Saturday, July 30, 2011
Von Prondzynski; the Nazi connection
Eanair 15 2012
Just noticed there is a tour of Stalag 8b this year with a stop at the hotel in Opole if anyone wants to check the facts here;
http://www.lamsdorf.com/lamsdorf-tours.html
Let us be clear; the cement factories at Oppole were part of Stalag 8b;
http://www.wartimememories.co.uk/pow/stalag8b.html
The Prondzynski family benefitted from slave labour, which goes some of the way to explain how someone would try and introduce summary dismissal at a university. It does not explain how a supposedly modern democratic constitutional republic would inflict this Nazi scum on us and the HEA needs to be investigated.
DCU should be closed down, with proper protection for students and graduates as was planned for NUI, before further damage is inflicted
____________________________________________________________________
Ferdinand has threatened me, and asked for my home address. This is my response;
He was seen outside a house on Anglesea Road, in Dublin, shoving furniture into a large Removals Van which had "Aberdeen Removals " on it Thurs Aug 18 2011. He caught a plane to Edinburgh ( RyanAir economy) the next day and was seen getting off it.
Of course, it is sheer happenstance that I know this; nevertheless, I encourage him to stop interfering with my life
______________________________________________________________________________
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/germanco1.html
is a list of companies participating in the compensation fund. It includes Dyckerhof. Given their attested history of sharp practise, we can assume this is not a charitable gesture
Secondly, this forced labour document
http://www.wartimememories.co.uk/pow/stalag8b.html
mentions a cement factory
E17 Oppeln. cement factory
is at Oppeln/ Groszowice
http://wikimapia.org/14649443/industrial-area-Groszowice-cement-factory
There was a clear assertion that a cement factory there was owned by the family before and throughout WWII ;
"Konrad, his great-grandfather, started a Silesian cement business in the late 19th century; the town square in the Groszowice is named after him. "
QED ; of course, perhaps they continued to turn out garden gnomes during that period with happy locals working there
There is some superb recent research which works from the currently attested paradigm that forced labour was not just a war crime, but was a central part of the Holocaust;
http://www.c-s-p.org/flyers/978-1-4438-1720-2-sample.pdf
______________________________________________________________________
As of August, 2010, the wikipedia entry for F von P was lengthy and appears quite accurate, and well worth reading. Regarding his paternal side his grandfather Alfred is well documented as being the first person to drop a bomb from an airplane, WWI. It was Alfred who eventually died of his injuries in 1932, not his father, Hans. Again, it appears well documented and not disputed that his father Hans fought on the German side in WWII. There is no claim that Hans died of his injuries, but there is a claim that he suffered injuries and poor health as a result, and that he was arrested for his part in the conspiracy to kill Hitler. Apart from Alfred being the first person to drop a bomb from an airplane, none of the rest of the information regarding what they did during the wars is supported by references. In particular, his father does not feature in the list of conspirators in the "Valkyrie" plot
There was a clear assertion that a cement factory was owned by the family before and throughout WWII ;
"Konrad, his great-grandfather, started a Silesian cement business in the late 19th century; the town square in the Groszowice is named after him. "
(F can correct this by writing to me if he now thinks it untrue); so if it used Nazi slave labour the family is surely implicated, and the question of whether Hans was officially a Nazi somewhat moot - he profited by the use of Nazi-provided slave labour, and presumably the cement produced was put to use in the Nazi industrial war effort; other abhorrent uses naturally come to mind. I don't know how much more one would need to have done for Nazism to be considered a Nazi, so much so it's surprising that this was disputed.
His father then joined Dyckerhoff AG, which was sued in US Federal court for profiting from the work of Nazi-era slave laborers
http://scout.wisc.edu/Projects/PastProjects/net-news/98-10/98-10-19/0015.html
It also lost a case for illegal business practices in Germany
http://www.carteldamageclaims.com/German%20Cement
We can assume that the financial and other assets of the family business were subsumed in Dyckerhoff - the wiki page is unclear about that. The physical plant ended up as described above;
http://wikimapia.org/14649443/industrial-area-Groszowice-cement-factory
Finally, Ferdinand was the first and so far only Irish university president to lose a non-confidence vote by his staff
http://www.thecollegeview.com/2008/12/14/no-confidence-motion-passed-on-college-bosses/
It would not be unfair to conclude that he was sent over to Ireland to destroy tenure as was done in his home institution of Hull through the Edgar Page case
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/law-report-court-cannot-review-lecturers-redundancy-regina-v-visitor-of-the-university-of-hull-ex-parte-page--house-of-lords-lord-keith-of-kinkel-lord-griffiths-lord-brownewilkinson-lord-mustill-and-lord-slynn-of-hadley-3-december-1992-1562448.html
Then he was sent packing back to Britain a decade later with nothing accomplished chaos on the IR front at DCU, and a flea in his ear.
Ferdinand is apparently currently in the USA, and can sue me if any of the above is untrue
Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. Stanford
30 Iuil 2011
PS F's continued insistence on behalf of his father is the classic "Ich war nicht dabei" - I was not part of it.
However, even granted the claim that his father was not in the SS - and none of us have any reason to believe anything F says - there is solid evidence that the "nice" Nazi army, the Wehrmacht, took part in atrocities, and did so with sentiments approaching glee. In particular, the German officers imprisoned at Trent Park in Britain revealed much, and their revelations were dramatized recently;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jn0q6
F got very far in Ireland simply by being more aggressive and sneaky - indeed, criminal - than us Irish who had only recently given our loyalty to the state.
