History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)

Book Description

Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.

Customer Reviews:

Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03

Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.

Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19

Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.

Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09

There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.

For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.

Very Interesting.......2007-03-07

It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.

History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10

Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.

I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.

Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.

Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.

I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.

This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.

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Making Sense of Japanese Politics
invaluable study of modern Japanese politics
excellent

The Logic of Japanese Politics
Gerald L. Curtis
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0231108435

Book Description

Widely recognized both in America and Japan for his insider knowledge and penetrating analyses of Japanese politics, Gerald Curtis is the political analyst best positioned to explore the complexities of the Japanese political scene today. Curtis has personally known most of the key players in Japanese politics for more than thirty years, and he draws on their candid comments to provide invaluable and graphic insights into the world of Japanese politics. By relating the behavior of Japanese political leaders to the institutions within which they must operate, Curtis makes sense out of what others have regarded as enigmatic or illogical. He utilizes his skills as a scholar and his knowledge of the inner workings of the Japanese political system to highlight the commonalities of Japanese and Western political practices while at the same time explaining what sets Japan apart.

Curtis rejects the notion that cultural distinctiveness and consensus are the defining elements of Japan's political decision making, emphasizing instead the competition among and the profound influence of individuals operating within particular institutional contexts on the development of Japan's politics. The discussions featured here -- as they survey both the detailed events and the broad structures shaping the mercurial Japanese political scene of the 1990s -- draw on extensive conversations with virtually all of the decade's political leaders and focus on the interactions among specific politicians as they struggle for political power.

The Logic of Japanese Politics covers such important political developments as

Â• the Liberal Democratic Party's egress from power in 1993, after reigning for nearly four decades, and their crushing defeat in the "voters' revolt" of the 1998 upper-house election;

Â• the formation of the 1993 seven party coalition government led by prime minister Morihiro Hosokawa and its collapse eight months later;

Â• the historic electoral reform of 1994 which replaced the electoral system operative since the adoption of universal manhood suffrage in 1925; and

Â• the decline of machine politics and the rise of the mutohaso -- the floating, nonparty voter.

Scrutinizing and interpreting a complex and changing political system, this multi-layered chronicle reveals the dynamics of democracy at work -- Japanese-style. In the process, The Logic of Japanese Politics not only offers a fascinating picture of Japanese politics and politicians but also provides a framework for understanding Japan's attempts to surmount its present problems, and helps readers gain insight into Japan's future.

Customer Reviews:

Making Sense of Japanese Politics.......2006-07-08

Books on Japan that are worth reading must fulfill three criteria. They must be based on a direct access to primary sources, which presupposes a high degree of familiarity with the Japanese language and social history. They have to build upon the scholarly literature, including analysis and commentary presented by Japanese scholars. And they have to offer a theoretical perspective that is relevant to the subject under consideration.

The Logic of Japanese Politics meets these three criteria with a wide margin. Professor Curtis seems to know every major political figure firsthand and has developed with many of them a personal relationship since their rookie years as junior Diet members. As a distinguished political scientist, he brings intellectual breadth as well as historical depth to his topic, and has himself published extensively in Japanese. He is careful not to placate preconceived notions on the Japanese political system, and develops useful comparisons with politics in Europe (whereas most observers, including Japanese political actors, tend to overuse the comparison with US politics).

The 1990s was an important turning point for Japanese politics. From 1989 to 1998, Japan had nine prime ministers; there had been only eleven over the previous thirty-four years. From 1955 to 1993, only one party, the LDP, was in power at the national level. Then during one year beginning in August 1993, every party in the Diet except for the Communists participated in one coalition government or another. Among parties opposed to the LDP, affiliations were in such a flux that a number of Diet members stopped indicating their party membership on their name cards. Although the PLD's absence from power lasted for less than a year, before they returned to government in an alliance with their former arch-rival the Japan Socialist Party, the period marked a dramatic rupture in Japanese politics, with the end of the so-called '55 system and the quest for a new political landscape that took some time consolidating.

Each chapter focuses on a particular phase of this transition: the ouster of the LDP from government and its replacement by a seven-party coalition led by the charismatic prime minister Morihiro Hosokawa; the unraveling of this coalition that nonetheless achieved to pass an important electoral reform; the LDP's return to power in a coalition led first by the Socialist Party's chairman Tomiichi Murayama, then by former MITI minister Ryutaro Hashimoto; the disappointing results of the 1998 upper-house election and the appointment of Keizo Obuchi over Junichiro Koizumi as party chairman and head of government.

The result of these changes and reorganization was immobilism and confusion precisely at a time when Japan needed policy change and strategic direction in order to deal with an ailing economy. Despite the rhetoric on the need for political reform, administrative restructuring and deregulation, Curtis shows that the Japanese public felt ambivalent toward undoing the system that brought Japan its postwar success, and that the authorities delivered relatively little in terms of real departures from the past. He also castigates the Japanese's infatuation with the idea that the two-party system of Westminster democracy would magically cure Japanese politics from all its ills, arguing instead that the "rice-roots" quality of Japanese democracy is its strength rather than its weakness.

Distinctly Japanese political institutions are introduced throughout the text. The zokugiin is a Diet member who concentrates on a single issue, developing expertise and influence through his contacts with the bureaucracy and special interest representatives. The habatsu is a faction within the LDP bound together by ties of personal allegiance more than doctrinal content. The most powerful faction usually leaves the position of party president (and thus prime minister) to someone from another faction, while exercising power from the shadow through control of the post of party secretary-general and through controlling the composition of the prime minister's cabinet. The all-important secretary-general has final say on candidate nominations and is in charge of the party's funds, two sources of power that enable him both to do favors and to punish party members.

