Our children are being exploited in increasing numbers; and not directly by paedophiles either, yet there is no community outcry, no angry mob beating down doors, no fliers being plastered through-out communities. Instead our communities aren't only silent about these exploitations of children, but they're accepted, even welcomed in some cases. Which leaves me wondering, why is there so much hatred for paedophiles and yet not for these other exploits of children which are just as bad, if not worse? Now please don't take this the wrong way, I am completely 100% against paedophilia, but I don't limit my outrage to just those who directly, physically rape our children, but instead I direct it to ANY and ALL sexual exploitation of children, period.

In this post I will briefly discuss the 7 ways our children are being exploited in the hope that our communities may finally wake up to what is going on and the same sort of outrage which paedophilia achieves, could be directed to these exploits as well.

1. Advertisers & Marketing

Open up a kids clothing catalogue and take a hard realistic look at the way their posed, and how they're made up. Perhaps after taking a look you'll start to understand the tip of this iceberg. Increasingly children are being posed in adult, mostly sexually explicit ways in order to sell junk to the relatively newly formed "tween" market. But the problems with the "tween" market, which comprises 6-12 year olds, don't stop at simple catalogues, but extend to a whole range of products produced and marketed directly to this demographic which encourage them to act in adult & sometimes sexually explicit ways.

2. Adult orientated textiles

It has now gotten to a point where you can walk into the girls section of any department store and find an assortment of sexually explicit, adult style clothing. Padded, push-up bra's are now available for children as young as EIGHT! G-STRINGS (Thongs) are available for toddlers as young as FOUR! And Bikini's can be purchased for babies whom aren't even ONE YEAR OLD. But the problem isn't exclusive to girls underwear and swimwear. There are mini-shirts for toddlers, see through and plunging neckline shirts for 6 year olds, in fact if you can think of it in adults clothing, be it men's or women's it will exist for children now days.

The slogans printed on children's clothes now days leaves a lot to be desired as well. I seen one the other day for young girls which read "How I am meant to know what's right?", which as far as I can see only encourages girls to act stupid and for sexism to be rife.

3. Social Networking

As I discuss in my recent post "Paedophiles and Social Networking" parents, family and friends are placing naked, or near naked photo's of their children on social networking sites, where perhaps unknown to them, anyone on the planet can view the images. If you haven't checked it out already I suggest you do.

But more than just the images being placed on social networking is the direct risk of exposure to paedophiles, fake profiles, identity scam and cyber-bullying that allowing our children to use social networks brings. The mere fact that they're allowed to use social networks unsupervised puts them at even greater risk.

4. Music Videos & Song Lyrics

Listen to the lyrics of any of the current Top 10 songs and you'll find degradation of women, sexually explicit language, the description of sexually explicit acts and drug use. Watch their music videos and you'll see much of the same. As children idolise these performers they copy them, and form their views to social subjects based on the lyrics in these songs.

What's more Music Videos containing highly graphic sexual imagery and degradation of women can be viewed any Saturday or Sunday morning amongst or immediately following the kids cartoons. These videos have become little more than softcore pornography and yet we allow our young children to not only watch it, but to idolise and mimic it!

5. TV Shows & Pop Film

Film & TV seem to have lost their ability to produce quality family entertainment. Instead we're bombarded by a constant stream of sexual orientated language and scenes, adult themes, swearing, softcore porn and hardcore violence, even during childrens viewing times.

Icons like Warner Brothers loony toons are no longer innocent, lovable family entertainment. Now they've been recreated into a crime solving, ninja force through Warner Brothers latest concept "Loony Toons Unleashed". The premise of the show is that they go around vigilante` style killing and beating up "bad guys". While some of the old time sound bytes like Bugs Bunnies iconic "what's up doc" are still present in the show, the characters are almost unrecognisable. It's a trend that has hit every popular 70's and 80's children's classic, turning them all into violent reincarnations of their former selves.

6. Tween market peer-pressure

With advertisers pushing their adult orientated "tween market" so hard, kids are no longer able to be kids. For those who try they only face ridicule and peer pressure to conform. Now days 7 year olds feel it's not only appropriate but necessary to wear make-up, to dress like adults, to have cell phones and all the rest. Children as young as 8 are now deciding to experiment with sex, which the market has confused them into thinking equates to love, with their "boyfriends" & "girlfriends".

