Feds: Drugs made at kosher meat plant:
Federal authorities charged that a methamphetamine laboratory was operating at the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse and that employees carried weapons to work.
In a 60-page application for a search warrant, federal agents revealed details of their six-month probe of Agriprocessors. The investigation involved 12 federal agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the departments of labor and agriculture.
According to the application, a former plant supervisor told investigators that some 80 percent of the workforce was illegal. They included rabbis responsible for kosher supervision, who the source believed entered the United States from Canada without proper immigration documents. The source did not provide evidence for his suspicion about the rabbis.
The Des Moines Register has written many reports that provide details not found elsewhere. In who and what they quote many of the reports are as biased in favor of the invaders as any other mainstream source. See their Related Stories links. They’re not all bad. I’ll highlight just a few things I think stand out.
Claims of ID fraud lead to largest raid in state history:
Father Nils Hernandez of the Immaculate Conception Parish in Cedar Rapids came to Waterloo after he heard about the raid.
“This is inhumane,” he said.
The article implies the padre was speaking about the raid, which by other accounts was perfectly civilized. A large number of invaders with children were immediately released. Contrast this treatment with the persecution and injustice the Feds have recently inflicted on FLDS families.
In Postville the inhumane people are the criminal alien employers greedily exploiting mostly latino alien invaders and lording their wealth and power over the natives:
Another plant worker told federal officials that undocumented workers were paid $5 an hour for their first few months before receiving a pay increase to $6 per hour. The minimum wage in Iowa is $7.25 an hour.
Company officials could not be reached for comment. The plant, which produces kosher and nonkosher meats, opened in 1987 when butcher Aaron Rubashkin and about 200 Hasidic Jews from New York took over a defunct meatpacking plant. Hasidic Jews follow strict laws. It is a branch of Orthodox Judaism.
The Jews’ arrival turned Postville, a community of 2,273 people on the Allamakee-Clayton county border in northeast Iowa, into one of Iowa’s most ethnically diverse.
Emphasis mine. See my SchoolDigger-related comments below.
The governor said federal officials reassured his staff that those arrested and detained will have their rights protected. He also emphasized the importance of enforcing immigration laws.
“I have said before that I believe it is important that we crack down on illegal immigration,” Culver said. “Illegal means illegal, not just those that are crossing the border illegally, but also those who are responsible for helping to make it happen.”
Say governor, besides “illegal means illegal”, would it also be fair to say that “20 years of illegal means corruption”? Should not those in government responsible for letting this go on so long also pay?
Critics, including former Gov. Tom Vilsack, accused federal officials of violating the workers’ Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures. Federal agents also were criticized for separating parents from their children.
In Postville, ICE spokesman Harold Ort said that the children of anyone detained would be cared for, and that “their caregiver situation will be addressed.
“They were asked multiple times if they have any sole-caregiver issues or any child-care issues,” he said.
Forty Agriprocessors workers were later released, with supervision, “on humanitarian grounds,” said Dummermuth, the U.S. attorney.
“They assured us the kids were going to be taken care of,” said Postville Mayor Robert Penrod.
Penrod said a majority of townspeople understand the plant’s role in the Postville economy, while a small number would cheer the raid.
“There’s people who hate the Hispanics, and there’s people who don’t like the Jews and would like to run them out of town,” he said.
This moralizing, like most of the “arguments” made against this and other raids, is ridiculously skewed. It considers the alien interests superior to those of the natives.
First, anyone who really cares about the Constitution should recognize that by not protecting our country from invasion federal officials at the very highest levels have, for a long time now, failed to uphold their oaths to protect the Constitution and their country’s citizens. They are actively committing treason. Appeals to the Fourth Amendment are specious.
Second, anyone who really cares about the welfare of the invaders should focus their resentment on the employers who exploit them. Nobody is forcing the employers to pay subpar wages and provide substandard working conditions. They do it because they are greedy, and in doing so flout immigration, employment, safety, and tax laws. The poor undocumented migrant sob stories would never happen if the Feds enforced our laws. Government officials are guilty of not keeping the invaders out. They are guilty of waiting 20 years to crack down on Agriprocessors. That is their crime.
Third, native families and children are human beings. They pay taxes. They obey the laws. They work hard. Equalitarians and egalitarians belie their professed beliefs and demonstrate their disregard for natives when they so lopsidedly devote their concern and sympathy to invaders and aliens.
