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=