Fourth ICIS conference; planned for the centenary of the Easter rising Spring 2016

Confirmed for UC Berkeley, co-sponsored by  Profs Dan Melia (Emeritus, UC Berkeley Celtic Studies programme and Rhetoric)

Theme  - Parallel Irelands; Ireland as Republic, deep state,  Utopian and actual colony

Confirmed speakers include Profs Dan Melia (UC Berkeley), Gearóid Ó Colmáin (RT news),  Chris O'Sullivan (USF), Mary Steiner (United Nations), Glynn Custred (Cal state, East Bay ), Gerald Gillespie (Stanford), Melanie O'Reilly (RTE/ Mistletoe music), Scott David (U Wash)

The international congress of Irish studies was established in  2012 and has run two conferences at UC Berkeley with another in Dublin, Ireland. It promotes the kind of free expression of ideas that might have prevented Ireland’s recent meltdown.  We have never accepted either state or corporate funding - and yes, it was offered. Stateside, we have had eminent speakers like Profs Dan Melia of UC Berkeley, Chris O’Sullivan of USF,  and luminaries like Ishmael Reed. In Ireland, we had several of that country’s most important thinkers, including Des Fennell, Dr Des O’Neill, Prof Cathal Brugha, and the actor and playwright Arthur Riordan. Our next conference will be our 4^th

Suggested themes include;

1.      Ireland’s “deep state”; a historical duopoly of political parties
in power, unelected bureaucrats, and an impenetrable legal system
2.      Alternative Irelands; the Diaspora; utopian communities; virtual
Irelands; the “fighting Irish” of Notre Dame;  the “new Irish” in
Ireland and their assimilation

Further themes can be found  below


Please send a 500 word abstract to eireann@yahoo.com by Feb 15 2016;
notification of acceptance by Mar 1. We already have a publisher

 ^{Further themes}

While it is common knowledge that, until two  decades ago, Gerry Adams sat on  a council claiming to be the true government of all Ireland, with powers of summary execution, that state of affairs has a long history. Fianna fail arose from a “government in exile” which, like the real one, was headquartered in the Dublin of the 1920’s. For a long time, the republic of Ireland had two athletic associations, the NACA and BLE, and  the former forbade its often superb athletes from Olympic competition. In the 1970’s, in the cash crisis occasioned by the marathon bank strikes of the period, Irish civil society created a parallel currency, with cheques being probabilistically discounted.

The debacle of the state’s commemoration of the centenary of 1916,involving the reduction ad absurdum of using Google translate t orender the central text into Irish, has already resulted in a parallel commemoration of O’Donovan Rossa’s interral. On Easter Monday, 2016,Robert Ballagh will lead an alternative celebration. Yet that is only the beginning.

The refusal of the Irish state to implement even minimal copyright and corporation law has led to musicians  - including the greats Donal Lunny, Melanie O’Reilly  and Nuala ni Dhomhnaill– registering their priceless works with US rights agencies. The Byzantine Irish legalsystem with its unaccountable delays led the Facebook/NSA plaintiff to throw up his hands in horror at what he called insanity and successfully take the case elsewhere than Facebook’s EU HQ in Ireland The illegal selling of the work of independent Irish artists atWalmart, work originally licensed by and to criminals at an Irish government trade stand in 1998,  was stopped only through a US Federal court case after the Ahern administration – as they promised they would  in 2002 – interfered with a criminal prosecution in Ireland.

Yet the issue is deeper still. The IRA unsuccessfully challenged the British and Irish states’ monopolies on violence; from 1919 the provisional government successfully challenged the civil and criminal law promulgated since the tanistry decision  of 1608. In fact, Ireland’s current chief justice is open to a Brehon law argument in her court.

It is arguable that Hobbes with his bloody-minded use of force by the state  is more current than Rousseau with his social contract . One of the innovations of 21^st century political thought , particularly following Lofgren’s magisterial essay on the topic, is the assertion of the “deep state” in Western democracy.

This is essentially a locus of power not answerable to the democratic process. While Lofgren points out that the CIA/NSA complex  plays such a role in the USA, this conference explores its correlate in Ireland.  It also asks whether Irish citizens can beat the new colonial establishment at its own game, as in the past.

 Much of this new infrastructure,  has not been reported in the press. The doctrine of “autonomous statutory responsibility” was repeatedly invoked in the Dail to free the universities from statutory control , perhaps in a prelude to the planned privatizations.

Industrial relations fora have been precisely to delay processes to facilitate a killer punch by management , as in the Cahill vs DCU case.  The latitude allowed the state in legal processes against its citizens, who got no funds for their legal team, is contrary to EU guidelines. 

Conversely, certain “private “organizations  , (like IMRO) masquerade on their websites as state, such are given illegal monopolies and state protection. In the newly celebrated topography it is as if the links of responsibility  are optional. and new islands added at the whim of the Irish establishment . In a state where the recent Allergan deal is the magnitude of CDP, it does not comfort one to discover that SFI has the same objectives as In-q-tel, CIA’s VC outgrowth

In this conference, we will discuss the Irish Utopian community once planned for the San Joaquin valley;  the Irish deep state; the “fighting Irish” (often, none are ethnically Irish) of Notre dame, who live outside the rule of law and whose rape of Lizzy Seeberg led directly to her suicide; the “Irish” festivals like Milwaukee often featuring rock  bands in kilts; and these less obvious claimants;

1. The Bertiestate. Arguably, 1997-2008 was a prolonged coup attempt. While we will never know for sure about the coup, it is clear that there was a sustained attempt to introduce a fraudulent e-voting system, massive transfer of money to a group around Ahern – both the holders  of the title “richest man in Ireland” during that period are now bankrupt – a sustained assault at academic freedom by court actions, closing of many venues that performed live music, and the Taoiseach’s own family, in turn, being seized by artistic genius which went into exponential decay in 2008.
2. On a positive note, the emigrants to England in the 1950’s Diaspora produced bands like the Smiths and Oasis, much of the successful soccer teams of the Charlton era, a pre-Riverdance parody dance troupe called the “Hairy Marys” and their children  considered themselves – like, say,  Johnny Marr of the Smiths – Mancunian Irish rather than English. Why stop at the island itself? This is particularly the case as Sinn Fein’s view is a united “multicultural” Ireland within the Commonwealth. Where does that leave Scotland’s aspirations?

