Leaders

The nearest sizable landmass to us is some four thousand kilometres away, so in the past, the vast expanse of ocean insulated and protected us. But that’s all changed now, making whatever happens elsewhere in the world to have some sort of ripple effect on us! I don’t like it! I prefer the insulation, the self-reliance and the independence we once enjoyed, all of which are being eroded by world influences and events.

In the past, I felt that I had no right to have an opinion on what might or might not go on around the world, as long as it had no direct impact our little country. But now those little ripples are becoming waves, which I reckon, gives me a right to throw my oar in to at least offer an opinion! I’ve never been a public protestor, but I have done my share of writing letters to the editor and to members of parliament. Maybe it is in my DNA because my ancestors were among the Chartists, who fought for workers’ rights. I remember from near on sixty years ago, my history lessons about the Reform Acts to enfranchise sections of the population, which were brought about not by politicians, through the pressure applied to them by students, professionals and artisans.

My favourite history teacher, Wally Mapplebeck, (I called my dog after him) told me there were three types of governance; democracy, communism and dictatorship - he also mentioned anarchy but that’s not governance. The League of Nations was supposed to prevent World War Two so its failure caused its demise and the United Nations took its place, with the goals of international cooperation, peacekeeping, human dignity and freedom. We all contribute in some way to this massive organisation so it is fair to ask the question, are getting value for our money? The answer to that question is personal, for you as an individual to consider. They, and who the hell are ‘they’ exactly? They, are trying to foist upon us this Agenda 21, which conspiracy theorists believe is the thin edge of world government. Old Wally would squirm in his box at the very thought!

So if Agenda 21 is the long term UN plan, who then would be the leader? And how does the UN work now? Is it supposed to a democratic organisation?  If so, how do the member countries with communist governments, or dictatorships, or even despotic leaders align with the idea of being democratic? Do some on the Security Council use the powerful veto just because they can? Does it rile them that someone else can come up with an idea?

Here are quotes from two friends who should know: ‘Politics is a dirty business!’ and, ‘Never trust a politician!’ There is a new General Secretary about to start his tenure at the UN. He is the leader! We watched the election with great interest because Helen Clark was standing. The method used is anything but democratic, more like an old boys’ network, which is the stuff of politics. Typically there was all the lobbying, pre-votes and the usual promises of support. What do you think happens once the person is elected? The stuff of politics again, ‘I helped you get elected, so now you help me with this little matter.’ (‘Or at least don’t stand in my way.’) So when it comes to leadership, the newbie is compromised from the start. Unless he has the true mettle that is needed for a job like his.

The United States has a new President. It remains to be seen if he will be a leader, the two are not the same. A good leader must be able to take advice from good people, must be able to recognise what is good, sound advice and what is unsound. Who can foretell what this fellow will turn out like, but it is obvious many voters believe a serious mistake has been made! From a distance it looks like their capitalistic method of voting is flawed! To become involved in politics the candidate needs to be rich or have access to wealth! It is a misconception that wealth equates to intellect, it is more likely that wealth equates to corruption – those two are good bed-fellows!

The rest of the world shouldn’t have to give a toss how the individual American votes, but here’s the thing, The United States of America by my count, holds 45.9% of the world’s nuclear warheads and that puts us all in danger! It’s enough for the rest of us to be concerned about the second amendment and the attitude that goes with that, without being concerned about the trigger finger on a nuclear arsenal! Of course the total world arsenal has the potential to blow us to little, tiny bits, but it takes only a few warheads to produce enough fallout to fry us all! Does Kim thingy know that?

Looking at the list of countries that possess nuclear warheads makes me shiver and I look at their leaders. Shivering stuff again, and it is certain that those leaders together with their cronies will have comfy protective bunkers – for the security of the country of course, or is it for personal safety? Is it good to know? In the end ruthless leaders like Hitler, Osama bin Laden, Gadhafi and Saddam Hussein slunk off like rats down a hole when their safety became compromised. They were happy to mete it out but not so keen when the worm had turned!

There are a whole bunch of world leaders that the common people have not voted for nor have any influence over. A few have inherited their role while too many are there simply through threats, force or somehow dealing to their opposition managed to get there!  But let’s not be too paranoid about all this, but we can’t afford be complacent either, world leaders, elected or not, nowadays have powers that do not befit mankind. We need to be very mindful of who represents us!

