http://www.liveleak.com/browse?q=Oakland Wed, 19 Jun 2013 22:33:21 -0400 Liveleak http://edge.liveleak.com/80281E/u/u/ll2/logo.gif http://www.liveleak.com/browse?q=Oakland Wed, 19 Jun 2013 17:03:34 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ea8_1371675049 IdolHanz Fratricide? What happened regardless of the facts and circumstances in the Suisun Police shooting death of Police Volunteer Bernard Arrarao, it certainly reflects poorly upon the leadership and rank and file of the Department. Shame! A full accounting and narrative is in good order but none is forthcoming despite the fact the Chief is now suing the City and the Officers are suing the Chief! Several hours ago, I received a reverse 911 call from Cmdr. Mattos with him declaring a public safety emergency for the unabated continuing burglary and home invasion crime spree. I now say cut their money off, fire them all, demand a legislative inquiry into all of this---for starts. Lawsuits are coming that will further drain the budgets as our neighborhoods suffer from poor and biased policing, poor leadership decisions and disloyalty to citizens and taxpayers. Welcome to Oakland Richmond Vallejo Sewer Soon Shitty! http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ea8_1371675049 IdolHanz Sewer Soon City - Suisun Porkers Shoot Their Own Troop Dead! Suisun City, Sewer Soon City, Chief Ed Dashido, Commander Tim Mattos, Sergeant Ted Stec, Sergeant Andrew White, Mayor Pete Sanchez, California, Solano County, Solano Communist County, Councilman Mike Hudson, Councilman Mike Segala, Councilwoman Jane Day, Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:43:48 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d82_1371601986 Detroit Iron By Samuel Weigley, Alexander E. M. Hess and Michael B. Sauter 24/7 Wall St.com - 4 hours ago After falling for five consecutive years, the number of violent crimes across the United States rose by 1.2% in 2012. Based on data published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the increase was even greater in some of America's largest cities. In 2012, for the third year in a row, Flint, Michigan had the highest violent crime rate in the country. According to the FBI, violent crime includes murder, nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. In some cases, the cities with the highest violent crime rate, including Flint and Oakland, had high rates in all four categories. However, most of the most violent cities tend to do very poorly only in a few categories. Yahoo! Homes is publishing the five most dangerous cities, based on the FBI Uniform Crime Report via 24/7 Wall St. To see the rest of the top 10 most dangerous cities in America, visit 24/7 Wall St. online: http://247wallst.com/2013/06/13/the-most-dangerous-cities-in-america-3/ Crime in these cities is typically not limited to just violent crime. Three cities - Birmingham, St. Louis and Oakland - were among the 10 worst cities in the nation for both violent crime andproperty crime. In some of the most dangerous cities, specific types of property crime were especially common. Flint and Cleveland had among the highest burglary rates, while Oakland, Detroit and St. Louis had among the highest rates of vehicle theft. The economies of many of the most dangerous cities have been in bad shape for years, in some cases long before the Great Recession. The populations of many of the most dangerous cities declined, leaving behind highly impoverished urban centers. The loss of economic diversity, explained John Roman, senior fellow at the Urban institute, only serves to exacerbate crime in cities like Detroit, Flint, Cleveland and St. Louis. In fact, all the 10 most dangerous cities had poverty rates above the national rate of 15.9% in 2011. In half of these cities, more than 30% of the population lived in poverty. Detroit and Flint had poverty rates of more than 40%. "It is very clear that poverty in particular is associated with higher crime rates," explained Roman. However, the relationship between the two is less certain. It is "very difficult to say whether crime makes places poorer, or poverty causes more crime," Roman noted. In many of the nation's most dangerous cities, unemployment is also extremely high. Seven of the 10 cities with the highest levels of violent crime had unemployment rates above 10% in 2012, much higher than the national unemployment rate of 8.1% that year. In two cities, Detroit and Stockton, the unemployment rate was more than 18% last year. Low educational attainment also goes hand-in-hand with high crime rates. In all of the 10 most dangerous cities, the percentage of adults with a high school diploma was below the 86% national average. In five of these metro areas, the percentage of adults with a diploma was below 80%. On its website, the FBI instructs readers to avoid comparing city violence because rankings tend to be simplistic and ignore factors that influence crime, as well as the different ways crimes are measured and reported. For this reason, Roman cautioned against directly comparing cities based on their individual