2012 FOX news DOOMS DAY with GERALDO RIVERA

The Prophesies of the World Ending In 2012

Scientists have long been the greatest skeptics of any sort of spiritual prophecy.

However, these scientists are adopting prophesies as they warn of the earth ending by December the year 2012. Out of 7 groups that are convinced beyond any shadow of doubt that the end is going to come in approximately less than 26 months, 5 hail from the scientific field.



Magnetic Fields Swap Could Herald End of the World, Scientists

Below are 7 apparent signs that prove 2012 will be the end of time;

1. The Earth’s Magnetic Field; scientists have said that the earth’s magnetic fields, that is, north and south poles, will trade positions in 2012. Since these poles shield us from most of the sun’s radiation, an exchange would result in radiation of ultraviolet rays that will destroy everything they come into contact with.

2. Sun Storms; solar storms have been widely reported with the effect of hitting the earth with lots of radiation energy. This energy has been interfering with power grids and ruining satellites. Scientists are predicting that these storms will reach an all-time deadly high in 2012.

3. Super volcano; geologists are predicting that the Yellowstone volcano which is active every 7000 years will erupt in 2012, an activity which will fill the air with ash, block the sun and cause a 17000-year long winter.

4. The atom smasher; this world’s biggest particle accelerator will have its first serious experiment in 2012 and scientists are giving prophesies that it will create small black holes that will crush the earth into a dense blob.

5. The physicists; physicists at the Berkeley University are saying that the earth is overdue for a disastrous event and have calculated a 99% chance of everyone dying in 2012.

6. The Mayan Calendar; the Mayans who were able to correctly calculate the period of a lunar cycle, also believe that the end of the world will be December 21 2012.

7. The bible; according to some Christian sects, interpretations of the book of Revelations indicate that prophesies of Armageddon will be fulfilled in 2012.

The World Cataclysm in 2012 & The Sunspot Theory

2012 is vastly approaching with about two years before predicted changes will occur. Patrick Geryl’s latest video portrays what to his theory will happen and he has based himself on the Sunspot Theory which he has deciphered for a great part. The Sunspot Theory being one of the 20 largest mysteries on earth, could well be the key to the imminent change we are facing on December 21, 2012. Watch this new video and understand what could happen to the world if Patrick Geryl is right:

Did Ancient Mayans Know Something We Don't About 2012?

The countdown is on to 2012, considered by some to be the year of the apocalypse. A publication called "An Encyclopedia of claims, frauds and hoaxes of the occult and supernatural" lists 44 distinct “end of the world” predictions that all went unfulfilled.

But that doesn’t stop the speculation from occurring. The movie “2012” treats you to a feast of death and destruction. Judie Doyle of Fort Wayne is not impressed with the premise behind the action thriller.
Judie Doyle/2012 End Times Skeptic: " I think it's ridiculous. I'm not that kind of a believer in that kind of thing."

End times predictions come from many sources.

16th Century Frenchman Nostradamus, who followers credit with predicting the rise of Napoleon, Hitler and the 9-11 terrorist attacks, say he forecast a comet will strike the earth or pass closely in 2012, with cataclysmic repercussions.

Critics say Nostradamus' prophecies are often dead wrong, or are so vague as to have no value in predicting events in advance.

Much of the 2012 “end times” uproar revolves around the Mayan culture's long count calendar and the fact it cuts off December 21st, 2012.
 
James Adams/Mayan Scholar: " Nowhere were they suggesting that in 2012 there was going to be the end of anything."

James Adams, a retired Manchester College professor, led numerous excursions to study the fascinating Mayan civilization.

He says the fact there are dates beyond 2012 written on Mayan monuments diminishes talk of the 2012 apocalypse.

James Adams: " I think the Maya would be surprised that they've been so helpful to Hollywood."
But the doomsday dialogue is alive and well.

Among the eye-popping theories, a mysterious planet will enter the solar system and disrupt planetary orbits, causing earthquakes and tidal waves, and that the earth's magnetic field is about to flip, leaving us vulnerable to solar flares.

Dr. John Platt/USC Professor of Earth Sciences: " Solar flares are very, very powerful events."
Lawrence Joseph/Author, Apocalypse 2012: " My great fear is the domino effect, where one thing leads to another, leads to another and we plunge into chaos."

Chris Highlen, with the University of St. Francis planetarium, sees no scientific evidence that mass chaos is just around the corner.

Christ Highlen/Fort Wayne Astronomical Society: " We've had millions of years of earth's history and nothing has wiped out life on earth yet, so I don't think we need to worry about 2012 particularly. It could happen tomorrow, it could never happen."

Jeff Neumeyer: " Mainline churches don't subscribe to the notion that December 2012 has any special apocalyptic significance. But that doesn't mean churches will necessarily ignore the subject altogether."
Pastor Rick Hawks, with The Chapel, arranged a sermon series in conjunction with the launch of the movie "2012" last year.

Hawks says the Christian church believes Jesus Christ holds the answers to "end times" questions.
Pastor Rick Hawks/The Chapel: " We believe he's bringing history to his glorious conclusion. We also believe nobody knows when that's going to happen."

Just in case the church is wrong, Chris Highlen downloaded an application for his phone that counts down the hours and minutes to horror or hoax.

Source: http://www.indianasnewscenter.com/news/local/Did-Ancient-Mayans-Know-Something-We-Dont-About-2012-108733069.html

Armageddon | Judgement Day | The Apocalypse

Why Is Russia Building 5000 More Nuclear Bomb Shelters In Moscow By The End Of 2012?

The Second Scientific Revolution; 2012 Declaration of Psychic Science with the Epoch-Making Significances is Now Preannounced by Galaxy Seven

Galaxy Seven from Taiwan preannounces 2012 Declaration of Psychic Science. He is also the author of this declaration.

In order to fulfill the Mayan prophesy, "Declaration 2012" will be formally signed by fourteen significant individuals and companies on 21 December 2012. This historical event could lead to the second scientific revolution. In fact, 21 December 2012 will be a great rebirth day, rather than a doomsday.
Website of Declaration 2012: (http://www.declaration2012.net) This psychic scientific revolution could also induce the second industrial revolution. The first industrial revolution in the 18th century was based on physical science, while the second industrial revolution in the 21st century will be based on psychic science.
The Earth is experiencing a resplendent phase of transformation. In truth, we are marching towards the most dazzling new era of psychic scientific civilization in human history.

Nevertheless, the reason why the development of psychic science on Earth is at a standstill is because a system of theoretical standards for psychic science is still lacking and people fail to unify research methodology. Once theoretical exemplars appear, psychic science and related industry will begin to progress swiftly, just like after the unified protocol of WWW appeared in 1989, the Internet started to develop by leaps and bounds.

 

 

"Declaration 2012" has designed a lucid and comprehensive theoretical system for psychic science. The theoretical system regards the scientific spirit of "honest description" as the basic attitude, "intuitive experimentation" as the main research methodology, the "Four Axioms of the Mind" as the presuppositions, and the "Four Laws of the Mind" as the criteria for verification. The conclusive primary concept is: "All lives are one and equal; True nature is blissful and joyful ." From the historical view point, the physical scientific revolution in the 17th century is the first scientific revolution . In 1687, Isaac Newton published the book Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, in which he used such logical and mathematical methods as induction and deduction to describe natural phenomena honestly.

Newton's honest, open-minded attitude helped to liberate people from the bondage of their blind faith in authority. This meant a great deal to those living in the 17th century who were bound tightly by authority. However, we are unknowingly marching towards another extreme: worshipping material. Everyone has to know that mathematical methods can only be used to describe external, local and regular phenomena of material and cannot explain all the truth in life and in the universe.

Having entered into the 21st century, we now need psychic science to engage in the second scientific revolution. In order to launch the psychic scientific revolution, we have to expand the horizons and methods of science, introducing the methodology of "intuitive experimentation" from psychic science.

The definition of "intuitive experimentation" is simple and clear. It means conducting honest descriptions of one's own intuitive experience and empirical effect while respecting others' honest descriptions of their own intuitive experience and empirical effect.

It should be noted that "intuitive experimentation" does not demand all of the experiences and experiments to be perfectly repeatable, nor does it arbitrarily apply local, regular phenomena to the entirety. Rather, it describes things honestly and intuitively in a flexible, open-minded attitude and acknowledges that there are limitations to all experiences.

One of the most valuable elements of scientific spirit is "honest description." As long as "honest description" occurs, broad-sense scientific spirit is achieved. What can be referred to as science is definitely not merely mathematics, and what can be expressed with mathematical formulas is often limited to simple, regular physical rules.

There is an enormous disparity between psychic science and physical science. Physical science pays special attention to objectivity, immediacy and absolute repeatability, while psychic science focuses on intuitiveness, gradation and practicality.

2012 doomsday update: The date is right, the predictions still wrong

Utah (ABC 4 News) - Is the apocalypse upon us in just 790 days? Some believe doomsday is December 21, 2012. They base that believe on the end of a cycle on the ancient calendar of the Maya.

But hold on. Gerardo Aldana, a researcher at the University of California Santa Barbara now claims we've got it all wrong. Aldana does not take on the predictions, only the math. He argues that the numerical value (known as the GMT) used to convert the Maya calendar to the Gregorian or modern calendar is off by as much as 50 to 100 years.

"I am all for challenging conventional wisdom," said Allen Christenson,

PhD. of Brigham Young University. But in this case he said they've correlated major historical and astronomical events using the GMT and the two calendars match up nicely. Dr. Christenson said, "I'm pretty comfortable about the dating." There is no error.

So, if there is no error in the calculation of the date, does that mean that the doomsday predictions are right? Not according to Dr. Christenson, "It's just nonsense. The same sort of things were said about Y2K."

Dr. Christenson bases his conclusion on decades of academic study of the Maya culture, art and religion. He is fluent in several Mayan languages. What's more, he published what some consider the definitive translation of the Popol Vuh -- something of a Maya Bible.

He explained that modern man seems much more concerned about December 21, 2012 than the Maya. "There is the sum total of one ancient Maya text that refers to the 2012 date." And it comes from a fairly minor monument found among Maya ruins. The translation of that monument indicated that on that date a particular god will descend. "To be perfectly frank, a god of endings and destruction." But he added, "Also a god of rebirth and creation."

In the Maya religion is the world is constantly dying and being reborn. A Maya priest explained to Dr. Christenson there is death at harvest time and at every sunset when the western horizon is splashed with blood. And at the winter solstice in 2012 there will also be a type of death and rebirth. But he added, "There's no indication whatsoever that they thought everything would end permanently after 2012. There are a lot of dates that they record in their monuments long after 2012."

Still, movies like "2012" and all of the doomsday websites do not upset Dr. Christenson. Of course he believes firmly that they are wrong. But from the hype, he hopes some good will come. "I hope that people will start taking an interest in who the Maya really were and learn more about the Maya ... one of the world's great cultures."

2012 Doomsday Was Never Predicted, Says Expert

2012 Doomsday isn't a concern... An expert says the belief that ancient Mayans predicted the world will end Dec. 21, 2012, has one problem: The Mayans said no such thing. The prospect of apocalypse now or at least in three years and a bit has spawned enough books to stock a small library, television documentaries and now a movie. The belief in the Mayan prediction is based on the long-count calendar, which covers 5,000 years and ends on that date as near as anyone can tell.

