Happy birthday Iga Wyrwał!

I can't believe I haven't acknowledged the gorgeous Iga Wyrwał's birthday on this blog before.

I mean, I've only been somewhat obsessed about her since at least 2008. I'm sure you can see why.

Despite a slightly odd return to modeling since the birth of her child, she remains one of the hottest women of the past decade.

Happy birthday!

The return of Iga Wyrwał

Remember the gorgeous Iga Wyrwał? You know, her:

For what it's worth, I ranked her as one of the top 10 hottest women in the world in my post on the subject, and I stand by that, even if I did get her first name wrong. I was misinformed!

Like I said earlier, she went and had a baby. Now, via the Smoking Jacket, she's making a comeback... weirdly. She's currently entered in an obscure modeling contest in the UK, where she looks like this:

Yes, apparently, that is her. Why a woman who, in all seriousness, has probably the best boobs on the Eurasian continent and is just smoking hot is taking this particular road back to the modeling business I don't know. What's worse is that she's totally failing the contest, too. Last I checked, she was in like 600th place or something.

I did say I hope she comes back to modeling, but this isn't what I meant at all! She has loads of fans, myself included, but really, we became fans of her in her core competency: looking absolutely fantastic while not wearing a lot. This ain't it, and a 600th place in a modeling contest really doesn't reflect her fanbase at all. I know this sounds a bit vulgar, but what I, and I think quite a few others, would really like to see is more of her in that mohawk. And preferably not much else.

Obama's foreign policy failure

When Barack Obama was elected, one of the campaign's favorite buzzwords was "change". In the field of foreign policy, the Obama administration was going to make America the darling of the world again. Remember the big New Beginning speech in Cairo? And the state visits that US critics called the "World Apology Tour" that were supposed to usher in a new era of American foreign policy?

So what actually happened?

Iraq

Almost two years ago, I predicted that if Obama actually goes through with the US withdrawal from Iraq, the consequences will be catastrophic. If the Iraqis are abandoned to their own devices, or to put it in Vietnam-era terms, the conflict is "Iraqi-ized", the country will face a real danger of collapse.

So far, this has been avoided through a simple ploy; the Obama administration has said it withdrew all US combat troops, leaving just 50,000 troops in the country. Back in the Cold War, it was customary for both superpowers to station troops in third countries but not admit it. Back then, they were usually called "advisers" no matter what they were actually doing. In the terminology of the time, the US has withdrawn all its combat troops, but left five divisions of advisers.

Now, with the supposed withdrawal carried out, Obama can declare victory. David Letterman actually said it best. Remember when George W. Bush landed on an aircraft carrier and delivered his "Mission Accomplished" speech? As Dave put it: "Well, they're trying that again."

The real withdrawal is coming at the end of 2011. In terms of strategy, I believe these deadlines have a horribly detrimental effect on the coalition effort to stabilize Iraq. What the late 2011 deadline does is it gives all the al-Qāʿida -affiliated insurgents a target to prepare for. If you know the Americans are leaving on such and such a date, start planning to overthrow the Iraqi goverment immediately afterward. Until then, stockpile armaments and supplies and expand your infrastructure. I believe this is exactly what they're doing.

This is exactly what happened in late 1974, when the Americans had left Vietnam. Congress signed a bill banning any US military activity in Indochina, and President Nixon was impeached and resigned. Knowing that the Americans wouldn't intervene, the North Vietnamese Army overran South Vietnam in a matter of months. The entire process of Vietnamization, transferring the burden of the war from the American to the South Vietnamese armed forces, had been a complete failure.

There's a very real risk that the same thing will happen in Iraq a little over a year from now. Remember when George W. Bush talked about the axis of evil and all that, including the idea that Iran was supporting the Iraqi insurgency? He was ridiculed for it back then, but now we can read, via the New York Times, what Wikileaks has let us know about Iran's involvment in Iraq.

NYT: Leaked Reports Detail Iran’s Aid for Iraqi Militias

During the administration of President George W. Bush, critics charged that the White House had exaggerated Iran’s role to deflect criticism of its handling of the war and build support for a tough policy toward Iran, including the possibility of military action.

But the field reports disclosed by WikiLeaks, which were never intended to be made public, underscore the seriousness with which Iran’s role has been seen by the American military. The political struggle between the United States and Iran to influence events in Iraq still continues as Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has sought to assemble a coalition — that would include the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr — that will allow him to remain in power. But much of the American’s military concern has revolved around Iran’s role in arming and assisting Shiite militias.

