Tuesday, May 10, 2011
From terrible beauty to prosaic reality to fatal inevitability
The epithets used in this blog may have seemed extreme until last
weekend; then both the Irish Times and Sindo published an article in
which a leading UCD economist effectively accused the Irish central bank
governor of treason;
http://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-kelly-irish-default-2011-5
The governor in question will IMO soon return chastened to his sinecure at TCD. However, there is an underlying dynamic exemplified here, which we will again scrutinize, and it relates directly to why DCU has been allowed behave outside the law for more than a decade.
The Irish state was set up as a compromise between irredentist republicans and pragmatists after a nasty, brutish and mercifully short civil war. This compromised nature did not allow the deep analysis of the inherited colonial institutions that the citizenry needed. For example, the state reverted to British common law after a successful experiment with republican courts, and then maintained common law even after a written constitution was adopted. There was surely world enough and time to develop an independent civil code, and that did not happen. Indeed, in the face of reality, UCD students were told until a decade ago (and may still be so told) that in fact some kind of (perhaps god-given) “natural law” obtained in Ireland.
The (deserved) decline of religion has led to a moral vacuum that lawyers have been eager to fill. The canvas afforded them is vast; a dearth of legitimation of authority in general, which they can and do address with casuistry, and a congeries of pure precedent (common law) going back centuries, with a programmatic (imitated in this elsewhere, including south Africa) Catholic nationalist constitution whose human rights protections are too weak to be observed.
So we have ended up with 3 of the top 20 biggest law firms in the EU (as of 2010) in a country which has neither an independent civil code, nor any sense of the individual's rights against the state. Canada, by contrast, funded groups as obscure as Maritimes accountants to take cases asserting their rights. The corporatist version of Ireland which succeeded the republican one from the mid-1980's allows consequential representation only through grain as coarse as unions.
And unions can be ignored; in fact, the size of the biggest law firms meant that law could itself be ignored. When a group around Bertie ahern saw a chance to control and indeed own much of the country, there was no countervailing force, and only the incompetence of the e-voting proposal prevented their carrying through the rest of their coup – as we now know, the money had been transferred to them. The middle-class had been bought off with “negotiated” salaries that Morgan Kelly echoes me in arguing are grotesquely large; there has never been a successful corporate enforcement prosecution in Ireland; the largest union was infected by Fianna Fail; the earlier movement based on a disgust of the low level of the “culture” being peddled by the state, inveighed against by publications like Sean O Faolain's “The Bell” was neutralized by IMRO's policing of public performances, which resulted in great musicians like Louis Stewart losing their gigs.
A new, rather terrible stage was presaged with the attack on tenure, and the removal of the universities from any external supervision. University presidents were free effectively to sell the places off, and this blog is one of many relatively feeble reactions. (Eventually, all we have been able to do is an IWO Jima type warning of how painful it will be to continue the war on tenure. That famously ended with Hiroshima).
Yet it is clear that the state is now worried about its new role as a collection agency for the IMF/EU, with the plan apparently being for peripheral EU countries like Ireland to act from 2013 as permanent debtors, the “assets' of the larger EU commercial banks. What is particularly bothersome about this fatal inevitability is that there are many much better structurings of the society, one of which I will now outline
First of all, Ireland is a country for the Irish; if Poland is allowed to maintain a population base that is 96% Polish (and indeed 95% Catholic), there is no reason that we should be compelled to have over 250k migrant workers taking our jobs. Interestingly, it is clear that the “Blood of the Isles” analysis is nonsense; it seems increasingly clear that this is also part of GFA propaganda, and the one complete Irish DNA analysis done to date indicates 13% of the SNPs are unique.
