United Nations Precipitously Falls into Irrelevance

September 27, 2012 Leave a comment

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | SEPTEMBER 27, 2012

How Corrupt Is the World Food Program? Click and learn more.

How do you know when an organization has lived beyond its days? When even its minion members do not attend what is portrayed as the most relevant meeting of the year. The decay of the United Nations is not new. The globalist-founded entity lost its credibility pretty much since it was created by ignoring crime and corruption all over the planet.

On its charter, the United Nations fancies itself as an organization that was founded to: maintain world peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international co-operation in solving international problems and to be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations.

One fact that the Charter does not say is who really founded the U.N. and how its founders never mean to achieve any of the goals listed above, which is why this irrelevant entity has never come even close to achieving anything positive. So, even though we’ve reported tirelessly about the real origin of the United Nations, let’s review it quickly again.

The United Nations was created back in 1945. The key proponent of the U.N. was Alger Hiss, an American lawyer and communist spy for the Stalin regime, as testified in Congress under oath by Whittaker Chambers, a former Communist Party member. Other founders of the U.N. include the Rockefeller family, and some other 30 or 40 members of the Council on Foreign Relations members, among others. Rockefeller himself donated the land on which the U.N. building sits today.

Upon its creation, the U.N. attempted to become relevant by producing a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is only valid as long as those rights “do not oppose the purposes and principles of the United Nations.” This Declaration though, was not created to bring freedom and liberty. It has the purpose of giving people the right “to a social and international order”, as explained on article 28 of the U.N. document.

Anyone mildly informed about current events is pretty well aware of the United Nations actions and its core globalist principles, so let’s  review a number of ‘accomplishments’ that the U.N. has accumulated throughout the years. Going from the most recent to oldest of its actions, the U.N. works hard to convince people that they and their governments need to be disarmed.

The U.N. is also a champion pusher of a global tax to finance its illegitimate operations. An initiative presented by the U.N.’s President of the Economic and Social Council, Milos Koterec, calls for the imposition of a global tax in an attempt to globally institutionalize socialism as a way to solve every single problem there is. His plan was presented at a forum whose main focus was the non-existent right of people to have “universal access to basic social protection and social services.” This is not to say that people in need should be left to die, but that an international institution without legitimacy like the U.N. does not have the legal standing to do such a thing.

The United Nations is known for financing eugenics programs all over the world with the monies it already receives from developed nations from across the planet as well as fake philanthropists such as John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Edward Harriman, Andrew Carnegie, William Gates, George Soros, Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey, Prince Charles and many others. Bill Gates and Ted Turner have publicly expressed their desire to depopulate the planet and they use their tax exempted foundations to finance their eugenics programs.

“First we got population. The world today has 6.8 billion  people. That’s headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on  new vaccines, health care, reproductive health  services, we lower that by perhaps 10 or 15  percent.”  - Bill Gates at California TED 2010 Conference.

“A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”  – Ted Turner

“In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.”  – Prince Philipe quote from Deutsche Press Agentur (DPA), August, 1988.

Prince Philip helped start the World Wildlife Fund in 1961 with former Nazi SS Officer Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, who is closely affiliated with the founders of the Bilderberg Group, and Sir Julian Huxley, who was also the President of the British Eugenics Society.

The U.N. is also a promoter of government-controlled access to health and medicine, pushing a global set of rules to manage what people eat and don’t eat. This initiative is known as Codex Alimentarius, a set of policies that let’s the U.N. govern over nutrition and access to traditional or alternative medical treatments and food.

Instead of actually dedicating its efforts to ending poverty and bringing health and services to the neediest, the U.N. has used its budget to push for a socialist agenda which includes taking possession of government-owned lands as well as privately kept properties all around the world. Through its proposed Agenda 21 initiative, the U.N. intends to socialize land ownership not to give it to the poorest, but to hoard it. As explained in a recent article, the United Nations is infiltrating developing nations to convince its leaders and citizens that they should not aspire to enjoy the benefits of the land and the industry. Instead, U.N. accomplices say, people should seek to be in peace with themselves while letting their countries and their people live in denigrating conditions.

For these and many other reasons, the United Nations has become increasingly irrelevant even for people like Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel, who missed the 2012 meeting happening now in New York City. “The concept of a world of nation-states, which dates to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, and the idea that they have a monopoly on international relations and on the conduct of war, is no longer valid,” said Max Manwaring, a professor at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, to the Wall Street Journal.

While the globalist organizations tell us that independent nation-states are obsolete, it seems that the only antique entity around here is their main instrument to centralize power and control — the U.N.. Despite the fact that their sham is falling in pieces, globalist minions like Barack Obama attempt to challenge real constitutional rights and freedoms by saying that “at a time when anyone with a cell phone can spread offensive views around the world with the click of a button, the notion that we can control the flow of information is obsolete.” Do you see the double speech?

The appearance of social media that helped democratize information, and although they remain in the hands of corporations, these media now threaten to destroy the ‘monopoly of truth’ in the hands of the establishment. That is why the U.N. is also attacking the right of people to say what they think. The United Nations is one of the strongest pushers of internet censorship and bans on free speech.

But don’t forget about the United Nations push for the Nazi inspired Environmentalist movement. The Nazi environmental program was the base for the creation of the U.N.’s Global Biodiversity Assessment Report. The complete program of sustainability is based on an effort to change human behavior to states that ordinarily humans would not approve or enjoy. This changes in human behavior are mostly brought upon by instigating fear. Fear of global warming, climate change, natural disasters, wars, famine, droughts and so on. This is a technique used throughout history by establishment globalists to ease people into their deadly social, political and economic models.

The United Nations is not a scapegoat as suggested by Flavia Krause-Jackson of the Wall Street Journal. She implies that the fact only 5 countries make all the decisions in the security council has somehow handicapped the U.N.. There is a reason why the United Nations was never opened to more nations to participate of the decision-making process: The U.N. was never meant to be what Ms. Jackson and those she interviewed for her article think. It was meant to be just another globalist-controlled entity that serves as a tool to torture the planet into a super concentrated state of tyranny.

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Eco-Tyranny at the Door Step: US Government Land Grabbing Policies

April 17, 2012

“Our Vision, Our Values” is the name of Obama’s Federal Government move to confiscate private property, eliminate land rights and steal the nations resources.

By KEVIN DEANNA | WND | APRIL 17, 2012

The environmentalist movement isn’t about protecting the environment at all, according to meteorologist-turned-journalist Brian Sussman.