As of this writing, the Iraqi political process is still deadlocked, with no government in place. This year, Iraq ranked seventh on the Failed States Index, barely doing better than Somalia, Sudan and Zimbabwe. In all likelihood, the US withdrawal will leave behind a country in total disarray, if it isn't completely taken over by the Iranian-supported militias.

Whatever happens, the hurried retreat from Iraq will ensure that the eight-year war will have one enduring result: some 4,000 American soldiers will have died in order to cement Iran's status as the leading power in the Middle East. The only country that directly gains from the chaos in Iraq is Iran.

Over the years, several left-wing commentators have delighted in pointing and laughing at the US attacking Saddam Hussein, because in the 1980's, the West largely supported Saddam's regime. What they either don't realize, or leave unsaid, is that there was a very good reason why the Americans supported Saddam: his Iraq wasn't the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iranian islamism was seen as a much greater threat than Saddam.

The defining political dynamic of the Islamic countries of the Middle East has been that there is no clear leader. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran have all contended for a dominant position in the region, with the Iraqi-Iranian conflict being, in one sense, precisely about regional dominance. Now Iran is becoming more and more powerful, and the elimination of Iraq as a counterbalance is a major geopolitical victory for Teheran.

It might be worthwhile for the decision-makers in Washington to recall that the reason the United States became embroiled in Iraq in the first place, that is twenty years ago, is because of the threat Iraq posed to Saudi Arabia. Ever since FDR, Saudi Arabia has been seen as a vital ally of the United States in the Middle East; some readers may be surprised to learn that over the years, the Saudis have received more military aid from the United States than Israel. The reason for the Gulf War was the threat Saddam's Iraq posed to Saudi Arabia. If the Obama administration goes through with the policy of withdrawal, effectively leaving behind a failed state under the sway of Iran, all the Iraq War will have accomplished is to change the threat to the Saudis from the Iraqis to the Iranians.

It's ironic that in the 1980's, Iran and Iraq fought an eight-year war over the dominance of the Middle East. By some estimates, Iran may have suffered as many as one million casualties in the fighting. The war was inconclusive. Twenty years later, the US fought an eight-year war against Iraq, and this time, Iran won.

**

Afghanistan

Next summer, according to Barack Obama's timeline, the US will begin to withdraw from Afghanistan as well. If Iraq was seventh on the Failed States Index, Afghanistan is sixth. The post-Ṭālibān government of Hamid Karzai has turned into a dictatorial, corrupt regime reminiscent of South Vietnam at its worst.

The comparison isn't far-fetched: the coalition forces in Afghanistan are fighting an insurgency based in a neighboring country, waiting for the occupying forces to leave so they can take over. The key to Afghanistan is Pakistan, a fact that Obama seemed to recognize in pre-election debates but has resolutely ignored in office.

Just recently, we were told that American's most wanted man, Usāmah bin Lādin, is living comfortably in northern Pakistan, along with second-in-command Ayman aẓ-Ẓawāhirī and the rest of the gang.

The Daily Telegraph: Osama bin Laden 'living comfortably in Pakistan'

Osama bin Laden is alive and well and living comfortably in a house in the north-west of Pakistan protected by local people and elements of the country's intelligence services, according to a senior Nato official.

The latest assessment contradicts the belief that the al-Qaeda leader is roughing it in underground bunkers as he dodged CIA drones hunting him from the air.

"Nobody in al-Qaeda is living in a cave," according to an unnamed Nato official quoted by CNN.

He added that Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's second in command, was also living in a house close by somewhere in the country's mountainous border regions.

Pakistani officials on Monday repeated their long standing denials that the Saudi-born terrorist mastermind was being given safe haven.

Ever since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Pakistani intelligence service has been playing a double game. In addition to channeling US and other Western aid for the anti-Soviet insurgency, Pakistani intelligence moved drugs the other way. Afghanistan has been the world's premier producer of heroin for a long time, and Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence moves some of the stuff out of Pakistan. The money they make off the operation is used, among other things, to interfere in Pakistan's internal politics and to fund terrorist operations against India.

As part of this lucrative narcotics deal, the Pakistanis have a cozy relationship with the Ṭālibān, who also fund their operations through the drug trade. At the same time, they're supposedly a staunch ally of the United States and totally committed to the war on terrorism. While the intelligence service continues to move heroin for the Ṭālibān, there is a full-blown insurgency going on in northwest Pakistan, which has by all accounts become the most important basing area for the Ṭālibān operating in Afghanistan.

