Consciousness studies

This is 1) to make it look like I'm working on blog updates more often than I actually am, and 2) for the one or two people who may possibly be interested in uber-complex high-range theories of consciousness. This is all just copied from an e-mail I sent to a friend, trying to give him a very basic intro to some all-encompassing theories of consciousness prevalent in the science community. :)

I've read a lot of these things, but I certainly haven't read all of them--especially some of the longer, more technical papers.

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In 2001, Daniel Dennett had a paper in Cognition, "Are We Explaining Consciousness Yet?". The whole thing is pretty technical, and if you don't know anything about Global Workspace theory (or, as Dennett calls it, "global neuronal workspace model of consciousness"), you'd need to get caught up on that first. The Wiki article could probably suffice for that. Quoting a little bit from it:

Conversely, conscious perception is believed to require more sustained, reverberatory neural activity, most likely via global feedback from frontal regions of neocortex back to sensory cortical areas (Crick and Koch, 1995) that builds up over time until it exceeds a critical threshold. At this point, the sustained neural activity rapidly propagates to parietal, prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortical regions, thalamus, claustrum and related structures that support short-term memory, multi-modality integration, planning, speech, and other processes intimately related to consciousness. Competition prevents more than one or a very small number of percepts to be simultaneously and actively represented. (see Baars 1988, Dehaene et al. 2003)

Bernard Baars is the main creator of this theory--I think this is a slightly technical summary of some of its main ideas...

Shit, I guess if you want to take a step backwards before getting into some of the more technical things, you could do Chalmers' What Is a Neural Correlate of Consciousness? (2000).

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Gerald Edelman is also pretty big figure in these areas... I think he's the one who came up with the term "neural Darwinism", which Dennett has also worked with. You should read up a bit about him. I've only read one paper of his, but it had some cool stuff: Naturalizing Consciousness (2003). Here's a little section:

Higher-order consciousness emerges later in evolution and is seen in animals with semantic capabilities such as chimpanzees. It is present in its richest form in the human species, which is unique in possessing true language made up of syntax and semantics. Higher-order consciousness allows its possessors to go beyond the limits of the remembered present of primary consciousness. An individual's past history, future plans, and consciousness of being conscious all become accessible. Given the constitutive role of linguistic tokens, the temporal dependence of consciousness on present inputs is no longer limiting. Nevertheless, the neural activity underlying primary consciousness must still be present in animals with higher-order consciousness.

With these distinctions in hand, we may consider how the neural mechanisms underlying primary consciousness arose and were maintained during evolution. The proposal is as follows. At some time around the divergence of reptiles into mammals and then into birds, the embryological development of large numbers of new reciprocal connections allowed rich reentrant activity to take place between the more posterior brain systems carrying out perceptual categorization and the more frontally located systems responsible for value-category memory (Fig. 1). This reentrant activity provided the neural basis for integration of a scene with all of its entailed qualia. The ability of an animal so equipped to discriminatively relate a present complex scene to its own unique previous history of learning conferred an adaptive evolutionary advantage. At much later evolutionary epochs, further reentrant circuits appeared that linked semantic and linguistic performance to categorical and conceptual memory systems. This development enabled the emergence of higher-order consciousness.

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I really don't know how valid these ideas are in the big scheme of things, but it was really interesting reading Sevush's Single-neuron theory of consciousness (2006). If his overall theory isn't very valid, he at least probably introduced some awesome smaller insights from the perspective. I know one of the main hypotheses is that the left lateral preforntal cortex is like... the highest-level seat of consciousness that exists in the brain.

The first question is whether the left lateral PFC is appropriately positioned to be the recipient of afferent connections pertaining to each of the sensory, emotional, and mnemonic components that comprise VR-conscious experience. This possibility is often dismissed summarily, but without accompanying analysis (e.g., see Dahaene et al. (1998)). Yet a review of the neuroanatomical literature suggests that the idea of a convergence zone should not be so casually disregarded. It has been suggested, for example, that the PFC as a whole functions as a convergence zone, receiving input from most other brain regions (Nauta, 1971; Miller and Cohen, 2001; Elston, 2003). Since PFC subregions are strongly interconnected (Barbas and Pandya, 1989), any one PFC subregion could be capable of serving as a convergence target for all the other PFC subregions. In the single-neuron theory, it is the left lateral PFC that is assumed to serve as the final convergence area for the sensory, emotional, and mnemonic components of VR-consciousness. Evidence in support of this contention is available for each of these components.