It’s about destroying private property, controlling behavior, and expanding government – and the Obama administration has a secret plan to further all of it, he says.

Sussman is now blowing the whistle on the real nature of environmentalism in his explosive brand-new book, “Eco-Tyranny.”

He reveals secret memos from inside Obama’s Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, outlining a covert plan “to pursue a program of land consolidation” for the federal government to secure tens of millions of acres of land that will be permanently out of reach for entrepreneurs, businessmen and private citizens.

The plan, entitled “Our Vision, Our Values,” notes that 130-140 million acres under BLM management are worthy of consideration as “treasured lands.” Because ecosystems defy “jurisdictional boundaries,” the memo outlines strategies by which the federal government can “rationalize and consolidate” its fragmented landholdings in order to properly “manage-at-scale.” While an ecosystem can simply refer to a single pond or small area, it can also refer to entire geographic regions, thus giving the government an almost unlimited justification to seize private property adjacent to “treasured lands.”

Sussman exposes this is not just theoretical discussion within the White House. The Obama administration is already moving to implement this as policy without consulting Congress by issuing an executive order entitled “America’s Great Outdoors Initiative.”

The unilateral order explicitly sets as a goal “reconnecting” huge swaths of land under federal ownership, creating large “corridors” compromising millions of acres that will be unavailable for use by private citizens.

The initiative also calls for the federal government to work through “public/private partnerships and locally supported conservation strategies.” This translates into activist environmental organizations having input on all decisions involving expanding government lands.

As it stands, the federal government controls more than 50 percent of the land in eleven Western states.

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Loving your Servitude: Microsoft’s Kinect Console Paves the Way for In-Home Spying

April 5, 2012

By LUIS R. MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | APRIL 5, 2012

Tyranny isn’t awful only because of the mayhem it achieves, but also because of the way it spreads its tentacles before it tightens the noose around unsuspecting populations. Tyranny will come in a uniform, says a proverb. But most of the time the uniform is just the last step in the process of achieving total control in a society. Hitler, perhaps the best example of what tyrants can accomplish, did not come into power with his brown shirt goon army stomping into people’s homes. It was an incremental process that intelligently carried out a series of actions through a series of steps which ended with Germans begging for tyrannical measures in the name of common good.

The remaining time of the twentieth century after Hitler was deposed and what has passed of the twenty-first century, has seen the rise of tyranny to levels that only H.G. Wells had been able to envision. This is a sign that puppet tyrants are not the bedrock of tyranny; they are just temporary mules that make it portable throughout the decades. Although twenty-first century tyranny seems to be rooted on the same principle that originated it back in the previous two centuries — security –, this principle can only be turned into a reason for tyranny if there is a necessity for it. But it isn’t even security as a principle the main driver of tyrannical regimes. For a temporary or permanent oppressive government to take control, it uses other tools that sort of complement the loss of freedom and the advancement of an out-of-control security grid. This complement is of course technology.

It would take much longer to achieve a complete state of tyranny if the tyrants intended to impose this state of affairs through force alone. That is why the men and women behind oppressive regimes use two of their best allies to achieve their goal: time and technological advances. Incremental changes through long periods of time in a way that conditions are engineered to promote a certain scenario are better accepted by populations who are worried 24 hours a day about their security. This is the reason why a heightened environment of insecurity together with the implementation of policies that reduce freedom and deviate attention from the loss of freedom are a perfect combination to bring about the best version of tyranny in the twenty-first century. In the case of our modern society, technological dependence has taken on the role that food scarcity and conflict, for example, played in previous eras.

One of the best ways to carry out tyrannical policies is to keep a population distracted while policies are created, accepted and put in place. In an era where self-security and economic imbalances are easily distracting people from opening their eyes and seeing what is really going on, technology is now more than ever playing a monumental role in advancing the tyrannical agenda thought out a long time ago. Not only have countries, companies and individuals embraced technology as part of their daily lives, but they’ve also become dependent to a degree that is no longer a choice to simply ‘get disconnected’ from it. Financial transactions, commerce, resource management and education are just a few of the areas in which technology has become a necessary evil. The problem is that technology users for the most part only have a myopic view of what technological advancements offer. This is a problem because technology is undoubtedly a double edge sword.

When it comes to technology and its applications, the two edges of the sword are usually defined as (1) the convenience it provides to our daily lives, and (2) the type of applications it can have. One-dimensional thinking always focuses on the benefits and the convenience. In fact, these are the terms in which technology is always presented. The other side, the not so positive consequences or misuse of technology is what is always hidden from the unsuspecting public, who only understand technological advances as entertainment; the opium of a population that hurts economically, mentally and that lacks the capacity — by design — to see beyond their leisure needs. Two-dimensional or three-dimensional thinking renders new and different ways of understanding. The three-dimensional way of thinking that also sees the sharper edge of the sword, the one that easily cuts through ignorance and that allows oppressive regimes to bring about their tyranny, is always acknowledged by the tyrants, but not by technology users.

Is it convenient to have a search engine that knows what you want to search, even before you type it in? Sure it is. But one needs to ask how does the company behind the search engine achieves this and what other applications would this technology have and whether or not they’d be as beneficial as the search results, or if they are beneficial at all. Google, has publicly announced that it will use every camera and microphone embedded in computers to spy on people in order to create profiles for commercial purposes. Although that way of spying is already alarming, one must wonder what else are they going to do. Is it comfortable to have newer, more efficient appliances at home? Sure. However, it is within our purview to investigate whether the comfort these devices bring are worth loosing privacy. For example, recently, the head of the CIA, David Petraeus publicly said that that organization along with the National Security Agency (NSA) would be using technological advances to spy on people through their appliances. This by the way is not limited to the United States. In fact, as we speak, the United States is building a seven football-stadium-sized facility that will house the largest spying apparatus in the planet. The NSA is well-known for their Echelon program and their work with Fusion Centers nationwide in the United States. Both Echelon and the Fusion Centers make up the largest spying force with the capacity to operate around the world.

