User:Pincrete/The Taliban visit Disneyland
The Taliban visit Disneyland during the European Intifada - A cautionary tale
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Sometimes the level of WP:OR and WP:SYNTH on an article reaches levels that are so creative that one can only applaud the inventiveness of the disregard - not only for policy - but for basic common sense. In that spirit, I share this cautionary tale.
To begin at the beginning:
Once upon a time,[when?] … … OK, in November 2016, someone listed an event perpetrated by ISIS on 28 January 2016 in Paris, as a 'terrorist plot'. No details, though the event was sourced, unfortunately the source used makes no mention of terrorism nor plots nor ISIS. In fact quite a few other news outlets reported this story on the same day, such as this, most of them included an explicit statement from French police that it was not believed to be terrorism, but let's assume that it was simply unfortunate that the inserting editor, just came across one of the few sources that didn't make that denial explicit. The story itself revolved around a European man and his wife or girlfriend who were booked into a hotel at Disneyland Paris, he handed over his suitcase for screening at the entrance, the screening showed up 2 handguns, police were called, he and the lady were arrested. Also in the suitcase was a Koran, the lady was released almost immediately. The man was charged with not having proper permits for the guns or somesuch, but at no point did French police even suggest any connection to terrorism (any terrorist handing over his suitcase for screening would have to be remarkably stupid if it really were a plot, that's WP:OR of course but it might have made editors a soupçon sceptical.) So far we have suspicious behaviour, but not even a hint of any terrorist plot, unless owning 2 guns and a Koran constitutes proof of same.
OK, back to our coverage of the event on WP, - in mid-December 2016, this text gets added: "A man carrying a Quran and two handguns concealed in a bag, and a female accomplice were arrested near Disneyland Paris. Same source used, still ISIS listed as perpetrators, still listed as a 'terrorist plot', in fact that editor has embellished the source, since nowhere in that source is it implied that the guns were concealed. (but why let sources spoil a good story?)
A suspicious story you might think, but how did it end? For that the blessed Daily Mail, comes to the rescue! A few days after the hotel incident, the man was sentenced to 6 months house arrest at his mother's home and banned from owning a gun for 5 years. The prosecution was disappointed since it: "had sought a nine-month suspended sentence for the 28-year-old … … Disneyland Paris said the guns were picked up by routine scanning of the man's bags at the hotel entrance". It does not make clear what the exact offence was, the man claimed to have carried the guns to protect himself since the Paris attacks, and even the Mail is bending over backwards to make clear that police had never implied any terrorist offence. Now I'm sure that there will be those who will still be convinced that anyone carrying a Koran and two guns into a hotel has to be up to no good, but I hope they will acknowledge that there are no RSs to support such an idea.
Meanwhile, back at WP, the claim that this was an ISIS plot sits for a further 6 months in our article, it is removed in June 2016 with the edit reason: "events with no notability this is not a news site", it is then restored on the same day, removed and restored several times until it finally disappeared. So, about 9 months of WP describing a trivial incident as a 'terrorist plot' perpetrated by ISIS, and - over an even longer period - some editors on the article insisting that there was no SYNTH on this article, that everything was RS, that NOTNEWS, didn't apply and that we had no need to formulate (and apply) objective criteria for what goes into the article, since it was obvious to anyone (except a few perverse Islamist apologists?) what was and was not actual or planned Islamic terrorism. The sky after all is always blue, especially in Disneyland.
Update
[edit]Shortly after writing the above and believing that I must surely have plumbed the depths about this non-event, I came across this edit made on 28 January 2016 on the article List of thwarted Islamist terrorist attacks. The text read "A Gunman carrying two weapons and Koran [sic] arrested at Disneyland Paris. Police are still searching for his accomplice." The source is the same as used above, and - as already said that source does not mention even suspicion of "terrorism", nor "plot", nor - as it happens - any police search for an accomplice, nor the man's religion, and only a caption describes the person as a "gunman". I removed the text on 3rd October 2017, so it was ONLY 20 months that this piece of absurdity was claiming to be an "Islamist terrorist plot", thwarted or otherwise.
intafada
[edit]Need to finish this someday - how the Taliban were marauding the whole of Europe during the European Intafada (you remember that don't you?)
intafada
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