So Much for Mayan Calendar Predictions

It's all a big bowl of prophesy soup.

Original artwork for Salem-News.com, by Shelli Pruett, author of Quantum Leap Cartoons, featured at www.QLCartoons.com

(SACRAMENTO, CA) - The latest doomsday has come and gone and most of us are all still here, fooled again.

However two horrible shootings took place in the United States as we approached this latest day of fear, as people mumbled words about the end of the world happening on 21 December 2012. You know, the end of the Mayan calendar, right? No offense, but I'm not going to lose sleep over something forecast by people defined in history by their penchant for human sacrifice.

According to Wikipedia, "the Mayan calendar shares many aspects with calendars employed by other earlier Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Zapotec and Olmec, and contemporary or later ones such as the Mixtec and Aztec calendars".

Nostradamus, the Bible, the Mayans, the Aztecs... whatever the source, I find it impossible to believe that the end of this world is something that could be accurately foreseen thousands of years ago.

I worked at a Las Vegas TV station during the dawning of the new millennium. News photographers assigned to the strip had bullet proof vests and more, we all had purchased gas masks in case things went awry, again it was a lot of needless hype.

Western people get excited about ancient predictions, while others in this world don't have time for such fancy thoughts. We're talking about people who are hard pressed to get a meal, or to make it to school or work without being attacked, or to know if rogue or even government military are about to invade their towns and rape their wives and murder their children.

This takes place every day in places like Burma, Sri Lanka, Palestine, Balochistan, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo and the list goes on.

The heroes are the humanitarians who place themselves often at great risk for the sake of helping others; those brave and selfless individuals who speak out, document, and expose the human rights violations that take place. They are the corps of the solution and without them we have nothing. Our Human Rights Ambassador, William Nicholas Gomes, constantly exposes human rights abuses and he is an example of a person who has paid a high price for his advocacy. He can't even return to his home country of Bangladesh over a threat to charge him with sedition, which carries the death penalty, for a poem he wrote criticizing the politics of Bangladesh.

These are not individuals who worry about Mayan calendars and other possible clues in history left for us to ponder. With or without religion, they work in real time doing their best to help as many disadvantaged people as they can and it is rarely a popular role to play. Gratitude is scarce and success often more evasive.

It is true that many if not most Americans, became lackadaisical in recent years and it is all fun and games until the violence comes to your neighborhood. Countless times in history, people who thought they were invincible learned quite brutally, that they were nothing of the sort.

The human race needs to put its collective foot down on all war criminals and human rights violators, at the top of that list are the human traffickers, many of whom are centered in nations closely allied with the U.S. This needs to change. Examples include Dubai and Yemen in particular, and also Israel.

The United Nations needs to undergo major house cleaning so that it has the integrity to effectively enforce international law the way that it is supposed to.

Just imagine if George W. Bush were to be officially tried and convicted in a war crime court. The action would show that we are indeed a responsible people, not just a nation of sloppy warmonger politicians who like to wage war and get away with the most costly mistakes in regard to the loss of human life.

If an international court convicted Bush, it would set a precedent to all others in the future; that they can not use humanity for their military playgrounds and experiments. Letting Bush and his team walk free is the end of the world, because it represents the last of our very sense of right and wrong.

Tim King: Salem-News.com Editor and Writer

Tim King has more than twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. Tim is Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor. His background includes covering the war in Afghanistan in 2006 and 2007, and reporting from the Iraq war in 2008. Tim is a former U.S. Marine who follows stories of Marines and Marine Veterans; he's covered British Royal Marines and in Iraq, Tim embedded with the same unit he served with in the 1980's.

Tim holds awards for reporting, photography, writing and editing from traditional mainstream news agencies like The Associated Press and Electronic Media Association; he also holds awards from the National Coalition of Motorcyclists, the Oregon Confederation of Motorcycle Clubs; and was presented with a 'Good Neighbor Award' for his reporting, by the The Red Cross.

Tim's years as a Human Rights reporter have taken on many dimensions; he has rallied for a long list of cultures and populations and continues to every day, with a strong and direct concentration on the 2009 Genocide of Tamil Hindus and Christians in Sri Lanka. As a result of his long list of reports exposing war crimes against Tamil people, Tim was invited to be the keynote speaker at the FeTNA (Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America) Conference in Baltimore, in July 2012. This is the largest annual gathering of North American Tamils; Tim addressed more than 3000 people and was presented with a traditional Sri Lanka ‘blessed garland’ and a shawl as per the tradition and custom of Tamil Nadu

In a personal capacity, Tim has written 2,026 articles as of March 2012 for Salem-News.com since the new format designed by Matt Lintz was launched in December, 2005. Serving readers with news from all over the globe, Tim's life is literally encircled by the endless news flow published by Salem-News.com, where more than 100 writers contribute stories from 23+ countries and regions.

Tim specializes in writing about political and military developments worldwide; and maintains that the label 'terrorist' is ill placed in many cases; specifically with the LTTE Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, where it was used as an excuse to slaughter people by the tens of thousands; and in Gaza, where a trapped population lives at the mercy of Israel's destructive military war crime grinder. At the center of all of this, Tim pays extremely close attention to the safety and welfare of journalists worldwide. You can write to Tim at this address: tim@salem-news.com. Visit Tim's Facebook page (facebook.com/TimKing.Reporter)