Punishment

Denying freedom to people who break the law is supposed to be the ultimate deterrent for criminals and there are plenty who believe a softer approach and rehabilitation is the best way to prevent re-offending. On the other hand there are others who believe in a harsher approach like locking up the crims and throwing away the key! Presumably too there are those who have an attitude that’s somewhere in between.

In my volunteer role, I attended a seminar on restorative justice and conflict resolution, which while informative, had little to do with my work and is something I will rarely encounter. I was blown away though by the statistics of violent crime and family violence and how victims are not only the direct victims but also the people surrounding the victim.

Back in the day, the police used to ask us employ ‘troublemakers’ just to get them out of town and away from their associates. These guys were more or less petty offenders and on their own and away from booze, they soon became a part of the team. We had no jurisdiction to keep them and they did not usually stay for long. There is no data whether or not we made a difference, but I would say any difference was limited.

I’ve never been to a prison but like everyone, I hear stuff through the media or anecdotally, but it seems to me that justice isn’t quite served when prisoners have a better choice of food than the aged in rest homes or patients in hospitals. It costs more to house a jailbird than it does to house a pensioner. Prisoners are able to work out in gyms, so when they are released, they can outrun a cop and probably out-fight him/her! Crims, apparently are a huge cost to society and to the taxpayer and yet victims struggle to even have a voice and are seldom compensated adequately.

With that in mind, I was interested to read the following in the newspaper (ODT) from one hundred years ago, it read like a reply to a correspondent:

The Hon. Dr M’Nab (Minister of Justice) has sent us a telegram with reference to a prisoner in Invercargill gaol sentenced to 10 days’ bread and water for refusing to work. The message says: The position in regard to the sentence passed upon Hooper by Mr Cruickshank, SM., is that the magistrate sentenced the prisoner to 10 days bread and water for refusing on four successive occasions to go to work. The maximum penalty under the Prisons Act for this class of offence is 14 days. The practice in the prison at Invercargill and elsewhere when a prisoner is sentenced to solitary confinement is as follows: The prisoner, on returning to the prison after sentence, is locked in the solitary cell, in place of the hammock and where the floor is of concrete, as at Invercargill, prisoners are supplied with a bed board, without mattress, or with a ruberoid covered by a strip of matting or some other material. He is not required to sleep on the bare concrete, nor is he deprived of his clothes for the period of the sentence, as suggested in the paragraph. At 7:30 each evening his outer clothes are taken away from him until the following morning. His blankets are removed during the day, but are returned each evening. His diet consists of bread and water. After he has been in confinement for two days he must be seen by a medical officer of the prison, who is directed by the regulations to order the prisoner to take such exercise in the open air as he deems necessary, so that it is not the case of continuous solitarily confinement. The medical officer also has full control of the dietary, and, if the prisoner appears to be suffering in health, he always improves his diet.

You would think that is a fairly severe deterrent.

Related, the very next day was the following:

One of the worst uses a man can be put to is to be made a convict. They are realising this in America. The New York Evening Mail, in an editorial article, has the following account of an interesting and successful experiment in the scientific use of criminals: ‘Quietly, with no blast of trumpets and no writing of text books, Henry Ford has performed a great modern achievement in sociology. The Ford factory today employs 36,000 men, nearly the entire army corps. Among these are 600 picked men. They are picked convicts. They are mainly men who came direct from prison, paroled by the authorities to work for Henry Ford. Six hundred of them! Everyone said that it could not be done. Ford was crazy. But of the 600, only one has failed to make good, and has been sent back to prison, and that man was sent back, not for being a criminal, but for being immoral. There is no fuss and talk about it. None of the ex-convicts’ fellow-workmen, and not five persons in the Ford plant, know who any of the 600 are.

In a remote Tanzania village I saw a line of prisoners in striped uniforms carrying buckets of water to the hospital. They were treated roughly and a mate who lived in the village supplied a blanket to each prisoner because they were not supplied at the prison. Likewise I saw prisoners tending gardens and lorry loads of them being transported to and fro. Certainly I would not like to be an inmate of those prisons!

Apparently here in New Zealand, while some say the prisons are like hotels, they can be dangerous places because gangs seem to have influence beyond the guards. There will be a pecking order and as long as the line is toed, you are ok, but if you happen to be pecked, you are in considerable danger. The authorities know this goes on, so is part of the process?

It is beyond me to have an opinion as how best to punish offenders, but if the deterrent is the goal, why are prisons full to overflowing? Again, why are there so many offenders? If mind-altering substances have to be paid for, so robbery seems to be a good source of income. The repeating theme seems to be that there is so much anger out there, sometimes pent-up and when there is a trigger, the result is an explosion.

