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An attack has occurred this morning when an individual carrying 2 backpacks and possibly weapons approached the Louvre in Paris and was engaged by a soldier who fired 5 shots. The assailant was wounded, as was a soldier during the attack. One report claims that the attacker shouted Islamic slogans during the attack.
1111GMT: A second possible assailant has been arrested. The French Govt have confirmed it is a terrorist attack.
1117GMT: It is confirmed that the first assailant attacked a soldier with a machete before being engaged and wounded.
1215GMT: Latest TV statements. The first assailant attacked a security officer and/or soldier with a machete causing wounds to his arm and face, while shouting "Allahu Akbar". A second soldier then engaged the assailant with rifle fire resulting in the assailant being seriously wounded in the stomach. The first assailant was carrying 2 backpacks but no explosives have been found in them. A search of the area is continuing. A second assailant has been arrested within the last hour a short distance away from the scene of the attack.
The Louvre Museum and the area around it is in lock-down, and the public and local workers are been evacuated from the area. The French Govt are releasing only statements that they can verify and are refusing to speculate any further during media questioning.
takyon: French soldier shoots attacker outside Louvre
Assailant Near Louvre Is Shot by French Soldier
Machete attack on soldier near Louvre was of 'terrorist nature'
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Friday February 03 2017, @12:10PM
Soldier with a rifle wounded by a guy with a machete. I think he did it wrong.
He fired five shots and only wounded the guy? I know he did it wrong.
Somebody get this guy a copy of Quake or Left4Dead or something.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 5, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday February 03 2017, @12:36PM
He fired five shots and only wounded the guy? I know he did it wrong.
No, he did it very very right. Now the bad guy is alive to be interrogated and, more importantly, to stand trial.
Putting arseholes like this in court reminds the world that these "terrorists" are in fact desperate, pitiful, small-minded little criminals rather than the apocalyptic supervillains that the media/ politicians like us to imagine.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Friday February 03 2017, @02:17PM
You are right. He probably would've done a lot better with a hockey mask.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday February 03 2017, @05:59PM
A Trump mask would have been a good statement...
I'm sure the white house will spin this into a "bowling green"-level massacre, while the French seem to actually want to minimize it... (partially for election reasons)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @02:34PM
You speak wise words!
(Score: 0, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Friday February 03 2017, @02:50PM
I disagree, of course. Gun the animal down like a dog, and let him rot in the street. He isn't fit for a human burial, just let the scavengers consume him. And, if that offends some Muslim sensitivities, well, so be it. Stop acting like animals, and you won't be left out as road kill to be eaten by vermin. Hell, the French can just bring back the gibbet. This guy was wounded - just put him in the cage, and hoist him high, to suffer and die at his own leisure. Yeah, Allahu Akhbar, Mohammed, but you're just maggot food.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday February 03 2017, @03:13PM
No, I rather think GreatAuntAnesthesia is on the right track with this--treat them like common, ordinary criminals. If you treat them differently, like you're talking about, you make them something to aspire to. Everybody wants to be the virtuous freedom fighter that stands up to evil overlords who shoot down people in the street like dogs. Nobody aspires to be Skippy the Wonder Flunky who shoots up the Circle K. The symbolic dimension makes all the difference.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @07:56PM
> No, I rather think GreatAuntAnesthesia is on the right track with this--treat them like common, ordinary criminals.
Exactly the way we do all the other terrorists like white nationalists.
> If you treat them differently, like you're talking about, you make them something to aspire to.
But you forget that derpaway is the resident daesh collaborator. His goal is exactly the same as theirs - to play them up into an existential threat.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Friday February 03 2017, @03:17PM
Reducing oneself to their level doesn't seem like something we should be aiming for.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Friday February 03 2017, @03:27PM
Not exactly reducing ourselves to their level. To a terrorist, you and I are important people. He needs us to make a statement, he needs us as his ticket into paradise, he needs us to convert, he needs us to justify his existence.
