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Archive 1

Osho's press conferences dd. 16/17 September 1985

I believe that the US authorities were not aware of sannyasins' involvement in this matter until Osho's press conferences on September 16 and 17. IIRC, the 1984 enquiry had concluded that the outbreak had been due to a food hygiene problem. As is documented by Frances FitzGerald (writing in The New Yorker – the article later also appeared in her book Cities on a Hill, p. 360/361), at the September 85 press conferences Osho

... said that Sheela and a dozen other commune leaders, including Puja, had left the commune over the weekend and gone to Europe. Calling them a "gang of fascists", he charged them with attempting to poison his doctor, his female companion as well as the Jefferson County district attorney and the water system in The Dalles. He also said that Sheela had mismanaged the commune's finances, stolen money, and left the commune $55 million in debt. ... The next day and then later on in the week, he added a number of new charges to the list: Sheela and her gang had robbed and set fire to the Wasco County planning office and had planned to crash an explosives-laden plane into The Dalles courthouse; they had engineered the bombing of the hotel in Portland; they had poisoned the county commissioner, Judge William Hulse, and quite possibly they had been responsible for the salmonella outbreak in The Dalles.

IIRC, it was only at this point that the enquiry into the salmonella incident was reopened, and investigations of the other specific issues Osho mentioned commenced. The subsequent enquiry confirmed the accuracy of most of his allegations (with the notable exception of the Portland bombing, I believe, which AFAIR was not found to have been instigated by sannyasins). I don't know where in the article that should go, perhaps after the sentence reporting the initial findings, but I think it should be mentioned somewhere, since it was a crucial point in the chain of events leading to the discovery of the plot. -- Jayen466 13:33, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

I will take a look at the source you provided and get back to you. Cirt (talk) 14:21, 19 November 2007 (UTC).
Thanks. -- Jayen466 16:49, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
The same events are covered in Carter, p. 224–225. The only one who all that time had not been happy with the "food handler" theory was congressman Jim Weaver, and he was ridiculed in the press for continuing to propound the theory that people from Rajneeshpuram were to blame for the salmonella outbreak. This only changed when investigators gained access to Rajneeshpuram in September 1985, a full year after the salmonella incident. And that was due to Osho's public statements to the press that he believed people from Rajneeshpuram were responsible, and his contacting the authorities and inviting them in to undertake an investigation. -- Jayen466 20:42, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm sorry, I looked through about 100 sources and did not find mention of Osho contacting authorities. I did find some brief mentions of other members of the Rajneeshee group contacting authorities, but not Osho. Please give me a chance to look into this angle further. Cirt (talk) 23:16, 19 November 2007 (UTC).
No, sorry, I think you are quite right. In the press conference, he says "We are reporting to the police, to the government", he mentions Interpol had been contacted, etc.; I doubt he meant by this that he had picked up the phone in person. But his public accusations gave the authorities the grounds to come in and investigate.
Brian Ecker, Associated Press, Portland, asked him on Sept. 16, after Osho had talked to the press about an attempt by Sheela to poison the water supply in The Dalles, "There was an outbreak of salmonella last year in The Dalles. Do you believe that these sannyasins had anything to do with that?" Osho replied, "Yes." When Ecker asked if he had evidence of that, he replied that the police would have to ascertain the evidence, but that there were sannyasins who had information on this.
"The guru's revelations produced, as might be expected, an electrical effect on Oregon. Journalists poured into the ranch, closely followed by the representatives of six law enforcement agencies. Jim Weaver said the FBI had promised an investigation, adding that for a year, law enforcement officials had been looking for a 'stool pigeon' (= informer). Now, he said, 'We have got the biggest one of all. The Bhagwan himself.'" (FitzGerald, p. 361) "Bhagwan accused Sheela of the activities listed above, maintained his own innocence, and invited journalists and law officials to Rajneeshpuram to investigate what had occurred." (Fox, 2002, p. 18) Will check further into this tomorrow, getting late here. Cheers, Jayen466 00:39, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

It seems like we have conflicting viewpoints in multiple secondary sources, with some writing about the bioterrorist attack, and Osho's implicit involvement, and others writing about his seeming double-crossing to other followers and perpetrators, in statements to the press. In order to provide balance, we should talk about this here on the talk page, and then probably add in information from more sources, but with attribution given to who said what in which particular source. Cirt (talk) 00:45, 20 November 2007 (UTC).

I think we can agree that the records in FitzGerald and Carter show that
1. one year had passed since the salmonella attacks had taken place;
2. the health authorities had come to the conclusion that food handlers were to blame:
3. Jim Weaver, who did not believe this verdict, contacted "health officials, the FBI, and the Federal Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. Many treated his concern as either paranoid or an example of political opportunism (indulging in 'Rajneeshee bashing', which was already in fact worth more than a few votes in Eastern Oregon). When he presented his facts on the floor of the House of Representatives, the Associated Press coverage called it a 'rambling speech made to an empty house'." (Carter, p. 224)
In other words, except for Weaver, who was perceived as a crank or an opportunist, no one believed that the Rajneeshees were to blame; the criminals were, to all intents and purposes, in the clear. This was the situation when Osho called the 16 September 1985 press conference and blew the whole thing wide open. Had he been personally involved, it is difficult to see why he would have made these facts public. At any rate, the facts allow the possibility that he had been unaware of what had been happening, as he claimed, due to being in almost complete isolation, and had decided that the authorities should be informed the moment he learnt of Sheela's wrongdoings – simply because it was the right thing to do.
Osho was never indicted for these crimes or named as a co-conspirator (Carter, p. 233). Sheela's trial was in spring 1986. She got 4.5 years for masterminding the salmonella attack and was required to give lie-detector testimony about Rajneesh assets and operations (Carter p. 237); to my knowledge, this did not result in any indictments of Osho or any further statements by US authorities about his involvement. -- Jayen466 15:34, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Obviously, there are sources and individuals already noted in the article that say otherwise, so I will continue doing a bit more research before adding the above stuff in to the article, but most of what you mentioned above from WP:RS sources will be added soon, I just want to double-check some stuff and check some additional other sources. Cirt (talk) 21:31, 20 November 2007 (UTC).

Okay. How do you manage to check so many sources? JSTOR? Questia? Or are you working in a library :-) ? -- Jayen466 21:54, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Still looking through sources... But in answer to your question, no, I do not work in a library, but I do visit libraries from time to time in the course of research. Cirt (talk) 03:13, 21 November 2007 (UTC).

"Osho's followers"

One weakness of the – otherwise solidly researched – article is that it presents "Osho's followers" as one homogeneous block, using phrases such as "Followers of Osho had hoped to incapacitate the voting population", "Osho's followers sought after two of three county seats (and) they decided to incapacitate voters", "clinical laboratory operated by the Rajneeshee movement", etc. These were not the "actions of the Rajneeshee movement" any more than the Nixon administration's crimes were the "actions of the American people". As in that case, the criminal activities committed were a strongly guarded secret within Rajneeshpuram, and the reason they were kept secret was that the vast majority of residents there (including a recent Indian secretary of state, as well as a chairman of a White House commission) would have had no truck with any of these shenanigans. I would welcome a discussion as to how we could remedy this. -- Jayen466 20:42, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

That should be a relatively easy fix, I will try to remedy this shortly. Cirt (talk) 23:17, 19 November 2007 (UTC).
Some actions do apply to all of Osho's followers, such as the "Share-A-Ride" tactic and other tactics, which the entire organization simply must have been aware of. Others, perhaps they were not all aware of and implicitly involved in, and I will make corrections explicitly to those points. Cirt (talk) 23:44, 19 November 2007 (UTC).
A number of sannyasins thought the homeless scheme quite barmy; FitzGerald reports that about half the contacts she had made on the Ranch left the Ranch (not the movement, necessarily) before matters came to a head. It is much as with any other policy that your local or national government may pursue; the fact that it happens does not mean thatityou and everyone else in your neighborhood agrees with it, or thinks it's a swell idea. -- Jayen466 00:00, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Okay, made some fixes. Good suggestion, read a little bit better now. Cirt (talk) 23:46, 19 November 2007 (UTC).
In any event, I made some adjustments in the article and I think that particular issue reads find now. Cirt (talk) 00:01, 20 November 2007 (UTC).
Still not quite there, IMO. For one, the people in Rajneeshpuram represented a small percentage (about 1 to 5%) of sannyasins. This is based on Carter, p. 122, who gives the resident sannyasin population of Rajneeshpuram (excluding festival visitors) as ranging from 200 to 2500 max.; the Osho movement, at the time, had at least 50,000, probably more like 100,000 members worldwide. By saing "Osho's followers had previously moved ..." etc. it is a little bit like saying, "Muhammad's followers were responsible for 9/11", a statement that is vastly more wrong than it is right. -- Jayen466 22:25, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Examples of wording usage in secondary sources

Let's take a look at how other secondary sources refer to the incident, and the group involved:

  1. U.S. Biodefense and Homeland Security Toward Detection and Attribution - "The Rajneeshee Cult Biological Attacks". - (Bernett)
  2. The Bioterrorism Threat By Non-State Actors - "The Rajneeshee Cult". (Thompson)
  3. Bioterrorism and Biocrimes - "The Rajneeshees also tried to contaminate the water system in The Dalles." - (Carus)
  4. Food Safety: Old Habits, New Perspectives - "Nevertheless, its current low profile as a food-borne pathogen may make B. anthracis a tantalizing tool for bioterrorists who, like the Rajneesh cult, wish to tamper with our food supply." - (Entis)
  5. Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health - "And on the eve of the county election, hoping to make hostile voters too ill to go to their polling booths, the Rajneesh followers put the bacteria in dressings at salad bars in the county's ten most popular restaurants." - (Garrett)
  6. Terrorism on American Soil: A Concise History of Plots and Perpetrators from the Famous to the Forgotten - "The first official use of salmonella by the Rajneeshees occurred on August 29, 1984, when the three sitting Wasco County commissioners came to Rajneeshpuram to collect information about the cult's operation to assist in their decision-making on matters before their board." - (McCann)
  7. Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War - "The Rajneesh crowd had chosen one of the mildest pathogens and had ignored the airborne delivery of biological agents - the traditional and most effective way of mobilizing microbes for war." - (Miller)

I think we can safely say that this sort of wording is used in reliable secondary sources as well. Cirt (talk) 06:02, 21 November 2007 (UTC).

Biased?

Sorry, I don't really know how to use this, and I edited the article, so you might want to put it back. But I do think it's based on very faulty claims. As you point out, the original investigators believed that the outbreak was caused by poor food handling. This was largely because there were other outbreaks about the same time in other areas of Oregon and Washington that no one claimed was related to sannyasins. No one has ever been convicted of the crime and no evidence has ever been presented in a court linking the outbreak in The Dalles to the Ranch. So your article as it stands is defamatory to a lot of people. The story of a discovery of the guitly sample, for example, is pure fabrication. I have a copy of the actual police report of the search. The sample was found in the medical lab where it was being used to conduct tests. This was what it was sold for. There was no evidence that salmonella had ever been cultured so it could be used for contamination purposes. Searces were done, powder was scraped off of lab equipment, but no traces of salmonella was ever found. I have those reports too. The story about salmonellla that came through Osho was a report by one woman that she had been asked to contaminate the water supply in The Dalles, but that she didn't do it. Her claim was never verified. (I know her, and she is a bit emotionally challenged.) There were no claims at that point that this was connected to the salad bar contaminations. Those claims didn't arise till two people, David Knapp and Ava (something) turned state's evidence and tried to get off by testifying to what they thought was wanted. Ava, I believe, managed to get off completely, but Knapp still had to serve some time. Given Weaver's insistence that sannayasins were responsible for the poisonings, it's no suprise that these two offered to confess to this very politicized incident. A close examination of the two stories however shows that they both contradict each other and are inconsistent with the evidence. Ava, for example, claimed to have poisoned the milk in a restaurant. The fact that milk had been contaminated had been reported in the press, but Ava got the restaurant wrong. The original investigator said, I believe in the JAMA article, that he wouldn't have believed it if there hadn't been these confessions. But, since these two had a good reason to lie--to get deals with the prosecution--that wasn't a good reason to change his opinion. Their very faulty testimony is the only evidence existing that any intentional contamination occurred. It isn't illegal for a legal medical lab to own an openly purchased sample of salmonella for a strain that had cause recent outbreaks. It would have been negligent for the lab not to have been testing for that strain. Most importantly, these incidents never happened around election time. This was explained by saying they were dry runs, but since they actually worked, why weren't they done around the time of the elections? It is hardly fair to smear an entire community on this kind of nonproof. Two very dishonest people (remember, they were involved in crimnal activity) tried to save themselves by slandering the community they had already betrayed. If you want to write about them, write about them, but don't write about a community whose main activiy was ecological reclamation and an attempt to build something beautiful.SangeetD (talk) 23:03, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I can't resist adding one thing here -- I know it is hopelessly WP:OR -- but the salmonella samples were claimed to have been found in a Rajneeshee laboratory a full year after the poisonings had taken place. Isn't that a little strange? Why would criminals hold on to evidence of their crime for a full year, nurturing this salmonella culture all this time rather than throwing it away, and then escape the scene a year later for fear of being arrested, yet leaving this evidence in plain sight for officials to find?? -- Jayen466 23:18, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

WP:NOT#FORUM

Please note that Wikipedia is not a discussion forum to discuss personal opinions about articles and historical events. If you have a specific point about a sentence or source used in the article, by all means, please discuss it on the talk page. Thanks. Cirt (talk) 03:11, 21 November 2007 (UTC).

