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 DECLARATION OF PLAGIARISM AGAINST ROWLING

This particular text is primarily intended for those involved in the media. Read it if you have time to spare and interest enough. Please do not write to us complaining about how long and tedious it is and all the rest of it. Nobody has a gun to your head to make you read it. Good luck and thanks for reading thus far.

Surprisingly, only a few of the comments we received so far to our last post have been openly racist. Most were reactions from idolaters who cannot bear the notion that their idol may have feet of clay. The most common knee-jerk reaction was inevitable;  in so many words – “Aw come off it! Why would you take so long to come out with this rubbish!” In other words, “do you really think we are that dumb?” Well, we don’t actually. At least not quite as dumb as Rowling and her buddies seemingly believe you are. For those of you therefore in either of these quandaries let us explain.

William is not a man to seek the limelight. Of the three of us he is least likely to put himself at the front of anything. As he says: “Why on earth would I want to put myself in the dock to have my character impugned by people of very dubious character and my ’sanity’ questioned by people who are likely a whole lot crazier than I?”

What took him so long is simple for those of you who know anything about us. In 1994 we embarked on a project that was well under way by the time J.K. Rowling published her first book in the Harry Potter series. This project – a series of large-scale murals that we call The People’s Gallery - was not finished until July 2008. It was a mighty vision, a vital service to our community in the Bogside, a tribute and and a visual record of what we all  had lived through for over thirty years. To us nothing was more important that finishing it. I will repeat; NOTHING WAS MORE IMPORTANT TO US, not even MONEY. William is one of us, in case you didn’t know. One of the trio known as The Bogside Artists. We enjoy high esteem in the world and the global art community…. because we have earned it. Now, if you are still with us, let us cut to the chase:

The gallery expresses the experiences of a predominantly Irish Nationalist community. Their feelings towards England have never been friendly for reasons that are too easy to understand and which we need not elaborate upon here. At the core of that feeling was the firm collective conviction that justice was not to be found in England. The Birmingham Six, the Hunger Strikes and the bogus Widgery Tribunal that fully exonerated soldiers guilty of the Bloody Sunday massacre in the Bogside, to name just a few, meant simply that with regards to justice from England – forget it! And woe betide the man or woman from the Bogside who went there to find it! The Bloody Sunday Committee did just that because they had no choice and have spent years and years waiting for a result and are still waiting.

We, on the other had a choice. Given then this distrust against England’s self-serving notions of ‘justice’ on what grounds exactly was William to expect to win a case of plagiarism against J.K. Rowling in an English court assuming he would live long enough to get a verdict? And had he lost, which we took to be a virtual certainty, irrespective of what evidence he had, what would have become of our mission….our gallery? Our own reputations as credible artists and the high regard our murals are held in worldwide would have been wiped out overnight if only because we were dumb enough to seek justice in an English court against their literary champion, the flag-bearing J.K. Rowling. We chose to leave well enough alone… until we had finished our gallery.

Once our gallery was completed and inaugurated by Bishop Edward Daly and Nobel Laureate John Hume we decided immediately to publish TRAVELS WITH LI PO, at our own expense, if only to let the world know where the story came from. It is a story about an orphaned boy who doesn’t know he is a wizard heading off to a school for sorcerers in a parallel world where he is to be tutored by an old achemist in seeking the prize of immortality called The Philosopher’s Stone. Why at our own expense? Because no other publisher would have taken it on after Rowling’s version hit the shelves without being hauled into court by her for stealing  ‘her’ work. The so-called similarities are too obvious for words. Moreover, Rowling has established swift and merciless retribution as the ‘norm’ with regards to anybody infringing ‘her’ copyright. Attack, being the best form of defence and all that.

William knew well enough that once he had mapped out his plans for a series of seven books describing the adventures of his boy-hero Owen Muldoon he had created something of profound and global significance that would be a huge commercial success for anyone who took it on. He was understandably very wary of having his ideas stolen. Therefore, he sent the manuscript first to AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL where, alas, J.K. Rowling was working at the time.  She co-incidentally, an unknown writer, was working feverishly, we are to believe, on a story about an orphaned boy who doesn’t know he is a wizard heading off to a school for sorcerers in a parallel world where he is to be tutored by an old achemist in seeking the prize of immortality called The Philosopher’s Stone.

Where in fact this story really came from and the reasons for writing it in the first place are fully clarfied at ; http://www.travelswithlipo.com. 