We don't need him. We swat him like the shit eating insect that he is, and let him lie where he falls.
Unless, of course, he falls near our food or our water - then we sweep him out of the way, can get on with our lives.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by janrinok on Friday February 03 2017, @04:00PM
I aspire to being better than that, although I accept that I might fail always to do so. I have no sympathy for terrorists, but I refuse to lower myself to treat anyone other than expected under the law.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Friday February 03 2017, @06:44PM
Not exactly reducing ourselves to their level.
Correct. It would put us at a lower level. Eliminating due process while proclaiming our love of freedom would also add a healthy dose of hypocrisy to the bill.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by charon on Friday February 03 2017, @07:29PM
From A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @04:11PM
ol' Runaway! Quick, some one prep his safe zone, stat!!
Too late! He's already there!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday February 03 2017, @04:20PM
That's just plain stupid.
Whenever you catch a bad guy, what you want is for the bad guy to tell you everything he knows about what he and other bad guys are up to, so you can catch the other bad guys and also thwart any other plots the bad guy might have going on. There are lots of interrogation techniques that work well for that, mostly involving cozying up to the bad guy and the interrogator pretending he's on the bad guys' side (important: torture definitely doesn't work for this purpose).
If we summarily execute terrorists, then we can't do that. If you say "Wait until they spill the beans, and then brutally execute them", that still doesn't work, because now terrorists aren't going to talk to you knowing full well that to do so would be a short trip to hideous-death-ville.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Touché) by fritsd on Friday February 03 2017, @07:42PM
If you'd leave a dead person to rot in front of the Louvre, passersby would complain to the government that these latest risqué avant-garde works of performance art are really going too far.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday February 04 2017, @12:39AM
Touche' - you nailed it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 04 2017, @04:17AM
If you really want to offend his muslim friends then feed the body to the hogs. Hogs will eat anything.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Saturday February 04 2017, @02:42PM
Almost anything. I've been told that hogs won't eat green peppers. They may turn their noses up at Muslims, too.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday February 03 2017, @03:10PM
Those don't result in juicy government weapons contracts. It's all about the dollars, dontcha know.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Friday February 03 2017, @12:37PM
Assuming that your comment is not a poor attempt at humour, if you believe that Quake or Left4Dead represent real life then perhaps it is you that ought to be rethinking events.
We are talking about soldiers opening fire in a very busy public place. They are posing the minimum risk to the public and will err on the side of caution rather than risk the lives of innocent passers-by. Without knowing in detail the situation it is easy to make snap judgements based on what you have 'learned' while playing a game. The rules of engagement are such that minimum force must always be used. The injured soldier defending himself against an unexpected knife attack might have resulted in him being unable to bring a rifle to bear on a close assailant.
It was a second soldier who opened fire but we have not been given details such as at what range did he do so, how busy was the area, or did he have a clear shot that would not have injured his comrade or innocent people?
Why don't you wait until the facts are known before you start criticising what has happened from the safety of your armchair?
(Score: 4, Funny) by isostatic on Friday February 03 2017, @01:49PM
if you believe that Quake or Left4Dead represent real life then perhaps it is you that ought to be rethinking events.
The soldier was injured as he did a rocket jump to get a good view
(Score: 4, Insightful) by pkrasimirov on Friday February 03 2017, @02:45PM
> Why don't you wait until the facts are known before you start criticising
Lol n00b, that's not how we do it in the Interwebz.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @11:31PM
> Why don't you wait until the facts are known before you start criticising
Lol n00b, that's not how we do it in the Interwebz.
Yeah, you should have looked that up before posting!