Is it convenient to have a communication device that allows us to talk to anyone, anywhere, as long as there is an electromagnetic signal available? Absolutely. But again, we should also know that, leaving health issues aside, cell phones are basically portable spying devices for a group of corporations whose real owners cannot sleep at night thinking of ways to learn about everything we do. Recently, both Apple and Google devices were in the news for their ability to record users’ movements and deliberately sending such information to an Artificial Intelligence-controlled hard drive or server somewhere. This information was collected without the users being aware of it, without their permission or consent. What did Eric Schmidt, Apple’s CEO had to say about it? “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” Why isn’t the public able to realize that iPhones, Microsoft phones and Android Google phones can be used to do many more things besides calling someone? Because technology has become — again not by accident — the opium of the people. They have been indoctrinated and programmed by the educational systems to lose their ability to think critically and to be innovators. Historically, humans have been transformed into users instead of creators. For at least a century — in modern society — the creators are the tyrants who figured out that technology could be used to enslave while it functioned as a distraction for the decadent masses.

Just as the Romans had their gladiator fights, we have football games, TV shows and of course our iPhones, Laptops and Game Consoles. Have you heard about Kinect? If not, this Microsoft gaming platform is the mother of all spying tools for in-home usage. If you like Happy Meals or Jack-in-a-Box, you’ll love Kinect. That’s right. While we were all sleeping, the tyrants figured out a way to make us like our servitude, and they’ve done a superb job. Not only will people be distracted playing games that will either make them psychos or dummies, but they’ll also be victims of direct spying by the military industrial complex. The reach of technologies like Kinect, which are only advertised as trendy, fun devices, goes beyond what most of its users even begin to fathom. With military contractors already working on ways to ‘better’ use the technology embedded in the game console, as well as publicly saying they intend to spy on people through it to steal their information, what exactly is there inside Kinect? As explained by multiple media outlets, Microsoft’s latest Xbox 360 has:

* Four microphones — a first, according to CEO Kyle Wiens. “We’ve taken apart binaural devices before, but this is our first quadaural sensor setup!”

* Two cameras (pictured).

* An IR transmitting diode.

* One fan. Wiens says that for a 12-watt device, Microsoft seems very paranoid about heat dissipation and blames this paranoia on the infamous red-ring-of-death problems that have plagued the 360. “This is a good thing for consumers, but we can’t help but wonder if they’ve gone overboard in the cooling department,” Kyle said.

* 64 MB of Hynix DDR2 SDRAM.

* A “tiny, diminutive, even” motor (pictured).

* A three-axis accelerometer.

* A Prime Sense PS1080-A2. “Kinect is based on Prime Sense’s motion detection technology,” explains Kyle. “This chip is the Kinect’s brains —– all the sensors are wired into here for processing before transmitting a refined depth map and color image to the Xbox.”

If you are technologically challenged or simply are not interested in technical details at all, because all you care about is having fun with Kinect, you are in trouble. The Quadaural sensor enables Kinect to listen to and identify up to five different voices. The two cameras are capable of taking pictures and recording video. The Infrared (IR) transmitting diode can create and record a thermal image of people in the room, which then becomes a powerful identification tool. The 64 MB hard drive makes sure that all the information collected is comfortably stored for easy access by outside users — military spies and hackers — and the Prime Sense sensor, the brain, closes the gift list that any control freak would dream about. The chip simply detects any movement that takes place in the room where Kinect is. Sadly, this kind of technology is not limited to Kinect. Other game consoles like Nintendo Wii and Playstation already use similar components which are sold as the best way to enhance gaming experience. How thoughtful of the creators! Much like the makers of the latest television sets, satellite boxes and fridges, Kinect is simply Big Bother in a box.

Any recommendations to stave off Big Brother from coming into our houses? According to a ‘freedom fighter’, it is a good idea to “make sure you disconnect Kinect whenever you are not using it”. Really? How about not buying a Kinect? How cattle-like have people become! Have your Soda pop, but make sure you drink it only one sip at the time so that the aspartame in it kills you slowly. Buy a cell phone, but use it less often, that way the cancer will take a decade or two to appear. We have indeed become comfortable slaves who not only enjoy but actually love our servitude.

I guess H.G. Wells fell way short of what a New World Order would look like.

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Tyranny in the Forecast: The Outlook for the New Year

January 3, 2012

by Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research
January 3, 2012

This past year has not been a good one for the 99%, and the new year is likely to be even worse. This column deals with the outlook for liberty.  The next will deal with the economic outlook.

diThe outlook for liberty is dismal. Those writers who are critical of Washington’s illegal wars and overthrow of the US Constitution could find themselves in indefinite detainment, because criticism of Washington’s policies can be alleged to be aiding Washington’s enemies, which might include charities that provide aid to bombed  Palestinian children and flotillas that attempt to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/24/us-israel-usa-flotilla-idUSTRE75N4A620110624  

The Bush/Obama regimes have put the foundation in place for imprisoning critics of the government without due process of law. The First Amendment is being all but restricted to rah-rah Americans who chant USA! USA! USA!  Washington has set itself up as world prosecutor, forever berating other countries for human rights violations, while Washington alone bombs half a dozen countries into the stone age and threatens several more with the same treatment, all the while violating US statutory law and the Geneva Conventions by torturing detainees.  http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/06/18/41514/general-who-probed-abu-ghraib.html   

Washington rounds up assorted foreign politicians, whose countries were afflicted with civil wars, and sends them off to be tried as war criminals, while its own war crimes continue to mount. However, if a person exposes Washington’s war crimes, that person is held without charges in conditions that approximate torture.

Bradley Manning is the case in point.  Manning, a US soldier, is alleged to be the person who released to WikiLeaks the “Collateral Murder” video, which, in the words of Marjorie Cohn, “depicts U.S. forces in an Apache helicopter killing 12 unarmed civilians, including two Reuters journalists. People trying to rescue the wounded were also fired upon and killed.” 

One of the Good Samaritans was a father with two small children. The video reveals the delight that US military personnel experienced in blowing them away from the distant skies. When it became clear that the Warriors Bringing The People Democracy had blown away two small children, instead of remorse we hear an executioner’s voice saying:  “that’s what he gets for bringing children into a war zone.”

The quote is from memory, but it is accurate enough.  When I first saw this video, I was astonished at the brazen war crime. It is completely obvious that the dozen or so murdered people were simply people walking along a street, threatening no one, unarmed, doing nothing out of the ordinary.  It was not a war zone. The horror is that the US soldiers were playing video games with live people.  You can tell from their commentary that they were having fun by killing these unsuspecting people walking along the street.  They enjoyed killing the father who stopped to help and shooting up his vehicle with the two small children inside.

This was not an accident of a drone, fed with bad information, blowing up a school full of children, or a hospital, or a farmer’s family.  This was American soldiers having fun with high tech toys killing anyone that they could pretend might be an enemy. 

When I saw this, I realized that America was lost. Evil had prevailed.