crime rates. However, because the cities with the highest and lowest violent crime rates have remained consistent for many years, he believes comparing city ranks was useful. Based on the FBI's Preliminary Annual Uniform Crime Report, 24/7 Wall St. identified the 10 U.S. cities with populations of 100,000 or more with the highest rates of violent crime per 100,000 residents. Using estimated populations and crime incidents from the FBI, which measures incidents of eight types of violent and nonviolent crime for 2012, 24/7 Wall St. calculated the incidence of the four types of violent crime per 100,000 persons for that year: murder, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault. In addition to crime data, 24/7 Wall St.reviewed median income and poverty rates for these cities from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey for 2011, the most recent available year. We also included average 2012 unemployment rates for these cities from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 5. Memphis, Tenn. &gt; Violent crimes per 100,000: 1,750.0 &gt; Population: 657,436 &gt; 2012 murders: 133 &gt; Poverty rate: 27.2% &gt; Percentage of adults with high school degree: 83.4% Memphis had the third highest rate of aggravated assault in 2012, with 1,151.9 cases per 100,000 residents. This was up from the 1,032.3 cases per 100,000 in 2011. The city'smurder rate of 20.2 per 100,000 people and robbery rate of 514.4 per 100,000 people were also up from 2011. The high levels of crime has people in the Memphis area feeling uneasy. According to a recent Gallup survey, roughly 43% of Memphis area residents reported feeling unsafe walking at night, the highest percentage of all the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the country and significantly higher than the 28% across the United States. 4. St. Louis, Mo. &gt; Violent crimes per 100,000: 1,776.5 &gt; Population: 318,667 &gt; 2012 murders: 113 &gt; Poverty rate: 27.0% &gt; Percentage of adults with high school degree: 83.9% There were 1,120.6 aggravated assaults per 100,000 people in St. Louis in 2012, higher than all but three other cities. Moreover, the murder rate of 35.5 cases per 100,000 was the fifth highest of all cities. Although St. Louis's violent crime was still among the highest in the country, it has improved. There were 80 less violent crimes per 100,000 people in 2012 compared to 2011 - the best improvement of any city on this list, with the drop mostly attributable to 106 less robberies per 100,000 people in 2012 compared to the previous year. Law enforcement officials attributed some of the drop to an increased police presence in high-crime neighborhoods. 3. Oakland, Calif. &gt; Violent crimes per 100,000: 1,993.1 &gt; Population: 399,487 &gt; 2012 murders: 126 &gt; Poverty rate: 21.0% &gt; Percentage of adults with high school degree: 79.9% There were 1,085.9 robberies per 100,000 residents in Oakland in 2012, higher than any other city. This was also significantly higher than the 851.2 robberies per 100,000 just a year earlier. The rates of murder and aggravated assaults also increased in 2012 compared to 2011. Violent crime was not the only issue in Oakland, either - there were 6,594 property crimes per 100,000 residents in 2012, more than all but eight other cities, and up from 5,287.9 in 2011. Crime in the city has increased ever since the city's police department went through a round of layoffs in 2010 due to $30.5 million deficit. 2. Detroit, Mich. &gt; Violent crimes per 100,000: 2,122.6 &gt; Population: 707,096 &gt; 2012 murders: 386 &gt; Poverty rate: 40.9% &gt; Percentage of adults with high school degree: 77.4% Detroit's murder rate of 54.2 per 100,000 residents was the second highest in the country last year. The homicide rate in Detroit, which included 386 criminal murders and an additional 25 justifiable homicides, reached the highest level in nearly 40 years. In addition, the city's aggravated assault rate of 1,320.8 cases per 100,000 people was also the second highest in the United States, although this was an improvement from the 1,333.6 cases per 100,000 residents in 2011. Detroit has struggled economically in recent years. The city's 2012unemployment rate was a whopping 18.6%, much higher than the 8.1% across the nation last year. The median household income of $25,193 was less than half the national median for 2011. 