(Score: 4, Informative) by Fnord666 on Friday February 03 2017, @02:30PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @03:30PM
Don't fool yourself with the way Hollywood portrays these things, such as the good guy shooting the gun out of the hand of the bad guy, or the good guy "winging" the bad guy so as not to kill them. Cops are trained that if they have to shoot, they shoot to hit, and the best part to hit is the body core (torso) because it is big, and it doesn't move as well as the rest of the body. You also don't get those dramatic situations where both the good and bad guys have guns pointed point-blank at each other's heads while they scream at each other. They have no idea what the person will do with the gun and as soon as they raise it, they get shot. Sometimes you hear someone say "why did they have to kill them? Why couldn't they just shoot them in the leg or something?" This isn't a video game. In this particular case, the assailant is fortunate to have survived.
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Friday February 03 2017, @03:38PM
Just for your information: The Louvre is not in America; American cops were not involved.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Spook brat on Friday February 03 2017, @05:45PM
American cops were not involved.
Amen! lately, it seems the procedure in the Home of the Brave (TM) is:
*unload the entire magazine into the suspect
*handcuff/otherwise restrain the suspect
*wait for backup to arrive before calling the ambulance
This incident at the Louvre seems to have had the best possible outcome. The suspect survived, no bystanders were injured, and the soldiers involved escalated their use of force only as much as was needed. It's almost like they had Rules of Engagement to follow, and proper training on how to execute them...
We could learn a thing or two from these French soldiers.
Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @05:55PM
My point is that he only survived by happenstance of where the bullet did or did not go, not by design. Put your own political slant on it if you really feel compelled.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Spook brat on Friday February 03 2017, @10:19PM
I'm not sure I understand your objection to my reply, since I totally agree with you that when using a firearm the only proper means to employ it is with lethal intent. I have no reason to believe that the soldier firing his rifle on this assailant did anything else: soldiers are taught to shoot to kill if they're shooting at all. You are perfectly correct that with a different wound location (e.g. heart, major artery) no amount of first aid would have saved the assailant; he would be dead before the ambulance arrived.
Are you objecting to the use of lethal force at all? That it was somehow unwarranted? Going back to the passage Fnord666 quoted from TFA:
A patrol of four soldiers are reported to have tried to subdue the assailant using non-lethal force after he rushed at them. When this failed and after one soldier was injured, five shots were fired. The suspected attacker was taken to hospital. (emphasis added)
The soldiers on the scene put their lives on the line, using non-lethal means until it was clear that they were not effective.
The soldier firing the shots stopped shooting when the threat ended.
The assailant received sufficient immediate first aid, timely enough EMT care, and sufficient hospital care that he is expected to survive.
What other course of action would you have recommended for the soldiers? What other outcome would you have preferred?
The political slant I'd like to put on this situation is a soldier's perspective: one person using lethal force to stop a second person from presenting a threat does not imply that the first person wants the second person to die. All death is unfortunate, even the death of those who would do us harm.
The soldier's sacrifice isn't dying. It's killing, and then living with having killed. [schlockmercenary.com]
Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday February 03 2017, @08:07PM
FWIK...admittedly from decades ago...MPs are also restrained in their use of force compared to many US cops.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @05:51PM
Yes, genius, that's obvious, and nothing I said suggests I'm talking about only US cops. Law enforcers learn the same techniques when faced with potentially lethal attempts on their lives. They have different tools to use for different situations, but once immediate threat to life is determined, they don't say "hmmmm, let's see if I can only give him a flesh wound to teach him a lesson."
(Score: 2) by Spook brat on Friday February 03 2017, @05:34PM
The "sufficient force" part was using less-lethal options until it was clear that was insufficient. Not having been on the scene, I'm not going to second-guess the difficulty of the shot or the capability of the shooter. From the description in Fnord666's post the rifle was used with lethal intent, which is the right way to do it.
In this particular case, the assailant is fortunate to have survived.
Yep. Immediate first-aid and rapid hospitalization make a single gunshot wound (even from a rifle!) survivable.
Incidentally, that matches with the "minimum necessary force" narrative as well; the shooter ceased fire when the attacker stopped.
Honestly, I think that you and Fnord are violently agreeing.
Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]