Mayans never predicted world to end in 2012: experts

By Pepe Cortes

PALENQUE, Mexico (Reuters) - If you are worried the world will end next year based on the Mayan calendar, relax: the end of time is still far off.

So say Mayan experts who want to dispel any belief that the ancient Mayans predicted a world apocalypse next year.

The Mayan calendar marks the end of a 5,126 year old cycle around December 21, 2012, which should bring the return of Bolon Yokte, a Mayan god associated with war and creation.

Author Jose Arguelles called the date "the ending of time as we know it" in a 1987 book that spawned an army of Mayan theorists, whose speculations on a cataclysmic end abound online. But specialists meeting at this ancient Mayan city in southern Mexico say it merely marks the termination of one period of creation and the beginning of another.

"We have to be clear about this. There is no prophecy for 2012," said Erik Velasquez, an etchings specialist at the the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). "It's a marketing fallacy."

The National Institute of Anthropological History in Mexico has been trying to quell the barrage of forecasters predicting the apocalypse. "The West's messianic thinking has distorted the world view of ancient civilizations like the Mayans," the institute said in a statement.

In the Mayan calendar, the long calendar count begins in 3,114 BC and is divided into roughly 394-year periods called Baktuns. Mayans held the number 13 sacred and the 13th Baktun ends next year.
Sven Gronemeyer, a researcher of Mayan codes from La Trobe University in Australia, who has been trying to decode the calendar, said the so-called end day reflects a transition from one era to the next in which Bolon Yokte returns.

"Because Bolon Yokte was already present at the day of creation ... it just seemed natural for the Mayan that Bolon Yokte will again be present," he said.

Of the the approximately 15,000 registered glyphic texts found in different parts of what was then the Mayan empire, only two mention 2012, the Institute said.

"The Maya did not think about humanity, global warming or predict the poles would fuse together," said Alfonso Ladena, a professor from the Complutense University of Madrid. "We project our worries on them."

Putin Blames Clinton for Unrest

By Irina Filatova and Alexey Eremenko

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday of instigating the public protests against the State Duma elections as tens of thousands signed up to rally over the weekend.

But Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev made ambiguous remarks about the protesters themselves, conceding that they have the right to rally but calling on the police to crack down on those who break the law.
Preparations were under way in Moscow for a new rally against the victory of Putin's United Russia party on Saturday, with almost 30,000 signed up on Facebook on late Thursday.

In what resembled an attempt to distance himself from the party, Putin also said his campaign staff for the presidential election in March would not be centered around United Russia but his All-Russia People's Front, and be headed by a prominent film director, not a party boss.

"I looked at the first reaction of our American partners. The first thing that the secretary of state did was characterize [the elections] as dishonest and unfair," Putin said at a meeting with the front's council on Thursday.

He said Clinton made her conclusions without reading reports from election monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and her words "gave a signal" to the Russian opposition.

"They heard this signal and started active work with the support of the U.S. Department of State," he said.

Putin said protest organizers were pursuing "selfish political goals," while most Russians did not want unrest.

"People in our country don't want the situation to develop like in Kyrgyzstan or Ukraine in the recent past. Nobody wants chaos," he said in reference to the "color revolutions" that swept several former Soviet republics in the mid-2000s.

Protests should not be obstructed as long as they are done within the law, and "we need to have a dialog with those who are opposition-minded and let them speak out," Putin said.
But police must stop any violations, he said.

Some 6,000 to 17,000 people protested the elections on Monday and Tuesday in Moscow, and hundreds more took to the streets throughout the country. Up to 1,000 have been arrested in the capital alone.

Preliminary results give United Russia 49.3 percent of the vote, but critics say up to half of that amount was gained through fraud, instances of which have been widely reported by individual observers and the country's sole independent watchdog, Golos.

In the days leading up to elections, Golos came under attack from the authorities and state-owned media for its acceptance of grant money from the United States and European Union. Russian authorities have repeatedly denied the group any funding.

Putin compared recipients of foreign money to Judas Iscariot during the Duma campaign. He continued the attack on Thursday, saying other countries were "investing hundreds of millions of dollars" to influence the vote in Russia.

"It's unacceptable when financing is being provided to some domestic organizations that are believed to be national but in fact work for foreign money and perform under the music of a foreign country," he said.