1. Flint, Mich. &gt; Violent crimes per 100,000: 2,729.5 &gt; Population: 101,632 &gt; 2012 murders: 63 &gt; Poverty rate: 40.6% &gt; Percentage of adults with high school degree: 82.9% With a staggering 2,729.5 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, no city had a higher violent crime rate than Flint. The city of just 101,632 people had 63 total murders and 1,930 aggravated assaults, both the highest relative to the city's population. Flint also had nationwide highs in burglary rates and arson per 100,000 people. The sheriff of Genesee County, where Flint is located, proposed a plan to create a violent crime mobile response unit that would cost $3 million. However, Governor Rick Snyder rejected the plan because he believed resources would be better "integrated into the ongoing efforts to make Flint safer." Like Detroit, Flint has suffered economically in recent years. The median household income was just $23,380 in 2011, the second-lowest of all 555 cities measured by the U.S. Census Bureau. To see the rest of the 10 most dangerous cities, visit 24/7 Wall St. online. http://homes.yahoo.com/news/the-most-dangerous-cities-in-america--2013-201732579.html http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d82_1371601986 Detroit Iron The most dangerous cities in America, 2013 Detroit, Flint, Oakland, Birmingham, St. Louis, Cleveland, et al Mon, 17 Jun 2013 23:47:16 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e42_1371526511 Fine_Just_Fine Last Update: 6/13/2013 Quick Introduction: This thread is for keeping track of the various anti-gun bills working its way through the California legislature. As of the May 31st deadline for bills to be passed out of their house of origin, the bills listed below are still pending, all of which we OPPOSE . The others are inactive or failed to pass for one reason or another, and although they're bound to show up again soon, we need to focus our efforts on the most pressing issues. To understand more of how the California legislative process works, read this: How Things Work in **California** - Bills, Laws, Legislators ASSEMBLY BILLS (Now pending in the Senate) AB-48 (Skinner) : Bans magazine rebuild kits and requires reporting purchases of 3,000 rounds or more of ammo. Status: Senate-In Committee Process-Public Safety Last amended 5/24/13 AB-169 (Dickinson) : Bans transfer of handguns not on the "not unsafe handgun" roster. Status: Senate-In Committee Process-Appropriations AB-170 (Bradford) : Redefines "person" for Assault Weapons permits. Status: Senate-In Committee Process-Appropriations AB-180 (Bonta) : Additional firearms restrictions in Oakland. Status: Senate-In Committee Process-Public Safety AB-231 (Ting) : Criminal liability when child accesses firearm in your home. Status: Senate-In Committee Process-Public Safety AB-500 (Ammianno) : Extends time period for background checks, secure storage requirements when living with prohibited person. Status: Senate-In Committee Process-Public Safety Last amended 5/24/13 AB-711 (Rendon) : Lead ammo ban. Status: Senate-In Committee Process-Appropriations Last amended 6/12/13 - regulations to be promulgated by July 2015, fully implemented by July 2018 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- SENATE BILLS (Now pending in the Assembly) SB-47 (Yee) : Bans Bullet Buttons. Status: Assembly-Pending Referral SB-53 (de Leon) : Requires ammo purchase "authorizations" recorded in a separate state database, requires all ammunition transactions to go through state-licensed ammunition vendors (including Internet purchases), records details of all ammunition purchases. Status: Assembly-Pending Referral SB-108 (Yee) : Mandatory locked storage of firearms when away from home. Status: Assembly-Pending Referral SB-293 (DeSaulnier) : Bans conventional handguns without owner authorization/"smart" gun technology. Status: Assembly-Pending Referral SB-299 (DeSaulnier) : Mandatory loss reporting of firearms within 48 hours. Status: Assembly-Pending Referral SB-374 (Steinberg) : Bans all semiautomatic rifles that does not have a fixed magazine, forced registration of rifles already owned. Status: Assembly-Pending Referral SB-396 (Hancock) : Ban and confiscation of magazines that are or was at one time capable of holding more than ten rounds (including 10/30 magazines). Status: Assembly-Pending Referral SB-567 (Jackson) : Expands definition of shotgun to include rifled barrels and those not designed to be fired from the shoulder. Status: Assembly-Pending Referral SB-683 (Block) : Requires firearms safety certificate for purchasing any firearm. Status: Assembly-Pending Referral SB-755 (Wolk) Expands definition of prohibited persons. Status: Assembly-Pending Referral The legislature goes on summer recess on July 12, and reconvenes on August 12. The next major deadline after that is September 13 , though in some cases that has been "extended" under the guise that it is not the next day yet. All Senate bills (SBs) must be passed by the Assembly before this deadline, and all Assembly bills (ABs) must be passed by the Senate before this deadline. Governor Jerry Brown then has until October 13 to sign or veto the passed bills. If he takes no action, then the bill becomes the law. Please write, e-mail, fax, and/or call your Assembly Member to oppose these Senate Bills, and your Senator to oppose these Assembly Bills (use the link in my sig to find your representatives).