When you are born a Jew, you'll always be a Jew, no matter what. That is not up to the person to decide unfortunately, it is the world that says he is, due to the simple definition : mother(a) = jew -> a = jew .
That is an overly-simplistic syntactic argument that (a) ignores the realities of martilineal descent laws (which do specify a limit on the number of generations removed from the Jewish community that a matrilineal line can be for a person to be legally considered Jewish) and (b) has no semantic or real-world significance. A person whose mother's mother was Jewish, but who does not practice Judaism or know anything about Jewish practices, is not Jewish in any way that matters. Applying syntactic labels to people is a pointless exercise.
Do you also not fly in airplanes because Nazis considered a strong air campaign fundamental to defeating England?
The Nazi war in Europe was not predicated on the existence of airplanes; their genocide was predicated on the existence of "inferior" races, including the existence of a "Jewish race." The fundamental Nazi philosophy was that some races are better than others (to point of including race in the definition of person's health); the extermination of "inferior races" was a matter of protecting and perfecting the genes of "superior races." That was the unique element of the Nazi genocide, that set it apart from previous massacres and genocides of Jews: where previously, Jews were told to convert or die, the Nazis did not care about religion at all, and were killing Jews only because of their "race."
So yes, to speak of a Jewish race is to lend legitimacy to the very philosophy that led to one of the worst genocides in history.
No I'm not. I'm the one who is distinguishing between the religion and the race
Then why even use the word "Jewish," unless you are trying as hard as you can to be ambiguous?
"Based on Jewish law's emphasis on matrilineal descent, even religiously conservative Orthodox Jewish authorities would accept an atheist born to a Jewish mother as fully Jewish." What do you say about that?
I have encountered that view in the past, and I disagree with it. The matrilineal descent concept was nothing more than a legal ruling from a time when Jewish religious laws were the laws of local and regional governments (a time when religion and government were very closely related). When that concept emerged, the determination of whether or not someone was Jewish had official and legal consequences -- it could be a deciding factor in how a crime was punished, in whether some property could be inherited, in whether a marriage was considered valid, etc. That was the state of affairs centuries ago; times have changed, philosophies have changed, and the matrilineal descent argument is now a matter of religious debate only (except in Israel; however, the situation there is more complicated, as the purpose of Israel's immigration policy is to give refuge to people who are persecuted -- even if those people are not practicing Jews. If you want to turn this into a conversation about Israeli politics, you will have to find an Israeli to have it with; I am not familiar enough with the current state of Israeli politics to really carry on such a conversation). It is also worth noting that after some number of generations outside of the community, a person would not be considered Jewish even if you could trace their matrilineal line back to Jews.
Right in the first few paragraphs of that article, you have this:
"The genetics of Ashkenazi Jews have been particularly well-studied, resulting in the discovery of many genetic disorders that are associated with this ethnic group. In contrast, the medical genetics of Sephardic Jews and Oriental Jews are more complicated, since they are more genetically diverse and there are consequently no genetic disorders that are more common in these groups as a whole; instead they tend to have the genetic diseases that are common in their various countries of origin."
I read that as saying that Ashkenazic Jews form a genetically distinct group (perhaps you could call that a "race," though someone else pointed out that "cline" is the correct term), whereas the rest of the world's Jews do not. If you want to grab a small victory, fine: you can go around talking about the "Ashkenazic Jewish Race" if you really
Sure, but that is more of a disagreement about how conversion should be performed than a disagreement about whether or not converts are actually Jews. I know one person who converted three times, once to Reform, once to Conservative, and then to Chabad (an ultra-orthodox movement). At no point did Chabad tell this person that he was not Jewish; they simply told him that he had "done it wrong" and would need to do it again.
There is no single Jewish ethnic group. Ashkenazic, Sepheradic, Yemenite, Ethiopian, and other, smaller Jewish communities are ethnically distinct (especially Ethiopian Jews, who were isolated long enough to have been forgotten by the rest of the Jewish world until very recently). The only commonality between these distinct Jewish communities is religion, and to some extent language (as it related to religious texts); even the traditional practices are different (see, for example, the different traditions concerning Passover that Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews adhere to).
You must be using "distinguish" to mean "identify exactly" but I'm obviously not -- that should have been clear from my argument about hair color. Nobody said it had to be or could be 100% accurate, and arguing such is simply a straw man argument.
The company that performed the test claimed that they could completely rule out the possibility that the MP had a Jewish ancestor, so no, this is not a "straw man," it is exactly what was claimed in TFA. Your hair color example is equally flawed; unless you are claiming that dark hair is more common among Jews than it is among other populations (which is almost certainly false, since the proportion of dark hair is highest in Asia), it is a poor way to guess whether or not a person is Jewish.
If you want to see how true that is, just do an experiment -- gather a random sample of 1000 Jews and 1000 non-Jews, and record their hair color. If you can show a non-negligible difference in the proportions of hair color observed in Jews and non-Jews, I will be convinced. I have my doubts that you will find such a result, but go ahead and prove me wrong.
Anyway, I've never thought of Ethiopian Jews as part of "the Jews" when thought of as a race, because yeah, they are not really genetically related to the Jewish race
So you basically throw away any counterexamples to your theory that there is a "Jewish race."
"But setting aside the emotional issues, Jews are clearly not a race. "
"Common ancestry is not required to be a Jew"
yet it also shows that in the 1980s the Supreme Court ruled that Jews are a race
For the purposes of applying an anti-discrimination law. The Supreme Court also ruled that tomatoes are a "vegetable" for legal purposes, even though botanically tomatoes are a fruit. Supreme Court rulings are not definitions of the world, they are just rulings on how the law should be interpreted.
It also gives the example of Nazi Germany classifying Jews as a race.
What a compelling example to point to...
