What is Rowling worth? Like most things to do with dough there is what you are told and then there’s the truth. Rumour has it that she earns 100 million quid every eight months. Whatever the actual figure you can take it that a lorryload of fivers is delivered to her door every month. That being the case why didn’t she settle with the family of the late Adrian Jacobs, whose work she stole, when she had the chance, before the whole shamozzle got out of hand? It is said Neil Gaiman who supplied the mere physical attributes of the hero and nothing else was paid a figure of 10 million quid. He denies it of course. Hard to prove one way or another but Rowling and her boys seem to be able to prove anything. How wonderful it must be to be able to lay claim to absolute truth on anything and have nearly everybody believe you too. The pope doesn’t get that! Idiots believe them too which is rather depressing we have to say. Jacobs’ case is “unsubstantiated, unfounded and untrue,” they tell you. We are in the land of heroic couplets with this sort of drivel. Rowling’s lawyers, Blair/Schillings, wrote the script. Bloomsbury came out with exact same cant when they were asked for a comment in the WTW London High Court case. Clever boys?

Adrian Jacobs’ family may even get a hearing if the Home Office doesn’t get in on the act and remind the judge that he is in bat for England as well as the law… and her image abroad… and all that. Students of the Widgery trial, that is now proven to be a sham after the recent apology by England for Bloody Sunday, will know what we mean.  What would the neighbours think if the canonized Rowling had feet of clay after all?

If we take leave to examine these words one by one we can see they amount to so much hot air, and we, The Bogside Artists, have heard them before and from the same source.

“UNSUBSTANTIATED”:  Means “unsupported”, “unverified”, “not factually proven.” (Encarta)
The Willy the Wizard people claim otherwise and have set up the actual writ they served on Scholastic Inc, New York for all to read. You can access it here;

http://thresq.hollywoodreporter.com/2010/07/harry-potter-willy-wizard.html

Seems to be a lot of substantiation there if you ask us!

“UNFOUNDED”:  Means  “Not supported by evidence”, “not established” (Encarta). More of the same don’t you think? Were it established it would be all over wouldn’t it? It seems clear that the Willy the Wizard people are seeking to establish their claims and will hopefully get their chance to do so in a court of law. This is begging the question isn’t it?  Begging the question means assuming  as already proven what you have set out to prove. People do that… lawyers mostly.

“UNTRUE”: A tricky one this. What is truth asked pilot of its Personification? He got no reply. In law you have to prove something to be true on the basis of evidence. Fair enough, even if many things are true for which there is no evidence and can be no evidence. This is also begging the question since if the claims were proven to be true there would be no ‘claims’ as such since the truth would already have been substantiated, proven and true.

What we are doing here is called thinking for oneself incidentally, a preoccupation much frowned upon by Harry Potter fans and fast becoming as obsolete as harpsichord recitals. Our conclusion? Rowling’s lawyers need a new script, one not designed to convince the gullible they have mastery of words and their usages when it is patently clear they do not. All three words amount to the same thing…  simply “unproven”. Proving is exactly what the WTW are trying to do and what Rowling’s wordsmiths are trying to prevent.

We are also totally convinced that the claims of made by the Willy the Wizard team are verifiably true. That means that Rowling and Little are lying in their teeth and this in turn raises the question… why didn’t they settle much earlier on when they had the chance? Then they would have had only us to deal with. And who is going to listen to us whistling in the dark when the very mountains tremble at the sound of Schillings and Blair? The answer to that is quite simple too. They are arrogant and stupid little people who have a blind faith in their ability to con whoever they want, whenever they want, however they want, as they have been doing for years.

We take this opportunity to make it public that our hat is in the arena with Willy the Wizard and its much sinned-against author Adrian Jacobs because we KNOW beyond any shadow of a doubt these men are telling the truth. We say this because we KNOW the true source of the story. As artists standing for freedom of expression we have no option but to tell the truth as it is known to us.  Not to do so is to lie by omission.

The bravest writer, John Pilger.

John Pilger today accepted the Sydney Peace Prize 2009 at Sydney Opera House. He had some things today that has distinct relevance to this blog.

