Blair's Iraq dossier plagiarised

national | miscellaneous | news report

Thursday February 06, 2003 22:10

by xvx

what a pathetic poodle, Blair is

Downing St's Iraq dossier plagiarised

http://www.channel4.com/news/home/z/stories/20030206/dossier.html

Published: 6 February 2003
Reporter: Julian Rush

The government's carefully co-ordinated propaganda offensive took an embarrassing hit tonight after Downing Street was accused of plagiarism.

Read sample of the accused plagiarised text

The target is an intelligence dossier released on Monday and heralded by none other than Colin Powell at the UN yesterday.

Channel Four News has learnt that the bulk of the nineteen page document was copied from three different articles - one written by a graduate student.

On Monday, the day before the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell addressed the UN, Downing Street published its latest paper on Iraq.

It gives the impression of being an up to the minute intelligence-based analysis - and Mr Powell was fulsome in his praise.

Published on the Number 10 web site, called "Iraq - Its Infrastructure of Concealment Deception and Intimidation", it outlines the structure of Saddam's intelligence organisations.

But it made familiar reading to Cambridge academic Glen Ranwala. It was copied from an article last September in a small journal: the Middle East Review of International Affairs.

It's author, Ibrahim al-Marashi, a postgraduate student from Monterey in California. Large sections do indeed appear, verbatim.

A section, for example, six paragraphs long, on Saddam's Special Security Organisation, the exact same words are in the Californian student's paper.

In several places Downing Street edits the originals to make more sinister reading.

Number 10 says the Mukhabarat - the main intelligence agency - is "spying on foreign embassies in Iraq".

The original reads: "monitoring foreign embassies in Iraq."

And the provocative role of "supporting terrorist organisations in hostile regimes" has a weaker, political context in the original: "aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes."

Even typographic mistakes in the original articles are repeated.

Of military intelligence, al-Marashi writes in his original paper:

"The head of military intelligence generally did not have to be a relative of Saddam's immediate family, nor a Tikriti. Saddam appointed, Sabir Abd Al-Aziz Al-Duri as head..." Note the comma after appointed.

Downing Street paraphrases the first sentence: "Saddam appointed, Sabir 'Abd al-'Aziz al-Duri as head during the 1991 Gulf War."

This second line is cut and pasted, complete with the same grammatical error.

plagiarism is regarded as intellectual theft.

Sample text

Government dossier: (page 13), published Jan 2003

"Saddam appointed, Sabir 'Abd al-'Aziz al-Duri as head during the 1991 Gulf War. After the Gulf War he was replaced by Wafiq Jasim al-Samarrai.

After Samarrai, Muhammad Nimah al-Tikriti headed Al-Istikhbarat al-Askariyya in early 1992 then in late 1992 Fanar Zibin Hassan al-Tikriti was appointed to this post.

These shifting appointments are part of Saddam's policy of balancing security positions. By constantly shifting the directors of these agencies, no one can establish a base in a security organisation for a substantial period of time. No one becomes powerful enough to challenge the President."

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Comments (9 of 9)

Stop posting cut-n-paste

by Editing elf

Thu Feb 06, 2003 22:14

The irony of you cut-n-pasting an article about cut-n-pasting.

Write a summary, include a link. If you're not willing to do that then don't post. You're NOT using indymedia to it's full advantage. Either you are a pro-war troll trying to force stories down the newswire or you're a selfish moron who's actions are forcing stories off the newswire.

Thanks.

Not my doing, BUT ...

by speaking truth to power

Thu Feb 06, 2003 22:40

I'm the purple bolt guy that Ray so detests.

I also post on other topics mainly relating to Iraq, but the above article is not my particular doing, although insha'Allah I will be perpetrating the same crime by distributing it elsewhere.

You can be sure that the information in the above article will somehow bypass most of the corporate media other than that of origin unless posted all over the web to the point that it cannot be ignored, so if the above article exposes the paucity of The Poodle's "case" for invading Iraq, then why SHOULDN'T it be cut-and-pasted - and everywhere - samizdat style? Isn't it everyone's objective here to do whatever they can to limit or stop the war?

Let's keep clearly focussed on working towards objectives, rather than rule-making.

Reasons why cut-n-paste is a bad idea

Thu Feb 06, 2003 22:55

1.It discourages people from writing their own article.
2. It can lead to propagation of errors in the original text. (e.g. the above one is missing part of the information in the original article).
3. It takes up extra space on Indymedia.ie This is a finite resource
4. It turns Indymedia into an annex of corporate media. If you can link to it, then it's published somewhere else already. If you can ADD to the article by providing contextualisation and extra links then that can be valuable.