Secondly, the Irish gene-line is worldwide, with concentrated clusters in places like New Hampshire. Similarly, the culture that the state has tried so hard to extirpate and replace with Westlife (they and the queen deserve each other) is very well-loved by many people of non-Irish ancestry (and, because of the Irish state, not exposed to many "native" Irish). Indeed, the GFA has meant that we as Irish people are like a young woman betrothed to a man who is still allowed to play the field, with all the destruction to our self-confidence implied. We should be able - like the unionists and the many opportunistic northern Catholics who play for whatever team suits them at any given moment – to choose new lifepartners like the independent Scotland that now seems likely, and use our demographic preponderance in NH, Massachusetts and Newfoundland to influence US and Canadian politics in our favour.
The first step is the most important step, and that is the assertion – against the Irish state as we have experienced it for over a decade – of our unique genetic and cultural identity as Irish people. We should be prepared to extend citizenship to anyone with similar ethnicity (defined here as genetic and/or cultural identity). So-called “Northern Ireland” should be encouraged to call a one-off referendum within 3 years to decide to join us or not; if no. we can remove orange from the flag as we really don't need it. This involves accepting a peaceful, partitioned island to stop the hemorrhage of our energy as a nation that “Northern Ireland” forces. Wolfe Tone and indeed Pearse et al wrote at a time when it was not clear how able a group we native Irish are. After the 20th century, we now know that we can excel in every field of human endeavor – if only our state would let us.
This, in turn brings us to the current Irish government, which is the administration the Irish should have elected in 1997. That they did not do so is a tribute to the same forces in Irish society who campaigned so viciously against tenure, and who are exemplified by the Irish Independent's espousal of Bertie Ahern, and Irish times' being successfully sued for libel on the tenure issue. Yet all this government has done so far is attempt to give legitimacy to a deal it did not make. The tensions between the instinctively pro-EU FG and old republicans in Labour are already clear. The dissolution of the second Dail was a near-theological issue compared to taxpayers being asked to pay for Nama and then bad loans by German banks which could well destroy the state.
So, in addition to my proposal of two years ago
http://academictenure.blogspot.com/2009/05/mayday-mayday-or-how-to-save-ireland.html, I propose;
1.Re-emphasise our ethnicity, as the state is supposed to do. This involves first removing the corruption in the Irish entertainment industry, and then supporting talented ethnic artists, as every country does
2.The fiscal crisis has successively produced the recommendation of turning bondholders into share holders and when “Pog mo” honohan rejected that, fixing the EU with half our debt as Kelly suggests. A similar “OK Corral”/nuclear option will eventually have to be taken, and let the chips fall where they may, particularly as the US and Britain are our two main trading partners – not the rest of the EU.
3.Energy resouces an be sourced from many countries outside the Anglophone dominance area like Venezula. (even if Obama has a shot at Chavez, to follow the miss on Qaddhafi)
4.As mentioned above, we need a complete restructure of the institutions of legitimation of power in Irish society, with a new legal system and a new republican view of the relationship between the individual and the state. That done, much of our civil service will be seen for the parasite it is
Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. Stanford
10 u Bealtaine 2011
PS I would never have achieved this status, continuous since 2006, without the criminals at DCU;
http://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-kelly-irish-default-2011-5
The governor in question will IMO soon return chastened to his sinecure at TCD. However, there is an underlying dynamic exemplified here, which we will again scrutinize, and it relates directly to why DCU has been allowed behave outside the law for more than a decade.
The Irish state was set up as a compromise between irredentist republicans and pragmatists after a nasty, brutish and mercifully short civil war. This compromised nature did not allow the deep analysis of the inherited colonial institutions that the citizenry needed. For example, the state reverted to British common law after a successful experiment with republican courts, and then maintained common law even after a written constitution was adopted. There was surely world enough and time to develop an independent civil code, and that did not happen. Indeed, in the face of reality, UCD students were told until a decade ago (and may still be so told) that in fact some kind of (perhaps god-given) “natural law” obtained in Ireland.
The (deserved) decline of religion has led to a moral vacuum that lawyers have been eager to fill. The canvas afforded them is vast; a dearth of legitimation of authority in general, which they can and do address with casuistry, and a congeries of pure precedent (common law) going back centuries, with a programmatic (imitated in this elsewhere, including south Africa) Catholic nationalist constitution whose human rights protections are too weak to be observed.
