'F for Fake': The Not-So-Curious Case of the Fars News Agency

Abstract

This article is a repudiation of the recent plagiarism of my Huffington Post’s Op-Ed, entitled “Geneva III: The Stillborn Conference and the Endemic Failure of the International Community” by Iran’s state-run Fars News Agency. An Iranian “journalist” has translated it into Persian without my permission, plagiarised it, malevolently changed its content in favour of the Syrian regime and its regional and international allies, and posted it on the Fars News Agency’s official homepage. The “journalist” in question, Hossein Molaei, has discharged the Syrian regime and its allies, particularly Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah from large-scale atrocities and ascribed them to the Syrian insurgents who are labelled by Molaei as terrorist groups. He actually made things worse as it presumes that my stolen article can be used to support the content of his paper.

Keywords: Plagiarism; Hilmi M. Zawati; Fars News Agency; Geneva III Conference; Syrian Regime; Crimes against Humanity; War Crimes