As in Iraq, so in Afghanistan: the US withdrawal will leave behind a failing state that will probably fall to the Ṭālibān. If this happens, the next target of the insurgency will be Pakistan, and in the worst case scenario, Pakistan will fall to Islamism. It's more than probable that the Pakistani government will have to come to terms with the Ṭālibān, possibly meaning a wholesale radicalization of the whole country and an escalation of the conflict with India.

For the United States to withdraw from Afghanistan before a viable government is in place and the Ṭālibān insurgency has been defeated amounts to, for all intents and purposes, abandoning the country to the Ṭālibān. If the Obama administration goes through with the plan, then the entire Afghanistan War will have been fought for nothing.

At best, US troops will leave behind a corrupt dictatorship that will come to some kind of terms with the Ṭālibān. The country will continue to be used as a base for terrorism, which was the reason the US invaded it in the first place.

**

What is needed in both Iraq and Afghanistan is not a withdrawal strategy, but a winning strategy. For Iraq and Afghanistan to become viable states that won't collapse like a house of cards as soon as the last American troops leave, the insurgencies need to be defeated. In the case of Afghanistan, this also means addressing the insurgency in Pakistan.

Right now, none of these things are happening. With the Ṭālibān securely based in Pakistan, largely immune from US operations, there's going to be very little stopping them from retaking Afghanistan after the US withdrawal. The situation in Iraq looks slightly better, but again, there's very little standing in the way of the militias restarting a full-fledged civil war, with Iranian support, as soon as the Americans leave.

Both the Iraq and the Afghanistan war were badly conceived, poorly executed and massively expensive policy blunders. The wars in themselves weren't necessarily a bad idea; getting rid of the Ṭālibān and Saddam Hussein is a victory for the entire world. The way the George W. Bush administration went about them was the problem, and now the Obama administration is compounding the problem by essentially abandoning both countries to the islamists. I genuinely hope I'm wrong and nothing horrible happens. It's just incredibly difficult to see how either Iraq or Afghanistan can become anything other than failed states if Obama goes through with the withdrawal.

**

Israel

Elsewhere in the Middle East, the Obama administration has also had grandiose plans for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was even described as a top priority.

That said, this is a topic on which the administration, even the President himself, can't seem to make up their mind. A couple of years back, I wrote about how Obama visited Israel as president-elect and strongly supported Israel's reprisal air strikes. On the other hand, Obama had stressed the need for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and demanded that Israel stop its "settlement" construction. At Cairo, he told the audience that "the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements".

Any hopes of a fresh approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were dashed quite spectacularly in March 2010. As vice-president Joe Biden was visiting Israel, the Israeli government announced that it was going ahead with a plan to build 1,600 new homes in occupied East Jerusalem, in direct defiance of the Obama administration's demands that Israel halt "settlement" construction.

In diplomacy, this is what is called a slap in the face, and the Obama administration politely turned the other cheek.

This year, President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched a new round of talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians, going so far as to say that a Palestinian state could be achieved within a year. Anyone who felt skeptical was amply rewarded when the Israelis torpedoed the negotiations by deciding to continue "settlement" building in occupied territory. Again, the Obama administration was apparently powerless to react.

American policy-makers don't always seem to realize how crucially important the Palestinian issue is in the Middle East. Despite Obama's grandiose talk of a new beginning, his administration's policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has in many ways been the worst possible choice. He's managed to antagonize Israel and the Israeli lobby in America, while failing to further the peace process or improve America's relations with the Muslim world.

**

Russia and Europe

In 2007, the George W. Bush administration announced plans to build a missile defense system based in Eastern Europe. The goal of the system is to defend the United States and Europe against small-scale missile attacks from a country like Iran or North Korea. The system the Bush administration planned would have a very limited capacity, and would be practically useless against a Russian nuclear attack. Nonetheless, the Russians were vocal in their protests against the system. Their opposition has nothing to do with missile defense in itself, but is geopolitical: a US missile defense system based in Poland and the Czech Republic is a very strong guarantee to these countries that the United States is interested in their security versus Russia.

In August 2008 there was the Georgia war, or if you prefer the Sov...Russian nomenclature, the amred conflict in South Ossetia. According to the Russians, they have stationed peacekeepers in the sovereign states of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. These sovereign states are recognized by a wide variety of free countries, including and limited to Russia, Venezuela, Nauru and Nicaragua.