But an anthropologist says the calendar was not intended as a predictor of doomsday or of giant tsunamis and earthquakes more destructive than anything in the historical or geological record.

"It's just like a car odometer. The calendar clicks over to a new set of numbers," Geoff Braswell, an anthropologist at the University of California at San Diego, told The San Diego Union-Tribune. "The Maya certainly didn't expect the world to end. They wrote about stuff happening 400 million years from now."
William Gladstone of Cardiff, Calif., has written a novel, "The Twelve," about the Mayan calendar. He told the newspaper he decided on a novel "because the story doesn't work as non-fiction."


Read more: http://www.thirdage.com/news/2012-doomsday-was-never-predicted-says-expert_10-21-2010#ixzz14nFKiIGV

"Armageddon Science": Our coming apocalypse, explained

Nuclear war, bioterrorism, nanorobots: What poses the greatest threat to our planet? An expert explains the facts

 

 

We are fascinated by the end of the world. Every summer, Hollywood rolls out a slate of foreboding disaster films, like "Armageddon," "The Terminator" or "The Day the Earth Stood Still," that capitalize on our desire to see our planet get obliterated. This coming weekend, moviegoers can watch aliens trample Los Angeles in "Skyline." Books like Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," with its dystopian vision of a plantless future, become cultural phenomena by feeding our anxieties about mortality and our own global expiration date. But how grounded are these fears in reality?

In "Armageddon Science: The Science of Mass Destruction," English science writer Brian Clegg, who has an advanced degree in physics from Cambridge University, considers the threats, both real and theoretical, that science and technology pose to the world. He searches beyond the obvious examples of nuclear warfare and global warming and introduces such strange concepts as antimatter bombs, nanorobots and cyberterrorist war. Despite the unnerving title and the alarming cover art of a post-apocalyptic city, Clegg's book presents a sober and rational analysis of the threats -- or lack thereof -- that we face. He dismisses several Armageddon scenarios, such as dark matter explosions or world-dominating robots, as unlikely. But he's less cavalier about other doomsday possibilities.

To find out if we should start building shuttles to Mars, Salon spoke to Clegg over the phone, from the U.K.

Let's cut to the chase. What product of science and technology is the most likely to wipe out the human race?
 
As long as we still have nuclear arsenals, in the end I have to go down that line. The other biggest danger to humanity is natural disasters, though they're not the main theme of my book. People talk about how humans will destroy the planet, but there's actually nothing we can do to destroy the planet. We can destroy ourselves, and the planet can destroy us.

Deep underground in Switzerland, an international group of scientists built what you call "the biggest machine ever envisaged by human beings," the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is a high-tech particle accelerator. There have been concerns it could lead to destruction. Is the machine dangerous?
 
The real worries are that the machine will produce tiny black holes or these [hypothetical particles] called strangelets. Neither of these possibilities should cause much worry. There's a popular image of a black hole that eats everything around it, but in reality the holes that could be produced by the LHC would disappear before you could even see them.

You refer to the practice of experimental particle physics as "childish." What do you mean by that?
 
It's more "childlike" than "childish." What we're doing with particle physics is the scientific equivalent of hitting something with a large hammer to see what happens. It's the only way to find out what's going on. In some ways, this is better than observation-based science. In a field like psychology, you can't experiment on human beings to look at everything that's going on, whereas in physics you can. Experimental physics also has this advantage over cosmology. You can't experiment with the galaxy and the stars; you can only observe.

What do you think of Dan Brown's ill-informed account of antimatter technology that can be used to blow up the Vatican in "Angels and Demons"?
 
I have no problem with Dan Brown getting the science wrong, but he structured the book in a way that presented this stuff as factual, which is pushing it a little bit.

You discuss the fact that scientists are more likely to be on the autism spectrum. Do you think this hinders their ability to contemplate how their findings might affect people?
 
I don't think that's an issue. People on the autism spectrum have difficulty with aspects of social relations and dealing with people, but this doesn't mean they don't understand the dangers of science and technology, and it doesn't mean they aren't concerned about other people.

To some extent, I think this explains the stereotypical view of the scientist as someone who is cold and impersonal. It's definitely not true that every scientist is on the spectrum -- there's just a higher prevalence of autistic disorders than in the general population. This might also partially explain why men are still so much more likely to be scientists than women, since men are more likely to be on the autism spectrum.

Bioterrorism versus cyberterrorism: Which is scarier?
 
Cyberterrorism. In the U.K., the government just completed a new assessment of the requirements of the military, and cyberterrorism was one of the top three threats. Cyberterrorism is relatively easy to accomplish, and relatively easy to do remotely, in terms of hacking into the Internet.

Bioterrorism is much easier than a terrorist nuclear attack, but it's not that easy. For the terrorists, the difficulty is in making a large impact. The anthrax attack after 9/11 had an effect, but it killed a very small number of people. It's actually quite difficult to deliver biological weapons that will infect people properly.

How concerned should we be about the dangers of nuclear terrorism?
 
I don't think it's the most dangerous possibility in the sense of all-out mass destruction. A nuclear terrorist event would be small compared to what a superpower can do, but I think it has a larger probability of actually happening. A dirty bomb, which is a regular bomb that spreads radioactive material, is the most likely scenario. An actual nuclear bomb would be very difficult for a terrorist organization to construct. Their best bet would be getting one from a nuclear nation.

The U.S. government convened the Committee on Medical Preparedness for a Terrorist Nuclear Event in July 2009. It almost seems like a throwback to the Cold War. What was it?
 
It's a committee put together by the Institute of Medicine at the government's request. The purpose is to increase awareness of the possibility of some form of terrorist nuclear event. The approach reminds me of the publications that were produced as information leaflets for the general public during the Cold War. It all seemed trivial back then -- stuff like "stay away from the windows, put your back against the walls." The Committee on Medical Preparedness suggests stuff like getting into a basement or the central core of a building, because a lot of radiation is actually stopped by simple things like bricks.

During the Manhattan Project, physicist Niels Bohr argued that all nations should share their knowledge of nuclear technology. After the bombs were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a proposed U.N. committee would share and guard nuclear technology. This never happened. Is international oversight of this kind still possible?
 
What Bohr had in mind wasn't that every nation should have a nuclear bomb, but that everyone should have the knowledge of what's involved in making one. This form of deterrence might have prevented nations from ever building the bomb, because each nation would know that if they started to build, every other nation might build as well. It's a different approach to deterrence. Unfortunately, nations did build bombs, so I'm not sure how realistic such a scenario is now, but it would have been nice.
 
The United States has the largest nuclear arsenal. It also has a national memory that doesn't include mass death and genocide: The majority of victims from the World Wars, for example, were not American. Do you think this makes Americans psychologically naive to the true costs of warfare?
 
If you look at the American reaction to 9/11, which in a sense was one of the very few attacks on the United States from the outside, the response was huge. This could have been influenced by the lack of experience of massive death tolls from outside attack. Back in the early days of nuclear weapons, people in the United States military were seriously suggesting an all-out nuclear attack on Russia. That certainly demonstrates the kind of naiveté you're mentioning. The Cuban missile crisis might have been a coming-of-age for the United States. There was a realization that America is not invulnerable, and this brought the government past their naiveté.

You devote a good deal of the book to global warming. Higher temperatures and rising sea levels cause natural disasters and drought, but why is it so difficult to pinpoint a timeframe for these events?
 
Arguably, these events are happening already. One of the problems with the public's understanding of climate change is that the numbers coming from the scientists represent worldwide averages. In a particular place, you might experience an extreme. Scientists are wary to say, for example, that Hurricane Katrina was caused by climate change, but there is a reasonable feeling that problems during the past 10 years have actually been caused by global warming. Scientific predictions for the near future regarding increases in average temperatures, rising sea levels, the melting of the ice -- so far the results have actually proven to be worse and more extreme than the scientists predicted.

What do we do about it?
 
Large-scale solutions include ideas like seeding the sea with iron -- which encourages algae growth, which then eats up carbon -- or putting up big sunshades in space. There's no doubt that these solutions could have an impact, but introducing such a large change into earth's extremely complicated system has risks. We need to really understand these ideas before we use them. Reducing our carbon emissions doesn't have a risk, so this seems safer to me.

Thirty-five thousand Europeans died in the summer heat wave of 2003, particularly in cities. Why is heat more dangerous in urban areas?
 
The problem is what's called the urban heat island effect. A city stores up heat during the day, and then gives that heat out at night, so individuals in cities are exposed to constant heat. In 1995, hundreds of people died in Chicago. Another problem is that heat rises, and many people live in tall buildings in cities. We have to start learning lessons from countries that experience this kind of heat on a regular basis. In some areas of India, people go up to the hills during the summer. Perhaps we will get to the point where cities are evacuated during the summer.

What are nanobots? How do they relate to your claim that "perhaps the most subtle peril the human race faces is that we could cease to be human beings at all"?
 
A nanobot is an incredibly small robot. On the medical side, you could theoretically use these things to attack viruses and bacteria, to repair problems with the heart, or to replace organs. Some think this is the way humanity will go: Nanobots will be part of our bodies, and they can keep us alive forever. The "Star Trek" idea is that a nanotechnology device will produce whatever food you want immediately. Nanotechnology is built up atom by atom, so we could program nanobots to build things in this way.

The downside is what happens if these things go wrong. There are two scenarios. One is that since nanobots need energy, there's no reason why they wouldn't eat us, especially if we're injecting them into the body. The other possibility is the reverse of the nanobot-as-assembler. Nanobots could take things apart atom by atom. But I think the whole thing is a very long-term concern. Just having a robot that works is difficult enough.

You discuss famed theorist Ray Kurzeil and his idea of the Singularity -- a point at which technology becomes superintelligent, which he believes will occur in 2040. You conclude that "Those who predict the Singularity have a false picture of the nature of humanity." Why do you think the idea of the Singularity is so popular?
 
The Singularity came from the ideas of science-fiction writer Vernor Vinge. It's like the Borg in "Star Trek": something that is a combination of living creature and machine. Followers of the Singularity believe the machine will become more and more intelligent, and that this new creature will be the next step. Homo sapiens will either be subjugated or wiped out.

Frankly, I think the time scales are unrealistic. There is no doubt that technology is going to be used to enhance human beings. We've been doing this for a long time. You could say that the dog enhanced human ability; we created dogs from the wolf and used them for our benefit. In the modern sense, we use technology inside our bodies. But technology always jumps in a different direction than you might expect. The people who talk about the Singularity look at computer technology and medical technology that puts stuff in our bodies and assume the technology will continue to progress in the exact same direction. I think we're much more likely to end up with technology that interacts with us rather than becoming a part of us.
The Singularity is a rather crude idea, and the 2040 prediction is ridiculous, especially if you look at how little cybertechnology has actually developed. Ray Kurzeil has this idea of wanting to live forever, and hoped to keep himself going until the technology developed, so the Singularity is a kind of wish fulfillment. Most of the scientific community, frankly, views him as an eccentric. He gives himself blood transfusions and eats vast numbers of supplements every day, and these are things that actually have very little scientific basis for prolonging life. The Singularity is popular because everyone wants to live forever. It's a very appealing idea.