He did not name the countries or the recipients, but he urged the people's front to consider tightening legislation on election-related funding "to protect our sovereignty."

It was unclear how legislation might be tightened. As president, Putin oversaw the passage of tough legislation aimed at preventing foreign funds from influencing elections.

The Presidential Front

Turning to his presidential campaign, which is expected to return Putin to the Kremlin after two presidential terms, between 2000 and 2008, Putin named movie director Stanislav Govorukhin as the head of his campaign team.

Govorukhin, 75, known for his detective miniseries "The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed" (1979), starring bard Vladimir Vysotsky, expressed surprise by his appointment but promised to do his best to support Putin.

Also on the team are pediatrician Leonid Roshal; Alexei Romanov of the Federal Security Service; Nikolai Fyodorov, chairman of the Institute for Socio-Economic and Political Research; labor activist Ivan Mokhnachuk; and several others. Putin said the list might grow.

Centering the team around the All-Russia People's Front will ensure the transparency of his campaign, Putin said.

The All-Russia People's Front, which comprises many major nongovernmental organizations, was created in May to unite nonpartisan supporters of United Russia and give them seats in the new Duma.

Putin said the front would get a total of 25 percent of United Russia's seats, and warned the party against trying to exceed its quota by stealing Duma mandates from peers.
Front representatives used the meeting to complain about regional officials ignoring or sabotaging the group.

Vyacheslav Lysakov, head of the motorist group Svoboda Vybora and a prospective member of Putin's campaign team, suggested that officials who "absolutely ignore professional communities, civil society and nongovernmental organizations" be dismissed. He named head of the transportation department of the Krasnodar region, Dmitry Pugachyov, as a prime candidate for removal.

"I don't even know him, but he's hurting my popularity," Putin said, laughing.

Speaking during a trip to Prague on Thursday, President Dmitry Medvedev echoed Putin, saying protests should not be obstructed as long as they are lawful.

Violations at rallies cause "various incidents" and are "not cool," Medvedev said, Interfax reported.
The president, who Putin promised to swap jobs with if United Russia fared well in the Duma vote, also said the election results reflect the political sentiments of the populace.

"The main thing is … to let the new parliament work," Medvedev said.

But he also called for fraud reports to be thoroughly investigated.

Clinton, who had expressed concern about reports of election fraud for two days running, toned down her criticism a NATO meeting in Brussels on Thursday. When asked about calls to annul the Duma vote results and hold new elections, she said: "Those kinds of decisions will have to be left up to the citizens of Russia."

But she also recalled a report by OSCE observers over violations, saying: "We hope that there will be decisions made that reflect the significance of having free, fair and credible elections."

No Place to Rally

Meanwhile, city authorities on Thursday failed to pick a place for Saturday's rally, which is timed for the Central Elections Commission announcement of the final results of the vote.

City Hall earlier sanctioned the Solidarity group to hold a rally of 300 people on Ploshchad Revolyutsii next to Red Square. But Thursday, it proposed to move the event to Bolotnaya Ploshchad, across the river from the Kremlin, saying the original venue would not be able to host a rally of thousands of people.

In addition, "the world's first ice theater," complete with a 4-meter-high palace based on Russian folktales, will open on Ploshchad Revolyutsii on Sunday, the press service of Moscow's Central Administrative District said, RIA-Novosti reported. Forecasts predicted temperatures slightly below freezing Sunday.

Solidarity said it would agree to the new venue if the attendance limit was increased to 10,000 people, Interfax reported. It also named the bigger Manezh Square as an alternative site.

Talks between the Moscow government and Solidarity were to resume Friday. Seven City Hall departments contacted by The Moscow Times failed to provide immediate comment on the matter, while repeated calls to Solidarity went unanswered.

Last Monday's rally near the Chistiye Prudy metro was also allotted for 300 participants but gathered 5,000 to 15,000. Police did not intervene until some protesters tried to stage an unsanctioned march to the next metro station, detaining some 300.

Police said about 570 people were detained at an unsanctioned opposition rally on Triumfalnaya Ploshchad on Tuesday, which saw 1,000 to 2,500 people turn up. About the same number of pro-Kremlin youth activists also rallied in the same place.