And it's certainly testable:

To begin with, the single-neuron theory makes the anatomical prediction that pyramidal neurons will be found in the left lateral PFC that are individually the recipients of convergent axonal input derived from brain regions considered to be involved in the processing of the sensory, mnemonic, and emotional stimuli that compose VR-conscious content. In addition, the theory makes the electrophysiologic prediction that left lateral PFC neurons will be found that respond in single-cell recording experiments to combinations of stimuli that typically comprise VR-conscious experience. As noted above, direct single-cell recordings have already identified neurons in lateral PFC that respond selectively to conjoint visual and auditory stimuli (Aou et al. 1983), to conjoint visual, auditory and tactile stimuli (Tanila et al. 1992), and to conjoint object and location features (Rao et al. 1997). The question is whether lateral PFC neurons exist that respond to conjoint input from the full complement of sensory, emotional, and mnemonic stimuli that comprise VR-conscious experience. The demonstration of the existence of neurons that are suitably anatomically and electrophysiologically convergent, while expected with the single-neuron theory, would be difficult to justify within the network NCC framework. Alternatively, the failure to identify such neurons despite a concerted effort to do so would militate against the single-neuron theory and favor the network approach.

He mentions a couple of other people who are involved in similar research: "Bieberich (2002) has proposed a 'recurrent fractal neural network' model in which information at the network level is reflected at the single neuron level". I haven't even read this one yet, but this is another major paper I just got that uses a lot of these ideas: Is Consciousness Only a Property of Individual Cells? (Edwards 2005)

The Top Ten Craziest Conspiracy Theories Ever: #1

Since some of these entries are getting long, I'm actually going to make this a series, releasing only one or two at a time. I've had a lot of fun revisiting some of those. :)

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1. Drunvalo Melchizedek

While the typical item on this list is a particular pet theory of a single person or small group of people, this first one is quite a bit different: Drunvalo Melchizedek's life itself could be described as something like a giant cosmic conspiracy, spanning the entirety of space and time.

The first major public appearance of Drunvalo Melchizedek was in 1994, in Bob Frissell's epic book Nothing in This Book is True, But It's Exactly How Things Are. The book would become quite popular in New Age and conspiracy circles, due to its matter-of-fact musings on everything from Atlantis, aliens, man-made structures on Mars, and cattle mutilations to, not least, Drunvalo Melchizedek and sacred geometry. Frissell gives us a candid introduction to Melchizedek:

Just who is Drunvalo Melchizedek? Let me begin by telling you about Drunvalo's great-great-great-grandfather, Machiavinda Melchizedek. Machiavinda was the person assigned from Galactic Center to be with us. He has been here from the very moment we were created.

Machiavinda Melchizedek made an appearance earlier (under the name Machiventa Melchizedek) in The Urantia Book, another popular New Age book in the 1950s that was the cornerstone of something that would become somewhat of a small religion (the Urantia Foundation). The Urantia Book was a massive text, worked on by many authors, who had been instructed by superior intelligent beings in the Universe to produce an Earth citizen's guide to the Universe, and everything we had missed out on so far. Not bothering to try to explain its insanely confusing astronomy, suffice it to say that The Urantia Book's main goal was revealing, for the first time, the authorities involved in the central administration of Universe.

The third part of The Urantia Book is about the history of Earth--which apparently is known as Urantia abroad in the universe. Paper 93 in Part 3 brings us some info on the Melchizedeks:

The Melchizedeks are widely known as emergency Sons, for they engage in an amazing range of activities on the worlds of a local universe. When any extraordinary problem arises, or when something unusual is to be attempted, it is quite often a Melchizedek who accepts the assignment. The ability of the Melchizedek Sons to function in emergencies and on widely divergent levels of the universe, even on the physical level of personality manifestation, is peculiar to their order. Only the Life Carriers share to any degree this metamorphic range of personality function.

...

Revealed truth was threatened with extinction during the millenniums which followed the miscarriage of the Adamic mission on Urantia. Though making progress intellectually, the human races were slowly losing ground spiritually. About 3000 B.C. the concept of God had grown very hazy in the minds of men.

...

And it was in consequence of having been thrown so completely on their own resources that Machiventa Melchizedek, one of the twelve planetary receivers, volunteered to do that which had been done only six times in all the history of Nebadon: to personalize on earth as a temporary man of the realm, to bestow himself as an emergency Son of world ministry. Permission was granted for this adventure by the Salvington authorities, and the actual incarnation of Machiventa was consummated near what was to become the city of Salem, in Palestine.

Don't know what other information there is about the Melchizedeks in The Urantia Book, but, bringing us back to the Frissell's book, more light is shed: in 1972, what are in effect the "custodians" of our corner of the galaxy, responsible for overseeing us, decide to send four emissaries to Earth. Drunvalo was among these:

[Drunvalo] was chosen because of his longstanding experience in the Melchizedek Order in the thirteenth dimensional realm. He had been there almost from the beginning, or about 10 billion Earth years. He had almost no awareness of polarity consciousness and was dispatched here because of that, because of his innocence.

Drunvalo came as what is called a "walk-in." Another person occupied his body until Drunvalo was ready to use it. That person undertook certain training and schooling that Drunvalo was later able to use. This was all done by agreement. It is illegal, according to universal law at the highest level, to take over a body any other way. The person who left his body for Drunvalo to occupy was given something very special. Drunvalo did not say what it was other than that.

The body that Drunvalo Melchizedek (real name unknown) inhabited

That's all I'm quoting from Frissell's book, so the rest of the post is going to be coming from the writings of Drunvalo himself.

By 1970, Drunvalo (or rather, the person whose body Drunvalo would occupy) had graduated Kent State University, and moved to Canada. Here is Drunvalo's account of the events leading up to 1972:

While in Vancouver, my wife and I decided we wanted to know about meditation, so we started studying with a Hindu teacher who lived in the area. We were very serious in wanting to understand what meditation was about. We had made white silk robes with hoods and were very serious about this new endeavor we had begun.

Then, one day, after practicing meditation for about four or five months, two tall angels about ten feet high appeared in our room! They were right there. One was green and one was purple. We could see through their transparent bodies, but they were definitely there. We did not expect this appearance to take place. We were just following the instructions that our Hindu teacher was giving us. I don't believe he fully understood as he kept asking us many questions and he didn't seem to understand either. From that moment on, my life was never the same. It wasn't even close.

The first words the angels said were, "We are you."

...

Over a period of many years, [the angels] led me to about seventy different teachers. They would actually tell me the address and the phone number of the teacher I was to go see. They would tell me either to call first or just show up at his or her house. So I would do this—and it would always be the right person! Then I would be instructed to stay with that person for a certain length of time.

(from http://www.drunvalo.net)

(However odd it may seem for an angel to announce "I am you", this is not a particularly isolated incident among New Age writings--many New Age spiritualists and channelers contend that, among other things, even the entities they are channeling are merely an altered/future/higher-dimensional form of themselves)

One of the persons that the angels led Melchizedek to was a Canadian alchemist, who, "amongst other things, was actually turning mercury into gold (though it can also be done from lead, which is more difficult)." (The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life, Vol. 1, p. 28 [1999]) Drunvalo studied with the alchemist for several years, learning from him alchemy and spirituality. As the turning point in the book, Drunvalo describes what happened while meditating with his teacher one day:

We had been in this meditation for maybe an hour or two, a pretty fair length of time. Then something happened—something I had never seen before, ever! He kind of went fuzzy, then disappeared right before my eyes! He was just gone. I’ll never forget it. I sat there for a moment and didn’t know what to do. Then I hesitantly reached over and felt for him. There was nobody there. I thought, Wow! I was totally in astonishment. It blew my mind (as we would say in the ’60s and ’70s), it definitely did! I didn’t know what to do, so I just continued to sit there. Then pretty soon a different person appeared in front of me, somebody completely and absolutely different! It wasn’t even close. My alchemist teacher was about thirty-five years old and this guy was maybe sixty or seventy, and a lot shorter—maybe five feet three or four.

