Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Colin Powell copione!

Altro che intelligence CIA... uno dei pezzi grossi dell'evidenza
di Colin Powell all'ONU erano... citazioni non attribuite di una
tesi di dottorato in Scienze Politiche (con tanto di errori di
ortografia)!!!!
-----------
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,890898,00.html
UK war dossier a sham, say experts 
British 'intelligence' lifted from academic articles 
Downing Street was last night plunged into acute international
embarrassment after it emerged that large parts of the British
government's latest dossier on Iraq - allegedly based on "intelligence
material" - were taken from published academic articles, some of them
several years old.
Amid charges of "scandalous" plagiarism on the night when Tony Blair
attempted to rally support for the US-led campaign against Saddam
Hussein, Whitehall's dismay was compounded by the knowledge that the
disputed document was singled out for praise by the US secretary of
state, Colin Powell, in his speech to the UN security council on
Wednesday.
Citing the British dossier, entitled Iraq - its infrastructure of
concealment, deception and intimidation in front of a worldwide
television audience Mr Powell said: "I would call my colleagues'
attention to the fine paper that the United Kingdom distributed...
which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities."
But on Channel 4 News last night it was revealed that four of the
report's 19 pages had been copied - with only minor editing and a few
insertions - from the internet version of an article by Ibrahim
al-Marashi which appeared in the Middle East Review of International
Affairs last September.
Though that was not the only textual embarrassment No 10 seemed
determined to tough it out last night.
Dismissing the gathering controversy as the latest example of media
obsession with spin, officials insisted it in no way undermines the
underlying truth of the dossier, whose contents had been re-checked
with British intelligence sources. "The important thing is that it is
accurate," said one source.
What Whitehall may not grasp is the horror with which unacknowledged
borrowing of material - the crime of plagiarism - is regarded in
American academic and media circles, even though successive US
governments have a poor record of misleading their own citizens on
foreign policy issues at least since the Vietnam war. On a special edi
tion of BBC Newsnight, filmed before a critical audience last night,
Mr Blair stressed that he was willing to forgo popularity to warn
voters of the dangers of weapons of mass destruction: "I may be wrong,
but I do believe it."
With trust a critical element in the battle to woo a sceptical public
the first sentence of the No 10 document merely states, somewhat
cryptically, that it "draws upon a number of sources, including
intelligence material".
But Glen Rangwala, a lecturer in politics at Cambridge University,
told Channel 4: "I found it quite startling when I realised that I'd
read most of it before."
The content of six more pages relies heavily on articles by Sean Boyne
and Ken Gause that appeared in Jane's Intelligence Review in 1997 and
last November. None of these sources is acknowledged.
The document, as posted on Downing Street's website at the end of
January, also acci dentally named four Whitehall officials who had
worked on it: P Hamill, J Pratt, A Blackshaw and M Khan. It was
reposted on February 3 with the first three names deleted.
"Apart from passing this off as the work of its intelligence
services," Dr Rangwala said, "it indicates that the UK really does not
have any independent sources of information on Iraq's internal
policies. It just draws upon publicly available data."
Evidence of an electronic cut-and-paste operation by Whitehall
officials can be found in the way the dossier preserves textual quirks
from its original sources. One sentence in Dr Marashi's article
