Sunday, February 7, 2016

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 4th

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.

Thursday, November 5, 2015

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 4th




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 21st 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?


Tuesday, October 6, 2015

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?

Saturday, September 5, 2015

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”;


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







Wednesday, August 26, 2015

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;


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

Monday, July 13, 2015

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 Schooler
In 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 break
The 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




Sunday, June 28, 2015

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?