by Bar­don Aggre­gates a mem­ber of Aggre­gate Indus­tries, part of the Hol­cim Group. Aggre­gate Indus­tries own the Glen­san­da Quar­ry on the north west coast of Scot­land. The quar­ry is europes biggest coastal quar­ry and has it’s own port. Aggre­gate Indus­tries plan to expand the quar­ry from 125 ha to 206 ha giv­ing reserves of 814 mil­lion tonnes of gran­ite. They cur­rent­ly extract 7–8 mil­lion tonnes a year and can increase this to 15 mil­lion tonnes. The expan­sion plan includes remov­ing the peaks “The Mam” and “Lag a ‘mhaim” from the sky­line. This would be vis­i­ble from the Scot­tish islands and will effect the ecol­o­gy of many species includ­ing otters, seals, and gold­en eagles. 20% of the stone extract­ed will go to major road net­work con­struc­tion across europe.
The Plant in York­shire was entered and sab­o­taged. Vehi­cles includ­ing all bull­doz­ers had holes drilled in vital parts of their engines and their tires. Both con­trol rooms were bro­ken into and all com­put­ers and instru­ment pan­els were smashed. Keys to all build­ings and machin­ery were removed from the site. The mes­sage “Stop Glen­san­da” was left. Aggre­gate indus­tries have sites all over the UK and the World, you know what to do!

Latest details: Earth First! Winter Moot 2008 — February 22nd – 24th 2008 — Nottingham

Join us for
Activist skill share
Plan­ning rad­i­cal action on cli­mate change,
Shar­ing ideas for the Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing
Oppo­si­tion to the UK genet­ic crop tri­als and mega-dams in Ice­land
a chance to share info on your own cam­paign

Arrive from 5pm, Fri­day Feb­ru­ary 22nd 2008, with din­ner at 7 o’clock.
Open to all those who have been involved in rad­i­cal eco­log­i­cal direct action and to those who just want to find out more.

EF! fist tree 1Join us for
Activist skill share
Plan­ning rad­i­cal action on cli­mate change,
Shar­ing ideas for the Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing
Oppo­si­tion to the UK genet­ic crop tri­als and mega-dams in Ice­land
a chance to share info on your own cam­paign

Arrive from 5pm, Fri­day Feb­ru­ary 22nd 2008, with din­ner at 7 o’clock.
Open to all those who have been involved in rad­i­cal eco­log­i­cal direct action and to those who just want to find out more.

Cost: £15 (to include accom­mo­da­tion and food)
Crèche and dis­abled access both avail­able,
but please call to let us know if you need either or if you have oth­er needs.

At The Sumac Cen­tre, Glad­stone Street Not­ting­ham, www.veggies.org.uk/sumac
For more info call 01508 531636 (num­ber not avail­able dur­ing the event)

Fri­day late after­noon and evening will be a chance to arrive, and for intro­duc­tions, plus a G8 talk & film, and an Intro­duc­tion to EF!

We’ll be kick­ing off ear­ly on Sat­ur­day morn­ing (9am break­fast) — start­ing with all shar­ing the most impor­tant rea­sons why we’ve come to Not­ting­ham, we’ll get on with some prac­ti­cal dis­cus­sions around the EF! Action Update, the web­site, and the sum­mer gath­er­ing.
From what we’ve all said, we’ll be able in the after­noon to move on to ‘where next?’, plus shar­ing cam­paigns we’re involved with & see­ing what they need, and get­ting togeth­er local­ly and region­al­ly with oth­er folk who are there.

On Sun­day we’ll move into groups to con­crete­ly take the ideas for­wards from the Sat­ur­day, from the cam­paigns we’re already work­ing on and what we want to do togeth­er. We’ll fin­ish at 4pm, after hav­ing shared what we’ve come up with. Hoorah.

Earth First! is not an organ­i­sa­tion, but a way of using non-hier­ar­chi­cal organ­i­sa­tion and the use of direct action to con­front, stop and even­tu­al­ly reverse the forces that are respon­si­ble for the destruc­tion of the Earth and its inhab­i­tants. For fur­ther info check out www.earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/

Plus
All day Fri­day 22nd Feb­ru­ary, Sav­ing Ice­land UK meet­ing, also at the Sumac Cen­tre. Open to those inter­est­ed in trav­el­ling to Ice­land or tak­ing part in sol­i­dar­i­ty actions against the con­struc­tion of large, wilder­ness wreck­ing dams in Ice­land.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion and essen­tial book­ing con­tact 01508 531636 or savingiceland@riseup.org

Tara campaign update: lock-ons and digger-diving, plus protest camp contact

I’m turn­coat ACS archae­ol­o­gist. I’m involved in Tara Cam­paign since June 2006 and thats my sto­ry about clamp­ing to a lor­ry at 31st of Jan­u­ary.

Wednes­day evening at Rath Lugh Ressis­tance Camp was quite nor­mal like every oth­er day. Few pro­test­ers were sit­ing in the Round­hause around burn­er, hav­ing tea and good con­ver­sa­tion about how bad multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions real­ly are. Approx­i­mate­ly about one o’clock when we were sit­ting in silence con­tem­plat­ing the idea of mega­lith­ic rock art being influ­enced by cymat­ic pat­terns caused by drum singing, six more pro­test­ers showed up. They bring with them idea of lock on to tar machine at Sol­diers Hill, which was enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly embraced by all of us. Soon we formed think tank and brain­stormed through idea of that kind of Direct Action. After an hour we were ready and went to our beds to have a good rest.

I’m turn­coat ACS archae­ol­o­gist. I’m involved in Tara Cam­paign since June 2006 and thats my sto­ry about clamp­ing to a lor­ry at 31st of Jan­u­ary.

Wednes­day evening at Rath Lugh Ressis­tance Camp was quite nor­mal like every oth­er day. Few pro­test­ers were sit­ing in the Round­hause around burn­er, hav­ing tea and good con­ver­sa­tion about how bad multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions real­ly are. Approx­i­mate­ly about one o’clock when we were sit­ting in silence con­tem­plat­ing the idea of mega­lith­ic rock art being influ­enced by cymat­ic pat­terns caused by drum singing, six more pro­test­ers showed up. They bring with them idea of lock on to tar machine at Sol­diers Hill, which was enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly embraced by all of us. Soon we formed think tank and brain­stormed through idea of that kind of Direct Action. After an hour we were ready and went to our beds to have a good rest.

I waked up ear­ly in the morn­ing and moved myself to the Round­haus. Some pro­test­ers were on quick sup­ply run, oth­er prepar­ing nec­es­sary equip­ment for action. Two of us were decid­ed to lock on to machin­ery, oth­ers were mak­ing sup­port for us. At 1020 GMT we depart­ed to cars. Morale was high, peo­ple smil­ing and jok­ing all over the road to Sol­diers Hill. At 1032 GMT we arrived at sites main gate and jumped out of car. Main objec­tive was tar machine so we moved quick­ly towards it, pass­ing by two work­ers with angle grinder rip­ping off tar­mac from the day before (they prob­a­bly had some flaws in it and need­ed to lay it again).

For­tu­nate­ly for us next to tar machine was lor­ry with tar trans­port so I chose that one as I knew that oth­er pro­test­er is aim­ing tar machine. When we approached them, there was a lit­tle bit chaot­ic sit­u­a­tion with work­ers run­ning around, obvi­ous­ly they had no idea about true nature of our action. I found­ed good spot under­neath the lor­ry and using work­ers igno­rance locked myself on. When they real­ized whats real­ly going on it was already to late. I placed my self com­fort­ably, make a rol­ly and attempt­ed to read Archae­ol­o­gy and Soci­ety by G. Clark. I was inter­rupt­ed by secu­ri­ty, Fer­rovial Span­ish work­ers and my favourite health and safe­ty offi­cer Mark Kleary.

Oth­er pro­test­ers left and were sup­port­ing two of us from out­side of con­struc­tion site. When fer­rovial or Kleary were not around I had nice chat with work­ers, they were quite sat­is­fied to have a break in their job. It was quite cold and one of them gave me gloves to warm my hands.

Then Gar­dai came in and start­ed usu­al drill (whats your name, would you live the site bla bla bla). We were ded­i­cat­ed to stay and make them cut us of from machin­ery. Mark Kleary him­self, was the man who cut my d‑lock. Before doing that he was say­ing some­thing about cut­ting dif­fer­ent parts of my body so he exposed him­self clear­ly as a psy­chopath. To be hon­est I’m lit­tle bit afraid of that man and I men­tioned that to Gar­dai. They did not com­ment­ed that.

It take three dif­fer­ent scis­sors and 2,5 hours to cut us off. After that we were hand­cuffed and tak­en to Gar­da Sta­tion at Navan. We were searched, sep­a­rat­ed and placed in dif­fer­ent cells. Oth­er pro­test­ers gath­er around Gar­da Sta­tion build­ing and were blow­ing whis­tles and shout­ing encour­ag­ing words. After some time we were tak­en to Dublin. There we expe­ri­enced very quick, fast food like court case.

We were col­lect­ed from court by fel­low pro­test­er. Now we are under bail con­di­tion until next court case which will be Feb­ru­ary the sixth, but keep work­ing for the cam­paign. In next hour I’m going to Sol­dier Hill to sup­port Dig­ger Divers by mean of ban­ner protest­ing. So that’s my sto­ry.

—————

Help is need­ed imme­di­ate­ly on site with cam­eras bat­ter­ies and gen­er­al sup­port. Please pur­chase phone cred­it for the vig­il phone 086 1758557 If you can’t come to the hill con­tact us at tarapark@sacredireland.org maybe there is some­thing you can do from your com­put­er or land­line.
Today, Feb 6th. Ash wednes­day.…. a dig­ger is on the arche­o­log­i­cal site less than 30 feet from Lis­mullen Henge but has been pre­vent­ed from work­ing. 12 activists have stopped con­struc­tion work­ers from unload­ing 3 dumper loads of hard core on the Lis­mullin arche­o­log­i­cal site. Gar­dai have been on site and tak­en names and threat­ened arrest. This work has been deemed ille­gal by the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion. It is also against pub­lic opin­ion, see full results of recent sur­vey on www.sacredireland.
A cer­e­mo­ny took place on the henge at Lis­mullin, Imbolg Feb 3rd. 2008. There will be anoth­er cer­e­mo­ny this Sun­day Feb 10th at 3pm
All wel­come.

—————

Demon­stra­tion at Lis­mullin morn­ing of 7th Feb — 8 AM

Time to get real. Time for hocus-pocus over.

Demo­li­tion works con­tin­ued today at the Lis­mullin nation­al mon­u­ment, which lies in the mid­dle of the M3 motor­way route, near the Hill of Tara, despite the fil­ing of High Court action yes­ter­day by Gor­don Lucas.

A large protest is planned for 8.00 AM tomor­row morn­ing, beside the Lis­mullin site. Demon­stra­tors are trav­el­ling from dif­fer­ent parts of Ire­land to object to the demo­li­tion works pro­ceed­ing, while the mat­ter is before the courts.

Small­er demon­stra­tions have been tak­ing place on a week­ly basis, and today two more demon­stra­tors appeared before Judge Bro­phy in Navan Dis­trict Court, charged with tres­pass, after being arrest­ed last week.

Rhi­an­non Cur­tis from the UK had her case dis­missed, because it was a first offence. Marcin Saw­ic­ki, from Poland, who pre­vi­ous­ly worked as an archae­ol­o­gist on the M3, had his case adjourned until next week, when an inter­preter was ordered to be present.

—————

Mass action at Tara, Mon­day 11 Feb, 12 noon

Just back from a very inter­est­ing day at Tara. Pho­tos are to fol­low that show the dev­as­ta­tion afoot up there, espe­cial­ly at Sol­dier Hill where con­struc­tion work­ers are rush­ing to build the 50 acre Blun­del­stown Inter­change. Lis­mullin and Rath Lugh are also very vul­ner­a­ble right now.

A day of mass protest at Tara is now planned for Mon­day, 11 Feb, at 12 noon. We are aim­ing to get var­i­ous groups and indi­vid­u­als to take part, as the sit­u­a­tion is crit­i­cal. If we all pull togeth­er for this, then we can have a strong impact, on the ground and in the media.

So make a date in your diaries, spread the word, and hope­ful­ly we’ll see some of you on Mon­day.

For any­one who wants to stay around up there for a while, the camp in Rath Lugh is in real­ly good shape, with warm, dry accom­mo­da­tion avail­able for activists. The guys up there are doing a great job, and it’s now time for every­one who cares about Tara to act.

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11th feb —

The sit­u­a­tion is esca­lat­ing at Lis­mullin. Dig­gers are try­ing to cross the pro­tect­ed area of the Nation­al Mon­u­ment. There is no Gar­da pres­ence. More machin­ery is arriv­ing and pro­test­ers are attempt­ing a block­ade. Please sup­port in any way you can, con­tact all media, bring sup­plies, video and pho­to­graph­ic equip­ment. Join the peace­ful protest and spread the word. Urgent Call Out Now!
Dig­ger

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It has been con­firmed that a dig­ger did indeed suc­ceed today in dri­ving right across the front of the Esker of Rath Lugh. This area is clear­ly marked and fenced as the Exclu­sion Zone/Preservation Area. Pro­test­ers also report oth­er machin­ery includ­ing huge earth movers com­ing right up as far as the fences.

There is ample room for dig­gers to manoeu­vre with­out going near the exclu­sion area. WHY WASNT THIS DRIVER ARRESTED ?

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The Rath Lugh Protest Camp needs your sup­port: The Rath Lugh Direct Action Camp is sit­u­at­ed two and a half kilo­me­tres from the Hill of Tara, on the Front Line of the pro­posed M3 between Lis­mullen and Baron­stown.

Rath Lugh is the out­er base camp for the Hill of Tara, enabling activists to keep a per­ma­nent vig­il on the move­ment of vehi­cles and per­son­nel work­ing on var­i­ous con­struc­tion sites through­out the val­ley. Activists also main­tain a con­stant pres­ence on the Rath Lugh Nation­al Mon­u­ment, which is cur­rent­ly under a tem­po­rary preser­va­tion order. The aim is to see this sig­nif­i­cant mon­u­ment per­ma­nent­ly pre­served in-line with the rest of the Tara Com­plex.

“We need peo­ple urgent­ly to halt the Val­ley’s destruc­tion. Every­one has a skill or tal­ent they can lend to this protest. Bring wellies, raingear, sleep­ing bags, torch, lighter, plen­ty of warm cloth­ing, and good spir­its. The protest is only going to get stronger, we will con­tin­ue to oppose the motor­way until it is moved, so come to Rath Lugh as quick­ly as you can. WE NEED YOU ALL NOW BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. Tara is call­ing, don’t ignore the call.”

Rath Lugh Camp Num­ber: +353 86 1537 146