Early in his oration Pilger attacked Australian policy with regards to the “boat people”, those unfortunates who flee to the shores of the great continent only to end up in what Pilger calls concentration camps like the one at Woomera. He asked how they would all feel if the boats were filled with white people. He remarked on the hypocrisy of Rudd who declared undying sympathy for the refugees early in his office and only recently declared that ” a hard line” must be taken against them. Pilger went on to castigate the rule of silence among journalists everywhere who “seem to know what not to say” without being told. He cited his own experience as a film maker, broadcaster and journalist in support of the assertion,  which indeed requires no support.  He pointed to mind control on the part of the media in service to political ideology. (The silence surrounding Travels with Li Po is owed in large measure to just that.)

“One of my favourite plays is Harold Pinter’s  “Party Time”.  He tells of the plot … a bunch of people are at a party in an apartment like any other middle-class soiree in Sydney or elsehwere. “But something is happening outside in the street, something terrible and oppressive for which  the people at the party share responsibility.” There is a moment’s uneasiness as the chatter stops for a second and then the laughter resumes.”

Pilger uses this as a methaphor for society at large. “How many of us live in that apartment?” 

“I believe that if we begin to apply  justice and courage to human affairs we begin to make sense of our world.” 

Silence he went on to say, recalling his experience of South African Apartheid, is the effect of tyranny. The citizens of Johannesburg lived a few kilometres from a shanty town where people wasted in poverty and their children died of disease but  these repectable citizens “looked from the side and did nothing.”

Australians, he went on, have become adepts at divide -and-rule where blacks who blame their own people for their misfortunes are welcomed and applauded.  Western Australia jails indigenous people at eight times the rate of the South African Apartheid figure.  Australia is internationally shamed for its treatment of  blacks.

“We discriminate on the basis of race. That’s it in a nutshell.”

Rights to land that were granted to the indigenous population of the Northern Territory in 1970 were clawed back by John Howerd by means of bribery and bullying. The Rudd government is doing the same. Leases are bought in with threats of basic amenities and services being witheld.

“You see, there are deals to be made… Foreign companies want a piece of the action”. ( For uranium and other minerals).

“Silences can be broken if we will it.”

“Tom Paine warned long ago that if we were denied critical knowledge we should storm, what he called, The Bastille of words. We need an Autralian Glasnost, … which broadly means, awakening, transparency, diversity, justice, disobedience…”

“In every newsroom, in every media college, teachers of journalism and journalists themselves need to be challenged about the part they play in the bloodshed, inequity and silence that is so often presented as normal.”

“What terrifies the agents of power is an awakening of people, of public consciousness. This is already happening in countries in Latin America where people have discovered a confidence in themselves they didn’t know existed. We should join them before our own freedom of speech is quietly withdrawn and real dissent is outlawed as the powers of the police are expanded. The struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

Pilger then called for a treaty guaranteeing universal land rights and a proper sharing of the resources of  Australia. The path to self-respect he warned for Australians as for any other nation lies in demanding  justice.

We agree with every word of the above with the proviso that justice is not to be “attained” as such but is only possible with the removal of injustice. You do not create ‘justice’. You make it possible. We take leave to point out that Travels with Li Po was inherenty an indictment of society that was purposefully transformed by the status quo into a fantasy …. to make money. The war is waged in the sphere of mind as it is in the hills of Iraq. AThat is what St. Paul meant by “principalities and powers” and that too, albeit in a different way, is what John Pilger is saying and why we quote him at length.

John Hume and Paddy Bogside

The new exhibition at our gallery in the Bogside area of Derry has been a resounding success. Over three hundred people attended the opening of this show commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the Battle of The Bogside that is also the subject of our most famous mural. The address was given by John Hume who, despite failing health, was “happy and proud” to make the opening address. Also in attendance were Paddy Bogside and Ivan Cooper, two of the major figures from the sixties and  prominent figures from the beginnings of the march for democracy to the present day. This march was inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King and a full account of that and what it meant to Bogsiders in general and indeed to the entire Free Democracy Movement can be found in our book The People’s Gallery. You can still get this book via our website, probably the only book you will find anywhere that tells you the exact truth about our murals and where they came from.  Many other councillors and VIPs were also in attendance.  Our thanks to them all.

This new exhibition has now been seen by many thousands of people from all over the world making of our recently opened gallery probably the most constantly visited of any city gallery in Ireland. If you are in Derry do not forget to call in. You will learn much about the history of the Troubles and the struggle for rights and freedom of speech and about the process of healing through art. You will hear and see  much to instruct …. and indeed to astonish you. Our warmest thanks to all who attended and especially to our good friend John Hume one of the few truly significant political figures to understand the unique character of our murals and their historical importance.