There is a time and place for everything. The place was the conflicted grief-filled streets of the Bogside, Derry, N.Ireland. Streets, let it be said, full of men, women and children whose sense of abandonment was palapable. The place it wasn’t….. a train to London. What it was … a character and story born of a father’s experience of rearing kids in a war-torn situation, his time spent teaching and working with children, and his life as a down-at-heel political artist. What it wasn’t …..  an “idea”…. on  train to London. 

After telling him that Amnesty would not be publishing his book, a third party, who might be interested in publishing it, was suggested to him by Rowling. We must assume this was a saintly act on Rowling’s part as she was selflessly helping another to the utter detriment of her own effort and its chances of publication. The publisher wrote to say she would indeed publish his work and her husband elicited from William, an aspiring author, confidential information about the character he had created, the philosophy behind his story and two new chapters of the second volume, one entitled “The Trial” where the hero gets tried and is sent to jail for kssing the red-haired girl who is too smart for her own good and the other called “The Town of the Academics” where is situated the College for Sorcerers. The town is entirely given over to ancient books, tomes, papyri and magical alchemical texts. It’s purpose is to serve the college and nothing else. He also sent him a complete breakdown of the main character “Owen Muldoon” that you can find on the Similarities Complete link on the Li Po website. “… to my eternal regret”, says William. “I was at the end of  my tether. I believed they were publishing my book. I took a chance.” This publisher directed William to the internet where he was to find a contract form and send it off to him. Soon afterwards he received a letter from the man’s wife saying she had a “terminal illness” that he assumed to be cancer and would not be proceeding with the publication but had sent his book on to Christopher Little who “would know what to do with it.” He also received a very formal and cryptic letter from her husband telling him he was not to try to publish his work anywhere else. This woman is alive and well. She knows who she is.

Prior to our publication of Travels with Li Po in the winter of 2008 William, who knew what had happened to his book, took leave to send a letter to this ‘third party’ who, he is convinced, is very much involved in the pillaging of his work. She received his letter and immediately ran off with it  to Christopher Little whose legal hound Neil Blair replied with a swift “shut-up or else” letter to William at his home in Australia. That letter meant solely for her, let it be noted, and which has since been cited as potential grounds for defamation is reproduced below exactly as it was, word for word. 

          Frightening…. threatening ? Or just what it is, a simple and candid statement of intent with adequate furnishing for the reasons why?  Depends who you are. You decide.

 Oct 1st/2008

Dear  ……,
               I feel impelled to write to you . I sent you  the manuscript of a book I wrote for children many years ago about a boy who doesn’t know as yet that he is a sorcerer and is being trained into this realization by a bird, a magical bird, a Puffin  called Li Po. I shied away from calling my book after it’s hero Owen Muldoon and simply called it TRAVELS WITH LI PO. You wrote to tell me you would publish it. You wrote later to tell me you had cancer and would not be able to. You did send my book and the two extra chapters of Book Two to a “colleague” in London because you knew as I knew that it would be a smash hit whoever published it.

             What you may not have known at the time was that Joanna Rowling had already read my book. You have only to ask her to verify this.  I sent it to Amnesty International in 1990/91. Rowling wrote to me asking me all sorts of questions about the hero and the plot etc. Foolishly, I told her all she needed to know  just  as  I foolishly  told you and your husband. I always had fears that my book would be ripped off which is how and why it ended up on your desk to begin with, in Scotland.  English-Irish relationships were at an all-time low during those years. I trusted you after you told me you would publish it.  I had no reason not to.

              “Travels With Li Po”, that, I am certain, became transmogrified into ‘Harry Potter’, was born out of the abysmal sufferings of my community in Derry in the North of Ireland during The Troubles.  Now  I know , better than most, that it is a big  wicked world etc, etc, and no mercy is shown to anyone who naively trusts strangers and “to the victor belongs the spoils “and all the rest  of  that vile nonsense. My book was ripped off by people who think like that. Harry Potter is a crime against The Holy Spirit, to put it bluntly. Compared to my original, it is exploitative rubbish.

              I am writing to tell you that my book will be published soon by myself and the whole saga of this will be in the preface.  Now, I am telling it like it is; unless you, your husband or Rowling, have a good reason why I should not.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

    Regards, William Kelly.