PPS Interesting analogy to F's father - Otto Skorzeny, yet another Nazi who took refuge in Ireland, and very close to F's father at almost exactly the same time, buying a very similar estate;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Skorzeny#Spain_and_Ireland
In many cases, these scum took advantage of the pro-Nazi sympathies of the roman Church
This is a rather indo-type take;
http://www.independent.ie/unsorted/features/scarface-skorzeny-the-hitler-henchman-who-became-a-kildare-farmer-258245.html
Remember that a lot of their money came about as a result of profits from forgery
Any issues of libel can be referred to my solicitors in Ireland, who have already successfully had an article by "The College View' removed because of libelous comments by FvP
PPS...and of course I have imminent legal proceedings, after my solicitor wrote to them in an attempt to resolve things amicably, against the "Irish Times" for comments P made about me and Paul Cahill last summer.
In the meantime, it gets better;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1538969/Ireland-welcomed-Hitlers-henchmen.html
There is of course a tinfoil hat theory that Skorzeny did not die until 1998 or so, and a much less fanciful one that he was a CIA operative
Let us note that Ferriter argues that Skorzeny and his ilk were told to leave by the IRA; they were made welcome by the Irish state, but Skorzeny would have recognized whom the true soldiers were, and left. Ferdie would never have gotten away with his illegal attempts to ruin the lives of Irish people, announce their ethnic minority status, and so on, pre-1998. No Ferdie - we weren't afraid of violent thugs like your head of "security" Ray Wheatley.
Is as Dun Dealgan do Brian Mac Craith, agus is feasach do ce a mot a oibrionn se.
10 u Lunasa
...and finally my family had a very brief connection with WW2 Germany
Jack O'Reilly, a Kilkeeman who broadcast from Nazi Germany featured Monday night 8/8/11 on "ealu" TG4. The account of his landing was inaccurate as is the one on;
http://www.jstor.org/pss/27725394
So he landed on Moveen and said the Railway was late so he got lost on the way to Kilkee? The railway used to arrive IN Kilkee!!
What happened was that he was injured after the parachute jump; my mother, the local physician, was called. Obeying her Hippocratic oath, she tended to him and to his companion; obeying the law, she reported it to the Gardai in due course so he was arrested .
The disinformation about O'Reilly "meeting farmers" going to the market was put about later as a cover story - any dealing with Nazis was reviled in my home town.
It is fair to say that my mom worked herself into an early grave from her willingness to tend to the sick, free of charge, day and night; she will be dead 35 years on Mon 15 August 2011. To think I had to deal with this scum at DCU!
All I did was work at DCU; now I am stuck in a house with 16 attested breaches of building code, without a salary since 2002, cannot move until my visa gets renewed, and all because civil "servants" were derelict in their duty
Just noticed there is a tour of Stalag 8b this year with a stop at the hotel in Opole if anyone wants to check the facts here;
http://www.lamsdorf.com/lamsdorf-tours.html
Let us be clear; the cement factories at Oppole were part of Stalag 8b;
http://www.wartimememories.co.uk/pow/stalag8b.html
The Prondzynski family benefitted from slave labour, which goes some of the way to explain how someone would try and introduce summary dismissal at a university. It does not explain how a supposedly modern democratic constitutional republic would inflict this Nazi scum on us and the HEA needs to be investigated.
DCU should be closed down, with proper protection for students and graduates as was planned for NUI, before further damage is inflicted
____________________________________________________________________
Ferdinand has threatened me, and asked for my home address. This is my response;
He was seen outside a house on Anglesea Road, in Dublin, shoving furniture into a large Removals Van which had "Aberdeen Removals " on it Thurs Aug 18 2011. He caught a plane to Edinburgh ( RyanAir economy) the next day and was seen getting off it.
Of course, it is sheer happenstance that I know this; nevertheless, I encourage him to stop interfering with my life
______________________________________________________________________________
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/germanco1.html
is a list of companies participating in the compensation fund. It includes Dyckerhof. Given their attested history of sharp practise, we can assume this is not a charitable gesture
Secondly, this forced labour document
http://www.wartimememories.co.uk/pow/stalag8b.html
mentions a cement factory
E17 Oppeln. cement factory
is at Oppeln/ Groszowice
http://wikimapia.org/14649443/industrial-area-Groszowice-cement-factory
There was a clear assertion that a cement factory there was owned by the family before and throughout WWII ;
"Konrad, his great-grandfather, started a Silesian cement business in the late 19th century; the town square in the Groszowice is named after him. "
QED ; of course, perhaps they continued to turn out garden gnomes during that period with happy locals working there
There is some superb recent research which works from the currently attested paradigm that forced labour was not just a war crime, but was a central part of the Holocaust;
http://www.c-s-p.org/flyers/978-1-4438-1720-2-sample.pdf
______________________________________________________________________
As of August, 2010, the wikipedia entry for F von P was lengthy and appears quite accurate, and well worth reading. Regarding his paternal side his grandfather Alfred is well documented as being the first person to drop a bomb from an airplane, WWI. It was Alfred who eventually died of his injuries in 1932, not his father, Hans. Again, it appears well documented and not disputed that his father Hans fought on the German side in WWII. There is no claim that Hans died of his injuries, but there is a claim that he suffered injuries and poor health as a result, and that he was arrested for his part in the conspiracy to kill Hitler. Apart from Alfred being the first person to drop a bomb from an airplane, none of the rest of the information regarding what they did during the wars is supported by references. In particular, his father does not feature in the list of conspirators in the "Valkyrie" plot
There was a clear assertion that a cement factory was owned by the family before and throughout WWII ;
"Konrad, his great-grandfather, started a Silesian cement business in the late 19th century; the town square in the Groszowice is named after him. "
(F can correct this by writing to me if he now thinks it untrue); so if it used Nazi slave labour the family is surely implicated, and the question of whether Hans was officially a Nazi somewhat moot - he profited by the use of Nazi-provided slave labour, and presumably the cement produced was put to use in the Nazi industrial war effort; other abhorrent uses naturally come to mind. I don't know how much more one would need to have done for Nazism to be considered a Nazi, so much so it's surprising that this was disputed.
