Talk at UC Berkeley; Shell in Mayo

St Patrick's day talk, 2009 “
Ireland : Postchristian and postcolonial?"

Home Room, Ihouse, UC Berkeley 12 noon
17 Marta 2009

Sean O Nuallain and Melanie O'Reilly

On 9 September, 2008, a 90-lb woman
drove to the gates of a Shell oil construction site in Glengad, North
West Mayo, a beautiful and sparsely populated part of Ireland , and
announced that she was going to remain on hunger strike until the
construction work stopped. Specifically, she insisted that the
pipe-laying ship “The Solitaire” must leave Irish territorial
waters before she ate again, and then resigned her teaching job as
principal of the local high school. Before Maura Harrington ate
again, on 19 September, the ship indeed had left, and Ireland had
experienced its first politically motivated home-grown explosives
attack (on the Dublin Shell office) since the 1920's. Construction
work is due to resume in Spring 2009, and there is a group ready to
go on hunger strike


Once the poster child of globalized
corporatism, Ireland now looks more like its reductio ad absurdum.

The phenomenal GDP growth from
1995-2007 ended in a property bubble with world record levels of
personal indebtedness, and the IMF will almost certainly be called in
during 2009. In the meantime, the twin narratives of Catholicism and
irredentism on the north-east corner of the island had been
abandoned. This talk discusses the need for substitute narratives,
going perhaps as deep as a revision of the notion that St Patrick's
was a civilising mission. It looks at the Shell incident in the
context of the wholly unconstitutional handover of natural resources
it involves, as well as other hot-button issue like Tara (with
updates from last year's talk) and the attempt to destroy academic
tenure.

Melanie O'Reilly, an award-winning
radio broadcaster with Ireland's national network, will talk about
the difficulties facing artists in Ireland during the “boom”.

Sean O Nuallain Ph.D. is an
activist, academic, and musician. In 2003, he won a landmark judgment
guaranteeing union representation for university staff in Ireland
(http://academictenure.blogspot.com/) and went on to co-found the
musicians' union of Ireland. On 17 September, 2008, he led a
delegation to Glengad and chaired mediation meetings involving all
stakeholders. He runs a music
company with his partner and has taught at both UC
Berkeley and Stanford. The second edition of his book on activism,
Being human (Intellect, 2004), was launched at Stanford in May, 2004;
he is currently working on “ Ireland : a colony once again?"

The Gaelic jazz innovator, musician
and broadcaster Melanie O'Reilly is currently to be heard over the
web with her award-winning series “Jazz on the Bay” and will gig
at the Freight and Salvage on 21 March, 2009, 8pm.

Pangur wrote:

Before Maura Harrington ate again, on 19 September, the ship indeed had left, and Ireland had experienced its first politically motivated home-grown explosives attack (on the Dublin Shell office) since the 1920's.

There was no attack. Despite what some media have reported about this and indeed the garda press release that fuelled it, the so-called device was non-viable. Indeed the 'device' was a bag of separate ingredients that could have possibly been used to assemble an incendiary device. These componants were not assembled. More to the point, if the top had been taken off the bottle and a petrol soaked rag placed into the bottle of petrol (one of the ingredients of the bag), a much more dangerous device would have been the result, provided that one had some way of lighting it up and of course provided that someone threw it. Nobody knows who left this bag of assorted crap outside Shell HQ, neither is it known what was intended. Short of the person or persons unknown, responsible for it. The question that needs an answer here is why did the bomb disposal unit blow it up?

There is of course a real possibility that it was shell, themselves, who left it there. However, having chaired the (successful) mediation meetings in sept 2008 at glengad, my impressios are;

1. Much hunger striking to come
2. Much political violence unless the state grows up




Btw, the talk is on
http://events.berkeley.edu/?event_ID=17593&date=2009-03-17&tab=all_events

Hermes wrote:

Pangur wrote:

Before Maura Harrington ate again, on 19 September, the ship indeed had left, and Ireland had experienced its first politically motivated home-grown explosives attack (on the Dublin Shell office) since the 1920's.

There was no attack. Despite what some media have reported about this and indeed the garda press release that fuelled it, the so-called device was non-viable. Indeed the 'device' was a bag of separate ingredients that could have possibly been used to assemble an incendiary device. These componants were not assembled. More to the point, if the top had been taken off the bottle and a petrol soaked rag placed into the bottle of petrol (one of the ingredients of the bag), a much more dangerous device would have been the result, provided that one had some way of lighting it up and of course provided that someone threw it. Nobody knows who left this bag of assorted crap outside Shell HQ, neither is it known what was intended. Short of the person or persons unknown, responsible for it. The question that needs an answer here is why did the bomb disposal unit blow it up?