Oh Putin, you dumbas...

Rabs

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2101607,00.html

Putin accused of plagiarising his PhD thesis

Tony Allen-Mills, New York
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THE career of President Vladimir Putin of Russia was built at least in part on a lie, according to US researchers. A new study of an economics
thesis written by Putin in the mid-1990s has revealed that large chunks of it were copied from an American text.
NI_MPU('middle');
Putin was labelled a plagiarist yesterday after a pair of researchers at the Brookings Institution, a Washington DC think tank, established that the Russian president’s academic credentials were based on a dissertation he had lifted in part verbatim from the Russian translation of a management study written by two professors at the University of Pittsburgh in 1978.
According to the Kremlin’s official biography, Putin, 53, obtained a PhD in economics from the St Petersburg Mining Institute in 1997. But the US researchers also established that his thesis was for a lesser degree that would not have entitled him to a full doctorate.
The embarrassing revelation that Putin, a former KGB agent, may have cheated and lied about his qualifications follows a long search by US scholars for evidence of the president’s academic prowess. A copy of the thesis was eventually located in the electronic files of a Moscow technical library.
According to Clifford G Gaddy, a senior fellow at Brookings, 16 of the 20 pages that open a key section of Putin’s work were copied either word for word or with minute alterations from a management study, Strategic Planning and Policy, written by US professors William King and David Cleland. The study was translated into Russian by a KGB-
related institute in the early 1990s.
The Washington Times reported yesterday that six diagrams and tables from the 218-page thesis also appeared to “mimic” similar charts in
the US work. The newspaper quoted Gaddy as saying: “There’s no question in my mind that this would be plagiarism.”
Putin’s work was entitled “The Strategic Planning of Regional Resources Under the Formation of Market Relations” and was largely an essay on how a state should manage its natural resources. Experts on the former Soviet Union said last week it was common for ambitious “apparatchiks” to seek to inflate their credentials with an impressive-sounding degree, and that there were many cases at the time of officials hiring ghost-writers to produce work they passed off as their own.
After serving as a KGB agent in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Putin moved into politics in St Petersburg. US scholars say that his academic studies in the mid-1990s may have been intended to impress the western investors who were flooding into the rapidly modernising Russian city.
“Somebody was cutting corners,” Gaddy added, “whether it was Mr Putin or whoever cut and pasted the work for him.”
While plagiarism has come to be regarded in America as a fatal blot on any US politician’s copybook — Senator Joe Biden has never recovered from allegations that he stole sections of a 1988 speech by Neil Kinnock, the former Labour leader — the issue is not taken especially seriously in Russia, which is second only to China as a producer of pirated copyright goods.
 
Meh well. So another politician lied and swore to it. Is it so surprising? Now see what he will do to corroborate or dispute the information. That is where the real drama starts to play out.
 
Why doesn't surprise this me at all? Hahahahaha, I find it rather amusing.... that's what you get when you have a spook in office. And on a greater scale of things.... who really cares if he is an academic or not. He is the bloody president of Russia. It's not that he won't be invited for talks, because he lied. And the honorary titles will come in due time from some university somewhere, which likes the fact that Putin is some doctor in something.......
 
We have soccer coaches getting doctorate degrees when they do a good job. Some uni likes the name and produce some honorary seat for say... physics of playing soccer. And there you have it a brand new doctor, who can hardly spell his own name correctly!
 
Ted said:
We have soccer coaches getting doctorate degrees when they do a good job. Some uni likes the name and produce some honorary seat for say... physics of playing soccer. And there you have it a brand new doctor, who can hardly spell his own name correctly!

Even more scary.... :-(
 
Well, when you shoot a man in the face, you kinda expect something to happen...Besides, even if he had broken any laws, according to the Constitution, no federal public official can be sued or jailed while in office.
 
C/2Lt Henderson said:
Well, when you shoot a man in the face, you kinda expect something to happen...Besides, even if he had broken any laws, according to the Constitution, no federal public official can be sued or jailed while in office.

I'm a bit rusty, can you tell me where exactly it says that in the US Constitution?
 
A few points aboout Putin's situation:

1. His degree is called "Candidate of Science". It's much below PhD. It is widely accepted in Russia that the "right" people might get their degrees by letting somebody else to do the job and just signing their names.
2. Cheating, in general, is not considered as a crime(by public opinion) and very often is considered as smartness. Tax evasion is common.
Students who succesfully have cheated on their exams can brag about it among their peers...
In this situation, a very popular president, as Putin is, cannot suffer. Furthemore, it will even enhance his position among the common folk - "he is the same as us!" His foreign reputation depends on oil prices and is not related to his scientific provess or integrity.
 
I could personally give a rat's hairy @$$ what Putin says,does,or anything like that. I just figured that this is another way that, in the words of Antigone, "that to be king is to do and say whatever ye please." In other words, people in positions of power can use that power to do anything they really please...
 
C/2Lt Henderson said:
I could personally give a rat's hairy @$$ what Putin says,does,or anything like that. I just figured that this is another way that, in the words of Antigone, "that to be king is to do and say whatever ye please." In other words, people in positions of power can use that power to do anything they really please...

He wasn't that powerful then, he was just an aid to the Major of Saint-Petersburg...
But he could use some perks...
My posting was just to reflect on the hopes some people might have that the electorat would be so indignant, they will kick him out of the office... The won't.
 
boris116 said:
A few points aboout Putin's situation:

1. His degree is called "Candidate of Science". It's much below PhD. It is widely accepted in Russia that the "right" people might get their degrees by letting somebody else to do the job and just signing their names.
2. Cheating, in general, is not considered as a crime(by public opinion) and very often is considered as smartness. Tax evasion is common.
Students who succesfully have cheated on their exams can brag about it among their peers...
In this situation, a very popular president, as Putin is, cannot suffer. Furthemore, it will even enhance his position among the common folk - "he is the same as us!" His foreign reputation depends on oil prices and is not related to his scientific provess or integrity.

Oh good, so my level of respect for Putin and the Russian "common folk" just plummetted ten fold...
 
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