Okay folks,

                  Rowling’s camp, guided by spin-doctors reminiscent of Hitler’s propaganda ministers are very likely reading this. Why? Because they got a game going called “defamation of character”. Like moles they dig for evidence that will hold up in court. What character? Well…. you got us there. We believe there are primed and willing volunteers ready to take Rowling’s place on the defamation rap if only to divert any serious scrutiny being levelled at her and her other accomplices. They know who they are and the part they have played in what is probably the most obscene case of literary plagiarism in modern times. Take it as a given therefore that Rowling’s legal hounds forage diligently for whatever they can latch onto to convince a gullible and conditioned public of their client’s inviolable public image and its innate moral immaculacy. Anything will do incidentally, if the bullying of the Derry News who first mentioned the connection is anything to go by. As for the dreaded “defamation of character’ case hanging supposedly above our heads like the sword of Damocles – what has been keeping them? Didn’t we get a letter from Rowling’s agent’s lawyer from as far back as  October 2oo8 warning us to ’shut up…  or else’ - or, words to that affect?  Did we promptly gag ourselves therefore at this individual’s insistence? Of course not! Could it be that they are trying to avoid a scandal? What kept us so long you might well ask? It’s all in our website; http://www.travelswithlipo.com. Politics had something to do with it and Anglo-Irish politics indeed is very likely at the heart of the arrogant and self-righteous plagiarism of “Li Po” in the first place.

A man steals your car. He is caught and goes to court. He is found innocent. So much for the daily grind in august courts of so-called ‘justice’ everywhere. The felon is cut loose on a technicality or some such idiocy. Even though he may drive off in your car he now believes he is innocent and actually didn’t steal anybody’s car. That is the problem right there. There are people in this world who think like that. Truth means nothing to them because they know they are guilty but winning in court for that very reason becomes the only thing that really matters. If they are proven ‘innocent’ in a court of law then they truly are innocent in reality. So long, in other words, as a lot of people believe you have red hair then in reality you really do have red hair even if you have no hair at all. So, tired at last of arguing our case in the most reasonable fashion possible, let us finally state it as it really is.

J.K. Rowling, with the help of others, plagiarized the

character, themes, writing style and contents of “Travels with Li Po”. 

The vision was never hers. The character was never hers. The essential story was never hers. The style was never hers nor the themes or sub-themes with their philosophical reach, still less the deliberate aim to write a book that explores the spiritual common ground between adults and children. The insights into the psyche of a young boy that gave rise to the character were also never hers who based her work she tells us on an “idea” and who, most significantly, did not  have a brother to grow up with nor a son to refer to. Bloomsbury her publishers in fact saw fit to call her “J.K. Rowling” to give the impression that the books were written by a man. No deception intended of course. All above board! Words written by William to her in his correspondence and, not only to her let it be stated, but to others involved in the Potter ‘phenomenon” ended up being delivered by her verbatim in press conferences as pertaining to ‘her own’ work . Nothing of any worthwhile significance put in the balance against these overwhelmingly vital factors blatantly plundered from the pages of “Li Po” is worth talking about in our view. Or, put bluntly, she is welcome to them. What in fact is ‘hers’ will be for future academics to figure out, if they can.

She and her buddies have been avoiding scrutiny for years as we have tirelessly pointed out. What in fact motivated them to commit the crime, apart from greed, is for them to know and you to guess at. What on earth could justify it? But that is what is meant by the phrase “avoidance of scrutiny”, the very antithesis  of “transparency”. It is time to call their bluff. The broom folks stops right here;  http://www.travelswithlipo/com.

                                            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.

It is refreshing to see that not everybody is a fan of Harry Potter.

From http://lost-and-profound.blogspot.com/ ( Label “rage”)

“Hello, I used to read the books and watch the movies. What has caused this transformation? Well, for one, the very thought that such a brain-numbingly stupid fucking story is what every man, child and man-child in the world dreams about is somewhat depressing, because I had better expectations from Mankind. Come on people, a fuckin’ boy wizard and his fucking quidditch? Whatever happened to Pamela Anderson and wet dreams?
The same country which brought Newton, Bertrand Russell, Shakespeare, Led Zep, Pink Floyd and Churchill to the world, which going by this list, I thought, had some damn good taste… How can England give Harry Potter to the world and how can it be such a phenomenon? I would have understood if Harry Potter became as popular as the Hardy Boys or TinTin or any of those school-kid books by Enid Blyton(and Madonna nowadays I hear). But come on, highest selling book, highest grossing movie ever?? Whatthefuck??

I hate Harry Potter. That annoying prick with his little wang/wand and his meaningless snake tongue and his pseudo latin/greek gibberish “ooh I know how to do magic.. expecto petronas”.. go fuck yourself!!!!
And the old DUMB bearded grandpa with the smug beatific smirk on his face (was I glad he was killed!) and don’t even get me started with the fat-ass rag-picker whose wit and command over english are worse than that of Scooby Doo(woo’y woo’y woo)…

I hate Harry Potter. I hope the future generations forget about it very soon, and I hope they forgive us for it. (I still haven’t forgiven my ancestors for religion).