His father then joined Dyckerhoff AG, which was sued in US Federal court for profiting from the work of Nazi-era slave laborers
http://scout.wisc.edu/Projects/PastProjects/net-news/98-10/98-10-19/0015.html
It also lost a case for illegal business practices in Germany
http://www.carteldamageclaims.com/German%20Cement
We can assume that the financial and other assets of the family business were subsumed in Dyckerhoff - the wiki page is unclear about that. The physical plant ended up as described above;
http://wikimapia.org/14649443/industrial-area-Groszowice-cement-factory
Finally, Ferdinand was the first and so far only Irish university president to lose a non-confidence vote by his staff
http://www.thecollegeview.com/2008/12/14/no-confidence-motion-passed-on-college-bosses/
It would not be unfair to conclude that he was sent over to Ireland to destroy tenure as was done in his home institution of Hull through the Edgar Page case
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/law-report-court-cannot-review-lecturers-redundancy-regina-v-visitor-of-the-university-of-hull-ex-parte-page--house-of-lords-lord-keith-of-kinkel-lord-griffiths-lord-brownewilkinson-lord-mustill-and-lord-slynn-of-hadley-3-december-1992-1562448.html
Then he was sent packing back to Britain a decade later with nothing accomplished chaos on the IR front at DCU, and a flea in his ear.
Ferdinand is apparently currently in the USA, and can sue me if any of the above is untrue
Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. Stanford
30 Iuil 2011
PS F's continued insistence on behalf of his father is the classic "Ich war nicht dabei" - I was not part of it.
However, even granted the claim that his father was not in the SS - and none of us have any reason to believe anything F says - there is solid evidence that the "nice" Nazi army, the Wehrmacht, took part in atrocities, and did so with sentiments approaching glee. In particular, the German officers imprisoned at Trent Park in Britain revealed much, and their revelations were dramatized recently;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jn0q6
F got very far in Ireland simply by being more aggressive and sneaky - indeed, criminal - than us Irish who had only recently given our loyalty to the state.
PPS Interesting analogy to F's father - Otto Skorzeny, yet another Nazi who took refuge in Ireland, and very close to F's father at almost exactly the same time, buying a very similar estate;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Skorzeny#Spain_and_Ireland
In many cases, these scum took advantage of the pro-Nazi sympathies of the roman Church
This is a rather indo-type take;
http://www.independent.ie/unsorted/features/scarface-skorzeny-the-hitler-henchman-who-became-a-kildare-farmer-258245.html
Remember that a lot of their money came about as a result of profits from forgery
Any issues of libel can be referred to my solicitors in Ireland, who have already successfully had an article by "The College View' removed because of libelous comments by FvP
PPS...and of course I have imminent legal proceedings, after my solicitor wrote to them in an attempt to resolve things amicably, against the "Irish Times" for comments P made about me and Paul Cahill last summer.
In the meantime, it gets better;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1538969/Ireland-welcomed-Hitlers-henchmen.html
There is of course a tinfoil hat theory that Skorzeny did not die until 1998 or so, and a much less fanciful one that he was a CIA operative
Let us note that Ferriter argues that Skorzeny and his ilk were told to leave by the IRA; they were made welcome by the Irish state, but Skorzeny would have recognized whom the true soldiers were, and left. Ferdie would never have gotten away with his illegal attempts to ruin the lives of Irish people, announce their ethnic minority status, and so on, pre-1998. No Ferdie - we weren't afraid of violent thugs like your head of "security" Ray Wheatley.
Is as Dun Dealgan do Brian Mac Craith, agus is feasach do ce a mot a oibrionn se.
10 u Lunasa
...and finally my family had a very brief connection with WW2 Germany
Jack O'Reilly, a Kilkeeman who broadcast from Nazi Germany featured Monday night 8/8/11 on "ealu" TG4. The account of his landing was inaccurate as is the one on;
http://www.jstor.org/pss/27725394
So he landed on Moveen and said the Railway was late so he got lost on the way to Kilkee? The railway used to arrive IN Kilkee!!
What happened was that he was injured after the parachute jump; my mother, the local physician, was called. Obeying her Hippocratic oath, she tended to him and to his companion; obeying the law, she reported it to the Gardai in due course so he was arrested .
The disinformation about O'Reilly "meeting farmers" going to the market was put about later as a cover story - any dealing with Nazis was reviled in my home town.
It is fair to say that my mom worked herself into an early grave from her willingness to tend to the sick, free of charge, day and night; she will be dead 35 years on Mon 15 August 2011. To think I had to deal with this scum at DCU!