Excellent addition

This article is a great addition to WP. I think the title should be Rajneeshee bioterror attack (1984), however I've experienced the frustration of articles getting renamed multiple times, so I won't change it myself unless there's a broad consensus. Thanks for adding an important event in Oregon's history to the encyclopedia. -Pete (talk) 19:20, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

On the same topic, I wonder about the use of the word "terrorism." From the lead, it seems that this was an attempt to strategically steal an election which, while repugnant, is not the same thing as terrorism. If the goal of the action was not to strike fear into a population, I don't understand why the title of the article should include "terror." -Pete (talk) 19:25, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
The incident has frequently been referred to as the first bioterrorism attack on US soil, so it is not Wikipedia that is inventing that moniker for it. I believe the Rajneeshees are still listed as a terrorist organisation by the US government -- a fact that causes some puzzlement in India, but true nonetheless. -- Jayen466 21:06, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Incidentally, the statement that it was the first bioterrorism attack on American soil is technically incorrect; cf. [1] [2] [3] and many others. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jayen466 (talk • contribs) 23:36, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes, many many sources use the word "terrorism" to describe it, one even discusses use of the term, and decided that, because it was an act of violence intended to influence a specific political outcome, it fit the very definition of terrorism. I will find that specific source for you. By the way, thanks for the compliments on the article I created. Cirt (talk) 21:20, 20 November 2007 (UTC).

As for renaming the article, you're right, I had already renamed it once from 1984 Rajneeshee bioterrorism attack, so unless there is overwhelming consensus to do this, I'd rather the title stay the same. Cirt (talk) 21:28, 20 November 2007 (UTC).

Bhagwan/Osho

I am aware that we are currently switching from "Bhagwan (Shree Rajneesh)" to "Osho" and back. We should standardise on one name and use this consistently throughout, except for the intro, where both names should be mentioned. -- Jayen466 11:32, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

  • A good idea. I would say go with "Osho", for the most part, unless we are being consistent in a particular sentence which is backed up to a specific source that says otherwise in that instance. Cirt (talk) 11:37, 21 November 2007 (UTC).

Interposing new comments in between others

  • Jayen466 (talk · contribs), I request that in the future, your new comments go at the bottom of whatever thread you are posting in. When you post new comments in between other people's comments, it becomes much more difficult to follow each line of discussion. Thank you, Cirt (talk) 11:39, 21 November 2007 (UTC).
No problem, my bad. -- Jayen466 11:56, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Cirt (talk) 12:00, 21 November 2007 (UTC).
Sorry about messing up the Harvard cites earlier. I haven't been in the habit of using them and only noticed your edit comments just now. -- Jayen466 12:01, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
Apology accepted, thanks. Cirt (talk) 12:03, 21 November 2007 (UTC).

Only two confirmed uses of biological weapons for terrorist purposes to harm humans

"According to Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945, these are the only two confirmed uses of biological weapons for terrorist purposes to harm humans."

This sentence is accurate, as per this text from this source:

There have been only two confirmed attempts to use BW for terrorist purposes targeting humans: the 1984 use of Salmonella by the Rajneesh cult in Oregon, and the 1990-1995 attempted use of anthrax and botulinum toxin by the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Tokyo. A third incident, the alleged use of a variety of infectious diseases against Native Americans in the Amazon basin during the 1950s and 1960s, is probably but not yet firmly established. A fourth incident, the 2001 anthrax letter attacks in the US, may be bioterrorism or biocriminality, determination of which must await the identification of the perpetrator(s) and motive.

  • Wheelis, Mark (2006). Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945. Harvard University Press. pp. 284–293, 301–303. ISBN 0674016998. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

Cirt (talk) 12:08, 21 November 2007 (UTC).

The book explicitly limits its purview to the period after 1945, it does not cover the entire human history of biological warfare and terrorism; the addition of "in recent history" corrected this, as does, to a slightly lesser extent, the naming of the book's title. (By the way, just in case you weren't sure, the wording "electrical effect" in the earlier edit was not mine, but FitzGerald's.) -- Jayen466 12:28, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
I think the attribution I gave the beginning of the sentence makes it read fine in its present state. And if you did not create the wording "electrical effect", then it should either have been part of a quotation, or paraphrased. Cirt (talk) 12:30, 21 November 2007 (UTC).

Electrical effect?

  • Do we really need this phrase in the article? It sounds more like sensationalism than anything else, and it does not contribute any additional factual or specific information. Cirt (talk) 12:39, 21 November 2007 (UTC).
    • The complete quote, as given in an earlier discussion above, was "The guru's revelations produced, as might be expected, an electrical effect on Oregon. Journalists poured into the ranch, closely followed by the representatives of six law enforcement agencies. Jim Weaver said the FBI had promised an investigation, adding that for a year, law enforcement officials had been looking for a 'stool pigeon' (= informer). Now, he said, 'We have got the biggest one of all. The Bhagwan himself.'" (FitzGerald, p. 361) This quote is verbatim (except of course for my insertion of the paraphrase "informer" for the term "stool pigeon"), without emendation of any intervening text, and is how FitzGerald, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist writing for the publication with the (then, at least) best fact-checking reputation in the world, describes the arrival of law enforcement agencies in Rajneeshpuram. By separating the two sentences in the way we have them now, as though the one did not have anything to do with the other, we may be obscuring the close temporal relationship between the press conferences and the arrival of law enforcement agencies. If you like, we can quote the whole FitzGerald passage verbatim. Note that Carter too writes, on page 225, that "investigators gained entry to Rajneeshpuram in September 1985", and on page 230, he describes the press conferences and the arrival of the task force in immediate succession, like FitzGerald: "On September 16, Bhagwan called a news conference ... charging that they had poisoned his physician ... and committed other serious crimes. At one point he exclaimed, 'They would even have poisoned me!' A joint federal-state task force of investigators moved to Rajneeshpuram." Again, the sentence reporting the arrival of the task force follows immediately upon the description of the press conference. Cheers, -- Jayen466 13:20, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
      • Again, this is Fitzgerald's personal inference here, and not facts. We have not once seen a source that says anything like: "Because of Osho's press conference...this happened...". I still think the use of the phrase "electrical effect", provides nothing to the article, and should be removed. Cheers, Cirt (talk) 13:27, 21 November 2007 (UTC).
        • Apologies, but your own personal inferences as to why two sentences are close together or one after another in source texts is all WP:OR. Who knows? - maybe they just put those sentences in that fashion because of chronological order, maybe they just felt like it - but we cannot infer any conclusions from that. Certainly we have no proof or evidence or anything to go on that the sole reason that investigators went into Rajneeshpuram was due to Osho's statements made to the press. Cirt (talk) 13:33, 21 November 2007 (UTC).
          • I did not put any inferences in the article; I merely put the sentences in the same relationship in which they are found in two independent and extremely reputable sources covering these events. Osho made specific comments about the salmonella incident that had occurred one year earlier, and various crimes he believed had been committed to the press; in addition, he said that he and/or people in Rajneeshpuram ("we") contacted various law enforcement agencies. So is it not natural that an investigation would ensue? But let's take a break on this issue for today, okay? Cheers, Jayen466 14:16, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
            • Where does it say specifically that Osho contacted law enforcement? Where does it say that as a result of Osho's statements, that was the specific reasoning for why law enforcement decided to investigate Rajneeshpuram? Until there is info to this effect, the two followed each other chronologically, but the first did not cause the second to occur. The current presentation in the article is accurate, as per multiple secondary sources. Cirt (talk) 14:20, 21 November 2007 (UTC).
              • FitzGerald says that the press conference had this effect, of journalists and law officials pouring into Rajneeshpuram. And, if this is the effect of the conference, then the conference is the cause, which is fully consonant with the presentation in the equally reputable Carter (1990). FitzGerald is a leading investigative journalist who spent months on site; her New Yorker article is one of the most reputable and most widely quoted sources available. Now, you said above, this is Fitzgerald's personal inference here, and not facts. The quality of your Wikipedia work tells me that you know better than to argue this way; we cannot begin to argue here about what is or isn't fact (don't get me started!), we can only review what has been published by reputable, verifiable sources. (As for Osho's contacting law enforcement, this is among the statements he made to the press; it can be verified by the transcript of the press conference, available in the osho.com library, as well as the press conference video; but I am not suggesting at this time that this should go in the article.) Best wishes, Jayen466 14:49, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
                • This is now going in circles and getting ridiculous, I'm sorry. If Fitzgerald said that the reason law enforcement went to Rajneeshpuram was because of Osho's statements, fine. But if she only made inferences and put sentences close together, as you said, above, then that should not go in the article. As it stands now, the article reads fine. If a reader comes along and reads the material which is written in a chronological order, and then their interest is piqued and they want to read more from the Carter or Fitzgerald source or other sources and draw their own conclusions about Osho's involvement or lack of involvement in the plot, and what led the law enforcement in their investigations - all the power to them. Cirt (talk) 14:53, 21 November 2007 (UTC).
  • I still think this "electrical effect" sentence in the article is just plain silly. It adds no real information, and just sounds funny and awkward. I think it should be removed. Cirt (talk) 14:58, 21 November 2007 (UTC).

Sarin

By all accounts, sarin is a chemical weapon (a nerve gas), not a biological weapon; hence I've deleted, for now, the references describing this incident and the Tokyo subway attack as the "only two" bioterror incidents. -- Jayen466 18:10, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Planning section

"Osho's followers had previously moved into the city of Antelope, Oregon in Wasco County, and had taken over political control, establishing a main presence at the Big Muddy Ranch, which was legally incorporated as the city of Rajneeshpuram.[6][7] The organization sought to gain political control over the rest of Wasco County by influencing the November 1984 county election." Could you double-check your sources there? This sounds a bit as though Rajneeshees had first moved into Antelope, taken control there, and then moved to the Big Muddy Ranch. What happened was, IIRC, that they bought the Big Muddy Ranch for $6 million, but soon ran into problems with zoning and construction permits, which prevented their erecting buildings on their land. I believe it was at that point that they started buying up empty houses in Antelope, until they actually represented the majority of the (very small, just a few dozen) Antelope population, and started to set up various offices or functions there which they were not permitted to have on their own land. -- Jayen466 23:31, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Removed sentence

Curt, please have a look at the "Salmonella poisoning" section. I took out a sentence that did not seem to belong there -- you may accidentally have inserted it there when trying to source the preceding sentence. If so, the source needs to be reinserted (at present, the first sentences of the section are unsourced). Thanks. -- Jayen466 13:43, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Was not "allowed to leave" United States, but rather was "deported"

According to Rajneesh's biography in Thomson Gale :

Nevertheless, Rajneesh's activities were brought to the attention of the federal government. The religious leader was soon charged with 35 counts of deliberate violations against immigration laws. On a plea bargain, he admitted his guilt in two of the charges and was deported back to his native India in 1985.

This is not the same as being "allowed to leave the United States" and if acceptable sources say he was "deported" then that should be present in the article. Cirt (talk) 17:32, 22 November 2007 (UTC).

Here is the wording in Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology :

The authorities were never able to connect him with crimes on the ranch, but he was found guilty of immigration violation and conspiracy to evade visa regulations (charges his followers claimed were entirely bogus). He was fined $400,000, given a suspended prison sentence of ten years, and ordered to leave the United States for a minimum of five years.

  • Staff (2001). "Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh". Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, 5th ed. Gale Group. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

Cirt (talk) 17:39, 22 November 2007 (UTC).

Here is the wording of his being "deported", in Newsmakers 1990 :

Rajneesh arranged a plea bargain and was deported as a result. After being rejected from 21 other countries, Rajneesh settled again in Poona. He had changed his name in 1988 from "Bhagwan," which is a deity's title in Hindi, to "Osho," a Buddhist term meaning "On whom the heavens shower flowers."

  • Staff (1990). "Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh". Newsmakers 1990. Gale Research. pp. Issue 2. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

Cirt (talk) 17:43, 22 November 2007 (UTC).

I assume you posted this in error on the Osho talk page, since the wording it relates to is here (I was just going to move it here). If you meant it to be on both pages, please rvt (note though that this wording is not present in the Osho article). Having gotten this out of the way, the wording "allowed" is present in Carter, marked as a quote, leading me to assume that this was the official wording of the verdict. Carter was very close to events at the time and researched this more thoroughly than anyone else (have a look at the citations listed in his book), and so I believe that in general, his account should be given preference in such matters of detail over accounts published 15 or 20 years after the event. Cheers, -- Jayen466 17:51, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Here is the wording of his being "deported", in Almanac of Famous People :

Cult leader known for preaching blend of Eastern religion, pop psychology, free love; deported from US, 1985, for immigration violations.

  • Staff (2007). "Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh". Almanac of Famous People, 9th ed. Thomson Gale. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

Cirt (talk) 17:53, 22 November 2007 (UTC).

Osho may have been both "allowed" to leave the United States, and "deported" as well. And no, just because some sources were written after others, does not give them any less credibility. The fact that multiple biographical articles in other encyclopedias about Osho contradict Carter should either be noted in the article, or simply used instead of the Carter source. Cirt (talk) 18:02, 22 November 2007 (UTC).

Here is the "deportation" of Rajneesh, as per a Forbes article from 1991 :

Rancho Rajneesh collapsed following the deportation of the guru to India in 1985 and the subsequent guilty pleas of top lieutenants on charges including arson, attempted murder, wiretapping and immigration fraud. Several Rajneeshee leaders are wanted for conspiracy to murder a U.S. Attorney. Rajneesh died in India last year.

  • Stern, Richard L. (June 24, 1991). "Bhagwan Washington? (Dennis Washington's purchase of ranch owned by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)". Forbes. 147 (13). {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

Cirt (talk) 18:10, 22 November 2007 (UTC).