B.t.w. I am NOT Ray. (Clue: Ray always posts as "Ray", he's very cunning that way)

Response

by Deep Impact

Thu Feb 06, 2003 23:31

1.It discourages people from writing their own article.

I really don't see that effect taking place. Indeed, at IMC sites where cut-n-paste is more common, what I've seen is more discussion and further postings of articles from authentic noncorporate sources.

2. It can lead to propagation of errors in the original text. (e.g. the above one is missing part of the information in the original article).

That's why the link should be provided, I agree. In everything I send, the link is always included for reference. But I also cut-and-paste the text in case the link gets changed or deleted. For example, the other day I posted an item from Art Daily about how the Security Council had ordered Picasso's Guernica to be covered up. I included the link, but within a few hours, Art Daily had already changed the link. Surely it is a valid function to post the material along with the link in order to document its existence if it disappears.

3. It takes up extra space on Indymedia.ie This is a finite resource

If the article is not permanently retained, I have no problem with that and I doubt that anyone else does, either. Why not keep such items for a week or so and then trash them or edit to just keep the links at that point.

4. It turns Indymedia into an annex of corporate media. If you can link to it, then it's published somewhere else already. If you can ADD to the article by providing contextualisation and extra links then that can be valuable.

I usually do that by extracting the part I consider to be most important and entering it or something like it as the title and subtitle and putting it in the summary (my jibe at Ray earlier today excepted). It is my observation that most corporate news does publish the "facts" but that they bury them under dozens of paragraphs: hiding in plain sight. A Washington Post article last year looked like a boring rehash of some idiot's testimony about the failure of the intelligence community to "prevent" 9/11. Buried about halfway through it was the statement that "We declared war on al-Qaeda six years ago". WHOA! That should have rung seven bells at every news network in the world. Instead it was euthanized.

Oh, I knew that already. I disagree with you, but at least you make supportive remarks to back your point of view, which is something of which Ray is congenitally incapable. Ray is the nowhere man of Beatle's fame and the living evidence that half of all people have only double-digit IQs.

'Nowhere man'?

by Ray

Fri Feb 07, 2003 10:03

My God, how will I ever live with the pain?

Indymedia is for _original news_. Copying and pasting an extract does not make your news original. Indymedia editors have better things to do than run around after you, editing articles down to just a link.

Write your own summaries. CREATE some news for a change. Don't just copy stuff other people have written. As it stands you're living proof that any idiot can master the cut and paste functions.

Wah Wah Wah...

by Gaillimhed

Fri Feb 07, 2003 11:14

The run of comments above is exactly the kind of pedantic whinging and childish name-calling that makes you all look rather silly, and discourages people from taking part in your 'Newswire'.

endless debate

by redJaDe

Fri Feb 07, 2003 12:08

'Indymedia is for _original news_.'

I disagree.

Indymedia newswire is for exchanging news and views (original or not) uncensored and unedited and aimed at the broader Left community.

If it was just for 'original content' people would not be allowed post freely in the first place.

Was this story relevant? Yes.

If you want your opinions to matter on this subject, join a mailing list and partipate in the Indymedia organisation.

http://indymedia.ie/about/mailinglists.html

cut-and-paste and plagiarism

by Mark Johnson

Fri Feb 07, 2003 14:14

The article on this web site attributes the quotes it makes, and it includes quotes for a purpose. That's OK. It's not plagiarism.

Blair's dossier does not attribute the text it copies and instead misrepresents it as coming from an intelligence organization. That's plagiarism.

It's also an affront to decency and honesty to misrepresent some old academic paper as intelligence results when the lives of tens of thousands of civilians are at stake in any decision.

Simple enough?

but editor!

by the real ELF

Thu Apr 29, 2004 19:39

cut and paste has long been seen as means of the most creative counter terrorist activity.
Joyce used it. Borroughs used it.
And we used it.
you wanted an end to War didn't you?
well how did you expect that to happen?
dec 13.
2- 33
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=21492&condense_comments=false#comment22803

great. one week later Saddam (the safely dead but still imitated) was confirmed by the CIA/FBI/One World Big Government Federal NAZI technology and money based Empire to be in possesion of a poem.

And he was more than capable of using that poem to deliver pandora's box which as we know was developed by the Boer and used by the Boer against "us".

Bertie, why can't you get it clear:-

You know sweet F.A. about geopolitics,
you don't know who "they" are and who "us" are, and it won't even take an operation brogue to end your party's hegemony and systematic corruption, manipulation and theft of our nations resources, it will just take the "Traitor and Idiotic one at that" label to stick.
& it will stick, I assure you.

And you Bertie fell for it.
All of it. What a wanker you are.

Cut and Paste is great.
Use it more often. I say.

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Blair's Iraq dossier plagiarised

Comments (9 of 9)