All I did was work at DCU; now I am stuck in a house with 16 attested breaches of building code, without a salary since 2002, cannot move until my visa gets renewed, and all because civil "servants" were derelict in their duty
Monday, July 25, 2011
Putting the Irish Civil Service on trial
It may not be widely known that I have received no salary since May,
2002. Nor did I look for any charity/quarter from the "Irish" state; in
my view, the response of veteran republicans like Mary MacSwiney and Dan
Keating in refusing to grant the Irish state any inroad into their
lives, at whatever cost, is an appropriate one;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Keating
In the meantime, I have received no welfare from the state, did not get my P45 from DCU, emigrated as soon as I could, and at no time sought quarter from an organization that I have experienced as not just criminal and parasitical , but full of useless morons in its administration. In Norway, of course, we've just seen what happens when this degree of alienation goes a few small steps further.
Fear not; shooting people is just reducing oneself to the level of the Irish state, and also strikes me as boring. However, we do have a relatively independent judiciary – which is facing pay cuts as a way of bringing it back into line – and so my case is now returning to the circuit court. It would seem to afford an excellent opportunity to find out what is meant by “autonomous statutory responsibilities “ (ASRs). I have already informed Ronnie Ryan, the senior civil servant involved, that he is to be summonsed to give evidence.
Actually, we already know what he is going to say;
“
14.—(1) A university, in performing its functions shall—
.....(b) be entitled to regulate its affairs in accordance with its independent ethos and traditions
….....
and if, in the interpretation of this Act, there is a doubt regarding the meaning of any provision, a construction that would promote that ethos and those traditions and principles shall be preferred to a construction that would not so promote.”
This was the beginning of “ autonomous statutory responsibilities “ which were then used to justify non-disclosure of public money matters, summary dismissals, abuse of staff and students and much else. Now we come to the punchline; this section 14 is about Academic freedom, and here it is in full;
“
Academic freedom.
14.—(1) A university, in performing its functions shall—
(a) have the right and responsibility to preserve and promote the traditional principles of academic freedom in the conduct of its internal and external affairs, and
(b) be entitled to regulate its affairs in accordance with its independent ethos and traditions and the traditional principles of academic freedom, and in doing so it shall have regard to—
(i) the promotion and preservation of equality of opportunity and access,
(ii) the effective and efficient use of resources, and
(iii) its obligations as to public accountability,
and if, in the interpretation of this Act, there is a doubt regarding the meaning of any provision, a construction that would promote that ethos and those traditions and principles shall be preferred to a construction that would not so promote.”
So this is a section about academic freedom and cannot be construed as the right summarily to dismiss, nor the right to bribe students, nor the right arbitrarily to refuse to give credit for exams – all of which have been documented in Dail exchanges and justified with reference to this section. See links from
http://universitywatchdog.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/the-greens-and-opportunistic-hypocrisy/
In actual fact, the act gives the Minister draconian powers, if he feels laws are being broken a la Statute 3 in DCU, surely exactly the type of situation the act envisages, and which puts DCU currently still in clear violation of the law of the land;
“(2) The Minister may, after a period of 14 days commencing on the day on which he or she gave to the chief officer the report of the Visitor and after considering the observations, if any, of the governing authority or the chief officer on the report—
(a) if the Minister is still of the opinion that the functions are being performed in a manner which constitutes a breach of the laws, statutes or ordinances of or applicable to the university; and
(b) is of the opinion that, because of the report, the governing authority should be suspended and the Visitor concurs,
recommend to the Government the suspension of the governing authority and the termination of the membership of its members.”
ASR) was just an excuse for the theft of hundreds of millions of taxpayers' money. For those non-Irish who read this blog, the truth of the matter is that corrupt morons like Ronnie Ryan are put in the Irish Civil service to deliver the state into the hands of the worst forces in Irish society.
Last time it was measured, my IQ on the Stanford-Binet scale was 151; my eldest daughter, who finished first nationally in the overall baccalaureate in France in 2007, is slightly higher. I dread what is happening to the Irish gene-line with these scum essentially allowed ride roughshod over those of us who are naturally law-abiding
Finally, everything I have written here falls well within my rights of academic freedom, as incarnated in the 1997 act.
Sean O Nuallain PhD, Ventura Hall, Stanford
25u Iuil, 2011
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Keating
In the meantime, I have received no welfare from the state, did not get my P45 from DCU, emigrated as soon as I could, and at no time sought quarter from an organization that I have experienced as not just criminal and parasitical , but full of useless morons in its administration. In Norway, of course, we've just seen what happens when this degree of alienation goes a few small steps further.
Fear not; shooting people is just reducing oneself to the level of the Irish state, and also strikes me as boring. However, we do have a relatively independent judiciary – which is facing pay cuts as a way of bringing it back into line – and so my case is now returning to the circuit court. It would seem to afford an excellent opportunity to find out what is meant by “autonomous statutory responsibilities “ (ASRs). I have already informed Ronnie Ryan, the senior civil servant involved, that he is to be summonsed to give evidence.
Actually, we already know what he is going to say;
“
14.—(1) A university, in performing its functions shall—
.....(b) be entitled to regulate its affairs in accordance with its independent ethos and traditions
….....
and if, in the interpretation of this Act, there is a doubt regarding the meaning of any provision, a construction that would promote that ethos and those traditions and principles shall be preferred to a construction that would not so promote.”
This was the beginning of “ autonomous statutory responsibilities “ which were then used to justify non-disclosure of public money matters, summary dismissals, abuse of staff and students and much else. Now we come to the punchline; this section 14 is about Academic freedom, and here it is in full;
“
Academic freedom.