The 2014  theft of Irish passports while in the custody of the US embassy in Dublin was first revealed as an industrial-scale planned activity in the 2013 ICIS proceedings. Nothing was done until Tim Pat Coogan was refused a visa and Tim himself, without any Irish state help, brought the situation to the boil. In the wake of these and numerous other incidents in which the Irish state has been revealed as little other than facilitator of a tax haven with suppression of the bogger natives, we invite papers on the following themes;

1.      An independent currency. Varoufakis  was checkmated by the ECB after failing to introduce an electronic currency. The result is that Syriza and Greece  are a cautionary tale. While Irish civil society and community could not perhaps achieve the network of pubs and cheques of the 1970’s, can we leave the EU/ECB yoke through use of  Bitcoin?

2.      Brehon law is fully as sophisticated as what passes for justice in Ireland’s civil courts;

From the horse's mouth

Is there a case for its re-introduction, particularly in our new society in which smartphones give the citizen near-perfect information?

3.       Irish people no longer can travel freely to the USA, which has been complicit in theft of Irish passports. Is it patriotic to accept a British passport on the same basis that Dev took the Oath?

4.      The proposed abolition of the NUI led to the creation of a university of Ireland in the USA, with regular seminars and conferences at Stanford and Berkeley. Is there any need, given Irish excellence at Scholarship, for these boondoggles like Medialab and SFI  with fully 5 billion euro now allocated to the latter?

PS The St Pat's day lecture/ICIS32 conference   were institutions at UC Berkeley 2008-2015  and here is an incomplete list



2008

The destruction of Tara

http://events.berkeley.edu/index.php/calendar/sn/ihouse.html?view=archive_results&startArchivePageData=50&browse_archive=yes

2009 Shell  in Mayo


http://events.berkeley.edu/index.php/calendar/sn/ihouse.html?view=archive_results&startArchivePageData=200&browse_archive=yes

2010

Academic tenure

http://events.berkeley.edu/index.php/calendar/sn/ihouse.html?view=archive_results&startArchivePageData=300&browse_archive=yes

2011

Talk on “The Irish banking crisis and its aftermath”


http://events.berkeley.edu/index.php/calendar/sn/ihouse.html?view=archive_results&startArchivePageData=500&browse_archive=yes

2012

First ICIS32 conference

http://sanfrancisco.eventful.com/events/icis-conference-/E0-001-048430480-6

2013

"The Re-enchantment of Ireland"
http://events.berkeley.edu/index.php/calendar/sn/ihouse.html?event_ID=65384

2014

Ireland's missing ambassador; the strange case of the diplomat gone Wilde:


http://events.berkeley.edu/index.php/calendar/sn/ihouse.html?event_ID=76561

2015

“The Irish in California:
Global Diaspora, National Implications”  part of the third ICIS conference;

https://events.berkeley.edu/index.php/calendar/sn/townsend.html?event_ID=88301&date=2015-03-17&filter=Event%20Type&filtersel=

Sunday afternoon quarterbacking; the war on Irish men

Letting you in on a secret; in general the only other men that Irishmen really respect/fear are other Irishmen.  Other countries produce their sociopaths, but only the Irish produce males who can think like criminals and behave like gentlemen  The castration of our manhood by the ECB must have been sweet indeed to our enemies. 

That tendency in the Irish state to allow the finest and the best  be dominated by scum, particualrly scum imported from the EU, quickened after that, we lost 10,000+ health care professionals; our university positions were filled by foreign retards; in a final insult, our young women are being abused and illegally deported from the US. The word is out that we are too weak to stand up for them.

The quarterback in that most peculiar travesty of rugby, American “football” (the ball rarely meets the foot) requires skill in decision-making, physical courage, and two of the best examples are Tom Brady and Matt Ryan. Of more interest, perhaps, is the fact that the outstanding player in the rugby world cup is Bernard Foley of Oz. He is an outhalf; that requires decision-making, physical courage, and – unlike the quarterback - ability both to pass and kick, and to play a central role in defence as the giants lumber out of the set pieces and mauls. But he is one of 4 Irish outhalves at the rugby world cup; both Johnny Sexton and Alan Macginty (playing for the US( are from Dublin; Owen Farrell is the fourth. Aprt from sexton (not an Irish name,  in the only national rugby  team that refuses to play its national anthem), all have Kennedyesque good looks

In the new Ireland, one of the major goals will be to allow these brilliantly skilled young Irish men their head.  There are those of us who believe that we, who defeated the Brits in war after war, have had this gay and feminazi nonsense foisted on us exactly to prevent our self-expression. That is what Terence MacSwimey, the true founder of the Irish nation, most feared, and we will not tolerate it

PS (11/10/15) in the past few days Ireland has competed against France, Germany (our 2 main "creditors")  and Poland, to whom we teach English on our island as we expel our own youth. There were no noticeable acts of gratitude from any of the objects of our affection; while we bear our creditors, Poland, aided by a Turkish ref, sent us flailing into the pay-offs. Oh well, another set of paydays for FIFA and the FAI.

PPS 
Well, Argentina's players WEPT as they sung their anthem

Ireland  does not play its anthem

Guess who won?

