Re: Free Will
On Fomenko: I read all the criticisms in advance of reading Fomenko so when I began to read, I was quite antagonistic. And frankly, that's not a bad way to read a book. If the author can persuade a hostile reader with his arguments and evidence, then he must have something!
Anyway, Fomenko really, REALLY has something here and his mathematical graphs and charts and so forth are impressive as all get out. You can't gainsay those things. He also cites an astonishing amount of evidence. It's worth reading just for that.
There are things that he writes about that are so logical and compelling that you wonder why you never thought of that before, one example being his analysis of the Book of Revelation.
Thing is, over the past few years as I have been reading a LOT, LOT, LOT of biblical studies, I've realized that, as they continue to study and analyze these things, as their skills develop and as evidence comes forward, the dates of composition keep moving forward in time. At least for the honest ones. The latest idea of the Copenhagen school is that the Old and New Testament were pretty much written at the same time, around 2 BC to 2 AD. That is astonishingly late for the Old Testament. And of course, they talk about glosses and additions and outright fakes that were added later.
Anyway, the idea that the two were composed pretty much at the same time is already sitting there in mainstream research, so when Fomenko comes along and can prove that both were composed a LOT later than anyone EVER thought (and I think he does), it just boggles the mind.
But, having said that, let me add that there is one thing that I haven't yet come across in Fomenko, and that is the idea that Western Civilization suffered a severe set-back as recently as the time of the Black Death and even later, and everything was "rebuilt," so to say. That is constantly in my mind: how bad it must have been during those times for so much to have been destroyed. How traumatized people must have been that their entire history could have been re-written without a protest.
But, when you look at some of the numbers and consider what we have just witnessed with 9-11 and the "re-writing of history" and things like what was done regarding JFK's assassination and so on, it becomes a little easier to believe that it could be done and that Scaliger et al DID do it!
Remember what I wrote about that period of time in my article about Baillie's book "New Light on the Black Death"?
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/145683-New-Light-on-the-Black-Death-The-Cosmic-Connection
Baillie has the scientific evidence to support his theory and his evidence actually supports - and is supported by - what the people of the time were saying: earthquakes, comets, rains of death and fire, corrupted atmosphere, and death on a scale that is almost unimaginable. Most people nowadays are not really aware of what happened just 660 years ago.
Anyway, China, where the Black Death is said to have originated, lost around half of its entire population (going from around 123 million to around 65 million).
Recent research into European death tolls also suggest a figure of 45% to 50% of the total European population dying during a four-year period though the figure fluctuated from place to place (which is a problem as we will see).
In Mediterranean Europe and Italy, the South of France and Spain, where the plague ran for about four years consecutively, it was probably closer to 70% to 75% of the total population. (In the USA today, that would be equivalent to reducing the population from its current 300 million total to 75 million in less than four years. That would also amount to having to bury or dispose of around 225 million corpses!)
In Germany and England it was probably closer to 20%. Northeastern Germany, Bohemia, Poland and Hungary are believed to have suffered less for some reason (and there are a few theories which are not entirely satisfactory).
There are no estimates available for Russia or the Balkans so it seems that they may have suffered little, if at all. Africa lost approximately 1/8th of its population (from around 80 million to 70 million). (These figures actually highlight one of the problems that Baillie brings up: the variability of death rates according to location.)
Whatever the death rate in any given location, the bottom line is that the Black Death produced the largest death toll from any known pandemic in recorded history and, as Baillie points out, nobody really knows what it was! Oh, of course, for a very long time everybody just "knew" it was Bubonic plague, so how is it that Baillie questions this well-established fact? He's not the only one.
Now, just think what Europe must have been like with this sort of thing going on? Imagine that going on in our own day? And imagine it coming from cometary bombardment, earthquakes, weather run amok, and so forth?
Do read also my "Wars, Pestilence, and Witches."
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/147339-Wars-Pestilence-and-Witches which proposes a reason for the cover-up at the end.
If you read Fomenko with the knowledge of these types of events firmly in mind, things begin to make a lot of sense.
Fomenko, of course, does not talk about cosmic catastrophe and that is a huge weakness in his entire work, (at least I haven't come across it yet), but what he does write about sure makes you realize that it is going to take some serious work and thinking to tease out the threads of what really may have happened, where and WHEN, in our history. It is a devastating critique of the way history is done and I think what he notices and the way he looks at it, though it is not the whole banana, is vital for anyone interested in this topic.