Numerous media and witness accounts said police acted with deliberate brutality on Triumfalnaya Ploshchad, beating up detainees in vans before placing them in detention.

No mass crackdown on pro-Kremlin activists was reported, and it remained unclear whether their own rally had been sanctioned.

Some pro-Putin Nashi activists brought to the capital on Sunday to rally in the streets in support of the government actually switched sides and joined the opposition ranks on Monday and Tuesday, Moskovsky Komsomolets reported.

Police also reported detaining about 20 people on Triumfalnaya Ploshchad on Wednesday.
The total number of this week's detainees stood at 1,000, independent rights group Agora said Thursday, citing its own figures, Interfax reported. It remained unclear how many were still behind bars.

Many detainees have spent hours and even days in overcrowded police cells without being provided food or water, it said.

Agora asked Moscow prosecutors to look into the mistreatment of the detainees, saying detention centers were in breach of international conventions on prisoner rights. Police have blamed the delays on the unexpectedly high number of detainees.

Tensions continued to mount Thursday, when offices of several leading critics of the elections were attacked by automated messages praising Putin.

Golos, the Yabloko party and the liberal Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported having their telephones blocked by repeated automated calls. The pre-recorded phrases, delivered by echoing female voices, included "Putin is the light," "Putin loves you," and "Love Putin, and your life will be full of meaning," news reports said.

Police had no comment on the matter.

Gauss vs. Churov

Reports of violations continued to flood in, with several bloggers criticizing the election results from a mathematical standpoint, noting that the distribution of votes for United Russia did not confirm to the normal, or Gaussian, statistical distribution.

"Canceling Gaussian distribution is like ordering a right angle to equal 100 degrees and water to boil at 60 degrees [Celsius]," prominent blogger Leonid Kaganov wrote Wednesday.

A recount was actually ordered in the Volgograd region, where United Russia won an unimpressive 35 percent of the vote, Kommersant said. The recount boosted the ruling party's result by 7 percent, but after a flurry of criticism from the opposition, election officials called the new figure a mistake.

Nevertheless, Central Elections Commission head Vladimir Churov persisted in his claims that vote-rigging reports were fabrications. He said Thursday that he would file complaints with the Investigative Committee to find and punish people responsible for making false videos of ballot-stuffing.

However, he also admitted that no fake videos had been found and conceded that at least some reports were real and needed to be investigated, Interfax reported.

Churov's comments were echoed by United Russia member Vladimir Burmatov, who said on the party's web site that some videos of alleged fabrications appeared on YouTube before election day. No links for the videos were provided.

At least one instance of incorrect reporting was, indeed, spotted Thursday, when U.S.-based Fox News television illustrated a story about protests in Moscow with footage from street riots in Greece. The channel did not comment on the mishap.

Several governors from regions where United Russia underperformed, including Yaroslavl, Vologda, Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, have been called to the Kremlin for a scolding, Izvestia said. The mayors of Ulyanovsk and Akhtubinsk — two cities where the ruling party also fared poorly — have already stepped down, allegedly over United Russia's result.

But no mass sackings are likely because new appointees would not have time to improve the situation in time for the presidential vote in March, Izvestia said.

Still, an increasing number of analysts and observers speculated that the Kremlin is faced with the need to at least partially dismantle its "power vertical."

The call was voiced this week by Kremlin first deputy chief of staff Vladislav Surkov, considered the engineer of the "power vertical" and the behind-the-scenes master of United Russia.

"It's obvious for me that the elections have ended the 'managed democracy,' the pseudo-democratic regime," said Gennady Burbulis, the Kremlin's gray cardinal from the early 1990s.

"The authorities are not strong when they mobilize police and Interior Troops. They are strong when they show a capability for dialogue," Burbulis, who served as first deputy prime minister under President Boris Yeltsin, said at a meeting with journalists Thursday.

"I think there's no other task for Vladimir Putin after the March 4 [presidential election] than to implement modernization policies — which, unlike the oppression of dissent, is the only real foundation for stability," Burbulis said.

In the meantime, numerous instructions on how to behave when detained by police began circulating on blogs and social networks, whose users remain the driving force of the protests.

