Month: October 2008

Mainstream media discovers the Somali meatpacker conflict

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

First it was the New York Times this morning and now it appears that USA Today is in on the action.  In this case, I really am glad the mainstream media reporters are a bunch of sheep.

“Prayer leads to work disputes” in USA Today doesn’t add a whole lot of new information from what we have been telling you for a month or so now, but check out the photo of one of the Somalis planning to file a complaint.  

Abdi Mohamed, 28, came to the USA as a refugee from Somalia a year ago. For most of his eight months at the Grand Island plant, his boss let him slip away for seven minutes at sunset to pray in the locker room, allowing him to balance his job cutting beef with a tenet of Islam.

“Anytime I’m not (praying), I’m damaging my relationship with God,” he says through a translator.

Mohamed, who lost his job Sept. 19, says he plans to file a discrimination complaint. “We are refugees to this country,” he says, “and now we are made to be refugees within America.”

That is one mean looking dude on the right.  The complaint filer must be the one on the left.  If anyone has a little investigation time, I bet the one on the right (the mean dude) is one of the community organizers.  Could it be mouthpiece Graen Isse?

By the way, hurry on over to USA Today  where a lot of hot comments are flying around on this story.  Once before when USA Today did something controversial about refugees the comments were very quickly yanked.

For new readers there are a couple of posts you need to check out.   The first is our research on how many Somalis have been admitted to the US by the State Department here.   And, the other is that as a result of DNA testing that showed that 80% of East Africans (including Somalis) trying to enter the US through the family reunification part of refugee resettlement were committing fraud, the program is presently suspended.

Somali conflicts in meatpacking towns make the New York Times

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update October 17th:   Read all the comments at the NYT about this article here.

Update:  I have been out all morning and in my travels I picked up today’s New York Times (only the second copy I’ve bought in years) and this Somali story is on the front page ABOVE THE FOLD.  Amazing!

 

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this link at the Religion of Peace blog this morning.  It is from the New York Times of all places and it’s a pretty thorough discussion of the tension growing in small town America over the arrival of Somali refugees.   The article entitled, “Somali influx unsettles Latino meatpackers” begins:

GRAND ISLAND, Neb. — Like many workers at the meatpacking plant here, Raul A. Garcia, a Mexican-American, has watched with some discomfort as hundreds of Somali immigrants have moved to town in the past couple of years, many of them to fill jobs once held by Latino workers taken away in immigration raids.

Mr. Garcia has been particularly troubled by the Somalis’ demand that they be allowed special breaks for prayers that are obligatory for devout Muslims. The breaks, he said, would inconvenience everyone else.

“The Latino is very humble,” said Mr. Garcia, 73, who has worked at the plant, owned by JBS U.S.A. Inc., since 1994. “But they are arrogant,” he said of the Somali workers. “They act like the United States owes them.”

Read it all, it is choke full of all sorts of interesting information.    The only thing missing is any discussion about the US State Department’s role in bringing all the Somalis here in the first place.  See our numbers post here.

And, just as I said in many previous posts, the Somalis have brought in community organizers to try to tamp down the multicultural anger toward the demanding Somalis!

Xawa Ahmed, 48, a Somali, moved to Grand Island from Minnesota last month to help organize the Somali community. A big part of her work, Ms. Ahmed said, will be to help demystify the Somalis who remain.

The New York Times needs to ask the follow-up question.  Who is paying these community organizers?

More Christian Iraqis become refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Seems that the new Iraqi government is unable or unwilling to protect its religious minorities and makes me wonder what we have helped create.  More Christians run for their lives in Iraq:

BAGHDAD — Cars and trucks loaded with suitcases, mattresses and passengers cradling baskets stuffed with clothes lined up at checkpoints Monday to flee Mosul, a day after the 10th killing of an Iraqi Christian in the northern city so far this month.

Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but local leaders have blamed al-Qaida in Iraq, which maintains influence in the region despite an ongoing U.S.-Iraqi military operation launched in May.

We reported  two weeks ago that the Iraqi government had done away with quotas for minority seats in regional councils and it is believed that Christian’s demands for those quotas are behind recent violence.

Islamic extremists have frequently targeted Christians and other religious minorities since the 2003 U.S. invasion, forcing tens of thousands to flee Iraq — although attacks slowed with a nationwide decline in violence.

The reason for the latest surge in attacks was unclear. But it coincides with strong lobbying by Christian leaders for parliament to restore a quota system to give religious minorities seats on provincial councils that will be chosen by voters before the end of January.

CAIR screams bloody murder when there is the slightest affront to Muslim sensibilities here, but predominantly Muslim countries can kill Christians with impunity.   When are we going to wake up?

I just went to CAIR’s site to get the link.  Look at that garbage!   They are calling on the McCain and Obama campaigns to denounce Islamophobia.    Hey, CAIR, those Christians running for their lives in Iraq, would you say they have Islamophobia?

Thanks to Blulitespecial for this story.

Saudi Arabia, home of the Religion of Peace, is willy-nilly executing black folks

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Last week I reported that Saudi Arabia was deporting Somali migrants back to Somalia and now comes news from Amnesty International that the Saudis are busy executing loads of poor black (Muslim!) people.  Favorite methods are stoning and beheading (because Islam tells them that is the way to do it).

Executions quadrupled last year in Saudi Arabia, where the majority of those put to death were poor, foreign workers, Amnesty International said.
More than half the 1,839 people executed in Saudi Arabia in the past 23 years were foreigners from developing nations such as Somalia and Sudan, the London-based human rights group said in a report today.

Remember yesterday I told you about Italian soul-searching over the murder of an African migrant— was it a racist attack?   How come no one suggests these Arabs are motivated by racism?    Or, is it o.k. because it’s government sanctioned racism—-Sharia law?    No soul-searching in Saudi Arabia it seems.

Saudi authorities, who say the death penalty is justified under Islamic Sharia law, argue that execution is a deterrent to crime and mention the country’s low rate of reported crime. They haven’t produced statistics to support this claim, Amnesty said.

 Three cheers for Amnesty International!

By the way, much of the mosque building going on in the US is being done with Saudi money, aren’t we a tad bit worried?

Mega-mosques coming our way

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I don’t have a lot to say about this, just wanted you to know what is happening.   From Religion News Service:

WASHINGTON — Mosques across the country are beginning to use a model similar to the one used by some suburban and downtown megachurches, operating multiple sites to serve a large and dispersed congregation.

Many of these “mosque chains” brand themselves as progressive, and sometimes feature gymnasiums and mixed-gender prayer areas for men and women. Some groups even host weekly services at churches or synagogues with the expressed goal of fostering interfaith goodwill.

Call me cynical but all this talk about “interfaith goodwill” gives me the creeps.   I think it’s really all about building Muslim political power and keeping us quiet until it’s too late.

Remember Imam Yahya Hendi, Georgetown University’s Muslim Chaplain!  He told an audience in Saudi Arabia that there would be 30 Muslim mayors in the US by 2015.