There are experts out there from social workers to phycologists and presumably they produce good outcomes and set the standard, but the crime stats keep climbing together with the cost of processing, legal aid, conviction and punishment all of which lands squarely on the shoulders of the taxpayer. Another unheralded victim.

Nelson Mandela's Legacy

From time to time people do great things and are recorded in history.

Nelson Mandela had no reason to forgive, nor to lead his country into an era of reconciliation - but he did and that has made him great!

What caused him to forgive, I have no idea but it is well documented that he was treated appallingly and was able to defeat any hatred that was within him.

Who can say how South Africa will progress after the tutelage of Madiba? There is a frailty in the human psyche that promotes greed and violence, which seems to be an easier path to follow than humility and peace usually at the expense of the innocent or underpowered.

Nelson Mandel's legacy is a bit different though just because the fundamental change in South Africa was through the reconciliation process. The challenges are still there but the possibilities for the nation are positive.
It is appropriate at the time of Madiba's death to reflect on the achievements of the man, but none of that would have been possible without the courage of F.W. de Klerk.
He too had vision and took a huge risk, based on the referendum among the white South Africans to break down apartheid, and to release Madiba.
There is much more to this story than I know!

The peaceful defeat of the apartheid regime gives the appearance, at least me, that it is easier to achieve resolution to conflict between race than conflict through religion - why is that?

French Forces [peacekeeper?] have gone into the Central African Republic! It is an outrage that we saw on television the corpses lying untended! The outrage being that they are corpses - through religious disharmony!
I have no idea of the issues here, but I do have empathy for those corpses and the families they belong to.

The 'scramble for Africa' by the European counties caused huge upheavals for African - the worst example has to King Leopold II in the Congo! Indigenous Africans can rightly are aggrieved.

The issue in the Central African Republic is between Africans. And you have to be careful when the fighting is because of religion. Underlying can be tribal issues, financial issues, land ownership issues or others.
But whatever the cause it is individuals that profligate the fighting.
If the fighting is because of religion, where are the leaders? Mandela promoted forgiveness and reconciliation and Christian, Islam, and most of the other religions promote the same thing! So why are they killing each other.

Mandela and de Klerk stepped up - why can't religious leaders step up and stop the killing? I'm not just talking the Central African Republic - give peace a chance!
 

JFK Shooting

I watched a few of the television documentaries on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the US president. 

There seem to be a lot of conspiracy theories and I found it a little difficult to get my head around it all.

Investigations seem to have been carried out on all the aspects that happened, might have happened or were possible to happen and what I have to say in neither groundbreaking or controversial. 

The thing is, I regularly shoot rabbits. Not for the fun of it - just because it the requirement of a land owner to control rabbits.

In New Zealand rabbits are an introduced species and they damage our environment and compete with livestock for food.

So I am a practiced shooter but I am not anywhere near a sharp shooter - as Oswald has been described - but I hit more than I miss. And from time to time I make difficult shots that one might term a fluke - but flukes do happen. 

It is difficult to shoot downhill because of the theories of trajectory and the influence of gravity, so you aim lower than you normally would - but it is difficult to make the judgement of how much to allow for.

Myself, I tend not to shoot downhill because I invariably miss.

It is also difficult to shoot at a moving target. It would seem from where Oswald was and the direction of the car, there would have been no need to allow any lead. But regardless of that, the mind would have played tricks.

The scope apparently was a four power, and the pictures I have seen show that it is a small thing to peer through.

As well to be accurate, you need to be calm - I would think Oswald's heart would have been pumping with whatever emotion he was experiencing. Then, he had to work the bolt in the rifle to reload - each time shifting from a comfortable firing position.

I drew a line on the margin of a piece of paper. 1cm from the bottom, I marked 1mm from the perpendicular after 25cm, the gap from the perpendicular is 1.7cm. So obviously if the muzzle of the rifle moved 1mm when Oswald fired, at 70m he would have missed.

Movies and electronic games make us all think that pointing and firing results in hitting.

I was given the DVD of the movie Django. Using open sights from what I would call a 'long distance', he dropped a farmer - moving, ploughing a field. Now such a shot is possible but it is unlikely. As I said - flukes do happen.

So all I am saying about Oswald's shots is that they were remarkable.

Morals don't come into the shooting if Oswald (and or Ruby) was a nutter. 

The ease of acquiring firearms seems to me to be ridiculous. It would seem that in the US as many other countries, the justification for owning a firearm is 'self defense'. And that means, basically, you are prepared to shoot someone. That then brings in morals.

