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The Holocaust did not have to happen.

Don't be silent.

We must not be silent about torture today. 
Currently, seventy-five nations worldwide 
engage in torture of prisoners, including political prisoners. 
Torture is immoral, unethical, and contrary
 to basic beliefs and values every major faith.

Thank you to the following national American Jewish community
organizations for publicly speaking out against torture as a state policy
of the United States government:

RABBIS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS - NORTH AMERICA
and its membership of 700 North American clergy

The ALLIANCE FOR JEWISH RENEWAL (ALEPH)

The SHALOM CENTER, Philadelphia

LAND MINES from wars worldwide during the last several decades continue to kill an estimated 15 to 20 thousand people every year. 

Many thousands more are horribly maimed. 

 Shamefully, the UNITED STATES has not signed the 1999 Ottawa Land Mine Treaty.
This important treaty bans the 
use, production, stockpiling and transfer of anti-personnel mines.

You can help: Urge your United States Senators, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, President Bush and Vice President Cheney to support American signing of the 1999 OTTAWA LAND MINE BAN TREATY.

Almost all U.S. Senators have FEEDBACK sections in the U.S. Senate government website. Please write them to take up this issue in the Senate and express your concern Ask your friends, relatives, co-workers to do the same.

You can ask the clergy where you worship to address this at services or with your congregation's Social Action Committee. 

Every congregation member can sign a letter from your church, synagogue, mosque, or temple.

While we can't stop war, banning these weapons can be accomplished.
All countries must agree to stop using mines as a weapon of choice.  

Let's tell the American President and U.S. Senators and that 
Americans really care enough about the needless deaths and horrible injuries which occur when poor people around the world step on land mines left over from wars.  

'Injustice Anywhere is a Threat
to Justice Everywhere'

  - Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in a 1967 speech.
He was assassinated the following year. 

"Any government that commits, condones, promotes or 
fosters torture is a malignant force in the world. 
And those who refuse to raise their voices against 
something as clearly evil as torture 
are enablers, if not collaborators."
  - Bob Herbert, in the February 11, 2005 
New York Times column: "Torture, American Style"

Thank you,
 Justices of the British House of Lords
who ruled in late 2004 that 
holding prisoners without access to 
counsel and without trial is contrary to British and 
international standards and rules of law & justice. 

Two New York Times articles in the Dec. 10, 2004 were noteworthy for their placement in the paper....
The first article that caught my attention was on page 15 and was but
one paragraph in length. Excerpts follow:
  
World Briefing 
Congo: WAR'S DEATH TOLL AT 3.8 MILLION
      "Six years of continuing conflict in Congo have claimed 3.8 million lives, half of them children, with most killed by disease and
famine.... 
     "The committee's  last survey, completed in
April 2003, estimated 3.3 million deaths.....
     "...despite peace deals reached by 2002, 
more than 31,000 civilians continue to die each month, the group said."

The second article was on page 18. Excerpts follow:  

 Unicef Report Says Children In Deprivation Reach a Billion
by Celia W. Dugger
"More than a billion children - more than half the children in the world - suffer extreme deprivation because of war, H.I.V. /AIDS or poverty, according to a report released yesterday by the United Nations Children's Fund."
     "...The report said that nearly half the estimated 3.6 million people killed in wars since 1990 have been children..."
     "...Ms. [Carol] Bellamy, who has headed Unicef for a decade, said she had been struck in her travels by the many ways conflicts affected the lives of children - in Ugandan villages where they are abducted by rebels; in Congo where they were are systematically raped as a
weapon of war; and in Iraq, where school enrollment has risen, but so has malnutrition."
     "...Along with war, AIDS and H.I.V. are destroying millions of childhoods in the sub-Saharan region of Africa....At least two million children have been infected......Almost half a million children died of AIDS 
last year, it said."