Earthquake reported near Alaska's HAARP array

by Alaska Dispatch

A 4.4-magnitude earthquake was reported just before 4:26 p.m. AKST near the Alaska towns of Gulkana, Glenallen and Gakona on Thursday, and just miles from the massive federal military installation known as HAARP. That's according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The quake's epicenter was about 14 miles from the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), which has been linked by many a conspiracy theorist to other calamitous events, particularly big temblors. HAARP spokesmen claim scientists out there are learning how to create aurora borealis and lightning. Others hold the program responsible for the March 2011 Japan earthquake as well as the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

Thursday's shaker near HAARP was just one of more than 30 earthquakes recorded in and around Alaska, according to the Alaska Earthquake Information Center.

UBS advice for a euro collapse: ‘tinned goods, small calibre weapons’

by John Shmuel

As if there isn’t already enough eurozone doom and gloom floating around these days.

A note from UBS economist Larry Hatheway on Wednesday spells out why he and his colleagues at the bank believe a eurozone collapse would result in an “end of the world” scenario. It makes for some grim reading.

Back in September, Mr. Hatheway and colleagues Paul Donovan and Stephane Deo released a report that predicted a disastrous outcome if even one nation left the eurozone. The economists envisioned a 20% loss in gross domestic product for creditor countries (e.g. Germany) in a break up, and a 40% loss for debtor countries (e.g. Greece).

But Mr. Hatheway now says it could be much worse.

“On reflection this author, at least, feels the estimates are probably conservative — the true costs could well be higher,” he said. “That’s because once Europe (and the world economy) finds itself in depression, policy probably couldn’t arrest the decline. Broken financial systems and ruined economies are the stuff of prolonged deflation or worse.”

Mr. Hatheway goes on to say that the eurozone was “flawed from the start.” But in his view, the pain that would result from a collapse in the monetary union far outweighs the current volatility that stems from trying to save it.

“The preferred outcome is to fix what is broken,” he said.

And for those wondering why the eurozone doesn’t just kick out Greece and be done with it, Mr. Hatheway argues against that type of solution.

“Once one country leaves the eurozone, residents in other at-risk member countries would plausibly conclude their country might be next to go,” he explains. “Logic dictates they would send their wealth abroad, resulting in a run on their domestic banks, precipitating a collapse of their financial sectors and economies”

Mr. Hatheway gives some insight into how bad he thinks the global macro situation could become if the world is faced with a eurozone collapse. He says when people ask him how they should prepare for a eurozone collapse, he gives the following reply:

“I suppose there might be some assets worthy of consideration—precious metals, for example,” Mr. Hatheway said. “But other metals would make wise investments, too. Among them tinned goods and small calibre weapons.”

Doomsday war games: Pentagon's 3 nightmare scenarios

Pentagon planners have plenty to deal with these days – Iran in search of nuclear-weapons technology, suicide bombings in Afghanistan, and the final pullout of US troops in Iraq potentially leaving behind a security vacuum in the Middle East. But in war games in Washington this week, US Army officials and their advisers debated three nightmare scenarios in particular. Here are the doomsday visions that Pentagon planners have been poring over:

1. Collapse of Pakistan

Following the assassination of the Pakistani president in a scenario that begins in 2013, Pakistan begins to descend into chaos. It is a time of great uncertainty, in which Pakistan’s “Islamist Army faction and its militant Muslim allies” decide to act.

Their plan, according to the war game: “to exploit that country’s growing civil disorder to seize power and create a radical Islamist state.” Compounding this chaos is the confusion over who will gain control of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons arsenal, estimated to number 80 to 120. These weapons are believed to be located at a half-dozen or so sites around the country.

At least one site is occupied by Islamist units. “Both US and other national intelligence services have concluded that sympathetic elements of the ISI [Pakistan's spy agency] have provided Islamist officers leading the breakaway army units with the activation codes needed to arm the nuclear weapons under their control,” notes the scenario, which is drawn from "7 Deadly Scenarios: A Military Futurist Explores War in the 21st Century" by Andrew Krepinevich, a former staffer in the Office of Net Assessments, the Pentagon’s futuristic and highly influential internal think tank.
If this were to happen, “there may be little to prevent these weapons from being used.”