__________________ Contact your Assembly Member and Senator to voice your opposition to the Intolerable Bills! http://www.calguns.net/calgunforum/showthread.php?t=776966 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e42_1371526511 Fine_Just_Fine CALIFORNIA GUN OWNERS: Status of New California Gun Legislation as of June 16, 2013 California, CA., gun laws, second amendment, democrats, gun grabbers, Flee the PRK Mon, 17 Jun 2013 20:50:28 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=24b_1371516460 Detroit Iron By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC NewsFor a guy who's been dead since 1975, Jimmy Hoffa really gets around. Through the years, tipsters have insisted the Teamsters boss - who vanished from a suburban Detroit restaurant - was laid to rest in the swamps of Florida, under the artificial turf of Giants Stadium and more than a dozen other spots. Monday, the feds were digging up a field in Oakland Township, Mich., with new designs on finding Hoffa's remains and solving the mystery of his disappearance. Here are some of the places where the labor leader has been rumored to be spending eternity: Giants Stadium: A mob informant told the FBI in 1986 that Hoffa was killed by an Irish gangster in a Detroit suburb and buried in an end zone near section 107 of the football field. Stadium officials said they they dug four feet down while replacing artificial turf and didn't find any trace of Hoffa. The stadium was demolished in 2010. General Motors' headquarters: Hoffa's onetime driver, Marvin Elkind, told a Canadian journalist that a Detroit mobster revealed the final resting place in 1985 when he walked past the GM building, known as the Renaissance Center, nodded toward the massive foundation and said, "Say good morning to Jimmy Hoffa, boys." Driveway in Roseville, Mich.: Acting on a tip, authorities used radar last September to inspect the driveway of a private home and saw something that made them want a closer look. Police drilled for soil samples but experts found no sign of human decomposition in the dirt. Sheraton Hotel on Wilmington Island, Ga.: A Teamsters pension fund owned this property near Savannah when Hoffa vanished, so it's been dogged by rumors that he was laid to rest under the helipad. "It's had a colorful past," a developer who converted it into condos once said. A dump in Jersey City, N.J.: Authorities spent several days in 1975 digging up a mob-linked waste facility after a tipster claimed Hoffa could be found there, a 55-gallon drum serving as a his coffin. They didn't find anything but animal bones. Wexler's Tavern in Cleveland: The owner of the watering hole was doing some renovation work last month when he made an intriguing find: bone fragments and a matchbook from the Palm Desert Lodge in California, which had strong ties to Hoffa. But pathologists determined the remains were not human. Florida Everglades: An ex-hitman who said he was Hoffa's bodyguard told a Senate committee in 1982 that Hoffa's body was ground up and stuffed in a steel drum that was then dumped in the Sunshine State's gator-infested wetlands. A Japanese-made car: A 2006 book claimed that a convicted hitman confessed before his death that he knifed Hoffa to death, took the body to New Jersey, burned it in a steel barrel, dumped the remains in a car that was compressed into a hunk of metal and sent to Japan to be used in new vehicles, the Detroit News reported. Incinerator in Hamtramck, Mich.: A Pennsylvania Teamsters official purportedly confessed on his deathbed that he flew to Pontiac, Mich., to collect Hoffa's body from his killers and then had it burned. The same source, Frank Sheeran, supposedly also told an author he shot Hoffa at a Detroit home, but blood found there in 2004 was not a match. Pool in Hampton Township, Mich.: A convicted murderer who had already led cops to one body in his home claimed they could find Hoffa under an above-ground pool there. So in July 2003, a backhoe dug up the yard while the tipster watched in shackles, but nothing was found. Tire-shredding plant in Hamtramck, Mich.: A 1978 book posited that Hoffa's corpse was disposed of at Central Sanitation Services, once owned by organized crime figures. The FBI said at the time they looked into that theory and discounted it. Horse farm in Milford, Mich.: The FBI spent 14 days looking for Hoffa at the 89-acre Hidden Dreams Farm after a 75-year-old prison inmate who once worked there claimed he witnessed the burial. That story, like so many others, turned out to be a pile of manure. http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/17/19006027-jimmy-hoffas-rumored-resting-places-from-the-everglades-to-the-end-zone?lite http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=24b_1371516460 Detroit Iron Jimmy Hoffa's rumored resting places, from the Everglades to the end zone Jimmy Hoffa, FBI Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:26:16 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=259_1371481497 Donegal http://www.vietnamgraffiti.com/vietnam-graffiti-messages The story of the Gen. Nelson M. Walker troopship began in 1997, when military artifact historian Art Beltrone first visited the "Ghost Fleet" on the James River in Virginia to assist with research for the World War II movie, The Thin Red Line. Once aboard the aging vessel, Beltrone found crowded troop compartments littered with hundreds of graffiti-marked bunk canvases, bulletin