I just checked FitzGerald. She also does not use the word "deported"; her wording is "He received a ten-year suspended prison sentence, and agreed to pay four hundred thousand dollars in fines and prosecution costs, to leave the country within five days, and not to come back for at least five years without the explicit permission of the United States Attorney General." (The New Yorker Sept 29. 1986, page 111). I think that may be technically different from being deported, since in deportation there is to my knowledge no question of the deportee "agreeing" to anything, but I don't know, so I will have to look further into this. Fox (2002) btw also has "deported". Cheers, Jayen466 18:13, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Okay, so on the one hand we have two sources saying he agreed to leave the United States (though they do not say he was not deported, they simply don't mention it) and then we have these, that do say he was "deported" :

  1. "Acharya Rajneesh". Contemporary Authors Online. Thomson Gale. September 5, 2003. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  2. Staff (2001). "Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh". Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, 5th ed. Gale Group. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  3. Staff (1990). "Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh". Newsmakers 1990. Gale Research. pp. Issue 2. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  4. Staff (2007). "Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh". Almanac of Famous People, 9th ed. Thomson Gale. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  5. Stern, Richard L. (June 24, 1991). "Bhagwan Washington? (Dennis Washington's purchase of ranch owned by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)". Forbes. 147 (13). {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

Are you saying that they are all wrong? Cirt (talk) 18:16, 22 November 2007 (UTC).

Curt, I am simply drawing your attention to a discrepancy. I don't believe you have access to the Carter, so I'll give you the complete quote here:
"He was fined $400,000, given a ten-year suspended sentence, "allowed" to depart from the country voluntarily, and placed on probation for five years. An effect of this arrangement is that he is ineligible to reenter the United States for five years from the date of entering the plea."
The wording in the September 29 1986 issue of The New Yorker was: "He received a ten-year suspended prison sentence, and agreed to pay four hundred thousand dollars in fines and prosecution costs, to leave the country within five days, and not to come back for at least five years without the explicit permission of the United States Attorney General."
So in this case, yes, I believe it is possible that the other publications are wrong, simply because we have two extremely reputable, well-researched, temporally and physically close-to-the-event secondary sources substantially agreeing with each other, and contradicting various tertiary sources compiled years later. Frances FitzGerald is a Pulitzer prize winner, The New Yorker's fact checking department is legendary and unparalleled in the history of journalism, and Carter was an American sociologist from a reputable university who I believe spent more time researching Rajneeshpuram than any other scholar anywhere in the world. Compared to that, the "Encyclopaedia of Occultism and Parapsychology" or the "Almanac of Famous People" simply don't cut the mustard. -- Jayen466 19:09, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
  • I am sorry, but I have to disagree with you here. Contemporary Authors Online, Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, Newsmakers 1990, Almanac of Famous People and Forbes are all reliable sources. We have no idea why the Carter and FitzGerald sources did not use the word "deported" to describe Osho's deportation from the United States for immigration fraud, but that does not mean that he was not deported by the United States government. In any event, the current wording in the article is fine, the language is attributed to the respective sources, with proper cites given. The readers can find those sources and read it for themselves. Cirt (talk) 19:13, 22 November 2007 (UTC).
    • Update: I have found at least (30) or more sources that also use the wording "deported" to describe Osho's deportation from the United States for immigration fraud. I will list them all here for you later. Until then, the current wording attributing the "deportation" to the various sources is fine. But after I list all the various other tens of reliable sources that describe Osho's "deportation" from the United States for immigration fraud, I think we will have to discuss actually simply wording it as a "deporation" in the article itself. We can cite 30 or more sources next to the sentence if you like. We'll discuss this later. Ta ta for now. Cirt (talk) 19:15, 22 November 2007 (UTC).
      • Carter refers to a "bargain arrangement" in the preceding sentence, FitzGerald refers to Osho's lawyers "cutting a deal" with the US Attorney's Office in the preceding sentence. What they describe, therefore, are simply the terms of the plea bargain. These included Osho's undertaking to leave the country, which he did the same day that he entered his plea, i.e. November 14 1986 (FitzGerald, p.112 The New Yorker 9/29/86 and p. 365 Cities on a Hill). This means that no deportation procedure was ever initiated; there simply would not have been time for one. Likewise, FWIW, the answers.com biography has: "He pled guilty with the understanding that he would be allowed to leave the country." Cheers, -- Jayen466 19:33, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Government sources also describe Osho (AKA Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh) as "deported" and not simply "allowed to leave"

Bolding is emphasis added to quotes :

  1. Staff (2007). "Oregon History: Chronology - 1952 to 2002". Oregon Blue Book. Directory and Fact Book compiled by the Oregon State Archives. Retrieved 2007-11-22. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
    "1985 - Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh deported and fined $400,000"
  2. Staff. "Wasco County History". Oregon Historical County Records Guide. Oregon State Archives. Retrieved 2007-11-22. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
    "The Bhagwan was indicted on federal immigration charges and deported to India."
  3. Staff (September 25, 2006). "Leadership, Director, Office of Policy and Planning, Joseph R. Greene". U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE. Retrieved 2007-11-22. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
    "In 1984, Mr. Greene was detailed to the Portland, Oregon district office to supervise the criminal investigation of the Indian guru, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, whose cult had taken over a small town in Central Oregon. This investigation, which began in 1981, resulted in the criminal convictions and deportations of the guru and many of his principle followers."

"Not to worry"

There is an ambiguity in our sentence,

He claimed that Sheela said "she had talked with Bhagwan about the plot to decrease voter turnout in The Dalles by making people sick. Sheela said that Bhagwan commented that it was best not to hurt people, but if a few died not to worry."

The ambiguity lies in who said "not to worry", Sheela or Bhagwan. There is another version of these events on page 30 of Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War. This describes that Sheela played doubters a tape to "prove" that Bhagwan would be fine with poisonings:

"If it was necessary to do things to preserve (the Bhagwan's) vision, then do it," KD reported the guru as saying on the muffled tape. Sheela had interpreted this to mean that killing people in the name of the guru was fine. If a few people had to die so that the Bhagwan's message could prevail, the disciples were "not to worry," Sheela told doubters at the meeting.

This source clearly attributes the words "not to worry" to Sheela, and not to Bhagwan. I wonder if there is an elegant way we could reflect this in our text, and remove this ambiguity.

We also now have rather a lot of statements that "most sannyasins" believed that Osho knew about or condoned Sheela's actions. I would like to point out that there are equally reputable statements to the contrary in the literature, e.g. FitzGerald, p. 378,

"They (sannyasins) also believed that they themselves would never have done violence to anyone on Sheela's orders. The open question was how many of them would have committed crimes if they thought the guru wanted them to. For most of them this was a nonquestion, as they believed Rajneesh incapable of doing, or willing, violence against another person.

However, rather than adding counterbalancing statements of this sort, I think the article would benefit more from removing some of the srecently added statements to the opposite effect, to restore balance. Would appreciate your thoughts on this. -- Jayen466 21:58, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

  • Again, we have multiple statements from secondary sources that show that many of the Guru's followers believed that he knew well in advance about the planning of these criminal acts. I think it would be better to add counterbalance, rather than to remove anything. Cheers, Cirt (talk) 23:43, 22 November 2007 (UTC).
    • Thanks for the changes. These statements about "criminal activities" are very general statements though, and should not be deemed to imply that all these crimes were the same, or that people thought all these various crimes were equally likely to have been committed with Osho's knowledge and consent. For example, there is a great deal of difference between a marriage entered into in order to circumvent immigration restrictions, and the attempted murder of Osho's own physician. It is far easier to believe that Osho might have condoned the former than it is to believe he would have advocated the latter, given that he remained very close to his physician for the rest of his life. Likewise, while arranged marriages might have been compatible with his own statements to the effect that every human being should have the right to live in any country they please, the same cannot be said for attempted murder for cheap political ends. Osho spent a lifetime speaking about the sanctity of every human life. This is also what comes out in the FitzGerald quote; the other cites lack this differentiation, treating wiretapping, immigration violations, poisoning and murder as though they were all the same thing. Cheers, -- Jayen466 01:18, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
      • That is simply what is there in the secondary sources. I don't think we should get into the details of each of the various multitudes of different crimes associated with Osho and his followers in this article. If you want to explain the whys and hows and the explanations and defenses behind each one, I suggest you start a separate article for that, with secondary sources of course, and write about it there and link to the new article from here. Rajneeshee sham marriages, Rajneeshee wiretapping in Oregon, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh immigration fraud and deportation - there are plenty of sources for all of those various articles - and I may create some of them at a later date, but on this particular article, we should just give them the brief mention that they already have in the article. Cheers, Cirt (talk) 05:02, 23 November 2007 (UTC).

Reliability of sources?

The following passage seems questionable to me: "Nuclear Terrorism After 9/11 and Studies in Conflict & Terrorism cite a report which suggests that Osho had initially vetoed the idea of using Salmonella typhi instead of Salmonella typhimurium.[32][33] Salmonella typhi causes typhoid fever, and the report stated that Osho had indicated that although a few fatalities would have been acceptable, the end goal was only to incapacitate people in order to influence voter turnout."

Again, these two sources do not pretend to be authoritative, in-depth studies of this incident, and one of them in fact cites the other as a reference for this statement. Parachini directs his readers to the much more authoritative Carus chapter in Tucker for a more complete account of this case (footnote 4), and Carus writing in Tucker states clearly on page 125:

No information exists in the available records about why Puna decided not to use Salmonella typhi.

He also makes it clear that there was no evidence in the FBI testimony files that would confirm that Rajneesh was involved in the planning of these incidents.

While I can understand the idea to have as many damning statements in the article as we can find, we should not disregard the reliability of sources altogether, and emend less reputable sources where they are in blatant contradiction to the more authoritative ones. -- Jayen466 14:09, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

  • Actually, both sources are authoritative secondary works on the subject. Methinks you are depending too much on only (2) sources (FitzGerald and Carter), when both of them mistakenly omitted the fact that Rajneesh was deported from the United States, which is acknowledged on a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement website, and in at least (30) or so other secondary sources. Perhaps we should instead be questioning the "reliability" of all of the sentences in the article cited to these 2 sources ? Cirt (talk) 14:17, 23 November 2007 (UTC).

No, I am pointing out that this statment about Rajneesh objecting to the use of S. typhi

  • is only present in Parachini (since the other text cites Parachini as its source for it),
  • that Parachini gives no source for the statement,
  • that Parachini himself refers his readers to Carus in Tucker for a thorough account of the incident, and
  • that Parachini's statement is roundly contradicted by Carus, who says that "No information exists in the available records about why Puna decided not to use Salmonella typhi." and that there is no evidence in the testimony confirming Rajneesh's involvement in planning.

I did not bring FitzGerald or Carter in at all. :-) Note also that Parachini does not "cite a report", as our article says, he simply states this without giving a source (p.390). -- Jayen466 14:29, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

  • I assumed good faith re: your quote: "No information exists in the available records about why Puna decided not to use Salmonella typhi." from above, and added it into that section of the article. Hopefully that rectifies this issue for you. Cheers, Cirt (talk) 14:31, 23 November 2007 (UTC).
    • I appreciate the gesture, but it will not do. We still have an invented "report" in the text that we say Parachini "cited", and this is no way to write an article. The reader will not know whether they are coming or going with all these contradictory claims. My feeling is that the Parachini quote should simply go, it is flatly contradicted by what he himself acknowledges as the superior source. -- Jayen466 14:41, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
      • Sorry, but I disagree with you. In order for a source to be reliable on Wikipedia, we do not have to pick apart its sources, simply the reliability of the work itself. And the Parachini source itself is reliable as a secondary source, and the statement in the article is attributed to Parachini and not simply given off on its own. Cirt (talk) 14:43, 23 November 2007 (UTC).
  • Jayen466 : - I respectfully request that you revert your last edit. Removing two sourced citations (not to mention creating a citation error in the references section in the process) when both sources are attributed to the sources within the sentence, and both sources are reliable sources, is an inappropriate action here. Cirt (talk) 22:18, 23 November 2007 (UTC).
Hi Curt, I appreciate you're asking me to do this, and I apologise for causing the citation error; this has now been fixed. Now, please bear with me here, for I have a reason for cutting the passage.
First, the wording that was present said that both the named studies "mentioned a report". This is factually incorrect. I don't know if you have the Parachini to hand; I do, and it makes no reference whatsoever to any third-party report. Such footnotes as are present – there are only two, and the whole account of the case covers less than a page in the document – refer to the Carus study contained in Tucker: Toxic Terror. Frost does mention a report, but his footnote in fact refers to Parachini. Since Parachini does not mention any such report, the "report" mentioned in Frost clearly is Parachini. (The Frost text, by the way, is a published M.A. thesis, so just on these grounds it does not compare to the work of authorities in this field like Carter or Carus.)
Quite apart from this inaccuracy in the wording, the passage given in Parachini makes an exceptional claim, which invokes WP:REDFLAG:
Exceptional claims should be supported by multiple high quality reliable sources. This includes statements likely to surprise the reader and claims that are contradicted by the prevailing view in the relevant academic community. Editors should be especially careful with conspiracy theories and with biographical material that seems out of character, embarrassing, controversial, or against the interests of a living person. Such claims should only be included when there is a consensus that the sources are indisputably reliable.
A single mention by a reputable author in a work which gives only a very superficial summary of this case, plus one citation of it in a published M.A. thesis, are not enough. In particular not, as this passage is indeed contradicted by the prevailing academic view. It is even expressly contradicted in the one source it cites for its brief presentation of the Rajneeshee case, namely Carus: "No information exists in the available records about why Puja decided not to use Salmonella typhi." The matter of S. typhi is discussed at some length by Carus, Rajneesh's name is not mentioned.
Okay, you may say, perhaps Carus had limited access to sources, and Parachini had more access (even though the only source Parachini quotes is Carus). So let's look at who Carus is and what his study is based on. First of all, Carus is a Senior Research Professor working at the National Defense University (his credentials are here. His review of the available documentation was extensive; it included personal interviews with investigators, prosecutors, and various other government officials. He reviewed all the available court records and testimony at length, and had his article checked by other experts in the field, including Carter (whom he describes as having authored the "best scholarly book on Rajneeshpuram"). All this is detailed on pages 116 and 117 of Tucker. Now, if after such a detailed study, this Professor feels qualified to state categorically that "No information exists in the available records about why Puja decided not to use Salmonella typhi" then I think we should believe him.
I also note that Carus specifically states, on page 115, that "the case is often cited in the terrorism literature, but the accounts are usually inaccurate and always incomplete." We should take this on board and be wary of citing from this literature, restricting ourselves to matters in which there is broad consensus, eschewing citations of exceptional claims. I already fixed a chronological error today, where we stated – quite wrongly – that the Share-A-Home predated the salmonella poisoning cases. This would not have happened if we had sourced this to Carter or Carus – Carter has the actual complete set of dates of how many homeless people arrived when, day by day (pages 216–217), and Carus too points out on page 135 that according to testimony, part of the reason why the leadership de-emphasized the salmonella project was that the Share-A-Home project began to get going and stretched the cult leadership's resources thin. This is exactly the opposite of what our article said, and the reason is the use of watered-down sources.
So, unless you can find other, authoritative academic sources, not just a minor write-up in a generic terrorism study, that back up Parachini's claim – which I think is extremely unlikely, given Carter's and Carus' results – then please kindly agree that the article is more objective and responsible without it. Kind regards, -- Jayen466 23:21, 23 November 2007 (UTC)