I was about to write that nothing has been done about the crime.  But something was done about it.  An American soldier who recognized the horrific war crime knew that the US military knew about it and had done nothing about it.  He also knew that as a US soldier he was required to report war crimes.  But to whom?  War crimes dismissed as “collateral damage” are the greatest part of Washington’s 21st century wars.  

A soldier with a moral conscience gave the video to WikiLeaks.  We don’t know who the soldier is.  Washington alleges that the soldier is Bradley Manning, but Washington lies every time it opens its mouth.  So we will never know. 

All we know is that retribution did not fall on the perpetrators of the war crime.  It fell upon the two accused of revealing it–Bradley Manning and Julian Assange. 

Manning was held almost two years without charges being presented to a court.
In December’s pre-trial hearings all Washington could come up with was concocted  accusations.  No evidence whatsoever.  The prosecutor, a Captain Fein, told the court, if that is what it is, that Manning had been “trained and trusted to use multiple intelligence systems, and he used that training to defy that trust. He abused our trust.”

In other words, Manning gave the world the truth of a war crime that was being covered up, and Washington and the Pentagon regard a truth teller doing his duty under the US military code as an “abuser of trust.”

In the 1970 My Lai Courts-Martial of Captain Ernest L. Medina, the Prosecution Brief states:

 “ A combat commander has a duty, both as an individual and as a commander, to insure that humane treatment is accorded to noncombatants and surrendering combatants. Article 3 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War specifically prohibits violence to life and person, particularly murder, mutilation, cruel treatment, and torture. Also prohibited are the taking of hostages, outrages against personal dignity and summary judgment and sentence. It demands that the wounded and sick be cared for. These same provisions are found in the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. While these requirements for humanitarian treatment are placed upon each individual involved with the protected persons, it is especially incumbent upon the commanding officer to insure that proper treatment is given.

Additionally, all military personnel, regardless of rank or position, have the responsibility of reporting any incident or act thought to be a war crime to his commanding officer as soon as practicable after gaining such knowledge. Commanders receiving such reports must also make such facts known to the Staff Judge Advocate. It is quite clear that war crimes are not condoned and that every individual has the responsibility to refrain from, prevent and report such unwarranted conduct. While this individual responsibility is likewise placed upon the commander, he has the additional duty to insure that war crimes committed by his troops are promptly and adequately punished.  http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/Myl_law3.htm  

At the National Press Club on February 17, 2006, General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that “It is the absolute responsibility of everybody in uniform to disobey an order that is either illegal or immoral.” General Pace said that the military is prohibited from committing crimes against humanity and that such orders and events must be made known.

However, when Manning followed the military code, his  compliance with law was turned into a crime. Captain Fein goes on to tell the “court” [a real court would throw out the bogus charges, but Amerika no longer has real courts] that “ultimately, he aided the enemies of the United States by indirectly giving them intelligence through WikiLeaks.” 

In other words, the “crime” is an unintended consequence of doing one’s duty–like the “collateral damage” of civilian casualties when drones, bombs, helicopter gunships, and trigger-happy troops kill women, children, aid workers, and village elders.  Why is Washington only punishing Manning for the collateral damage attributed to him?

Captain Fein could not have put it any clearer.  If you tell the truth and reveal Washington’s war crimes, you have aided the enemy.  Captain Fein’s simple sentence has at one stroke abolished all whistleblower protections written into US statutory law and the First Amendment, and confined anyone with a moral conscience and sense of decency to indefinite detention and torture. 

The illegal detention and treatment of Manning had a purpose, according to a number of informed people. Naomi Spencer, for example, writes that Manning’s long detention and delayed prosecution is designed to coerce Manning into implicating WikiLeaks in order that the US can extradite Julian Assange and either prosecute him as a terrorist or lock him away indefinitely in a military prison without any recourse to the courts, due process or the law.
 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30075.htm 

Assange’s case is mysterious.  Assange sought refuge in Sweden, where he was seduced by two women.  Both admit that they had sexual intercourse with him voluntarily, but afterwards they have come forth with claims that as they were sleeping with him in the bed, he again had sexual intercourse with them, and that they had not approved this second helping and that he was asked to use a condom but did not. 

The Swedish prosecutorial office, after investigating the charges, dismissed them. But, strangely, another Swedish prosecutor, a woman suspected of connections to Washington, resurrected the charges and is seeking to extradite Assange to Sweden from the UK for questioning.  

The legal question is whether a prosecutor can seek extradition for investigative purposes. The UK Supreme Court thinks that this is a valid question, and has agreed to hear the case. Normally, extradition requests come from courts and are issued for persons formally charged with a crime. Sweden has not charged Assange with a crime.

The real question is whether the Swedish prosecutor is acting on behalf of Washington.  Many who follow the case believe that Washington is behind the prosecutor’s re-opening of the case, and if Sweden gets hold of Assange Sweden will send him to Washington to be put in indefinite detention and tortured until he says what Washington wants him to say–that he is an Al Qaeda operative.  

This is the way that Washington intends to absolve itself of its war crimes revealed, allegedly, by Manning and Assange.

Meanwhile, Washington in a brazen display of hypocrisy accuses other countries of human rights abuses, while Congress has passed and President Obama has signed an indefinite detention and torture bill that US Representative Ron Paul says will accelerate America’s “slip into tyranny” and “descent into totalitarianism.” 

In signing the Bill of Tyranny, President Obama indicated that he thought that the tyranny established by the bill did not go far enough. He announced that he was signing the bill with signing statements that reserved his right, regardless of any law, to send American citizens, deprived of due process and constitutional protection, abroad to be tortured.

This is the US government that claims to be a government of “freedom and democracy” and to be bringing “freedom and democracy” to others with bombs and invasions.

The past year gave us other ominous tyrannical developments.  President Obama announced that he had a list of Americans whom he intended to assassinate without due process of law, and Homeland Security, itself an Orwellian name, announced that it had shifted its attention from terrorists to “domestic extremists.”  The latter are undefined and consist of whomever Homeland Security so designates.  

None of this was done behind closed doors.  The murder of the US Constitution was a public crime witnessed by all.  But like Kitty Genovese, who was stabbed to death in New York in 1964 in front of onlookers who failed to come to her aid, the media, Congress, bar associations, law schools, and the American public failed to come to the defense of the Constitution.  