14.—(1) A university, in performing its functions shall—
(a) have the right and responsibility to preserve and promote the traditional principles of academic freedom in the conduct of its internal and external affairs, and
(b) be entitled to regulate its affairs in accordance with its independent ethos and traditions and the traditional principles of academic freedom, and in doing so it shall have regard to—
(i) the promotion and preservation of equality of opportunity and access,
(ii) the effective and efficient use of resources, and
(iii) its obligations as to public accountability,
and if, in the interpretation of this Act, there is a doubt regarding the meaning of any provision, a construction that would promote that ethos and those traditions and principles shall be preferred to a construction that would not so promote.”
So this is a section about academic freedom and cannot be construed as the right summarily to dismiss, nor the right to bribe students, nor the right arbitrarily to refuse to give credit for exams – all of which have been documented in Dail exchanges and justified with reference to this section. See links from
http://universitywatchdog.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/the-greens-and-opportunistic-hypocrisy/
In actual fact, the act gives the Minister draconian powers, if he feels laws are being broken a la Statute 3 in DCU, surely exactly the type of situation the act envisages, and which puts DCU currently still in clear violation of the law of the land;
“(2) The Minister may, after a period of 14 days commencing on the day on which he or she gave to the chief officer the report of the Visitor and after considering the observations, if any, of the governing authority or the chief officer on the report—
(a) if the Minister is still of the opinion that the functions are being performed in a manner which constitutes a breach of the laws, statutes or ordinances of or applicable to the university; and
(b) is of the opinion that, because of the report, the governing authority should be suspended and the Visitor concurs,
recommend to the Government the suspension of the governing authority and the termination of the membership of its members.”
ASR) was just an excuse for the theft of hundreds of millions of taxpayers' money. For those non-Irish who read this blog, the truth of the matter is that corrupt morons like Ronnie Ryan are put in the Irish Civil service to deliver the state into the hands of the worst forces in Irish society.
Last time it was measured, my IQ on the Stanford-Binet scale was 151; my eldest daughter, who finished first nationally in the overall baccalaureate in France in 2007, is slightly higher. I dread what is happening to the Irish gene-line with these scum essentially allowed ride roughshod over those of us who are naturally law-abiding
Finally, everything I have written here falls well within my rights of academic freedom, as incarnated in the 1997 act.
Sean O Nuallain PhD, Ventura Hall, Stanford
25u Iuil, 2011
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Dangerous legal vacuum at the Irish universities
The peculiar phrase “autonomous statutory responsibilities “ keeps
coming up in reply to questions about the Irish universities both in the
Dail (including questions from Joe Higgins) and as we've seen from
civil servants. So they are responsibilities, but autonomous, so
effectively not responsibilities; moreover this paradoxical state has
been enshrined in statute.
The phrase does not occur at all in the 1997 act, and “independent” itself is NEVER used in this context but usually correctly refers to concerns about academic freedom. The section 25 referred to time and again by the “mandarins” bears no relation to autonomy, and in fact is precisely the section that DCU has been flagrantly in breach of since 1997. Far from being statutory, it is clear that a civil servant (originally Padraic Mellett of the HEA) invented this phrase to allow universities' management do whatever they wanted to staff, students and the taxpayer.
This stinks of “because we can” and only a few months ago the administration which made this its leitmotif and motto sank without trace. Finally, the repeated reference to "day to day' management of the universities is also a civil servant's fabrication, and bears no relation to the legislation. As it happens, that legislation allows the minister to SUSPEND governing authority on foot of a Visitor's report
Sean O Nuallain PhD, Ventura Hall, Stanford
21u Iuil, 2011
PS I just checked the web, and the only reference to the phrase “autonomous statutory responsibilities" other than references as answers to questions in the Dail about the Irish universities is in a murder inquiry in Bradford
Sturart Neilson's similar experiences can be found at
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/78472?comment_order=asc&condense_comments=false&userlanguage=ga&save_prefs=true
PPS One can abdicate a responsibility; delegate a responsibility, or live up to a responsibility. In all these cases, there is the clear implication of accountability (the necessity to answer to a higher authority) once responsibility is in play, so it is by definition not “autonomous”. On the other hand, delegating “autonomous responsibilities “ - if it means anything at all - is surely equivalent to assigning complete discretion, complete freedom of action. So what successive administrations have been doing in answering a range of questions about clear violations of civil and criminal codes with the phrase “autonomous statutory responsibilities “ is saying that the universities are outside the remit of any statutory control.
Of course, none of that is suggested in the 1997 act, which clearly gives an oversight role to the minister. The civil servants who drafted those answers (starting with Ronnie Ryan) should be investigated, prosecuted, and sacked if it turns out that clear criminality ensued – and in my experience it indeed did ensue.
The phrase does not occur at all in the 1997 act, and “independent” itself is NEVER used in this context but usually correctly refers to concerns about academic freedom. The section 25 referred to time and again by the “mandarins” bears no relation to autonomy, and in fact is precisely the section that DCU has been flagrantly in breach of since 1997. Far from being statutory, it is clear that a civil servant (originally Padraic Mellett of the HEA) invented this phrase to allow universities' management do whatever they wanted to staff, students and the taxpayer.
