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.

One of the greatest exponents of the uses and abuses of the media and the gullibility it thrives on was the late, great Malcolm Muggeridge. Here, in an essay on the “death-wish of liberalism’ he puts in a nutshell the mindset of the liberal “success-at-any-cost-to-others’ that is the basis of the Harry Potter plagiarisms.

Nobody dares question the mythic Rowling or her assertions any more than they once questioned the tyrannical oligarchy of the USSR. Plus ça change plus c’est la même chose. But it is a salutary exercise to reflect on Rowling’s ‘idea-on-a-train’ nonsense not to mention her immaculate public image and indeed those of her elusive mentors and accomplices in light of the following:

I recall in their yellow jackets a famous collection in England called the Left Book Club. You would be amazed at the gullibility that’s expressed. We foreign journalists in Moscow used to amuse ourselves, as a matter of fact, by competing with one another as to who could wish upon one of these intelligentsia visitors to the USSR the most outrageous fantasy. We would tell them, for instance, that the shortage of milk in Moscow was entirely due to the fact that all milk was given nursing mothers – things like that. If they put it in the articles they subsequently wrote, then you’d score a point. One story I floated myself, for which I received considerable acclaim, was that the huge queues outside food shops came about because the Soviet workers were so ardent in building Socialism that they just wouldn’t rest, and the only way the government could get them to rest for even two or three hours was organizing a queue for them to stand in. I laugh at it all now, but at the time you can imagine what a shock it was to someone like myself, who had been brought up to regard liberal intellectuals as the samurai, the absolute elite, of the human race, to find that they could be taken in by deceptions which a half-witted boy would see through in an instant. I never got over that; it always remained in my mind as something that could never be erased. I could never henceforth regard the intelligentsia as other than credulous fools who nonetheless became the media’s prophetic voices, their heirs and successors remaining so still. That’s when I began to think seriously about the great liberal death wish.

van Meegeren forgery

genuine Hals

In Defense of Copyright in a Thieving World.

Thanks to; http://www.mystudios.com/gallery/han/methods.html

Han van Meegeren (1889 – 1947 ), born Henricus Antonius van Meegeren, was a Dutch painter and portraitist and a failed artist of the realist school.

“With his artistic career fading van Meegeren turned to forgery along with his friend Theo van Wijngaarden. Together they teamed up to create a number of forgeries. Han was a gifted copyist and Theo stumbled upon a way to mix gum in the paint to soften it when the alcohol test was used to test a painting.

They cooked up a painting by  (Frans) Hals, “Laughing Cavalier”. Van Meegeren then picked out de Groot to authenticate the painting because he had painted the forgery in a way that would appeal to him. They had a third party to present the painting and de Groot pronounced it to be a fine Hals. They then knocked off a few more forgeries and the money was rolling in.

‘The Laughing Cavalier’ was just about to be sold at auction for the second time when Dr. Bredius saw it and condemned the painting. He pointed out all the stylistic errors. But de Groot stuck by his opinions. A committee of scholars was gathered to study the painting and they all agreed it was a fake. Poor de Groot quietly bought back the painting and the reasons never became public knowledge. Van Meegeren split ways with his cohort and vowed to never be caught again.

In 1932 disgusted by his treatment by the Dutch art critics, whom he believed to be incapable of appreciating his genius, he left Holland. He wanted to prove that the critics were prejudiced and ignorant. His plan, to paint a single picture that the world would accept as a Vermeer.

A well respected lawyer (G.A. Boon) was hired to present the painting  (‘Supper at Emmaus by Vermeer’) to Dr. Bredius. He was to tell Bredius that he was representing a well known family from Italy who needed the money. As soon as Bredius saw the painting he proclaimed it to be the greatest masterpiece of Vermeer. However….  it was quickly recognized as a fake by a number of French experts. Word never got out because everyone thought it was too ridiculous to mention.”  (emphasis ours ). 

What that last sentence  really means of course is that a lot of people, self-styled art  ’experts’, cultural critics, ‘know-alls’, journalists etc would have got to look real dumb. This is to be avoided at all costs especially in England who prides herself on having educated the rest of the world. We would all be muck savages had it not been for England and India would neve have discovered trains.

Next in line Mr Frans Hals.

Hals perfected his style via much labour and heartache and suffered the ridicule of the ‘experts’ of his day. After a stint in the local insane asylum he died an old man, poor, broken, and surviving on a state pension. His genius was recognized belatedly and inspired many artists subsequently from  Manet to Sargent who acknowledged their debt to the great man because…. they had professional integrity.

Frans Hals (c. 1580 – 26 August 1666) was a Dutch Golden Age painter especially famous for portraiture. He is notable for his loose painterly brushwork, and helped introduce this lively style of painting into Dutch art. Hals was also instrumental in the evolution of 17th century group portraiture. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_Hals#Painting_technique

Van Meegeren found Hals a snitch to copy as his style was simple, spontaneous and relied on only a few colours. You can hardly tell the difference can you? Many people couldn’t and, as for those who could…..well, as above, “word never got out because everyone thought it was too ridiculous to mention”.  His motive for success at any cost could hardly have been clearer had he been a failed writer in search of a good book to rip off.  And so,  we come to Christopher Little and J.K. Rowling.

If Van Meegeren were alive today and assuming he was not in prison he would be illustrating the covers for the Harry Potter series… in someone else’s style, of course. Like the author herself he would be encouraged to use his own name or, at any rate, a more digestible version of it, and like her, have apologists to argue “precedents”, in defense of his crime. But the truth is always the truth however we dress it up… or wherever we bury it. How long will it be before some intrepid journalist plucks up courage to bring it to light despite the shame that will befall his colleagues and the threats facing his editor from Rowling’s legal ruffians? How long before a disgruntled Rowling ‘loyalist’, paid or unpaid, breaks ranks and confesses all? It is surely only a matter of time as van Meegeren himself realised long before he was nabbed. The sooner the better, say we who have been drawing attention to this issue for years and have well documented our reasons for doing so at http://www.travelswithlipo.com