Now.. regardless of how you feel about that, you have to admit that many people recognize the Jewish race
Many people think that the Earth is flat, but their views have just as little merit as the views of people who think that there is a "Jewish race."
The article says there is a genetic test
No, the article says that "many Jews have a common ancestry," a fact that was demonstrated through genetic analysis. That does not mean that there is a test that can demonstrate that someone is or is not Jewish since (a) it says nothing about whether or not other people may share that ancestry with Jews (all human beings share at least some common ancestry) and (b) it leaves room for a large number of Jews who do not share a common ancestry with other Jews. At best, you could use those markers to say, "This person shares a common ancestry with some Jews," which is a very weak statement.
that identifies at least part of that traditional Jewish race
You have yet to say what exactly the "Jewish race" even is. It seems to have nothing to do with a person's physical appearance, it seems to be loosely connected to genetics, and it seems to have no practical significance. Judaism itself was not started by some particular tribe, it was a collection of regional practices that coalesced several thousand years ago, likely due to the dictates of an ancient Israeli king. It would be somewhat interesting to see if this hypothetical "Jewish race" is nothing more than a subset of a broader "middle eastern race," that includes Muslims and Christians (and other, smaller religious movements) fr
If it were just the MP doing this out of curiosity, I would say he is a wacko who is overly obsessed with race and genetics. Yet the purpose of doing this was almost certainly political: he likely wanted to rally support from Hungarians who hate Jews and Gypsies, and wanted to parade around this "proof" that he is not one of "them." That is why it is problematic for a company to provide this sort of testing: it fuels violence and Nazi attitudes.
Imagine if private schools or social clubs pressured people to get these tests, refusing to admit members who showed signs of being descended from Jews or Gypsies. Imagine if people were ostracized or even physically attacked if they "tested positive" for such genes. That is the sort of outcome that such testing will inevitably lead to. Hungary already has problems with ethnic violence; this sort of testing would undoubtedly fuel that.
The fact that a right-wing Hungarian website called the test "noble" rather than "irrelevant" should be all you need to know that such Nazi ideology is not yet dead.
I am Jewish, born and raised, and I can assure you that Judaism welcomes converts, if they are really committed to converting. Conversions to Judaism take two years, during which a person is expected to learn about Jewish religion and culture, study with a rabbi, and ultimately have a bar/bat mitzvah. Once converted, a person is part of the Jewish community, period -- they are Jewish. I have not encountered any branch of Judaism that does not recognize converts; even the ultra-orthodox have a conversion process through which non-Jews can join the Jewish community.
If you demand biblical references, look at the story of Ruth.
I bet it would be interesting trying to tell them from the middle east Arabs by DNA.:)
Indeed; the Ethiopian Jews were found to have more DNA in common with the rest of the population of Ethiopia than with any other Jewish population (it may not be the middle east, but Ethiopia is very close to the middle east and Semitic languages are spoken there).
You claimed that Jews are indistinguishable from any other group, but that's in fact wrong
Prove it. How will you distinguish Jews from non-Jews, other than by religion and culture?
How about if we simply use the genetic test described in the article?
As you noted there are a bunch of subgroups of Jewish people who have ancestral ties. As a result even if only due to their proximity and history there will be genetic ties as well.
Except that the Ethiopian Jews' genetics were closer to the general population Ethiopia than to any other Jewish population. So much for using genetics to test whether or not someone is Jewish.
By the way, your story of your great grandfather and your father only illustrates how races can change over time.
No, it illustrates that there is nothing genetic about being Jewish. People have converted to Judaism throughout the history of Judaism; it is absurd to think that there is some Jewish forefather or that all Jews share some common lineage.
Yes I could declare that I am a Jew, but I would still be cognizant that I am Jewish in religion only, I did not suddenly change my ancestry.
So what? Do you really think that having Jewish ancestors has some special significance? I would guess that almost everyone living in Europe and the Mediterranean region has at least one Jewish ancestor. Does that really make a difference to you? Do you really care that much about who your ancestors were going back hundreds or even thousands of years?
Judaism is a religion and a culture. There is no Jewish gene; there are some genes that are common to certain Jewish communities, which has to do with a cultural demand to marry within the community, but those genes have absolutely nothing to do with being Jewish.
Not the same AC, but while I'd definitely acknowledge that people who convert to Judaism are Jewish (the religion), that has nothing to do with whether or not they're ethnically Jewish. The race and the religion are not mutually inclusive.
Then define the race. There are black Jews, white Jews, Jews from the middle east, Jews from northern Europe, Jews from southern Europe, etc. What are the defining characteristics of this so-called "Jewish race?"
Ah see, that is quite another story. My personal view is that someone who renounces Judaism and adopts a new religion is not Jewish anymore. I understand that this particular view is not widely accepted or mainstream amongst Jews, however; indeed, the ultra-orthodox view that people who convert to Judaism were born with Jewish souls does not extend to people converting away from Judaism.
I think it is absurd to claim that people cannot stop being Jewish. If someone starts living their life as a Catholic or a Muslim, in what way are they still Jewish?
Just taking some simple observations would give you an average success rate greater than random selection so your "not at all" is wrong. For instance, pick only those with dark hair. (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/7061-hair#anchor7)
I read this while stroking my red beard (courtesy of my red-headed Jewish father) and running my hair through my blond hair (courtesy of my German great-grandfather, who converted to Judaism in order to marry my great-grandmother). If it will satisfy you, though, I will rephrase the question: given a lineup of five white people with black hair, how will you determine which person is Jewish?
Why do people insist on having an airtight, scientifically sound, completely precise definition for race?
Why do people insist that a religion or culture is even related to race? Race should refer only to sets of inheritable characteristics; Judaism is not something you can inherit. I cannot convert to having dark, African skin, no matter how hard I try; yet anyone who is willing is able to convert to Judaism, and if I wanted to I could convert out of Judaism.
