alone for Christmas and suicide bombers

From a CPT update in Mexico:
"Schweitzer met with families of the prisoners Tuesday evening in a small chapel in Huajuapan, which was decorated with Christmas lights. Those left behind after the arrests are in a state of shock. Seventeen-year-old Jaime made the twenty-hour trip to see his parents in prison. He is home alone with his fourteen-year-old sister for Christmas."

In other news: I just read an article highlighting women suicide bombers, specifically one woman who was 70 and one girl who was 18. The slant of reporting makes me furious. All these writters seem to care about is selling papers. You have to read two pages of to even begin to brush on WHY someone would do something like that. And I always get pissed off when two people who use violence are highlighted, and the obviously vast majority of people who are not blowing themselves up (but many of who are still working for a resolution to the conflict) are as ever, forgotten.

Incidentally, the more you play up violent responses to oppression in the media, the more average people who are hurting are going to see that as the only possible response to repression.

Alternatively, I would like to remember Hafez' mother. She's also a grandmother, a matriarch. She got thrown around by the soldiers and saw her two sons beaten up and taken to prison, only in her case, it was articulately nonviolent protest.