M3 Protest
The M3 Motorway through Meath has finally opened a few days ago. For reasons which are still unclear to me, it has been very controversial.
You may have heard that it's destroying the landscape of the area, and wantonly paving over remains. You may even have heard that the hill was damaged by it. It's not. The protest was total nonsense.
The road doesn't damage the hill in any way, instead running in the valley where the existing road passes. It wasn't visible from the hill at all when I visited in 2008, and they'll have planted the screening hedges at this stage. I'm going to visit again shortly to confirm.
A monument called Lismullen was uncovered by the builders during the construction. Archaelogists excavated it, documented it, photographed it, and recovered artifacts, and then it was covered up. Everyone's happy. They wouldn't have known about this site otherwise. This is standard practice worldwide - in Europe, with so many thousands of years of history, you can't put a shovel in the ground without uncovering something of archaeological significance. It happens all the time elsewhere and we followed international practice in our treatment of Lismullen.
International outrage over the building of the M3 road was created due to persistently exaggerated claims made by the protesters which were picked up by the media. I remember being asked in 2005 about why "Ireland is bulldozing the Hill of Tara to make way for a road" - he said he'd read it that way in a newspaper. I wonder who told the journalist that?
Videos like this are typical - emotive and angry, but not based in reality. The site is fenced off from him to keep protesters and other crazies out, since in protests like these they have a history of vandalising equipment and having to be removed by guards.
Sanity came from an unexpected quarter - Jonathan Rhys Meyers, of all people, had a good point to make which he could be right about - though note that he makes clear (at 0:27) that he isn't specifically against the road per se.
What has really occurred here is that a minor archaelogical site has been hijacked by a lawyer. This persistent little fucker has been jumping from one bandwagon to another: first Carrickmines for the M50, then Tara, and now Newgrange for the much-needed Slane bypass - I see he's pimped up his Facebook page with Save Newgrange stickers - way to create a new legal case for yourself, asshole.
He seems determined to make Slane his new cause. The Slane bypass has been desperately requested for decades by the locals and there is absolutely no opposition to it. In fact, the locals are complaining about Salafia's protest, because it means the road might not get built! Despite this, Salafia has decided that because it passes *3.5 km* from the Newgrange area, it must be stopped. Three and half kilometres. Three thousand five hundred metres away. {source}
My gripe with the M3 protest is that this site was taken over by what I call "tourist protesters" - these people are mainly not Irish (0:45 onwards) and their fulltime occupation is, like rock band groupies, moving from protest to protest. They have finely honed disruption tactics - both psychological and physical. They psychological methods include preying on staff and convincing them that if they touch a protester they'll have a lawsuit on their hands and get fired - while the physical tactics are the good old chaining yourself to a digger stunt.
I wonder why this, of all places in Ireland, has been made a poster boy for green anti-road campaigns - when an entire Viking village got paved over to make way for the Waterford bypass. It's probably because of the druid and witch association with the site (watch from 4:30 for epic lulz.) This has been a popular place for dancing around fires on Midsummer's Eve since time immemorial and since a lot of pagans reject money and capitalism, there's loads of time for fucking about with placards and holding up infrastructure development.
I see that although the road is open now, they still haven't taken down their banners (3:20). Please, please get back to discussing Wicca in your squat in Dublin and let us all get on with our lives.
Edit: Recently the pagans congregated on the hill to mark the summer solstice. As I predicted, this article, they agreed that you couldn't see or hear the new road from the top. (Note also, that only one pagan had a negative comment to make - but the newspaper, ever anxious to sensationalise the story, made that the headline.)
You may have heard that it's destroying the landscape of the area, and wantonly paving over remains. You may even have heard that the hill was damaged by it. It's not. The protest was total nonsense.
The road doesn't damage the hill in any way, instead running in the valley where the existing road passes. It wasn't visible from the hill at all when I visited in 2008, and they'll have planted the screening hedges at this stage. I'm going to visit again shortly to confirm.
A monument called Lismullen was uncovered by the builders during the construction. Archaelogists excavated it, documented it, photographed it, and recovered artifacts, and then it was covered up. Everyone's happy. They wouldn't have known about this site otherwise. This is standard practice worldwide - in Europe, with so many thousands of years of history, you can't put a shovel in the ground without uncovering something of archaeological significance. It happens all the time elsewhere and we followed international practice in our treatment of Lismullen.
International outrage over the building of the M3 road was created due to persistently exaggerated claims made by the protesters which were picked up by the media. I remember being asked in 2005 about why "Ireland is bulldozing the Hill of Tara to make way for a road" - he said he'd read it that way in a newspaper. I wonder who told the journalist that?
Videos like this are typical - emotive and angry, but not based in reality. The site is fenced off from him to keep protesters and other crazies out, since in protests like these they have a history of vandalising equipment and having to be removed by guards.
Sanity came from an unexpected quarter - Jonathan Rhys Meyers, of all people, had a good point to make which he could be right about - though note that he makes clear (at 0:27) that he isn't specifically against the road per se.
What has really occurred here is that a minor archaelogical site has been hijacked by a lawyer. This persistent little fucker has been jumping from one bandwagon to another: first Carrickmines for the M50, then Tara, and now Newgrange for the much-needed Slane bypass - I see he's pimped up his Facebook page with Save Newgrange stickers - way to create a new legal case for yourself, asshole.
He seems determined to make Slane his new cause. The Slane bypass has been desperately requested for decades by the locals and there is absolutely no opposition to it. In fact, the locals are complaining about Salafia's protest, because it means the road might not get built! Despite this, Salafia has decided that because it passes *3.5 km* from the Newgrange area, it must be stopped. Three and half kilometres. Three thousand five hundred metres away. {source}
My gripe with the M3 protest is that this site was taken over by what I call "tourist protesters" - these people are mainly not Irish (0:45 onwards) and their fulltime occupation is, like rock band groupies, moving from protest to protest. They have finely honed disruption tactics - both psychological and physical. They psychological methods include preying on staff and convincing them that if they touch a protester they'll have a lawsuit on their hands and get fired - while the physical tactics are the good old chaining yourself to a digger stunt.
I wonder why this, of all places in Ireland, has been made a poster boy for green anti-road campaigns - when an entire Viking village got paved over to make way for the Waterford bypass. It's probably because of the druid and witch association with the site (watch from 4:30 for epic lulz.) This has been a popular place for dancing around fires on Midsummer's Eve since time immemorial and since a lot of pagans reject money and capitalism, there's loads of time for fucking about with placards and holding up infrastructure development.
I see that although the road is open now, they still haven't taken down their banners (3:20). Please, please get back to discussing Wicca in your squat in Dublin and let us all get on with our lives.
Edit: Recently the pagans congregated on the hill to mark the summer solstice. As I predicted, this article, they agreed that you couldn't see or hear the new road from the top. (Note also, that only one pagan had a negative comment to make - but the newspaper, ever anxious to sensationalise the story, made that the headline.)