He was a little guy, and he looked Egyptian. He had dark skin and his hair was kind of long, but pulled back. He had a clean-shaven face except for a thick beard growing from his chin that was perhaps six inches long and tied in five places. He was dressed in simple tan-colored cotton clothing with long sleeves and pants and sat cross-legged facing me. After my shock wore off, I just looked into this person’s eyes. There I saw something I hadn’t seen before except in babies’ eyes. When you look into a little baby’s eyes, you know how easy it is because there’s nothing going on, no judgment, no nothing. You can just fall into their eyes, and they’ll fall into yours. Well, that’s what it was like to look at this man. There were just these big baby eyes in this old body. He didn’t have anything going on. I had an instant connection with this person, and there were no barriers. He touched my heart like no one had ever done before.

Then he asked me a question. He said there were three missing atoms in the universe, and did I know where they were? I had no idea what he meant, so I said, “Well, no.” Then he gave me an experience, which I’m not going to describe, that sent me way back in time to the beginning of creation and brought me forward again. It was a very interesting out-of-body experience. When I came back, I understood what he meant about the three missing atoms—at least I thought I did. And I said, “Well, I think what you mean is this,” and proceeded to tell him what I thought. When I finished, he just smiled, bowed and disappeared. A little later my alchemist teacher reappeared. My teacher didn’t know the change had taken place. Everything that happened seemed to be only in my experience.

I went away from that totally preoccupied with the experience. At the time, the angels had me working with four other teachers, so I was going from one to the next to the next, and my life was really full. But I couldn’t think about anything except this little man who had appeared to me. I never asked him who he was, and he didn’t return. Time went on, and finally the experience started to fade away. But I always carried the question, who was that guy? Why did he have me go look for those three atoms, and what was this all about? I had a longing to see him again, because he was the purest person I had ever met—ever. Twelve years later I found out who he was. It was Thoth. (Ancient Secret, p. 29)

Yes--Thoth, the Egyptian god of writing, science, magic, etc.:

But Egypt was by no means the beginning of Thoth--rather, Thoth "goes almost all the way back to the beginning of Atlantis. He figured out, 52,000 years ago, how to stay conscious in one body continuously without dying, and he has remained in his original body since then." (p. 29)

And by no means was 1972 the beginning of Drunvalo Melchizedek either. A few pages later, Drunvalo talks about Thoth's wife, "Shesat" (Seshat), and his relationship with her over the millenia:

She’s a most extraordinary person—in some ways at least as extraordinary as Thoth, if not more so. She was the first person to bring me consciously to Earth, which was in, roughly, 1500 B.C. I was not physically here, but we had made a conscious link across the dimensions. She connected with me because of problems the Egyptians were having within their country that, from her point of view, would eventually affect the whole world and the outcome of humanity. We worked very closely together. (p. 31)

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There are way too many ideas in this book to cover, but I'm going to try to highlight some of the more insane ones. Drunvalo says that almost all of the information contained within the book was transmitted to him telepathically by Thoth; I don't think most of the information is so unique; I think a good amount of it can actually be found in Zechariah Sitchen's books on Sumer and Egypt (who will be #6 or so on this list). Later in the book, Drunvalo says "...after Thoth left in 1991, I became aware of Zecharia Sitchin, read his works, and found out that Sitchin’s and Thoth’s information were almost perfect fits—so perfect it just couldn’t be a coincidence."

Indeed, not a coincidence, I say.

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On Earth, according to Thoth, there are five totally different steps or levels of life that each human is going to pass through. When we reach the fifth level, we will make a transformation that transcends known life itself. That’s the normal pattern. Each one of these levels of consciousness has many aspects that are different from the other levels. First, they have different chromosome levels. The first level of human consciousness has 42 + 2 chromosomes; the second level has 44+2 chromosomes; the third one has 46 + 2; the fourth, 48 + 2; and finally 50 + 2. Each level of human consciousness has a different body height associated with it. (This might sound kind of funny if you’ve never heard it before.)

The first level of 42 + 2 has a range of height somewhere between four and maybe six feet. The people who fall into that category specifically are the Aborigines in Australia, and I believe that certain tribes in Africa and South America also do.

The second level of consciousness has 44+2 chromosomes, and that’s us. Our band of height is about five to seven feet. We’re a little taller than the first group. The third level’s height goes up considerably. The 46+2 chromosome level interrupts the Reality through what you could term unity or Christ consciousness. That range of height is from about ten to sixteen feet tall.