This stinks of “because we can” and only a few months ago the administration which made this its leitmotif and motto sank without trace. Finally, the repeated reference to "day to day' management of the universities is also a civil servant's fabrication, and bears no relation to the legislation. As it happens, that legislation allows the minister to SUSPEND governing authority on foot of a Visitor's report
Sean O Nuallain PhD, Ventura Hall, Stanford
21u Iuil, 2011
PS I just checked the web, and the only reference to the phrase “autonomous statutory responsibilities" other than references as answers to questions in the Dail about the Irish universities is in a murder inquiry in Bradford
Sturart Neilson's similar experiences can be found at
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/78472?comment_order=asc&condense_comments=false&userlanguage=ga&save_prefs=true
PPS One can abdicate a responsibility; delegate a responsibility, or live up to a responsibility. In all these cases, there is the clear implication of accountability (the necessity to answer to a higher authority) once responsibility is in play, so it is by definition not “autonomous”. On the other hand, delegating “autonomous responsibilities “ - if it means anything at all - is surely equivalent to assigning complete discretion, complete freedom of action. So what successive administrations have been doing in answering a range of questions about clear violations of civil and criminal codes with the phrase “autonomous statutory responsibilities “ is saying that the universities are outside the remit of any statutory control.
Of course, none of that is suggested in the 1997 act, which clearly gives an oversight role to the minister. The civil servants who drafted those answers (starting with Ronnie Ryan) should be investigated, prosecuted, and sacked if it turns out that clear criminality ensued – and in my experience it indeed did ensue.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Ruairi Quinn's private secretary continues the criminality
Many questions have been asked in the Dail about clear violations of the
law of the land at DCU and other Irish universities, for example in the
links from;
Here
In all cases since 2002, the response has come back that
"The Universities Act, 1997 confers autonomous statutory responsibilities
on universities in relation to the day to day management of their
affairs. The operational management and conduct of staff relations are
matters for each university, in accordance with Section 25 of the Act. "
This is actually wrong, as the act provides provision for the appointment of a high Court judge
" Where the Minister is of the opinion that there are reasonable grounds for contending that the functions of a university are being performed in a manner which prima facie constitutes a breach of the laws, statutes or ordinances applicable to the university, the Minister may, after first advising the governing authority of his or her opinion and considering any explanation given in response, and with the concurrence of the Government, request the Visitor to the university to inquire into any matter giving rise to the Minister's opinion."
This is in keeping with the traditional role of a visitor to handle these issues;
University Visitor
I am shocked but not surprised that, as Quinn engages in shadow-boxing with the Church, his private secretary prefers to continue the criminality. I append my recent correspondence with him
"
Ronnie
It is clear that you do know any of the critical legislation so I cite it for you below. In the meantime, statute no 3 of DCU has been thrown out by the High Court in Ireland, in a decision the Supreme court chose to uphold. You seem to be the only person not to have heard of that;
The finale of the Cahill case
Moreover, the SIPTU official in charge of the negotiations (Carmel Hogan) gave sworn evidence that she was NOT consulted, as required in the act, about statute no 3
So let's look at
The relevant section of the Universities act
“
20.—(1) Where the Minister is of the opinion that there are reasonable grounds for contending that the functions of a university are being performed in a manner which prima facie constitutes a breach of the laws, statutes or ordinances applicable to the university, the Minister may, after first advising the governing authority of his or her opinion and considering any explanation given in response, and with the concurrence of the Government, request the Visitor to the university to inquire into any matter giving rise to the Minister's opinion.
(2) If the Visitor is satisfied that there are reasonable grounds for the Minister's opinion, the Visitor shall inquire into the matters giving rise to that opinion and any related matter and report to the Minister on the results of the inquiry.
(3) A Visitor shall, for the purposes of this section, be entitled at all reasonable times to enter a university to inquire into the academic or other affairs of the university or to conduct an inspection of the university and its buildings, equipment and records where the inspection is, in the opinion of the Visitor, relevant to his or her inquiries.
(4) A Visitor shall be afforded all reasonable co-operation and facility by the university, its employees and its governing authority, including access to such buildings, equipment and records as the Visitor may require, to enable the Visitor to perform his or her functions under this section.”
The act, continued
“19.—(1) Where a university does not have a Visitor, the Government shall from time to time as the occasion requires, following consultation with the President of the High Court, appoint a Judge of the High Court, or a retired Judge of the High Court or the Supreme Court, to be the Visitor for the purposes of this Act. “
It is incumbent on Minister Quinn to appoint a visitor to fix this mess, not on me, or any other academic on whom this criminality is visited
Ventura Hall, Stanford University
----- Original Message -----
From: "Minister for Education & Skills"
To: "Sean O'Nuallain"
Sent: Monday, July 18, 2011 6:20:38 AM
Subject: RE: 1101818
Mr. Sean O'Nuallain
xxxx@Stanford.Edu
PLEASE QUOTE REF NUMBER ON ALL CORRESPONDENCE
Our Ref: 1101818
Dear Mr. O'Nuallain
I refer to your email correspondences to the Minister for Education and
Skills, Mr. Ruairi Quinn T.D.
The Universities Act, 1997 confers autonomous statutory responsibilities
on universities in relation to the day to day management of their
affairs. The operational management and conduct of staff relations are
matters for each university, in accordance with Section 25 of the Act.
Dublin City University is one such autonomous body under this
legislation and it has statutory responsibility for both its operational
affairs and the management of its staff.
The Department of Education and Skills therefore has no role in respect
of disciplinary matters relating to this University, nor does it have a
role in matters relating to any grievances which staff may have in
relation to either their intellectual property or their contracts of
employment.
