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.

“To have been… or not to have been. That is the query.” ( Prince Mc Hamish of Scotland.)

       Plagiarism – The Ransacking of Another’s Soul.

         How to Tweak your Way to Ignominious Glory.

There are many types of plagiarism. It goes on in many disciplines from music to painting, from mathematics to medicine. It goes on from the simple story called “Finding Nemo” to the high-flying speeches of presidents. From lazy little Johnny sneaking a peek at his fellow student’s answers during exams to shysters avid for letters after their names offering theses by forgotten graduates, signatures substituted, in their demand for a doctorate they could never possibly win on their own merits. Proving it is difficult; and if the plagiarism is eminently successful you will need people of the same misfit sociopathy as yourself to fight in your corner.  Of course, the crime is indefensible no matter who is fighting your corner.

                        “Competitive Plagiarism”  is the most obnoxious form of the disease. This is where the malfeasant is motivated by the conviction based on self-inflated notions of his ‘abilities’; “anything you can do I can do better.” Providing of course you show me what and how. Just give me the text and explain to me how you created it bit by bit and ….I will take it from there. Ciao!

                        Salieri who is alleged to have pilfered the work of Amadeus Mozart falls into this category. The predator, in other words, takes the work of the other as  THE GIVEN  on which to stamp their own name and creates nothing by way of novel invention worth a damn. The goal is not in the service of art, not to improve on something pre-existing for the sake of art, assuming one’s talent is commensurate with one’s arrogance,….but to steal. Else one would acknowledge one’s source. In their defense, self-righteous plagiarists (as they all must be) will cite precedents, genres etc, whatever indeed will make the original creator look like a plagiarist himself. The plagiarist’s philosophy if thieves can be said to have one is that “all creators pilfer the ideas of others. I am no different but I can prove I am better at it.” Salieri might well refer to Mozart’s teacher Haydn or Bach to justify his theft. Fact is, Salieri is incapable of writing anything comparable on his own which is why he is driven to plagiarism in the first place, irrespective of whose shoulders Mozart may have stood on to create his own divine music. Apologists for Salieri and his ilk are all over the net. By the same token you will find people in your junk mail telling you you have won a million bucks if you just contact them to pick it up. Salieri is said to have been Mozart’s ‘friend’. Greed hath no friends.

                        Any schoolboy of twelve or over indeed can tell you how to go about your “borrowing” of ideas. For example, there is nothing new in the story of Hamlet. There are precedents in literature that go all the way back to Oedipus about the prince bent out of shape over his mother and her new lover who has usurped his father’s status and kingship. Freud wrote about its prevalence in myth and named the complex after Oedipus. Unaware that there are only 36 plots possible in the whole of literature according to recent findings Shakespeare would derive his plots from history books and other works by Boccaccio, Brooke, Holinshead etc. Ergo, I can pillage the plot of Hamlet with impunity just as Salieri might have pillaged the work of Mozart. There is nothing new in it after all. All I need is the essential tried-and-tested idea. THE MAIN IDEA. I can do with the rest as I will. Once I have that I can pillage the mighty scenes of  the ghost of  Hamlet’s father appearing to him on the battlements, the Mousetrap Play to unmask Claudius, the death and madness of Ophelia, the final showdown and death of the hero in a sword fight etc, etc.

                        Hamlet indeed is a good example because the plot is complex. The cake is rich and from it you can extract all sorts of ingredients if you are that desperate and barren. You keep the style of writing of course and the world of the play, tweaking this and tweaking that, tweaking here and tweaking there, until your little heart is content. “To be or not to be” becomes, under the laser of your ‘genius’ (After all you are now greater than your impudent rival Mr. Shakespeare) …. “To have been or not to have been.”  You blush at your own powers of creativity, at how you have moved the ghost from the battlements to the dungeons; the Mousetrap is renamed the Flytrap; and you positively weep when you fling Ophelia into a lake instead of a brook as the author had intended. It is all soooo you! You see your own reflection in every tweak. Tired of tweaking you may even get ‘professional tweakers’ marshalled  by your so-called ‘literary’ agent to take over for you while you dream of riches and fame and meeting the queen and learn how to pass yourself off as a saint from your PR people. Won’t daddy be proud?

                         Finally, you give your Hamlet black hair instead of blond, make him good with pistols instead of sword, remove him from stupid old Denmark, install him in a castle in Edinburgh and call your concoction “McHamish Prince of Scotland”.  A masterpiece is born! All kneel. You have won at last. People will call you a ‘great’ writer. But people are gullible as your agent, who is firmly on your side (at least until the shit hits the fan) has no doubt counseled you. As for the author you pillaged, in the words of Ophelia – “O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown”. You know what you have done of course. And you cannot Un-Know it try as you might.

                        Et Caïn dit « Cet oeil me regarde toujours!  (Victor Hugo “La Conscience”.)