Oft said 'politics is a dirty game'. The forces of internal and external politics result in the will of the individual(s) excerpting the the mandate of the people/population.

Whatever the reason a democratically elected President was taken down by remarkable rifle fire.

Religion, Politics and History.

I'm not sure where this will all go, because I usually do not discuss religion or politics. I hope I can be diplomatic and inoffensive.

Last evening I saw images of starving starving children (due to human conflict in Syria), and of soldiers, now unknown, who went off to fight in the First World War. To be honest, I was outraged at what was happening to those children, and again at the waste of potential of those who went off to war, presumably so children do not have suffer as they are in Syria (and elsewhere) some one hundred years later.

There is an awful lot in this world and beyond that I don't understand! I cannot get my head around the concept of nothing, nor of the concept of infinity. Scientists tell us the Universe was created by a Big Bang which occurred in such a small fraction of a second that is unimaginable to me. Created from nothing - not an atom! Then the Universe has expanded to infinity ever since and is still expanding. (Not quite the right way of saying it, I know.)

I also have trouble with the visualization of heaven and of its antithesis. Perhaps it depends on your point of view: For a prostate sufferer, having a good pee is a form of heaven, and surely those starving kids in Syria know what hell is!

Point of view is where belief comes from: everyone is surely entitled to their own particular belief, problems only occur with what the belief of an individual, or collective  may cause them to do.

Within  humanity, there are many races, the reason for which is also difficult for me to understand - oh I know it is put down to 'environmental factors'. Apparently all races have similar DNA but the diversity of the visual astounds.
And why did people remain in inhospitable places like deserts or in areas of extreme cold?
And what is within the human psyche to distrust others who are different. It seems in history [and even today] there was no, 'Welcome stranger, you look different to me, but that's cool!' Instead, it is more like, 'There's a stranger, let's kill him!'
 Ethnicity has been the cause, excuse or side issue of wars over the ages.

I can understand that mankind in early history embraced forms of religion, hoping for favorable weather/harvests and for fertility. However I don't understand how or why early mankind were fascinated by and had great understanding of the stars. The moon and the sun are obvious but the was the solstice observed? Spring is announced by nature, as is autumn, so to know when the solstice occurs seems unimportant in the scheme of things.
But populations were somehow convinced to build great works [hugely labor intensive] to honour the solstices or/and their gods.
Faith and religion are good things because guidelines and rules are made for populations to follow, creating a form of order, but of course this created leaders and gave those leaders power - sometimes great power. And with that comes corruption.
Greed comes quite quickly and there seems to be something within the human psyche for leaders [religious or otherwise] to find  ways of amassing wealth at the expense of their followers. And of course the wealth of one group  became coveted and so was the cause of battles and wars.

It would appear that all culture had their religious beliefs, there own particular deities and way of honoring them. And there were prophets and holy men & women.

Then along came a man, know for his humility and meekness, who started off by doing some good deeds and performed miracles. He went into the wilderness (alone) and later says to his fellows, 'Follow me.' And this started a religion. Our modern time is tied to the birth of this man.

Some six hundred years  previously, a prince went out into the wilderness (alone) and he recieved enlightenment and discovered the meaning of life and his teachings led to an enduring religion.

Then twelve hundred years later, a man known for his honesty and trustworthiness went out into the wilderness (alone), and returned able to read and write, he united warring tribes and stopped inter-tribal fighting. He later took 10 000 soldiers and won a battle without bloodshed. Honoring this man led to another religion.

There are around 4 200 religions and presumably they all teach things like peace, tolerance, humility and all round goodness. The edict or dogma or whatever it is called is all well and good but how individuals interpret  their particular religion can be far from what the edict or dogma may say.

Charles Darwin espoused the theory of the survival of the fittest, and from what I have seen throughout my adventures, I have to agree with him.
So this leads to a couple of questions:
(1) Some religions have leaders and members - the most holy - who are celibate, so how can their particular holy line continue?
(2) Within the character of some people, there is an element of sympathy/empathy. In others, there is clearly not. Is sympathy/empathy a weakness to be exploited and ultimately unsurvivable - a trait that will die out?

In all nature, the object of life is to eat as much as possible and to procreate - and for mankind to survive, there is also a need for shelter.
In all nature, living is for self. Piglets for example suckling on their mother are only concerned in their own full stomachs - they care not if another dies through lack of food. The trait of sympathy/empathy makes mankind a little different to all other animals - sometimes.
If an apple was cut up to be shared among me and my peers as children, the one who took the largest piece was looked down upon and maybe castigated; that was our society and perhaps something to do with peer pressure. So according to Darwin's Theory, are we weaker and less likely to survive as one of the fittest?

