Our commemoration of Eiri Amach1916

 Irish studies conference  Women's faculty club and 229 Dwinelle UC Berkeley 22-24 April 2016


First call for participation


Confirmed for UC Berkeley, co-sponsored by Professor emeritus Daniel Melia (Dept of Rhetoric and  Celtic Studies program)
Theme  - Parallel Irelands; Ireland as Republic, deep state,  Utopian and actual colony

Confirmed speakers include Profs Dan Melia (UC Berkeley), Cathal MacSwimey-Brugha (UCD),  Dr Malachy Ó Néill, Eamon O Ciardha (both U Ulster)  Gearóid Ó Colmáin (RT news),  Chris O'Sullivan (USF), Mary Steiner (United Nations), Fred Martin (UC Berkeley), Glynn Custred (Cal state, East Bay ),   Gerald Gillespie (Stanford), Melanie O'Reilly (RTE/ Mistletoe music),  Hassan Ahmad (UC Berkeley),  Scott David (U Wash), , Seán ó Nualláin (UOI)

Others will be added as the cosmos unfolds……..

Preliminary schedule

Fri 22

 We're premiering a musical piece "The Land of Ireland - Amergin to adzed-head and beyond" by Melanie O’Reilly  and Frank Martin  after a reception in the women's faculty club at UC Berkeley 22 April 5 to 8pm

Sat 23

10 am  Dan Melia   will open the conference

  Sovereignty and the law

Chair/facilitator and opening paper Hassan Yousef (UC Berkeley)

11 am Keynote; Dan Melia on Brehon Law

12 Seán ó Nualláin;  a New constitution, same old Republic ?

1pm Lunch

2pm Immigration and nationality

Chair/facilitator Glynn Custred

I Giglioli ((UC Berkeley), Glynn Custred, Greald Gillespie, Gearóid Ó Colmáin

5-30pm Adjourn

Sunday, 24 April

 1916 anniversary

9-30 Reading of the proclamation in Irish Cathal MacSwimey-Brugha who will talk about his grandfathers Cathal Brugha and Terrence Macswiney. Incidentally, Cathal Brugha read the proclamation in Irish at the first Dail sitting in 1919

10-00 Reading of the proclamation in English ; SFPD officer Che Heron who will talk about his great-grandfather, James Connolly and the effects his execution had on the family

10-30 Keynote "Recalling a Trio of O’Neills in 2016"  Dr Malachy Ó Néill

11-30 1916: ‘The Last Jacobite Rebellion’ Eamon O Ciardha

1pm Lunch

2pm  Language and Culture

Chair and Keynote Mary Steiner (UN, SF)

3pm  Keynote by Chris O’ Sullivan on the Irish Utopian community in the San Joaquin Valley in California

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

Since the first cfp was issued, these themes have emerged and will be discussed;

1. Immigration and nationality ( 23 April 2016)

a. On Dec 29 it was announced that ISIS/ISIL had issued a fatwa
legitimizing conditions for rape of female sex slaves.  The same day,
the European court  issued its own  fatwa prohibiting the expulsion
from Ireland of the leader of ISIS there regardless of the outcome of
the contemporary supreme court appeal in Ireland. ISIS has explicitly
threatened Ireland, and has made no secret of its plans to overthrow
the state there in favor of a theocracy. Does this mean that the
charge of treason in the Irish constitution applies only to Irish
people wishing a better life for other Irish people a la 1916?

b. Unlike Ireland, ISIS actually has a national territory, one that it
vigorously defends. A little-bruited consequence of the 1998 GFA
agreement is that Ireland rescinded its claim on all its land,
including the 26 counties. Yet the attempt to define the nation in
terms of anchor babies was defeated in 2003 with the same number
voting against this definition as voted for the GFA. Does this bring
us back to the 1937 implicit definition of the nation?

c. The newly crowned heavyweight boxing champion, Tyson Fury, has been
refused the Irish citizenship he covets because his father, in keeping
with traveler tradition, used a baptismal cert in place of
state-issued document. Together with hundreds of thousands of
Argentinean Irish, and tens of millions who lack an Irish grandparent
but desire recognition by the state, he is excluded. Conversely, many
Catholics  in the North will vote to stay in the UK and jealously hold
on to their Irish passports. Are we giving our passports and state
recognition to the wrong people?

D, Right on cue, with the influx of new coolie workers from Syria for
multinationals, Neolithic  middle Eastern has been found in Belfast.
(Whether the female farmer was Protestant or Catholic has apparently
 not been determined)Yet in 2010 the first  Irish DNA test on an autochtone revealed
considerable genetic isolation and uniqueness?


2 Sovereignty and the law (Sunday, 24 April)

The Berkeley balcony incident was a great and avoidable tragedy. After
action against Irish J-1 holders by the cities of Berkeley and Santa Barbara in
2010, members of the Irish community in Ca pleaded with the Irish
state to cut the numbers by 90%. In the wake of the incidents of June
16, 2016, the US state department has in fact insisted in the face of
opposition from An Taoiseach that all future J-1 visas must come with
a job, thus cutting the numbers by 80%. Given that spooks on the US
embassy in Dublin were engaged in the theft of Irish passports, did
these kids get caught  in a crossfire between the  US state department
and diplomatic security services, whose representatives were stealing
passports in Dublin at precisely the time they were needed in
Benghazi?

Since the final cfp the following events have occurred;

1. Using perhaps $250k of Irish taxpayers’ money, the Irish free state has organized a rival event in SF with a musical maestro whose name  the computer mavens on this list will find delicious; Kim Kluge! We will thus open our event with Melanie O’Reilly – one of Ireland’s alltime greats – premiering hers and Frank Martin’s new suite “"The Land of Ireland - Amergin to adzed-head and beyond"
2. Tor the first time in its 90 + years of existence, the establishment comprising the power structure of the Irish free state has failed to form a government after a free lection;
3. Therefore, the Irish free state will simply collapse from its own weight over the next few months. While its destruction has been wished for by many for generations, violence is unnecessary. We do recommend that Irish residents withhold water charges, USC, LPT and all other taxes not taken at source in order to starve the beast.