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A slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, develops an ugly reputation for abusing animals and workers. Reports of dirty, dangerous conditions at the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant accumulate for years, told by workers, union organizers, immigrant advocates and government investigators. A videotape by an animal-rights group shows workers pulling the windpipes out of living cows. A woman with a deformed hand tells a reporter of cutting meat for 12 hours a day, six days a week, for wages that labor experts call the lowest in the industry. This year, federal investigators amass evidence of rampant illegal hiring at the plant, which has been called “a kosher ‘Jungle.’ ”

The conditions at the Agriprocessors plant cry out for the cautious and deliberative application of justice.

In May, the government swoops in and arrests ... the workers, hundreds of them, for having false identity papers. The raid’s catch is so huge that the detainees are bused from little Postville to the National Cattle Congress fairgrounds in Waterloo. The defendants, mostly immigrants from Guatemala, are not charged with the usual administrative violations, but with “aggravated identity theft,” a serious crime.

They are offered a deal: They can admit their guilt to lesser charges, waive their rights, including the right to a hearing before an immigration judge, spend five months in prison, then be deported. Or, they can spend six months or more in jail without bail while awaiting a trial date, face a minimum two-year prison sentence and be deported anyway.

Nearly 300 people agree to the five months, after being hustled through mass hearings, with one lawyer for 17 people, each having about 30 minutes of consultation per client. The plea deal is a brutal legal vise, but the immigrants accept it as the quickest way back to their spouses and children, hundreds of whom are cowering in a Catholic church, afraid to leave and not knowing how they will survive. The workers are scattered to federal lockups around the country. Many families still do not know where they are. The plant’s owners walk freely....

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The local cowboy government finds a Jew operating a plant in a highly illegal manner, it's full of immigrants who can be busted easily under existing laws, other meat-packing interests in the area (owned by Christians) have been hating on this Jew for some time...it was the perfect target for a government clusterbomb.

You ever been to Iowa? It's mightly backwards, pardner, like you stepped on to a movie set right before the gun fight scene.

[ 01 August 2008: Message edited by: Robespierre ]

So why do they want to crack down on undocumented immigrant labour? Why are they building a wall across the Mexican border and hiring tens of thousands of new border guards and immigration enforcement personnel?

Because there is an even more profitable system of exploitation in the works - the innocuously-named Guest Worker Program.

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Under the plan, foreign workers -- including the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants already in the United States -- could apply to work for three years. Each would be matched with an employer, provided with a biometric identification card to help track his or her whereabouts, and released in the country.

But immigrants who are already living in the United States illegally would have to pay an unspecified fine before they could enter the program. They would also be dispatched to the back of the employment line, behind foreign nationals who followed the rules.

Officials said the fine would preclude any amnesty for illegal immigrants, an anathema to conservative groups and politicians....

The workers could travel freely between the United States and their places of origin, as long as they remained employed and broke no laws. But neither they nor the foreign workers who come to the United States under the program would be eligible to apply for permanent legal status when their time in the program expires.... - Source

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To the capitalists of the USA, this is far too much freedom.

The Guest Worker Program would end even this minimal freedom for immigrant workers, and make them essentially indentured servants. Lose your job and you lose your status, and you are subject to immediate deportation; thus employers can mistreat immigrant workers while secure in the knowledge that they can't quit their jobs and they are terrified of being fired. The employer can ignore labour laws and safety laws with impunity; he can pay less than minimum wage, or delay paying wages, and know that nobody will complain for fear of immediate deportation.

To the capitalist employers the Guest Worker is a very attractive worker, especially since workers who are US citizens can't possibly compete with them for jobs. The Guest Workers can never hope to become citizens of the US, and face deportation at the end of their 3-year term in the program.

With the Mexican border sealed off, the requirement of a biometric ID card, undocumented workers will all but disappear, but the capitalists will still be able to depend upon cheap immigrant labour to produce super-profits and keep general wage rates at a minimum.

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Originally posted by Doug:
It always bugs me in these cases that they never arrest the owners and managers. It's hard to blame Guatemalans for wanting to move to the US for potentially better wages. Those who exploit that desire for their own profit? Shameful.

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I know there are provisions to jail owners and their agents. So, you have to think like a cowboy capitalist to come up with reasons why that never seems to happen. In this case, the governmental authorities that sat down and worked out a plan to raid this particular meatpacking plant might have considered the following before carrying out this farce of justice:

• Owner is a Jew; let's not open ourselves to a charge of anti-semitism by putting the dirty heathen in jail, especially when all we really want to do is send a message to other Jews that we don't want yer kind in these here parts. The Jewish-controlled media might be all over this if we ain't careful.
• Them thar inmagrints is mostly Gutemalans, and them people ain't nearly as tough to harass as the damn Mexicans. Let's slap a heavy crime on them, no one will complain, and we'll look like the badass heroes that we are. Hell, we might even git an episode of COPS outta this one! Yeeee-ha!
• That Guest worker program is coming on, and lotsa folk'll be making good money off of the administration of it once they git it going, But sny dern fool knows it's a sham, and won't stop the illegals from crossing the border, especially once the quotas are filled. Hell yeah, too much money being made fighting the illegals to turn around and make 'em legal---everybody knows that deal.