In my lifetime the collapse in respect for, and authority of, the Constitution has been an horrific event.  Compare the ho-hum response to the Obama regime’s police state announcements with the public anger at President Richard Nixon over his enemies list.
Try to imagine President Ronald Reagan announcing that he had a list of Americans marked for assassination without impeachment proceedings beginning forthwith. 

Local and state police forces have been militarized not only in their equipment and armament but also in their attitude toward the public. Despite the absence of domestic terror attacks, Homeland Security conducts warrantless searches of cars and trucks on highways and of passengers using public transportation.  A uniformed federal service is being trained to systematically violate the constitutional rights of citizens, and citizens are being trained to accept these violations as normal. The young have no memory of being able to board public transportation or use public roadways without intrusive searches or to gather in protest without being brutalized by the police. Liberty is being moved into the realm of myth and legend.  

In such a system as is being constructed in public in front of our eyes, there is no freedom, no democracy, and no liberty.  What stands before us is naked tyranny.

While America degenerates into a total police state, politicians constantly invoke “our values.”  What are these values?  Indefinite imprisonment without conviction in a court. Torture. Warrantless searches and home invasions. An epidemic of police brutality. Curtailment of free speech and peaceful assembly rights. Unprovoked aggression called “preemptive war.” Interference in the elections and internal affairs of other countries. Economic sanctions imposed on foreign populations whose leaders are not in Washington’s pocket.  

If the American police state were merely an unintended consequence of a real war against terror, it could be dismantled when the war was over.  However, the evidence is that the police state is an intended consequence. The PATRIOT Act is a voluminous and clever attack on the Constitution. It is not possible that it could have been written in the short time between 9/11 and its introduction in Congress. It was waiting on the shelf.

The dismantling of constitutionally protected civil liberties is purposeful, as is the accumulation of arbitrary and unaccountable powers in the executive branch of government. As there have been no terrorist events within the US in over a decade except for those known to have been organized by the FBI, there is no terrorist threat that justifies the establishment of a political regime of unaccountable power.  It is being done on purpose under false pretenses, which means that there is an undeclared agenda.  The threat that Americans face resides in Washington, D.C.

Of the presidential candidates, only Ron Paul addresses the Constitution’s demise.Yet, the electorate is concerned with matters unimportant by comparison. Propagandized 24/7 by the Ministry of Truth, Americans are not sufficiently aware of their plight to elect Ron Paul president.  

It might be too late for even a President Ron Paul to turn things around. A president has no power unless his government supports him.  What prospect would President Ron Paul have of getting his appointees confirmed by the Senate?  The military/security complex is not going to vacate power. Powerful monied interests would block his appointments. If he persisted in being a problem for the Establishment, he would be victimized by a scandal and fail to be reelected if not forced to resign.

Remember what the Washington Establishment did to President Carter.  His budget director and chief of staff were framed, thus depriving Carter of the powers of his office. Even Ronald Reagan had to give away more than half of his government, including the White House chief-of-staff and vice presidency, to the Establishment.  President Reagan told me that he wanted to end stagflation in order that he could end the cold war, but that he could not sign a tax bill if I could not get one out of his administration that he could send to Congress.  

I do not know, but I suspect that turning things around internally through the political system is not in the cards.  Our chance to resurrect liberty might come from Washington’s hubris.  Imperial ambitions and drive for power can produce unmanageable upheavals and a loss of allies. Overreach abroad with a demoralized, unemployed and downtrodden population at home are not the ingredients of success. 

How much longer will the Russian government permit NGOs funded by the US Endowment for Democracy to interfere in its elections and to organize political protests? How much longer will China confuse its strategic interests with the American consumer market?  How much longer will Japan, Canada, Australia, Britain, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, and the Middle East oil states remain US puppets?  How much longer can the dollar retain the reserve currency role when the Federal Reserve is monetizing vast quantities of debt? 

How much longer can a “superpower” survive when it is incapable of producing political leadership?

America’s salvation will come when Washington suffers defeat of its hegemonic ambitions.

Many readers, especially those who watch Fox “News” and CNN and read the New York Times,  might see hyperbole in my outlook for 2012.  Surely, many believe, the draconian measures put in place will only be applied to terrorists.  But how would we know?  Indefinite detention and torture require no evidence to be presented. The American public has no way of knowing whether tortured detainees are terrorists or political opponents. The decision to detain and torture is an unaccountable decision. It relies on nothing but the subjective arbitrary decision of someone in the executive branch. Why are Americans prepared to take the word of a government that told them intentionally the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was a threat to America?  

Like cancer, tyranny metastasizes. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Soviet Union’s most famous writer, was a twice-decorated World War II Red Army commander. He made mild critical comments about Stalin’s conduct of the war in a private letter to a friend, and for this he was sentenced, not by a court, but in absentia by the NKVD, the secret police, to eight years in the Gulag Archipelago for “anti-Soviet propaganda.”  Not even Stalin had indefinite detention. The closest the Soviets came to this medieval practice resurrected by the Bush and Obama regimes was internal exile in distant parts of the Soviet Union.

During much of the Soviet era, even art, literature and music were scrutinized for signs of “anit-Soviet propaganda.”  America’s Dixie Chicks suffered a similar, but more frightening, fate. Bush did not need the NKVD.  The American public did the job for the secret police. Wikipedia reports:
“During a London concert ten days before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, lead vocalist Maines said ‘we don’t want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States (George W. Bush) is from Texas.’ The statement offended many Americans, who thought it rude and unpatriotic, and the ensuing controversy cost the band half of their concert audience attendance in the United States. The incident negatively affected their career and led to accusations of the three women being “un-American“, as well as hate mail, death threats, and the public destruction of their albums in protest.”
In Nazi Germany, the mildest criticism could bring a midnight knock at the door.

People with power use it.  And power attracts the worst kind of persons. As Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prove, democracies are not immune to the evil use of power. Indeed, identical inhumane treatment of prisoners goes on inside the US prison system for ordinary criminals.
 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8451.htm

A December 30, 2011, search on Yahoo for police brutality produced 20 million results.

Over-fed goon cop thugs taser little children and people in wheel chairs.  They body slam elderly grandmothers. The police are a horror. They represent a greater threat to citizens than do criminals.

Preventative war, indefinite imprisonment, rendition, torture of people alleged to be “suspects” (an undefined category), and assassination are all draconian punishments that require no evidence. Preventative war is an Orwellian concept.

How do you prevent a war by initiating a war?

How do we know that a country that did not attack us was going to attack us in the future?