A colony once again redux

In 2005, at the peak of the Celtic bubble, I started work on the book that became “A colony once again”;

http://www.cambridgescholars.com/download/sample/59226

It is fair to say that it was contrarian; the cheer-leading for the miracle economy of the time was so intense that I was actually barred from broadcasting on RTE.

In 2010, Ireland lost her economic independence. Yet that was less the icing on the cake than the decoration on the icing. What I noted in 2005 was the Ur-event of neocolonization; the rejection of the natural impulse of a nation to have its sensibility reflected in the apparatus of state. The rest, as they say, is history; while I phrased the neocolonization in terms of global trends like neoconservatism and phenomenology, Ireland is now again at a critical juncture that demands we examine what went on from 1997 onward.

Briefly, if one considers the present “government” as essentially a colonial administration, everything falls into place. It is a fact that the state is on the hook for E100 + billion in debt that was passed on to the sovereign from private banks, including (in an unprecedented move) junior such debt. It is a fact that the state sponsored criminals to sell off the oeuvre of Ireland's leading musicians of the 1990's to fellow-criminals at international trade shows for cut-price sale at Walmart. It is a fact that there has not been a single prosecution for this, despite successful legal actions taken in the USA and England. It is a fact that the latitude allowed these criminals in the legal anti-matter in which we dwelt involved also enormous pressure on musicians to sign “indemnifications” which would retrospectively clothe the scams in legality.

It is a fact that repeated question in the Dail about criminal activity in the universities – including bribery and intimidation of students – were met with the response that the universities are allowed act outside the law. It is a fact that there were repeated attempts to impose an utterly inadequate e-voting system on the nation. It is a fact that when the tide went out in 2008 and we found out who was naked, several “businessmen” had loans in the $ billions that were - in that beautiful phrase - “non-performing” ie they had no intention of ever repaying them. It is a fact that the 1998 GFA deprived Ireland of a national territory and is best regarded as not just a surrender by the Provos, but is a classical Anglo-Saxon imposition  of what they wanted in 1921 ie unconditional surrender to the Anglo-american alliance.It is also a fact that, while the GFA was adopted by referendum, it was voted out by referendum in 2004 wherein the definition of the nation reverts back to the 1937 “whole island”.

Suspension of the action of criminal investigation was a major technique. That means that the DPP actually advised people to take civil actions, fully knowing how ruinously expensive they are. The creaky civil system could actually be abolished in Ireland at no risk to justice. For those not familiar with this area, it is nonsense to continue this demarcation in a country where “contempt of court” is a criminal verdict arising from civil proceedings. Another major technique was refusal to stop trading after dissolution companies owned by wealthy individuals like U2.

Remarkable resources have been invested to curtail the natural fecundity of the Irish while forcing them to accept hordes from Eastern Europe. Soon, of course, we will  be told to vote to accept n abortion regime that ensures the Kermit gosnells of Ireland will be honored. The division of job agencies into one dealing with domestic companies and the IDA, dealing with foreign such, resulted in corporate takeover of hitherto superb Irish software education by American imbeciles working through Irish criminals.

So what to do? Well, the colonial system is remarkably fragile, and our current PM has announced he no longer has the stomach for the job and will retire soon. That is not surprising, as he is no longer safe walking down the street. 

Like Scotland, Ireland has a venerable culture, massive natural resources that are being stolen from us by the day, and a gifted native population. We can turn everything around in a year once we get rid of the gangsters currently in power.

Here is the plan;

1. Agree to put corporate tax up to 35% as a quid pro quo for a debt writedown. As this should apply only to services, it is likely that Intel will stay
2. Being Irish is still the no. 1 ethnicity in the world. We have given it away too cheaply to Americans, who reciprocate by falsely accusing and then deporting our women on at least two occasions. Let Americans work for Irish credentials by passing a culture exam and paying 1% of their income to us
3. Reassert the claim on the whole island, and allow a referendum take place that will allow parts of the NE corner to secede. Irish credentials can be gained by people in these seceded areas. For the rest of the NE corner, a vote of over 60% in electoral areas will allow them access to Irish passports without passing a culture exam. If there are riots as a result of this, send in the army
4. Reinstate the 1916 document as the founding document of the state, and insist as all Irish patriots have done that even 1921 was a forced compromise too many, Accept also 1919 (first Dail), 1937, and rescind 1608 (the evil "Tanistry" decision that resulted in recission of the Brehon law regime
   
   
   
   

Resistance to the unlawful actions of the Irish state is morally justified

We are coming to the end of the neoliberal dispensation. Economization of life; financialization of the economy; bail-outs of the banksters when, as frequently must happen, the bubble bursts. The methods of control envisaged since 2000; spying, torture, preventive war – morphed into simple illegal dispossessions/evictions and putting the expansion burden on China.

China , in turn, grew a real-estate bubble from 2009 and then coerced its populace into the stock “market” in shanghai. Both bubbles are now pricked. In Ireland, the establishment saw its main chance to survive; destroy fiscal and general economic independence, and ask scum like Blackstone in to buy property poistfolios at a discount and with a guarantee of coercive help to evict Irish people.