includes a misplaced comma in referring to Iraq's head of military
intelligence during the 1991 Gulf war. The same sentence in Downing
Street's report contains the same misplaced comma.
A Downing Street spokesman declined to say why the report's public
sources had not been acknowledged. "We said that it draws on a number
of sources, including intelligence. It speaks for itself."
Dr Marashi, a research associate at the Centre for Nonproliferation
Studies in Monterey, California, said no one had contacted him before
lifting the material.
But on the regular edition of Newsnight he later gave some comfort to
No 10. "In my opinion, the UK document overall is accurate even though
there are a few minor cosmetic changes. The only inaccuracies in the
UK document were that they maybe inflated some of the numbers of these
intelligence agencies," he said.
Explaining the more journalistic changes inserted into his work by
Whitehall he added: "Being an academic paper, I tried to soften the
language.
"For example, in one of my documents, I said that they support
organisations in what Iraq considers hostile regimes, whereas the UK
document refers to it as 'supporting terrorist organisations in
hostile regimes'.
"The primary documents I used for this article are a collection of two
sets of documents, one taken from Kurdish rebels in the north of Iraq
- around 4m documents - as well as 300,000 documents left by Iraqi
security services in Kuwait. After that, I have been following events
in the Iraqi security services for the last 10 years."
-------------------
La pubblicazione e' disponibile a
http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2002/issue3/jv6n3a1.html
L'evidenza dell'"intelligence Britannica", invece, e' a
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2003/02/07/uk0103.pdf
Qualche chicca:
---------------------
 For
example, on p.13, the British dossier incorporates a misplaced comma:
"Saddam appointed, Sabir 'Abd al-'Aziz al-Duri as head"..
Likewise, Marashi's piece also states:
"Saddam appointed, Sabir 'Abd al-'Aziz al-Duri as head"..
The other sources that are extensively plagiarised in the document are
two
authors from Jane's Intelligence Review:
Ken Gause (an international security analyst from Alexandria,
Virginia),
"Can the Iraqi Security Apparatus save Saddam" (November 2002),
pp.8-13.
Sean Boyne, "Inside Iraq?s Security Network", in 2 parts during 1997.
None of the sources are acknowledged, leading the reader to believe
that
the information is a result of direct investigative work, rather than
simply copied from pre-existing internet sources.
The fact that the texts of these three authors are copied directly
results
in a proliferation of different transliterations (eg different
spellings
of Ba'th, depending on which author is being copied).
There are two types of changes incorporated into the British document.
Firstly, numbers are increased or are rounded up. So, for example, the
section on "Fedayeen Saddam" (pp.15-16) is directly copied from Boyne,
almost word for word. The only substantive difference is that Boyne
estimates the personnel of the organisation to be 18,000-40,000 (Gause
similarly estimates 10-40,000). The British dossier instead writes
"30,000
to 40,000". A similar bumping up of figures occurs with the
description of
the Directorate of Military Intelligence.
The second type of change in the British dossier is that it replaces
particular words to make the claim sound stronger. So, for example,
most
of p.9 on the functions of the Mukhabarat is copied directly from
Marashi's article, except that when Marashi writes of its role in:
"monitoring foreign embassies in Iraq"
this becomes in the British dossier:
"spying on foreign embassies in Iraq".
Similarly, on that same page, whilst Marashi writes of the Mukhabarat:
"aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes"
- the British dossier renders this as:
"supporting terrorist organisations in hostile regimes".
Furher examples from the section on "Fedayeen Saddam" include how a