When we natives see our representatives, the people we pay taxes to, who are supposed to enforce our laws, instead give priority to the interests of aliens, we are naturally outraged. It makes us wonder why we pay taxes and obey the law. At the same time, the aliens who break our laws suffer little consequence and are thereby emboldened to ever more lawless and anti-social behavior, further harming and incensing the natives.
Immigration raid: biggest kosher meatpacker started by Jews in 1987:
Shutting down production at the plant will have a significant impact on the kosher meat sales, said Menachem Lubinsky, chief executive of Luicom Marketing and editor of KosherToday.
“They are a major supplier to retail establishments all over the world,” Lubinsky said.
The company processes and packages kosher meat and poultry products under the brand Aaron’s Best that it supplies to small grocery stores and meat markets across the United States. The company also processes non-kosher meat products including Iowa Best Beef.
Agriprocessors also operates a meatpacking plant in Gordon, Neb., called Local Pride LLC, which the Rubashkins opened in 2005.
The Rubashkins, Hasidic Jews from Brooklyn, N.Y., came to Postville in the late 1980s and created Agriprocessors, a kosher meatpacking plant run by observant Jews.
The Rubashkins have been in the kosher meat business since Aaron Rubashkin immigrated to the United States in 1952. Rubashkin and his sons, Sholom and Heshy, relocated their business to Iowa to be closer to livestock supplies. The company bought the former HyGrade meat processing plant in Postville in 1987.
Agriprocessors, Aaron’s Best, Iowa Best Beef, Local Pride. Check. If you buy these brands you’re aiding and abetting the exploitation of poor undocumented migrants. Stop it.
Lubinsky is (or was as late as 2005, see below) Agri’s paid PR guy. Honest, professional reporters should investigate and mention things like that, right?
– – –
Whenever I’m curious about the “diversity” of a community I find SchoolDigger very useful. Schooldigger, unlike census data, is finer-grained in time and space, and less prone to undercounting invaders, at least the asian and latino ones. SchoolDigger also offers graphs that reveal trends over the last 20 years, and make it crystal clear what “diversity” really means. From what I’ve seen “diversity” often means “pure latino, coming soon”. It almost always means “less White”. Therefore when the Des Moines Register writer and so many other invasion supporters celebrate diversity they’re celebrating one race getting pushed out and replaced with another. They seem so eager to perpetrate this “diversity” that they don’t care if it involves massive violation of laws. They are celebrating ethnic cleansing.
See Alain Leroy Locke Senior High for example, where latinos and blacks recently brawled. A glimpse at the SchoolDigger graph conveys a better understanding of what’s going on in that school’s neighborhood than any politically correct newspaper article.
The people writing these PC articles, like Alan Abramowitz, think so poorly of Whites that even when there are no overt signs of racism they consider it perfectly acceptable to conceive poisonous imaginary crimes like symbolic racism. Thus they can continue to demonize and scapegoat us until we are completely gone. They never express any concern about the very concrete anti-White racism that, for example, transforms peaceful White towns like Postville into alien-dominated scofflaw enclaves. That transformation, and the racist “diversity” mentality driving it and protecting it, is something to celebrate.
Look again at the Alain Leroy Locke graph. Look at the graph for Postville’s Cora B Darling school to the right. Look up the schools in places you care about. These graphs don’t reflect the imaginary or “symbolic” ravings of a paranoid anti-White journalist. They reflect very real ethnic cleansing. A displacement of people that is as real and tangible as racism gets.
The apologia, the disinformation, the disregard for corruption, and the outright denial of the illegitimate nature of this demographic shift – all of it coming from invasion supporters – makes the accusation of genocide both reasonable and justifiable.
– – –
Another report from the Des Moines Register. Worker describes scene at plant:
When she’s deported, she said she would rather be taken to Mexico, where it will be easier to reenter America.
She was put in a building with other women, she said, but could not identify the building. There were cots set up inside, and the group she was with was told to go to sleep.
Hours later, she told nurses she wasn’t feeling well. They checked her and instructed agents to return her to Postville. She was driven by a male and female agent in a white van back to town, but when they asked where she lived, she said she told them to take her to St. Bridget’s Catholic Church.
She said she was afraid of leading ICE agents to her house.
She rang the doorbell at the church again and again. Father Paul Ouderkirk thought a fellow pastor had locked himself out of the house.
Now, the woman said she’s worried for her children in Guatemala. The raid means she won’t make money this week, and can’t send any back, she said.