Preventative war is like Jeremy Bentham’s concept of preventing crime by locking up those thought by the upper crust to be predisposed to criminal activity before they commit a crime. Punishment without crime is now the American Way.
The concepts that the Bush/Obama regimes have institutionalized are totally foreign to the Anglo-American concepts of law and liberty.  In one decade the US has been transformed from a free society into a police state.  The American population, to the extent it is aware of what has occurred, has simply accepted the revolution from the top.  

Ron Paul is the only American seeking the presidency who opposes the tyranny that has been institutionalized, and he is not leading in the polls. 
This tells us all we need to know about the value Americans place on liberty.

Americans seem to welcome the era of tyranny into which they are now entering.

Filed under World Tagged with , , , , , ,

Save Us from the Tyranny of Bankers

May 29, 2011

By Robert Chapman
International Forecaster
May 29, 2011

We hope all of our appearances on Greek TV, radio and in the press have helped the educational process and to allow the Greeks to identify who the real culprits are, and what to do about it. It has just been over a year since this tragedy became reality, but we reported on Greece and Italy ten years ago. They both bent the rules to enter the euro zone. We knew then that Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase were assisting them by creating credit default swaps. There were a few European journalist who reported on the issue, but the elitists control the media and few noticed that Greece and Italy were beyond bogus. The events of the past year remind us of the onslaught of the credit crisis, which unfortunately is still with us. What finally brought about trouble for Greece and other euro zone countries was the zero interest rate policy of the Fed and slightly higher rates by the EC. These policies encouraged speculation and caused problems that would have never happened otherwise. In addition, the stimulus measures by both banks were embarked upon to save the financial sectors and in that process promote speculation by the people who caused thee problems in the first place. That began with QE1 and stimulus 1, which we now recognize as our inflation drivers. Wait until QE2 and stimulus 2 appear next year. It will be very shocking.

Just to show you what a loser lower rates are just look at economic progress. There has been no recovery under either QE1 or QE2. Even 4.60% 30-year fixed rate mortgages have not encouraged people to buy homes. They are either broke or they don’t know whether they will be employed five-months or even one year from now, so how can they buy a house? Consumer spending is falling along with wages. The small gains you see are for the most part the result of higher inflation.

Growth moved from the fourth quarter of 2010 of 3.1% to 1.8% in the first quarter of 2011. We had forecast 2% to 2-1/2% growth for 2011. That is little to show for a minimum of $1.8 trillion spent in QE2 and stimulus 2. Without that we probably would have been at a minus 2%. Just think about that. Trillions of dollars spent with little results. Obviously such programs do not work very well. You would have thought the Fed would have found a better way after two such failures. They know what the solution is, but they won‘t put it into motion and that is to purge the system and face deflationary depression. That will happen whether they like it or not, but in the meantime the flipside is 10% inflation headed to 14% by yearend and another greater wave next year, and another in 2013. Unimpressive results is not the word for it. It has been a disaster and the Fed keeps right on doing it. As a result of the discounting of QE3 we wonder what the stock market has in store for us? We would think that a correction would be in the future. If that is so could that negatively affect the economy? Of course it could. All the good news coming, further stimulus by the Fed, will have been discounted. What does the Fed do for an encore? Create more money and credit – probably? Does that mean hyperinflation, of course it does. If the Fed stops the game is over. We are also seeing fewer results from additional stimulus. It is called the law of diminishing returns. In the meantime the dollar goes ever lower versus other currencies, but more importantly versus gold and silver.

If you can believe it, even though the Fed has provided financial flows and assisting speculative flows so Wall Street, banking and hedge funds can glean mega-profits, it still has not provided enough liquidity for additional GDP growth. The small and medium sized businesses have been shut out. The latter participants do not play those games, it is the propriety trading desks, hedge funds and the remainder of the leveraged speculating community that takes advantage of the excess liquidity and the Bernanke put of keeping bonds and stocks up artificially. The Fed and the others are sustaining this process. There are negatives for the Fed and their friends, higher commodity and gold and silver prices. The Fed and banks temporarily took care of that and haven’t quite finished their latest short-term foray in that sector. There are still fears as well regarding Greek debt fears and their CDS, Credit Default Swaps, and those of other euro zone members. They could still blow up in everyone’s faces in a partial if not total default, which is very likely. Banks are on the wrong side of this trade as well as the bond trade, not only with Greece, but with five other nations as well.

In the final analysis papering over the problem never works. The problems also reemerge with new additional problems. The combination of excessive speculation and liquidity and too big to fail is going to end badly, as it always has. De-leveraging will eventually rear its ugly head.

As we said, Greece and others could cause extensive bond and CDS problems and that is not only being reflected in a lower euro, but in higher Greek bond yields of 16-3/8% in their 10-year notes and 24-3/4% in two-year yields, and Portugal, Ireland and Spain are not far behind. The socialists just lost the latest election in Spain in a big way showing the public is fed up with the lies of government and the bankers. The euro is attempting to break $1.40 to the downside as a result of those election results and the Greek impasse. It is obvious that Greece cannot service its debt and reduce its deficit and the other deficient nations are in the same boat. The CDS marketplace would be severely disrupted if there were a sovereign debt default. That fear, of contagion, could be seen in higher rates in Spain, some .30%, the highest upward move this year. Greece, Ireland and Portugal have problems that can never be resolved and Spain, Italy and Belgium are not far behind.

Spain is implementing austerity, but that means like in recent weeks millions have demonstrated in 72 Spanish cities. The 17 autonomous regions have doubled their debt in the last 2-1/2 years. The socialists just did not know when to stop, now they are out of office. Spain is going down. There is no way they can sustain. That should bring the CDS situation front and center. It will also increase unemployment for those 18 to 35 to 40% or more. It is not surprising that half of the protestors were in that age group.

Greek PM George Papandreou, who secretly promised Europe’s elitists bankers that he would sell-off and or pledge Greek state assets, wants to sell stakes in Hellenic Telecommunications, Public Power Corp., Postbank, the ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki and their local water company. All supposedly worth $70 billion. The bankers, of course, say they are worth far less. They want to buy them for 10% to 20% of what they are worth – so what else is new. The Cabinet went along with the giveaway, as expected, and without a whimper. The EU is demanding all the assets be sold off immediately, so the bankers can buy them as cheaply as possible. The threat by the bankers is if you do not sell and sell fast for a pittance, then we won’t fund loans of $42 billion over the next 2-1/2 to 3 years. If not funded it would be “re-profiled” another new euphemism for default and debt restructuring, or perhaps debt extension.