In this context it would not be appropriate for the Minister to comment
upon the individual disciplinary issues raised in your correspondences
relating to Dublin City University.
I trust that this clarifies the matter for you.
Yours sincerely
Ronnie Ryan
Private Secretary"
Sean O Nuallain PhD, Ventura Hall, Stanford
19u Iuil, 2011
PS It turns out that Ryan is a hold-out from the notorious FF/PD 2002-2007 administration ans the perhaps worse FF/"Green" 2007-2011 administration. My senior labour party contact had never heard of him.
Quinn had better get rid of him
PS 7 u Feabhra 2012 I should of course had written "do not know" above
Here
In all cases since 2002, the response has come back that
"The Universities Act, 1997 confers autonomous statutory responsibilities
on universities in relation to the day to day management of their
affairs. The operational management and conduct of staff relations are
matters for each university, in accordance with Section 25 of the Act. "
This is actually wrong, as the act provides provision for the appointment of a high Court judge
" Where the Minister is of the opinion that there are reasonable grounds for contending that the functions of a university are being performed in a manner which prima facie constitutes a breach of the laws, statutes or ordinances applicable to the university, the Minister may, after first advising the governing authority of his or her opinion and considering any explanation given in response, and with the concurrence of the Government, request the Visitor to the university to inquire into any matter giving rise to the Minister's opinion."
This is in keeping with the traditional role of a visitor to handle these issues;
University Visitor
I am shocked but not surprised that, as Quinn engages in shadow-boxing with the Church, his private secretary prefers to continue the criminality. I append my recent correspondence with him
"
Ronnie
It is clear that you do know any of the critical legislation so I cite it for you below. In the meantime, statute no 3 of DCU has been thrown out by the High Court in Ireland, in a decision the Supreme court chose to uphold. You seem to be the only person not to have heard of that;
The finale of the Cahill case
Moreover, the SIPTU official in charge of the negotiations (Carmel Hogan) gave sworn evidence that she was NOT consulted, as required in the act, about statute no 3
So let's look at
The relevant section of the Universities act
“
20.—(1) Where the Minister is of the opinion that there are reasonable grounds for contending that the functions of a university are being performed in a manner which prima facie constitutes a breach of the laws, statutes or ordinances applicable to the university, the Minister may, after first advising the governing authority of his or her opinion and considering any explanation given in response, and with the concurrence of the Government, request the Visitor to the university to inquire into any matter giving rise to the Minister's opinion.
(2) If the Visitor is satisfied that there are reasonable grounds for the Minister's opinion, the Visitor shall inquire into the matters giving rise to that opinion and any related matter and report to the Minister on the results of the inquiry.
(3) A Visitor shall, for the purposes of this section, be entitled at all reasonable times to enter a university to inquire into the academic or other affairs of the university or to conduct an inspection of the university and its buildings, equipment and records where the inspection is, in the opinion of the Visitor, relevant to his or her inquiries.
(4) A Visitor shall be afforded all reasonable co-operation and facility by the university, its employees and its governing authority, including access to such buildings, equipment and records as the Visitor may require, to enable the Visitor to perform his or her functions under this section.”
The act, continued
“19.—(1) Where a university does not have a Visitor, the Government shall from time to time as the occasion requires, following consultation with the President of the High Court, appoint a Judge of the High Court, or a retired Judge of the High Court or the Supreme Court, to be the Visitor for the purposes of this Act. “
It is incumbent on Minister Quinn to appoint a visitor to fix this mess, not on me, or any other academic on whom this criminality is visited
Ventura Hall, Stanford University
----- Original Message -----
From: "Minister for Education & Skills"
To: "Sean O'Nuallain"
Sent: Monday, July 18, 2011 6:20:38 AM
Subject: RE: 1101818
Mr. Sean O'Nuallain
xxxx@Stanford.Edu
PLEASE QUOTE REF NUMBER ON ALL CORRESPONDENCE
Our Ref: 1101818
Dear Mr. O'Nuallain
I refer to your email correspondences to the Minister for Education and
Skills, Mr. Ruairi Quinn T.D.
The Universities Act, 1997 confers autonomous statutory responsibilities
on universities in relation to the day to day management of their
affairs. The operational management and conduct of staff relations are
matters for each university, in accordance with Section 25 of the Act.
Dublin City University is one such autonomous body under this
legislation and it has statutory responsibility for both its operational
affairs and the management of its staff.
The Department of Education and Skills therefore has no role in respect
of disciplinary matters relating to this University, nor does it have a
role in matters relating to any grievances which staff may have in
relation to either their intellectual property or their contracts of
employment.
In this context it would not be appropriate for the Minister to comment
upon the individual disciplinary issues raised in your correspondences
relating to Dublin City University.
I trust that this clarifies the matter for you.
Yours sincerely
Ronnie Ryan
Private Secretary"
Sean O Nuallain PhD, Ventura Hall, Stanford
19u Iuil, 2011
PS It turns out that Ryan is a hold-out from the notorious FF/PD 2002-2007 administration ans the perhaps worse FF/"Green" 2007-2011 administration. My senior labour party contact had never heard of him.