    • I have added the full quote from the book Nuclear Terrorism After 9/11, and attributed the quote to the book itself DIFF. In this manner we are not making any inferences, simply including a quote from the book. The quote itself is verifiable back to the book. My request for you to revert your edit that removed two sources still stands, but I will also await for comment from previously uninvolved editors, below. Cirt (talk) 22:47, 23 November 2007 (UTC).
    • I think the current representation in the article, using the direct quote from the book Nuclear Terrorism After 9/11, is acceptable here instead of the previous text which you had removed. I will go ahead and add back in that Carus statement. Cirt (talk) 23:28, 23 November 2007 (UTC).
      • I will agree to disagree with you on this, and leave this information out for the time being. I have removed the Request for Comment subsection. Cirt (talk) 00:29, 24 November 2007 (UTC).

Confirmation of status for GA review

Hi, your delinquent GA reviewer here. Perhaps luckily for the article, I was occupied with other duties for too long a time to get to the review in an expedient fashion. I just want to confirm that the RFC truly is agreed to be finished, and that the article is stable enough for review. Please let me know, and I'll get to it right away. Regards, VanTucky talk 20:49, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

  • Article is Stable -- There have been no edits to the article since November 27, so it's quite stable. As for the non-existent RFC, to clarify, yes, there was an issue, but I had voluntarily withdrawn the RFC, and changed the article text in-line with the other editor's suggestions, so that issue was resolved. Cirt (talk) 23:03, 12 December 2007 (UTC).

Successful GA nomination

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

Needless to say, this is review long overdue. Accordingly, I'll keep it short and to the point.

  1. Is it reasonably well written?
    A. Prose quality:
    B. MoS compliance:
    Well done.
  2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?
    A. References to sources:
    B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:
    Far exceeds the minimum GA standard for inline citations.
    C. No original research:
  3. Is it broad in its coverage?
    A. Major aspects:
    B. Focused:
  4. Is it neutral?
    Fair representation without bias:
  5. Is it stable?
    No edit wars, etc:
  6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
    A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:
    B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:
  7. Overall:
    Pass or Fail:
    Thanks for your patience, and congratulations! VanTucky talk 02:17, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Serovar

I removed the italics from the serovar. Left it when it is used as the specific epithet. I think this is standard. (Amaltheus (talk) 05:48, 2 January 2008 (UTC))

Sheela

Cirt, if it's of interest to you, Sheela now runs a nursing home in Switzerland: http://www.matrusaden.ch/ Puja I don't know anything about. Jayen466 00:29, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that has been reported in a couple secondary sources, I'll add it soon. Cirt (talk) 00:34, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

thoughts about reorganization etc.

I'll be making more than a few edits here... as I see things that look a bit out of place... for example (this may be confusing... sorry):

  • the para beginning "According to a 1994 study published in the journal Sociology of Religion..." doesn't seem to fit in the "Investigation" section. It does, however, seem to fit with a later para, which in turn looks like it should be broken up into two paras (or one section split off and added to another). The para beginning "Federal and state investigators requested ..." seems to cover two topics: ideas about the execution of the terrorist act, and ideas about its perpetrators. There is in my mind a logical break with the section that begins "A 1999 empirical analysis..". These two things do not seem to belong together, BUT the bit about "According to a 1994 study" seems to fit in with the latter. Do you see what I mean? Morover, there is a 7-year hiatus between the sannyasins initial coments that no one believed the Bhagwan could do violence, and "City on a Hill" remarks saying that many of them thought him complicit in one way or another. is that time gap significant? Ling.Nut (talk) 07:03, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Re the 7-year hiatus: There is no hiatus really, except that involved in publishing the academic study by Latkin ("Feelings after the Fall"). The data for this study were collected in 1985 and 1986. Frances FitzGerald's "Cities on a Hill" account first appeared in The New Yorker in September 1986, based on her several visits to Rajneeshpuram over the previous years. (The statement that sannyasins believed Osho incapable of willing violence was hers.)
The actual question posed in the Latkin survey (which is at the bottom of the statement that "most sannyasins indicated that they believed he knew about Ma Anand Sheela's illegal activities") was: "I'm sure Bhagwan didn't know about what Sheela was doing", with a 5-point scale from "Strongly Agree" to "Strongly Disagree". Results were
  • Strongly agree – 3
  • Agree - 8
  • Don't know – 47
  • Disagree – 25
  • Strongly disagree – 18
Out of a sample of 101, 43 were not sure he was unaware of "what Sheela was doing", 47 felt they couldn't say, and 11 were sure he hadn't known.
The potential weaknesses of the question are that –
  • it asked respondents if they were "sure",
  • it did not specifically refer to any particular crime. From the respondents' view, it could equally refer to Sheela's dictatorial leadership style within the commune; her management decisions in the day-to-day running of the commune; her most serious crime, i.e. the attempt to murder Osho's physician (I don't actually think anyone believes that Osho was aware of this – he stayed close to the man to the day he died); her bugging his room (ditto); the wiretapping of phone lines (?), etc.
I think that may go some way to explaining the difference between Latkin's and FitzGerald's statements.
According to a recent Australian newspaper article featuring an interview with Catherine Jane Stork (Shanti Bhadra), "The Bhagwan would later blame Sheela for the madness that engulfed the commune, but Stork is adamant that he himself orchestrated many events in his detailed daily briefings. It was the Bhagwan who devised or approved various cynical schemes to evade US law: sham marriages enabled his followers to get US residency, despite his repudiation of marriage; court actions were launched to stymie investigations into the commune's immigration and tax affairs; Sheela's provocative media appearances, in which she abused her interviewers and made tasteless jokes, ratcheted up the tension." So according to Stork, he knew about the sham marriages, about the court actions, and encouraged Sheela to be provocative; there is, to me, a notable absence in what Stork says of any reference to the various poisonings, or the murder attempt. Jayen466 12:32, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
  • I suspect the sentences "All but one of the restaurants affected went out of business" and even more importantly "The incident was the single largest bioterrorist attack in United States history" might belong in the WP:LEDE. Ling.Nut (talk) 07:05, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Nitpick: The term "sannyasins" is used once in a photo caption and once in a direct quote within the body text. Are all the members of this group considered sannyasins? From reading the article sannyasin, it seems this is not simply a term that is interchangeable with members of Osho's group... Does this need to explained somewhere?
  • Nitpick: ... Sheela said "she had talked with Bhagwan about the plot to decrease voter turnout in The Dalles by making people sick. Sheela said that Bhagwan commented that it was best not to hurt people, but if a few died not to worry." Here again Bhagwan and Osha are used interchangeably, which is of course correct (strictly speaking), but is a little confusing. But there are different schools of thought about how to treat contents of a direct quote. You could replace each instance of Bhagwan with Osha in square brackets (i.e., "[Osha]"). Alternatively you could follow the first instance of bhagwan with Osha in square bracckets "Bhagwan [that is, Osha]". You be the judge. Ling.Nut (talk) 07:07, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Redundant: "but initially thought it to be the result of poor food handling" and "Initially, investigators came to the conclusion that the outbreak had been due to poor personal hygiene". Ling.Nut (talk) 07:16, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Erm. Um. I'm really up in the air about the para beginning "The mayor of Rajneeshpuram, David Berry Knapp ...". Would that be considered a part of the investigation, or (since it came out during the trial) a part of the prosecution? More to the point, do events that took place during the trial belong under Investigation or prosecuation? Ling.Nut (talk) 07:28, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
  • erm, um. The sentences beginning with "Investigators also believed that similar attacks.." also don't quite seem to fit where they presently are, but at this moment I can't find a more appropriate location... maybe they should be left there for lack of a better place (?). I dunno. Ling.Nut (talk) 07:38, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

New-born

Some more details on the new-born victim that would be worth including: Carter has "... an infant born two days after his mother's infection survived only after "emergency, continuous and specialized care". He was initially given a 5 percent chance of survival." Jayen466 10:59, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Page number/full cite in case that url doesn't work at some point? Cirt (talk) 11:03, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Nevermind, it appears to be Page 224 from the (1990) ed., ISBN 0521385547. Cirt (talk) 11:05, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Yep, sorry. Page 224 it is. Jayen466 11:08, 14 March 2008 (UTC)


... did not have the desired effect on the election

The sentence "The Rajneeshees eventually withdrew their candidate from the November 1984 ballot, and the salmonella poisoning did not have the desired effect on the election" does not quite hit the mark. As we state elsewhere in the article, the two poisonings appear to have been test runs (Carter pp. 225–226); as such they were not meant to affect the election, but were meant to establish feasibility. The commune decided on October 25 to boycott the election, following the emergency changes in voter registration (initiated by secretary of state Norma Paulus, according to Carter, p. 220–221) that ensured that the street people would not be certified to vote, rendering the whole issue moot (and probably saving The Dalles from another attack nearer election day). Carter quotes a ranch resident who claimed he ran a computer simulation of the election; even with the street people voting, they thought they would be 700 votes shy of winning; another salmonella attack was considered a potential means to incapacitate the balance (p. 226). Jayen466 13:44, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, will take a look at that. (There are other sources besides Carter, ya know. :) j/k) Cirt (talk) 13:47, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
The current wording is supported by the WP:RS/WP:V secondary source, cited at the end of the sentence, Terrorism on American Soil, (McCann), Page 156 and Page 158. Cirt (talk) 13:52, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Great, that's fixed that. Jayen466 13:56, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
 Done, nice. Cirt (talk) 13:57, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Garrett

I am not impressed with the [http://www.amazon.com/Betrayal-Trust-Collapse-Global-Public/dp/0786884401/ref=si3_rdr_bb_product Garrett] as an encyclopedic source. The narrative seems unreliable; the text states e.g. the salmonella were placed on the eve of the county election (!). That might sound logical, but is not what happened. The cover says, "Reads like a Robert Ludlum thriller" ... Jayen466 18:44, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Charges/allegations: drat it, you're right, I thought so too, but Gordon wrote "charges" and I left it. Better now. Jayen466 01:46, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
Is there a specific place where the Garrett source is currently used that you take issue with? Cirt (talk) 02:43, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
Still looking things up, please bear with me. I changed the supply source for the Typhimurium, both Carus and Miller are positive it came from VWR Scientific rather than ATCC. (The 172.159.72.212 edits are mine, WP had logged me out.) Jayen466 15:27, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Water system

Hi Cirt, re the water system -- Carus (Bioterrorism and Biocrimes) actually describes an attempt that was made (not just planned) to poison the water system: so this was not just planned, but executed (page 57). Flaccus has "The cult members had planned to contaminate The Dalles' water supply." but does not refer to any timing to coincide with Election Day (so then we would run afoul of WP:SYN). Carter has "this technique" (referring to the salmonella poisoning incidents that had occurred) "was to be used if the election appeared to be heading for a close race" as well as a reference to an election "wild card" (p. 225–226). So I think the version I had was accurate. Another thing, the wording I found in Phyllis Entis was "turning away a busload of the cult's followers, saying that they would have to return later and submit to an examination of their qualifications to register to vote" (p. 244). I couldn't find the wording "enforcing regulations and requesting that all new voters submit their qualifications to register to vote". Are you sure you have this from Entis? Cheers, Jayen466 23:55, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I will check on this stuff mentioned above. Would be worthwhile to expand on the attempts to poison the water supply, from info from the above-mentioned sources. Cirt (talk) 23:59, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Re the removed/repositioned cites: This was a result of the discussion with SandyGeorgia (talk · contribs) on the FA nomination page. Less of an issue to me now given that the article has since achieved FA. Jayen466 00:01, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for pointing that out, might be worthwhile to work those cites back in, in other places in the article. Cirt (talk) 00:03, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
They could also go in Further Reading, if you think they are noteworthy. Doesn't have to be a cite if the existing cite(s) already cover(s) all the sentence content; less superscript numbers looks cleaner and easier to read. Jayen466 00:07, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Okay, I will look into that. Cirt (talk) 00:09, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Sociological commentary

This type of info is better suited for articles like Rajneeshpuram, or Osho movement, both articles need lots of work, and that info is more relevant to them. Let's keep any "sociological commentary" to that which directly discusses the bioterror attacks themselves, and their impact on society. Cirt (talk) 20:46, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, you're right actually; that commentary is more generic. He does not refer to this attack specifically in the book, only to various unspecified criminal actions committed by leaders of the group (with a pointer to other literature). Will keep it earmarked for Rajneeshpuram when that article has matured a bit. Jayen466 21:42, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Okay, well feel free to work on those above 2 articles, they both need lots of work. Cirt (talk) 21:44, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

"Clearly, "Unambiguously" ...