So we have ended up with 3 of the top 20 biggest law firms in the EU (as of 2010) in a country which has neither an independent civil code, nor any sense of the individual's rights against the state. Canada, by contrast, funded groups as obscure as Maritimes accountants to take cases asserting their rights. The corporatist version of Ireland which succeeded the republican one from the mid-1980's allows consequential representation only through grain as coarse as unions.
And unions can be ignored; in fact, the size of the biggest law firms meant that law could itself be ignored. When a group around Bertie ahern saw a chance to control and indeed own much of the country, there was no countervailing force, and only the incompetence of the e-voting proposal prevented their carrying through the rest of their coup – as we now know, the money had been transferred to them. The middle-class had been bought off with “negotiated” salaries that Morgan Kelly echoes me in arguing are grotesquely large; there has never been a successful corporate enforcement prosecution in Ireland; the largest union was infected by Fianna Fail; the earlier movement based on a disgust of the low level of the “culture” being peddled by the state, inveighed against by publications like Sean O Faolain's “The Bell” was neutralized by IMRO's policing of public performances, which resulted in great musicians like Louis Stewart losing their gigs.
A new, rather terrible stage was presaged with the attack on tenure, and the removal of the universities from any external supervision. University presidents were free effectively to sell the places off, and this blog is one of many relatively feeble reactions. (Eventually, all we have been able to do is an IWO Jima type warning of how painful it will be to continue the war on tenure. That famously ended with Hiroshima).
Yet it is clear that the state is now worried about its new role as a collection agency for the IMF/EU, with the plan apparently being for peripheral EU countries like Ireland to act from 2013 as permanent debtors, the “assets' of the larger EU commercial banks. What is particularly bothersome about this fatal inevitability is that there are many much better structurings of the society, one of which I will now outline
First of all, Ireland is a country for the Irish; if Poland is allowed to maintain a population base that is 96% Polish (and indeed 95% Catholic), there is no reason that we should be compelled to have over 250k migrant workers taking our jobs. Interestingly, it is clear that the “Blood of the Isles” analysis is nonsense; it seems increasingly clear that this is also part of GFA propaganda, and the one complete Irish DNA analysis done to date indicates 13% of the SNPs are unique.
Secondly, the Irish gene-line is worldwide, with concentrated clusters in places like New Hampshire. Similarly, the culture that the state has tried so hard to extirpate and replace with Westlife (they and the queen deserve each other) is very well-loved by many people of non-Irish ancestry (and, because of the Irish state, not exposed to many "native" Irish). Indeed, the GFA has meant that we as Irish people are like a young woman betrothed to a man who is still allowed to play the field, with all the destruction to our self-confidence implied. We should be able - like the unionists and the many opportunistic northern Catholics who play for whatever team suits them at any given moment – to choose new lifepartners like the independent Scotland that now seems likely, and use our demographic preponderance in NH, Massachusetts and Newfoundland to influence US and Canadian politics in our favour.
The first step is the most important step, and that is the assertion – against the Irish state as we have experienced it for over a decade – of our unique genetic and cultural identity as Irish people. We should be prepared to extend citizenship to anyone with similar ethnicity (defined here as genetic and/or cultural identity). So-called “Northern Ireland” should be encouraged to call a one-off referendum within 3 years to decide to join us or not; if no. we can remove orange from the flag as we really don't need it. This involves accepting a peaceful, partitioned island to stop the hemorrhage of our energy as a nation that “Northern Ireland” forces. Wolfe Tone and indeed Pearse et al wrote at a time when it was not clear how able a group we native Irish are. After the 20th century, we now know that we can excel in every field of human endeavor – if only our state would let us.