The ancients 'who were in touch' with their gods - or used magic or other means - became leaders of their groups and politics quickly came came into play. And if the priest, or whatever title was given to him, was not the leader, he/she was close to, and provided 'divine' advice to the leader.
We know of the maxim; power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And perhaps this is a human frailty - or is that survival of the fittest thing again?

Through history for reasons of religion, politics or plain old greed there there have been atrocities. Those man on man (and not excluding the feminine variety) were mostly unrecorded and but history tells us of the well known instances  perpetuated by governments, warlords,  random leaders and indeed churches/religions.
One of the tools used has been and is terror. And this is another mystery to me because we all think that others should think as we do; so if you are not into terror it really makes you wonder.

Kings and Queens were surrounded by political intrigue and they, or their henchmen kept their position by the use of murder, terror or fear. And it is fair to say that throughout history, and in the scheme of nature, whoever is at the top gets knocked off, This happened by by various means - death being the ultimate but  these days, the process is more likely to be democratic and through the voting process.

I can't ramble on about this without pointing the finger.
To identify times of darkness within history is simple enough, but listing them means I need to put them in order and it would be easy to miss some. However some times of terror come to mind randomly - based on my imagination of fear in the hearts of those who were/have been victimized.
The Reign of Terror during the French Revolution (the thought of the guillotine does not sit well with me) , The Spanish Inquisition (torture and not being able to trust your neighbor), Roman Imperialism  (having to participate in the Colosseum 'games'), Belgium in the Congo (gross brutality), the Holocaust (mass murder), and all the other 'ethnic cleansing' and genocide episodes (Bosnia, Rwanda). The list is huge.
Then there were then there were the World Wars, followed by a Cold War, when nuclear weapons were amassed - enough to blow the plant to bits many times over! And some countries persist in testing in a bid to have their own!

To be blunt, dying is dying, fried by nuclear fusion, gassed, shot, blown to smithereens, or bashed by a rock (add what you like), the result is the same. Though there is a difference in dying and being killed! Those who use these ways of killing (or invent them) justify it in some way but personally, in their heads, what really are they actually thinking?  


Human beings have complex brains, and I wonder how far back intelligence goes. When they built the pyramids  the Egyptians, they were using mathematics that many student of today struggle with.
So it is reasonable to suggest those Egyptians had a similar brain capacity to what  we have today.
We have all these emotions/things; love, hate, pride, forgiveness, sympathy, greed, and more stored in out psyche.

I just wonder what goes on in peoples heads when they are pulling triggers, detonating bombs, wielding bush-knives, stabbing or bashing to kill and maim innocent people.

We all know right from wrong. We cannot help what/how we feel but we do have control of how we behave.

There is just one other thing about the human psyche, we need and respond to love - nobody loves a terrorist. 

I shed a tear for those starving kids of Syria and I punch the air in support of a student girl who survived a gunshot wound to the head while rightfully seeking education.

Violence - In Particular. Family Violence

I attended a talk presented by two women from the Women's Refuge, and I found some of the statistics they presented to be alarming! Here we are in little old NZ and we are one of the worst countries for domestic violence.

Now I'm no expert on the subject, but I have seen my share of life and thought it would be a good idea to toss around some thoughts on the subject.

The two women delivering the talk certainly knew their stuff and have had a lot of experience in Women's Refuge and I have no doubt that they have helped many women through high stress situation - and I applaud them.

In NZ we have in place 'anti smacking [of children] legislation' which has been an attempt to protect children from family violence. However at the back of my mind, I believe that taking that 'disciplinary tool' away from parents leaves a void so the defining of boundaries for parents is made a little more difficult.

In the talk, the women told us that violence in the home was a 'learned practice'. If a parent is violent toward a child, then that child will have violent tendencies to it's off spring.

They certainly have the data to back that statement, and while I have no disagreement with what they said, I don't think that is the full story.

In distant history, something happened to cause humankind to rise up and become different to the other animals on this planted. The process can be defined in religious, scientific or mystical terms, depending on personal belief, but in the end we are among the animal population of this planet and Charles Darwin's theory of 'survival of the fittest' fits human beings as much as any other living thing.