No descriptive word is necessary here ([4], [5]). That gets into POV interpretation. It is simply enough to present factually what was said by the author. Cirt (talk) 03:21, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Clean up needed

The sections discussing the planning and execution of the attack eschew chronological order and frequently overlap. They require a total rewrite and/or the inclusion of a brief graphical timeline for clarity. ˉˉanetode╦╩ 20:28, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

The inclusion of a graphical timeline for clarity is a good idea, I like it. I also think some of the changes made in this edit are improvements - I agree with the change of "Osho" to "Rajneesh" throughout the article, to match the naming convention of the time period and in the majority of the secondary sources.
However I must say that the edit also seems to have removed some key sentences and changed phrasing on a few to the detriment of the article. The Salmonella poisoning subsection is appropriate, the prior subsection refers to the planning, this subsection describes just what the subsection title says it does, the poisoning event. The {{ambiguous}} is not needed and should be removed - this information is backed up to a very reliable secondary source. The outbreak occurred in two waves: from September 9 to September 18, 1984, and from September 19 to October 10, 1984.<ref name="torok" /> - this sentence should not have been removed, and it should be put back into the article in that location. The primary delivery tactic involved one member concealing a plastic bag containing a light brown liquid with the salmonella bacteria, and either spreading it over the food at a salad bar, or pouring its contents into salad dressing. - The wording of this sentence was changed entirely, such that the meaning of the sentence itself is changed as well. This prior wording should be restored. In one instance "Symptoms" was changed to "Reported symptoms of infection" - "Symptoms" works fine here and the more complex phrasing is not needed. , and the salmonella poisoning did not affect the outcome of the election. - this phrase was removed from a sentence - it should be restored. Some residents feared further attacks and would not go out alone. was changed to Some residents would not go out alone our of fear of further attacks. - the change replaced the second "out" with "our", this seems to be a typo. Most of the other changes look fine and are positive improvements to the article. Cirt (talk) 21:20, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for reviewing the changes. I'd like to explain a few details:
  • {{ambiguous}} was added to this sentence, "Approximately twelve people were involved in the plots to employ biological agents and at least eleven were involved in the planning process." There's no clear differentiation between the two halves of the sentence. The reader is left wondering (or at least I was), which is it? 11 or 12? If twelve people were involved in the execution of the terrorist plot while only eleven were in on the planning phase, then the wording should be clarified. Also, were these eleven people a subset of the twelve? scratch that, on second read it's clear as day
  • "The outbreak occurred in two waves..." - This sentence was redundant, the timeframe had already been established earlier in the paragraph.
  • The change to the "primary delivery tactic" sentence was an attempt at compacting info. I've no objections to changing it back
  • "Reported symptoms included..." meant to resolve a minor ambiguity: Were these general symptoms of salmonella infection or the documentation of specific instances? Again, I've no objection to reverting back.
  • "and salmonella posioning did not affect the outcome of the election" is doubly redundant, it creates a run-on sentences and repeats a previous sentence that plainly states the election results.
  • The "our" is indeed a typo ;)
I'll go ahead and revert some of the contested changes and start work on a draft timeline. Cheers, ˉˉanetode╦╩ 21:49, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
  • {{ambiguous}} - yes I believe this refers to execution versus planning, will make this a bit more clear after double checking the research.
  • "The outbreak occurred in two waves..." - This sentence should be restored, but perhaps earlier up in the same subsection, it helps to frame the material.
  • The change to the "primary delivery tactic" sentence was an attempt at compacting info. I've no objections to changing it back - okay please do, thanks.
  • "Reported symptoms included..." meant to resolve a minor ambiguity: Were these general symptoms of salmonella infection or the documentation of specific instances? Again, I've no objection to reverting back. - okay please do, in this instance I think the prior wording is more appropriate.
  • "and salmonella posioning did not affect the outcome of the election" is doubly redundant, it creates a run-on sentences and repeats a previous sentence that plainly states the election results. - However without this phrasing, the meaning is inferred, rather than stated. This phrase is necessary to emphasize that the intended affect of their plot actually failed.
  • The "our" is indeed a typo ;) - ah okay thanks.
Cirt (talk) 21:55, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
"The outbreak occured in two waves..." would definitely work earlier on, though I'd like to leave that up to you. I've added "thus rendering the terrorist plot unsuccessful" to make sure nothing is inferred. My edits are superficial, please feel free to to change back whatever you think doesn't work. I'd like to give the rest of the article a pass or two later as the text seems fragmented at times. ˉˉanetode╦╩ 22:10, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

"Bad cite" ?

[6] - Redheylin (talk · contribs) has failed to explain why this source does not satisfy WP:RS. This article has been through WP:DYK, reviewed and passed as a Good Article, had a peer review, and was successfully promoted as a Featured Article. Cirt (talk) 12:51, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

"On the other hand"

[7] - edits like these are inappropriate, and push a POV. Let's just state the facts. Cirt (talk) 12:56, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Death in the Pot

Removed, as the source did not appear to add any new info. Cirt (talk) 02:03, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Quote sourced to different cite

[8] = this edit by Rumiton (talk · contribs) is inappropriate, as it removed sourced info and added a cite to the end of a sentence and could lead to the implication that the quoted text was backed up to that cite. Cirt (talk) 13:45, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry if the cite didn't match, but the sentence I removed just seemed repetitive. Rumiton (talk) 14:22, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
Not repetitive, one is a source saying something, the other is a quote from one individual that had direct experience related to the incident. Cirt (talk) 14:26, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

But...

But... = this sort of wording change is not NPOV. Best to just keep it to matter-of-fact statements. Cirt (talk) 14:02, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

The change was just meant to be grammatical. Quoting one opinion, then an entirely different (opposite) one, is normally separated by "but." I don't think the word gives excess weight to either opinion. Rumiton (talk) 14:25, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
The use of "but..." in this fashion is POV. It does indeed appear to give weight to the POV that is presented after the "but..." Cirt (talk) 14:26, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
I see you have reverted everything I did. Are the above the only contentious parts? I have no POV about this subject, BTW, I would just like to see a less clumsy and better-written article. (Though it is well written on the whole.) Rumiton (talk) 14:38, 4 January 2010 (UTC) I can see ways of getting around the "but" problem". I will think more about it. Rumiton (talk) 14:40, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
If you could suggest an alternative way of improving the wording, without simultaneously introducing POV problems, that would be most appreciated. Cirt (talk) 14:41, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
Still thinking. Rumiton (talk) 03:43, 5 January 2010 (UTC)The first two paragraphs in the Prosecution section I find quite difficult. There seems to be a misplaced set of quote marks, and the ideas seem disjointed. Perhaps some of the sentences could be reworked and incorporated in a new section. "Culpability", perhaps? Rumiton (talk) 04:56, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
No, that particular subsection is already of an appropriate size length. Cirt (talk) 18:03, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Yes, the size is fine, but interviews by researchers to establish culpability outside of the court process seem out of place in a section called Prosecution. Not a big point. Rumiton (talk) 01:15, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
I do not think that one particular paragraph is big enough to warrant its own separate subsection. Cirt (talk) 03:03, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Where did the search box go? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.171.155.245 (talk) 01:05, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

It is still there. :) -- Cirt (talk) 14:46, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Contradiction?

The first sentence of the third paragraph, section "Salmonella poisoning", says, "Local residents suspected that Rajneesh's followers were behind the poisonings, and turned out in droves on election day to prevent the organization from winning any county positions, thus rendering the terrorist plot unsuccessful." However, the third sentence says, "Only 239 of the commune's 7,000 residents voted." Doesn't it contradict the previous statement? Was it "droves" or "only 239"? — Kpalion(talk) 08:45, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

The "droves" (local non-cult residents) and the 239 (Rajneshee commune residents) are two different groups, there is no contradiction 77.247.11.82 (talk) 09:33, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
Agree with above IP assessment. :) -- Cirt (talk) 13:20, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, I must have read the article without enough care. I assumed "commune" referred to a low-level administrative unit within the Wasco County rather than the cult. — Kpalion(talk) 13:45, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
Ah. Nope, it refers to the latter group. :) -- Cirt (talk) 14:21, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Hyperbole?

  • The attack is one of only two confirmed terrorist uses of biological weapons to harm humans.

Are you sure? this document counts more. Moreover, this depends highly on your definition of terrorism versus partisan action -- always a shaky thing to talk about as this depends upon the context of the analyst. You might also want to cross check with the article on Well_poisoning. As I recall, and this is by no means my area of experties, the use of dead carcasses to poison water sources is reasonably common, historically speaking. User A1 (talk) 09:00, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Also incorrect, according to the above document:

  • The Rajneesh group is the only known organization to have cultured its own pathogen for terrorist purpose

User A1 (talk) 09:02, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Finally, bioterror is one of those loaded words that really should be avoided. "Biological attack" would be so much better. I'm not claiming these people were anything but nuts, but it implies a level of organisation that the article suggests just was not there. User A1 (talk) 09:17, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
Also, depending upon your definition, there are early accounts of biological attacks for political reasons in region now the USA. Siege_of_Fort_Pitt#Blankets_with_smallpox User A1 (talk) 09:25, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
Apparently I am still going. [9] makes for interesting (and contradictory to this article) reading, particularly Unit 731, and the bit about Georgi Markov User A1 (talk) 09:34, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

'bioterror attack'. hybeerbole alert! how on earth has this made featured article and the main page with that as a name!? 83.91.89.186 (talk) 12:40, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the previous comments. "Bioterror Attack" makes it sound like the Rajneeshies are affiliated with al Quaida and is really quite inappropriate. --Alan Hartley, a user from Oregon —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.246.173.73 (talk) 13:12, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

This is factual, cited info, as per WP:RS secondary source:
Thank you for your time, -- Cirt (talk) 13:19, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
Consider that a source may not encompass all possible cases -- I have presented dissenting RS, from a military source -- clearly both cannot be right. The possibilities are that (1) I am interpreting this incorrectly, and there is no conflict or (2) there are conflicting sources of information. I am somewhat surprised at "thankyou for your time". This is highly dismissive and does not address the concerns raised. User A1 (talk) 14:59, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
Evidently you doubt that Harvard University Press would publish a reliable source. -- Cirt (talk) 15:02, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
It is possible for a book to be wrong, or incomplete -- these are works by human beings. Have you even read the document above? Please address concerns directly, rather than beating the drum. User A1 (talk) 15:04, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
The document cited above, states, "The first large-scale bioterrorism attack in the United States occurred in 1984." -- Cirt (talk) 15:06, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
Please read my bullet points above, you are not addressing the concerns here. Namely:
  • The Rajneesh group is the only known organization to have cultured its own pathogen for terrorist purpose

and

  • The attack is one of only two confirmed terrorist uses of biological weapons to harm humans.

Neither of which is true. User A1 (talk) 15:10, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Both of which are true. Both of which are backed up to WP:RS secondary sources. -- Cirt (talk) 15:11, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
OK, looking at that document above, on page 12, line 2, it referrers to the Aum Shinrikyo cult which succesfully grew anthracis, and possibly C burnetii. Looking at line 8, it describes how the group used aerosolized biological agents against nine targets. It further descirbes the use of butlinium toxin against the Japanese parlimentary building in Tokyo. adn the wedding of the crown prince of Japan. This is a reliable source, and it disagrees with your other source. Please do not consider books as absolute gold, but part of a larger tapestry of works. User A1 (talk) 15:16, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
  • Relevant quote from cited sources, above:
    • Wheelis, Mark (2006). Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945. Harvard University Press. pp. Pages 284–293, 301–303. ISBN 0674016998. There have been only two confirmed attempts to use BW for terrorist purposes targeting humans: the 1984 use of Salmonella by the Rajneesh cult in Oregon, and the 1990-1995 attempted use of anthrax and botulinum toxin by the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Tokyo. A third incident, the alleged use of a variety of infectious diseases against Native Americans in the Amazon basin during the 1950s and 1960s, is probable but not yet firmly established. A fourth incident, the 2001 anthrax letters in the US, may be bioterrorism or biocriminality, determination of which must await the identification of the perpetrator(s) and motive. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  • Thanks, -- Cirt (talk) 15:19, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Right, so addressing the first point "the only known organisation" is fundamentally wrong, even according to your own source User A1 (talk) 15:21, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Nope. -- Cirt (talk) 15:24, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
OK I am going to leave this -- this is quite insane. Like typing to brick wall. User A1 (talk) 15:24, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Not Terrorism

The Wikipedia article on Terrorism states "Terrorism is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.", that is not what happened here, the article states "The commune leadership planned to sicken and incapacitate voters in The Dalles, where most of the voting public of the county resided, in continuation of their efforts to rig the election.". The article needs to be addressed to reflect this.--Kitchen Knife (talk) 14:36, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

