Slam Bill O'Reilly for His Jihad Against Dr. George Tiller

By Isaac Fitzgerald, AlterNet. Posted June 2, 2009.

The cost of child marriage is too high to be ignored. When a girl is forced to marry at a young age, it diminishes her chance at an education, endangers her health and has long-lasting and dire consequences not only for her, but for her family and community as well.

Young brides are:

• More likely to become young mothers. Girls under the age of 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth than a woman in her 20s.
• More likely to drop out of school and have limited economic opportunities, which keeps them and their families locked in the cycle of poverty.
• Twice as likely to suffer domestic violence and are more vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases like HIV.

The United States can use its leadership to prevent child marriage. Stand with CARE and ask your representatives to co-sponsor the International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act of 2009.

VII -- Hold Shell Oil Accountable for Its Environmental and Human Rights Crimes

Shell Oil Co. faces charges that it was complicit in the slayings of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Nigerian activists. Shell Guilty is a collective of environmental and human rights groups that have formed a global campaign to hold Shell accountable and demand that it stop gas flaring in Nigeria.

Call for Shell to come clean about its corporate irresponsibility, human rights abuses and record of environmental devastation. Take action by clicking here. To learn more, visit ShellGuilty.com.

VIII -- Stop Starbucks' Problematic Labor Practices

Starbucks has a history of being anti-barista, anti-union, and thus anti-Employee Free Choice Act. Brave New Films, which took on the giant chain store Wal-Mart, is spilling the beans on Starbucks' atrocious labor practices, and it needs your help. Let Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz know that you demand he stop opposing the Employee Free Choice Act and allow his workers to unionize. Also, if you work at Starbucks, know someone who does, or even just got a coffee there today share your Starbucks story.

IX -- Health Care for America Now

With the likes of Rick Scott and Blue Cross Blue Shield turning on the pressure, we must keep on Obama to carry out his campaign promises about fixing our broken health care system. Click here to learn more about what you can do to help ensure that insurers don't defeat health care reform.

X -- Stand Up to Home Depot and Save Patagonia's Rivers

The Home Depot is the largest U.S. buyer of timber products from the Matte Group, one of the companies planning to build five big dams on two pristine rivers in Patagonia, southern Chile. The dams and their associated transmission lines would ruin rivers, flood rare, endangered forests and destroy livelihoods.

Why the Home Depot? Every year the Home Depot purchases $50 million worth of timber products from the Matte and Angelini groups – owners of wood-products companies CMPC and Arauco – which together control the main Chilean owner of the dam consortium called HidroAysén. The Home Depot claims that it works to protect Chilean native forests, but the dams and their transmission lines would require clear-cutting and flooding of untouched temperate rainforests of a type found nowhere else on the planet. 

InternationalRivers.org is calling on the Home Depot to protect Patagonia and stop buying timber products from the Matte and Angelini groups. Will you help? Learn how you can get involved!

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