What should we do about Armageddon scenarios, other than just be freaked out?
 
We should encourage people to get a better education in science. In the end, decisions that relate to scientific discoveries are in the hands of politicians, and a lot of decisions are made with very little scientific knowledge. If everyone had a better understanding of the possible dangers in the application of science, we will realize, "OK, we can influence the politicians, so we ought to understand what's going on here at a more fundamental level."

I try to end on a cautiously optimistic note. We have gained so much from science. Like anything else, it can be misused. And we still face major risks from natural disasters. But we do now have the capacity for mass destruction, and we have to be more careful, more thoughtful and hopefully more knowledgeable about how we deal with science and technology.

Source: http://www.salon.com/books/our_picks/?story=/books/feature/2010/11/08/apocalypse_science_interview

END OF THE WORLD POSTPONED

YUCATAN – Mayan scholars have updated their doomsday prophecy. The world will end in 2015, not 2012.Oops…. They made a mistake.   There’s good news for those that were fearing the 2012 Mayan apocalypse.   They counted wrong.   The world is not going to end in December 2012.  Instead, it’s going to end on September 3, 2015.   Update your daily planners!

A new critique, published as a chapter in the new textbook “Calendars and Years: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World” argues that the accepted conversions of dates from Mayan to the modern calendar are off.  This coupled with a new book, “We Are All Going To Die In 2015″ by Fritz Barnkopf  are rewriting the Mayan doomsday playbook that has been popularized in our culture over the last ten years.

The problem was discovered when researchers realized the Mayan calendar was converted to today’s Gregorian calendar using an erroneous calculation called the GMT constant, named for the last initials of three early Mayanist researchers.

But the GMT constant is completely bogus.  “The Mayan researchers of the past twenty years put too much stock in the GMT,” said Mayan expert Robert Wannamaker.  “They probably were chewing on too many cocoa leaves. The fact is that the GMT constant is 2 years and 271 days off.  We’ve proven that conclusively hear at The Scripps Institute.”

The apocalypse is now delayed.   This is a stunning blow to all the merchandisers that were seeking to capitalize on the “end-of-world” prophecy BEFORE the world ends.  “Man, I was selling all sorts of 2012 doomsday paraphernalia.   Now, I gotta go back and make it all again for 2015.  It’s a real drag,” said 2012 fanatic, Judd Barkley.

Hollywood is jumping right on the 2015 bandwagon.   Producers are lining up to make the 2012 sequel, 2015. “It’s great for us,” said Producer Tracey Barnham.  “I hope that they extended it again in a few years, so we can keep this franchise going.”

Not likely.  Mayan researchers are unanimous on the end-of-world data.  The world will disappear in 2015.  You might want to plan accordingly.

Bad news:  we’re all going to die.  Good news:  We got three more years!  Woo-hoo!!!

Phew! 2012 Doomsday Date May Be Wrong

Doomsday believers, you might be able to breathe a sigh of relief.

Photo: Phew! 2012 Doomsday Date May Be Wrong: Mayan Calendar's Doomsday Date May Be Off by 50 to 100 years, Research Shows

The much-hyped "prediction" that, according to the ancient Mayan calendar, the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012 may be based on a miscalculation.

According to recent research, the mythological date of the "end of days" may be off by 50 to 100 years.


The much-hyped "prediction" that, according to the ancient Mayan calendar, the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012, may be based on a miscalculation.

According to recent research, the mythological date of the "end of days" may be off by 50 to 100 years.

To convert the ancient Mayan calendar to the Gregorian (or modern) calendar, scholars use a numerical value (called the GMT). But Gerardo Aldana, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says the data supporting the widely-adopted conversion factor may be invalid.

In a chapter in the book "Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World," Aldana casts doubt on the accuracy of the Mayan calendar correlation, saying that the 2012 prophecy as well as other historical dates may be off.

Apocalypse 2012

Power Politics: The Aztec calendar forecasts doom in two years. Looming on the election calendar is the possibility of a second wave that will end the Democrats' world as they know it for a long time.

Analysis of last Tuesday's results shows just how big the GOP wave was. Republicans took control of at least 19 legislative bodies, giving them control of both chambers in at least 26 states. After the 2010 census, the party will play a dominant role in redrawing some 314 congressional districts.

Republicans won 16 of 30 races for state attorney general, taking five away from the Democrats. And in a stunning rebuke to George Soros and his Secretary of State Project to control our election machinery, Republicans won 17 of 26 secretary of state races — a gain of six. They hold the majority of governors, including pivotal states such as Florida, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

The GOP may even have the good fortune of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi remaining the poster child for dysfunctional government. ABC News reported Friday Pelosi was calling every Democratic House member who won on Tuesday, as well as many who lost, to gauge her support for remaining minority leader.

While we share the disappointment at the re-election of such legislative Smurfs as Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer and Patty Murray, the GOP's failure to take Senate control is a blessing in disguise.

Full control of Congress would have let Obama run against Republicans and blame them for obstructionism and failure of the economy to recover. As it is, we still have Harry Reid to kick around.

As The Hill reports, in 2012, for the first time in two decades, the Democrats will have more Senate seats to defend, 21 seats vs. only 10 for the GOP. Throw in independents Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Bernie Sanders of Vermont. and they 23 to protect.

Many Democratic seats up next cycle are in purple or red states, including those of Sens. Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Jon Tester (Mont.), Jim Webb (Va.), Kent Conrad (N.D.), Ben Nelson (Neb.) and Bill Nelson (Fla.). Two senators who won special elections Tuesday, Manchin and Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), will face voters again in two years.

The GOP-controlled House can now vote to repeal or defund ObamaCare and permanently extend all the Bush tax cuts, leaving President Obama fighting for re-election on a platform of raising taxes and completing the socialist transformation of health care in an economy likely to have remained stagnant, and putting pressure on the Senate.

They could also move to return unspent stimulus funds to the U.S. Treasury and the American taxpayer.

As happens when Republicans win big, there are calls for compromise at some kind of "Slurpee summit." But making only the cuts for those making $250,000 or less permanent with a two-year extension for job creators would leave them vulnerable in 2012 to the charge of seeking tax cuts for the rich.

Speculation of Obama moving to the center a la President Bill Clinton after 1994 isn't serious. Clinton was a pragmatist consumed with personal ambition who chaired the Democratic Leadership Council. He could work with a Newt Gingrich for his and the country's benefit, co-opting rather than resisting GOP ideas.

President Obama is an ideologue bent on the fundamental transformation of America who would rather adopt a scorched America policy than admit to the resounding rebuke of his policies by the American people.

While the Democrats continue to double-down on failure, the GOP is in position to run the table.

If the Republicans don't fold on a winning hand, we have some good news and bad news for the Democrats. The bad news is that the 2010 election results may have been the good news.

Brooks KY resident convinced that world will change Dec. 21, 2012

John Kehne doesn’t exactly know why or how, but evidence convinces him that the world will change on Dec. 21, 2012.

The Brooks resident has gone as far as creating his own Web site, www.december212012.com, currently the number one Google site devoted to the topic. Kehne boasted over five million hits per month from 63 countries.

Kehne does not claim to predict the future in any fashion. He just feels there is enough evidence to believe that something significant will happen on that day.

With a specific date and time offered for the event (11:11 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time, 6:11 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time), and a new movie (“2012”) being released, Kehne personally focused on the scientific potential.

“Pole shifts, hurricanes, tsunamis... my general thought is we’re in a progression of disasters that are going to continue,” he said.

According to Kehne, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) predicted major solar activity in 2012.

“It could be something that could knock back technology 100 years, and this comes from NASA,” he said.

Other scientific evidence Kehne offered included a specific planetary alignment that takes place once about every 26,000 years, falling on the date of the Winter Solstice.

Kehne’s first interest in the subject sprang from the astronomical interest found in a children’s story, “The Angry Aztecs,” he found at a used bookstore.

“This started as an interest, no rhyme or reason, it began just as a hobby I guess,” he said. “As I researched it, so many things coming together at one time sparked my interest.”

From there Kehne researched the Mayan calendar. A culture dating back about 3,000 years, Mayans are famous for advanced astronomical and mathematical knowledge.

Many 2012 believers point to the calendar, which began in 3,114 BC and stops on Dec. 21, 2012.

“It’s not a religious thing, it’s a cyclical thing,” said Kehne. “It’s the end of a big cycle.”

Kehne also referenced other far-away cultures, such as Egyptians, Chinese and Hopi Indians, all of whom share a cycle end at that time. The Hopi Indians referred to it as a “purification.”

On the astronomical side Kehne noted that the solar system’s placement in the Milky Way would shift from one plane to another. He believed the change could result in cataclysmic disruption and potential change in the planet’s magnetism.

“The equinox wobble occurs every 26,000 years based on the NASA Web site,” Kehne said. “Even a small wobble could mean extreme changes.”

Kehne mentioned both religious and astrological aspects many believed offered hints to a major event in time.

According to Kehne, astrologers felt that astrological ages take place roughly every 2,000 years based on the Zodiac’s astrological symbols.

“Some of it ties to religion,” he said. “The Age of Taurus ended around the time of Moses, leading into the Age of Aries.”

Astrologers believed Aries, the Ram, was a symbol of many gods leading into a god-head. The belief correlates with religions beginning to accept one god rather than many.

Kehne added that astrologers acknowledged the Age of Pisces, the fish, as the time of Jesus. The new age, or Age of Aquarius, is believed to occur beginning Dec. 21, 2012.

A Christian himself, Kehne said he was not belittling religious aspect. Despite a great deal of support for his site and hundreds of daily emails, he receives hate mail, including a few death threats.

“Some religious-minded individuals remind me that no man will know the end of the world,” said Kehne. “To me, this does not represent the end of the world. It’s a new beginning, not an ending.”

As the anticipated date edges closer, Kehne said overall interest increases. He added that, unlike other humanity-driven phenomena such as Y2K or 9/11, the Dec. 21, 2012, scenario is not controlled by technology or governments.

“People are not looking toward a conspiracy theory,” he said. “It’s not a government control issue. It’s just Mother Nature. I think people are taking it more seriously now.”

Kehne’s Web site is not a predictor of things to come; rather, it’s a collection of resources pertaining to the topic. He described it as a one-stop source for researchers.

“I didn’t make it all up,” he said. “I’m just collecting information.”

THE HOW AND WHY OF THE MAYAN END DATE IN 2012 A.D.

Why did the ancient Mayan or pre-Maya choose December 21st, 2012 A.D., as the end of their Long Count calendar? This article will cover some recent research. Scholars have known for decades that the 13-baktun cycle of the Mayan "Long Count" system of timekeeping was set to end precisely on a winter solstice, and that this system was put in place some 2300 years ago. This amazing fact - that ancient Mesoameri- can skywatchers were able to pinpoint a winter solstice far off into the future - has not been dealt with by Mayanists. And why did they choose the year 2012? One immediately gets the impression that there is a very strange mystery to be confronted here. I will be building upon a clue to this mystery reported by epigrapher Linda Schele in Maya Cosmos (1994). This article is the natural culmination of the research relating to the Mayan Long Count and the precession of the equinoxes that I explored in my recent book Tzolkin: Visionary Perspectives and Calendar Studies (Borderlands Science and Research Foundation, 1994).