Ouderkirk said he toured the plant in 2002, one of seven he’s toured nationwide.
“It was one of the dirtiest plants I’ve been in,” Ouderkirk said.
Ouderkirk said he toured all sections of the plant, but was denied access when a new section was built.
“The pace was fast,” Ouderkirk said. “They had no place where people could sit down and eat, only a room about the size of (a 15 ft. by 15 ft. area) where they crowded in.”
Many of the immigrants detained in Postville on Monday came from small, rural towns in Mexico or Guatemala, Ouderkirk said, arriving in small groups with relatives or friends.
“It’s like any grapevine,” he said. “They hear it and they come.”
DHS and or the FBI should shut down St. Bridget’s as well as Agri’s plant. Aiding and abetting known criminals is a crime.
Do they have slaughterhouses, children, or laws in Guatemala? How would the reporter, Ouderkirk, or this Guatemalan lady feel if gueros were moving to Guatemala, disrupting Guatamalan communities, displacing Guatemalans from their jobs, ruining their schools, and then cried about fear? They would laugh. They would call the invaders invaders. Racist invaders. They would say, “yanqui go home”.
Lady, go back where you came from. Take your children with you.
– – –
The problems in Postville are not new. What’s happening there reflects what’s happening all over America, and why. Criminal aliens and their allies think of America as a “nation of immigrants” – a “proposition nation” where the proposition is “how fast can you make money, no matter what effect it has on the natives”. Natives who are harmed are just so many subhuman obstacles to be insulted and abused before being shoved aside.
Another recent story from the Register. Immigration raid: Proliferation of undocumented workers began in early ’80s:
Workers in the country illegally have likely been at the Agriprocessors plant in Postville for almost 20 years, said author Stephen Bloom, a journalism professor at the University of Iowa.
“This is the worst-kept secret in Iowa,” said Bloom, who in 2000 published a book chronicling how Agriprocessors’ Hasidic culture affected Postville, a town in northeast Iowa.
The only “thing you need to work at the plant was a strong back and a strong stomach” and a Social Security number, whether it was valid or not, he said.
“Iowans don’t want to do this kind of work for minimum wage and few or no benefits,” he said.
The proliferation of undocumented workers at meatpacking plants can be traced to the early 1980s, said Dave Swenson, an Iowa State University economist.
“Jobs Americans won’t do” is one of the more deeply dishonest ways of describing what’s going on. The invasion is not about Americans not wanting to do jobs. Iowans did the jobs in Postville for a long time before any aliens came to town. Many continued afterward. The real problem, there and elsewhere, starts with the employers who are too greedy to pay a wage citizens will accept, and too unscrupulous to obey the laws and pay their taxes. The other problem, as I’ve already mentioned, is a federal government that has failed in its primary responsibility: to defend our territory from invasion.
The greed and crime in Postville went on for 20 years. Why? Was the government forced to act after the crimes became so egregious they could no longer be ignored? Or are the government’s apparently haphazard raids deliberately calculated to drum up political and financial support for the invasion?
Lonewacko’s report, Agriprocessors meat packing raid, Postville, Iowa (kosher, UFCW), contains an interesting breakdown:
Of those arrested, 290 are Guatemalan, 93 are Mexican, four are Ukrainian and three are Israeli.
He also linked this summary of events leading up to the raid: Postville – A Sleepy Iowa Town Is Transformed Into A Multicultural Sewer, which in turn links to a page containing even more detail.
It turns out the same Steve Bloom quoted by the Register above wrote an interesting, relevant book concerning the culture clash in Postville. Published in 2000, it generated plenty of discussion:
Manuel came from a religious family in Guatemala, but he rarely has time for observance. AgriProcessors does not slow down for Sundays or for any Christian holidays, except Christmas. A more practical problem, however, arises on Jewish holidays, when the plant closes and the workers are not paid.
Pay is a recurring complaint from AgriProcessors’ workers. Manuel makes $7.25 an hour, having moved up from $6.25. But Manuel and many other workers said that their weekly paychecks come up three or four hours short regularly, a claim that the union organizers reported hearing frequently. When supervisors are alerted, they promise to correct things but rarely do, workers and union officials said.
How Agriprocessor came to town has already been described farther above. In hindsight, if we can find any fault with the people living in Postville in 1987 it would be that they foolishly put their desire for wealth and jobs above their sense of community. But then it’s not like they could have told the jewish aliens not to come to town. It may have taken the Feds 20 years to lift a finger against Agriprocessor’s flagrant immigration, tax, drug, and safety violations. But we can be sure that those same Feds would fly in instantly, anywhere, and armed for war if they heard even so much as a rumor that some alien’s civil rights were being violated.