7. Sexting

With 6 year olds now owning cell phones, and a high charged sexual advertising environment around them it should come as very little surprise that pre-teens are sending naked &/or sexually explicit photo's of themselves to their friends by way of MMS. Unfortunately this often leads to the image being forward to all the students at the child's school and can end up literally anywhere, including posted on the internet for all to see, including paedophiles.

We have now entered into a weird sort of a world, where the mere mention of the word paedophile causes hysteria, over-emotional reactions and most of all hatred. Yet on the other hand some of the same people feel that placing naked images of their children, say in the bathtub; on public spaces such as social networking sites is fine. The thing is, a naked image of a child in a public space is always a naked image of a child in a public space, regardless of where it came from or it's intentions. An individual example is a woman on Sarah's facebook profile whom has placed pictures of her 15 year old niece wearing ONLY her underwear, posed in a sexual way on facebook. When Sarah commented on the photo's negatively the woman claimed Sarah was just jealous of the 15 year old's body. Now I'm sorry but placing sexually explicit images of a minor online is a CRIMINAL offence. And yes that law applies to naked photo's of toddlers and babies as well.

So the question has to be asked, why do people whom are so strongly opposed to paedophilia posting photo's of children online which are in the legal classification as child porn? I think a small part of the answer lies in the fact that many people still haven't caught onto the realities and limitations of social networking. People treat their profiles as if they're a lounge room with their friends all sitting around chatting, when in actual fact social networking is much more like trying to have a private discussion with your friends on the busiest street on the planet, while someone takes notes, makes copies and spreads those copies to all the other streets on the planet.

That is to say, social networking sites aren't private places. You can be upset about that all you like, you can talk about how they should be, but the fact of the matter is they aren't, and due to the nature and function of the internet they CAN'T be either. We need to be aware of what about ourselves and more importantly our children we're placing online. Images of naked, or near naked minors should never, under any circumstances be placed online. It places those minors at risk and is a criminal offence.

It seems to me that there are an unusually high number of major things in the world RIGHT NOW which could, if continuing on their present course, spell either the downfall of humanity and in some cases other species of earthly life as well. This post is a list of those things.

1. Potential for World War III

There are a number of events happening in the world currently which could ultimately spark World War III, these include; rising tensions inside the world wide Muslim community as extremists call upon Muslims living in western countries to destroy democracy and instil Islamic law. With Muslim groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir rallying Muslims living in the west to revolt and create a transnational Islamic state. Heck, the USA has even received a fresh threat of attacks on America which will make 9/11 pale in comparison.

At the same time, North/South Korean tensions are rising, with the USA pushing the UN to act harshly on North Korea. Similarly Israeli/Palestinian tensions are increasing as well, with Israel ruling out any chance of an independent Palestinian state by 2012. Israel has even begun aggression against nationals from it's ally states such as the USA in the recent commando raids upon Turkish humanitarian aide flotillas.

Iran is definitely a threat to global peace as the UN steps up sanctions against the country, which not only has nuclear weapons but now has commercially viable autonomous humanoid robots. And lastly China, with their entry into the capitalist world is hungry for global dominance. The have an almost inexhaustible number of soldiers, more money than you can poke a stick at and well, they seem to own most of the world now anyway.

2. Climate Change

This one really is a no brainer. Our climate is clearly changing, defined sessions are quickly becoming a thing of the past in my neck of the woods. Seas are rising, and the world seen the first climate change refugee's in 2008. Climate change means some REALLY nasty things are headed our way.

3. The BP oil spill

While the fact the BP oil spill has been spewing 911,454,000 litres of oil into the sea per day for the passed 72 days is a bad enough ecological disaster which will likely see the Gulf of Mexico take decades to recovery, if ever. New evidence shows that the BP oil spill has also dramatically increased the arsenic levels in the ocean, and those levels are continuing to rise. In other words, as arsenic levels rise sea life will die. Take out key points in the oceanic food web and you'll end up with basically no life left in the sea. Guess what happens to life on the land if life on the sea goes extinct.