The Mayan Long Count


Just some basics to get us started. The Maya were adept skywatchers. Their Classic Period is thought to have lasted from 200 A.D. to 900 A.D., but recent archeological findings are pushing back the dawn of Mayan civilization in Mesoamerica. Large ruin sites indicating high culture with distinctly Mayan antecedents are being found in the jungles of Guatemala dating back to before the common era. And even before this, the Olmec civilization flourished and developed the sacred count of 260 days known as the tzolkin. The early Maya adopted two different time keeping systems, the "Short Count" and the Long Count. The Short Count derives from combining the tzolkin cycle with the solar year and the Venus cycle of 584 days. In this way, "short" periods of 13, 52 and 104 years are generated. Unfortunately, we won't have occasion to dwell on the properties of the so-called Short Count system here. The Long Count system is somewhat more abstract, yet is also related to certain astronomical cycles. It is based upon nested cycles of days multiplied at each level by that key Mayan number, twenty:


Number of Days / Term
1 / Kin (day)
20 / Uinal
360 / Tun
7200 / Katun
144000 / Baktun


Notice that the only exception to multiplying by twenty is at the tun level, where the uinal period is instead multiplied by 18 to make the 360-day tun. The Maya employed this counting system to track an unbroken sequence of days from the time it was inaugurated. The Mayan scholar Munro Edmonson believes that the Long Count was put in place around 355 B.C. This may be so, but the oldest Long Count date as yet found corresponds to 32 B.C. We find Long Count dates in the archeological record beginning with the baktun place value and separated by dots. For example: 6.19.19.0.0 equals 6 baktuns, 19 katuns, 19 tuns, 0 uinals and 0 days. Each baktun has 144000 days, each katun has 7200 days, and so on. If we add up all the values we find that 6.19.19.0.0 indicates a total of 1007640 days have elapsed since the Zero Date of 0.0.0.0.0. The much discussed 13-baktun cycle is completed 1872000 days (13 baktuns) after 0.0.0.0.0. This period of time is the so called Mayan "Great Cycle" of the Long Count and equals 5125.36 years.

But how are we to relate this to a time frame we can understand? How does this Long Count relate to our Gregorian calendar? This problem of correlating Mayan time with "western" time has occupied Mayan scholars since the beginning. The standard question to answer became: what does 0.0.0.0.0 (the Long Count "beginning" point) equal in the Gregorian calendar? When this question is answered, archeological inscriptions can be put into their proper historical context and the end date of the 13-baktun cycle can be calculated. After years of considering data from varied fields such as astronomy, ethnography, archeology and iconography, J. Eric S. Thompson determined that 0.0.0.0.0 correponded to the Julian date 584283, which equals August 11th, 3114 B.C. in our Gregorian calendar. This means that the end date of 13.0.0.0.0, some 5125 years later, is December 21st, 2012 A.D.1

The relationship between the Long Count and Short Count has always been internally consistent (both were tracked alongside each other in an unbroken sequence since their conception). Now it is very interesting to note that an aspect of the "Short Count", namely, the sacred tzolkin count of 260 days, is still being followed in the highlands of Guatemala. As the Mayan scholar Munro Edmonson shows in The Book of the Year, this last surviving flicker of a calendar tradition some 3000 years old supports the Thompson correlation of 584283. Edmonson also states that the Long Count was begun by the Maya or pre-Maya around 355 B.C., but there is reason to believe that the Long Count system was being perfected for at least 200 years prior to that date.

The point of interest for these early astronomers seems to have been the projected end date in 2012 A.D., rather than the beginning date in 3114 B.C. Having determined the end date in 2012 (for reasons we will come to shortly), and calling it 13.0.0.0.0, they thus proclaimed themselves to be living in the 6th baktun of the Great Cycle. The later Maya certainly attributed much mythological significance to the beginning date, relating it to the birth of their deities, but it now seems certain that the placement of the Long Count hinges upon its calculated end point. Why did early Mesoamerican skywatchers pick a date some 2300 years into the future and, in fact, how did they pinpoint an accurate winter solstice? With all these considerations one begins to suspect that, for some reason, the ancient New World astronomers were tracking precession.


The Precession


The precession of the equinoxes, also known as the Platonic Year, is caused by the slow wobbling of the earth's polar axis. Right now this axis roughly points to Polaris, the "Pole Star," but this changes slowly over long periods of time. The earth's wobble causes the position of the seasonal quarters to slowly precess against the background of stars. For example, right now, the winter solstice position is in the constellation of Sagittarius. But 2000 years ago it was in Capricorn. Since then, it has precessed backward almost one full sign. It is generally thought that the Greek astronomer Hipparchus was the first to discover precession around 128 B.C. Yet scholarship indicates that more ancient Old World cultures such as the Egyptians (see Schwaller de Lubicz's book Sacred Science) and Babylonians also knew about the precession.

I have concluded that even cultures with simple horizon astronomy and oral records passed down for a hundred years or so, would notice the slow shifting of the heavens. For example, imagine that you lived in an environment suited for accurately demarcated horizon astronomy. Even if this wasn't the case, you might erect monoliths to sight the horizon position of, most likely, the dawning winter solstice sun. This position in relation to background stars could be accurately preserved in oral verse or wisdom teachings, to be passed down for centuries. Since precession will change this position at the rate of 1 degree every 72 years, within the relatively short time of 100 years or so, a noticeable change will have occurred. The point of this is simple. To early cultures attuned to the subtle movements of the sky, precession would not have been hard to notice.2

The Maya are not generally credited with knowing about the precession of the equinoxes. But considering everything else we know about the amazing sophistication of Mesoamerican astronomy, can we realistically continue to deny them this? Many of the as yet undeciphered hieroglyphs may ultimately describe precessional myths. Furthermore, as I show in my book Tzolkin: Visionary Perspectives and Calendar Studies, the Long Count is perfectly suited for predicting future seasonal quarters, indefinitely, and precession is automatically accounted for. Some of the most incredible aspects of Mayan cosmo-conception are just now being discovered. As was the case with the state of Egyptology in the 1870's, we still have a lot to learn. In addition, Mayanists like Gordon Brotherston (The Book of the Fourth World) consider precessional knowledge among Mesoamerican cultures to be more than likely.


The Sacred Tree


We are still trying to answer these questions: What is so important about the winter solstice of 2012 and, exactly how were calculations made so accurately, considering that precession should make them exceedingly difficult?

If we make a standard horoscope chart for December 21st, 2012 A.D., nothing very unusual appears. In this way I was led astray in my search until Linda Schele provided a clue in the recent book Maya Cosmos. Probably the most exciting breakthrough in this book is her identification of the astronomical meaning of the Mayan Sacred Tree. Drawing from an impressive amount of iconographic evidence, and generously sharing the process by which she arrived at her discovery, the Sacred Tree is found to be none other than the crossing point of the ecliptic with the band of the Milky Way. Indeed, the Milky Way seems to have played an important role in Mayan imagery. For example, an incised bone from 8th century Tikal depicts a long sinking canoe containing various deities. This is a picture of the night sky and the canoe is the Milky Way, sinking below the horizon as the night progresses, and carrying with it deities representing the nearby constellations. The incredible Mayan site of Palenque is filled with Sacred Tree motifs and references to astronomical events. In their book Forest of Kings, Schele and Freidel suggested that the Sacred Tree referred to the ecliptic. Apparently that was only part of the picture, for the Sacred Tree that Pacal ascends in death is more than just the ecliptic, it is the sacred doorway to the underworld. The crossing point of Milky Way and ecliptic is this doorway and represents the sacred source and origin. In the following diagram of the well known sarcophagus carving, notice that the Milky Way tree serves as an extension of Pacal's umbilicus. The umbilicus is a human being's entrance into life, and entrance into death as well:



Diagram 1: Pacal and the Sacred Tree.


We may also remember at this point that the tzolkin calendar is said to spring from the Sacred Tree. The Sacred Tree is, in fact, at the center of the entire corpus of Mayan Creation Myths. We should definitely explore the nature of this astronomical feature.

The first question that came up for me was as follows. Since Lord (Ahau) Pacal is, by way of divine kingship, equated with the sun, and he is portrayed "entering" the Sacred Tree on his famous sarcophagus lid, on what day does the sun come around to conjunct the crossing point of ecliptic and Milky Way? This would be an important date. In the pre-dawn skies of this date, the Milky Way would be seen to arch overhead from the region of Polaris (Heart of Sky) and would point right at where the sun rises. This (and the corollary date 6 months later) is the only date when the Sun/Lord could jump from the ecliptic track and travel the Milky Way up and around the vault of heaven to the region of Polaris, there to enter the "Heart of Sky." It should be mentioned that 1300 years ago, during the zenith of Palenque's glory, Polaris was much less an exact "Pole Star" than it is now. Schele demonstrates that it wasn't a Pole Star that the Maya mythologized in this regard, it was the unmarked polar "dark region" symbolizing death and the underworld around which everything was observed to revolve. Life revolves around death - a characteristically Mayan belief. The dates on which the sun conjuncts the "Sacred Tree" are thus very important. These dates will change with precession. Schele doesn't pursue this line of reasoning, however, and doesn't even mention that these dates might be significant. If we go back to 755 A.D., we find that the sun conjuncts the Sacred Tree on December 3rd. I should point out here that the Milky Way is a wide band, and perhaps a 10-day range of dates should be considered.

To start with, however, I use the exact center of the Milky Way band that one finds on star charts, known as the "Galactic Equator" (not to be confused with Galactic Center). Where the Galactic Equator crosses the ecliptic in Sagittarius just happens to be where the dark rift in the Milky Way begins. This is a dark bifurcation in the Milky Way caused by interstellar dust clouds. To observers on earth, it appears as a dark road which begins near the ecliptic and stretches along the Milky Way up towards Polaris. The Maya today are quite aware of this feature; the Quich» Maya call it xibalba be (the "road to Xibalba") and the Chorti Maya call it the "camino de Santiago". In Dennis Tedlock's translation of the Popol Vuh, we find that the ancient Maya called it the "Black Road". The Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque must journey down this road to battle the Lords of Xibalba. (Tedlock 334, 35. Furthermore, what Schele has identified as the Sacred Tree was known to the ancient Quich» simply as "Crossroads."

This celestial feature was not marginal in ancient Mayan thought and is still rec- ognized even today. In terms of how this feature was mythologized, it seems that when a planet, the sun, or the moon entered the dark cleft of the Milky Way in Sagittarius (which happens to be the exact center of the Milky Way, the Galactic Equator), entrance to the underworld road was possible, which could then take the journeyer up to the Heart of Sky. Shamanic vision rites were probably involved in this scenario. In the Yucatan, underground caves were ritual places used by shaman to journey to the underworld. Schele explains that "Mayan mythology identifies the Road to Xibalba as going through a cave" (Forest of Kings, 209). Here we have a metaphorical reference to the "dark rift" in the Milky Way by way of its terrestrial counterpart, a syncretism between earth and sky which is characteristic of Mayan thinking. Above all, what is becoming apparent from the corpus of Mayan Creation Myths is that creation seems to have taken place at a celestial crossroads - the crossing point of ecliptic and Milky Way.