                         Next, in the illustrious company of whoever else has helped you commit your crime you have your story peddled to the publishing houses. Of course that is all just for the gullible. The pre-selected grabs his long-awaited product with both hands and sets about interesting the rest. They smell money in it which is all that concerns them. Their market researchers tell them it is time for just such a story. The world is hungry for your inconsolable hero. Mc Hamish has winner written all over him  and they buy up the copyrights. Trees are felled by the myriad and books shipped everywhere by night and day and, of course, film producers fall over themselves for their take of the ‘universal’ cake. The thing is a smash hit and Disney includes Mc Hamish’s castle in its theme park complete with ghost in the dungeons and the thrilling pistol-duel at the end. By then ,of  course, you have rehearsed your lines for the press; about how ‘inspired’ you were by a great idea that just fell into your lap out of the heavens where you now dwell, how you slaved and toiled into the wee hours giving shape to your masterpiece, how you sacrificed health and well-being in the style of the great Romantics (whose shoes you are not worthy to unlace), to bring forth your masterpiece…. and all the rest of it. Pabulum for the paying public for whom you have as much contempt as for the man you ripped off. Your agent protects you from very dangerous things like questions,unsolicited interviews and unexpected visitors.

                         And if your new-found wealth does not succeed in preventing you from being dragged into court by Shakespeare’s protectors, those messengers of Hugo’s eternal Eye devoted to the integrity of the creative soul of Mankind, your legal hounds can argue that your play is “similar to”  but not really the same. After all, Shakespeare’s ghost was younger, had a beard, didn’t speak in Glaswegian slang, appeared on the battlements for crying out loud not in the dungeons, was a swordsman not a gun-toter, his girl was called Ophelia and there is no connection at all betwen “Ophelia” and Agnes Ofeelme, etc, etc, etc, etc. Your fans have been educated into being appalled at the very notion that your genius that they crave in their sleep to emulate is being called into question. They sing hymns with anxious teachers for your vindication. Middle-class newspapers that serve the interests of those who have been creaming off from your theft rally with all the ruthlessness you deployed to commit it gather in their clubs to defend your innocence. Your agent and political gurus rejoice that they had the foresight to cast you as a saint in the way Maggie Thatcher was cast as a firm but sensitive Head Mistress. Everything is panning out perfectly. You are inviolable…… or so you think, now managing director of the magic theatre whose floors you used to scrub. Who can get at you? But, a large eye follows you to bed at night and in the morning as you draw your curtains it is staring at you from the horizon.

                        Of course, most of us know Hamlet - one of the greatest plays ever written. But we are not really talking about Hamlet per se. Nor Shakespeare for that matter. They are just similes for the sake of argument. It would be damn difficult to rip off Shakespeare without acknowledging him even though most lawyers can easily prove he is dead and a fair few that is is still alive and dines regularly with Elvis in Clapham. The Bard for all that is established forever.

                        But, what if your source is another book by an author that only a few people know about, an obscure writer whose story never quite got the fanfare treatment yours was guaranteed to get even before you began to paste it together?  What if it was a story ahead of its time that was allowed to sink into obscurity like the paintings of El Creco that were only rediscovered centuries after his death? For example, what if the story and the world within it was created by a doting father for his son. What then?

      Et, comme il s’asseyait, il vit dans les cieux mornes
L’oeil à la même place au fond de l’horizon.
Alors il tressaillit en proie au noir frisson.
        Cachez-moi !  cria-t-il; et, le doigt sur la bouche,…..

                        What I have explained by analogy is, as far as I am concerned, how it is done by plagiarists everywhere who are driven by greed and ambition. You need neither flair, nor imagination. You need to know only how to read, photocopy and to write. And, we can all write. Can’t we?

                                            FORBES On Potter.

                   Forbes is America’s business think-tank mag.

Below is a quote from an early article (2001) article on the Potter phenomenon.

Seemingly the writer has no difficulty in accepting that a woman who never had a brother has suddenly become an expert in juvenile male psychology nor has even doubted for a second her claims to orginal creation. What he does do however is shed light on how and why a fantasy is manicured, tailored and marketed for mass consumption. Worth reading for all sorts of reasons. Here is the link to the complete article.  Forbes  on Potter.