Then there is the threat that the bankers, the ECB-European Central Bank for the Euro Zone, would refuse to supply the Greek banking system with any further liquidity. They would then admit their new word refilling would mean default. This would end with Greece leaving the euro zone and the euro and total default, the issuance of a new drachma at 50% of the value of the euro and perhaps even leaving the EU, the European Union. Jens Weidmann, the Bundesbank’s new president said no compromise on monetary stability and a correction back to normality and a full separation between monetary and fiscal policy. It is obvious to us that in spite of debt of $620 billion that Germany wants to cut Greece loose. The German voters said that in last month’s elections. The Germans should have accepted default for $0.50 on the dollar offered by the Greeks a year ago. Even if the Greeks sold $50 billion in assets it would be a drop in the bucket, when they cannot possibly pay off the remainder of the debt ever. This shows you how derelict the bankers and sovereign countries were in allowing this debt to be accumulated. In addition Goldman Sacks and JPMorgan Chase hid their problems, via credit default swaps and now these same banks and others want to loot the country.

Tuesday Jean-Claude Junker, chair of the euro zone finance ministers committee had to admit he lied about the secret meeting the bankers had concerning Greece. He is another who says Greece cannot pay its debt under its current debt burden. Both he, and Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, said that any partial or total default would put all of Europe and the euro in jeopardy. In fact, some of these apologists for banks, especially the Germans, have entertained having Germany control Greek budgets and collect taxes. That means you would have a financial SS running things not only in Greece, but also in Ireland and Portugal and eventually in Belgium, Spain and Italy.

It should be noted the ECB paid in capital $14 billion and they hold $183 billion in Greek debt. We would say the ECB is already insolvent. It could be the Ponzi scheme, much like that of the Fed’s will soon come to an end. Some believe that a 50% markdown is in store for Greek debt. That could have worked a year ago, but not low. It is 2/3’s or more of a write down. We can just imagine Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Belgium, Spain and Italy recapitalizing the ECB – forget it. This is why partial or full debt default are out of the question. Just to buy time the ECB will kick the can down the road as long as they can. Those six nations in trouble should all go back to their currencies, default by at least 2/3’s and leave the euro zone.

European bondholders with a 50% debt write off are offside $1.2 trillion for Greek, Portuguese and Irish debt. If we include Spain, Italy and Belgium the 50% write off is $846 billion. That should easily destroy the ECB and the euro zone. We predict that by October changes will have to be made not only in the EU and euro zone, but in the UK and US as well. The battle rages in the euro zone, EU, UK and in the US over overwhelming debt. The debts are all unpayable. This dance of debt could go on for 4 or 5 months. Even a temporary solution is not going to work. The debts are unpayable. Once the lending stops the bottom falls out. The same is true in the US. They cannot raise interest rates and neither can the UK and euro zone, and the issuance of money and credit can only lead to inflation and hyperinflation. The bankers and the politicians in the debtor countries have so enraged the public, and the public now knows what they are up too because of talk radio and the Internet, that we don’t believe there can be settlements. We’ll see by the end of October and perhaps much sooner. All one party or group has to say is forget it we are out of here, and the entire system blows up.

We have seen the extensive damage, as we predicted, that has been caused by one interest rate fits all, which led to a major misallocation of funds and malinvestment. Due to such low interest rates massive debt was accumulated. The EU’s answer is to usurp sovereignty and turn the entire mess over to technocrats, who will most certainly make matters worse.

Political currencies like the euro do not work. It is an unnatural cultural instrument designed to bring people of differing cultures together as one. The order envisioned by European elitists is total amalgamation of all nations at every level. What the professionals not included with the elitists don’t understand is that these Illuminists want world government, at any cost.

The insiders in Europe have realized their plan did not work and that the six countries involved have to be cut loose and the remainder has to stay with the euro. Whether this can be accomplished remains to be seen and we personally believe it is a lost cause. In this withdrawal process bankers and others are going to be exposed and the outcome will be jail time and forfeiture of ill-begotten gains.

Over the past 1-1/2 years we have witnessed a degenerative process in Greece and in other nations as well. The Greek president and his party does not have the votes to give away Greece’s assets to European bankers even though they promised to do so.

Antonis Samaras, opposition leader, is not going to allow that to happen. The standoff could last 4 to 5 months. No Greek property collateralization and severe austerity are not acceptable. Opposition support will not be forthcoming. The formula proposed by the bankers is the same one used by the IMF to loot countries and keep them in perpetual servitude and poverty.

Probably on orders from the bankers the present government has made no effort to restart the economy. Mr. Samaras has called for renegotiation of the bailout deal before anything meaningful can get underway or proceed. He also knows 62% of the voting public is behind what he recommends, and that only 15% are against. That is why a referendum would solidify his position. If PM Papandreou promised the bankers he would sell off Greek assets he should not have done that, because he doesn’t have the power to do so. Worse yet, now Alexis Tsipras of the Left Coalition is calling for Mr. Papandreou’s resignation. Tsipras said what Mr. Papandreou is doing is a crime against the Greek people.

Professors and experts are pushing for a referendum because they say what the PM is trying to do is illegal. Polls already show that 62% of the electorate is against using Greek national assets as collateral. Fifteen percent are for, which means 23% is undecided. The PM does not have a majority in Congress and he cannot win a referendum for the terrorist bankers. These problems could last for months. In the final analysis they will be a partial bankruptcy that could last a year or two. Ultimately such an arrangement won’t work.

We are very proud of Mrs. Theodorakis and Samaras as they save Greece from the tyranny of the bankers.

As an addendum Italy has public debt of 120% of GDP and compromise 17% of the euros total GDP, Spain is 12% and Greece, Ireland and Portugal 6%. If Italy or Spain goes bankrupt the euro is dead. Italy has had a slow economy for ten years.

The top 91 European banks carry $144 billion in Italian debt, or quadruple their holdings of Spanish debt, and 22 times the holdings of Irish debt. This number will give you an idea of the enormity of European bank debt. If the euro fails there will be in a heap of trouble.

We haven’t commented too much regarding the Fed’s secret advance of $30 billion to Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and the Royal Bank of Scotland, which is controlled by the Queen of England. This just shows you the Fed is a tool of major banks and in particular European Illuminists banks. There is no transparency unless it is demanded by court order. The Fed is supposed to be an agency of government, when in fact they are agents of the banks who own them. The Fed handed out free cash to their owners. The horror story goes on and the one and the only solution is the termination of the Fed.