boards, and other historic artifacts left not by WWII troops headed for war in the Pacific, but by soldiers going to war in Southeast Asia a generation later. Beltrone's discovery led to extensive research about the Walker, which was first commissioned in 1945 and saw service in WWII, the Korean War, and Vietnam. Many of the artifacts, thanks to the work of the Beltrones, have been rescued from the ship and are now relocated in museums throughout the U.S., including the new National Museum of the United States Army, the Oakland Museum of California, and the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=259_1371481497 Donegal Vietnam Graffiti: Messages from a forgotten Troopship - Ghost Fleet: James River - Virginia USA, Vietnam, James River, Ghost Fleet, Virginia, G.I, Marines, Military, Sun, 16 Jun 2013 11:10:32 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e63_1371395049 Cooperkevin65 Tampa Bay Rays right-hander Alex Cobb was taken off the field on a stretcher after he was hit on the right ear by a liner off the bat of Kansas City's Eric Hosmer in the fifth inning of Saturday's game. Cobb put a hand on his head after being struck. Trainers from both teams and other medical staff immediately ran onto the field. Cobb could be seen kicking his legs while being examined on the mound. The Rays announced that Cobb remained conscious the whole time and was taken to Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg for further examination. Rays spokesman Rick Vaughn said all tests were normal and that Cobb suffered a mild concussion. Players on both teams had hands on their heads as a stunned silence overtook Tropicana Field after the crowd gasped when Cobb was struck. It came a month after Blue Jays starter J.A. Happ was also struck by a liner against the Rays and suffered a skull fracture. Happ was discharged from an area hospital the following day. The sound of the ball striking Cobb -- which sounded like a bat hitting a ball -- could be heard in the press box. Rays players, manager Joe Maddon and pitching coach Jim Hickey gathered at the mound during the 11-minute delay. Shortstop Yunel Escobar was in squatting position looking down at the ground, while Hickey appeared at time at be nervously pacing near the mound. It has been a tough week for Cobb, who left the team after starting Monday night's game against Boston due to the death of his grandmother. He was informed of the death after the game in which the 25-year old gave up a season-high six runs over four innings in a 10-8, 14-inning loss to the Red Sox. While Happ has been fine since getting hurt, Arizona's Brandon McCarthy collapsed at a restaurant with a seizure related to the head injury he sustained while pitching last September. He was having dinner with his wife at a Phoenix restaurant when he passed out. While pitching for Oakland last Sept. 5, McCarthy sustained what was described at the time as life-threatening injuries when he was struck in the head by a line drive off the bat of Erick Aybar of the Los Angeles Angels. He had an epidural hemorrhage, brain contusion and a skull fracture. Emergency surgery was performed that night and he was released from the hospital six days later. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e63_1371395049 Cooperkevin65 Rays starter Alex Cobb was taken off the field on a stretcher after he was struck in the head by a line drive Saturday. Injury,Ouch Fri, 14 Jun 2013 12:13:00 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b37_1371224950 IgorDeal Officials identified him as Oakland man Yeiner Garizabalo, 24, whom friends say is an acrobat and had been performing with a circus troupe prior to his bizarre "breakdown." Garizabalo was taken for a psych evaluation, and later charged with misdemeanor battery. BART officials say they're requesting an order to ban him from their stations. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b37_1371224950 IgorDeal Naked acrobat terrorizes BART riders WTF, naked, crazy Fri, 31 May 2013 18:31:45 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=92d_1370039318 dingledd Authorities are looking to identify a person caught on surveillance video dumping a severely injured German Shepherd at the doorstep of the Oakland Animal Shelter. The dog is probably 6 to 7 years old and dumped shortly after midnight Thursday. The dog has been abused so badly and is in so much pain that veterinarians fear they will have to put her down. Officials say the dog's kidneys are failing and that her organs are shutting down. nbcbayarea.com http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=92d_1370039318 dingledd <span class="highlight">Oakland</span> Police - Abused dog dumped at shelter oakland,police,abused,dog,shelter,cruelty,chained Fri, 31 May 2013 01:39:37 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=aab_1369978599 nonad Very cool of them to save this doggie. They brought her back to life. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=aab_1369978599 nonad Dog Rescued from House Fire in <span class="highlight">Oakland</span> dog rescued from house fire, oakland, california Tue, 11 Jun 2013 08:01:10 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1dc_1370950854 NukeMeSlowly "The number one lesson when it comes to gun safety is that a gun is not a toy. However, there are some cases where guns are, in fact, toys, and one California elementary school is doing its best to keep those toy guns out of the hands of kids. On Saturday, Strobridge Elementary School in Hayward is holding a toy gun exchange program where students can trade in their toy guns in for books and the chance to win a new bicycle. "Playing with toys guns, saying 'I'm going to shoot you,' desensitizes them, so as they get older, it's easier for them to use a real gun ," Strobridge Principal Charles Hill told the San Jose Mercury News. "Some of the guns I've confiscated, if they're stuck down in a waistband, the average person would think it's a real gun," he continued. "I could easily see one of our sixth-graders wanting to fake out someone at a 7-Eleven by walking in there . They would think it's funny, but it could turn into tragedy." This effort is modeled off of gun buyback programs where actual firearms can be traded in for cash, which have become increasingly common in the wake of last year's tragic Sandy Hook shooting. Late last year, the cities of San Francisco and Oakland teamed up to for a gun buyback program that netted hundreds of weapons. Toy gun exchanges have been occurring intermittently around the country for a few years now. In 2011, popular Newark, New Jersey mayor Corey Booker hosted the violence-plagued city's first toy gun exchange , which was marred when a man accidentally shot himself a few blocks away. While a missile launcher was turned in during a Seattle gun buyback program in January, the only missiles that are likely going to be involved in this weekend's efforts will be made by Nerf." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/07/toy-gun-exchange_n_3405158.html http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1dc_1370950854 NukeMeSlowly Elementary school in California offers a toy gun buyback program toy guns, firearms, nerf, left coast rationality, your children are going to be metro flop noodles Thu, 06 Jun 2013 08:18:52 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=fd2_1370520861 Detroit Iron Robert Stacy McCain President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's most powerful assistant was a "conscious Soviet agent," according to a new book that details how Harry Hopkins and others in FDR's administration revealed U.S. secrets - and influenced American policy - to help Josef Stalin's Communist dictatorship. Hopkins went so far as to alert Soviet officials about FBI surveillance that had discovered a Communist agent's role in what proved to be the U.S.S.R.'s plan to steal atom-bomb secrets from the Manhattan Project, author Diana Westexplains in her new book, American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character . "If Harry Hopkins, the top aide to President Roosevelt, was indeed a conscious agent ... what does this say about Roosevelt?" West said Tuesday, describing the "implications" of Hopkins's role in shaping FDR's domestic and foreign policy agenda. "History as we know it completely unravels." Since the 1990s, when the U.S. declassified its "Venona" decodings of secret Soviet cable messages, several Cold War historians have suspected that Hopkins was the agent identified in the cables as "Source 19," who in 1943 provided the Kremlin with details of a private top-secret conversation between Roosevelt and British Prime MinisterWinston Churchill. No official in FDR's White House had as much access to the President as Hopkins, and West's book cites extensive evidence from both Russian and U.S. sources to chronicle Hopkins's role as the most influential of those who pushed American policy in a pro-Soviet direction during Roosevelt's presidency. Known to history primarily as an architect of FDR's New Deal economic policies, Hopkins died in 1946, before investigations of Communist subversion and espionage exposed traitors like State Department official Alger Hiss and atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. As director of Lend-Lease policy, Hopkins's pro-Soviet leanings were no secret during World War II, when the U.S. was allied with the U.S.S.R. against Hitler's Germany, and an August 1943 article in the New Yorker described Hopkins as "an articulate propagandist for all-out aid to the Russians." Yet the presidential aide's influence became the subject of controversy in 1949, when a U.S. Army officer who had worked in the Lend-Lease program, Maj. George R. Jordan, testified to Congress that wartime shipments to Russia approved by Hopkins included uranium and other materials necessary to the development of atomic weapons. Jordan testified that the Soviets also used Lend-Lease shipments to smuggle back to Moscow classified U.S. documents about the top-secret Manhattan Project. Much of Jordan's testimony about the flow of stolen secrets to Moscow was corroborated by Victor