To clarify this ever growing picture, we should stop here and plot out some charts. In addition to the detailed star maps from Norton's 2000.0 Star Atlas which allowed me to pinpoint the crossing point of Galactic Equator and ecliptic, I use EZCosmos to plot these positions3. What I found answers the question of why the Maya chose the winter solstice of 2012, a problem seemingly avoided by astronomers and Mayanists alike. While it is true that the sun conjuncts the Sacred Tree on December 3rd in the year 755 A.D., over the centuries precession has caused the conjunction date to approach the winter solstice. So, how close are we to perfect conjunction today? Exactly when might we expect the winter solstice sun to conjunct the crossing point of Galactic Equator and ecliptic - the Mayan Sacred Tree? Any astronomer will tell you that, presently, the Milky Way crosses the ecliptic through the constellation of Sagittarius and this area is rich in nebulae and high density objects. In fact, where the Milky Way crosses the ecliptic in Sagittarius also happens to be the direction of the Galactic Center.4


The Charts


So the quest returns to identifying why December 21st, 2012 A.D. might represent some kind of astronomical anomoly. I'll get right to the heart of the matter. Let's look at a few charts.



Chart 1.


Here is a full view of the sky at noon on December 21st, 2012 A.D. The band of the Milky Way can be seen stretching from the lower right to the upper left. The more or less vertical dotted line indicates the Galactic Equator. The planets can be seen tracing a roughly horizontal path through the chart, indicating the ecliptic. The sun, quite strikingly, is dead center in the Sacred Tree. Let's look closer.



Chart 2.


The field is now reduced from a horizon-to-horizon view to a field of 30 degrees. Part of the constellation of Sagittarius can be seen in the lower left portion of the chart. The planet in the middle-to-upper left portion of the chart is Pluto, which rarely travels directly along the ecliptic. The center square near the sun is placed on the Trifid Nebula (M20). According to the star chart I used, this nebula is very close to the crossing point of Galactic Equator and ecliptic. However, a small star (4 Sgr) is even closer; it sits right on the Galactic Equator and its declination is only 00 .08' below the ecliptic. Let's look closer at these features.



Chart 3.


The field is now reduced to a 5-degree span, what astrology considers to be within conjunction. The dot to the lower right of the sun is the star 4 Sgr. Amazingly, the Sun is right on target. We couldn't have hoped for a closer conjunction. 1 day before or after will remove the sun a noticeable distance from the crossing point. December 21st, 2012 (13.0.0.0.0 in the Long Count) therefore represents an extremely close conjunction of the winter solstice sun with the crossing point of Galactic Equator and the ecliptic, what the ancient Maya recognized as the Sacred Tree. It is critical to understand that the winter solstice sun rarely conjuncts the Sacred Tree. In fact, this is an event that has been coming to resonance very slowly over thousands and thousands of years. What this might mean astrologically, how this might effect the "energy weather" on earth, must be treated as a separate topic.

But I should at least mention in passing that this celestial convergence appears to parallel the accelerating pace of human civilization. It should be noted that because precession is a very slow process, similar astronomical alignments will be evident on the winter solstice dates within perhaps 5 years on either side of 2012. However, the accuracy of the conjunction of 2012 is quite astounding, beyond anything deemed calculable by the ancient Maya, and serves well to represent the perfect mid-point of the process.

Let's go back to the dawn of the Long Count and try to reconstruct what may have been happening.


Why: Winter Solstice Sun Conjuncts The Sacred Tree in 2012 A.D.


First, the tzolkin count originated among the Olmec at least as early as 679 B.C. (see Edmonson's Book of the Year). We may suspect that astronomical observations were being made from at least that point. The tzolkin count has been followed unbroken since at least that time, up to the present day, demonstrating the high premium placed by the Maya upon continuity of tradition. In this way, star records, horizon positions of the winter solstice sun, and other pertinent observations could also have been accurately preserved. As suggested above, precession can be noticed by way of even simple horizon astronomy in as little time as 100 to 150 years. (Hipparchus, the alleged "discoverer" of precession among the Greeks, compared his own observations with data collected only 170 years before his time.) Following Edmonson, the Long Count system may have appeared as early as 355 B.C. Part of the reason for implementing the Long Count system, as I will show, was probably to calculate future winter solstice dates.

We must assume that even at this early point in Mesoamerican history, the crossing point of ecliptic and Milky Way was understood as the "Sacred Tree". Since the Sacred Tree concept is intrinsically tied into the oldest Mayan Creation Myths, this is not improbable. At the very least, the "dark rift" was already a recognized feature. Early skywatchers of this era (355 B.C.) would then observe the sun to conjunct the dark ridge in the Milky Way on or around November 18th.5 This would be easily observed in the pre-dawn sky as described above: the Milky Way points to the rising sun on this date.

Over a relatively short period of time, as an awareness of precession was emerging, this date was seen to slowly approach winter solstice, a critical date in its own right in early Mayan cosmo-conception. At this point, precession and the rate of precession was calculated, the Long Count was perfected and inaugurated, and the appropriate winter solstice date in 2012 A.D. was found via the Long Count in the following way.


How: Long Count and Seasonal Quarters


Long Count katun beginnings will conjunct sequential seasonal quarters every 1.7.0.0.0 days (194400 days). This is an easily tracked Long Count interval. Starting with the katun beginning of 650 B.C.:


Long Count Which Quarter? Year
6.5.0.0.0 Fall 650 B.C.
7.12.0.0.0 Winter 118 B.C.
8.19.0.0.0 Spring 416 A.D.
10.6.0.0.0 Summer 948 A.D.
11.13.0.0.0 Fall 1480 A.D.
13.0.0.0.0 Winter 2012 A.D.


Note that the last date is not only a katun beginning, but a baktun beginning as well. It is, indeed, the end date of 2012.6

The Long Count may have been officially inaugurated on a specific date in 355 B.C., as Edmonson suggests, but it must have been formulated, tried, tested, and proven before this date. This may well have taken centuries, and the process no doubt paralleled (and was perhaps instigated by) the discovery of precession. The Long Count system automatically accounts for precession in its ability to calculate future seasonal quarters - a property which shouldn't be underestimated.


Summary


This has been my attempt to fill a vacuum in Mayan Studies, an answer to the why and how of the end date of the 13-baktun cycle of the Mayan Long Count. The solution requires a shift in how we think about the astronomy of the Long Count end date. The strange fact that it occurs on a winter solstice immediately points us to possible astronomical reasons, but they are not obvious. We also shouldn't forget the often mentioned fact that the 13-baktun cycle of some 5125 years is roughly 1/5th of a precessional cycle. This in itself should have been suggestive of a deeper mystery very early on. Only with the recent identification of the astronomical nature of the Sacred Tree has the puzzle revealed its fullness. And once again we are amazed at the sophistication and vision of the ancient New World astronomers, the decendants of whom still count the days and watch the skies in the remote outbacks of Guatemala.

This essay is not contrived upon sketchy evidence. It basically rests upon two facts:

1) the well known end date of the 13-baktun cycle of the Mayan Long Count, which is December 21st, 2012 A.D. and

2) the astronomical situation on that day. Based upon these two facts alone, the creators of the Long Count knew about and calculated the rate of precession over 2300 years ago. I can conceive of no other conclusion. To explain this away as "coincidence" would only obscure the issue.

For early Mesoamerican skywatchers, the slow approach of the winter solstice sun to the Sacred Tree was seen as a critical process, the culmination of which was surely worthy of being called 13.0.0.0.0, the end of a World Age. The channel would then be open through the winter solstice doorway, up the Sacred Tree, the Xibalba be , to the center of the churning heavens, the Heart of Sky.

Notes:

1Linda Schele and David Freidel, unlike most Mayanists, continue to support the work of Floyd Lounsbury in promoting the 584285 correlation. This is 2 days off from the Thompson correlation that I use. The decisive factor in supporting the Thompson correlation of 584283 is the fact that it corresponds with the tzolkin count still followed in the highlands of Guatemala. To account for this discrepency in his correlation, Lounsbury claims that the count was shifted back two days sometime before the conquest (not likely), thus explaining its present placement. This means that either correlation will give the December 21st end date. Nevertheless, Schele and Freidel still report that the end date is December 23rd, 2012 rather than Dec. 21st, an unfortunate faux pas understandable only because they aren't particularly interested in the specifics of the correlation debate. For a detailed discussion of this topic, refer to my book Tzolkin: Visionary Perspectives and Calendar Studies.

2Case in point is the mysterious existence of myths obviously describing precession in the ancient verses of the Kalevala, the Finnish National Epic. These myths were relayed from the earliest times by way of singers. Many of these stories are thoroughly magical and are filled with sky lore. The Finnish language is not of Indo- European origin and up until the late 19th century peasants in Finland and northwestern Russia had little contact with Europe. Indeed, their heritage suggests more contact with Central Asia than Europe. Some of the Kalevala stories describe a sacred Mill called the Sampo (derived from sanskrit Skambha = pillar or pole) with a "many ciphered cover". This spinning Mill is a metaphor for a Golden Age of plenty and the starry sky spinning around the Pole Star (known as the Nail of the North), which in the Far North is almost straight over head. The Mill at some point is disturbed, its pillar being pulled out of its peg, and a new one - a new "age" - must be constructed. This becomes the chore of Ilmarinen, the primeval smith. In this legend, ancient knowledge of precession among unsophisticated "peasants" who were nonetheless astute skywatchers, was preserved via oral tradition almost down to modern times.

3EZCosmos is a graphic software package that can accurately plot and animate the positions of planets, stars, nebula and so on, for 14,000 years. It is well suited to this research because it accounts for precession in its positional calculations. It also happens to be the software that Linda Schele used to discover the astronomical meaning of the Mayan Sacred Tree.

4 Here we briefly converge with the ideas of Terence McKenna. In the book he co- authored with his brother Dennis (Invisible Landscape, Seabury Press 1975 and Harper San Francisco, 1993), Terence suggests that the position of winter solstice sun within 3 degrees of the Galactic Center in the year 2012 A.D. (a "once-in-a-precessional- cycle" event) may provide the eschatological end point for his theory of time known as Timewave Zero. His end date was chosen for historical reasons and was, apparently, only later discovered to correspond with the Mayan end date. The McKennas point out that this unusual astronomical situation has been noted by other writers, namely, Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend in Hamlet's Mill (1969). As ACS Publication's The American Ephemeris for the 21st Century shows, in the year 2012 the Galactic Center is at 27 Sagittarius (within 3 of winter solstice). Thus McKenna demonstrates that on winter solstice of 2012, Galactic Center will be rising heliacally just before dawn, in a way reminiscent of how the Maya observed Venus's last morningstar appearance.

5This basically follows the "1 degree every 72 years" rule of precession. In this way, back in 3114 B.C. the sun conjuncted the Sacred Tree on Oct 10th, which is 72 degrees, or 1/5th of the ecliptic from the winter solstice. The Fall Equinox sun conjuncted the Sacred Tree about 6400 years ago (1/4th of a precessional cycle). Ancient cultures in Mesopotamia may have recognized this alignment, and called it a Golden Age. The fall from this state of alignment may be responsible for the original Fall from Paradise myth, which filtered out to the Judaic tradition.