reference to how, in Boyne's original text, its personnel are
"recruited from regions loyal to Saddam", referring to their original
grouping as "some 10,000-15,000 'bullies and country bumpkins.'"
becomes in the British government's text a reference to how its
personnel
are:
"press ganged from regions known to be loyal to Saddam" ... "some
10,000-15,000 bullies."
Clearly, a reference to the "country bumpkins" would not have the
rhetorical effect that the British government was aiming for.
Finally, there is one serious substantive mistake in the British text,
in
that it muddles up Boyne's description of General Security (al-Amn
al-Amm), and places it in its section on p.14 of Military Security
(al-Amn
al-Askari). The result is complete confusion: it starts on p.14 by
relating how Military Security was created in 1992 (in a piece copied
from
Marashi), then goes onto talk about the movement of its headquarters -
in
1990 (in a piece copied from Boyne on the activities of General
Security).
The result is that it gets the description of the Military Security
Service wholly wrong, claiming that its head is Taha al-Ahbabi (whilst
really he was head of General Security in 1997; Military Security was
headed by Thabet Khalil).
Apart from the obvious criticism that the British government has
plagiarised texts without acknowledgement, passing them off as the
work of
its intelligence services, there are two further serious problems.
Firstly, it indicates that the UK at least really does not have any
independent sources of information on Iraq's internal politics - they
just
draw upon publicly available data. Thus any further claims to
information
based on "intelligence data" must be treated with even more
scepticism.
Secondly, the information presented as being an accurate statement of
the
current state of Iraq's security organisations may not be anything of
the
sort. Marashi - the real and unwitting author of much of the document
-
has as his primary source the documents captured in 1991 for the Iraq
Research and Documentation Project. His own focus is the activities of
Iraq's intelligence agencies in Kuwait, Aug90-Jan91 - this is the
subject
of his thesis. As a result, the information presented as relevant to
how
Iraqi agencies are currently engaged with Unmovic is 12 years old.
For reference, here are a few other summary comments on the British
document.
Official authors are (in Word > Properties) P. Hamill, J. Pratt, A.
Blackshaw, and M. Khan.
p.1 is the summary.
pp.2-5 are a repetition of Blix's comments to the Security Council on
the
difficulties they were encountering, with further claims about the
activities of al-Mukhabarat. These are not backed up, eg the claim
that
car crashes are organised to prevent the speedy arrival of inspectors.
p.6 is a simplified version of Marashi's diagram at: [
http://cns.miis.edu/research/iraq/pdfs/iraqint.pdf
]
http://cns.miis.edu/research/iraq/pdfs/iraqint.pdf
p.7 is copied (top) from Gause (on the Presidential Secretariat), and
(middle and bottom) from Boyne (on the National Security Council).
p.8 is entirely copied from Boyne (on the National Security Council).
p.9 is copied from Marashi (on al-Mukhabarat), except for the final
section, which is insubstantial.
p.10 is entirely copied from Marashi (on General Security), except for
the
final section, which is insubstantial.
p.11 is entirely copied from Marashi (on Special Security), except for
the
top section (on General Security), which is insubstantial.
p.12 is entirely copied from Marashi (on Special Security).
p.13 is copied from Gause (on Special Protection) and Marashi
(Military
Intelligence).
p.14 is wrongly copied from Boyne (on Military Security) and from
Marashi
(on the Special Republican Guard).
p.15 is copied from Gause and Boyne (on al-Hadi project / project
858).
pp.15-16 is copied from Boyne (on Fedayeen Saddam).
A final section, on the Tribal Chiefs' Bureau, seems to be copied from
a
different piece by Cordesman.