Nevertheless, 10 years later, the locals aren’t exactly happy with their marriage of necessity. “The Jews,” as they’re called, drive like maniacs, never mow their lawns, build without permits, bargain furiously (which the locals feel implies the price is unfair), and wait months, if ever, to pay their bills. Disregarding the fundamental rule of Iowa coexistence, the Hasidim won’t even make eye contact on the street. One of Bloom’s local informants asks: “Hadn’t their mothers taught them any manners?”
Bloom does his best to be fair to the Hasidim as he explores their hermetically sealed world. He notes his relief at the familiar speech rhythms, the questions upon questions. He accepts an invitation for a Shabbat stay with a Hasidic family, revels in the food, and prays with his hosts on command. But finally, Bloom is a liberal, not a fundamentalist: He’s repelled by their intolerance, their insularity, their open delight in cheating “the goyim,” and their manipulative arguments. He quotes one Hasid as saying proudly: “I am a racist… . Why haven’t the Jews been extinguished after scores of attempts throughout history? That we are still here defies logic. There is only one answer. We are better and smarter. That’s why!” Bloom’s heart is with the Postville local who says: “It’s not such a great religion if they don’t want to be a part of the community, is it?”
Knowing this, isn’t it difficult to blame “the goyim” for not liking the jews? The dislike appears mutual. Mayor Penrod, quoted above, surely knows this and should have mentioned it. Instead he chose to smear the natives as irrational haters.
The jews, as they’re called, is a label they often use themselves. Bloom probably knows that. As a journalist who seems to sympathize with Iowans he should also recognize that it’s a more neutral than “the nativists”, “the racists”, “the rednecks”, and all the other not-so-subtle insults journalists, especially the jewish ones, prefer to “the Whites”.
Intolerance, insularity, cheating “the goyim” (a disrespectful label we do not attach to ourselves), and manipulative arguments are indeed fundamental, long-held characteristically jewish values. Certainly in comparison to those of European stock. The cheating and manipulation are especially alien and objectionable. From his thoughts Bloom seems a rare breed. Liberals like him usually have no problem cheating or making manipulative arguments. He enjoys his muted jewishness while disapproving, openly in a book, of others who feel their bigotry more strongly. That’s rare. And finally, jews usually get their panties in a bunch only when they sense intolerance, insularity, and fundamentalism in White Christians. Whoops, wait a minute…
Bloom, a largely secular Jew who frequently frames his relationship to his faith in terms of Jewish food, came to Iowa from San Francisco to teach journalism at the state university. At first, Bloom, his wife and their young son loved their new home.
But by their third year there, the blush had begun to fade.
“We were lonely. We didn’t fit into the local social order. . . . We missed people like us.”
Soon Bloom begins to see “them” everywhere. Two female American Gothic types stare at the Bloom family in a restaurant, and as the Blooms leave ask “in an Almira Gulch tone, ‘You’re not from around here.’ ” Bloom took this to mean “what they were driving at wasn’t where we were from, but who we were, what we were: city folks, Jews. . . .”
Here is some insight into the mind of a self-righteous alien. Self-righteous because who else could move to a place and expect the people there, who by his own choice of words (“people like us”, “American Gothic types”, “Almira Gulch tone”) he obviously considers alien, not notice that he is in fact just as much an alien to them? If stares and getting called “city folk” is the worst story Bloom has then it’s no wonder rude, unscrupulous aliens are flocking to America’s heartland.
The Hasidim had some supporters, too, though many of them seem to be people who directly benefited from their arrival.
But the crux of the problem seemed to revolve around three major issues. The Hasidim were very aloof. They treated the locals as though they were diseased. “If they mix with us they think we’ll contaminate them,” someone told Bloom.
More disturbing to Bloom was that the Lubavitchers were dishonorable in their business dealings. They’d buy something and not pay for it or pay or withhold payment for a long time.
“I get bills and throw them away,” one bragged to him. “The more bills I get, the faster I throw them away. If they want to get paid that badly, they’ll send me another notice and then another. When I’m ready to pay them, I pay them.”
