Changing America one meatpacker at a time, now it’s Montana’s turn

“It’s a really smart place for China to put in investment and to partner with Montana to have a really good packing industry and processing plant here.”

(Fred Wacker, rancher)

You know the phrase often used during Obama’s tenure in the Oval—changing America by changing the people.  Well, that’s what is happening because greedy global corporations, especially food processing like BIG MEAT, BIG CHICKEN and BIG YOGURT, say they can’t find enough Americans to work low wage jobs so they need compliant immigrant laborers.

To hell with what flooding unsuspecting towns with third world workers does to rural America!

Trump with Republican Senator Daines giving Chinese investors a foothold in Montana?

Most egregious are the cases where the company (changing your town by changing the people) is foreign-owned.

We know this because we have been writing about the subject for ten years.  In the early days the refugee resettlement contractors hid their relationship with global companies, but recently we reported on one—Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service—signing a contract with Brazilian-owned JBS Swift in Greeley to help them “train” refugees as good employees for the meat giant.  They signed another pact with Tyson Foods.

Now comes news that President Donald Trump made a deal with China to purchase Montana beef!

And, here is the catch: (To save money!) Montana needs a big new Chinese-owned meatpacking plant! What could go wrong?

From the Daily Mail:

US Senator Steve Daines and ranchers from the northwestern state of Montana on Wednesday applauded a 300-million-US dollar beef deal between Chinese commerce giant JD.com and the Montana Stockgrowers Association (MSGA).

“This landmark agreement has the potential to substantially increase Montana opportunity and agricultural exports to the fastest growing overseas market for beef,” Daines said in a statement.

JD signed the agreement with Errol Rice, executive vice president of MSGA, on Wednesday in Beijing as U.S. President Donald Trump began his three-day state visit to China.

[….]

JD also intends to invest up to another 100 million dollars to build a brand-new slaughter house and feedlot infrastructure in Montana to help set up its supply chain there, with construction beginning as early as the spring of 2018.

Win-win deal! Not!

Wacker says it’s cheaper to build a BIG MEAT plant in Montana than to ship to existing plants in other states. To hell with the disruption to Montana towns which will be flooded with migrant laborers, not to mention the impact on the environment!

The agreement follows an agricultural roundtable meeting in early September between a Chinese delegation and Montana farmers and ranchers, hosted by Daines at the Morgan Ranch House, near downtown Bozeman, Montana.

Fred Wacker, owner of Cross Four Ranch in Miles City, Montana, said at the meeting that it would cost him about 80 dollars a head to send cattle to feedlots and processing plants in the Midwest, so as to ship beef products to China and other overseas markets. He would like to seek partnership with Chinese companies to build a world-class processing plant in Montana.

“It’s a really smart place for China to put in investment and to partner with Montana to have a really good packing industry and processing plant here,” Wacker said, arguing that would help bring down logistic costs and guarantee stable supply of high quality beef to China, a win-win deal for both sides. [Losers are the citizens of Montana!—ed]

More here.

I suppose there is one bright side–unlike Chobani Yogurt in nearby Idaho, I doubt the Chinese owners will approve of Muslim workers in light of their clear historical animosity to the ‘religion of peace.’  I can just see the mess when the Chinese company gets hit with some discrimination lawsuits when they say “NO” to Somali workers.

Heck, maybe they will insist on bringing in Chinese workers!

For my mushrooming Montana archive, click here.

My Meatpackers archive is here.

In the summer of 2016 I traveled around the country to visit mostly meatpacking towns and haven’t eaten store-bought meat since. I raised beef cattle on a small scale for 20 years, but when I saw those mile-after-mile feedlots, cattle standing in the hot Colorado sun (and the migrant labor disrupted towns), I lost all interest in supermarket beef.

Montanans you don’t want massive feedlots in your lovely state!

Readers should know that the US State Department opened a controversial refugee resettlement office in Montana two years ago. Paving the way for the arrival of cheap refugee labor?

More on Montana wannabe meatpackers next! Here it is!