Violence is, if you like, our heritage. Like other animals, prehistoric man fought and killed for food and to procreate! The through history the fight to 'reach the top' has known no bounds - ether personally or nationally. Wars of the past were indeed butchery, unlike the conventions of war today, but the end has been the same - it leaves people dead or maimed!

There are certain things that places humans above animals : love, compassion, conscience, logic, generosity - also the antithesis of those qualities.

So how did things happen as they have? The Colosseum in Rome where people who were threats to the government were executed for the pleasure of the citizens - and the gladiators. Genocide through the ages. Crusades. Slavery.  The Inquisition. Wars.

Just a few words, but violence on a huge scale and a distinct lack of love, compassion, conscience. logic or generosity.
 Inventors and scientists have worked out how to kill more efficiently and on a larger scale. For example, what is the mind set of the person who invented the machine gun? Then what is the mind set person behind the machine-gun as he sees his fellow man being mown down?

A lot of killing has been done in the name of religion - maybe religion is not the problem, but the people therein.
Lord Acton's truism, that all power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely is exemplified in in Paul I Wellman's book, Glory, God and Gold when he was discussing religious intolerance of Catholic Spain, but it is true for any religious intolerance. Both the Roman and Protestant hierarchies were governed by the same principle of jurisdiction - the criminality of heresies. Whoever believed wrongly - that is otherwise than the Holy Office of the Catholics, or, say,the Venerable Consistory of the Calvinists - believed nothing. And he who believed nothing thereby committed the crime of treason to God and deserved capital punishment. Persecution hence became a sacred duty, an act agreeable to God, and the greater the intolerance, the greater the value.

The Women's Refuge representatives told us there was no excuse for violence  and that included alcohol and drugs. I thought about that, and at first disagreed, but it is terminology. I have seen that men - no, not only men - become more aggressive when stimulated by alcohol.
But they are right - it is not an excuse. But it is a reason!

There are few among us that are totally nonviolent. The most placid and mild-mannered person I knew was my mother, but she liked it when the movie or television baddie got his just deserts!
The big hits in sport are applauded and the crowd bullies those they do not like.
All this is entertainment - like in the Colosseum - but it is still violence.
Huge numbers of young people are in control of the trigger (or other weapons) in their electronic games - many of these are graphic.

But violence is not just the physical stuff. As  walked down the street recently, behind me were on older couple. For some reason the woman wanted to go to some shops, in a different area of town. The man obviously did not so he was loudly protesting and being aggressive.
The man's mouthing off would have embarrassed his wife into silence and acquiescence he used the tool to get his own way, so to him it was effective. Did I do anything? No, a verbal confrontation on the street would have embarrassed the woman further and I could not see the man to judge if he was prone to physical violence.

So what do we do about violence? I wish I had a workable solution, but it is a tough nut to crack.

Some things will not happen :
Censorship.There will be violence in the movies, on television, on computers and in books. Now it is often claimed that such things have little effect. Well, it was pointed out by those two women that violence is learned behavior. Anyway there are many who believe violence in the medial has a minimal effect.
Curbs on alcohol & drugs. In the real world the acquisition of these things is easy.

Laws are in place and the police are to be commended for what they do. Times are tough for them.
The prisons are full and costly - parolees very often continue to be troublesome.

The bottom line though is exactly what the two women said, 'There is no excuse for family or domestic violence.
This is a flat statement, and entirely correct.

Despite all the long history of violence above, today there is no excuse. I guess we have to make a distinction, because there is and will remain aggression and an element of violence in sport, so lets say there is legal and illegal violence.

So we accept there is no excuse for family or domestic violence and while the two women conceded that women do commit the crime, the majority is that women and children are victims of  violence committed by men.

The tough question is, 'what do we do to prevent/stop family/domestic violence?'

I am no expert in the field and I have no panacea. My first suggestion is to utilize the same tool that 'Quit Smoking' use - it is not a cool activity.
Encourage peers to speak up and denounce violence.
Teach the principle of action/reaction. At the first outburst, an aggressor can be calmed by an approach of non aggressive reply.  The technique needs to be learned.
Help by Women's Refuge is very good, but a hotline number needs to be more public and available.
People seem not to want the police to be involved. It should be advertised that the police are very helpful - and life saving - and can be trusted.
We all need to watch out for each other.
It seems that an aggressor will hit back if a wife/partner complains to the police or Women's Refuge. Perhaps the perceived blame (on the wife/partner) would be less obvious if the appropriate numbers were displayed by way of a mail drop - pamphlet or fridge magnet.

I understand that there is soon to be an appeal for Women's Refuge funding - it is good to support them.