In my 2012 book I predicted that one or other of the over-reaches by the state would end in violence;

http://www.cambridgescholars.com/download/sample/59226

In Mayo, the state colluded with Shell to destroy the infinitely courageous protesters; the student fees protesters were bought off. The water charges has proven to be the tipping point. Criminal prosecutions against these protesters while the criminals who destroyed a generation's work in building up the economy remain scot-free is the end of this state. I will not mention the numerous occasions wherein the state has actively colluded with criminals in the music industry and elsewhere as the details are here;

http://www.cambridgescholars.com/download/sample/59228

I predict blood on the streets of Dublin this weekend, and a rocky road to 2016

PS  Some what to my pleasant  surprise, the water charges protest was peaceful and dignified and - not to my surprise - elicited no response from the state. Much of the agitation has been violent, like following meter installers to their homes

It is as if, because the coup in all its philistinism, criminality and incursions by the corrupt state apparatus was never actually officially declared, what we are experiencing is a simple (and dangerous) weakening of the state itself rather than the normal political process of replacement of one set of ideas by another through elections

A Dialogue Among World Views

Foundations of Mind II: A Dialogue

 Among World Views

 Good review of the event here;'

https://cynthiasuelarson.wordpress.com/2015/08/30/reparsing-nature-at-foundations-of-mind-ii/

Conference August 13-15 3105 Tolman Hall UC Berkeley
(watch for announcement of larger venue)
Thursday August 13: Metaphysics

Living the Quantum Paradigm

Thursday, Aug 13 2015, 9:00-1:00 (Break 10:45 - 11:15)
Chair: Cynthia Sue Larson
Panelists/speakers include Wolganag Baer (Nascent),  James
Johnson (LBL),and Swami Prasannatmananda (Vedanta society)

This is a humorous introduction to this section;

Henrt Stapp, colleague of Heisenberg, and cell-phone addiction

This session invites interdisciplinary dialogue and exercises addressing the underlying philosophy and logic of quantum physics, and approaches to living in accordance with quantum principles. Questions about the nature of reality require inclusion of quantum physics beyond the historical “shut up and calculate” approach, which
has provided multiple interpretations of quantum physics without agreement on the philosophical quantum paradigm foundation. Whereas quantum physics challenges scientists to comprehend whether, how, or where a boundary between classical and quantum physics may exist, philosophy promotes critical thinking and clarity about arguments, terminology, and ideas. Scientific philosophy can lead the way toward development of new theoretical approaches and alternate interpretations, while finding conceptual weak points in theories and
arguments.

Experiential approaches to living in accordance with quantum principles provide unique opportunities for appreciating the feeling of levels of consciousness and the dream-like nature of reality. In Vedanta, the body is a synonym for sensations and the mind for thoughts; both are presented to consciousness, the fundamental eternal reality. Yet exercises are also proposed to maintain this insight, which otherwise does not persist.

10:00 Submitted papers

Shiva Meucci 
Judy B. Gardiner
Cynthia Sue Larson
Frank Heile
Leanne Whitney
Julia Bystrova
Jonathan W Schooler
Maria Syldona

Session on Ontology

Thursday, Aug 13 2015 1:00 - 3:30
Chair: Sean O'Nuallain
Panelists/speakers include Henry Stapp (LBL, Berkeley) , Jacob Needleman (SFSU)
(keynotes), Len Talmy ( U Buffalo) Kevin Padian (UC Berkeley)

It is our belief that much grief, and waste of taxpayers' money, could be avoided with an appropriate re-parse of nature that acknowledges there are rifts between the quantum and classical physical realities,
and further ontological discontinuities at the biological and intentional thresholds. It is further our belief that the relative failure of the HGP, and imminent debacle of both the Obama and “Blue brain” neuro initiatives, are due to precisely this unwillingness to cater to ontology. Moreover, even incessant crawling of the web has
failed to yield anything other than at best mediocre results in machine translation.

Finally, this tendency manifests itself in the social sciences with psychologism, the reduction of exigent social dynamics to cognitive and other psychological theories of how these forces are processed. This has led on the one hand to the non-engaged intellectual; on the other, to bewildering interpretations of postmodern thinkers geared mainly to giving instructors a free pass.

This session invites papers that address technical issues in science and the arts under this rubric. Consider the question of authentic political engagement. In particular, the latter category of papers may explore the fact that reality is related to consciousness and yet transcends it, As we act, we become aware of being objects in
a social space that yet can be magicked away in a classroom.

Submitted papers
Sean O Nuallain
Jonathan SchoolerIn the absence of theory, return to Villa Serbelloni?

Thursday, Aug 13 2015  3:45 to 5:30
Chair: Marcin Joachimiak (Physical Biosciences, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)
Panel includes , Kevin Padin (Integrative Biology, UC Berkeley), Stuart Kauffman
(Systems Biology,Seattle), Howard Pattee (Binghamton University),
Beverly Rubik (FAIM)

Several decades before the HGP was initiated, a diverse group of scientists convened at Villa Serbelloni to tackle the troubling lack of theory in biology. The solutions they proposed were various, from
an untroubling emphasis on hierarchy to a reinstatement of Aristotelian material and final causality to a network-based approach to the interaction of metabolism and genetic code. It is fair to say
that the HGP to its cost – and that of the public who paid for it – ignores these guidelines. Is it time for a fresh period of reflection?

Submitted papers
Madza Vierges (Ph.D candiate, Cal)
Beverly Rubik (Faim)Friday, August 14: Science

Session on Probing subjectivity with neuroscience; non-invasive probes into subjectivity

Friday, Aug 14 2015  9 am - 1 pm
Chair; Justin Riddle (Ph.D. candidate, UC Berkeley)
Panel includes Walter Freeman (UC Berkeley),
Jeffrey Martin, Chris Tyler, Saher Yousef

While a century ago dreams were regarded as revelatory of true psychic dynamics, a later generation took to drugs for that same purpose. A new ethos is stressing invasive methods that essentially involve
consent forms being signed by patients already stressed by imminent surgery.

While the results have been mixed, the fact remains that there already exists an array of tools that can shape experience without the risks of drugs or surgery. This session will investigate these tools, like TMS and EEG, and their results. It will feature discussion of synchronized gamma and whether it indeed is the signature of
consciousness that many claim it is.

9:00 Keynote: Walter Freeman

9:45 Chris Tyler

10:30 Q+A

10:45 break

11:00 Panel/papers

Papers
Juan Acosta-Urquidi
Justin Riddle

1:00 breakThe Real Madrid Model for universities; superstar academics, free transfers

Friday, Aug 14 2015  2 pm - 3 pm
Chair Brian Barsky (UC Berkeley)
Panellists/speakers include Ignacio Chapela (UC Berkeley)

A new model on the university is being developed in Europe and Russia; superstar academics are to be flown in as adjunct profs, if only for a few months a year, and tenure is to be excised along the lines
successfully implemented by Thatcher and Major. An executive is to be created that removes power from the academic community to centralize it into fewer and less accountable hands. While this model reached its nadir in Ireland in the aughts, other countries are now emulating
it. This panel attempts to dissect it and propose alternatives.

This is particularly relevant as the 50the anniversary of the free speech movement at Berkeley comes to a close. In keeping with the themes of this conference, Mario Savio was “interested in the
connection between quantum mechanics and free will” (Cohen, 2009 P 275)

As a high school student on a summer programme at the NSF summer institute “One day I made an observation ….which convinced me – and still does - that this essential connection between macrophysics and microphysics also precludes strict determinism… we have once again coupled a a sub microscopic event with macroscopic human behavior. The physical indeterminism of human behavior constitutes a necessary
condition for human freedom” (Savio from Cohen, 2009, Pp 17-18)

Cohen, R (2009) Freedom’s Orator . NY: OUP

Submitted papers
Sebastian Benthall, (I-school UC Berkeley)

Quantum entanglement, negative probabilities and neural oscillations;
the sublime final achievement of the great American polymath Patrick
Suppes

Friday, Aug 14 2015 3:30 to close
Participants include members of the final Suppes group including
Acacio de Barros and Gary Oas. They will be joined by,
others with empirical results

Like his fellow-American Frank Lloyd Wright, Pat Suppes experienced a breathtaking burst of creativity in the ninth decade of his life. While Pat’s earlier work on economics, psychology and the philosophy of science achieved justified world renown, it is the sustained attack on problems of mind and world that occupied his later energies that we will celebrate in this panel. This work, which is being continued at Stanford, features the highly technical and competent researchers on this panel bringing a wide artillery of techniques to bear on issues of mind, brain, cognition, and epistemology. It is their work which will indicate whether what was being hinted at in Pat’s autumn years until his passing in late 2014 is an entirely new language for describing
humanity’s relationship to reality itself

4:30 Submitted papers
R. P Bajpai
Karla Gadamez (LBL)

Saturday, August 15: Ecological consciousness, environmental technology
9 am to 12-30

9 am

Stuart Kauffman: Conference Keynote "Humanity In A Creative Universe”

10-15

Miguel Altieri
Agroecology Scaling Up for Food Sovereignty
and Resiliency

11 am

Fritjof CapraThe Systems View of Life: A Unified Conception of Mind, Matter, and Life

1:30-2-30 session continues
Confirmed speakers include Glenn Aparicio Parry, Katja Pettinen,
Tania Re

3:00 pm

Mindfulness : meditation, presence in daily life and high performance in sports and the arts

While the beneficial effects of meditation to health can perhaps most economically be explained in terms of its measured decrease in brain metabolism, the issue of how to elicit high performance perhaps needs to be re-opened in the context of modern neuroscience. Artists, meditators and athletes will talk about their experience of presence and flow

, Sperry Andrews, Yoshio Nakamura, Saher Yousef,  Melanie O'Reilly, Sean O Nuallain

Why Ireland too should default

The general outline of Ireland's grim future is now clear. While it is unlikely that any political party can explicitly claim this as its program, it is equally unlikely that any of the current main  parties have the gumption to buck these trends;

1. Borrowing on the financial markets, secured against commitments to sell off the family silver at a discount. The more silver is committed, the lower the borrowing rate ("bond yield"), and the cops can be used against the ensuing riots as we've already seen;
2. Financialization of the economy and the economization of life. The wet dream of hucksters such as Blackrock to continue demanding mortgage payments AFTER repossession has become a reality in Ireland and Spain'
3. Continuation of the assault against Irish artists, scholars and other entrepreneurs
4. Yielding to every international neoliberal demand – gay marriage, abortion, etc – culminating in passivity when the US embassy connived in theft of Irish passports

The problem is that this combination is unstable. One can borrow, and encourage parasites to breed with welfare payments; but the international banksters always ask for a kilogram flesh too much, and water charges proved these modern-day Shylocks often overstep. So there is no party with support steadily over 25%, and we can expect instability for while.

While Iceland did fine by playing a much more subtle game with the IMF, Greece seems determined to take the banksters on mano a mano. This is what Ireland, with its much greater natural resources, should have done long ago and Greece's stance deserves all our support

PS (5 Iuil 2015) Lest we forget; we were repeatedly told that the "yes" was such a foregone conclusion that bookies had paid out on it 4 days BEFORE THE VOTE;

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-01/paddy-power-pays-out-early-on-greece-voting-yes-in-referendum

So who paid Paddy Power to pay out "five figures" ie about the Kilkee Strand races level? Was it Blackstne, also features in that disgusting article?

Reality check; Irish students have misbehaved in Berkeley for close on a decade

( Pre-preface; finally, action from the US embassy in Dublin to prevent a recurrence;
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34798079)

 I preface these comments ;  I write as a parent whose two daughters came to Berkeley for the summer, aged 20 and 19, in 2011 and 2013 (respectively). Getting each of them home safely was a non-trivial task. As such, my heart goes out to the parents who seem falsely to have been told their kids were safe here without any supervision. This is the most immature and undisciplined Irish generation in living memory.

What bothers me about the line taken by the Irish state is

1. It had been warned, in writing, since 2103 that there was likely to be a problem

2. Its conveying - however indirectly - the notion that it it ok to wake people up every night as Irish kids have been doing in Berkeley every summer  for a decade is not just disrespectful. It is also possible it will lead to a more serious incident, like taking an SUV out on US 101 and causing a pile-up

The Irish Times has decided that whereof it should not speak, it will again lay down the law as "paper of record";

http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-radio-web/new-york-times-article-a-fantastic-distortion-of-j-1s-1.2253154

On 15 June, 2015 Mel and I picked up our new friend, F. a young piper from Ireland, in our car. We brought him to the Starry Plough in Berkeley , where he played with me for young Americans doing Irish dance. Many of them drive from silicon Valley every Monday; the dance floor is mobbed. This receives NO state subsidy and the Starry Plough recently celebrated its 40^th anniversary; it is now the SF East Bay's oldest night club.

F. went home; his music may have saved his life. Otherwise, he might have been “partying” and lost his life with the others. How did we meet him? We have taken to giving young Irish people our business cards when we see them, lost, on the streets of Berkeley.

Every year the fraternity houses and many apartments are “let” to Irish J-1 holders; notoriously, they wrecked a house in SF in 2014. However, we had already warned the consul general in 2013 - in writing – that this was an accident waiting to happen. After the 2014 house carnage, we wrote again, ccing to the Taoiseach, whose daughter was herself on a J-1 at the time.

It turns out that there was serious trashing of houses in Santa Barbara in 2010. In Berkeley, the Irish  J-1 holders through raucous parties have actually caused local legislation to be changed so that two noise  infractions now nets you a large fine. That happened around the same time as the Santa Barbara incident

What needs to be done? Frankly, ALL the Irish state services here in the Western USA are a joke; in SF, only the pastoral center is trusted. There will be a time to investigate the waste of state money in farcical projects like the San Jose “innovation” center, and the state;s obstruction of the development of Irish studies here. What we need to do right now is express our sympathy, however, to those involved and bereaved, but also tell them that – yes, Irish people did care enough for their sons and daughters to ask the consul to stop the annual influx.

Looking through the tragically shortened life histories of the dead, they do NOT come across as drinkers. In fact, they come across if anything as nerds on their first unsupervised trip away from home, and profoundly decent kids. The most innocent explanation - and a likely one - is that, although they WERE keeping their neighbours awake, they were posing for a photo. The fact both lessees, and the cousins were on the balcony with the birthday girls supports this

 It would be very interesting to find out who was INSIDE the room, egging them on in whatever idiot game they were playing - a game guaranteed to win them the Darwin awards this year, if the "photo" idea is wrong. I note they all inside  have  been offered flights home

Those who want to come here should be given a course on American culture, and respect for others.  No matter what humbug the IT comes up with, the fact remains that there were (at least) 13 people on a balcony in downtown Berkeley at 12-40 in a city where people got to bed before 11am, that there is a history of Irish kids creating a ruckus there, and that kids come over here with neither accommodation nor a job ready. secondly, the lease for that building sates no noise after 9pm.

Finally, many of us work hard on projecting a positive image on Ireland. Waking people up in the middle of the night is not how to do that. wandering around the streets with hurleys, and interacting neither with Americans their own age nor the larger Irish community does not help either

How does one recognize an Irish kid sans hurley? In general, because they wear a sports jersey with a logo like "AIG" or some other sterling exponent of ethical behaviour. The Irish state is perhaps deliberately  producing a generation of thugs and imbeciles; that needs to be rectified in the educational system there. Until it is so rectified, please keep these unformed kids away and give them a chance to be exposed to the real depth and beauty of their own culture

Then they will turn out to be fine young men and women like their Californian counterparts

 PS I went to the address and noted the wreaths. Unless I'm mistaken, several of them are fraudulent. for example, the one from a "flatmate" remembering their wonderful company is at odds with the recollection of the African-American woman  interviewed with me on NBC. who remembers non-stop noise. The handwriting is remarkably similar on many....what we have IMO is classic Irish stage-management of an undoubtedly tragic event, stage-management which is aimed at getting the state off the hook

As for us, we played a memorial at the Starry Plough 22 June. It is noticeable that Clodagh, a survivor who is currently paralyzed, has been heroic. Why was she not told to have her social life in the wee hours in nightclubs there for the purpose?

Stop press (!) F had his drink spiked in the wee hours of 24 Aug, and was abducted and thrown out of a car in downtown Oakland. He phoned us at 1 am. We took photos of the grazes etc

PPS Source for the change in the Berkeley noise ordinance due to the Irish kids; Jim Hynes, an Irish -American who works for the city of Berkeley.  If the Irish state put a fraction of the effort it is putting in to imposing a maudlin narrative on this event into asserting the rights of its creative class, or indeed preventing musicians from being ripped off and getting cancer as several did following events I have documented in my "Ireland in crisis" book, we would have a great country and both Mel and I would be living there, not in the US;


http://www.amazon.com/Ireland-Crisis-Analyses-Proposed-Solutions/dp/1443849650

Returning Gaelic culture to Scotland

In my capacity as the de facto head of Irish studies at UC Berkeley, I was invited to a private luncheon/discussion/Q+A with Chris Patten on Fri 8^th May, in the wake of the Tories’ success. He was indiscreet and very smart; he correctly pointed out that the physics/comp sci graduates being employed by the bookmakers were always more likely to provide more accurate predictions than the official pollsters (including Nate Silver ) and so the result had been less of a surprise to him.

He added that he will of course travel England’s green and pleasant land boosting whatever deal Cameron gets from the EU before the referendum. And NI, he continued,  pays dearly for peace in the shape of bad government; the unionist “cultural” expression is a tribal perversion of Britishness with which he is uncomfortable. Finally, yes, the UK may split up.

Scotland will look within after secession and all indications are that it will use its Gaelic past as a key pillar of its identity. Indeed, it can look to Ireland’s successful playing up of the sophistication of the Neolithic culture, the Gaelic language, Scottish reels and bagpipe bands  as usurpations of Scotland’s own culture. It will do the necessary DNA analysis and conclude that there was no massive Irish invasion of Scotland, but a shared culture and people over North-Eastern Ireland and western Scotland.  Finally, as this blog has consistently argued, it may make Ireland irrelevant by using its superior intellectual and legal traditions.

Unlike Ireland, which simply adopted the most arcane traditions of English jurisprudence, Scotland has its own legal system. It is of course a fantasy to imagine that legal and moral standards are immeasurably higher in any other country to one’s own; yet what passes for “law” in Ireland beggars belief. After a brief period of republican courts, the Irish free state re-instated the British system, labeled “insane” by the plaintiff in the current Facebook case who realized that he could get neither a speedy nor a fair trial in Ireland.

What Ireland uniquely possessed was tortured, exiled writers and a political absolutism that led briefly (1921-1998) to independence of part of the island. This absolutism may indeed stem from the perception that a whole alternative civilization was locked up in texts and music that the British had not got around to suppressing for precisely the same reason as that in India; it just seemed too childish and pathetic. By the 1990’s that “infantile” culture had achieved such worldwide currency that Liam Neeson, prior to accepting an OBE in 1999, spoke of how universal consciousness was manifesting in Ireland….

It was just about then, Neeson’s Deepak Chopra moment, that things were falling apart there, But what had held them together up to then? There is no equivalent of Edinburgh’s “Athens of the North”; Ireland’s writers were in general banned and exiled; the music was sustained more by barowners’ steadfast refusal to take money from musicians drinking and playing there than any state initiative. In my opinion, the answer is complex; it was a sense of the numinous in Irish society, one that protected clerical pedophiles but also asserted a hierarchy of value in the elite arts like theater; a nexus of impresarios, theater-managers and actors who sensed (in a system that Neeson himself befitted from) that while there was very little money, free rehearsal space in a modern city center is a gift; an Irish twist on roman Catholicism that allowed organizations like Opus dei actually make a positive contribution; and a political system where even an undoubtedly venal person like Charles Haughey would assert not just the territorial integrity of the country, but the greatness of a past that could – and, briefly, did - yet shape the future.

In fact, the only truly egregious thing that Haughey inflicted on us was Bertie Ahern. Within a year of the latter’s taking office, and the unionists’ brutal murder of Sean Brown that led to what they must have seen as the IRA’s surrender, all the pillars of the old Irish society were gone. Neoliberalism replaced Catholicism as the state dogma; the folk music was privatized in a contract that only the Irish legal system could assert as valid; a series of bubbles was generated that led to the surrender of the country’s economic autonomy. We are now facing at least a decade of political instability, with political parties being birthed and dying in a fragmented political landscape.

The country that Ireland has become is not a fit locus for the remnants of Celtic/Gaelic culture that it preserved with such persistence and courage. The book of Kells could with justification just as easily be termed the book of Iona; the bagpipe bands so beloved of Irish-Americans are Scottish; the Fiannaiochta exist as strongly in Scotland as Ireland. It is possible that the Irish state has served its historical purpose. The fact that the British ensured, by repeatedly frustrating the democratic will of the people,  that it was birthed in violence, resulted in a pathological state. They will not make the same error with the Scottish, who will thrive in a resource-starved 21^st century, hopefully as our close partners.

Indeed, there is a case for a Scots-Irish confederation, with the rights of Protestants protected by the demographic reality of their being almost 50% of the population.

PS Aspects of Ahern's destruction of Irish civil society is outlined in this free excerpt

http://www.cambridgescholars.com/download/sample/59226


There are further deatils and proposed solutions in this conference proceedings;

http://www.amazon.com/Ireland-Crisis-Analyses-Proposed-Solutions/dp/1443849650

3rd ICIS conference; 1st annual UC Berkeley St Patrick's day celebration

1^st annual UC Berkeley St Patrick's day celebration Noon-10pm

Schedule

Noon Kurka Boshkin play at Memorial stadium, UC Berkeley

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QycRVt8Xf8

1-30-10pm Third conference of the International Congress of Irish Studies

Sponsored by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict , and the International Congress of Irish Studies

Introduction by Prof Dan Melia (Emeritus, UC Berkeley)

Part 1: The (American ) Irish Diaspora

1-30 pm 370 Dwinelle UC Berkeley 8^th annual UC Berkeley St Patrick's day lecture

Prof Christopher O'Sullivan (USF)

“The Irish in California”

The Irish in California:

Global Diaspora, National Implications

The Irish seem to have been in California forever yet there is no evidence that St. Brendan ever explored the Pacific Coast. Nonetheless, even prior to the Gold Rush, people of Irish ancestry played enormous roles in shaping California’s destiny, particularly its landscapes, its culture and, most important, its politics. The Irish contributed to California in three major ways: First, as empire builders, with figures such as the mysterious Irish priest Father Eugene Macnamara, who sought to build an Irish nation in the San Joaquin Valley in the 1840s; San Francisco’s first millionaire, Sam Brannan; and the four Irish millionaires known to posterity as the Silver Bonanza Kings. Second, the Irish made lasting contributions as planners, surveyors, and engineers with figures such as Jasper O’Farrell, architect of San Francisco’s city plan; and Michael O’Shaughnessy and William Mulholland, both of whom shaped the destinies of San Francisco, Los Angeles and the state of California with unprecedented water projects. Finally, and perhaps most important, were the Irish contributions to politics, with figures such as the Workingmen’s Party leader Denis Kearney; San Francisco’s “Blind Boss” Chris Buckley; the “Renaissance Prince” of San Francisco, Mayor Jimmy Phelan, and his chief adversary, the Galway-born champion of labor, Father Peter C. Yorke. However, the most important Irishman in California history may have been the long-forgotten and misunderstood U.S. Sen. David C. Broderick who, both in life and, more consequentially, after his shocking murder, kept California in the Union column.

