It's an assumption that others are saying "turning her life around" = finding god. There could be lots of other things that were going right in her life prior to this train wreck that people perceived as proof her life was getting on track.

Nicko wrote:The principle that violence is only ever justified when it is used defensively? You know, the same one that lets us condemn murderers in the first place?

Right.

But also, I don't trust reporters of police or attorneys or judges or juries or, for that matter, myself. As Frank Zappa once said, people are bad, stupid, and incompetent. Plus, they lie. It's good that people are all three, because it cancels out somewhat. There's the idea that if we get a bunch of them doing things, it will cancel out even more. It isn't a great idea, but nobody seems to have come up with a better one (see "bad, stupid, and incompetent")

It's very easy to get into a blood lust fury, and lots of people will groove with it. But it makes people even more bad, stupid, and incompetent, and this is probably worse. The excesses of fury can do things I'd rather not see, such as warfare. Consider the Great War and its sequel, which happened because the first one wasn't satisfying enough, apparently. And the first one happened because, well, does anybody have a solid answer for that one?

Larry Flint is reported to have said something interesting, in the series of court cases that led to the protection of parody. Something like, "if the law can protect a scumbag like me, then people know it will protect them." I like the idea of the law's protecting me; as Gandhi said about Western civilization, it would be a very good idea. You gotta protect a few scumbags.

More importantly, though, giving into blood lust damages the individuals who do it and makes them less able to contribute to society.

Couple of news stories this morning...
http://www.news.com.au/national/neighbours-reveal-what-mersane-warria-was-doing-before-eight-children-were-found-dead-in-cairns/story-fncynjr2-1227163142200
http://www.news.com.au/national/queensland/police-probe-whether-drug-ice-played-a-role-in-cairns-child-killings/story-fnj4alav-1227163409925
Five fathers, and she was seeing two men, neither of whom were fathers. Sounds like a stereotypical fucked up single mother family that we hear and, sadly, see so much of in some areas. Lots of domestic violence out here in aboriginal communities stems from this sort of thing...bunch of kids, all of them with different fathers, sitting on welfare, drinking their lives away, and social services scared shitless to do anything about removing children from dangerous situations for fear of being labelled as "starting another stolen generation" or some such bullshit.

Sometimes the best place for kids ISN'T with their mother...and skin colour should play literally no part in such decisions, but sadly for the last decade or so it very much does after activists made sure that even in cases of terrible sexual abuse aboriginal and islander children are quite often returned straight back to their family groups so they can "remain in contact with their culture", when white children would be quickly removed. In rare cases where aboriginal children have been placed with white foster families, cries of "stolen generation" arise quickly and even after years and despite childrens protests that they don't want to go, the kids are taken away and returned to remote drug, violence, and alcohol riddled communities...but hey, at least they're "in touch with their culture"...
This even happened in our own family. One of my sister in laws died and my wife and I were prepared to take in at least one of her kids, but because the father was aboriginal, the prime concern was to put them somewhere that they could be in touch with their "culture" (even though the mother had been white). The two oldest girls were then subject to years of sexual abuse, but our pleas fell on deaf ears as the girls were passed around family members in the community so they could stay with aboriginal families, and get abused some more usually. Sickening!

I wonder if in this case the murderers reported cries of "Don’t let them take them away from us" meant that family services grew a spine for once and was in the process of removing the children, but acted way too slowly?
By the second story drugs could have played a part as well...Ice is sadly becoming very prevalent in a lot of places and many small and large country towns and cities.