6The Long Count has other strange astronomical properties. For instance, the 13- katun cycle of 256 years was known to the Yucatec Maya as a prophecy cycle. We see it used in the Books of Chilam Balam. The astronomical reference here is to conjunction cycles of Uranus and Pluto, two of which equal 256 years. From another angle, 3 katuns equal exactly 37 synodical cycles of Venus.

Prognosis 2012: Towards a New World Social Order

Historical background – the establishment of capitalist supremacy

When the Industrial Revolution began in Britain, in the late 1700s, there was lots of money to be made by investing in factories and mills, by opening up new markets, and by gaining control of sources of raw materials. The folks who had the most money to invest, however, were not so much in Britain but more in Holland. Holland was the leading Western power in the 1600s, and its bankers were the leading capitalists. In pursuit of profit, Dutch capital flowed to the British stock market, and thus the Dutch funded the rise of Britain, who subsequently eclipsed Holland both economically and geopolitically.

In this way British industrialism came to be dominated by wealthy investors, and capitalism became the dominant economic system. This led to a major social transformation. Britain had been essentially an aristocratic society, dominated by landholding families. As capitalism became dominant economically, capitalists became dominant politically. Tax structures and import-export policies were gradually changed to favor investors over landowners.

It was no longer economically viable to simply maintain an estate in the countryside: one needed to develop it, turn it to more productive use. Victorian dramas are filled with stories of aristocratic families who fall on hard times, and are forced to sell off their properties. For dramatic purposes, this decline is typically attributed to a failure in some character, a weak eldest son perhaps. But in fact the decline of aristocracy was part of a larger social transformation brought on by the rise of capitalism.

The business of the capitalist is the management of capital, and this management is generally handled through the mediation of banks and brokerage houses. It should not be surprising that investment bankers came to occupy the top of the hierarchy of capitalist wealth and power. And in fact, there are a handful of banking families, including the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers, who have come to dominate economic and political affairs in the Western world.

Unlike aristocrats, capitalists are not tied to a place, or to the maintenance of a place. Capital is disloyal and mobile – it flows to where the most growth can be found, as it flowed from Holland to Britain, then from Britain to the USA, and most recently from everywhere to China. Just as a copper mine might be exploited and then abandoned, so under capitalism a whole nation can be exploited and then abandoned, as we see in the rusting industrial areas of America and Britain.

This detachment from place leads to a different kind of geopolitics under capitalism, as compared to aristocracy. A king goes to war when he sees an advantage to his nation in doing so. Historians can 'explain' the wars of pre-capitalist days, in terms of the aggrandizement of monarchs and nations.

A capitalist stirs up a war in order to make profits, and in fact our elite banking families have financed both sides of most military conflicts since at least World War 1. Hence historians have a hard time 'explaining' World War 1 in terms of national motivations and objectives.

In pre-capitalist days warfare was like chess, each side trying to win. Under capitalism warfare is more like a casino, where the players battle it out as long as they can get credit for more chips, and the real winner always turns out to be the house – the bankers who finance the war and decide who will be the last man standing. Not only are wars the most profitable of all capitalist ventures, but by choosing the winners, and managing the reconstruction, the elite banking families are able, over time, to tune the geopolitical configuration to suit their own interests.

Nations and populations are but pawns in their games. Millions die in wars, infrastructures are destroyed, and while the world mourns, the bankers are counting their winnings and making plans for their postwar reconstruction investments.

From their position of power, as the financiers of governments, the banking elite have over time perfected their methods of control. Staying always behind the scenes, they pull the strings controlling the media, the political parties, the intelligence agencies, the stock markets, and the offices of government. And perhaps their greatest lever of power is their control over currencies. By means of their central-bank scam, they engineer boom and bust cycles, and they print money from nothing and then loan it at interest to governments. The power of the banking elites is both absolute and subtle...

"Some of the biggest men in the United States are afraid of something. They know there is a power somewhere, so organised, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."

-- President Woodrow Wilson

The end of growth – capitalists vs. capitalism

It was always inevitable, on a finite planet, that there would be a limit to economic growth. Industrialization has enabled us to rush headlong toward that limit over the past two centuries. Production has become ever more efficient, markets have become ever more global, and finally we have reached the point where the paradigm of perpetual growth can no longer be maintained.

Indeed, that point was actually reached by about 1970. Since then capital has not so much sought growth through increased production, but rather by extracting greater returns from relatively flat production levels. Hence globalization, which moved production to low-waged areas, providing greater profit margins. Hence privatization, which transfers revenue streams to investors that formerly went to national treasuries. Hence derivative and currency markets, which create the electronic illusion of economic growth, without actually producing anything in the real world.

If one studies the collapse of civilizations, one learns that failure-to-adapt is fatal. Continuing on the path of pursuing growth would be such a failure to adapt. And if one reads the financial pages these days, one finds that it is full of doomsayers. We read that the Eurozone is doomed, and Greece is just the first casualty. We read that stimulus packages are not working, unemployment is increasing, the dollar is in deep trouble, growth continues to stagnate, business real estate will be the next bubble to burst, etc. It is easy to get the impression that capitalism is failing to adapt, and that our societies are in danger of collapsing into chaos.

Such an impression would be partly right and partly wrong. In order to understand the real situation we need to make a clear distinction between the capitalist elite and capitalism itself. Capitalism is an economic system driven by growth; the capitalist elite are the folks who have managed to gain control of the Western world while capitalism has operated over the past two centuries. The capitalist system is past its sell-by date, the banking elite are well aware of that fact – and they are adapting.

Capitalism is a vehicle that helped bring the bankers to absolute power, but they have no more loyalty to that system than they have to place, or to anything or anyone else. As mentioned earlier, they think on a global scale, with nations and populations as pawns. They define what money is and they issue it, just like the banker in a game of Monopoly. They can also make up a new game with a new kind of money. They have long outgrown any need to rely on any particular economic system in order to maintain their power. Capitalism was handy in an era of rapid growth. For an era of non-growth, a different game is being prepared.

Thus, capitalism has not been allowed to die a natural death. First it was put on a life-support system, as mentioned above, with globalization, privatization, derivative markets, etc. Then it was injected with a euthanasia death-drug, in the form of toxic derivatives. And when the planned collapse occurred, rather than industrial capitalism being bailed out, the elite bankers were bailed out. It's not that the banks were too big to fail, rather the bankers were too politically powerful to fail. They made governments an offer they couldn't refuse.

The outcome of the trillion-dollar bailouts was easily predictable, although you wouldn't know that from reading the financial pages. National budgets were already stretched, and they certainly did not have reserves available to service the bailouts. Thus the bailouts amounted to nothing more than the taking on of immense new debts by governments. In order to fulfill the bailout commitments, the money would need to be borrowed from the same financial institutions that were being bailed out.

With the bailouts, Western governments delivered their nations in hock to the bankers. The governments are now in perpetual debt bondage to the bankers. Rather than the banks going into receivership, governments are now in receivership. Obama's cabinet and advisors are nearly all from Wall Street; they are in the White House so they can keep close watch over their new acquisition, the once sovereign USA. Perhaps they will soon be presiding over its liquidation.

The bankers are now in control of national budgets. They say what can be funded and what can't. When it comes to financing their wars and weapons production, no limits are set. When it comes to public services, then we are told deficits must be held in check. The situation was expressed very well by Brian Cowan, Ireland's government chief. In the very same week that Ireland pledged 200 billion Euro to bailout the banks, he was being asked why he was cutting a few million Euro off of critical service budgets. He replied, "I'm sorry, but the funds just aren't there". Of course they're not there! The treasury was given away. The cupboard is bare.

As we might expect, the highest priority for budgets is servicing the debt to the banks. Just as most of the third world is in debt slavery to the IMF, so the whole West is now in debt slavery to its own central banks. Greece is the harbinger of what is to happen everywhere.

The carbon economy – controlling consumption

In a non-growth economy, the mechanisms of production will become relatively static. Instead of corporations competing to innovate, we'll have production bureaucracies. They'll be semi-state, semi-private bureaucracies, concerned about budgets and quotas rather than growth, somewhat along the lines of the Soviet model. Such an environment is not driven by a need for growth capital, and it does not enable a profitable game of Monopoly.

We can already see steps being taken to shift the corporate model towards the bureaucratic model, through increased government intervention in economic affairs. With the Wall Street bailouts, the forced restructuring of General Motors, the call for centralized micromanagement of banking and industry, and the mandating of health insurance coverage, the government is saying that the market is to superseded by government directives. Not that we should bemoan the demise of exploitive capitalism, but before celebrating we need to understand what it is being replaced with.

In an era of capitalism and growth, the focus of the game has been on the production side of the economy. The game was aimed at controlling the means of growth: access to capital. The growth-engine of capitalism created the demand for capital; the bankers controlled the supply. Taxes were mostly based on income, again related to the production side of the economy.

In an era of non-growth, the focus of the game will be on the consumption side of the economy. The game will be aimed at controlling the necessities of life: access to food and energy. Population creates the demand for the necessities of life; the bankers intend to control the supply. Taxes will be mostly based on consumption, particularly of energy. That's what the global warming scare is all about, with its carbon taxes and carbon credits.

Already in Britain there is talk of carbon quotas, like gasoline rationing in wartime. It's not just that you'll pay taxes on energy, but the amount of energy you can consume will be determined by government directive. Carbon credits will be issued to you, which you can use for driving, for heating, or on rare occasions for air travel. Also in Britain, the highways are being wired so that they can track how many miles you drive, tax you accordingly, and penalize you if you travel over your limit. We can expect these kinds of things to spread throughout the West, as it's the same international bankers who are in charge everywhere.

In terms of propaganda, this control over consumption is being sold as a solution to global warming and peak oil. The propaganda campaign has been very successful, and the whole environmental movement has been captured by it. In Copenhagen, demonstrators confronted the police, carrying signs in support of carbon taxes and carbon credits. But in fact the carbon regime has nothing to do with climate or with sustainability. It is all about micromanaging every aspect of our lives, as well as every aspect of the economy.

If the folks who are running things actually cared about sustainability, they'd be investing in efficient mass transit, and they'd be shifting agriculture from petroleum-intensive, water-intensive methods to sustainable methods. Instead they are mandating biofuels and selling us electric cars, which are no more sustainable or carbon-efficient than standard cars. Indeed, the real purpose behind biofuels is genocide. With food prices linked to energy prices, and agriculture land being converted from food production to fuel production, the result can only be a massive increase in third-world starvation. Depopulation has long been a stated goal in elite circles, and the Rockefeller dynasty has frequently been involved in eugenics projects of various kinds.

'The War on Terrorism' – preparing the way for the transition

The so-called War on Terrorism has two parts. The first part is a pretext for arbitrary abuse of citizen's rights, whenever Homeland Security claims the action is necessary for security reasons. The second part is a pretext for US military aggression anywhere in the world, whenever the White House claims that Al Qaeda is active there.