You're mistaking the religious beliefs with the race.
So take away the religion and the culture, and what is left? What do you think Judaism is, beyond religion and culture?
And it doesn't matter if you convert, you'd still be a Jewish Catholic or Jewish Atheist or Jewish Pastafarian.
Not according to us Jews. I have been told by ultra-orthodox rabbis that a person who converts is considered to have been born with a Jewish soul, and just needed to find their way to the greater Jewish community. The Reform and Conservative movements are equally open minded; I grew up going to a Reform synagogue, and I never heard anyone question whether or not converts were really Jews, nor did I hear them refer to a convert's previous religion. Converting to Judaism is making a commitment to be Jewish, not just to be a "Jewish Catholic" or some other nonsense. The children of a convert are considered to be Jewish, as if their parents had been born into the community themselves.
I suppose these people's racial 'logic' works on similar terms.
You are underestimating the sheer volume of data that is transferred through Tor. Even if you only looked at Americans using Tor, you would have a huge amount of data to store; petabytes is an understatement (remember that every connection on Tor involves transferring more data than is actually being transferred end-to-end, due to the nature of onion routing). If you take only a sample, you are not likely to find child abuse imagery -- despite the headlines, most of the data transferred through Tor is not related to child abuse (e.g. Chinese people often use Tor to download American films, which on its own accounts for quite a bit of the utilization of Tor).
I doubt the FBI has the resources to do what you are suggesting. It is not just a matter of storage; the FBI does not yet have the ability to wiretap the entire Internet, and a Tor circuit is fairly likely to cross international borders and thus go outside of the FBI's jurisdiction (assuming that such things even matter these days). The FBI could not even compromise the much smaller anonymous remailer system; Tor has hundreds of thousands of nodes.
The NSA might have those kinds of resources at its disposal. Asking the FBI to do it is silly.
Considering that as recently as 400 years ago, Hungary was ruled by the Ottoman Empire -- the same empire that mass numbers of Sephardic Jews ran to after the Spanish expulsion -- it is not at all unlikely that there are Hungarians who are descendants of Sephardic or even Yemenite Jews, or any of the other Jewish populations that lived under Ottoman rule. You are also ruling out the possibility that people traveled, and that some of this guy's ancestors might have found their spouse in the middle east (which is not terribly far from Hungary), or that someone from another region was traveling and met their spouse in Hungary.
The only populations you can really rule out are populations that were isolated to the point of being forgotten, like Ethiopian Jews.
It's quite possible for both the genetic test to be valid
Judaism is not encoded in anyone's DNA. People convert to Judaism all the time, and people convert away from Judaism to other religions all the time. My great-grandfather was a blond-haired, blue-eyed German who was raised by Catholic parents, who fell in love with my great-grandmother, converted to Judaism, and immigrated to America. Unless you are one of those people who thinks that converts are not really "Jews" (which is not a position that even the most hard-core ultra-orthodox Jewish movements [openly] accept), you cannot claim that genetic tests can reveal whether or not someone is Jewish.
A second issue with the tests is that there are several genetically distinct Jewish populations (hint: this is because genetics has more to do with geography than with religion). The Ethiopian Jews have a very different genetic "fingerprint" than European or Middle-Eastern Jews, and I am just going to go out on a limb and guess that the test performed on this politician did not include genetic markers from Ethiopia. I similarly doubt that genetic markers from Central Asia populations were included, or from controversial communities like the Lemba. Not all Jews have white skin, black hair, or prominent noses, and not all Jews have European DNA.
Just what makes you all so sure these guys *haven't* figured out a way to screen for racial impurities?
The well-known patterns of intermarriage between Jews and the surrounding cultures, that's what. Jews do not generally like to admit it, but intermarriage has been happening between Jewish men and non-Jewish women for thousands of years (it is actually less common for Jewish women to marry non-Jewish men). This should not be terribly surprising, since Jews rarely lived in such isolation that they had no contact with other cultures, and one of the things that commonly happens when two cultures meet up is for people to intermarry.
It is also worth pointing out that there is no single Jewish ethnic group. There are Ashkenazic Jews, Sephardic Jews, Yemenite Jews, Ethiopian Jews, and less known populations of Jews in central Asia and Africa. These groups have distinct genetic patterns, with the exception of a common Y chromosome gene that indicates descent from the ancient priestly line (this is an uncommon gene among Jews, and has little use in ruling out that a person is the descendant of Jews; this gene is not present in Ethiopian Jews, for example).
All that being said, I take issue with the term "racial impurities." What does that even mean? If I lined up a bunch of white men, would you know which ones were Jews (hint: not at all)? If a Jewish baby and a non-Jewish baby are switched at birth, how would anyone know? Judaism has more to do with culture and religion than genetics; there is no gene that makes someone Jewish, Jewish people are not born keeping kosher or covering their heads. You can make a similar statement about Gypsies; Roma is a culture, not something that is encoded in someone's genes.
That is possible, but I have my doubts about that scenario. Tor has been reviewed, attacked, analyzed, etc. by countless cryptography and security researchers. We have a good idea of Tor's weaknesses, and we have a good idea of Tor's strengths. It is definitely possible that there is an unknown, unpublished vulnerability that the FBI will exploit, but the likelihood that after so many years nobody in the research community noticed such a serious problem is pretty low.
If you ask me, Tor is probably not something the FBI can break with its resources. The NSA might be able to, since Tor is weak against a global adversary (a well known issue).
I can't speak for child porn, but I have given photographs that I have taken to others simply because I know it brings them pleasure and in giving them pleasure, I get pleasure.
