To quickly lead a report’s reader to its essential content or an audience to a central issue it is necessary to write or speak precisely. Precise is explained by "exactly or sharply defined or stated" [1] or "exactly or sharply defined or stated; definite; exact; … not vague or equivocal" [2]. Three issues came up in a recent presentation that dealt with evil acts and potential responses. The first issue is what words will be appropriate. Propaganda or shading reality by semantics [3] justifies the questionable. Whether the term is spin or big lie repeating the language of those who seek acceptance enables them to continue acting.

War against civilians to eliminate an entire kind of people is called genocide. This tragedy has taken place in many places in the world. Technology has been part of making the speed and size of such killings greater. It made it possible to commit murder without incurring direct awareness of responsibility. Bombing that created firestorms in Germany and Japan, as well as missile launches and use of high altitude aircraft are examples. This began with the German effort to eliminate British resistance in World War II. It continued in Vietnam and goes on today in Serbia.

Aerial bombardment of civilians was unthinkable before it first took place in Spain or Ethiopia in the nineteen-thirties. It led to Picasso’s Guernica [4] one of the twentieth-centuries’ masterworks. Use of antipersonnel weapons such as cluster bombs designed to kill people masks the reality that war always involves murder and that civilians, namely women and children, die from such activity.

War is a form of oppression. So are slower means that destroy humans’ souls. Incarceration, eliminating posts of opportunity, and economic enslavement leading to famine and starvation are other sorts. Addiction is one response. Two of the books below describe the link between such kinds of societal injustice and consequent human behavior that end hope.

[1] Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield Massachusetts: G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, 1963.

[2] On-line dictionary Wordsmith; obtained by electronic mail from wsmith@wordsmith.org.

[Establish an executable file dict with the following content:

mail -s "define $1" wsmith@wordsmith.org < /dev/null

Enter dict word to obtain the definition by electronic mail response.]

[3] Hayakawa, S. I. (Samuel Ichiye), Language in Thought and Action, [in consultation with Arthur Asa Berger and Arthur Chandler, 4th ed.; … and Alan R.Hayakawa ; with an introduction by Robert MacNeil, 5th ed.] NY: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, c1978; San Diego California: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990. PE 1585 H32la 1990 On Reserve at Management Library.

[4] Text excerpt from Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New, Art and the Century of Change, Thames and Hudson 1980 and 1991 is at world-wide-web universal resource locator http://indigo1.biop.ox.ac.uk/graham/guernika_comm.txt; this citation and an available image are at http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/9820/guernica.htm.

Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki & James D. Houston, Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment, Toronto Canada and NY: Bantam Books, 1974, 1973.

McCourt, Frank, Angela's Ashes: A Memoir, NY: Scribner, 1996.

Entire ... Complete in all parts; undivided; undiminished; whole; full and perfect; not deficient [2]

Murder ... To kill with premeditated malice; to kill (a human being) willfully, deliberately, and unlawfully. ...To destroy; to put an end to. ... Syn: To kill; assassinate; slay. See {Kill}. [2]

War ... A contest between nations or states, carried on by force. (Whether for defense, for revenging insults and redressing wrongs, for the extension of commerce, for the acquisition of territory, for obtaining and establishing the superiority and dominion of one over the other, or for any other purpose.) Armed conflict of sovereign powers; declared and open hostilities. ... (Law) … condition of belligerency … maintained by physical force. ... To make war; to invade or attack a state or nation with force of arms; to carry on hostilities; to be in a state (of) violence. ... To contend; to strive violently; to fight. [2]

Genocide ...the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group. [1]

[1] Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield Massachusetts: G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, 1963.

[2] On-line dictionary Wordsmith; obtained by electronic mail from wsmith@wordsmith.org.

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mail -s "define $1" wsmith@wordsmith.org < /dev/null

Enter dict word to obtain the definition by electronic mail response.]

Excerpt (Unverified)

Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New, Art and the Century of Change,

http://indigo1.biop.ox.ac.uk/graham/guernika_comm.txt;