‘Beyond its mandate’: Canada’s ‘radical’ postal workers’ union helps fund litany of controversial causes

Earlier this month, The Rose, a women’s newsletter issued by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, declared that through its support of Israel, Canada is complicit in “war crimes.”

Alongside claims that “patriarchy was introduced into First Nations cultures through European colonization,” the publication asserts that Canada “is allowing Israel to terrorize occupied people, breach international law, normalize home demolitions … and steal resources.”

Almost immediately, Jewish groups issued condemnations of the three-page document as “a racist propaganda tool filled with half-truths,” according to the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies.

Representatives from all three major parties joined the chorus, with the most colourful coming from Liberal leader Bob Rae: “I continue to be astonished by the extent to which ideas which should be on the ‘loony tunes’ margins of politics have now been adopted by a union which represents thousands of its members.”

Read the rest at The National Post

h/t BCF

Canadian Union of Postal Workers reiterates need for 'Right to Work' legislation

Idiotic CUPW leadership supports terrorists

CUPW bosses using union dues to fund a hateful agenda reiterates the need for Bill C-377

It was a grey, drizzly, crappy day this Friday morning. Looking outside should make one for a moment of those hardworking Canadians, serving their fellow citizen and doing a job for the government by making sure you get your mail delivered on time.

To get that job, the mail sorters, the carriers, the truck drivers, the front line workers manning the post offices were all forced to join a union, The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW).

If you are a postal worker who doesn't like what the union does, it doesn't matter, you had to join. If you think union politics are insidious, it doesn't matter, you had to join. If you don't want union dues deducted from every one of your paychecks, it doesn't matter, it gets taken from you and you have no say over it.

I've worked in unionized environments. For the government. the vast majority of union members are decent, hardworking people. They do their job, cash their cheques, and for the most part, their only involvement with the union is getting a free calendar from them once a year and the odd notice for a union barbecue or holiday party. Not much in return for the hundreds of dollars culled from each employee over the course of each year from their weekly salaries.

Union employees and representatives are another mater. With few exceptions, the ones intimately involved with the union are the worst, most inept employees, and are prone to pettiness and sleaziness. They focus on the union as a way of protecting their ability to be inept and sleazy in the workplace.

The union bosses, who make big salaries and don't even work in your workplace, are the worst of the lot. They run their operations like Stalinist fiefdoms. They live lavishly while pretending to be regular Joes. They travel the country and beyond with large expense accounts and little concern for how the money is spent. Because for them the cash keeps coming and coming, every week, out of the workers' dues.

Think of the history of the long and intricate involvement between unions and organized crime and that tells you much about union "ethics."

Union bosses love playing the big shot, taking money from regular working people to pay for their depraved, insidious political goals. The Canadian Union of Public Employees regularly sends its bosses on "solidarity missions" to the communist dictatorship in Cuba or to prostrate themselves at the feet of authoritarian buffoon  Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. All this on the dime of union members, who are never told how much it costs.

Public service unions in Canada do not pay taxes nor do they disclose their spending.

For the guy and gal postal worker out there in the cold today, doing the hard job to let those union bosses live it up, the worst part is, they don't even get to be told by the unions how their money is spent. The union bosses want to keep it that way for a very logical reason. They know out much disgust and outrage they would face from their own membership upon seeing how their money funds the waste and malfeasance of the  high-living bosses.

The current example is the all-expenses excursion CUPW is sending six "delegates" to in Brazil for a "Let's Destroy Israel" conference. In a facade of trasparency, the union is letting anyone from its membership apply to go. But the twist is that, "Priority will be given to members who have experience with issues and activities related to this trip.." In other words, their cronies who share the hateful, politicized fanaticism of the union bosses get the largesse dispensed to them. While the average postie who isn't interested in destroying Israel is left to pick up the tab.

Union members have a right to expect their dues to be used to support workplace safety, fairness and collective bargaining; not the pet Jew-hate or communist cheerleading projects of the union kings.

Bill C-377, which has passed its Second Reading and has gone to the House of Commons Finance Committee, has the union commissars in a full-blown panic. It will force unions to disclose their spending on items over $5000. The unions are apoplectic with fear of having to tell the people whose money they squander exactly how they are doing it.

The unions have become so enraged, one of their stooges, a CUPE organizer named Humberto da Silva, who makes videos for the union-financed website rabble.ca, produced a video in which he compared Prime Minister Stephen Harper to Adolf Hitler because of the introduction of the spending transparency Bill.

Transparency wasn't actually big on Hitler's to-do list. Like CUPW's bosses, making life bad for Jews was. If  CUPW and some of the other union honchos want to find Hitler comparisons, they need not point all the way to the Prime Minister's office in Ottawa. The nearest mirror would do much better.

Simon Fraser University strikes a blow against fanatical, undemocratic national student union

What do university students get for being in the Canadian Federation of Students?

From the sounds of things, not much, other than the opportunity to have part of their tuition fees used to subsidize a few radical causes and the activists who want to use other people's money to push their own political agenda (and enjoy a few expense-paid trips and make a few buck on the side at the same time).

The Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) uses money they take away from students, which amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars per university, to support radical, divisive issues along with the Public Interest Research Groups at Universities, which has a fetish for some of history's most prolific mass-murderers.  These issues or affiliations include the anti-Semitic Israeli Apartheid Week, anti-Semitism directed at Jewish student organizations, a violent activist group called The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), and the radical leadership of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, to name but a few.

The radical student organizations benefit from knowing that most students are too busy going through university  trying to get an education (and get laid) to scrutinize their tuition fees line by line.