Then there’s another range for the fourth level of consciousness—the 48 + 2s—who have a height of about 30 to 35 feet. The final band, the perfected human, is between 50 and 60 feet tall. They have 52 chromosomes. I suspect that the reason there are 52 cards in a deck is related to those 52 chromosomes of the potential of man. For those of you who are Hebrew, you might remember that Metatron, the perfect man—that which we will become—was blue and 55 feet tall. (pp. 66-67)

Melchizedekian Attempt at Egyptology, Take 1

50 to 60 foot tall humans, you say? On what planet? When?

Oh, wait...

oh no...

noooooooo!

This is Abu Simbel [Fig. 4-11] in Egypt ... Notice how very tall these statues are; this was the actual height of these beings! Compare it to the size of the tourists near the bottom right in the photo. If these stone folks were to stand up, they would be in that 60-foot range, which indicates that they were at the fifth level of consciousness. (p. 119)

:)

No New Age/conspiracy fuckfest would be complete without some crazy shit involved the Great Pyramids of Giza, and how they were built by an enslaved race of aliens from Nibiru or some shit (there's plenty of that in the book, too). Let's see what he has to say:

So Thoth and friends went to the very spot where the unity-consciousness vortex exited the Earth. This point was about a mile away from where the Great Pyramid sits in the desert today, but then it was out in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a rain forest. Centered right over the axis of this vortex on the Earth, they created a hole extending approximately one mile into the Earth, lining it with bricks. It took only a few minutes or so, because they were sixth-dimensional beings, and whatever they thought always happened. It was that simple.

Once the hole aligned with the unity axis was created, they mapped the ten Golden Mean spirals that emerged from the hole and located where they moved above the Earth. They used the hole as the axis, starting far down, and mapped the spirals of energy as they moved up out of the hole and extended into space. One of the spirals exited the Earth not far from the present Great Pyramid. Once they found it, they built a little stone building in front of the hole; that building is the key to the entire Giza complex. Then they built the Great Pyramid.

According to Thoth, the Great Pyramid was built by himself, not Cheops. Thoth says that it was completed about 200 years prior to the shifting of the axis. The apex of the Great Pyramid, if the capstone were in place, sat exactly on the curve of the spiral. They lined up the center of the hole with the south face of the stone building and the north face of the Great Pyramid. It has amazed surveyors who have looked at this. Though these structures are a mile away from each other, the south face of the stone building and the north face of the Great Pyramid are in perfect alignment. They do not believe that we could do it any better today even with our modern technology.

MOTHER OF GOD.

Of course, Melchizedek's faux Egyptology also wouldn't be complete without a redating of the building of the Sphinx—dated to about 2500 BCE by mainstream scholars—but usually redated by conspiracy theorists to correspond to after the destruction of Atlantis in 15,000 BCE or some shit. Let's see when he redates it to:

The Sphinx is not far away from the Great Pyramid. According to The Emerald Tablets and Thoth, the Sphinx is much, much older than the 10- to 15,000 years estimated by John Anthony West ...

According to Thoth, the Sphinx goes back at least five and a half million years. I guess eventually that will be brought forth, because he hasn’t been wrong about anything yet. Even John Anthony West secretly suspects that it is a great deal older than 10- to 15,000 years. He wasn’t concerned with making speculations into the millions of years; he just wanted to get it well past the 6000-year mark, because that will crack our previously accepted Earth history. He and his team have now done that, and later, I believe, they’ll try to push the date back further as they introduce more evidence.

WHAT?

I'm done.

DONE.

Upcoming topics (and a brief intro)

Soooo, I've told several people in the last month or so that I was hoping to be posting regularly on here by now... but, obviously, there's only been one post so far--and not even an introduction or anything. Just know that I have been writing a lot--stuff written specifically for this blog--but some of the things aren't even near being finished rough drafts. Being something like a clinically-OCD perfectionist tends to make the writing process long and laborious sometimes--especially with subjects that I don't know as well as others.

I don't think I'm going to even write a big intro post to this blog, as I'd planned to do (I will probably write a pretty neat description on the sidebar, though). But, to sum up in extreme brevity, this blog is about meaning, the world, and the self.

It is this author's judgment (which is certainly open to elaboration, qualification, and criticism) that, for a good number of us, knowledge and information in our education often arrived in a very fragmented state, and we have had to organize our knowledge in a very compartmentalized way. Elaboration on this argument will be forthcoming, but the defining memory I have of something like this is elementary school cell biology, and rote memorization of the components of a cell, but with little to no idea of function--no idea of how the parts interact on the micro level, and absolutely no conception of how a cell functions in the world of the macro.