Nicaragua.

In what was apparently a colossal miscalculation, Georgia attacked the breakaway republic of South Ossetia, which gave the Russians the perfect excuse to invade Georgia. This was old-fashioned sphere of influence politics: the Russians consider Georgia to be in their backyard, and they get to decide what happens in their backyard. It was also a brazen violation of international law and an invasion of a sovereign country. To make things worse, the country in question was a member of the NATO Partnership for Peace, and had recently hosted US troops on a joint exercise.

How did the Obama administration react to Russia's actions? By deciding to scrap the missile shield.

Guardian: US scraps plans for missile defence shield in central Europe

Barack Obama today reversed almost a decade of Pentagon strategy in Europe, scrapping plans to deploy key elements of a US missile defence shield.

Instead, he said, a more flexible defence would be introduced, allowing for a more effective response to any threat from Iranian missiles.

The U-turn is arguably the most concrete shift in foreign policy from that of the Bush administration, which spent years negotiating to place silos and interceptor missiles in Poland, and a radar complex in the Czech Republic.

The shift is a triumph for the Kremlin, which has long and vehemently argued that the shield is aimed at neutralising its intercontinental missiles; Moscow had warned of a return to a cold war arms race, and threatened to deploy nuclear missiles in its Kaliningrad exclave, surrounded by EU states.

Yes, of course the administration said that Russia shouldn't invade other countries, but this is the only concrete political action they took immediately following the crisis.

Viewed on its own merits, several commentators considered Obama's missile defense U-turn reasonable. That may be so, but this is to ignore the geopolitical significance of the missile shield for Eastern Europe. Viewed from the Kremlin, Obama's move to scrap the missile shield is pure weakness. The Americans come up with a plan; Moscow protests; the Americans retreat.

This wasn't the first time Obama was ready to sell out Eastern Europe, either. in March 2009, Obama approached the Russians on the subject with a letter.

NYT: Russia Welcomes Letter From Obama

The Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, said Tuesday that his administration was open to overtures from the United States on its proposed missile defense plan, but he dismissed the notion of a deal in which the United States would shelve the plan in exchange for Russia’s help on Iran.

The statement came in response to a report in The New York Times about a private letter from President Obama to his Russian counterpart, saying the proposed missile defense system would not be necessary if Moscow could help stop Iran from developing long-range weapons and nuclear warheads.

On the Foreign Policy website, a blog post described the letter as "Yalta all over again":

"it could also turn out to be a second coming of Yalta -- a sell-out of America's eastern European allies of epic proportions."

The Yalta Conference was held at Yalta in February 1945 between these three gentlemen and their entourages.

One of the topics of the conference was no less than the division of Europe into two spheres of influence. Probably the most infamous example is Churchill's draft proposal, which he pencilled out on a sheet of paper: he suggested to Stalin that they divide up Central Europe between themselves, listing names of countries and percentages of influence each side would have. For example, Romania would be 90% Soviet and 10% Western, with Greece the opposite. On a smaller scale, Yalta was where the Western Allies agreed to repatriate all Soviet citizens to the Soviet Union, regardless of their own wishes or their upcoming fate. This meant death for thousands at the hands of Stalin's execution squads.

In short, at Yalta the western allies sold out Eastern Europe to the Soviets. The comparison may be exaggerated, but the way Barack Obama's administration has reacted to the Georgian war certainly doesn't show strength. Offering to trade the missile defence of NATO to the Russians in exchange for fuzzy diplomatic guarantees is unlikely to send a strong message that the United States is committed to resisting Russian expansionism, and the failure to react in any way to the invasion of Georgia only strengthens the message. If anything, the weakness of the Obama administration will embolden the Russians to act more aggressively inside what they consider their sphere of influence. As I'm writing this blog post uncomfortably close to the Russian border, I can say that this is bad news for all of us over here.

It isn't just relations with Eastern Europe that Obama seems intent on sabotaging, though. He caused a stir in 2009 by seeming to downplay the UK-US "special relationship", prompting the Daily Telegraph to ask:

DT: Will Barack Obama end Britain's special relationship with America?

A British official said: "I don't think Obama is steeped in the tradition of the special relationship going back to Churchill and Roosevelt. Of course someone of his generation is going to look at it differently. I think what he looks at are the assets that are brought to the table and the expertise you have. This is a definite change of emphasis."

In the six decades since in which Winston Churchill first coined the phrase special relationship, successive American presidents have paid ritual obeisance to the notion that Britain should assume a place at the White House top table.