I’m very curious to see how people react to this story and how it plays out over time. Will anyone in Agri’s management go to jail? Will they be driven out of Iowa? Out of business? Will the jewish community, acutely aware of this case because it affects their supply of holy meat, rise up and shout, “Exploitation and lawbreaking! Not in my name!” Or will it be, “Oh my G-d! Stop the persecution, stop the anti-semitism!”
There is a precedent, from 2005, that would seem to favor expecting the latter response. The following blog post outlines a coldly calculated plan based on manipulative arguments. What a surprise.
PETA doesn’t play Kosher:
Now, how does a group of orthodox rabbis, the different groups that ordain food as Kosher, and, well, Agriprocessors take on an organization that is a well-oiled PR and grass roots machine? Well, the rabbis and the kashrut organizations hired Lubicom Marketing Consulting, a firm that has a long history of working with kosher companies and causes.
Quoted below is Lubicom’s founder, Menachem Lubinsky, who was quoted by the Register above as if he were a disinterested kosher pundit.
Lastly, the venom they have spewed and the degree of how they continue to go after a major supplier of glatt kosher meat in this country can only be construed as anti-Semitism, especially when stunned animals and practices at non-kosher plants certainly are nowhere as humane as the practices at Agri.
The comment section of a Yeshiva World News report on the Agri raid is also interesting. There you can see a battle being waged. The fair-minded people appear outnumbered. This window into alien “frum/yidden” thinking is more discomforting and more difficult to comprehend than anything Bloom has to say.
Quote “lets blame the unions, lets blame peta, lets blame the anti-semites…but god forbid we should blame rubashkin….sorry people, but rubashkin and others dont pass the savings at using illegal labor onto their customers…i for one hope they are prosecuted to the full extent of the law… ”
Comment by bacci40 — May 12, 2008 @ 6:04 pm
Is “bacci” short for bacon? since when do Yidden hope to see other Frum jews prosecuted to the full extent of the law, especially as you haven’t even heard his side.
Do you hire illegal immigrants to clean your house?
Comment by isi98 — May 12, 2008 @ 7:15 pm
The Rubashkins are AMAZING balei chesed and balei tzedaka……Please visit their store on 13th avenue and see all the homeless they feed daily (for free). For all those who are hoping they get punished and for those that claim they are not passing on their savings etc. Before you judge and make your comments please realize they have helped countless yisoimim – almanos – and continue to do so. I pray for them – I pray they should continue with their business and go from strength to strength.. Closing them down will only hurt hundreds and maybe thousands of people. Please don’t be so quick to chanmpion for another’s downfall. After all we are all one .. their goodness benefits all of us.
Comment by frumma — May 12, 2008 @ 9:54 pm
Yidden, frum, balei, chesed, tzedakah? We are all one? And who is this “us” to whom frumma refers? In trying to understand alien thoughts like these I’m getting the distinct impression I’m meant to misunderstand that the friendly-sounding translations apply to jew and non-jew alike. I suspect, however, they were originally intended to define how jews should treat each other, and that plenty of them still see it that way. Just as many muslims consider infidels inferior, and lie to us about it and other things they think.
But that’s probably just my “symbolic racism” peeking through.
– – –
The title of this post comes from what I understand to be the respected words of a respected jew:
In one of his most famous essays – entitled Glatt Kosher – Glatt Yoshor – [Rav Breuer] wrote:
‘Kosher is intimately related to yoshor. G-d’s Torah not only demands the observance of kashruth and the sanctification of our physical enjoyment, it also insists on the sanctification of our social relationships. This requires the strict application of the tenets of justice and righteousness which avoid even the slightest trace of dishonesty in our business dealings and personal life.’
“Yoshor”, to put it in my terms and not to diminish the concept, seems comparable to Superman’s “truth, justice, and the American way”. I understand and respect that value. It’s why I feel compelled to leave the shithole this decidedly non-yoshor immigration invasion is turning California into, and to find a new home amongst natives who share my values. It’s why I write about it. Unlike Bloom when those “American Gothic types” notice I look different or act different I understand it to mean that I’ve accidentally brought some “city” with me. I accept it as my duty to assimilate, and my responsibility for failure, not theirs.
From their prior words and acts it seems the Rubashkins and their friends either have no regard for yoshor or think it only applies to their dealings with other jews. The latter view would explain why they have such a bad reputation as employers and yet a good one as yidden. What this raid and the subsequent revelations of their dishonest business dealings will do is provide other jews an opportunity to demonstrate what they think yoshor means.
Sen. Edward Kennedy has malignant brain tumor:
