On May 24th William began to do what he had been putting off for so long. He wrote the second part of Travels with Li Po. “The first part was merely to show the vision and what I had intended for it. Had I played my cards closer to my chest Harry Potter would not exist.”

Here he goes on to explain why he has written it and what it was all about from the beginning.

“After my story had been stolen by Rowling and Little there didn’t seem much point in going on with it. As soon as I duped what had happened incidentally I changed the ending of Part One to include the Virtue Agency the theme of which is the exploitation of what is good by what is evil. I also changed the title of my book from “Owen Muldoon and The Philosopher’s Stone” to “Travels with Li Po” and made a few other changes. Given our circumstances at the time taking Rowling to court was an impossibility for a number of reasons I need not go into.

It was suggested to me by my friends and family to finish my book so that I could elaborate on the vision I had for it, no easy matter I have to say, when all your fundamental ideas have been stolen wholesale, not to mention the philosophy that underpins them. That’s why I kept putting it off having long accepted that my career as a writer ended brutally in the summer of 1990 shortly after I had sent my book to Amnesty. Later I sent it to Little and one or two signed documents later knew beyond doubt I had been royally ‘stitched up’ by both of them.

Still, I wrote Part Two so that people could have access to the real deal, the authentic, genuine wholesome story and not the exploitative derivative. There are a few surprises in it as well for the few intelligent people around who are healthily sceptical of the Rowling-Little money-mining scheme they call “Harry Potter.” I am happy with it. At least it is mine.

My purpose in writing it in the first place was to empower kids with a critical view of life that would protect them from the oligarchic power-mongering and media chicaneries that ironically lie at the heart of the Harry Potter series. Li Po reflects the state of abandonment we all endured in the Bogside in the 1980-90s, a state that afflicted kids in particular and brought them face to face with questions of ultimate concern long before they were able to deal with them. If death is a big thing in both books, this is the reason why. My aim was to write a readable book, not to set up a global franchise. That is where Potter and me part company for good. Children’s literature, being depressingly conservative from a political viewpoint, I had it all to do with a book that was way left of centre from the start. I have not abandoned that position nor will I. Maybe the hour has come at last for Li Po that I considered at the time to be ground-breaking and still do. I also knew in my heart of hearts that some tosser or tossers would plagiarise it. I got that right!

Let me also state for the record that it is my unshakeable conviction that Willy the Wizard met with the same fate as my own work and the Bogside Artists support them in their struggle for justice. The Wizarding world of broomsticks and fantasy is derived totally from Adrian Jacob’s book. It should be obvious to anyone who has a modicum of non-deluded sense left that it is utterly inconceivable that the family of Adrian Jacobs would sink themselves in debt, pay millions to lawyers, mortgage their homes and spend 8 long years trying to drag the felons into court just so that they tell a big lie to the world, and expect it to believe them. If you believe to the contrary then your argument should be that they be removed from the streets forthwith and be subjected to electro-convulsive therapy for their own good. I suggest you were better off to take the more reasonable stand that they deserve the benefit of all out doubts with regards to Rowling and her relationship to Little. And that the argument of greed should be leveled at them not at their victims.

Adrian Jacobs’ family are demonised as “greedy”, “opportunistic” etc by the Rowling camp and her supporters in the media (many of whom are, conveniently, Rowling’s personal friends) but it is clear to us that the greed begins with the plagiarism of what never ever belonged to her or Little and which, I believe, was beyond the intellectual reach of either of them at the time. Let us, on the strength of this common sense, entertain the notion that, as with us, what Adrian Jacobs’ people are saying is the truth and always has been the truth; and Rowling-Little not only have a case to answer but, in the name of democracy, should be forced to answer it.

Freedom of Expression is More than a Basic Human Right

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech

The following are unedited excerpts from wikipedia on the subject of freedom of speech.

“The First Amendment was adopted on December 15, 1791. The Amendment states:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The right to freedom of speech is recognized as a human right under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and recognized in international human rights law in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The ICCPR recognizes the right to freedom of speech as “the right to hold opinions without interference. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression. Furthermore freedom of speech is recognized in European, inter-American and African regional human rights law.”

Freedom of speech, or the freedom of expression, is recognized in international and regional human rights law. The right is enshrined in Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 13 of the American Convention on Human Rights and Article 9 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

One of the earliest Western defences of freedom of expression is Areopagitica (1644) by English poet and political writer John Milton. Milton also argued that if the facts are laid bare, truth will defeat falsehood in open competition, but this cannot be left for a single individual to determine. According to Milton, it is up to each individual to uncover their own truth; no one is wise enough to act as a censor for all individuals

It should be clear to all therefore that plagiarism is an evil of relative magnitude that militates not just against a basic human right but against the very heart of democracy itself. The public at large are duped by perpetrators as to the severity of the crime. Perpetrators either succeed in buying their way out by offering the victim a minimal share in their ill-gotten gains or get the law to do their dirty work for them by allowing courts to adjudicate on the basis of draconian laws of proof that are clearly in the criminal’s favour. The crime itself can only be fully comprehended by its many victims. What is needed are new laws whereby reason, plausibility and expert testimonies are given added weight in the assessment process and in which a competent and fool-proof lie-detection technology can be used to find the truth or falsehood of conflicting statements.