You do not face life imprisonment for those photographs, and I seriously doubt that whatever pleasure you might get from knowing you brought pleasure to others would be work that sort of risk. Sexually abusing children is a serious crime, and no rational person would send a photograph of themselves engaged in such a crime to anyone else without receiving some level of compensation or some assurance that the counterparty will share in any liability (e.g. if the other person sends a photograph of themselves abusing children). While people do make irrational decisions, there are people out there who have been abusing children and producing photos and videos of that abuse for years -- and they would not have evaded the police for so long if they were not making at least some rational decisions.
I imagine the same motivation drives many teenage "sexters" sharing images of their own bodies.
Which is not even close to the kind of child abuse that is depicted in some of the photos and videos that I am referring to.
I also imagine that this same motivation drives many adults whose risk-assessment skills are so lacking that they don't appreciate the risk they are taking by 1) making child-porn pictures, and 2) letting them out of their own hands / out of their control.
I am sure that such people exist, but as far as I know they do not produce the bulk of child abuse imagery that is out there. People who lack risk assessment skills are people who will be caught relatively quickly, because they make stupid mistakes. There is no way that such people could be responsible for the kind of things that the police have found:
Series of photos or videos depicting a child being abused over the course of many years, clearly showing how the child is growing up in an abusive environment.
Photographs produced by the same set of adults over the course of many years, depicting new victims being abused.
Underground networks of anonymous pedophiles who share photos and videos of themselves abusing children, demanding new, never-before-seen imagery from people trying to join their groups.
These are the people who pose the greatest threat to children, because they are organized, methodical, and ruthless, and they encourage and demand that others to behave similarly. These are where the most depraved photographs and videos come from -- photographs depicting bestiality, photographs depicting infants being abused, photographs depicting children being tortured, and so forth. They are not sending their photographs to people who are not willing to trade or pay. They are sophisticated and they know how to manage risks, and most importantly they know how to protect their own identity from people within and without their groups.
So no, it is not unreasonable to say that in the absence of evidence that a suspect paid for child abuse imagery, that the suspect did not contribute to the production of that imagery. There are some people who will just share it because they know others want it, but that represents a minority of both the material itself and the danger to children.
Because the beloved US Consitution applies to man, not solely to US citizens.
Indeed, that is why it starts with this sentence that clearly indicates its universal applicability:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The fact others download and view the material provide validation and acceptance to the producers which probably is worth far more than money
I think you are seriously overestimating how valuable it is for a child abuser to know that there are people who like watching what he is doing. Producing and distributing child sex abuse imagery is one of the riskiest things a person can do -- almost no countries would hesitate to imprison people for it, and the jail sentences are often long or indefinite. Emotional validation is nowhere near sufficient to justify taking such risks; money or some other form of trade (e.g. one abuser trading new pictures with another) is basically a necessity.
Sure, there is the occasional idiot who produces child abuse images for the reason you stated; such people are sometimes caught when the police are going after low-hanging fruit i.e. people whose only crime is possession of child abuse images. The really dangerous people are the ones who are not so stupid, the ones who take real precautions and who demand some form of payment for their images/videos. My understanding is that most of the child abuse imagery out there today was produced by that second category, by the people who are turning it into an enterprise of sorts. Those were the sort of people involved with Dreamboard (for those who do not remember, this was a truly depraved website for trading images of child abuse that was recently taken down), the sort involved with Yardbird (a group that used anonymous remailers and Usenet, which had escaped notice by the police until one of their members was inadvertently arrested), the sort who run "modeling" agencies in Eastern Europe, and so forth.
The problem, of course, is that the sort of people I described above are not doing the sort of stupid things that allows the police to catch "low hanging fruit." These are not people who share their images on Kazaa (the FBI has an ongoing program to catch people who do), they are the sort of people who know how to mitigate and manage risk and how to use opsec to protect themselves. Catching them is a challenge, which is why it only happens rarely and only after years of investigative work.
Of course, law enforcement agencies need to keep up their arrest numbers and need to remind people that they are catching "pedophiles." Thus you see efforts to catch low-hanging fruit, e.g. honeypot websites, efforts to catch people who download sex abuse images from peer-to-peer networks, arrests for possession of such images. These efforts do little to combat the production of child abuse imagery, and only catch idiots and people who were either curious or who just wanted to satisfy some bizarre urge. People who produce child abuse imagery have no way to count how many people are sharing those images on peer to peer networks, so even if your point were valid, such efforts are pointless.
The original reason for making the possession of child abuse imagery illegal was the assumption (which at the time was valid) that anyone who possesses such imagery must have purchased it. That assumption is not valid in this century; I would be willing to be that the majority of people who possess child abuse imagery did not pay for it or in any way contribute to its production. We may find the images disturbing (and I would be suspicious of someone who does not), we may have difficulty understanding why anyone would want to masturbate to such imagery, we may not understand why people who collect and create detailed categories of such imagery, but we should not allow our disgust or our poor understanding of psychology lead us to assume that the low-hanging fruit represents a serious threat to children. There is a difference between someone with perverse fantasies and someone who is actually harming children.
Would it work for tor users to select an option NOT to redistribute CP through their node and for a service for flagging material as CP
First of all, you need a way to distinguish child abuse imagery from everything else; this is not nearly as easy as it sounds, e.g. the case of Lupe Fuentes. Even if you could develop such a system, the intelligence agencies of countries like China would undoubtedly hijack that system, preventing Tor users from reading about Tibet or Tienanmen Square. You also need to deal with the fact that communications through the Tor system may simply be encrypted; all it takes is a hidden service that uses TLS, and suddenly your system falls apart.
You may not have noticed, but they were elected to represent the interests of Americans. Why would they be particularly worried about whether foreigners are having their rights violated? Those foreigners are represented by governments that are supposed to be concerned about that sort of thing.