4. Self aware AI in a military robot

The University of Adelaide in collaboration with robotics company Strategic Engineering have created the worlds first robot to be able to fully think for itself, as part of a US Military Super-Smart robots challenge. Funnily enough this AI's primary mission is to search, target, "neutralise" an enemy. It's weird, they create a self aware robot, then expect programming it to kill "the enemy" isn't going to backfire on us.

5. Plague Squirrel

A squirrel carrying the plague has been found at a camp in California causing the closure of the park for the next 10 days. Now two points to note here

(1) The fact the plague is back in town, the squirrel can't have picked up the plague from nowhere!

(2) How do you find out a random squirrel has the plague if a human doesn't first become infected? Seriously...

I'd say we need worry a LOT more about the potential for another pandemic of the plague then we do about the almost harmless swine flu.

6. Global insanity

Maybe it's just me, but it seems the world is becoming far more violent. Everyday the newspapers are filled with increasingly more seemingly random and pointless acts of violence. Children now days seem to think it's fun to gang up on a random person walking down the street and beat them within an inch of their life. There are 10 year olds in the UK whom KILL homeless point for kicks. Everywhere it seems, people who used to be normal are randomly becoming violent.

I don't know about you, but when I think about cars I can't help but associate them with noise, pollution and rising petrol prices. It's enough that some people have even gone to great lengths to convert their cars to & refine their own bio-diesel. Sure I suppose there is a certain charm and novelty to having your exhaust smell like burritos and French fries but (1) could you imagine the smell on large scale? Or the price of oil? and (2) They're still just as noisy and they're not 100% pollutant free either.

Toyota's Petrol/Electric Hybrid the "Prius" won over a lot of green inclined people searching for a cheaper and less polluting alternative. But the 'Prius' had the fundamental flaw of still running on petrol. Which means you have to pay for 2 fuel sources, plus it's still just as noisy when running on petrol AND it pollutes. Sure not as much as a fully petrol based car, but sustainability means cars can't pollute at all.

Enter Nissan whom have announced the December 2010 US release of their all electric car; the 'leaf'. Nissan are working with other industry players to roll out commercial recharging stations first in the USA and then across other countries around the world. These recharging stations will make owning a leaf viable, as you can always recharge on longer trips. For most people though, recharging will only need take place every 2 or so days as the leaf can get around 160km (100mi) from a single charge, and can even be recharged from home.

Recharging gives you 2 port options, a smaller port for recharging from home which will take 12 - 14hrs on 110v and 8hrs on 240v, so leaving the car plugged in over night to recharge while you sleep would be viable. The second larger plug is for the aforementioned commercial recharge stations which are predicted to take just 30 minutes to fully recharge the car from empty. Of course the question of what would one do during that time comes to mind, and is really the largest flaw I can see with the Leaf. However there is talk of installing the commercial recharge stations in parking garages for work places, shopping centres and so forth, so recharging could take place while you're at work or doing the groceries which sounds somewhat reasonable, although only really suited in that model to suburban & metro areas.

The Leaf also, like the Toyota 'Prius' gets some of it's charge back when braking or coasting & even includes a solar panel to give some extra recharge for FREE! I can see the solar panel coming in handy if you run out of charge in the middle of no where, think about it, wait a day and you're car will be fully charged and ready to drive again. The head lamps are LED powered giving both brighter lights and better power efficiency. But some of the coolest features are inside the car. The dash for example displays not only how much charge you have left but an estimate based on your own PERSONAL driving history in that car, as to how much further that charge will get you.

That's right, you read correctly, this car remembers your driving history and responds. It even has a novelty feature on the dash where you can earn 'trees' over time depending on how efficiently you drive the car. The inbuilt satnav also connects to the internet via a Nissan exclusive wireless service updating the GPS with real time information such as the location of your nearest recharging station, which when you're running low on charge the car will politely suggest you should visit. 6 speaker stereo allows cd/mp3 playback, has inbuilt bluetooth and has ipod/mp3 player connectivity. Under the hood, it even packs 100hp, 210ft.ibs torque!

But above ALL that, the most impressive thing about the Nissan Leaf is the obvious facts about the car. It doesn't directly pollute, being electric it's whisper quiet and it ultimately SHOULDN'T cost the earth to run. Being electric also there are a lot less parts, and a lot less of those parts move, meaning less ware & tare and fewer trips to the mechanic saving you even more cash. The Nissan Leaf, definitely worth looking out for through-out 2011.