Now even allies of Mr Obama believe he intends to extract a higher price for access to the corridors of his power.

This might seem overly paranoid, but a year later, Argentina brought out an old hobby-horse: the Falklands. The Argentinians consider the Falkland Islands their territory, but the islands' British-born population does not. Earlier this year, Argentina threatened to blockade the islands, and Venezuela's dear leader strongly supported them. As a blogger for the Telegraph put it:

So far, the mounting Falklands conflict has been met with deafening silence from Washington. Both the White House and State Department have failed to comment on the situation, despite a significant heightening of tensions. Not only is this another striking failure of leadership on the part of the US administration, but it also demonstrates an extraordinary level of indifference towards America’s closest ally.

As far as Europe is concerned, Obama's foreign policy looks worryingly like an effort to appease the Russians at the expense of Europe.

**

All in all, I consider President Obama's foreign policy so far to be a total failure. He has brought no leadership and no new vision to US foreign policy. The mere fact of his election, and the rhetoric of the first few months, seemed to raise the world's opinion of the United States, and got him the Nobel Peace Prize. A prize that was earlier given to organizations like the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Grameen Bank, and since to an imprisoned Chinese human rights activist, was given to an American president for making a speech. To paraphrase a percentage-jotting alcoholic, never has so much been awarded to so few for so little.

Obama did succeed in raising hope; where he failed was in capitalizing on it. His Middle Eastern policies range from the inept to the potentially catastrophic, and his humiliation by Israel has effectively ended any hope of an outreach to the Muslim world. If his administration has had any impact on relations with Europe, it has been a negative one, undermining the special relationship with the UK, destabilizing NATO and encouraging the Russians in their quest to become a superpower with a Cold War-like sphere of influence.

I haven't really mentioned East Asia, as I don't feel that I'm qualified to comment on it, but suffice to say that the Obama administration has attracted criticism for a soft policy on China as well, preferring to concentrate on economic interests to the detriment of human rights.

One of the many great injustices of a representative democracy is that in foreign policy, as in nearly all other fields, the consequences of Obama's actions will be borne by his successor. If the rest of his term plays out like this, the next guy is getting a bum deal.

Poland approves castration of pedophiles

Reuters: Poland okays forcible castration for pedophiles

(Reuters) - Poland on Friday approved a law making chemical castration mandatory for pedophiles in some cases, sparking criticism from human rights groups.

Under the law, sponsored by Poland's center-right government, pedophiles convicted of raping children under the age of 15 years or a close relative would have to undergo chemical therapy on their release from prison.

"The purpose of this action is to improve the mental health of the convict, to lower his libido and thereby to reduce the risk of another crime being committed by the same person," the government said in a statement.

I bring this up mainly because several people I know support this. Also, when a Finnish tabloid broke the story over here and included an online poll, 95% of respondents supported the legistlation. I'd like to take a moment to address the ethics behind this idea. Unless otherwise noted, data is sourced from Wikipedia.

In practice, chemical castration means that the prisoners will be forcibly given drugs that reduce their sex drive. Technically, they're not being castrated in the proper wince-inducing sense of the word, as nothing is being cut off or even permanently disabled. However, their hormone production is lowered, leading to changes in both body and mind.

Several US states have passed similar laws; for example, in California a prisoner convicted for a second time of child molestation may be treated with MPA if they are on parole, regardless of their wishes. The ACLU, in opposing similar legistlation in Florida, called it a "return to the Dark Ages". Their paper can be read here.

I'm sure some people are aghast that the ACLU could oppose something like this. After all, it's for the children. It's worth looking at the core of the ACLU argument, because it puts my first point very concisely.

Sexual assault is not about sex - that is a myth. This law reinforces the stereotype that men are sex-crazed individuals and that child molesters and sexual predators need to be drugged to control sexual impulses. In reality, sexual assaults are about violence, power and the humiliation of a survivor or victim.

Eliminating sexual desire or a body part, for that matter seems like a quick fix. No more trying to squeeze extra convicts into already overcrowded jails. No more spending money to feed and clothe another felon sentenced to life. Just get rid of the testes. But this law avoids the real issues.

Firstly I should point out that pedophiles and child molesters are not the same thing. Having said that, sex crime against children does indeed happen for a variety of reasons. Most child molesters have many other psychopathological issues apart from a sexual attraction to children, and it has been argued that it's the other psychological issues they face, most especially sociopathy, that drive them to commit crimes, not their sex drive. As a matter of fact, studies have found that several convicted pedophiles already have low testosterone levels to begin with, strongly suggesting that it isn't their testosterone that makes them commit crime.