This, in turn brings us to the current Irish government, which is the administration the Irish should have elected in 1997. That they did not do so is a tribute to the same forces in Irish society who campaigned so viciously against tenure, and who are exemplified by the Irish Independent's espousal of Bertie Ahern, and Irish times' being successfully sued for libel on the tenure issue. Yet all this government has done so far is attempt to give legitimacy to a deal it did not make. The tensions between the instinctively pro-EU FG and old republicans in Labour are already clear. The dissolution of the second Dail was a near-theological issue compared to taxpayers being asked to pay for Nama and then bad loans by German banks which could well destroy the state.
So, in addition to my proposal of two years ago
http://academictenure.blogspot.com/2009/05/mayday-mayday-or-how-to-save-ireland.html, I propose;
1.Re-emphasise our ethnicity, as the state is supposed to do. This involves first removing the corruption in the Irish entertainment industry, and then supporting talented ethnic artists, as every country does
2.The fiscal crisis has successively produced the recommendation of turning bondholders into share holders and when “Pog mo” honohan rejected that, fixing the EU with half our debt as Kelly suggests. A similar “OK Corral”/nuclear option will eventually have to be taken, and let the chips fall where they may, particularly as the US and Britain are our two main trading partners – not the rest of the EU.
3.Energy resouces an be sourced from many countries outside the Anglophone dominance area like Venezula. (even if Obama has a shot at Chavez, to follow the miss on Qaddhafi)
4.As mentioned above, we need a complete restructure of the institutions of legitimation of power in Irish society, with a new legal system and a new republican view of the relationship between the individual and the state. That done, much of our civil service will be seen for the parasite it is
Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. Stanford
10 u Bealtaine 2011
PS I would never have achieved this status, continuous since 2006, without the criminals at DCU;
Monday, May 2, 2011
Another disciplinary “procedure” suicide
- His income, including that for basic food and lodging;
- His sense of his own worth as a professional in society;
- His status in society;
- His relationship with the students whom he will often regard as surrogate children, to be nurtured and cared for;
- His engagement with his subject, which will be passionate in the case of any real scholar, and which cannot be pursued at the top level outside a well-funded institution, with opportunity to go to conferences, remain seized of current trends, etc;
- Quite simply, some structure to every day.
There is, of course, much else. The response that will increasingly be chosen by the best scholars is that they will work independently of institutions. The Irish state is playing with fire in its meddling with tenure status.
And so we come to the suicide of Antonio Calvo, revisited today in the NY Times after much earlier coverage;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Antonio_Calvo
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/nyregion/after-suicide-firing-of-princeton-lecturer-is-questioned.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/20/antonio-calvo-princeton-suicide_n_851775.html
We can be absolutely sure that criminal charges against Princeton management will be announced pretty much immediately unless they can produce concrete evidence that their case was bulletproof.
Joshua Howarth (Ex-DCU) committed suicide after an illegal disciplinary procedure was visited on him. I had my career and those activities above that can indeed be called “my life” ruined; Paul Cahill had 5 years taken from a brilliant career.
So why have the people responsible for Howarth's death and much more human misery - O'Dwyer at Arthur Cox, Mallon the fantastically obese idiot barrister (see below), Burns, Contry and Prondyzinski at DCU, indeed Byrne and a succession of governing authorities at DCU – been allowed get away Scotfree?
Does the Irish state really think it can continue to get away with this? I attach Mallon's assessment that the statute was ok, rejected by the courts in Ireland. Why is taxpayers' money still being shoveled at these useless, indeed murderous bastards?
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D Stanford 2u Bealtaine 2011
PS I couldn't resist it and looked up Princeton's disciplinary code for harassment;
http://www.princeton.edu/hr/policies/statement/1.0/1.0.2/4-AntiHarassmentPolicyProcedures.pdf
I can't find any procedure facilitating what happened - a DCU-like bullying by a security guard before any due process, and a suspension BEFORE the hearing
So Antonio was illegally removed from campus by the guard and Princeton will pay his relatives $tens of millions
This is all straight from the DCU playbook