The kokutai or kokkai taisaku iinkai is a party's Diet-strategy committee that doubles the formal House Management Committee (giin unei iinkai, or giun) and that offers the channel for backroom deals between parties or for informal contacts with the bureaucracy. The innai kaiha is a parliamentary caucus that can be distinct from the political party (or parties) it supports. It came to play a critical role after the collapse of LDP one-party dominance in 1993 as politicians seeked to restructure the party system.

Detailed knowledge of the functioning of these institutions and others is important in order to understand how politicians operate within particular institutional constraints. Politics in Japan makes sense in Japanese terms, and clear reasoning can make sense of Japanese politics.

invaluable study of modern Japanese politics.......2001-01-21

As the title of the book suggests, there is a logic to Japanese politics, just as there is a logic, a coherence, to other social phenomena and behavior. This will no doubt disturb those students of the Asian "mind" who are prone to boil down Japanese "national character" to some sort of ahistorical essence. As Professor Curtis says, he hopes he "will leave the reader with a sense of the culture of Japanese politics. It is not a book that argues that culture explains Japanese politics." This is revisionism operating in a healthy sense. There are a couple of specific points I would like to make. In dissecting electoral reform, he does not mention recent play given to direct election of the prime minister, an idea first raised by Nakasone in the 1960s. Of course, the conservatives are betting this would benefit the election of a strong right-wing leader in the mold of Shintaro Ishihara, the present governor of Tokyo. Secondly, in speculating on the direction Japanese politics may take, he mentions only briefly what he terms the New Right and the implications for U.S.-Japan relations. The drift to the right in Japanese politics is unmistakable, which in its worst form would lead to remilitarization and indeed pose a problem for Far East security. Already, the national anthem and national flag, replete with their war-time associations, have been officially recognized. This past February both the upper and lower houses of the Diet formed committees to study revising the Constitution. The New Right, or neo-nationalists, if you will, see this as an opening for revising Article 9, the anti-war article. Just one small error to point out in a name: read Taku Yamasaki vice Yamazaki. All in all, this is a tremdously valuable study.

excellent.......2000-07-04

I have lived in Japan for a few years in the 1990s and have always assumed that (at least for now) the politicians there don't really matter. And compared to American politics, Japanese politics seemed dry with one party rule until 1993. But Curtis shows how exciting it all is under the surface. I read this book very slowly, wanting to absorb every detail; however, Curtis writes well and will keep you moving through the events of the 1990s.

So if you are a student of Japan and are trying to piece together some of the highlights you already know, read this book. Curtis has done us a great service.

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Sino-Japanese Relations: Interaction, Logic, and Transformation
Ming Wan
Manufacturer: Stanford University Press
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0804754594
Release Date: 2006-03-17

Book Description

With the passing of the “friendship generation” and the increase in (mostly negative) societal participation in the late 1980s, the governments of China and Japan have found it increasingly difficult to navigate between the constraints and possibilities in their relationship. Based on ten years’ research in the United States, China, and Japan, this book argues that the relationship is politically now dispute-prone, cyclical, and downward-trending but manageable; militarily uncertain; economically integrating; psychologically closer in people-to-people contact yet more distant. The author develops measures of political interaction, trade, foreign direct investment, tourism, and student exchanges, and casts doubt on many prevailing assumptions about Sino-Japanese relations.

Japanese Foreign Policy: The Emerging Logic of Multilateralism

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Japanese Foreign Policy: The Emerging Logic of Multilateralism
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The Logic of Japanese Politics: Leaders, Institutions, and the Limit of Change. (Reviews). (book review): An article from: Journal of Contemporary Asia

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The Logic of Japanese Politics: Leaders, Institutions, and the Limit of Change. (Reviews). (book review): An article from: Journal of Contemporary Asia
Geoffrey C. Gunn
Manufacturer: Journal of Contemporary Asia Publishers
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Binding: Digital

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This digital document is an article from Journal of Contemporary Asia, published by Journal of Contemporary Asia Publishers on March 1, 2002. The length of the article is 2939 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The Logic of Japanese Politics: Leaders, Institutions, and the Limit of Change. (Reviews). (book review)
Author: Geoffrey C. Gunn
Publication: Journal of Contemporary Asia (Refereed)
Date: March 1, 2002
Publisher: Journal of Contemporary Asia Publishers
Volume: 32 Issue: 1 Page: 131(7)

Article Type: Book Review

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THE LOGIC OF JAPANESE POLITICS: Leaders, Institutions, and the Limits of Change.(Review): An article from: Pacific Affairs

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THE LOGIC OF JAPANESE POLITICS: Leaders, Institutions, and the Limits of Change.(Review): An article from: Pacific Affairs
Andrew Dewit
Manufacturer: University of British Columbia
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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This digital document is an article from Pacific Affairs, published by University of British Columbia on June 22, 2001. The length of the article is 658 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: THE LOGIC OF JAPANESE POLITICS: Leaders, Institutions, and the Limits of Change.(Review)
Author: Andrew Dewit
Publication: Pacific Affairs (Refereed)
Date: June 22, 2001
Publisher: University of British Columbia
Volume: 74 Issue: 2 Page: 269

Article Type: Book Review

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The Logic of Japanese Politics
Gerald L. Curtis
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OPUQLE

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