Friday, April 19, 2013

Boston Marathon Suspects 1 and 2



These are the pictures the FBI has put up at 2 am Eastern Time.

together


Suspect 1 closer



Suspect 2

I was sure they would have had disguises.  If these really are the people who left the explosive devices, they would appear to have been pretty careless.  With all the security cameras around these days, not to mention people's phone cameras, one would have to assume your image would be captured. 

These pictures are certainly good enough that people who know them can identify them and I'd guess the FBI has their names and information by the time I get up tomorrow morning.

I've noted before and I'll note again - we are much more concerned about intentional harm than 'accidental' harm.  (I use quotation marks because much accidental harm is preventable.)  The Marathon bombings got much more attention than the West, Texas explosions, even though the latter has more deaths.  Partly this might have been fatigue on the part of the media having the Texas deaths follow so closely to the Marathon deaths. 

We all can understand intentional deaths viscerally and they feel so much more outrageous, I think, because we feel they didn't have to happen.  Lucky for corporations whose products and practices kill people, that we're less angry at them for putting profit over people, or ruthlessly ignoring common-sense safety practices.  That we don't feel as strongly that they didn't have to happen, even when that is often the case.  Coal mines that hadn't complied with safety requirements.  Dumping of toxic wastes where they contaminate the drinking water and the air. The human relationship between a person violently killing another person with a gun, knife, or a bomb, is somehow more compelling than someone killing another through neglect or greed.  The latter are harder to see.  But the corporate toxic dumps around the world are killing more people, more horribly and slowly,  than all the bombers combined.  And in my mind delusional killers are less responsible than well educated, well compensated corporate managers whose decisions kill their workers and their neighbors. 

3 comments:

  1. Steve, your argument makes sense but it won't make money. The Boston bomb and run drama is really much more exciting than a movie or some environmental regulation, don't you think?

    After all, American justice works so well with bullets, bombs and death. It's called a constant state of war.

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  2. It is very odd that two individuals who by history are intelligent would not realize they could be easily identified. For a while I thought their noses were probably some kind of disguise because they make their faces so easy to identify. Why would they wear those hats? It makes no sense. I am not saying I don't think they are the perps, I am just saying it is weird.

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  3. What's weirder is that after carefully planning such a high-profile event, they then rob a convenience store?

    ReplyDelete

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