Slashdot Mirror
When you are born a Jew, you'll always be a Jew, no matter what. That is not up to the person to decide unfortunately, it is the world that says he is, due to the simple definition : mother(a) = jew -> a = jew .
That is an overly-simplistic syntactic argument that (a) ignores the realities of martilineal descent laws (which do specify a limit on the number of generations removed from the Jewish community that a matrilineal line can be for a person to be legally considered Jewish) and (b) has no semantic or real-world significance. A person whose mother's mother was Jewish, but who does not practice Judaism or know anything about Jewish practices, is not Jewish in any way that matters. Applying syntactic labels to people is a pointless exercise.
Do you also not fly in airplanes because Nazis considered a strong air campaign fundamental to defeating England?
The Nazi war in Europe was not predicated on the existence of airplanes; their genocide was predicated on the existence of "inferior" races, including the existence of a "Jewish race." The fundamental Nazi philosophy was that some races are better than others (to point of including race in the definition of person's health); the extermination of "inferior races" was a matter of protecting and perfecting the genes of "superior races." That was the unique element of the Nazi genocide, that set it apart from previous massacres and genocides of Jews: where previously, Jews were told to convert or die, the Nazis did not care about religion at all, and were killing Jews only because of their "race."
So yes, to speak of a Jewish race is to lend legitimacy to the very philosophy that led to one of the worst genocides in history.
No I'm not. I'm the one who is distinguishing between the religion and the race
Then why even use the word "Jewish," unless you are trying as hard as you can to be ambiguous?
"Based on Jewish law's emphasis on matrilineal descent, even religiously conservative Orthodox Jewish authorities would accept an atheist born to a Jewish mother as fully Jewish." What do you say about that?
I have encountered that view in the past, and I disagree with it. The matrilineal descent concept was nothing more than a legal ruling from a time when Jewish religious laws were the laws of local and regional governments (a time when religion and government were very closely related). When that concept emerged, the determination of whether or not someone was Jewish had official and legal consequences -- it could be a deciding factor in how a crime was punished, in whether some property could be inherited, in whether a marriage was considered valid, etc. That was the state of affairs centuries ago; times have changed, philosophies have changed, and the matrilineal descent argument is now a matter of religious debate only (except in Israel; however, the situation there is more complicated, as the purpose of Israel's immigration policy is to give refuge to people who are persecuted -- even if those people are not practicing Jews. If you want to turn this into a conversation about Israeli politics, you will have to find an Israeli to have it with; I am not familiar enough with the current state of Israeli politics to really carry on such a conversation). It is also worth noting that after some number of generations outside of the community, a person would not be considered Jewish even if you could trace their matrilineal line back to Jews.
Also you should check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_genetics_of_Jews if you really think there are no "people of merit" who think there's a genetic link among Jews.
Right in the first few paragraphs of that article, you have this:
"The genetics of Ashkenazi Jews have been particularly well-studied, resulting in the discovery of many genetic disorders that are associated with this ethnic group. In contrast, the medical genetics of Sephardic Jews and Oriental Jews are more complicated, since they are more genetically diverse and there are consequently no genetic disorders that are more common in these groups as a whole; instead they tend to have the genetic diseases that are common in their various countries of origin."
I read that as saying that Ashkenazic Jews form a genetically distinct group (perhaps you could call that a "race," though someone else pointed out that "cline" is the correct term), whereas the rest of the world's Jews do not. If you want to grab a small victory, fine: you can go around talking about the "Ashkenazic Jewish Race" if you really
Sure, but that is more of a disagreement about how conversion should be performed than a disagreement about whether or not converts are actually Jews. I know one person who converted three times, once to Reform, once to Conservative, and then to Chabad (an ultra-orthodox movement). At no point did Chabad tell this person that he was not Jewish; they simply told him that he had "done it wrong" and would need to do it again.
There is no single Jewish ethnic group. Ashkenazic, Sepheradic, Yemenite, Ethiopian, and other, smaller Jewish communities are ethnically distinct (especially Ethiopian Jews, who were isolated long enough to have been forgotten by the rest of the Jewish world until very recently). The only commonality between these distinct Jewish communities is religion, and to some extent language (as it related to religious texts); even the traditional practices are different (see, for example, the different traditions concerning Passover that Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews adhere to).
You must be using "distinguish" to mean "identify exactly" but I'm obviously not -- that should have been clear from my argument about hair color. Nobody said it had to be or could be 100% accurate, and arguing such is simply a straw man argument.
The company that performed the test claimed that they could completely rule out the possibility that the MP had a Jewish ancestor, so no, this is not a "straw man," it is exactly what was claimed in TFA. Your hair color example is equally flawed; unless you are claiming that dark hair is more common among Jews than it is among other populations (which is almost certainly false, since the proportion of dark hair is highest in Asia), it is a poor way to guess whether or not a person is Jewish.
If you want to see how true that is, just do an experiment -- gather a random sample of 1000 Jews and 1000 non-Jews, and record their hair color. If you can show a non-negligible difference in the proportions of hair color observed in Jews and non-Jews, I will be convinced. I have my doubts that you will find such a result, but go ahead and prove me wrong.
Anyway, I've never thought of Ethiopian Jews as part of "the Jews" when thought of as a race, because yeah, they are not really genetically related to the Jewish race
So you basically throw away any counterexamples to your theory that there is a "Jewish race."
Look at this page: http://www.jewfaq.org/judaism.htm#Race
I did, and this is what I saw:
"But setting aside the emotional issues, Jews are clearly not a race. "
"Common ancestry is not required to be a Jew"
yet it also shows that in the 1980s the Supreme Court ruled that Jews are a race
For the purposes of applying an anti-discrimination law. The Supreme Court also ruled that tomatoes are a "vegetable" for legal purposes, even though botanically tomatoes are a fruit. Supreme Court rulings are not definitions of the world, they are just rulings on how the law should be interpreted.
It also gives the example of Nazi Germany classifying Jews as a race.
What a compelling example to point to...
Now.. regardless of how you feel about that, you have to admit that many people recognize the Jewish race
Many people think that the Earth is flat, but their views have just as little merit as the views of people who think that there is a "Jewish race."
The article says there is a genetic test
No, the article says that "many Jews have a common ancestry," a fact that was demonstrated through genetic analysis. That does not mean that there is a test that can demonstrate that someone is or is not Jewish since (a) it says nothing about whether or not other people may share that ancestry with Jews (all human beings share at least some common ancestry) and (b) it leaves room for a large number of Jews who do not share a common ancestry with other Jews. At best, you could use those markers to say, "This person shares a common ancestry with some Jews," which is a very weak statement.
that identifies at least part of that traditional Jewish race
You have yet to say what exactly the "Jewish race" even is. It seems to have nothing to do with a person's physical appearance, it seems to be loosely connected to genetics, and it seems to have no practical significance. Judaism itself was not started by some particular tribe, it was a collection of regional practices that coalesced several thousand years ago, likely due to the dictates of an ancient Israeli king. It would be somewhat interesting to see if this hypothetical "Jewish race" is nothing more than a subset of a broader "middle eastern race," that includes Muslims and Christians (and other, smaller religious movements) fr
If it were just the MP doing this out of curiosity, I would say he is a wacko who is overly obsessed with race and genetics. Yet the purpose of doing this was almost certainly political: he likely wanted to rally support from Hungarians who hate Jews and Gypsies, and wanted to parade around this "proof" that he is not one of "them." That is why it is problematic for a company to provide this sort of testing: it fuels violence and Nazi attitudes.
Imagine if private schools or social clubs pressured people to get these tests, refusing to admit members who showed signs of being descended from Jews or Gypsies. Imagine if people were ostracized or even physically attacked if they "tested positive" for such genes. That is the sort of outcome that such testing will inevitably lead to. Hungary already has problems with ethnic violence; this sort of testing would undoubtedly fuel that.
The fact that a right-wing Hungarian website called the test "noble" rather than "irrelevant" should be all you need to know that such Nazi ideology is not yet dead.
Any Jews want to confirm or deny this?
I am Jewish, born and raised, and I can assure you that Judaism welcomes converts, if they are really committed to converting. Conversions to Judaism take two years, during which a person is expected to learn about Jewish religion and culture, study with a rabbi, and ultimately have a bar/bat mitzvah. Once converted, a person is part of the Jewish community, period -- they are Jewish. I have not encountered any branch of Judaism that does not recognize converts; even the ultra-orthodox have a conversion process through which non-Jews can join the Jewish community.
If you demand biblical references, look at the story of Ruth.
I bet it would be interesting trying to tell them from the middle east Arabs by DNA. :)
Indeed; the Ethiopian Jews were found to have more DNA in common with the rest of the population of Ethiopia than with any other Jewish population (it may not be the middle east, but Ethiopia is very close to the middle east and Semitic languages are spoken there).
You claimed that Jews are indistinguishable from any other group, but that's in fact wrong
Prove it. How will you distinguish Jews from non-Jews, other than by religion and culture?
How about if we simply use the genetic test described in the article?
As you noted there are a bunch of subgroups of Jewish people who have ancestral ties. As a result even if only due to their proximity and history there will be genetic ties as well.
Except that the Ethiopian Jews' genetics were closer to the general population Ethiopia than to any other Jewish population. So much for using genetics to test whether or not someone is Jewish.
By the way, your story of your great grandfather and your father only illustrates how races can change over time.
No, it illustrates that there is nothing genetic about being Jewish. People have converted to Judaism throughout the history of Judaism; it is absurd to think that there is some Jewish forefather or that all Jews share some common lineage.
Yes I could declare that I am a Jew, but I would still be cognizant that I am Jewish in religion only, I did not suddenly change my ancestry.
So what? Do you really think that having Jewish ancestors has some special significance? I would guess that almost everyone living in Europe and the Mediterranean region has at least one Jewish ancestor. Does that really make a difference to you? Do you really care that much about who your ancestors were going back hundreds or even thousands of years?
Judaism is a religion and a culture. There is no Jewish gene; there are some genes that are common to certain Jewish communities, which has to do with a cultural demand to marry within the community, but those genes have absolutely nothing to do with being Jewish.
Not the same AC, but while I'd definitely acknowledge that people who convert to Judaism are Jewish (the religion), that has nothing to do with whether or not they're ethnically Jewish. The race and the religion are not mutually inclusive.
Then define the race. There are black Jews, white Jews, Jews from the middle east, Jews from northern Europe, Jews from southern Europe, etc. What are the defining characteristics of this so-called "Jewish race?"
Ah see, that is quite another story. My personal view is that someone who renounces Judaism and adopts a new religion is not Jewish anymore. I understand that this particular view is not widely accepted or mainstream amongst Jews, however; indeed, the ultra-orthodox view that people who convert to Judaism were born with Jewish souls does not extend to people converting away from Judaism.
I think it is absurd to claim that people cannot stop being Jewish. If someone starts living their life as a Catholic or a Muslim, in what way are they still Jewish?
Just taking some simple observations would give you an average success rate greater than random selection so your "not at all" is wrong. For instance, pick only those with dark hair. (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/7061-hair#anchor7)
I read this while stroking my red beard (courtesy of my red-headed Jewish father) and running my hair through my blond hair (courtesy of my German great-grandfather, who converted to Judaism in order to marry my great-grandmother). If it will satisfy you, though, I will rephrase the question: given a lineup of five white people with black hair, how will you determine which person is Jewish?
Why do people insist on having an airtight, scientifically sound, completely precise definition for race?
Why do people insist that a religion or culture is even related to race? Race should refer only to sets of inheritable characteristics; Judaism is not something you can inherit. I cannot convert to having dark, African skin, no matter how hard I try; yet anyone who is willing is able to convert to Judaism, and if I wanted to I could convert out of Judaism.
You're mistaking the religious beliefs with the race.
So take away the religion and the culture, and what is left? What do you think Judaism is, beyond religion and culture?
And it doesn't matter if you convert, you'd still be a Jewish Catholic or Jewish Atheist or Jewish Pastafarian.
Not according to us Jews. I have been told by ultra-orthodox rabbis that a person who converts is considered to have been born with a Jewish soul, and just needed to find their way to the greater Jewish community. The Reform and Conservative movements are equally open minded; I grew up going to a Reform synagogue, and I never heard anyone question whether or not converts were really Jews, nor did I hear them refer to a convert's previous religion. Converting to Judaism is making a commitment to be Jewish, not just to be a "Jewish Catholic" or some other nonsense. The children of a convert are considered to be Jewish, as if their parents had been born into the community themselves.
I suppose these people's racial 'logic' works on similar terms.
Indeed.
I believe this was just tested. But if you can handwave the results away with politically correct platitudes
I guess you have no concept of people converting to Judaism, do you? Or are you one of those people who things that converts are not really Jews?
You are underestimating the sheer volume of data that is transferred through Tor. Even if you only looked at Americans using Tor, you would have a huge amount of data to store; petabytes is an understatement (remember that every connection on Tor involves transferring more data than is actually being transferred end-to-end, due to the nature of onion routing). If you take only a sample, you are not likely to find child abuse imagery -- despite the headlines, most of the data transferred through Tor is not related to child abuse (e.g. Chinese people often use Tor to download American films, which on its own accounts for quite a bit of the utilization of Tor).
I doubt the FBI has the resources to do what you are suggesting. It is not just a matter of storage; the FBI does not yet have the ability to wiretap the entire Internet, and a Tor circuit is fairly likely to cross international borders and thus go outside of the FBI's jurisdiction (assuming that such things even matter these days). The FBI could not even compromise the much smaller anonymous remailer system; Tor has hundreds of thousands of nodes.
The NSA might have those kinds of resources at its disposal. Asking the FBI to do it is silly.
Considering that as recently as 400 years ago, Hungary was ruled by the Ottoman Empire -- the same empire that mass numbers of Sephardic Jews ran to after the Spanish expulsion -- it is not at all unlikely that there are Hungarians who are descendants of Sephardic or even Yemenite Jews, or any of the other Jewish populations that lived under Ottoman rule. You are also ruling out the possibility that people traveled, and that some of this guy's ancestors might have found their spouse in the middle east (which is not terribly far from Hungary), or that someone from another region was traveling and met their spouse in Hungary.
The only populations you can really rule out are populations that were isolated to the point of being forgotten, like Ethiopian Jews.
It's quite possible for both the genetic test to be valid
Judaism is not encoded in anyone's DNA. People convert to Judaism all the time, and people convert away from Judaism to other religions all the time. My great-grandfather was a blond-haired, blue-eyed German who was raised by Catholic parents, who fell in love with my great-grandmother, converted to Judaism, and immigrated to America. Unless you are one of those people who thinks that converts are not really "Jews" (which is not a position that even the most hard-core ultra-orthodox Jewish movements [openly] accept), you cannot claim that genetic tests can reveal whether or not someone is Jewish.
A second issue with the tests is that there are several genetically distinct Jewish populations (hint: this is because genetics has more to do with geography than with religion). The Ethiopian Jews have a very different genetic "fingerprint" than European or Middle-Eastern Jews, and I am just going to go out on a limb and guess that the test performed on this politician did not include genetic markers from Ethiopia. I similarly doubt that genetic markers from Central Asia populations were included, or from controversial communities like the Lemba. Not all Jews have white skin, black hair, or prominent noses, and not all Jews have European DNA.
Just what makes you all so sure these guys *haven't* figured out a way to screen for racial impurities?
The well-known patterns of intermarriage between Jews and the surrounding cultures, that's what. Jews do not generally like to admit it, but intermarriage has been happening between Jewish men and non-Jewish women for thousands of years (it is actually less common for Jewish women to marry non-Jewish men). This should not be terribly surprising, since Jews rarely lived in such isolation that they had no contact with other cultures, and one of the things that commonly happens when two cultures meet up is for people to intermarry.
It is also worth pointing out that there is no single Jewish ethnic group. There are Ashkenazic Jews, Sephardic Jews, Yemenite Jews, Ethiopian Jews, and less known populations of Jews in central Asia and Africa. These groups have distinct genetic patterns, with the exception of a common Y chromosome gene that indicates descent from the ancient priestly line (this is an uncommon gene among Jews, and has little use in ruling out that a person is the descendant of Jews; this gene is not present in Ethiopian Jews, for example).
All that being said, I take issue with the term "racial impurities." What does that even mean? If I lined up a bunch of white men, would you know which ones were Jews (hint: not at all)? If a Jewish baby and a non-Jewish baby are switched at birth, how would anyone know? Judaism has more to do with culture and religion than genetics; there is no gene that makes someone Jewish, Jewish people are not born keeping kosher or covering their heads. You can make a similar statement about Gypsies; Roma is a culture, not something that is encoded in someone's genes.
That is possible, but I have my doubts about that scenario. Tor has been reviewed, attacked, analyzed, etc. by countless cryptography and security researchers. We have a good idea of Tor's weaknesses, and we have a good idea of Tor's strengths. It is definitely possible that there is an unknown, unpublished vulnerability that the FBI will exploit, but the likelihood that after so many years nobody in the research community noticed such a serious problem is pretty low.
