injusticebusters 2002 > > Peter McWilliams: Martyred by the War on Drugs, high spirited gentle fighter to the end

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2005 : Year of the David Milgaard Inquiry: Bringing 36 years of Saskatchewan police and prosecutorial misconduct to the attention of the public

In respectful and smiling memory of a shining presence . . .

Peter McWilliams

Died June 14, 2000

All of Peter Mcwilliams' books online for free

Shortly after I first got on the internet, I got on a mailing list for Peter McWilliams' observations and links to interesting material. Sometimes there would be more than one mailing in a day, sometimes a few days would elapse between mailings. I welcomed them when they arrived because there was always something in Peter's emails to bring a smile to my face. I didn't worry when they didn't because I knew Peter was sick and that he had bouts with his illness which kept him off line. I felt like I had got to know him. I could picture him in his wheelchair, in his place, with friends dropping by, flowers in the window . . .

So when I learned that he had died, by choking on his own vomit, because he was not allowed to toke up and keep the nausea down, I was deeply angered -- and sad. It felt like I had lost a friend. And I had. As had millions of other people Peter had touched with his writing.

Peter understood the world as a creative common. Everything he had, he shared with others. He put his beliefs into action. And he was severely punished, as have been many trailblazers before him. He has not been forgotten. See also Todd McCormick, who has continued the struggle to legalize marijuana as medicine.

MY PHILOSOPHY OF CREATED STUFF
(AKA "ART", AKA "INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY")

Here you will find the complete text of all my books currently in print, plus works "in progress." You are welcome to read, search, download, copy, print, or give away any of it. Just don't try to sell large chunks of it, or I'll call the FBI. (See the first 30 seconds of any rental videotape.)

You're certainly free to incorporate portions of these books in what you create, and sell that. That's the nature of the creative process. There's no need to ask me to "grant permission". Who the hell am I to "grant permission"?

Created stuff is meant to be shared. That's why the creative person created it. Why else do creative people exist? "I burn to be seen!" as someone wrote. Well, maybe someone wrote that. I just made it up, but it sounds as though someone else might have written it earlier. Maybe I read it somewhere, or saw it on an Arts & Entertainment documentary on Paris in the Twenties. Who cares? It got said, and it fit what I wanted to say, so I said it.

Creativity stimulates the creators and entertains everybody else. The vast majority of people need to be entertained. God bless them every one. Creative people, however, need to be stimulated, inspired, nudged, cross-pollinated, and occasionally kicked in the ass. Art both entertains and inspires at the same time. (I use "Art" here in the broadest sense of the word - everything from Jeopardy! to Goethe to Graffiti.)

Art, therefore, needs to be readily available - available to the general public for entertainment, and available to artists for pilfering. Artists should be able to incorporate - consciously or unconsciously, credited or not - the work of other artists.

Andy Warhol makes an epic film: Empire - twenty-four nonstop hours of one view of the Empire State Building, and where would David O. Selznick's King Kong be without the climatic scene atop the Empire State Building? Yet neither Warhol nor Selznick give credit to the architectural firm that created the building: Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon. But was it Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon themselves, or some nameless geniuses within the organization?

As one explores more closely the sources, inspirations, and antecedents of any creative work, the more it becomes difficult to give full credit to any one person, just as a single letter on a computer screen becomes just dots when examined more and more closely. To credit everyone who contributed anything to a work of art would excessively burden even the sturdiest creation.

Obviously, there must be some protections - creative people have to live and are entitled to a fair return for their labor. What concerns me is that art has now become "intellectual property". It is bought, sold, and litigated over by an anonymous group of bean counters who collectively aren't creative enough to make a decent pot of baked beans.

So, I throw my intellectual properties onto the net to stimulate or appall, comfort or enrage, entertain or exasperate.
Happy hunting.

Peter McWilliams

Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell

Truth suppress'd, whether by courts or crooks, will find an avenue to be told. Sheila Steele, injusticebusters.com

If you hold the mouth of Truth, It will burst out its rib-cage. Somali proverb

Publisher : Sheila Steele

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Another target of Dueck's malice: : Wilf Hathway

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This is a pretty good scrapbook for the 1998-2002 period.