Hoisted by his own petard

Of all the high-flyers and assorted fraudsters now coming down to earth, this one is just too rich and comical to pass by. 

Owen Lippert, now scandalized as the wholesale plagiarizer from Australian Prime Minister John Howard in a speech he wrote for Stephen Harper, was the former Director of the Law and Markets Project at the Fraser Institute before he graduated to work for Harper.  He has a PhD, so one would think he should know something about plagiarism.

His most notable book at the Fraser Institute: Competitive Strategies for the Protection of Intellectual Property, which he edited and in which he argues for negotiating stronger intellectual property rights through the Free Trade Area of the Americas.  Could this be extended to protection of intellectual property from Australia?

Thanks to Rick Mercer for pointing this out.

4 comments

  • And more ironically, it needs to be pointed out, with the libs baying for blood that Harper lifted his speech from a conservative-thinking LIBERAL Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

    Which reminds, Iggy the deputy minister of the Liberal Party is also on record for supporting the Iraqi invasion and war.

    So liberal/conservative minds think alike? It looks so!

  • Plagiarism is not so uncommon. George Bush plagiarized Robert Stanfield’s words from a speech Stanfield gave during the October Crises, When Bush was delivering a speech at “Ground Zero” to New York’s firefighters he used much of Stanfield’s exact words.

    Stanfield’s speech was carried in the Globe and Mail during the October crisis. This plagiarism has also been registered at the University of Victoria through some computer program they have which catches plagiarism. Three years ago, this particular plagiarism by Bush had already been caught officially in Canada on five occasions. Who was Bush’s speech writer at the time? A Canadian?

  • Canadian speech-writer – how about David Frum – pretty well as conservative as they come, he, but I don’t know whether he wrote officially for Dubya?

  • Yes, Frum was a special assistant to President Bush for economic (?) speechwriting, 2001-2002 – see his web site

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