I emphasized the word 'claims' above, because the terrorism pretext is being used to justify arbitrary powers, both domestically and globally. No hard evidence need be presented to Congress, the UN, or anyone else, before some nation is invaded, someone is kidnapped and tortured as a 'terrorist suspect', or some new invasive security measure is implemented. When powers are arbitrary, then we are no longer living under the rule of law, neither domestically nor internationally. We are living under the rule of men, as you would expect in a dictatorship, or in an old-fashioned kingdom or empire.

Part 1: Preparing the way for a new social order

In a very real sense, the terrorism pretext is being used to undo everything that The Enlightenment and the republication revolutions achieved two centuries ago. The very heart of the Bill of Rights – due process – has been abandoned. The gulag, the concentration camp, and the secret arrest in the night – these we have always associated with fascist and communist dictatorships – and now they are not only functioning under US jurisdiction, but being justified publicly by the President himself.

Is there really a terrorist threat to the homeland, and would these measures be a sensible response to such a threat? People sre strongly divided in their answers to these questions. Quite a bit of hard forensic evidence has come to light, including links to intelligence agencies, and my own view is that most of the dramatic 'terrorist' events in the US, UK, and Europe have been covert false-flag operations.

From an historical perspective this would not be at all surprising. Such operations have been standard practice – modus operandi – in many nations, though we usually don't get proof until years later. For example, every war the US has been involved in has had its own phony Gulf of Tonkin Incident, or its Weapons of Mass Destruction scam, in one form or another. It's a formula that works. Instant mobilization of public opinion, prompt passage without debate of enabling resolutions and legislation. Why would the War on Terrorism be any different?

As regards motive: while Muslims have only suffered as a result of these dramatic events, our elite bankers have been able to create a police-state infrastructure that can be used to deal with any foreseeable popular resistance or civic chaos that might emerge as they prepare the way for their post-capitalist future.

With the collapse, the bailouts, and the total failure to pursue any kind of effective recovery strategy, the signals are very clear: the system will be allowed to collapse totally, thus clearing the ground for a pre-architected 'solution'. Ground Zero can be seen as a metaphor, with the capitalist economy as the Twin Towers. And the toxic derivatives illustrate the fact that the collapse is actually a controlled demolition.

It seems to me inevitable, given the many signals, that martial law will be part of the transition process, allegedly to deal with the problems of economic collapse. Perhaps a collapse in the food-supply chain, due to a collapse in the energy-supply chain. The US emergency responses in New Orleans and again in Haiti give us more signals, actual test trials, of what kind of 'emergency response' we can expect.

First and foremost comes the security of the occupation forces. Those suffering in the emergency are treated more like insurgents than victims in need of help. In the case of Haiti, the US response can only be described as an intentional genocide project. When people are pinned under rubble in an earthquake, the first 48 hours, and 72 hours, are absolutely critical points, as regards survival rates. When the US military systematically blocked incoming aid for those critical hours, turning back doctors and emergency teams, they sealed the fate of many thousands who could have been saved.

One can imagine many nightmare scenarios, given these various signals, these ominous signs. World Wars 1 and 2 were nightmares that really happened, with millions dying, and these same banking dynasties orchestrated those scenarios and then covered their tracks. We must also keep in mind the Shock Doctrine, where catastrophe is seen as opportunity – when 'things can be done that otherwise could not be accomplished'. We are still being impacted by the shock waves that were sent out on 9/11, and again when the financial system collapsed. And the the really big shock, the general collapse of society, is yet to come. The ultimate version of the Shock Doctrine: 'If the collapse is total, we can accomplish any damned thing we want to accomplish'.

I won't venture a guess about how this transition process will play out, but I do expect that it will be a nightmare of one description or another. Already the growing homeless population is suffering a nightmare, by any civilized standards. One day you're living in a home whose value is going up, commuting to a good job, and the next thing you know your family is out on the streets. That's a nightmare. The transition time will be a difficult time, but it will be a transition, it will be temporary, like a war. And like a war, it will enable social and economic reconstruction in the aftermath.

Consider how Japan and Germany were socially and politically transformed by the postwar reconstruction process. Those were exercises in social engineering, as were the preceding transformations under Mussolini and Hitler. Although the outcomes were quite different, in each case a total collapse / defeat was the preamble to reconstruction. A total collapse of the capitalist economy is simply the application of a proven formula. The second part of the formula will be some new social order, or perhaps some old social order, or some mixture. Something appropriate to a non-growth, command economy.

That's part 1 of the War on Terrorism: it has enabled the creation of the police-state infrastructures required to to deal with the collapse of society, and to provide security for the reconstruction process.

Part 2: Preparing the way for global domination

Part 2 of the War on Terrorism is about the geopolitical dimensions of a non-growth-based global economy. Earlier I suggested that geopolitics was different under capitalism, than it was under sovereign monarchs. The whole dynamic was different, and outcomes were weighed on a different scale. Similarly, many things will change in a shift from chaotic, growth-oriented capitalism, to a centralized, micromanaged, economic regime.

Consider, for example, the significance of control over oil reserves. In a growth economy, profits were the prize, and controlling the markets and the distribution channels amounted to holding a winning hand in the game. The local dictators could manage things as they pleased, and take their cut of oil revenues, as long as they honored their contracts with the oil majors, who were happy to sell to the highest bidders.

In a non-growth economy, where the focus is on direct control over the supply and distributions of resources, it becomes necessary to secure, in the military sense, the sources of petroleum, and the routes for its distribution. It is no longer sufficient to merely profit from unbridled operations. Securing of the sources, and directly allocating the distribution, is the foundation for micromanaging the non-growth economy. This applies to other critical resources as well, such as uranium, and the rare minerals needed by the 'defense' and electronics industries.

In fact we are in the midst of a resource-grab war, with China and Russia making long-term energy deals with Iran and Venezuela, China buying up agricultural land in Africa, Washington making long-term deals for Brazilian biofuels, and there are many other examples. In many ways imperialism is reverting to colonial days, when direct administration was the model, rather than the capitalist model: profiting from corporate investments under dictators who suppress their populations.

There is a natural reversion to the dynamics of the 'good old days of empire' when the Great Powers of Europe focused their economic activity within their individual spheres of influence. Everyone knows that global resource limits are being reached, partly from population pressures, and partly from resource-exploitation practices. For this reason alone, we have the peaceful part of the resource-grab war.

In Iraq, Afghanistan, and now in Pakistan and Yemen, the US, with NATO support, is playing a very non-peaceful hand in the resource-grab game. It's the hand of a bully, 'I have the biggest gun, so I'll take what I want'. These aggressive actions are very provocative to Russia and China, and threatening to their vital economic interests. An attack on Iran would be more than a provocation, it would be a direct slap in the face, a challenge: 'Fight now or resign yourself to being subdued piecemeal'.

In addition to all this petroleum grabbing, the US has been surrounding Russia and China with military bases, and has recently accelerated the installations of anti-missile systems on their borders, over the strong objections of Russia and China. The US is being intentionally provocative, and it is threatening vital interests of these potential adversaries.

Alliances are being formed in response, on a bilateral basis, and in the form of the SCO. China and Russia are very close in their military cooperation, and technology sharing. Their strategic planning is based on the expectation of a US attack, and their strategic response is based on the principle of asymmetric warfare. For example, a million dollar missile capable of taking out a multi-billion dollar aircraft carrier. Or perhaps a handful of missiles capable of disabling the Pentagon's command-and-control satellite systems.

Meanwhile the US is spending astronomical sums developing a first-strike capability, with space-based weapons systems, control-of-theater capability, forward-based 'tactical' nukes, etc. The new anti-missile systems are an important part of a first-strike strategy, reducing the ability of Russia or China to retaliate. These systems are more than just provocative. They are the modern equivalent of marching your armies up to your adversary's border.

If there is a nuclear exchange between the major powers, historians will cite all of these things I've mentioned as 'obvious signs' that war was coming. Parallels would be drawn to the pre-World War 1 scenario, when Germany was eclipsing Britain economically, as China is eclipsing the US now. In both cases a 'desperate attempt to maintain hegemony' would be seen as the cause of the war.

There may or may not be a World War 3, but all of these preparations make it clear that our banking elite intend to preside over a global system, by hook or by crook. If they wanted a peaceful arrangement, a splitting of the third-world pie, so to speak, it could be easily arranged at any time, along with substantial nuclear disarmament. China and Russia would like to see a stable, multi-polar world; it is only our elite bankers who are obsessed with world domination.

It is possible that nuclear war is a 'desired outcome', accomplishing depopulation, and making the collapse even more total. Or perhaps China and Russia will be given an offer they can't refuse: 'Surrender your economic sovereignty to our global system, or face the consequences'.

One way or another, the elite bankers, the masters of the universe, intend to preside over a micromanaged global system. The collapse project is now well underway, and the 'surround your enemy' project seems to be more or less completed. From a strategic perspective, there will be some trigger point, some stage in the economic collapse scenario, when geopolitical confrontation is judged to be most advantageous. It's a multi-dimensional chess board, and with the stakes so high, you can rest assured that the timing of the various moves will be carefully coordinated. And from the overall shape of the board, we seem to be nearing the endgame.

Prognosis 2012 – a Neo Dark Age

2012 might not be the exact year, but it's difficult to see the endgame lasting much beyond that, and the masters of the universe love symbolism, as with 911 (both in Chile and in Manhattan), KLA 007, and others. 2012 is loaded with symbolism, eg. the Mayan Calendar, and the Internet is buzzing with various 2012-related prophecies, survival strategies, anticipated alien interventions, alignments with galactic radiation fields, etc. And then there is the Hollywood film, 2012, which explicitly portrays the demise of most of humanity, and the pre-planned salvation of a select few. One never knows with Hollywood productions, what is escapist fantasy, and what is aimed at preparing the public mind symbolically for what is to come.

Whatever the exact date, all the threads will come together, geopolitically and domestically, and the world will change. It will be a new era, just as capitalism was a new era after aristocracy, and the Dark Ages followed the era of the Roman Empire. Each era has its own structure, its own economics, its own social forms, and its own mythology. These things must relate to one another coherently, and their nature follows from the fundamental power relationships and economic circumstances of the system.

In our post-2012 world, we have for the first time one centralized global government, and one ruling elite clique, a kind of extended royal family, the lords of finance. As we can see with the IMF, WHO, and the WTO, and the other pieces of the embryonic world government, the institutions of governance will make no pretensions about popular representation or democratic responsiveness. Rule will be by means of autocratic global bureaucracies, who take their marching orders from the royal family. This model has already been operating for some time, within its various spheres of influence, as with the restructuring programs forced on the third world, as a condition for getting financing.

Whenever there is a change of era, the previous era is always demonized in mythology. In the Garden of Eden story the serpent is demonized – a revered symbol in paganism, the predecessor to Christianity. When republics came along, the demonization of monarchs was an important part of the process. In the post-2012 world, democracy and national sovereignty will be demonized. This will be very important, in getting people to accept totalitarian rule, and the mythology will contain much that is true...