If you ask me, Tor is probably not something the FBI can break with its resources. The NSA might be able to, since Tor is weak against a global adversary (a well known issue).
I can't speak for child porn, but I have given photographs that I have taken to others simply because I know it brings them pleasure and in giving them pleasure, I get pleasure.
You do not face life imprisonment for those photographs, and I seriously doubt that whatever pleasure you might get from knowing you brought pleasure to others would be work that sort of risk. Sexually abusing children is a serious crime, and no rational person would send a photograph of themselves engaged in such a crime to anyone else without receiving some level of compensation or some assurance that the counterparty will share in any liability (e.g. if the other person sends a photograph of themselves abusing children). While people do make irrational decisions, there are people out there who have been abusing children and producing photos and videos of that abuse for years -- and they would not have evaded the police for so long if they were not making at least some rational decisions.
I imagine the same motivation drives many teenage "sexters" sharing images of their own bodies.
Which is not even close to the kind of child abuse that is depicted in some of the photos and videos that I am referring to.
I also imagine that this same motivation drives many adults whose risk-assessment skills are so lacking that they don't appreciate the risk they are taking by 1) making child-porn pictures, and 2) letting them out of their own hands / out of their control.
I am sure that such people exist, but as far as I know they do not produce the bulk of child abuse imagery that is out there. People who lack risk assessment skills are people who will be caught relatively quickly, because they make stupid mistakes. There is no way that such people could be responsible for the kind of things that the police have found:
These are the people who pose the greatest threat to children, because they are organized, methodical, and ruthless, and they encourage and demand that others to behave similarly. These are where the most depraved photographs and videos come from -- photographs depicting bestiality, photographs depicting infants being abused, photographs depicting children being tortured, and so forth. They are not sending their photographs to people who are not willing to trade or pay. They are sophisticated and they know how to manage risks, and most importantly they know how to protect their own identity from people within and without their groups.
So no, it is not unreasonable to say that in the absence of evidence that a suspect paid for child abuse imagery, that the suspect did not contribute to the production of that imagery. There are some people who will just share it because they know others want it, but that represents a minority of both the material itself and the danger to children.
Because the beloved US Consitution applies to man, not solely to US citizens.
Indeed, that is why it starts with this sentence that clearly indicates its universal applicability:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The fact others download and view the material provide validation and acceptance to the producers which probably is worth far more than money
I think you are seriously overestimating how valuable it is for a child abuser to know that there are people who like watching what he is doing. Producing and distributing child sex abuse imagery is one of the riskiest things a person can do -- almost no countries would hesitate to imprison people for it, and the jail sentences are often long or indefinite. Emotional validation is nowhere near sufficient to justify taking such risks; money or some other form of trade (e.g. one abuser trading new pictures with another) is basically a necessity.
Sure, there is the occasional idiot who produces child abuse images for the reason you stated; such people are sometimes caught when the police are going after low-hanging fruit i.e. people whose only crime is possession of child abuse images. The really dangerous people are the ones who are not so stupid, the ones who take real precautions and who demand some form of payment for their images/videos. My understanding is that most of the child abuse imagery out there today was produced by that second category, by the people who are turning it into an enterprise of sorts. Those were the sort of people involved with Dreamboard (for those who do not remember, this was a truly depraved website for trading images of child abuse that was recently taken down), the sort involved with Yardbird (a group that used anonymous remailers and Usenet, which had escaped notice by the police until one of their members was inadvertently arrested), the sort who run "modeling" agencies in Eastern Europe, and so forth.
The problem, of course, is that the sort of people I described above are not doing the sort of stupid things that allows the police to catch "low hanging fruit." These are not people who share their images on Kazaa (the FBI has an ongoing program to catch people who do), they are the sort of people who know how to mitigate and manage risk and how to use opsec to protect themselves. Catching them is a challenge, which is why it only happens rarely and only after years of investigative work.
Of course, law enforcement agencies need to keep up their arrest numbers and need to remind people that they are catching "pedophiles." Thus you see efforts to catch low-hanging fruit, e.g. honeypot websites, efforts to catch people who download sex abuse images from peer-to-peer networks, arrests for possession of such images. These efforts do little to combat the production of child abuse imagery, and only catch idiots and people who were either curious or who just wanted to satisfy some bizarre urge. People who produce child abuse imagery have no way to count how many people are sharing those images on peer to peer networks, so even if your point were valid, such efforts are pointless.
The original reason for making the possession of child abuse imagery illegal was the assumption (which at the time was valid) that anyone who possesses such imagery must have purchased it. That assumption is not valid in this century; I would be willing to be that the majority of people who possess child abuse imagery did not pay for it or in any way contribute to its production. We may find the images disturbing (and I would be suspicious of someone who does not), we may have difficulty understanding why anyone would want to masturbate to such imagery, we may not understand why people who collect and create detailed categories of such imagery, but we should not allow our disgust or our poor understanding of psychology lead us to assume that the low-hanging fruit represents a serious threat to children. There is a difference between someone with perverse fantasies and someone who is actually harming children.
It is cheaper to get other countries to train people, then import them to work here.
Would it work for tor users to select an option NOT to redistribute CP through their node and for a service for flagging material as CP
First of all, you need a way to distinguish child abuse imagery from everything else; this is not nearly as easy as it sounds, e.g. the case of Lupe Fuentes. Even if you could develop such a system, the intelligence agencies of countries like China would undoubtedly hijack that system, preventing Tor users from reading about Tibet or Tienanmen Square. You also need to deal with the fact that communications through the Tor system may simply be encrypted; all it takes is a hidden service that uses TLS, and suddenly your system falls apart.
You may not have noticed, but they were elected to represent the interests of Americans. Why would they be particularly worried about whether foreigners are having their rights violated? Those foreigners are represented by governments that are supposed to be concerned about that sort of thing.