Part 2: Conflict and resolution on the island of Ireland

2-30 pm Seán Ó Nualláin UOI

“Why Prime Minister Gerry Adams is unlikely to invade Northern Ireland”

Abstract

By April 2016, the 100^th anniversary of the Easter rising that gained Ireland a measure of independence, it is likely that Gerry Adams will be Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland. Moreover, as his lieutenant Martin McGuinness has stated, it is likely that the set of elections in early 2016 for the Westminster and Northern Ireland assemblies will make a United Ireland inevitable. With Sinn Fein fulfilling their master plan of being in government in both jurisdictions of the island, neither of which jurisdictions they recognized until recently, they may be tempted to simply send the army over the border. This paper argues that Adams has his eye on another anniversary and will simply let the border melt away. 1919 was the first meeting of the “provisional” government after which his paramilitary organization was named, and from which it claimed its role as the legitimate government of the whole island from 1919 to 1999. It is in keeping with Adam's extreme-long term thinking that it is also the 850^th anniversary of the first Anglo-Norman invasion.

3pm David SchoenholzerDepartment of Economics UC Berkeley

“"Political Marches, Neighborhood Composition and Violence in Northern Ireland"

Abstract: We study the effect of political marches on violence in Northern Ireland. To this end, we construct a new dataset for the main conflict period of 1969-1979, geocoding all 1,844 casualties of political violence, collecting locations on political marches and daily rainfall data. We use a difference-in-difference design to estimate the change in violence during marching season in wards where marches took place to those where no marches took place. We find significant effects accounting for about 50 casualties. We also find that this effect is stronger for Catholic victims targeted by state forces. In months with a lot of rain, marching wards exhibit no more violence than non-marching wards, suggesting that lower attendance may lead to lower violence.

Part 3 Irish Gothic

3-30pm Tom Walsh (UC Berkeley) Title TBC

4 pm Clemens Ruthens "Trinity, Dublin and Dracula: A Bit(e) of Bram Stoker"

Part 4: St Patrick, Man and Myth

The historical St Patrick is a fugitive figure, as one would expect
looking across  a chasm of  over 1.5 millennia. This has allowed
various concepts to be projected on him; a Briton who yet becomes the
most potent rallying-symbol for the entire Irish diaspora; a liberator
who seems to have been involved in expunging the native Celtic
traditions

Yet we have two documents from him that indicate a well-defined
subjectivity; his confessions and the letter to Coroticus.  It is
interesting how different  the songs celebrating him are from these.
“Dóchas linn Naomh Pádraig” speaks of his Druidic opponents as being
“useless, and hard of heart” and “He cleansed them for us forever,
great glory to our dear saint!”

By contrast, the Lorica of Saint Patrick declares  “ I arise today.
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity” and
continues to refer to the Druidic concept of “niurt”, a divine
strength pervading the cosmos. According to respected  researchers
like O Duinn of the University of Limerick, there is a sly reference
to the Chandogya Upanishad, with Christ rather than the infinite
invoked to be beside, behind and above the speaker.

The Lorica of Saint Patrick was almost certainly written several
centuries after Patrick’s death. It may represent a historic
compromise between the Druidic remnants still existent and a
Christendom weakened by the fall of the Roman empire. It is a text
plunged in the kind of nature mysticism that O Duinn insists is
central to the Druidic tradition. As such, it resembles Tibetans'

equally successful reconstruction of Indian Buddhism.

The ebbing of Christendom has again  been experienced by 21st century
Ireland, leaving moral chaos..

4-30 pm Prof Dan Melia (Emeritus, UC Berkeley) on a redating of St Patrick's mission to the mid 4^th century from the received date of 432

5pm Reception and Vernal equinoctal Bacchanal – Durant hotel

7-30pm Melanie O''Reilly and Frank Martin perform ethno-jazz, Cafe Trieste, San Pablo, Berkeley

We propose giving the Lorica an ethno-jazz setting,
with Celtic and other themes. We propose also an indirect tribute to
our late friend, Dave Brubeck, by setting “Ailiu Iath eirann” with its
celebration of the physical land of Ireland to 5:4; the fact the lines
in general have 5 syllables making this possible.

Bios

Melanie O''Reilly was Ireland's representative at the Euro-Jazz festival at UCLA in 2013

Melanie O''Reilly and Frank Martin's Joyce & Jazz Suite already had an invite and grant to be performed at Cork Jazz Festival as part of the Jazz Gathering, in 2013.
Both Joyce & Jazz Suite AND the Sean O Riordain pieces have been
recorded on Ceol Ceantair CD and these pieces were performed at NCH,
-this concert was picked as one of the top ten concerts of the 2103,
by Ireland's Sunday Independent. The Sean O Riordain pieces were performed part of Dublin's IMRAM festival in 2014; among other current Imran projects is the Doors in Gaelic, featuring Ray Manzarek's saxplayer George Brooks.

Frank Martin is an SF bay area music legend and one of the world's greatest pianists in any genre.


PS We had another outstanding success with an audience of over a thousand over all the events Photos of the conference and late gig include Mel  ;Tom Walsh and Dan Melia (UC Berkeley)

and Clemens Ruthens (Trinity, Dublin). Next time a pro photographer, I hope;