The Satanic Windmills of Plagiarism.

Plagiarism. What is its nature? The will to win by possessing is its impetus; a will that cannot climb its selected mountain under its own steam: it needs help; and it forages for that help in the honest labours of another. And if you consider Rousseau’s definition of morality as “self-restraint”  plagiarism is totally redundant in that respect. Whatever it needs it takes. To win at any cost is the motivation and in that there is simply no room for morals, no room for compassion, no room for humanity. To my mind it manifests the heartless soul of imperialism. It must have what it needs irrespective of the cost to others. It is violence. It invades foreign territory at will. It’s primary self-deception is that it already owns what it seeks to possess. Rape therefore is its true nature; the rights of  the defenceless ‘other’ negated absolutely.
                                  The philosophy of the plagiarist  if he/ she can be said to have one is ALL ART IS MADE OF IDEAS. IDEAS BELONG TO US ALL. THERE IS NO COPYRIGHT ON IDEAS. The latter statement is only partly true but the real fallacy lies in the first statement, viz, ALL ART IS MADE OF IDEAS. It is true and it is false all at once. The introjected object is the idea. Reality is subsumed and managed by us under the forms of ideas. But, the creative spirit itself is consciousness, i.e, the subject that experiences. Consciousness is not an object. The eye cannot see its own capacity to see any more than a river can flow backwards to find out  from whence it came. The violence done to the work of another is  violence done to the creative presenter of ideas, violence perpetrated against the subject. It is personal  in other words and cannot be other. Only the victim knows how personal it actually is.

                                 Without the individual presenter the ideas delivered by creative endeavour COULD NOT EXIST  in the particular forms chosen and moulded by the presenter. This is easy enough to understand. You can pilfer the style and method of pictorial representation of a Rembrandt self-portrait for instance on the false premise that the great work is composed of nothing but ideas but you cannot present your finished copy as a portrait of  YOU however radical and imaginative your changes may be if you preserve the actual essential features of Rembrandt’s features, what makes Rembrandt’s portrait unique.  The simulation can never be the truth and the TRUE origin of your facsimile is Rembrandt’s portrait without which yours could not exist. In literature, the definitive statement that Mr. Smith invented certain things is in no way invalidated by digging up ‘similiarities’ in books long since forgotten. And if you subscribe to the fact that there are only 36 possible plots available to us in the whole of literature you may take it that your plot, however ingenious, is among them. Theft can never be lawful and this fact of happenstance-similiarity cannot and should not be presented as a defence of it. The fact that an author has invented something without directly copying known precedents should pass as proof positive as to original creation in view of the fact that plagiarism by definition is the exact opposite, i.e,  deliberately and intentionally and without acknowledgement copying directly from known sources in an attempt to claim ‘original creation’ for yourself. It is for the publisher to determine if the level of precedential similarities are acceptable or not or whether the ignorance of the writer in regard to them can be taken on trust. It follows then, as night doth the day, that if a writer is found guilty of plagiarism so too is their publisher and their agent as neither of these can claim professional integrity and total ignorance of existing precedents at one and the same time. For either to cite such precedents in support of their client’s copyright claim to ‘original creation’ is imbecility  at best and skullduggery at worst.

                                 To mask your theft what you have to do is change the form. You have to change it to the extent that nobody can recognize it’s origins. With regards to literature, you can for example steal the character of Hamlet. You can give him black hair instead of blond, make him fat instead of slender, etc, etc, etc but if you have derived your ‘original’  character from Shakespeare’s Hamlet you have changed the true into the false and have tried to pass off your false attempt as your unique creation. What you have taken from Hamlet is what makes Hamlet “Hamlet”, however cleverly you have cleared your tracks.  His essential character must remain intact else your pilfering was in vain. Indeed, a production of Hamlet in Hong Kong could well portray Hamlet with all the aforementioned traits with oriental eyes added as mandatory. But he would still be Hamlet, speaking his lines and acting out his part. Your facsimile may be original in its falseness, especially if you do not dislcose your source, but sooner or later you will have to get rid of your self-delusions and confront the fact that you are no Shakespeare, that Hamlet was never yours to begin with and that there is more to artistic creation that the take-over of original ideas that do not belong to you exclusively as an individual even if they do belong to humanity at large. That is on a par with claiming E=mc ² as your own discovery when you cannot add up your grocery bill without a calculator. The world belongs to us all but no individual is entitled to take possession of it in his/her own name. What compounds your felony to those who have but a minor grasp of dialectics is this often forgotten element in the balance.  The times one lives in calls forth from the imagination the ideal and inevitable  response to those times in art form. Without Napoleon there is no Eroica. The man who, in the honest pursuit of his craft, answers that calling is the true orginator of the work. The one who copies that man’s work and attempts to pass it off as their own is an imposter and a cheat of the lowest possible calibre. In brief; the copy however attractively presented is not the truth and can never be the truth.