November 23, 2008

Vanished, without a trace

Remember this? Last June, members of the French Third Marine Parachute Regiment were giving a demonstration to a bunch of civilians, and one of them emptied his FAMAS in the direction of the crowd. He thought it was loaded with blanks, but it was really firing live ammunition, and he managed to wound 17 people.

I thought of it today, and wondered what followup there had been. Here's the interesting thing: it's all been hushed up. It's as if it never happened.

Searching Google News for "Third Marine Parachute Regiment" doesn't give you any news reports after July 5. Searching for "Carcassonne shooting" yields its last result on August 1.

And not a word since then. Anyone care to speculate on whether this story would have vanished without a trace if it had been US Marines responsible? (Of course, US Marines aren't this stupid, which is why it hasn't happened.)

Or is it simply that a French military foul-up isn't news?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at 01:10 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 165 words, total size 1 kb.

1

Jesus, simply terrible. Never heard of it before until just now!

Even if it sounds silly, I blame those facist Eurocrats.

Posted by: CronoLink at November 23, 2008 02:25 PM (N6Jlz)

2 You realise they don't speak American in France, right?

news.google.fr has news from a few days ago.

Posted by: pete at November 23, 2008 05:51 PM (3Jqzb)

3 I also know that the AFP has an English Language branch. Why no English-language reports about it? Why are no other news agencies paying any attention?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 23, 2008 06:24 PM (+rSRq)

4 Why no English-language reports about it? Why are no other news agencies paying any attention?

Why would there be? The original incident was reported; subsequent developments are only of local interest. That hardly qualifies as "hushed up".

Posted by: pete31415 at November 23, 2008 06:41 PM (3Jqzb)

5 Please don't play games with your "name" in the posting form. Pick one and stick with it.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 23, 2008 06:58 PM (+rSRq)

6 That's mee.nu playing games with my name.  Keeps resetting the fields between preview and post.

Posted by: pete at November 23, 2008 07:06 PM (3Jqzb)

7 Ah, yes, it will automatically set it to your registered username and override whatever you typed in last.

Which isn't terrible, but is a bit weird particularly when it happens in the preview screen.  I will fix it.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at November 23, 2008 07:36 PM (PiXy!)

8 There you go again, assuming the job of the media is to inform you...tsk, tsk.  It's to make money, push their agenda, and promote euro-socialism.  You can't show what a great job the Euro-socialists are doing if they're busy accidentally shooting their own citizens.  Doesn't fit the narrative...

Posted by: ubu at November 23, 2008 10:45 PM (/dTXk)

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