We do not go by what other Wikipedia articles say, rather by WP:RS secondary sources, which say this was bioterror. -- Cirt (talk) 14:39, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
The contradiction between the reality of the situation and what the press called it needs to be pointed out. This by all defintions of Terrorism was not Terrorism it was poltical violence.--Kitchen Knife (talk) 14:43, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
It is pointless to argue semantics while simultaneously disregarding what is stated and how the incident has been characterized in multiple WP:RS secondary sources. -- Cirt (talk) 14:44, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
It isn't about semantics it's about what makes a terrosist act. There is a tendency to characterise all violence committed by non state groups, with a poltical agende as terrorism. It is not about semantics but about the motivation for the actions and how those actions will acheive there aim.--Kitchen Knife (talk) 14:52, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
That is not for you and I to determine, which would be a violation of WP:NOR. That is for WP:RS secondary sources to determine. -- Cirt (talk) 14:53, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
No actually its not. Your sources may be affected by their own opinions on the matter, and it is important to convey information in as neutral a manner as possible. This article is unfortunate for an FA, and should be moved. I am highly surprised that this made FA, particularly in light of the problems with the sources identified in the FA discussion. User A1 (talk) 14:57, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
No, it should not be moved. -- Cirt (talk) 14:58, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
It seems to me that the fact that a source erroneously refers to a direct use of force as terrorism suggests that the source itself is neither neutral nor reliable. I do not mean to say that the source cannot be used at all, but the Wikipedia article need not refer to a non-terrorist act as terrorism merely because a book that is being used as a source for information about the act refers to it as terrorism. Abhayakara (talk) 21:53, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
I would have to dispute Kitchen Knife assertion that this isn't terrorism. Using the definition quoted there was systemic use of terror when the group targeted 10 different restaurants and was planning on infecting the ground water supply. Later in the article it did mention that the town was in fear (terror) of eating at those restaurants. Furthermore, the group also attempted to infect grocery stores, but that was not effective. The latter part of the quote where it speaks to coercion is also presented, where the group is attempting to coerce the political election results. The terrorism article does speak to political coercion as terrorism. Of course the terrorism article also states that there is no standard definition of terrorism, so this discussion is probably mute. Inomyabcs (talk) 23:19, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
Whether the population became scared or not is irrelevant. If the objective was to incapacitate people by any means other than terror then it was not terrorism.--Kitchen Knife (talk) 23:33, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
Kitchen Knife is correct. Terrorism is a tactic. Guerilla warfare is a tactic. Direct use of force is a tactic. Each of them works in a different way. What characterizes terrorism is that it attempts to achieve a result as a result of the terror that it instills. The Rajneeshis were simply trying to incapacitate people, with a callous disregard for their well-being, to keep them from voting.
This was reprehensible, and frightening, even terror-inducing. But the terror was a side-effect of the tactic, rather than a necessary result of the tactic. The necessary result of the tactic was the incapacitation of the populace. This is a direct use of force, not terrorism, however terrifying it must have been for the people of The Dalles who had to go through it.
The reason people are making a fuss about this is that the term "terrorism" is frequently misused, as it is here, to describe any terrifying act of violence. By using the word so broadly, its narrow meaning is obscured, and this makes it easier for misunderstandings to occur. It would be much better not to use the term "terrorism" to describe what happened here, because it doesn't fit the actual meaning of the word. Language does change over time, and there is a certain futility to resisting this change, but the purpose of Wikipedia is to clearly inform its readers, and hence ought to be more careful about the use of terminology than regular people are in their daily discourse. Abhayakara (talk) 01:31, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
Again, this is not a matter for debate among individual Wikipedians to construct their own POV interpretation of history - as that is a violation of WP:NOR. We defer to WP:RS secondary sources. -- Cirt (talk) 03:16, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
I think you should carefully read WP:NPOV. You have one source referring to this as a bioterror attack. We know that it isn't a bioterror attack, because the description of the events does not conform to the generally-accepted meaning of the term "terrorism." This casts doubt on your source. A cursory search on Google shows lots of articles that mention Rajneeshpuram, the salmonella outbreak, and the criminal investigation that followed, but do not mention terrorism. The term "terrorism" does not appear in the list of crimes for which convictions were obtained. All of the articles that do mention terrorism are either copies of this article, or else copies of the original material that you're using as a source. So it's not NPOV to use the term bioterrorism here. You have one source that uses the term; the fact that you have looked no further does not cure the failure to properly weight that source against other available sources that do not agree. See also WP:WTW which specifically mentions "terrorist" as a word to be careful of. Abhayakara (talk) 06:10, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
while it appaers that sources comtemporary to the event usually don't call it terrorism Academic sources call it such in retrospect [10] Weaponbb7 (talk) 06:21, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
Over 350 results for "bioterrorism" and "Rajneesh", in search of books. -- Cirt (talk) 11:20, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
Then we have a conflict between the contemporary sources and later sources. In such an instance we would do better to go with the earlier sources closer to the event as they primary. Also as the legal judgements are not terrorism then it is clear that no court accepted they where terrorism. Did the prosecutor even bring terrorism charges? The "academic" references are more pop sociology rather than peer reviewed papers.--Kitchen Knife (talk) 12:20, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
Cirt: The number of results isn't relevant. Go look at the things that Google found, and you will discover that many of them are actually the same text repeated many times at different sites. What is relevant is the quality of the sources, not the number of sources. Weaponbb7: the sources you are citing here are articles about terrorism, not articles about the Rajneeshi incident. They mention the Rajneeshi incident because they need an example of bioterrorism and this is the best they could do, not because it's an actual example of terrorism. It isn't sufficient for some source to say that something is true--the quality of the source must be considered. These sources would be good sources to justify a sentence like this: Some sources refer to the Rajneeshi salmonella poisoning incident an act of bioterrorism. They are not sufficient to justify the claim that it was an act of bioterrorism. Kitchen Knife: articles written at the time of the incident are not primary sources--they are secondary sources. Primary sources are things like source records and eyewitness accounts, and can't be used as sources for Wikipedia articles, since using them is essentially doing original research.
In addition, I will note that the people advocating the use of the term "bioterrorism" here have not explained why, despite the fact that the term is one that is recommended against in WP:WTW, its use is justified in this case. The mere fact that a source uses this term is not in itself sufficient justification. There are academics who have made the case that George W Bush is a terrorist, but his Wikipedia article nevertheless does not refer to him in this way, because to do so would violate both WP:NPOV and WP:WTW. The motivation for the use of the term in that case is pejorative, not descriptive. I can't say what the motivation is in this case, but the use of the term is clearly inaccurate, and the fact that the source uses it does not somehow render it more accurate, nor does it require that we use the term here. Quoting from WP:NPOV: Assert facts, including facts about opinions—but do not assert the opinions themselves. A fact is a statement about which there is no serious dispute among reliable sources.
Furthermore, regardless of whether or not the article itself should refer to this incident as terrorism, using the term in the title of the article is extreme and inappropriate, and clearly not NPOV. Abhayakara (talk) 14:36, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
Hm, additionally, the sourcing here is actually inaccurate. Consider this citation:
Scripps Howard News Service (January 28, 2007). "Health experts fear bioterror attack". Grand Rapids Press: p. G1. "A total of 751 people, including members of the Wasco County Commission, became ill with nausea, diarrhea, headaches and fever. Forty-five people were hospitalized, but no one died. It was the first, and still the largest, germ-warfare attack in U.S. history."
Here the citation says that this was a germ-warfare attack, but the article is about bioterrorism. This is used as a citation to justify the claim that this attack was a bioterrorist attack, but the quotation specifically calls it a germ-warfare attack, not a bioterrorism attack. I would have no objection to the use of the term "germ-warfare attack" in place of "bioterrorism attack." Abhayakara (talk) 14:46, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
I do not think it is warfare I would go for the term "biological assault" this allows it to be interpreted as either an assault in military terms or an assault in legal terms.Biological Assault--Kitchen Knife (talk) 15:02, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
Per WP:RS, on Wikipedia, Scholarly sources and academic sources in published books are more authoritative than news articles closer to the time of the event. -- Cirt (talk) 16:02, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
The produce some "academic sources in published books", what you are produceing is pop science books not academic works and for example the second book in your list refers to biocrimes as well as bioterrorism and biocrime fits far better than bioterrorism.--Kitchen Knife (talk) 16:09, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
Um, yeah, incorrect, those are literally hundreds of WP:RS secondary sources identifying this as bioterrorism. This discussion is getting ridiculous. -- Cirt (talk) 16:10, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
No they do not. You haven't read the books you just figure that because the term bioterrorism and Rajneeshee occur in the same book then it justifies your point. You need actually quotes from the text of the book and you need to show the book is genuinely an academic or journalistic work.--Kitchen Knife (talk) 16:19, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
I have done the research and read the books. I will provide specific quotes. -- Cirt (talk) 16:21, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
  • We go by what the sources say. There may be room to evaluate whether the charge of terrorism is WP:UNDUE, but if a large number of sources say it, well... it sorta loses that option... How many sources? What publishers? • Ling.Nut 16:47, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
    • Looking for scholarly journals. Got a couple uses of the bio-terrorism in Emerging Infectious Diseases JB Tucker - , 1999 - ncbi.nlm.nih.gov • Ling.Nut 16:52, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
      • Reliable sources from major publishers including Harvard University Press have already been cited, above:
        • Wheelis, Mark (2006). Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945. Harvard University Press. pp. Pages 284–293, 301–303. ISBN 0674016998. There have been only two confirmed attempts to use BW for terrorist purposes targeting humans: the 1984 use of Salmonella by the Rajneesh cult in Oregon, and the 1990-1995 attempted use of anthrax and botulinum toxin by the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Tokyo. A third incident, the alleged use of a variety of infectious diseases against Native Americans in the Amazon basin during the 1950s and 1960s, is probable but not yet firmly established. A fourth incident, the 2001 anthrax letters in the US, may be bioterrorism or biocriminality, determination of which must await the identification of the perpetrator(s) and motive. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
      • Apparently this has not satisfied those crying foul and putting forth their own WP:NOR and personal opinions, over the weight of reliable secondary sources. -- Cirt (talk) 16:53, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Even without Harvard getting involved, any reliable authoritative source that calls this a terrorist attack gets to define it. We do not. Our interpretations of what terrorism means are irrelevant. If the sources calls it terrorism, that's what makes it so. --Moni3 (talk) 01:15, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Bioterror characterization used in multiple reliable sources

Please note that

Here is a sampling of quotations from published books, with bolded emphasis added to relevant portions of the quotes:

  1. Kendall, Ronald J. (2008). Advances in Biological and Chemical Terrorism Countermeasures. CRC Press. p. 8. ISBN 978-1420076547. One relatively recent incident involving the use of a biological agent on a community scale very clearly fits the definition of bioterrorism and is an excellent demonstration of the difficulty associated with recognizing a covert bioterror attack. In an attempt to sway a countywide election by inhibiting the ability of voters to reach polling stations, members of a cult following Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh contaminated the salad bars of four different restaurants in the Dalles, Oregon, area with Salmonella typhimurium in 1984. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  2. Lashley, Felissa R. (2007). Emerging Infectious Diseases: Trends and Issues. Springer Publishing Company. p. 419. ISBN 0826102506. Religious cults vary in sophistication and resources, but at least one group, the Rajneesh, successfully carried out what most consider the first biological terrorism attack on American soil. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  3. Byrne, Joseph Patrick (2008). Encyclopedia of Pestilence, Pandemics, and Plagues. Greenwood. p. 53; Volume 1: A-M. ISBN 0313341028. Although the anthrax letters were not intended to cause casualties, there have been two attacks that were intended to do so: a 1984 bioterrorist attack in The Dalles, Oregon, by the Rajneesh sect, and attempted bioterrorist attacks in Japan by the Aum Shinrikyo sect from 1990 to 1995.
  4. Carus, W. Seth (2002). Bioterrorism and Biocrimes: The Illicit Use of Biological Agents Since 1900. Fredonia Books. p. 50. ISBN 1410100235. This account is based on a longer paper, "A Case Study in Biological Terrorism: The Rajneesh in Oregon, 1984," prepared as part of a project on chemical and biological terrorism sponsored by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute for International Studies. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  5. Von Lubitz, Dag K. J. E. (2003). Bioterrorism: Field Guide to Disease Identification and Initial Patient Management. CRC Press. p. 6. ISBN 0849320305. Anthrax dispersal represents the latest in the history of bioterrorism in the U.S. The first reported event occurred in 1984 when members of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh attempted to poison several people in Dalles, Oregon in order to eliminate opposition and win local elections.
  6. Prasad, S.K. (2009). Terrorism and Bioterrorism. Discovery Publishing House. p. 277. ISBN 8183563899. This history of bioterrorism shows that small groups and individuals cannot be ignored. ... In Oregon, members of the relatively large cult Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh poisoned food at 10 restaurants by spraying salmonella on salad bars, sickening 751 people.
  7. Anderson, Walter Truett (2003). The Next Enlightenment: Integrating East and West in a New Vision of Human Evolution. St. Martin's Press. p. 186. ISBN 0312317697. It was there that Rajneesh and his followers attained their greatest notoriety: Rajneesh for amassing a fleet of twenty-nine Rolls Royces for his personal use and his followers for various escapades, including the first documented U.S. case of bioterrorism when they used salmonella bacteria to poison a salad bar.
  8. Urbano, Mary Theresa (2006). The Complete Bioterrorism Survival Guide: Everything You Need to Know Before, During, and After an Attack. Sentient Publications. p. 60. ISBN 1591810515. Non-state sponsored bioterrorist attacks have also occurred. The first to be noted occurred in 1984 in The Dalles, Oregon. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, an Indian guru, and his followers had purchased land in the area, with the goal of developing an international headquarters.
  9. Hoge, James F. (2001). How Did This Happen? Terrorism and the New War. p. 219. ISBN 1586481304. members of an Oregon-based religious cult led by Bagwan Shree Rajneesh carried out the first bioterrrorism attack in America in 1984. The cult members, hoping to disrupt an upcoming county election, contaminated local salad bars with salmonella, infecting hundreds of Oregonians. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  10. Engeman, Richard H. (2009). The Oregon Companion. Timber Press. p. 319. ISBN 0881928992. in 1984 an instance of mass food poisoining that sickened 751 people in The Dalles; it was perhaps the first instance of mass bioterrorism in the United States.
  11. Lewis, Theodore Gyle (2006). Critical Infrastructure Protection in Homeland Security: Defending a Networked Nation. Wiley-Interscience. p. 32. ISBN 0471786284. In a bizarre plot to take over local government, followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh poisoned salad bars in 10 restaurants in The Dalles in 1984, sickening 751 people with salmonella bacteria. Forty-five were hospitalized. It is still the largest germ warfare attack in U.S. history.
  12. Miller, Judith (2002). Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War. Simon & Schuster. p. 34. ISBN 0684871599. So when the Federal Bureau of Investigation needed a top expert to study the attack of the Rajneeshees and examine the cult's compound, it turned to Patrick. Flown out from Detrick to Oregon in late 1985, he sensed that the cult was to blame for the outbreak. For one thing, he found a germ incubator - an unusual piece of equipment for a health clinic. Patrick knew salmonella well. Scientists at Detrick had investigated the bug as a weapon, with at least one worker falling ill. As the evidence grew, Patrick could see that the people in The Dalles had been victims of crude bioterrorism. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  13. Wheelis, Mark (2006). Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945. Harvard University Press. pp. Pages 284–293, 301–303. ISBN 0674016998. There have been only two confirmed attempts to use BW for terrorist purposes targeting humans: the 1984 use of Salmonella by the Rajneesh cult in Oregon, and the 1990-1995 attempted use of anthrax and botulinum toxin by the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Tokyo. A third incident, the alleged use of a variety of infectious diseases against Native Americans in the Amazon basin during the 1950s and 1960s, is probable but not yet firmly established. A fourth incident, the 2001 anthrax letters in the US, may be bioterrorism or biocriminality, determination of which must await the identification of the perpetrator(s) and motive. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  14. Croddy, Eric (2004). Weapons of Mass Destruction: An Encyclopedia of Worldwide Policy, Technology, and History. ABC-CLIO. p. 65. ISBN 1851094903. A 1984 Salmonella bacteria attack in Orego, and the attempts by Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo to use botulinum toxin and anthrax bacteria in the early 1990s, have been the most concerted efforts by nonstate actors to use biological agents in the pursuit of some political agenda – that is, bioterrorism. No one died as a direct result of these biological attacks, althought the Rajneeshee cult in Oregon was more successful in terms of actually carrying out a biological attack than Aum Shinrikyo. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  15. Lalich, Janja (2004). Bounded choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults. University of California Press. p. 10. ISBN 0520231945. The Rajneesh group was in the news again in fall 2001 in relation to American's rekindled interest in bioterrorism. ... the Rajneesh group had been implicated in the first incident of biological warfare on U.S. soil. While trying to assert itself politically in rural Oregon, members of the group had deliberately poisoned about a dozen salad bars in nearby The Dalles with salmonella bacteria in order to debilitate the local populace and keep them from voting. No one died, but approximately 750 people were stricked with stomach ailments and other illnesses.
  16. Swearengen, James R. (2005). Biodefense: Research Methodology and Animal Models. CRC Press. p. 9. ISBN 0849328365. The first episode of bioterrorism in the United States occurred in 1984. The Rajneeshee cult was founded by an Indian guru named Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in the 1960s.
  17. Snow, Robert L. (2003). Deadly Cults: The Crimes of True Believers. Praeger. p. 87. ISBN 0275980529. an incident in Oregon with a cult that practiced and promoted a philosophy based on New Age concepts shows that cults can twist and use any belief system to attract members to its group. More importantly, however, the following incident shows how some cults will use whatever means they have to, including bioterrorism, to take and keep control.
  18. Kahn Ph.D., Laura H. (2009). Who's In Charge?: Leadership during Epidemics, Bioterror Attacks, and Other Public Health Crises. Praeger. p. 41. ISBN 0275994856. In September 1984, the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, a cult that had bought a 64,000 acre ranch in Wasco County, Oregon, committed the first large-scale act of bioterrorism in U.S. history.
  19. Committee on Standards and Policies for Decontaminating Public Facilities Affected by Exposure to Harmful Biological Agents (2005). Reopening Public Facilities After a Biological Attack: A Decision-Making Framework. National Academies Press. p. 25. ISBN 0309096618. In 1984, the Rajneesh cult spread Salmonella typhimurium on salad bars in The Dalles, Oregon, in an attempt to influence the outcome of an election by making the opposition ill and unable to vote. The resulting illnesses initially were thought to be a case of natural foodborne disease, but later the event was recognized as an act of bioterrorism. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  20. Stripling, Mahala Yates (2005). Bioethics and Medical Issues in Literature. Greenwood. p. 24. ISBN 0313320403. One of these major issues is bioterrorism because terrorists have the ability to use recent advances in technology to disseminate disease, to cause illness, and to inflict mass death. In 1984 the first documented case of bioterrorism occurred in The Dalles, Oregon, a quiet town along the banks of the Columbia River. Followers of the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh spiked salad bars with salmonella at 10 restaurants and sickened about 750 people. Fear was widespread in the area as many residents thought cult members would try to spread the AIDS virus and to contaminate the water supply. Scared people would not go out alone, becoming prisoners in their own homes. The cult's motivation was to keep voters from the polls so that their candidates would win county elections. This incident received little national attention because it was perpetrated by a local fanatical fringe cult. Cult members fled to Europe; their leader died in India in 1990.

Thank you for your time, -- Cirt (talk) 18:20, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Note: Please do not intersperse comments in-between list, above, but rather respond with new posts, below, here. Thank you, -- Cirt (talk) 18:27, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

This is a frustrating conversation, because each of the books you've cited is an example of the creeping overuse of the term "terrorism" to refer to any act of violence committed by an individual or non-government organization with the intent to influence or control the behavior of a populace. If you look for pre-9/11 books or articles referring to the Rajneeshee attack as bioterrorism, I think you will have trouble coming up with a similar degree of support for your position. All but one of the books you've cited is a book about terrorism. Naturally they will call the Rajneeshee attack "terrorism," because, post-9/11, it became popular to refer to anything negative as terrorism, and there was money to be made inciting hysteria about it. Even the genuinely scholarly or practical works, like the book on decontamination, use the term, because that is the term that gets people to read the book.

Unfortunately, this leaves us at an impasse. The use of the term terrorism here is in fact inaccurate, according to the U.S. Department of Defense' own definition of terrorism. Yet because you have sources that use the term, and seem committed to the use of the term, it seems unlikely that we will be able to fix this article.

That being the case, I would propose the addition of the following section:

Use of the term "Bioterrorism"

The U.S. Department of Defense defines terrorism as "the calculated use of unlawful violence or the threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear, intended to coerce or intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological." Although many sources can be cited that refer to the Rajneeshee attack as an example of bioterrorism, other sources refer to it as a germ-warfare attack, or a biological attack, without using the term "terrorism" or "bioterrorism" to describe it.

While this does not really satisfy my objection, it at least documents the inaccuracy. Abhayakara (talk) 19:16, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

However examples can be found of the use bioattack bioLOGICAL attack, biological assault, thoughthese are not as well researched as CiRT's work it does leave us with a choice. Therefore the impasse can be broken by a vote.--Kitchen Knife (talk) 19:26, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
No. Completely oppose such an addition, which is based on satisfying a disgruntled Wikipedia user's personal opinion. It is also a violation of WP:NOR, especially when viewed in conjunction with multiple cited WP:RS secondary sources, listed above. -- Cirt (talk) 19:27, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
Cirt is absolutley right, Replacing reliable secondary sourcing with your own "more accurate evaluation" based on indirectly related sources violates WP:NOR. Weaponbb7 (talk) 19:38, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
Agreed. Thank you, Weaponbb7, much appreciated. -- Cirt (talk) 19:41, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
Actually if you look I have found alternative descriptions of the events, so it is not about satisfying disgruntled me but deciding which of several descriptions best fits. Sveral of the returned in the above searches are from univesities, respected research bodies and the RAND organisation.--Kitchen Knife (talk) 19:44, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, nice. — From your above-listed search results: bioattack (85 results) biological attack (990 results), biological assault (6 results) — versus over 8,000 results for "bioterrorism" and Rajneesh. "Bioterrorism", is clearly the more prominent used term to characterize this historical event. -- Cirt (talk) 19:51, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
We have a choice to make based on Wikipedias various rules and the available evidence. It's not just a matter of counting the refs.--Kitchen Knife (talk) 20:05, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion

Suggestion to Abhayakara (talk · contribs) and Kitchen Knife (talk · contribs): You two may not be as familiar with research on this topic, having never contributed to this talk page prior to the article's appearance on the Main Page. How about we take a break from this for one week, we can allow some time for you to research and review scholarly and academic coverage of this historical incident in WP:RS secondary sources (please list them here as you peruse them) - and come back and revisit and discuss those sources at that point in time? -- Cirt (talk) 19:33, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

I think this is a good suggestion, but in fact I've been reading the sources you've been offering, and the best support you have for the position that this was a terrorist act was that some of the residents reported feeling fear. All of the evidence I've seen presented about the motivation for the biological attack was that it was intended as a direct use of force. There was no threat of some future poisoning if people voted, for example; rather, the attempt was simply to try to physically incapacitate enough voters to sway the election. And if there was terrorism going on, in the sense of physical intimidation, that was not bioterrorism--it was just terrorism.
Since you are intimately familiar with the sources, I'm curious if you know of one that describes the intent of the Rajneeshees in a way that is consistent with the DoD definition of "terrorism." You're right that I'm new to this article, but the reason I went to look at is that I remember the whole blowup with the Rajneeshees, and I had never heard of it being referred to as "bioterrorism" until I read this article.
What drew me to the article (from the front page, as you surmise) was the apparent misuse of the term "terrorism" in the title. I would appreciate it if you would make an attempt to assume that I actually have a valid position here, and am not just sniping. I understand that you don't agree with me, and I do think you are coming from a valid and informed position. In general, this is a very good article, and it is not my intention to take away from that. But to represent this as terrorism, and not even be willing to admit that this is a controversial position, is not NPOV.
BTW, User:Kitchen Knife, it isn't customary to vote on stuff. The goal is to try to reach consensus. Sometimes we don't get to be part of the consensus that emerges. That's okay. I would like to see a better compromise here than the present article, but voting isn't compromising.
With respect to the compromise User:Cirt proposed, I do think it would be good for us to stop this back-and-forth for a week and see how we feel at the end of the week—that is a good suggestion. Abhayakara (talk) 19:59, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
  • This entire discussion is akilter, since the definition of terrorism that Abhayakara provides neatly and exactly describes this incident. Revisiting: The U.S. Department of Defense defines terrorism as "the calculated use of unlawful violence or the threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear, intended to coerce or intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological." Ahem. Excuse me. Do you see the words intended to coerce or intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological in there? I sincerely couldn't ask for twenty words that summarize this article more completely. It's a bit of a jaw-dropper that anyone would use this definition to argue against the use of the word terrorism. In fact, this definition makes this conversation an open-and-shut case in favor of using the word • Ling.Nut 23:22, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
Your going to explain that as it makes no sense. Coercion is the practice of forcing another party to behave in an involuntary manner. Preventing them from volting by making them ill is not coercion.--Kitchen Knife (talk) 23:32, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
I am having problems entertaining this conversation. It borders on the absurd. I could post a dozen or so dicdefs of "coerce", but what would be the point? You say it was not terrorism. You will not be moved, for reasons unknown. If I entertain your arguments, we will argue until the cows come home.... Using violence to prevent someone from voting is creating the necessity that they to do as their attacker wishes: refrain from voting. That is coercion. Saying otherwise not only strains credibility, it strains the application of WP:AGF.. • Ling.Nut 00:06, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Agree with Cirt and Ling.Nut. Residents of The Dalles were subjected to disease, intimidated, and the cult attempted to manipulate the political process. This is coercion. This argument unnecessary anyway. The sources call it terrorism so it is. --Moni3 (talk) 01:19, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
You also might get sick if you continue to argue.Wolfview (talk) 06:57, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
"the act of coercing; use of force or intimidation to obtain compliance" the intention was to prevent the victims from voting by making them ill it was not to get them to vote in the way the perpetrators wanted. That they where trying to manipulate the system is irrelevant it is what they tried to do to the individuals and fear was incidental what they intended to do was keep the victims from the voting booths by illness, not fear of illness. Your arguments do not make sense.--Kitchen Knife (talk) 11:51, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
  • The sources are there in great numbers! Your arguments are muddled. I call WP:SPADE and say you are trying to WP:PUSH. This deserves not to be heard. If it is continued, it should be taken to another forum (content dispute, or whatever). • Ling.Nut 12:06, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
    • The arguments are not muddled at all. It is you that seems not to understand the English Language and is trying to maintain someone else's POV. Your almost immediate resorting to quoting WP:PUSH is actually passive aggressive behaviour and very WP:PUSH itself. A debate was going on which may have resulted in reaching consensus but you have decided to stop the debate I think that reflects you rather muddled understanding of how consensus is reached. I've had a look at you talk page and you seem to be a persistent POV warrior, and a rather rude one at that.--Kitchen Knife (talk) 12:21, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
    • Oh me oh my. OK. Let me speak clearly 1) There is no hope for consensus that removes the word "bio-terrorism", because if there were, our consensus wouldn't reflect a large number of very reliable sources, and Wikipedia would be trash. 2) There's no hope that you will be able to go to any other forum and get the words removed, for precisely the same reason. It's you alone arguing against a mountain of respectable journals and publishers. So your hopes are not even good enough to be called "slim." 3) The reason I call POV is that it is the only explanation that makes any sense to me – anyone who has any Wikipedia experience at all could see in flash that your case is nonexistent. If I am wrong about your POV, and so there is some other reason why you cannot see what is in plain sight and is as large as a herd of rampaging elephants, then I do in fact apologize. • Ling.Nut 13:30, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
      • I think that is clear evidence of your POV. The author has produced one set of references and I have produced others. Do you dispute the existance of the others? Do you dispute there reliability? I can only assume you have very little Wikipedia experience and no understanding of NPOV. It is clear from your arguments that you have limited ability at written comprhesion and it is clear from you talk page that you value style over content.--Kitchen Knife (talk) 13:53, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
        • Without wanting to get too involved, I believe I can see Kitchen Knife's point. The 9/11 attacks were acts of terrorism because they were intended to create a state of fear that would discourage future acts of warfare by the US. The invasion of Iraq was an act of warfare, not terrorism, because it was intended to remove the ability of the Saddam government to function at all, not to create a climate of fear that would influence their decisions. From that understanding, the Rajneeshi actions were an escalation of terrorism into warfare. Rumiton (talk) 14:11, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Again, two points: we (as individuals or as a group) can't decide not to call these terrorist attacks when authoritative sources have done so. We can't decide if they follow a certain criteria. Authoritative sources have already called them terrorist attacks. Wikipedia should only mirror what sources say, not re-interpret characterizations to meet our consensual criteria. These arguments should be had with the authors of the sources, not this article. Even so, the facts are not demonstrably untrue. Residents of The Dalles were subjected to terror in the same way the entire US was on Sept 11. If the object of Sept 11 was to keep the US from invading some mid eastern place, that objective was not made as clear as this action was: to keep the people of The Dalles from voting and participating in the local political process. --Moni3 (talk) 16:53, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Yes but there are sources that do not refer to the attack as terrorism. You argument almost suggest that if one authority asserts something, whilst some do not, then the one explicit assertion trumps all others. The question as to terrorism or not is answered simply because it wasn't fear of illness that would prevent people from voting it was illness itself.--Kitchen Knife (talk) 18:36, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Then this is a question for Cirt and anyone else who has read widely on the subject. Are there authoritative sources that make a point to say this event was not a bioterrorist attack, or does not fall within the definition of terrorism?
To Kitchen Knife, if we take the example of waterboarding which both has been described as torture and an interrogation technique, the sources strictly define it as one or the other. In waterboarding's case, an extended discussion took place that involved dozens of sources, editors, and arbitration (See Talk:Waterboarding/Definition). Eventually, the number of sources that characterize waterboarding as torture established that it should be stated as such in the first sentence of the article.
If there are authoritative sources that say this event was not terrorism--not just that the sources declined to call it terrorism--there is a way to discuss it in the article. However, the sources would have to be viewed with the weight of all the sources that have called it terrorism. They would determine if such a discussion warranted its own section or just a footnote. --Moni3 (talk) 19:10, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Reply to Moni3, not that I have come across, nope. -- Cirt (talk) 19:12, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Yes there are I provided some Google Searches which return results from various academics and military sources.--Kitchen Knife (talk) 19:34, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Can you present them, please, as in Author X with this background characterizes the event as...whatever it is? Can you provide their arguments addressing the question of terrorism? It would benefit editors who are participating in this discussion. --Moni3 (talk) 19:41, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Phase 2 of Suggestion