Obama to UN in 2013: We will take 50,000 from DR Congo off your hands

That is what we learned here in June 2013 when Anne Richard, then Asst. Secretary of State for Population Refugees and Migration for President Obama, announced the deal presumably to begin in Fiscal Year 2014 and continue for five years.

 

anne richard-and-unhcr
Richard with then UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Gutteres who is now Secretary General of the UN.

 

I just checked the numbers (at Wrapsnet) and see that we have admitted 38,431 from FY14 to the present. So, expect UN pressure to take 11,569 more Congolese from UN camps in Africa over the next couple of years.

(By the way, going back to FY08, we have admitted 48,870 from DR Congo in nearly a decade.)

But…..

We learned the stunning news just a couple of days ago that some of those DR Congo ‘refugees’ would return to African camps if they could. See Utah here.

Although the Trump Administration has slowed the flow from camps in countries like Tanzania, we sure hope that maybe the trend (saying “no” to the UN) will continue.

We can’t afford to bring more extremely impoverished and uneducated people to America (with huge families to boot) to live jobless and unhappy in roach-infested apartments! Doesn’t sound very humanitarian to me!

(In case you are wondering, only 1,860, 3% of the DR Congolese we have admitted since FY08 are Muslim. The remainder represent many religious groups.)

One of the key takeaways for readers is that once we begin admitting large numbers from certain countries, mostly because the UN tells us to, the flow never stops.

Anyone suggesting stopping the flow is hit with the ‘how can you be so cruel to keep family members out’ meme.

Somalis are a prime example—we’ve been admitting them for decades—will we ever stop?  How many decades do we continue to clear out the never-ending UN camp pipeline?

Over the next few days I’m going to tell you about some other ethnic groups we aren’t ever going to stop—from Burma, Nepal (Bhutanese) and Iraq—unless someone has the guts to tell the UN NO! No more.

And, this is why it’s a good thing we didn’t open the Syrian spigot in a big way!

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society sues Trump Administration again

They apparently want to make it clear to the Muslim world that they are the good people.

 

HIAS we support Muslim neighbors
From The Jewish News of Northern California https://www.jweekly.com/2017/11/13/jewish-family-services-silicon-valley-files-suit-halt-refugee-ban/

 

Here is what Mark Hetfield CEO of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (aka HIAS) said in an e-mail yesterday. (Emphasis is mine)

The Trump Administration shows no signs of backing off their policies against refugees, so we’re taking the Administration to court. Again.

Hetfield_Mark_lg
HIAS could lose more than half of its funding if the US Refugee program was dismantled. See below. Don’t miss Hetfield’s salary! Doing well by doing good!

From the moment the first executive order banning refugees and travelers from Muslim countries was issued on January 27th, HIAS and our partners in the American Jewish community have opposed every attempt by President Trump to close America’s doors to those in need of protection.

Our outrage has only grown stronger with every new executive order that prevents thousands of refugees from finding safety in the U.S.

Enough is enough. Together with our longstanding local resettlement partners Jewish Family Service of Seattle and Jewish Family Services of Silicon Valley, HIAS yesterday filed a suit to again challenge restrictive policies that seek to prevent vulnerable refugees from finding freedom and safety. As we have for the last 136 years, we will continue to work tirelessly to ensure that America remains a country that welcomes refugees instead of turning them away.

Then here is the news from Seattle:

Lawsuit: ‘It’s the dismantling of the U.S. refugee program’

rabbi berkowitz
Rabbi Berkovitz says Trump is dismantling the whole refugee program which would mean HIAS will lose millions of taxpayer dollars for its advocacy work. (LOL! he didn’t say the last part!)

“People are dying who were given permission to come into this country. It’s tragic,” said Rabbi Will Berkovitz, CEO of Jewish Family Service of Seattle, one of the refugee agencies that’s filed the lawsuit.

“The agenda that’s really thinly veiled here is the dismantlement of the refugee resettlement program as a whole,” Berkovitz said. “Not for now, but forever.”