Not until several years into college would I begin to get some glimpse of the interconnectedness of chemistry, microbiology, and evolution, and hence finally begin to understand the principles that birthed Life itself, and now sustain it. We are this product of billions of years of evolution, fine-tuned by Nature to the extent that we are now Nature turned back to reflect on itself.

Meaning is what emerges from our attempts to make connections and draw inferences between elements in our environment. This is a process shared by apes and infants alike. But now, in our peculiar situation, society (for most of the readers, advanced scientific capitalist society) is the middleman between the world and meaning--and for our species, has allowed for a complexity of meaning absolutely unrivaled in our corner of the universe. Our social environment is the architect of our perception, and determines how broadly or narrowly we will see events in the world.

It will be our goal to see the world as broadly as possible, free from any limiting biases that may be prevalent in our social environment.

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Oh, and the self is important, too. :) Hopefully you see where that fits in to all this. :)

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Okay, now that that was some sort of introduction, I'm going to wrap this up, and just show a couple of the forthcoming posts that I've at least done some work on so far (some of them are almost done). Things in quotations are actually semi-formal papers.

• Islam in Western Europe
• Genocide: "Never Again," and again, and again...
• The Top Ten Craziest Conspiracy Theories Ever
• "Can first-person accounts of cognitive processes during high-level psychedelic experience give valuable insights into consciousness and brain studies?"
• "Towards a quasi-objectivist aesthetics of music"
• Does Mass Media Really Defer to Governmental Interest?
• Analogy in science education
• Was the Invasion of Iraq for Oil?
• Is Evolutionary Psychology a Pseudoscience? (Redux)
• "On Cosmopolitanism: Ethics and International Relations"
• The philosophy of Gilmore Girls
• Gender, Neuroscience, and Behavior
  
• Babies for Breakfast: Politicians and Conspiracy Theories
• Dialogue and approach of the popular religious critics (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, etc.)
• The Thin Veneer of Christian Belief in America
  
  
  

Personality and Conflict in the Democratic Race

And the battle of the personalities continues.

You know, because of events that have happened (or is it because I support Obama?), I kind of want to say that the Clinton campaign is the one that really bears the most responsibility for perpetuating the disgusting process by which, in effect, the potential for really focusing on issues of policy is taken away by focusing on issues of candidate personality, or on the character of the associates of the candidates (and what these associates said in some interview)--or even on the associates of the associates. But, ultimately, I think the blame extends to both camps and, in particular, media and the nature of the campaign process.

Looking back a few months ago, I really wanted to say that everyone overreacted to the comment by Bill Shaheen (former co-chairman for Clinton's New Hampshire campaign), where in an interview he predicted that Republicans would jump on the opportunity to blast Obama because of his past drug use. The incident seems to have been almost universally characterized as dirty partisan politics whereby, in a fierce turn of irony, Shaheen successfully made an issue out of something under the guise of predicting someone else would make it an issue. Problem was that we didn't get any of the context of the comment from the original article in which it appeared. Could it conceivably have been in response to a question by the interviewer such as "Are there any things that you think Republicans are particularly likely to come down hard on Obama about?" In that case, his comment looks more like simply a statement of fact, no?

Granted, when Shaheen resigned, he said that he deeply regretted saying what he did. Why would he feel any regret or shame for his comments unless there was some ulterior motive in bringing up the drug use besides just stating fact? But even Obama said that he “did not think it was Shaheen's intent to plant such a rumor.” Anyone want to shed any light on this?

Anyways... along similar lines, a couple of weeks ago, I didn't have any immediate urge to accuse Mrs. Ferraro of fanatical racism. Since we only really got that small snippet of comment from the interview, it's hard to say what she really meant... but I just assumed that she simply believes--due to her fanatical conviction that Hillary is so obviously a better candidate--that if Obama didn't have some distinguishing characteristic that would radically appeal to a large bloc of voters, he wouldn't be in position that he's in. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, I don't think she made a racist remark. I think she made a huge (completely unsubstantiated, and idiotic) attack on the quality of Barack Obama. I think the only way the statement could be considered racist is if it's construed as implying that black people are automatically going to vote for a black candidate. The logic behind that would be awful. But also, I don't think we should disregard the results of some of the primaries, and the trends the numbers suggest: “In Georgia, Obama polled 88% of the Black vote, in Alabama 84%, in Arkansas 74%. In Tennessee 77%. In the northeast, Obama polled 82% of the Black vote in New Jersey and 74% in Connecticut.”