There are good, progressive people everywhere who care about justice.

I live in Iowa and I know a lot of them.

Think also of the churches in this Iowa town who have taken a leading role in supoorting the workers and their families affected by this raid.

The entire population of Iowa did not commit either the injustice of the working conditions at this plant, nor the injustice of the raid.

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Originally posted by lagatta:
It is deeply un-Kosher. Jewish - and Muslim - dietary laws require slaughter that will inflict the least possible suffering on the animal.

Not to mention ethical treatment of workers...

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When I was a child visiting my grandparent's, I observed how differently they slaughtered their chickens and cattle, than other persons that I saw on their farms. The chickens never made one sound, never mind the abscence of flapping about all over the ground after heads were removed. However, it would not be until I was an adult, that I would come to understand, why they were "kosher".

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Originally posted by USSocialDemocrat:
Posted by Robespierre:
You ever been to Iowa? It's mightly backwards, pardner, like you stepped on to a movie set right before the gun fight scene.

There are good, progressive people everywhere who care about justice.

I live in Iowa and I know a lot of them.

Think also of the churches in this Iowa town who have taken a leading role in supoorting the workers and their families affected by this raid.

The entire population of Iowa did not commit either the injustice of the working conditions at this plant, nor the injustice of the raid.

(Nor, by the way, have I ever felt in Iowa as though I was about to be in the middle of a gun fight. I did, however, Robespierre, almost step into a knife fight on the streets of Manhattan once...)

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Originally posted by Robespierre:
You ever been to Iowa?

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May I make an apology for your treatment?

And, please, do not be entirely put off by it. I, for one, would like to hear how there are, perhaps, more Iowan churches more like those of Minnesota than are to be found in the southern Bible Belt. There was a very interesting article in a Harper's mag a couple of years back making the "good/bad" distinction in the Christian social message...with the good guys leaning to a continued dependence on the sermon from the mount, the other guys -in the growing congregations - only asking what the church can do for them in a "feel-good" way.

Bet you subscribe to the earlier sect?

I've entered here because the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and its successor, the New Democratic Party had a Christian leadership, and while it's now necessary to put down the fundamentalist/evangelical Christian take on Darwin with their perverted (un-Christian?) view of the disposessed - which we can all join in criticizing - everyone of faith gets subjected to the same criticism. And that is just playing to an assumed audience in this venu.

[ 02 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]

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Originally posted by George Victor:
I, for one, would like to hear how there are, perhaps, more Iowan churches more like those of Minnesota than are to be found in the southern Bible Belt.

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Originally posted by George Victor:
The Little Houses on the Prairies?

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Why not? Better than your Fourmen from the Mount.

[ 02 August 2008: Message edited by: unionist ]

But if you compare the Christian position of the four, you get real comoplexity. A pox on all of their houses does not have the same resonance out there in voter land...(if that's not being too opportunistic in our pristine view of things political...

[ 02 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]

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Originally posted by George Victor:

But if you compare the Christian position of the four, you get real complexity. A pox on all of their houses does not have the same resonance out there in voter land...(if that's not being too opportunistic in our pristine view of things political...

[ 02 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]

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One memory of Rushmore was the near absence of African-Americans. And we speculated on the reason(s) for that phenom.

Later, driving alone down through Wounded Knee, where there were no Americans of any extraction alongside us - curtains stirred behind windows closed to the ferocious heat - we decided that the causes of the cultural differentiation were similar in each case.

But I remain hopeful, reading just this morning, Rawi Hage's longing for a secular world ruled by reason. He despairs, noting that "we're just territorial monkeys".

Well, it's certainly possible.

A little background:
According to Wikipedia, Postville has a population (as of the 2000 census) of 2, 273. Estimates of the Hasidic Jewish population in the town range from 150 to more than 300.

Postville has been predominantly German and Norwegian throughout its history. In 1987, a group of Hasidic Jews of the Lubavitch movement from New York purchased a slaughterhouse in Postville to process Kosher meats, thus creating the company Agriprocessors. Since then, Postville has seen an influx of people, including many Ukrainians, Russians, Mexicans, Guatemalans and Filipinos.

Outright hostility between the Postville natives and newcomers has been rare, however it appears that there has been tension between them. Much of this has focused on the Hasidic community.

By the way, the interaction of Postville natives with these newcomers was the subject of a book about the town, Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America (ISBN 0-15-100652-0), written by Stephen Bloom, a professor at the University of Iowa.

As of yesterday, the Attorney General of Iowa (a Democrat) is now pursuing child labor charges against Agriprocessors.

I suppose the difference is that in the Upper Midwest, we do not have many Southern Baptists. What Baptists we have are American Baptists, which are more liberal than their southern brethren.

Somewhere along the way in talking about freedom, you folks lost sight of the meaning of the word.

And NOBODY seems to want to try to explain the Canada/U.S. differences in this way. I can only recall some text (was Fox the author?) talking about the "feudal splinter", or some such, surviving in Canada, a silliness about noblesse oblige etc.Old C.B.McPherson developed a complex theory explaining "agrarian socialism", and I recall Bell or someone also doing a number on Saskatchewan...explaining its distinctiveness.