Quinn had better get rid of him
PS 7 u Feabhra 2012 I should of course had written "do not know" above
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Open-source funding for open-source science
This blog is essentially part of an attempt to persuade the Irish state
to obey its own laws. I will not deny that the state's failure to do so
enrages me. Moreover, it has stopped attempting to sack academics
because we won all the critical battles, and made sure there was a lot
of publicity. In the meantime, Dail questions have revealed that the
authorities feel that universities indeed can act outside the law of the
land, including bribing and threatening students and illegally
dismissing academics. For example, the Irish Supreme court ruled that
Paul Cahill had been ILLEGALLY, not just unfairly dismissed, and so
ordered him unequivocally reinstated.
However, there is another critical issue; that of truth and how it is sought for. After the welcome decline of religious dogma, the state universities began to have an ever more critical role in this endeavor. The brief success of neoliberalism in Ireland – an increasingly faint memory - led to a corporate takeover of the universities. What is insidious here is the destruction of the truth-seeking process as taxpayers' money is used to debauch students' minds and make them into cannon fodder for corporations, while corporations get their R+D done on the cheap through mechanisms like SFI
The problem now is that the academics who prostitute themselves to achieve PI status – and as a Stanford faculty member, I can with credibility state that they produce mainly garbage in the process – hog all the taxpayer resources. This blog has consistently argued that all taxpayer-funded research should be publicly available through open-source mechanisms, rather than locked away in proprietary journals (The kind that gave Robert Maxwell his start)
A rather glaring problem remains; how to fund science outside the corrupt “public sector” mechanisms? Inevitably, scientists have now turned to mechanisms like Kickstarter.com, previously used effectively for the arts;
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2011/07/12/science/12crowd.html
While this is a non-optimal solution – putting it gently, in that good scientists are still being penalized for refusing to game the corporate system – hopefully the fact that such a bastion of received liberalism lie the NY Times has entered the fray might even wake up a few decision-makers in Ireland?
With a bit more time and talent, perhaps a Swiftian satire could be generated as academics look up Taskrabbit.com every day to find and bid on piecework for themselves like;
Philosopher needed 2 hours to explain Rawls' political theory
Can you come over to the tech and explain in 1 hour what Heidegger meant by “Da-sein?”
$20 to explain the Copenhagen interpretation of QM to an MBA class in 45 minutes
etc
Sean O Nuallain PhD, Ventura Hall, Stanford
12u Iuil, 2011
However, there is another critical issue; that of truth and how it is sought for. After the welcome decline of religious dogma, the state universities began to have an ever more critical role in this endeavor. The brief success of neoliberalism in Ireland – an increasingly faint memory - led to a corporate takeover of the universities. What is insidious here is the destruction of the truth-seeking process as taxpayers' money is used to debauch students' minds and make them into cannon fodder for corporations, while corporations get their R+D done on the cheap through mechanisms like SFI
The problem now is that the academics who prostitute themselves to achieve PI status – and as a Stanford faculty member, I can with credibility state that they produce mainly garbage in the process – hog all the taxpayer resources. This blog has consistently argued that all taxpayer-funded research should be publicly available through open-source mechanisms, rather than locked away in proprietary journals (The kind that gave Robert Maxwell his start)
A rather glaring problem remains; how to fund science outside the corrupt “public sector” mechanisms? Inevitably, scientists have now turned to mechanisms like Kickstarter.com, previously used effectively for the arts;
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2011/07/12/science/12crowd.html
While this is a non-optimal solution – putting it gently, in that good scientists are still being penalized for refusing to game the corporate system – hopefully the fact that such a bastion of received liberalism lie the NY Times has entered the fray might even wake up a few decision-makers in Ireland?
With a bit more time and talent, perhaps a Swiftian satire could be generated as academics look up Taskrabbit.com every day to find and bid on piecework for themselves like;
Philosopher needed 2 hours to explain Rawls' political theory
Can you come over to the tech and explain in 1 hour what Heidegger meant by “Da-sein?”
$20 to explain the Copenhagen interpretation of QM to an MBA class in 45 minutes
etc
Sean O Nuallain PhD, Ventura Hall, Stanford
12u Iuil, 2011
Monday, July 4, 2011
Consciousness is cheap
Sean O Nuallain PhD, Room 28, Ventura Hall, Stanford
Location; conference room, Ventura Hall, Stanford 4pm July 6th 2011
Intelligence requires bigger brains. Such brains are metabolically expensive, and make childbirth painful and dangerous for us bipedal animals. It may be the case that humans have reached the limit for brain size, that we have compressed to the furthest point that ion channels are still reliable by keeping neurons small
Consciousness seems to have an ambiguous role in our functioning. In particular, classic work by Libet suggests that motor neurons show preparation to initiate action tenths of seconds before we are aware that we intend to do so It is not a stretch to propose that we continually narrate to ourselves a “stream of consciousness” about our actions that is little more than what a sports commentator does about a game he is calling
However, it does seem to be the case that consciousness coincides with a episode of synchronized gamma, and that such episodes betoken a decrease by 4 orders of magnitude in the metabolic demand by the brain on the rest of the organism. It is now accepted that the brain consumes around 20% of the organism's total metabolic energy. That leads to a hypothesis; perhaps consciousness is fundamentally a “spandrel”, an incidental artifact of the need to keep metabolic costs down
In this talk, the relevant evidence – phenomenological and evolutionary – will be considered, and the state of knowledge about mechanisms of consciousness will be outlined. We will then proceed to examine the justification for what seems a priori a counter-intuitive hypothesis
Sean O Nuallain PhD, Ventura Hall, Stanford
La an neamhspleachais, USA, 2011
PS PS Paper to be published in "Biosemiotics" on-line this fall 2011