So I guess that leaves the “And if he was a woman he would not be in this position” comment. Again, giving her the benefit of the doubt, I'll assume she just meant that it would be no contest if the race were between two women--because Hillary is the best female candidate who could possibly exist. Or something like that.

But if Obama is in the position he's in because he's black, but wouldn't be in this position if he were a woman... what if he were a black woman? I think the universe would explode or something. :D

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But I have a really hard time excusing everyone for not standing up for Samantha Power. I just finished Power's excellent book, A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, and am about to start her book on Sérgio Vieira de Mello. I think it's unquestionable that she would be a valuable asset as an advisor to any candidate or elected official—she's a huge human rights advocate, and critical of anyone who isn't. I think the most mature thing that could have been done in the situation would have been for Obama and Power to have done a joint speech/press conference where, first of all, Obama gave a fucking precise lesson in geopolitics: really spelling out to the public exactly what Power's job is, and what her interests are--and how important she is, not just to our nation, but to the world. Then, Power should have made a speech where she apologized, and made it abundantly clear how idiotic her statement was, and how idiotic it is for anyone to be so careless with the things they say in public. Lastly, Obama should then have said that, the most correct, the most ethical position, and the position best for America and best for the world is this: I'm going to keep Power on staff, and accept any fallout that may result from that.

Certainly, the Clinton campaign wasn't giving a shit who Power is, beyond the lady who said something mean about Hillary. "Only an hour before her resignation was made public, surrogates to Clinton convened a conference call demanding her firing." "'We’re here today to ask Senator Obama to ask Samantha Power not to be part of his campaign,' said Rep. Nita Lowey of New York, responding to the remark by Power--foreign policy adviser to Obama and expert on international human rights. 'It’s really a test for Obama, a test of character,' she said."

Obama's character was already tested. So was Hillary's. And, in a sense, they both failed.
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On to Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Okay, just selected a random op ed from a few days ago. Here are the first few lines: “This controversy isn't over with Rev. Wright's departure. Senator Obama must explain his relationship with Wright. Why? Because for twenty years, Barack Obama attended Trinity United Church in which Wright spewed his hateful rhetoric on an apparently regular basis.”

I haven't been keeping up with domestic news much at all the past few days, but from a quick scan, this seems to be a fairly common sentiment among some people: Barack must answer as to why he kept attending the church, in spite of some of the insane views of its pastor. And the subtext here seems to be that he needs to answer in order to dispel any notion that he agrees with some of the things that Wright has said.

Well, that was certainly already answered. In the Washington Post op-ed a few months ago that originally linked Louis Farrakhan to Obama through Wright: “It's important to state right off that nothing in Obama's record suggests he harbors anti-Semitic views or agrees with Wright when it comes to Farrakhan. Instead, as Obama's top campaign aide, David Axelrod points out, Obama often has said that he and his minister sometimes disagree. Farrakhan, Axelrod told me, is one of those instances.”

I think the important thing for everyone to keep in mind is that Trinity United has 10,000 members (6,000 weekly). The community it serves is the African American community in the South Side of Chicago. If there are any crazy comments or conspiracy theories that happen to get slipped into a sermon, it's definitely nowhere near the primary goal of the pastor. The primary goal is encouraging the community to lift itself out of poverty; to unite; to give hope for the many who are hopeless. Since the church is entirely black, there's definitely more of a tendency for the pastors to migrate towards Black Theology. Jeremiah Wright happens to have links to extremist Black liberation theology. The other day, Rev. Wright couldn't stop asking Sean Hannity if he had read any James Cone, the founder of Black liberation theology--a man who is severely confused at best; bigoted and delusional at worst.

I can't help but think that any questioning of whether Obama may actually support some of Wright's more controversial statements (or especially if Obama is also “anti-American”!) is about as ridiculous and non-progressive as Hillary's massive fuck-up in response to the question of Obama actually being a closet Muslim.