This is really the same argument as with any kind of rape. Men do not rape because of their sex drive. Men who rape do so because they have deep-seated psychological problems. Quite simply put, diminishing their sex drive does nothing to fix the underlying causes of their crimes. In a very real sense, chemical castration doesn't treat the problem at all because of this.

What I just said is highly relevant, because none of the drugs currently used for chemical castration have permanent effects. If the person being treated stops taking the drugs, their effects will subside. What this means is that the drugs will only work if the person being treated is willing to keep taking them.

In general, the best results have been gained from a combination of pharmacological and psychiatric treatment, and basically, drugs that control sex drive are no different from any other psychiatric medication. In conjunction with therapy, they can work. Without therapy, though, the medication doesn't address the underlying problems at all. In many cases, all it gets us is a former child molester who no longer has as much sex drive as before, but is still the kind of sociopath who is capable of sexually abusing children.

What's more, given that rape is not primarily an expression of sexuality but an expression of power and control, actual sexual functioning would seem to be secondary. And as I said, the drugs will need to be taken for the rest of the offender's life for them to stay effective. What if they just stop taking the drugs? You can't force anyone into therapy if they don't want it.

**

There are also some very real human rights issues involved. Sadly, "pedophiles" are such a good enemy that for a lot of people, they don't have any human rights at all. Here's how the Reuters article I started this post off with continues:

Prime Minister Donald Tusk said late last year he wanted obligatory castration for pedophiles, whom he branded 'degenerates'. Tusk said he did not believe "one can use the term 'human' for such individuals, such creatures."

"Therefore I don't think protection of human rights should refer to these kind of events," Tusk also said.

His remarks drew criticism from human rights groups but he never retracted them.

This is the kind of thing I expect from really bad novels, not actual politicians, but there you are, he said it. In Poland, pedophiles are not humans, and therefore they have no human rights.

Okay, so it's just the opinion of their prime minister. But it's a frightening one. In past times, chemical castration has been used in, for example, Britain, to treat homosexuality. Renowned computer scientist, cryptanalyst and mathematician Alan Turing agreed to undergo chemical castration to avoid being sent to prison for homosexuality. A few years later, he killed himself.

That brings me on to what I find most disturbing about this idea. The treatment will lower a patient's testosterone levels, which I pointed out are already low in some pedophiles. This means radically changing not only the person's sex drive but also their body and personality in general. If they're forced to take these drugs for a prolonged time, the "treatment" really means personality change.

Are we okay with the idea that the government can change your personality?

The treatment affects the offender's entire sex drive, at worst effectively denying them any kind of sex life. Pedophiles divide into exclusive and non-exclusive; the first kind are only sexually aroused by children, while the latter sort also have "normal" sexual impulses. Only roughly 7% of pedophiles are exclusive, so if a blanket chemical castration is applied, it means depriving 93% of the "patients" of a normal sex life. If that isn't cruel and unusual punishment, then I don't know what is.

The medical fact is that pedophiles are, by definition, mentally ill. Most child offenders are also mentally ill. What they need is treatment, not just for their sakes but for our sake as well. If people suffering from these mental disorders are going to rejoin society, they need to be treated for our safety as well as their health.

As it stands, the Polish scheme isn't going to prevent sex crime against children. Many sex offenders already undergo therapy without it being forced on them by the law. For the remainder, chemical castration won't be a treatment, it will be a punishment. And not only that, but a punishment that isn't effective at deterring the crime it's supposed to deter.

**

All in all, compulsory chemical castration is inhuman and ineffective. The only purpose it seems to have is to get politicians cheap votes from the moral panic on pedophilia. No matter how strongly we feel about any kind of crime, we can't just abandon our concepts of human rights to punish the offenders. It's even worse if we punish them in a way that doesn't even deter the crime.

Also, on a wider note, legislation like this can open doors to really scary places. As I said, are we comfortable with the idea of government-mandated personality change? In a way, that's what forcing you to take hormone-altering medication is. As psychiatric medicine advances, if we start passing laws like this, why not prescribe personality change as a punishment for other kinds of crime as well? I'm not seriously arguing that there's a direct and slippery slope from this law to a mind-control society, but it's worth thinking about. If only because the combination of moral panic, blatant disregard for human rights and enthusiasm about medical solutions sounds very scary indeed.