The principal targets of such weapons would be United States, and US citizens draw little comfort, the scenario adds, from the efforts of US government officials to emphasize the difficulties involved in transporting nuclear weapons halfway around the world, which would be necessary, they add, in order to target an American city.

US forces have considered a preemptive strike on the area where the weapons are thought to be located, but Islamist forces have warned of the “horrific consequences” that would result if any foreign power attempted to do this. While the crisis in Pakistan “comes as a shock to most Americans,” the scenario notes, “to many observers, including senior government officials, it is hardly a surprise at all. To them, the greatest surprise is that Pakistan did not implode sooner.”

2. Rise of militant China

It is the year 2013, and “what experts are calling the greatest aggregation of naval power the world has ever seen is assembling in a long arc several hundred miles off the maritime approaches to China.” The leaders of the United States and Japan are debating what to do next “in what many fear may be the opening gambits in a new world war.”

The People’s Liberation Army is blockading Taiwan – and diplomats know that a blockade is an act of war. That’s why they are calling it a “quarantine,” and US allies, including Japan, are contemplating a retaliatory “counterquarantine” against Chinese ports.

Defense analysts conclude that a series of internal crises in China has brought the world’s great naval powers to the cusp of war. China’s economic growth has slowed dramatically. This has worried Chinese leadership, which “needs a rapidly growing economy to ensure its legitimacy,” according to the scenario, also drawn from "7 Deadly Scenarios" by Mr. Krepinevich, who now is the executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

At the same time, China’s young male population is rising, the result of China’s one-child policy and widespread selective abortions that favor male offspring.

Now girls are at a premium, leaving many young men unmarried and suffering “from low self-esteem, and feel[ing] alienated from (and rejected by) ‘mainstream’ society. Some scholars, studying the consequences of historical cases of profound sex-ratio imbalances, argue that this situation may set the stage for high levels of internal stability,” the scenario warns.

"They also ominously note that at times governments faced with this prospect have attempted to redirect that frustration against external rivals.”

A succession of US administrations, “distracted by the Long War with radical Islamist states and groups, and enjoying the short-term economic benefits of trade with China, failed to take the growing Chinese military machine seriously.” Yet “for those who looked closely, the warning signs have been there.”

China has pursued cyberwarfare “to introduce a wide range of viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and other cyber ‘weapons’ into the information grids” of the United States, especially US military computer networks. China has also expanded its fleet of submarines specially equipped to “cut undersea fiber-optic cables that provide data links both to US military forces and to the civilian economy.”

Then, in quick succession, America suffers two major cyberstrikes. One penetrates the Pentagon’s major link to troop supply lines. The other hits the New York Stock Exchange, resulting “in a termination of trading for nearly two days.” Now Pentagon planners must decide how to respond.

3. Collapse of North Korea

Authoritarian dictators can repress their populations for decades, but now the regime of Kim Jong-il “is embarking on the most difficult challenge that such regimes face: succession,” according to a scenario by Bruce Bennett and Jennifer Lind, published in the fall issue of the journal International Security.

Yet “the transition from apparent stability to collapse can be swift.” A government collapse in North Korea “could unleash a series of catastrophes on the peninsula with potentially far-reaching regional and global effects.”

This could trigger a massive outflow of the nation’s 24 million people, many of whom are severely malnourished, across the border into South Korea. With the food shortages could come civil war.
Equally troubling, “North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction could find their way out of the country and onto the global black market.” As a result, the consequences of a “poorly planned response to a government collapse in North Korea are potentially calamitous.”

North Korea has 1.2 million active duty military troops. What’s more, China will likely send its forces to aid in humanitarian efforts, as well. “The specter of Chinese forces racing south while US and South Korean troops race north is terrifying given the experience of the Korean War, a climate of suspicion among the three countries, and the risk of escalation to the nuclear level.”

Based on the most optimistic assumptions, according to the scenario, as many as 400,000 ground forces would be required to stabilize North Korea – more than the US commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

This would strain US forces, but the Pentagon noted in its 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review that the “instability or collapse of a WMD-armed state is among our most troubling concerns. Such an occurrence could lead to a rapid proliferation of WMD material, weapons, and technology, and could quickly become a global crisis posing a direct physical threat,” the scenario warns, “to the United States and all other nations.”