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.

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.

ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN

“One Word of Truth…”

His Nobel Speech 1970

“It is useless to assert what one’s heart does not believe .”

“A work of art carries its proof in itself. Artificial, strained concepts do not withstand the image-test; all such concepts crumble, they are revealed as puny and colourless, they convince nobody. But words which have drawn on truth and presented it to us in live, concentrated form, grip us and communicate themselves to us compellingly – and nobody, even centuries later, will ever be able to refute them.”