Kravchenko, a Soviet official who defected in 1944 - and whom Hopkins unsuccessfully sought to have handed back over to the Russians. Further evidence indicating Hopkins's status as a Soviet agent emerged in the 1990s with the defection of KGB agentOleg Gordievsky, the declassification of the Venona decryptions, and the publication of KGB documents smuggled out of Russia by former Soviet intelligence officer Vasili Mitrokhin. In a 1990 book, Gordiesvsky said that a top KGB official, Iskhak Akhmerov, described Hopkins as "the most important of all Soviet wartime agents in the United States." "Defenders of Hopkins have been trying to dance around it ever since," said conservative author M. Stanton Evans, who last year published Stalin's Secret Agents: The Subversion of Roosevelt's Government , co-authored with former U.S. counter-intelligence expert Herbert Romerstein. Evans said in a telephone interview that Romerstein, who died last month, "said definitively that Hopkins was a Soviet agent." Despite the post-Cold War revelations, many biographers and historians continue "whitewashing" Hopkins's record, Evans said. Controversy is likely to continue because unlike those Evans calls "slam dunk cases" like Hiss and other Roosevelt administration figures including Lauchlin Currie and Harry Dexter White - where the Venona messages and other proof clearly identifies them as Soviet agents - the evidence pointing to Hopkins as "Source 19'' is subject to interpretation. Other possibilities, including State Department official Laurence Duggan, have been suggested as "Source 19," although Evans said, "I don't buy it." Some have argued that Hopkins was an unwitting agent who didn't realize he was being used by Stalin to influence U.S. policy. However, Evans noted Hopkins's connections to other known or suspected Soviet agents, including his onetime assistant David Niles, who was mentioned in the Venona cables as helping two KGB agents obtain U.S. visas. But perhaps the most damning evidence is how Hopkins tipped the Soviets in 1943 to the FBI's surveillance of Communist espionage activity. A confidential message from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, reproduced in West's new book, told Hopkins that a "continuing" investigation had discovered that Russian diplomat (and Comintern agent) Vasily Zarubin had made a payment to U.S. Communist Party official Steve Nelson to help place espionage agents "in industries engaged in secret war production ... so that information could be obtained for transmittal to the Soviet Union." This information had come from a "bug" at Nelson's home in Oakland, California, through which the FBI first learned of the Soviet effort (code-named "Enormous") to obtain the atomic secrets of the Manhattan Project. Instead of warning President Roosevelt, however, Hopkins "privately warned the Soviet embassy in Washington that the FBI had bugged a secret meeting" between Nelson and Zarubin, according to documents from the KGB archives smuggled out by Mitrokhin. West's new book - praised by Evans as "explosive" - extends far beyond Hopkins to survey not only the history of Soviet penetration of the American government in the 1930s and '40s, but also the intense effort to prevent exposure of the secret agents who served Stalin's dictatorship while on the U.S. payroll. That effort has continued even after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the revelations from Russian and American sources that confirm the testimony of such ex-Communist witnesses as Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley. "While this story is political and historical, it is also moral and cultural," West said. "Not only is there is a major rewrite of history in order, there are some major wrongs that need to be righted - wrongs to our great witnesses and investigators, our truth-tellers, including of course Sen. Joe McCarthy. Only in this way, I believe, do we get a chance at returning even just closer to a moral universe of right and wrong, black and white, truth and lie." Like McCarthy, who has been demonized as a "witch hunter," others who told the truth about Communism were smeared and dishonored, West said, while Soviet agents who betrayed their country are celebrated as heroes. "Is there a statue to Bentley at her alma mater Vassar? ... Of course not. There is, however, the Alger Hiss Professor of Social Studies at Bard College." This history "is not taught to Americans and is not known to Americans," West said, because "the people who do know it would never be permitted to teach it on our campuses." West said the resulting distortions of history have consequences. "There is also an urgent relevance in terms of current national security," West said. "The lies about Communism and Communist influence operations then and the lies about Islam and Islamic influence operations now are striking, as I note throughout the book. The most frightening aspects of this are not due to the challenges posed by staving off threats to liberty from another collectivist totalitarian ideology, but rather by the greater threat posed by the spectacle of the U.S. government lying to the American people about Islam today as it once lied about Communism." http://www.viralread.com/2013/06/05/top-fdr-aide-hopkins-was-soviet-agent-book-examines-betraya l/ Harry Hopins (left) with Soviet dictator Josef Stalin at a 1943 wartime conference in Tehran, iran. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=fd2_1370520861 Detroit Iron Top FDR Aide Hopkins Was Soviet Agent communism, Communist Party, Diana West, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Hopkins, Josef Stalin Wed, 05 Jun 2013 21:34:24 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1bc_1370482308 Detroit Iron Posted 07:01 PM ET Scandal: IRS profiling of Tea Party groups was endorsed by Democrats who ignored tax-exempt groups funded by billionaire backer George Soros and others who encouraged this assault on democracy and the Constitution. Rep. Jim McDermott has made it official that Democrats who don't support efforts to enhance border security on the grounds it means ethnic profiling do support federally backed, taxpayer-funded profiling of Tea Party groups based on their political and religious beliefs. To make it worse, like the rape victim who is told she wore suggestive clothing, McDermott, D-Wash., pointed his finger at representatives of targeted groups at Tuesday's hearing and told them in essence that they had it coming and brought it on themselves by exercising their First Amendment rights. The next time the IRS asks what we read, the response should be "the United States Constitution." Interestingly, the finger-pointing Democrats who were given the opportunity to call representatives of liberal or progressive groups that were similarly targeted did not because they could not. No group with "hope," "change," "forward" or "progressive" was targeted. On the contrary, some groups, like those funded by Soros, enjoy tax-exempt status as they work to aid in the fundamental transformation of America. Both the Human Rights Campaign ($2,716,328) and ProPublica ($300,000) are Soros-funded. The IRS released the confidential donor lists of the National Organization for Marriage to the liberal Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)3 organization. This is a felony punishable by five years in a federal prison. At that time, Joe Solmonese, a left-wing activist and Huffington Post contributor, was the president of the HRC. Solmonese was also a 2012 Obama campaign co-chairman. The Huffington Post used the confidential documents to publish a story questioning Mitt Romney's support for traditional marriage. ProPublica, a liberal nonprofit news investigative website, received copies of applications from 31 conservative nonprofits from the IRS in November 2012, including nine that had not yet been approved and thus were not supposed to be made public. Americans United for Change (AUFC) enjoys 501(c)4 tax-exempt status. The group exists, its own website says, "to amplify the progressive message - to contribute to a grass-roots groundswell for progressive policies." It directly engaged Republican senators facing reelection in 2008, running TV ads against them. Soros-connected MoveOn PAC reported contributions of $305,171 in 2006 to AUFC, another $150,000 in 2008 and back up to $300,000 in 2010, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Yet it was never targeted for trying to change the political landscape. The Soros-funded Ruckus Society is a 501(c)3 organization that is part of the Occupy Movement. Its mission statement is to provide the tools, training and support needed to achieve its goals through the strategic use of "creative, nonviolent" direct action. What it supports is criminal trespass and was heavily involved in attempts to shut down the Port of Oakland. The IRS targeting of Tea Party groups can be traced in part back to a series of letters that the liberal groups Campaign Legal Center (CLC) and Democracy 21 sent to the IRS back in 2010 and 2011. Both groups were funded by Soros' Open Society Foundations. The CLC received $677,000 and Democracy 21 $365,000 from the Soros-backed foundation, according to the Foundation's 990 tax forms. Alabama Tea Party leader Becky Gerritson is not a Hungarian-born billionaire whose network of tax-favored organizations routinely funds political activity including attempts to put grass-roots organizations such as hers out of business. "I want to protect and preserve the America that I grew up in, the America that people cross oceans and risk their lives to become part of, and I am terrified that it is slipping away," Gerritson, who described herself as a "born-free American woman," told Congress and the American people. Sometimes, so are we. Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/060513-658978-soros-groups-escaped-irs-special-scrutiny.htm#ixzz2VOayWFlc Follow us: @IBDinvestors on Twitter InvestorsBusinessDaily on Facebook http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1bc_1370482308 Detroit Iron Soros Groups Dodged Scrutiny, Pushed Tea Party Profiling Tea Party, IRS, George Soros