Another feature this Friday was that Fitch cut its outlook for Japan to negative from stable, which was not unexpected due to the earthquake.

According to Goldman Sachs 2011 growth is not going to be 4.8% but 4.3%. UBS has cut their estimates from 3.9% to 3.6%. They also believe the market will remain stagnant.

Central banks are raising interest rates, China, India, the Philippines, Chile, Poland, Peru and Malaysia. Others like us are looking for worldwide growth this year of 3.5%.

Small gold and silver coins of one-ounce or less are becoming scarce in Europe. That condition is also moving up to bars.

The IRS, moving aggressively to collect more taxes from small businesses, is telling companies being audited to turn over exact copies of the electronic records kept in their business-software programs, according to a letter from an agency official to the American Institute of CPAs.

The accounting group fears this will force small businesses to turn over customer lists, personnel data, confidential client information and other unrelated information often contained in the off-the-shelf software programs many businesses use to manage all aspects of their finances.

Small-business groups are beginning to push back, saying the agency shouldn’t treat small firms like bigger businesses, which usually have elaborate accounting systems and are able to give the IRS only the data the agency seeks. Small businesses, defined by the IRS as those with assets of less than $10 million, often use one off-the-shelf software program such as QuickBooks or Peachtree. A spokesman for Intuit said the Mountain View, Calif., company “was aware that the IRS has purchased copies of small-business accounting software to use in its tax audits.” The IRS declined to comment.

“Many accountants are worried this could lead to fishing expeditions” to find problems beyond the scope of the requested information, said Danny Snow, a certified public accountant in Memphis who is active in the American Institute of CPAs, or AICPA. “It’s not like what the IRS asks of large companies.”

Orders for U.S. durable goods dropped more than forecast in April, reflecting less demand for aircraft and disruptions in supplies of auto parts stemming from the earthquake in Japan.

Bookings for goods meant to last at least three years fell 3.6 percent, the most since October, after a 4.4 percent jump in March, a Commerce Department report showed today in Washington. Economists projected a 2.5 percent drop in April, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey. A measure of demand for business equipment declined by the most this year.

Bookings for Boeing Co. aircraft slumped last month and vehicle makers slowed production due to a components shortage that may be short-lived as Japanese manufacturers recover. At the same time, rising overseas sales at Deere & Co. and General Electric Co. indicate factories will keep expanding.

There is “a slowing, but not a dramatic slowing in manufacturing,” Bricklin Dwyer, an economist at BNP Paribas in New York, said before the report. “The inventory rebuilding cycle has tapered off and now we have a normalization. Manufacturing will still be an important component of growth going forward.”

Orders excluding the volatile transportation equipment category decreased 1.5 percent in April after a 2.5 percent gain. The median projection in the Bloomberg survey was for a 0.5 percent rise.

Estimates of total durable goods orders in the Bloomberg survey of 81 economists ranged from a drop of 5.7 percent to a gain of 2 percent. Economists’ forecasts for orders excluding transportation ranged from a decline of 1.2 percent to an increase of 1.8 percent.

New orders for manufactured durable goods in April decreased $7.1 billion or 3.6% to $189.9 billion. Excluding transportation, new orders decreased 1.5%. Excluding defense, new orders decreased 3.6%. Transportation equipment, also down two of the last three months, had the largest decrease, $4.9 billion or 9.5% to $46.7 billion.

Inventories of manufactured durable goods in April, up sixteen consecutive months, increased $3.2 billion or 0.9% to $350.5 billion. This was at the highest level since the series was first published on a NAICS basis in 1992. Transportation equipment, also up sixteen consecutive months, had the largest increase, $1.0 billion or 1.0% to $106.1 billion. This was also at the highest level since the series was first published on a NAICS basis in 1992.

Slower economic activity drove rates on fixed-rate mortgages down for the sixth week in a row, Freddie Mac’s chief economist said on Thursday.

The 30-year fixed rate hasn’t been lower since early December. The loan averaged 4.6% for the week ending May 26, down from 4.61% last week and 4.84% a year ago.

Fifteen-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 3.78% this week, down from 3.8% last week and 4.21% a year ago. That loan’s rate hasn’t been lower since late November.

Rates on adjustable-rate mortgages also fell this week, with the 5-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage averaging 3.41% this week, down from 3.48% last week. The ARM averaged 3.97% a year ago.

And 1-year Treasury-indexed ARMs averaged 3.11% this week, down from 3.15% last week and 3.95% a year ago.

To obtain the rates, the fixed-rate mortgages required payment of an average 0.7 point, while the ARMs required payment of an average 0.5 point. A point is 1% of the mortgage amount, charged as prepaid interest.

“Fixed mortgage rates eased slightly for the sixth consecutive week amid reports of slower economic activity. The index of leading indicators fell 0.3% in April and represented the first monthly decline since June 2010,” said Frank Nothaft, vice president and chief economist of Freddie Mac, in a news release. “In addition, the Federal Reserve banks reported less business and manufacturing activity in Philadelphia, Chicago and Richmond.”

However, Nothaft said that house-price indexes may be nearing a bottom.

“On a national basis, prices fell 0.3% between February and March, which was the smallest decline since November 2009, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency. In addition, four of the nine Census Regions exhibited positive growth, compared to none in February.

“Separately, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported a further reduction in the serious delinquency rate (90 or more days plus foreclosures) in the first quarter, which stood at the lowest reading since the second quarter of 2009.”

Sales of homes in some stage of foreclosure declined in the first three months of the year, but they still accounted for 28 percent of all home sales a share nearly six times higher than what it would be in a healthy housing market.

Foreclosure sales, which include homes purchased after they received a notice of default or were repossessed by lenders, hit the highest share of overall sales in a year during the first quarter, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday.

“It’s an astronomically high number,” said Rick Sharga, a senior vice president at RealtyTrac. “In a normal market, you’re looking at the percentage of homes sold in foreclosure to be below 5 percent.”

In all, 158,434 homes in some stage of foreclosure were sold in the first quarter, down 16 percent from the last three months of 2010 and down 36 percent versus a year ago. Sales of all other types of homes also declined sharply, according to RealtyTrac’s figures, which differ from other home-sales estimates.

While the number of bank-owned properties sold declined, they grew as a share of all home sales. Bank-owned homes accounted for nearly 19 percent of all sales, up from 17 percent in the fourth quarter and up from 18 percent a year ago, the firm said.

That’s not good news for the housing market.

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