The following images were taken December 31st, 2006. They show the pathway for the M3 motorway having been cleared through part of the Tara / Skryne Valley, at Rath Lugh. Other wooded areas are still intact, but it is feared works will resume tomorrow, New Years Day. Peaceful demonstrations at the sites will occur daily, beginning Monday morning. For full set of images go to http://www.tarawatch.org
Large trees cleared from the bottom of Rath Lugh, a national monument, and defensive fort to Tara, on the northern slope of Skryne. There is no indcation that the site will be excavated. If it was to be. excavated, then would they not have cleared it a year and a half ago? Also a new area being worked on today, just behind Lismullen. There are still wooded areas remaining between Rath Lugh and Blundelstown, which will be the location of daily demonstrations beginning New Year’s Day.
If you want to assist, please visit the Tara Solidarity Vigil, which is located on the north of the Hill of Tara, past Rath Grainne. Just follow the ditch/ road north, from the parking area, and they are located in the corner. Rope and tarpolin are needed. Call 086-175-8557 or 087-132-3365
Save Tara Campaign is a network consisting of
Save Tara Skryne Valley group, - http://www.savetaravalley.com/
Tara Solidarity Vigil and - http://www.tarasolidarityvigil.net/
TaraWatch http://www.tarawatch.org/
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2 comments:
Great to see this site setup about the destruction of one of greatest monuments. Ireland has really turned into a sad and greed ridden place these days. Everything is about money. I live in the UK these days but when I heard of the plans for this motorway I was sickened. They simply should not do this. Tara was a massively important ritual site in ancient times and still holds an almost magical significance to this day. But of course the current government would not understand this. The past must be destroyed to make way for the progress of the Celtic Tiger. As a former archeologist this is one of the worst things that could happen to our heritage. If they go ahead with this they might as well stick mobile phone masts on top of the Rock of Cashel!
Anyway great work on the blog, hope something can be done about this motorway but it already looks like it is too late.
I have been studying for some years now the workings and legacies of destructive colonialism, destructive colonial histories that we Irish have often related to our own history as an indigenous people. A people who have struggled against pernicious oppression from colonial capitalism, for colonial history is of course inextricably wound up in capitalism, in the desecration of cultures and the ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples for mere wealth, inspired by greed and the hunger for power. And that is a way of life that has nothing to do with community or fairness or humility, a way of life we Irish have tried to proclaim is our antithesis.
As a people we have called upon our own suffering at the hands of English colonial violence and, indeed, we employ that history to explain and unite our own cultural and national pride. We have celebrated overcoming such colonial insidious motivations, such sinister reasoning that resulted in, not just the persecution of a people, but the inherently more violent act of maliciously attacking national, cultural heritage and the attempted destruction of a way of life. We bulge with pride over that great myth of our common success in overcoming the odds, beating back our oppressors, maintaining our identity, while the faint echoing of the African American adage “we shall over come” echoes within our sense of ourselves. But we have, it now seems, learned absolutely nothing from that history and those struggles. And now the betrayal of that myth, the sickening assimilation of all that we claim we have struggled against, the dismantling of all of our myths, and no less than the loss of any sense of cultural pride, seems finally upon us.
With the wanton, ignorant, and boorish destruction of much of our indigenous heritage, has culminated at the valley of ancient, Irish kings with the desecration of the hill of Tara, the people who govern my country have shown themselves to be mere imposters. Meager puppets, (muppets as we would have it), of neocolonialism, they have taken on the mantle of moronic dupes, drooling at the prospects of capitalism, rolling joyfully in the dirt of the dog-eat-dog world expounded by avarice and ignorance and have succeeded in doing what hundreds of years of malevolent colonial rule could not do – they have initiated the erasure of our indigenous identity! How Cromwell must be dancing around his grave at the prospect of such self subscribed cultural elimination. These people who rule and initiate such horribly ignorant and callous disregard for our country, our nation, our cultural heritage must be exposed for the pretenders that they are. They have no sense of Ireland or Irishness. Someone please demand from them the facts of our ancient, indigenous, cultural history. Challenge them to explain what identity is and what the survival of an indigenous culture means, and how that is an integral part of our survival, of whom we are, or rather, were!
Indeed as I read the Irish headlines, the business pages, all I can decipher are the repugnant apes imitating the British and the Anglo-Saxon American posture, one of utter perdition, and I am concurrently angered, abhorred, and lost! I implore the people who read this to understand that the destruction of Tara is the most ominous sign for this country and its people. That, as we ape and celebrate the greed that, in truth does and has, ravaged a country we mistakenly view through rose-tinted, Disney history, that is America, this will lead us down the same road to the cultural divisions, a closed mind, and lost community which constitute that nations social problems. By stopping this wanton destruction, (for a roadway that in honesty will do nothing to ease transportation, infrastructure, and communication problems, as anyone with any sense of foresight will have figured out by now!), of a place that represents the very essence of our cultural heritage and our sense of nationhood, that act will surely restore some vague sense of hope and pride to our people and to our country, a country that is today more rife with racism, sexism, arrogance, and widening class divisions. We need to reassess – and Tara must be the starting point. Do not lose this battle, for if we do, we lose, period!
David Doolin
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