The lawsuit claims the order is unconstitutional, discriminates against Muslims and gives preference to Christian refugees. [The US might actually give preference to Christians, what is the world coming to!—ed]

You have to give them credit for chutzpah!

HIAS has been a long-time supporter of the Lautenberg Amendment which gave preference for resettlement to Soviet Jews among others, see here.

So are they now saying that the Lautenberg Amendment must go?  Look for HIAS to reverse itself and ask Congress to abolish Lautenberg (Ha! Ha!).

Here is what we learned from the Jewish agency in California:

Plaintiffs are being represented by the International Refugee Assistance Project at the Urban Justice Center; the National Immigration Law Center; attorneys Lauren Aguiar, Mollie M. Kornreich and Abigail Sheehan Davis; Perkins Coie; and HIAS.

Learn more about the director of the National Immigration Law Center when she was bragging and disparaging then candidate Donald Trump by clicking here. Jim Simpson and I attended the spectacle.

This is a screenshot from a recent financial accounting post on the nine federal refugee contractors:

Screenshot (1077)_LI
Since all of the refugee contractors receive funding by the head for the refugees they place in your towns, and if the Trump Administration continues to lower the incoming numbers it blows a hole (a crater!) in the budgets of the big nine. HIAS could lose about $23 million if the program was dismantled as they (supposedly) fear.

Chobani Yogurt update: plant expansion planned for Twin Falls, Idaho

Idaho Republican governor Otter praised the yogurt tycoon.

Here is the story from the Utica, NY Observer-Dispatch:

The founder and CEO of Chobani has no regrets about moving part of his Greek yogurt company to south-central Idaho, a region embroiled in the national debate over refugee resettlement that spread to company boycotts by far-right bloggers and conspiracy theorists. [So there were boycotts—who knew?–ed]

lavinia and chobani
Not a conspiracy, they are now out in the open about cozy relationships between refugee agencies and companies looking for immigrant labor. That is Hamdi Ulukaya on the right with the head honcho of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants Lavinia Limon (Bill Clinton’s former Director of ORR). USCRI is the major contractor placing refugees in Twin Falls.  It is 98% funded by taxpayer dollars. Limon makes over $300,000 a year in salary and benefits for changing America by changing the people (and finding Chobani Yogurt its laborers)!

“I hear the conversations here and there, but it’s a peaceful community that we all love,” said Hamdi Ulukaya, a Turkish immigrant. “It’s the home of Chobani.”

Ulukaya spoke to The Associated Press before a Thursday announcement of a $20 million expansion of the company’s facility in the city of Twin Falls — the world’s largest yogurt plant — to serve as its global research and development center tackling how yogurt is made and consumed.

[….]

The company employs 2,000 workers, including 300 refugees.

However, Chobani’s time in Idaho also has taken a darker turn as anti-immigrant advocates have seized on the company’s open stance on refugees. Fringe websites have falsely claimed that Ulukaya wanted to “drown the United States in Muslims.” Other websites, like Breitbart News, falsely attempted to link Chobani’s hiring of refugees to an uptick in tuberculosis cases in Idaho.

 

To counteract the hateful rhetoric, Chobani sued right-wing radio host Alex Jones earlier this year, saying that Jones and his InfoWars website posted fabricated stories linking Ulukaya and the company to a sexual assault case involving refugee children in Twin Falls. Jones originally promised to never back down in his fight against the yogurt giant but eventually retracted his statements in a settlement. [We are aware that Chobani lawyers threatened other news outlets as well—ed.]

Ulukaya declined to comment on the Jones lawsuit but said the rise in anti-refugee sentiment has never delayed a project he wanted to pursue. And he says he is committed to being a welcoming company.

chobani with cup
Messy!

[….]

During Thursday’s expansion launch, Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter praised Chobani’s impact on the community.

More here.

See my entire Twin Falls archive by clicking here.

See what is messy here!