In those terrible dark days, before the blessed unification of humanity, anarchy reigned in the world. One nation would attack another, no better than predators in the wild. Nations had no coherent policies; voters would swing from one party to another, keeping governments always in transition and confusion. How did they ever think that masses of semi-educated people could govern themselves, and run a complex society? Democracy was an ill-conceived experiment that led only to corruption and chaotic governance. How lucky we are to be in this well-ordered world, where humanity has finally grown up, and those with the best expertise make the decisions.

The economics of non-growth are radically different than capitalist economics. The unit of exchange is likely to be a carbon credit, entitling you to consume the equivalent of one kilogram of fuel. Everything will have a carbon value, allegedly based on how much energy it took to produce it and transport it to market. 'Green consciousness' will be a primary ethic, conditioned early into children. Getting by with less is a virtue; using energy is anti-social; austerity is a responsible and necessary condition.

As with every currency, the bankers will want to manage the scarcity of carbon credits, and that's where global warming alarmism becomes important. Regardless of the availability of resources, carbon credits can be kept arbitrarily scarce simply by setting carbon budgets, based on directives from the IPCC, another of our emerging units of global bureaucratic governance. Such IPCC directives will be the equivalent of the Federal Reserve announcing a change in interest rates. Those budgets set the scale of economic activity.

Presumably nations will continue to exist, as official units of governance. However security and policing will be largely centralized and privatized. Like the Roman Legions, the security apparatus will be loyal to the center of empire, not to the place where someone happens to be stationed. We have seen this trend already in the US, as mercenaries have become big business, and police forces are increasingly federalized, militarized, and alienated from the general public.

Just as airports have now been federalized, all transport systems will be under the jurisdiction of the security apparatus. Terrorism will continue as an ongoing bogey-man, justifying whatever security procedures are deemed desirable for social-control purposes. The whole security apparatus will have a monolithic quality to it, a similarity of character regardless of the specific security tasks or location. Everyone dressed in the same Evil Empire black outfits, with big florescent letters on the back of their flack jackets. In essence, the security apparatus will be an occupying army, the emperor's garrison in the provinces.

On a daily basis, you will need to go through checkpoints of various kinds, with varying levels of security requirements. This is where biometrics becomes important. If people can be implanted with chips, then much of the security can be automated, and everyone can be tracked at at all times, and their past activity retrieved. The chip links into your credit balance, so you've got all your currency always with you, along with your medical records and lots else that you don't know about.

There is very little left as regards national sovereignty. Nothing much in the way of foreign policy will have any meaning. With security marching to its own law and its distant drummer, the main role of so-called 'government' will be to allocate and administer the carbon-credit budget that it receives from the IPCC. The IPCC decides how much wealth a nation will receive in a given year, and the government then decides how to distribute that wealth in the form of public services and entitlements. Wealth being measured by the entitlement to expend energy.

In a fundamental sense, this is how things already are, following the collapse and the bailouts. Because governments are so deeply in debt, the bankers are able to dictate the terms of national budgets, as a condition of keeping credit lines open. The carbon economy, with its centrally determined budgets, provides a much simpler and more direct way of micromanaging economic activity and resource distribution throughout the globe.

In order to clear the way for the carbon-credit economy, it will be necessary for Western currencies to collapse, to become worthless, as nations become increasingly insolvent, and the global financial system continues to be systematically dismantled. The carbon currency will be introduced as an enlightened, progressive 'solution' to the crisis, a currency linked to something real, and to sustainability. The old monetary system will be demonized, and again the mythology will contain much that is true...

The pursuit of money is the root of all evil, and the capitalist system was inherently evil. It encouraged greed, and consumption, and it cared nothing about wasting resources. People thought the more money they had, the better off they were. How much wiser we are now, to live within our means, and to understand that a credit is a token of stewardship.

Culturally, the post-capitalist era will be a bit like the medieval era, with aristocrats and lords on top, and the rest peasants and serfs. A definite upper class and lower class. Just as only the old upper class had horses and carriages, only the new upper class will be entitled to access substantial carbon credits. Wealth will be measured by entitlements, more than by acquisitions or earnings. Those outside the bureaucratic hierarchies are the serfs, with subsistence entitlements. Within the bureaucracies, entitlements are related to rank in the hierarchy. Those who operate in the central global institutions are lords of empire, with unlimited access to credits.

But there is no sequestering of wealth, or building of economic empires, outside the structures of the designated bureaucracies. Entitlements are about access to resources and facilities, to be used or not used, but not to be saved and used as capital. The flow of entitlements comes downward, micromanaged from the top. It's a dole economy, at all levels, for people and governments alike – the global regimentation of consumption. As regards regimentation, the post-capitalist culture will also be a bit like the Soviet system. Here's your entitlement card, here's your job assignment, and here's where you'll be living.

With the pervasive security apparatus, and the micromanagement of economic activity, the scenario is clearly about fine-grained social control, according to centralized guidelines and directives. Presumably media will be carefully programmed, with escapist trivia, and a sophisticated version of 1984-style groupthink propaganda pseudo-news, which is pretty much what we already have today. The non-commercial Internet, if there is one, will be limited to monitored, officially-designated chat sites, and other kinds of sanitized forums.

With such a focus on social micromanagement, I do not expect the family unit to survive in the new era, and I expect child-abuse alarmism will be the lever used to destabilize the family. The stage has been set with all the revelations about church and institutional child sexual abuse. Such revelations could have been uncovered any time in the past century, but they came out at a certain time, just as all these other transitional things have been happening. People are now aware that widespread child abuse happens, and they have been conditioned to support strong measures to prevent it.

Whenever I turn on the TV, I see at least one public-service ad, with shocking images, about children who are physically or sexually abused, or criminally neglected, in their homes, and there's a hotline phone number that children can call. It is easy to see how the category of abuse can be expanded, to include parents who don't follow vaccination schedules, whose purchase records don't indicate healthy diets, who have dubious psychological profiles, etc. The state of poverty could be deemed abusive neglect.

With the right media presentation, abuse alarmism would be easy to stir up. Ultimately, a 'child rights' movement becomes an anti-family movement. The state must directly protect the child from birth. The family is demonized...

How scary were the old days, when unlicensed, untrained couples had total control over vulnerable children, behind closed doors, with whatever neuroses, addictions, or perversions the parents happened to possess. How did this vestige of patriarchal slavery, this safe-house den of abuse, continue so long to exist, and not be recognized for what it was? How much better off we are now, with children being raised scientifically, by trained staff, where they are taught healthy values.

Ever since public education was introduced, the state and the family have competed to control childhood conditioning. In religious families, the church has made its own contribution to conditioning. In the micromanaged post-capitalist future, with its Shock Doctrine birth scenario, it would make good sense to take that opportunity to implement the 'final solution' of social control, which is for the state to monopolize child raising. This would eliminate from society the parent-child bond, and hence family-related bonds in general. No longer is there a concept of relatives. There's just worker bees, security bees, and queen bees, who dole out the honey.

Postscript

This has been an extensive and somewhat detailed prognosis, regarding the architecture of the post-capitalist regime, and the transition process required to bring it about. The term 'new world order' is too weak a term to characterize the radical nature of the social transformation anticipated in the prognosis. A more apt characterization would be a 'quantum leap in the domestication of the human species'. Micromanaged lives and microprogrammed beliefs and thoughts. A once wild primate species transformed into something resembling more a bee or ant culture. Needless to say, regular use of psychotropic drugs would be mandated, so that people could cope emotionally with such a sterile, inhuman environment.

For such a profound transformation to be possible, it is easy to see that a very great shock is required, on the scale of collapse and social chaos, and possibly on the scale of a nuclear exchange. There needs to be an implicit mandate to 'do whatever is necessary to get society running again'. The shock needs to leave people in a condition of total helplessness comparable to the survivors in the bombed-out rubble of Germany and Japan after World War 2. Nothing less will do.

The accuracy of the prognosis, as prediction, is of course impossible to know in advance. However each part of the prognosis has been based on precedents that have been set, modus operandi that has been observed, trends that have been initiated, sentiments that have been expressed, signals that have been given, and actions that have been taken whose consequences can be confidently predicted.

In addition, in looking at all of these indicators together, one sees a certain mindset, an absolutist determination to implement the 'ideal solution', without compromise, using extreme means, and with unbridled audacity. World wars have been rehearsals for this historic moment. The police state infrastructure is in place and has been tested. The economy is in the process of collapse. The enemy is surrounded with missiles. Arbitrary powers have been assumed. If not now, the ultimate prize, then when will there be a better opportunity?

Our elite planners are backed up by competent think tanks, and they know that the new society must have coherence of various kinds. They've had quite a bit of experience with social engineering, nurturing the rise of fascism, and then engineering the postwar regimes. They understand the importance of mythology.

For example there is the mythology of the holocaust, where the story is all about extermination per se, and the story is not told of the primary mission of the concentration camps, which was to provide slave labor for war production. And some of the companies using the slave labor were American owned, and were supplying the German war machine. Thus does mythology, though containing truth, succeed in hiding the tracks and the crimes of elite perps, leaving others to carry the whole burden of historical demonization.

So I think there is a sound basis for anticipating the kinds of mythology that would be designed for leaving behind and rejecting the old ways, and seeing the new as a salvation. There is a long historical precedent of era changes linked with mythology changes, often expressed in religious terms. There will be a familiar ring to the new mythology, a remixing and re-prioritizing of familiar values and assumptions, so as to resonate with the dynamics of the new regime.

The nature of the carbon economy has been somewhat clearly signaled. Carbon budgets, and carbon credits, are clearly destined to become primary components of the economy. As we've seen with the elite and grassroots supported global warming movement, the arbitrary scarcity of carbon credits can be easily regulated on the pretext of environmentalism. And peak oil alarmism is always available as a backup. As elite spokespeople have often expressed, when the time comes, the masses will demand the new world order.

The focus on control over consumption, resources, and distribution is implicit in the emphasis on energy limits, is latent in the geopolitical situation, as regards depletion of global resources, and is indicated by the need for a new unifying paradigm, as the growth paradigm is no longer viable.

The nature of the security apparatus has been clearly signaled by the responses to demonstrations ever since 1998 in Seattle, by the increased use of hardened-killer mercenaries at home and abroad, by excessive and abusive police behavior, by airport security procedures, by Guantanamo and renditions, by the creation of a domestic branch of the army, dedicated to responding to civil emergencies, and by the way Katrina and Haiti have been handled.

It would be a major mistake to think of those last two as bungled operations. They were exercises in collapse management of a certain kind, to be applied to certain populations, where the training and equipment appropriate for combat in Afghanistan is seen as being appropriate for administering aid to civilian disaster victims. These selected disaster victims will be seen primarily as threats to civil order, or perhaps undesirables to be incarcerated or eliminated. They will be demonized as rioters and looters. Assistance will comes later, if at all. And it can all be broadcast on TV, and somehow be seen as the way things have to be. These two exercises were not bungled at all. They were alarmingly successful, most notably in the case of the realtime PR mythology.

The limited role of national governments, being primarily allocators of mandated budgets, has been clearly signaled by long-standing IMF policies in the third world, and by the way the bankers have been dictating to governments, in the wake of the over-extended bailout commitments. The carbon entitlement budgeting paradigm accomplishes the same micromanagement in a much more direct way, and is the natural outcome of the push toward hard carbon limits.