“The ironic part is that Harry Potter doesn’t need the help. The young wizard himself is the greatest British hero since James Bond. Rowling is a worthy successor to Ian Fleming, who, incidentally was a pretty fair children’s book writer, too, having penned Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The books are so popular that the movie would have been wildly anticipated, no matter how it was released. Harry Potter is such a skilled wizard, he might be allowed to work his own magic. He could hit his home runs even without a juiced ball or a corked bat. “

Flattering stuff don’t you think? from someone wrestling with the ‘given’ but expressing not a single doubt as to its origin. The timely creation of a hero for the age does not seemingly even merit the simple question of how this inevitability could possibly have found expression in an “idea” if you please that popped into a woman’s head during a train journey. Interestingly, it is the whole train idea itself that the Adrian Jacobs litigants are sueing over. Indeed, you could be forgiven for thinking that the shennanigans of Rowling’s script writers reflect the obsessive determination of shysters trying to prove righful ownership to something that never did and never could havc belonged to any of them, covering their tracks, as it were,  even before they have made them, to be certain of winning a case should it ever come to court as theyare most assuredly afraid it some day will.  Deplorable stuff in our view…. we who have taken great pains to set the record straight as the plumb- line we use for our murals … for all to see. Clearly, the architects of this “phenomenon” ( and that would include the alleged ’creator’) were smugly convinced from the start that once the product called Potter was accepted and enjoyed by countless kids queries as to its authenticity would be readily snuffed out by means of tacit support from the guard dogs of the  media (especially the British media bloated as ever with their imperial delusions), - brutally  aggressive legal tactics protecting alleged copyright and on-going relentless self-fortification against any form of scrutiny from any source.

 This shamelessly amoral  game has been going on for quite some time and will only end when every single penny that can be extracted from Potter has made it loyal way to the coffers of the coporations and their subsidiaries both sides of the Atlantic who have been feeding off the commercial brew  for well  over a decade. The truth is Harry Potter was hijacked from a previous creation. End of story. And his true origins lie in the purgatory of  political conflict in Northern Ireland not in a silly daydream. From the battle front of collective tragedies, let us repeat ….. not from an “idea”.

It is atonishing to us that ‘intelligent’ people, writers and journalists would you believe?, men with degrees as long as your stupidity, teachers of literature etc, etc, have bought into this cock-and-bull crap with scarcely a one asking a single serious question as to the authenticity of Rowling’s claims when it is glaringly obvious to anybody who is not a congenital retard that the source must clearly be elsewhere. This blog is to make it clear to you where that ELSEWHERE actually is and indeed why Potter exists at all.

Adrian Jacobs is the deceased writer on whose behalf his family seek justice for alleged plagiarism on the part of Christopher Little and Bloomsbury  – publishers of the Harry Potter word-spinning carousel beloved by the gullible. By all accounts it would indicate that the Harry Potter people were not able to even come up with their own fantasies. Zounds! We have little to say about any of this but to wish Mr. Jacobs ‘ people good luck from us whose position on this and related matters is well enough expressed on the main page of our blog.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the tourist season grinds to a close. Those competent artists among you who have something to express and know how to express it might consider showing at our illustrious gallery. During the summer season this is one of the most cosmopolitan and most visited galleries to be found anywhere in Ireland and elsewhere for that matter. It is funded entirely by ourselve and gets as much financial help in that regard as the upkeep of our murals. Zilch in other words. But then you have to understand the position of our council members. They cannot promote or market our murals without promoting us and to do that they would have to change overnight from game-playing biased ingrates to decent human beings. Hell will freeze over, as they say. We sail on regardless.

our flag

A sound question. Addressed to home-grown pseudo-revolutionaries in particular, especially those who take sledgehammers to crack peanuts. Never mind the multi-conglomerates, the state protected polluters of oceans and rivers, the high-rollers of Monaco or Vegas who think nothing of tossing away a million or two on the flip of a card, the billionaires who lust for ever greater and greater power, the war-mongers and political spin doctors who haunt the corridors of Washington and London planning the ,merciless subjugation of small struggling nations like Nicaragua or Afghanistan.  No, the real enemy are three Derry men from the slums of the Bogside, spawned from the lowest level of the working class, socialists to a man please note, who are trying to scratch a living from their art – the murals they painted for the people of Derry and which attract many thousands of visitors per year. Socialist murals indeed which we intended from the start even if the pseudo’s have neither the sensibilities or the intelligence to recognise that simple fact.

Targeted by the jealous, the petty-minded, the misinformed, the greedy and self-deluded fantasists masquerading as “revolutionaries’ who seemingly can sleep through all of their astonishing contradictions like babes in straw, snug in their self-appointed roles as liberators of mankind and blessed, would you believe ?, with an all-embracing love for the oppressed everywhere except those of course, like us, they are determined to add to the pile.   We three, it seems, The Bogside Artists, provide these idiots with a mighty cause to serve – What mighty cause? Why preventing us, in homage to the class we represent, from earning an honest  living from our labours by denigrating our work and our names.  How proud they must be of themselves and how humbled by their mighty achievement. What achievement?  Well…. you would need to ask them, unless you count working in the employ of  even bigger idiots than even they, an ‘achievement’. We are still here is what this blog is here to state. That is our flag flying in the breeze by the way, just outside our studio. Our flag of independence. The price we have paid? Contact us and we will be happy to tell you. It is not over until The Fat Tyrant learns to sing and the fanatic understands that the system is his real target and not the ordinary folk who are trying to earn a living against the oppression of these –  its most ruthless practitioners.