Daily Beast reporter Betsy Woodruff shows her ignorance about Rohingya Muslims

I can hear you asking: So what else is new?

This is the scary thing when you know a good bit about a subject and you see some Leftist media reporter, with a big following (surely you have seen her on Fox), writing about something she knows little about. 

In this case it is Betsy Woodruff on the Rohingya. 

Woodruff and Fields.png
Woodruff (left) and her friend Michelle Fields being oh-so-cool pretending to be serious Washington DC journalists! P.S. the devout Rohingya would not like those dresses. https://everipedia.org/wiki/betsy-woodruff/

Here (below) is the title of her piece where she suggests that anyone who doesn’t believe that the Rohingya are pure as the driven snow are themselves inciting violence.

She includes Ann Coulter, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and yours truly as instigators of violence (murder and rape by Buddhists) against the poor, much-maligned Rohingya Muslims of Burma (actually they are most likely Bangladeshis) simply because we haven’t bought the ethnic cleansing story hook, line and sinker.

Daily Beast headline:

The American Far Right Asks: What Rohingya Ethnic Cleansing?

Before you read Woodruff’s yellow journalism, I want to say a few things. I have followed the build-up of the controversy in Burma for ten years and have written 212 previous reports on Rohingya people.

I’ve watched the international Left build a classic propaganda campaign to promote the image of the Rohingya as the poster-children for ethnic cleansing—poor suffering souls who only want to be left alone to build their Muslim community in the midst of a violent (to hear them tell it) bunch of Buddhists.

The fact that famous Burmese human rights activist Aung San Suu Kyi has not jumped to the defense of the Rohingya is telling.  Dear Betsy, is she a Far Right activist too?

And, finally, yes there have been excesses from the Buddhists. It would be inexcusable for me (although I’m just a blogger) not to say that, but surely a ‘journalist’ of Woodruff’s stature might actually mention the rape and killing carried out by the Rohingya against Buddhists.

Here are Woodruff’s opening comments:

Some of the most influential figures in the far right have suggested that the Rohingya had Burma’s ethnic-cleansing campaign coming.

The Burmese government is engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing that has displaced more than 600,000 Rohingya civilians from their homes. Burmese military forces have burned dozens of Rohingya villages, raped women and girls, and murdered scores of people, according to an October report from Amnesty International. The government’s brutality against the predominantly Muslim ethnic minority has drawn condemnation from the United Nations, the international human rights community, and the U.S. State Department.

But in far-right media, it’s a different story. Some of the most influential figures of the far right have helped amplify voices that incite violence, and have even suggested that the Rohingya had it coming.

Continue reading as she gasps over remarks by Coulter, Geller, Spencer and unnamed writers at Breitbart including this one (she provides no link) who apparently said this:

(Let me ask you faithful readers if this sounds outrageous to you.)

“Perhaps the Buddhists are trying to maintain their own history and culture in the face of calls for destruction,” it concluded.

What an unthinkable concept that is according to Woodruff (gasping again)!

burmese-monks-e1506120223754
Yup! Monks being politically incorrect!

She does give a link for a recent story at World Net Daily by Leo Hohmann where I am quoted:

And WorldNetDaily, a site best known for promoting birther conspiracy theories***, recently ran a piece indicating Burma’s government was handling the Rohingya crisis appropriately.

“The Buddhists get it,” anti-refugee activist Ann Corcoran told the site. “They are being very politically incorrect.”

(Gasp!)

I urge anyone considering themselves journalists to visit my Rohingya Reports category with over 200 previous posts.  You should learn that the Rohingya began the latest round of violence in 2012. First came the rape and murder of a Buddhist girl by Rohingya and retaliation by Buddhists. Then the Rohingya burned some Buddhist villages in Rakhine state….and back and forth it went.

*** Have some fun, go back to Woodruff’s piece and see how many words she uses that are yellow journalism techniques— exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering or sensationalism.  Like this: “conspiratorial right-wing Robert Spencer.”

Post is filed in my ‘Laugh of the day’ category, here.