To get back to Freda's original question as brucie so kindly did. The discussion between personal acts of violence over acts of violence by states or nations is an important one.   How often in reality have we been faced with the person with a gun/knife/bludgeon ready to instantly kill our loved ones where the only defence is to kill or be killed? I'm not saying that it doesn't happen - clearly it does - and I would suppose we've all been in the situation where a well-placed kick has diffused and/or resolved many situations. It is a very rare event nevertheless. However violence that is endemic i.e. institutionalised racism, the assumption by State or National police of a right of judgement and action beyond their mandate, the assumption by soldiers (witness recent events re US, British, Swiss, soldiers) because they have the position and the weapons to do what they like to people, occupation forces, national liberation struggles, anti-union attacks, and so on continues, as freda observes, a spiralling violence that becomes part of a culture, a form of ongoing terror, that has no resolution beyond escalation and the end result is more and more people die. Horrible. And we live with it daily and by living with it, are we accepting it? Who wants a world like that? Yet, at the same time, and here's a discussion; in Redfern Aboriginal people finally attacked the police - didn't couldn't win in the long run - but that night of violence gave a strength and a power to individual koories unified that challenging authorities that for too long have been killing them could in fact change a dynamic that previously, they had been powerless in. Yet in the long run it will be mediation, education, and sheer commitment to future history that will change things. I've been in a situation, as a committed non-violent person, of having to whack someone. Most recently at a pub where I was at a loose sort of meeting where a person was being allowed to say the most offensive and racist things. There was no reasoning there but it was important that those words were not allowed to live comfortably in that atmosphere so I launched myself at the speaker and gave him a good smack in the mouth. Bedlam! I was the one who was banned which seemed a bit mean to me but by the same token it forced the issue about how people were allowed to talk about things. Words are a very dangerous form of violence and people accept them easily as part of a "freedom of speech" democratic right. Was I right or was I wrong as a person who is anti-violent to do this? And what is the difference between personal "protection/defence" and institutional violence? And does accepting this part of the discussion as okay undermine an anti-violence stand?