Comment: It appears that despite the helpful clarifying comments from experienced FA contributors including Ling.Nut [11] and Moni3 [12], and a report to ANI for issues of comportment during discussion on this page [13], user Kitchen Knife (talk · contribs) is unwilling to listen to reason or understand Wikipedia policy with regard to this issue. At this point, if desired, Kitchen Knife (talk · contribs) can file a requested move of this page through the appropriate process, and then subsequently that proposal may be discussed here at this talk page, to assess consensus and/or opposition to such a proposal. -- Cirt (talk) 19:13, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

You have misrepresented Moni3 contribution, it was considerable more even handed than you imply.--Kitchen Knife (talk) 19:36, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
[14] -- Cirt (talk) 19:37, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
"If there are authoritative sources that say this event was not terrorism--not just that the sources declined to call it terrorism--there is a way to discuss it in the article. However, the sources would have to be viewed with the weight of all the sources that have called it terrorism. They would determine if such a discussion warranted its own section or just a footnote. --Moni3 (talk) 19:10, 12 September 2010 (UTC)"--Kitchen Knife (talk) 19:42, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Kitchen Knife (talk · contribs), if you really want to get the page moved to your preferred POV title, the way to go about attempting to do that, is through the WP:REQMOVE process. If you want to rehash and argue about minutiae of other editors' comments from other subsections, please do that above. -- Cirt (talk) 19:44, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Did you major in condescension? I am aware of what needs to be done. I've been editing wikipedia for a long time thanks.--Kitchen Knife (talk) 20:00, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Omissions in this article

Speaking as someone who had a front-row seat for this bizarre affair, this article omits a few points:

  • Why did the Rajneeshees seek to control Wasco county? This arose over a dispute between the Rajneeshees & the local government over their obsessive construction at Rajneeshpuram (now the Great Muddy Ranch). The Rajneeshees were upset over the time it took the county to review & approve their permits, much of which involved Oregon's land use regulations. This latter point is important because, no matter what the local authorities actually felt about the matter -- IIRC, a large number of people in Wasco county have no love for Oregon's land use laws -- they had to enforce them to some degree. Anyway, the Rajneeshee's strategy was to take over the various government levels as they went along: first Antelope, the nearest incorporated town to Rajneeshpuram, which is where the Rajneeshees had to file their paperwork; and next was Wasco county.
  • The effect of this on popular opinion Up to this event, the Rajneeshees were considered to be the equivalent of the crazy old man down the block which everyone is a little frightened of, but the general opinion is that he was best dealt with by ignoring him. Even the "Share-a-Home" program was seen as the behavior of a group of eccentrics, rather than a serious attempt to seize power. After the news seeped out about the attack, & people understood just what happened, the Rajneeshees were perceived to be a danger, & the sympathy they had amongst the rest of Oregonians evaporated.

I know the media of the time expressed these points. It would only take some digging thru the archives of the local newspapers to verify these assertions. -- llywrch (talk) 04:19, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Nod, okay, certainly valid points. I will do some more research, and see about adding a few sentences here and there, thanks! :) -- Cirt (talk) 04:20, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Llywrch's right: though it's a matter of thought as to how much belongs here and how much elsewhere. The place was bought for conversion into a town and was fairly quickly incorporated as a city and included upon the Oregon map. An agreed building programme began, I do not know in what sense it was "obsessive". Amid the construction of a dam, lake, roads and infrastructure, the incorporation was reversed, for reasons I have never discovered. And then Sheela tried to take over Antelope in order to force through the original plan. It's all documented. Redheylin (talk) 12:47, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
The above matters are duly logged at the page Rajneeshpuram in an account that has long been tagged unbalanced, though with no comment. It diverges in chronology and tone from the present brief account, I think, sufficiently to be termed a POV fork. So Llywrch might turn his attention to the other account and to balancing and reconciling it with the necessarily briefer account here. Redheylin (talk) 13:11, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Alright, sure, I will take a look at doing some additional research in that particular area. -- Cirt (talk) 17:57, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Um, I hadn't even thought about the Rajneeshees for several years, & wouldn't have even made those comments had this article not been a featured article on the front page. I'm not intending to read the article on the town soon; I have enough on my plate trying to get Ethiopia-related articles up to snuff. Cirt's response -- to research the points I raised -- was the response I was hoping to get, so as far as I'm concerned, the matter is over. -- llywrch (talk) 23:04, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, will do so, it is on my list. ;) Thanks again, -- Cirt (talk) 02:20, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

"with the possible exception of"

  • diff = totally unsourced claims added to article.
  • diff = source added to article that does not mention the Rajneeshee bioterror attack

Not appropriate additions. -- Cirt (talk) 19:25, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

A minor inaccuracy

Since my first edit got reverted I'm noting it here. The Rajneeshee's weren't the only terrorist group to culture a pathogen the Aum Shinrikyo group did as well, though they didn't end up using it. The Anthrax attacks of 2001 might also fall under this category, though it was an individual and I'm not certain he cultured the agent himself.Polyquest (talk) 19:27, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

That is WP:OR violation, unless you have a secondary source that comes to these conclusions? -- Cirt (talk) 19:28, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
Which additions have to be justified? The 2001 Anthrax attack or the Aum Shinrikyo group? Polyquest (talk) 19:32, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
You see, in this edit, diff, you wrote: "with the possible exception of ...". But those are your words. Those are your conclusions. You have not presented a secondary source that makes those conclusions itself. -- Cirt (talk) 19:34, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
If you check the source currently being used, I believe it justifies my edits.Polyquest (talk) 19:39, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
Wrong. Quote from source, Leitenberg 2005, "there is apparently no other “terrorist” group that is known to have successfully cultured any pathogen." -- Cirt (talk) 19:41, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
I meant in regard to the Anthrax. As to the Aum Shinrikyo perhaps this source would be appropriate. Polyquest (talk) 19:46, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
The source you suggest fails to mention the Rajneesh group. -- Cirt (talk) 19:46, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
My claim does not regard the Rajneesh group. It regards other groups that attempted, with limited success, to use pathogens in terrorist attacks. Polyquest (talk) 19:49, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
Don't you see that you are attempting to use other sources to make a claim that you yourself have formed of your own opinion? That is a violation of WP:NOR. -- Cirt (talk) 19:50, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
What I see is that the article makes a claim, "the Rajneesh group was the only known organization to have cultured its own pathogen for terrorist purposes", that is contradicted by several reliable sources. Since the 2001 Anthrax attack, and the activities of the Aum Shinrikyo group involved culturing pathogens for use in terrorist acts.Polyquest (talk) 19:56, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
I changed it to a direct quote from the cited source. Now it is accurate. :) -- Cirt (talk) 20:02, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
All right, fair enough.Polyquest (talk) 20:06, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
Thank you. :) -- Cirt (talk) 20:06, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

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definition of "terrorist"

From the description in the article there was no intention to terrorize anyone, only to sway the election. By what definition is it appropriate to call this terrorism? As Glenn Greenwald has repeatedly written, the word "terrorism" has become a political term without clear definition. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.211.69.239 (talk) 23:40, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Good point-- it isn't right to throw a word around & never think about how you're using it. Thanks for making me think! :) Right now, though, I'm thinking it should be considered terrorism. A biological weapon is still a weapon, and lives were endangered, so this could be considered an act of violence. And this would make it consistent with the Terrorism article's definition: "in its broadest sense, the use or threatened use of violence (terror) in order to achieve a political, religious, or ideological aim." Lusanaherandraton (talk) 20:41, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

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Requested move 12 June 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move the page to any particular title at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 20:19, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack → Rajneeshee food poisoning attacks – or Rajneesh movement Salmonella poisoning attacks – There aren't any articles about Rajneeshee food poisoning attacks in other years that we need to disambiguate, and having "bioterror" in the article title seems a bit extreme and tabloidish. As far as I know, the attacks were intended to temporarily incapacitate and confuse and suppress voting, not to kill (and no one was killed, although that was certainly a possibility). The perpetrators had considered and rejected the idea of using a more deadly pathogen. Also please note the suggested change from "attack" to "attacks". This involved multiple incidents that were not simultaneous (glasses of water given to two people on August 29, produce in grocery stores and doorknobs and urinal handles in the county courthouse at some point, and ten restaurant salad bars in September and October, and possibly some attempt to contaminate the public water supply, which the article mentions but doesn't give any detail about). —BarrelProof (talk) 00:45, 12 June 2018 (UTC)--Relisting. Dekimasuよ! 01:03, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Dropping 1984, and attack --> attacks, fine. But speaking as someone disgusted by the modern trend toward labeling everything terrorism, this was terrorism. While I applaud them for being responsible mass poisoners by not deploying the most lethal thing they could get their hands on (who knows why – because a more lethal attack would be more likely to be detected?) it's only luck that no one died, and if no lives were taken certainly many were destroyed. There's nothing extreme about calling this bioterror. EEng 01:10, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
I didn't exactly say it wasn't bioterrorism, and I didn't suggest removing that word completely from the article. I just think that the way it is used in the title is rather sensationalistic and unnecessary, and somewhat less descriptive of the incident. —BarrelProof (talk) 00:33, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
It's close to a tossup, but I still support retaining bioterror. EEng 01:44, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

"The incident was the first and is the single largest bioterrorism attack not targeting Native Americans in United States history."

Regarding the aforementioned sentence, which appears at the end of the first paragraph, both sources cited state that this was the first bioterrorism attack in the US carried out at all, and make no distinction regarding Native Americans. I'm fairly certain the segment "...not targeting Native Americans..." ought to be removed, or other sources provided that support this claim. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 100.14.106.6 (talk) 20:54, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

29 or 39 months?

The article on Sheela says 39 months. Which is it? --142.163.195.93 (talk) 15:22, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Bioterrorism article lists an attack 70 years earlier in its history section

The Wikipedia article on bioterrorism linked to from here currently says in its history section,

"Shortly after the start of World War I, Germany launched a biological sabotage campaign in the United States, Russia, Romania, and France. At that time, Anton Dilger lived in Germany, but in 1915 he was sent to the United States carrying cultures of glanders, a virulent disease of horses and mules. Dilger set up a laboratory in his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He used stevedores working the docks in Baltimore to infect horses with glanders while they were waiting to be shipped to Britain."

so the reasoning used above to remove mention of bioterrorism attacks against Native Americans from this article, that no sources contradicted the claim that this is the first bioterrorist attack in U.S. history, appears to be incorrect. One very well-known incident,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Fort_Pitt#Biological_warfare

is also documented in an article and categorized by Wikipedia as a biological warfare incident, like this article. Thank you 73.142.68.213 (talk) 04:30, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Ma Anand Sheela prison

How in the bloody hell did she walk after only 2 1/2 years after masterminding this and half a dozens other attacks? 200.119.184.108 (talk) 05:57, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

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