 ortografia)!!!!
Capisco la fretta indotta dalla libidine di cogliere in castagna il
segretario di stato USA, ma l'hai letto l'articolo?
Ale
--
*La sconfitta reclama ad alta voce perche' esige spiegazioni; mentre la
vittoria, come la carita', nasconde un gran numero di peccati*
Alfred T. Mahan

 ortografia)!!!!
Peccato che il Torrieri, con la sua voglia di fare disinformazione, si
dimentica di dire che il dossier era INGLESE e che Colin Powell l'ha
solo indicato tra le altre prove :)
-Stefano

segretario di stato USA, ma l'hai letto l'articolo?
No :)
E se l'ha letto e' solo il solito tentativo di fare disinformazione
sperando che le persone non si prendano la briga di leggerselo :)
-Stefano

 ortografia)!!!!
Sei certo di avere letto per bene l'articolo?!?
--
Bet Dalet Gimel
     «Odi profanum vulgus et arceo»

 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,890898,00.html
 
vi sono state diverse repliche a questo articolo del tipo
se il Giorgio avesse letto l'articolo originale - putroppo nessuno
degli users spiega perche' facciano questo commento, io una idea
ce la avrei ma non e' costruttivo correggere degli errori se
questi non vengono chiaramente delineati.
Come in tutte le situazioni sono andato a leggermi la stessa notizia
altrove, ed in particolare la BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2736575.stm
Friday, 7 February, 2003, 13:18 GMT 
The plagiarism plague
E' interessante la didascalia della foto che dice
'e' facile come fare CtrlC (copia) CtrlV (incolla)'
le prime righe dicono che Downing Street e' stata accusata di
aver copiato etc...
quello che e' di interesse e' quello sotto:
As the midnight oil burned and student Ibrahim
al-Marashi hurried to complete his post-graduate
treatise on Iraq's intelligence network, little did he
suspect where it might end up. 
Mentre il tempo stava finendo e lo studente Ibrahim
al-Marashi si affrettava a completare il suo
"post-graduate treatise" (grosso modo la tesi di dottorato)
circa la rete di intelligence dell'Iraq, non sospettava 
certo dove potesse finire.
Earlier this week the essay, albeit in a slightly modified
form, quietly reappeared as part of a dossier of
evidence against Saddam Hussein drawn up by Downing Street. 
Questo lavoro, sebbene in forma leggermente modificata,
e' riapparso etc.. etc..
l'articolo poi prosegue con una serie di esempi di notevoli
copia & incolla, tutti quanti in campi innocui, libri o musica
copiata, politici che copiano i discorsi.
E' interessante notare per inciso che il 
doppiostandard Tony quando gli fa comodo strilla ai quattro
venti che e' stato copiato.
Five years ago, Downing Street delighted in
pointing out how William Hague, then leader of the
opposition, had seemingly cannibalised a speech made
by Tony Blair some years before. 
ma te guarda.
Dicevo che comunque queste sono sciocchezze, il fatto  grave che rimane 
e' che con questo dossier questo cretinetto di Blair ci vuol
fare una guerra.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,890898,00.html
 
Notare che citare rapporti esistenti non e' un male, nel senso
che si scrive normalmente:
Secondo [X] la rete di intelligence dei servizi iracheni e' localizzata...
ove [X] punta al riferimento originale.
Oppure
Secondo [X] la rete di intelligence dei servizi iracheni "e' localizzata...
Ove la " mostra che da quel punto si parte con una citazione
letterale di materiale altrui.
Il rapporto in questione invece 
[questa frase e' dal guardian, non dalla BBC]
the first sentence of the No 10 document merely states, somewhat
cryptically, that it "draws upon a number of sources, including
intelligence material". 
e a posteriori te credo che nascondevano le fonti, se e' vero
che citano materiale del >>1997<< e addirittura:
One sentence in Dr Marashi's article
includes a misplaced comma in referring to Iraq's head of military
intelligence during the 1991 Gulf war. The same sentence in Downing
Street's report contains the same misplaced comma. 
una frase comparsa nel >>1991<< (con errore di ortografia annesso)
e' chiaro che chiunque si pone la domanda se sia il caso di fare
una guerra nel 2003 usando informazioni raccolte 5 anni prima.
E questo secondo me porta al piu' interessante aspetto della
faccenda - amministrazioni (o politici) come Blair, Bush o
compagnia bella non riescono ad attrarre staff members di qualita'.
Magari pagheranno anche bene ma, come e' noto a chi cerca di
assumere personale altamente qualificato, detto personale
vauta assai criticamente la qualita' della organizzazione in cui
lavora perche' - detto in soldoni - se ne sbatte dei nobili
destini di Blair o Bush e pensa alla sua carriera tra 5, 10 o 20 anni.
Chi avra' trovato il Blair a scrivergli questo rapporto?
Qualche "yesmen" che in una multinazionale di un certo peso
non troverebbe mai lavoro - in questo modo la  multinazionale di un 
certo peso ha lo staff member che scrive un rapporto con i
crismi corretti mentre il governo Blair si trova quello
che fa "cut&paste" senza nemmeno correggere gli errori.
Sulla divergenza di qualita' del personale che lavora per
le pubbliche amministrazioni e per quello che quantomeno
lavora nelle public companies (parlo di middle management almeno)
ci sarebbe da discutere - come sul fatto che il DJ, mentre
Bush&Blair si preparano a far la guerra santa - mi pare di averlo
visto ieri a 7,xxx che direi che e' gia' un messaggio per
i due crociati.
Bye
 
-- 
questo articolo e` stato inviato via web dal servizio gratuito 
http://www.newsland.it/news
 segnala gli abusi ad 
ab...@newsland.it

una guerra nel 2003 usando informazioni raccolte 5 anni prima.
Fossero tutte le li informazioni raccolte :))
*ROTFL*
Continua cosi' Pirlissima(TM), specialmente con le due acrobatiche
traduzioni dell'inglese :))
*LOL*
-Stefano