Mission & Justice

Phillip Adams; 15/4/08

 was infuriated by the announcement that a 14-year-old model would be striking those high-fashion poses on Australian catwalks, alongside the fully matured 15 and 16-year-olds who pose and pout for ageing women and perving men. And I was delighted when, at last, there was a public uproar. What does an under-age model from Poland have to do with kiddie porn downloads in Australia or child prostitution in Thailand? Sadly, a great deal. They’re variations on the theme of child abuse. In war zones across the world, kids are used as killers. Dragged from their families, drugged and indoctrinated, countless thousands of child soldiers are committing atrocities in the name of this or that god, on orders from a wide variety of war lords. While some children survive physically, their minds are mutilated. Millions of others are enslaved as virtual or actual slave labourers, whether on feudal or family farms or in the infamous famous-brand factories in developing nations.

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Charles Bremner & Marie Tourres; 11/4/08
Promoting extreme thinness will become a criminal offence in France, punishable by a jail sentence, under a government-backed law to combat anorexia nervosa. The world’s first use of the law to tackle eating disorders is broadly aimed at the media and fashion world, but especially at the websites and blogs of the so-called pro-ana movement. Some promote starvation as a “life-style choice”, with girls and young women posting their wasting images as “thinspiration” for others. Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace have come under pressure to ban their pro-ana entries.

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