Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Suppression of Free Speech Via Malicious "Attack" Book Reviews at Amazon.com and Sister Sites

A substantial problem with malicious book reviews at Amazon.com and their sister sites is that they constitute suppression of free speech in the name of free speech.

David Streitfeld has the story at The New York Times in A Casualty on the Battlefield of Amazon’s Partisan Book Reviews.

What makes these attacks even more malicious is that the book review posters are often anonymous, have often not even read the books in question, and are posting only because they are primarily interested in suppressing contrary views to their own.

Suppression of contrary opinion is quite rampant in archaeology and studies of the ancient world.

People think it is fine to make jokes about lawyers, because attorneys are so successful professionally and monetarily that criticism runs off their backs like water from ducks, but archaeologists e.g. are not used to criticism of any kind, because in the past, people have never looked closely at the work that archaeologists do or have done. When that work is examined carefully, it is obvious to anyone that much is false and that there is much to be improved.

Getting that message through to (and against the opposition of) the lobby of the ancient world academic community is easier said than done.



Posted by Andis Kaulins at 1/22/2013 08:46:00 PM

Most Popular Posts of All Time

Sky Earth Native America


Sky Earth Native America 1:
American Indian Rock Art Petroglyphs Pictographs
Cave Paintings Earthworks & Mounds as Land Survey & Astronomy,
Volume 1, Edition 2, 266 pages, by Andis Kaulins.

  • Sky Earth Native America 2:
    American Indian Rock Art Petroglyphs Pictographs
    Cave Paintings Earthworks & Mounds as Land Survey & Astronomy    ,
    Volume 2, Edition 2, 262 pages, by Andis Kaulins.

    • Both volumes have the same cover except for the labels "Volume 1" viz. "Volume 2".
    The image on the cover was created using public domain space photos of Earth from NASA.

    -----

    Both book volumes contain the following basic book description:
    "Alice Cunningham Fletcher observed in her 1902 publication in the American Anthropologist
    that there is ample evidence that some ancient cultures in Native America, e.g. the Pawnee in Nebraska,
    geographically located their villages according to patterns seen in stars of the heavens.
    See Alice C. Fletcher, Star Cult Among the Pawnee--A Preliminary Report,
    American Anthropologist, 4, 730-736, 1902.
    Ralph N. Buckstaff wrote:
    "These Indians recognized the constellations as we do, also the important stars,
    drawing them according to their magnitude.
    The groups were placed with a great deal of thought and care and show long study.
    ... They were keen observers....
    The Pawnee Indians must have had a knowledge of astronomy comparable to that of the early white men."
    See Ralph N. Buckstaff, Stars and Constellations of a Pawnee Sky Map,
    American Anthropologist, Vol. 29, Nr. 2, April-June 1927, pp. 279-285, 1927.
    In our book, we take these observations one level further
    and show that megalithic sites and petroglyphic rock carving and pictographic rock art in Native America,
    together with mounds and earthworks, were made to represent territorial geographic landmarks
    placed according to the stars of the sky using the ready map of the starry sky
    in the hermetic tradition, "as above, so below".
    That mirror image of the heavens on terrestrial land is the "Sky Earth" of Native America,
    whose "rock stars" are the real stars of the heavens, "immortalized" by rock art petroglyphs, pictographs,
    cave paintings, earthworks and mounds of various kinds (stone, earth, shells) on our Earth.
    These landmarks were placed systematically in North America, Central America (Meso-America) and South America
    and can to a large degree be reconstructed as the Sky Earth of Native America."


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