But at a few universities, the student bodies have caught on and are fighting back and have held referendum to de-certify the CFS. Concordia,  Guelph and the University of Victoria have all voted, overwhelmingly, against continuing their membership in CFS.In each case, the CFS has not respected the democratic outcome and have tried to fight these decisions in court. They have lost, but those court battles to impose themselves where they aren't wanted are being paid for with student fees they take from other universities.

Simon Fraser University is the latest institute to have fought back against the CFS. They voted to get out of the CFS and are facing an ongoing lawsuit by the national student union to bleed money from the school. In fighting the democratic decision of Simon Fraser's student body, the CFS has demonstrated that their only concern is self-interest, which is of little surprise, given where their support is based. In Simon Fraser's case, they've also had the foresight to evict their Public Interest Research Group from the premises.

Students across the country need to become more aware of how their student funds are being used. Like any other union, the CFS, whose leadership works in self-serving partnerships with public service unions, isn't fighting for students as much as the right of a select few to choose how to blow some student money.

(and make dumb videos)

Explicit calls for political violence come from the radical left in Canada

Any mass murder in North America has ramifications beyond the transparent tragedy that accompanies the death of innocents in a society that is comparatively among the safest in the world.

In trying to make sense of the incomprehensible, there are some who will try to find a culprit beyond the obvious, sometimes without any rational basis. The atrocity perpetrated by demented killer Jared Loughner over the weekend in which six innocent people were murdered and Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was critically wounded has, what seems to be, an obvious explanation. The perpetrator, whose public pronouncements suggest an incoherent, unbalanced madman, was mentally ill and acted out out of psychosis.

But one of the tragedies in this case, that compounds the original one, is that there are no shortage of people who are happy to exploit these deaths for political and ideological motives.

Because the central victim in is a Democratic legislator whose district was identified by Sarah Palin as a "target" for  Republicans to take, Democrats and others on the left, both in the US and in Canada, have ebulliently grasped the opportunity to lay blame on the former Republican Vice Presidential candidate,the Republican party and "right wingers" in general for allegedly creating a climate filled with violent rhetoric that supposedly created these events.

Nothing could be more absurd.

From The Democratic Leadership Council website

Despite preposterous suggestions from people like Paul Krugman in The New York Times, there is no evidence whatsoever establishing that anything Sarah Palin, or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh said that played any role in Loughner's deranged violence. Sarah Palin may be a bit of a buffoon more famous for celebrity itself than for political adroitness, but her use of political rhetoric never called for violence of any kind and it falls within the scope of discourse that typifies much of American politics.

Responsible conservatives are as opposed to violence as much as responsible liberals. We live in a democratic society where change can be achieved through persuasion and elections.


Sane people are appalled by and reject the idea of initiating transition by terror.

But what may be shocking to some is that in Canada, explicit calls for violence to achieve political ends are coming from none other than the radical left.

Or perhaps not so shocking. The most recent acts of publicized political violence in Canada came from The Black Bloc during Toronto's G20 conference. It was radical leftists who rioted and caused millions of dollars in damage to make a political statement.

But it doesn't end there. Prominent Canadian leftist Judy Rebick founded a Marxist-leaning website called rabble.ca. It's now published by the spouse of the NDP's Deputy Leader, Libby Davies and is mainly funded by Canadian unions like CUPW and CUPE. That site's discussion forum recently hosted a thread entitled, "When is the time for violent revolution?" in which its contributors made comments like:

"I was wondering when it would be ok to overthrow a government, violently if need be."

"Perhaps the reason the ballot box isn't working is because the ballot box isn't the way to the solution."

"I think 9/11 was just a test run. The people failed with flying colours. And I think it's an example of what's in store for the future if fascists back themselves into another corner."

"How many more decades should we wait? It appears that Canadians arent catching on, so should we suffer in silence for 30 more years? maybe a generation or three? Dont the better people of our society have a responsibility to the stupid?"

and worse.

Beyond that,  CUPE, CUPW, Independent Jewish Voices (an anti-Israel group) and the NDP's Socialist Caucus were all endorsers of a recent rally where one of the speakers called for violent revolution in Canada.

At a Toronto rally in support of convicted American cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamar, one of the speakers was an organizer from the Communist newsletter BASICS. Following a rambling speech about conspiracies and praising violent revolutionaries, he said "we haven't had any threat of insurrection or any, you know, revolutionary uprisings in Canada quite for, for quite some time, right? But that that doesn't mean that operation is not still in play."

This suggests that the Canadian radical left is not only advocating violence, but planning it.

This type of organized insurrection against democracy is far more dangerous than a lone madman. Violence for political means is deplorable, and no ideology or political movement has a monopoly on it. But its strongest proponents these days are not the "right-wingers" and "neo-Cons" but their opponents.

CUPE, CUPW, NDP Socialist Caucus co-sponsor rally calling for violent revolution in Canada

It isn't just the Islamists you have to worry about.

Believe it or not, Canada still has communist and radical socialist organizations advocating violent revolution. And they may be involved in places you wouldn't expect.

The Trotskyite International Bolshevik Tendency (what the hell does that mean - they aren't always Bolshevik, but they tend to be??) as well as the NDP's Socialist Caucus, CUPE, The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (of course) and Independent Jewish Voices, a virulent anti-Israel group that is a sponsor of The Sea Hitler, (holds events at OISE) and is led by 9-11 conspiracy theorist Diana Ralph, along with Khaled Mouammar's Canadian Arab Federation, were just some of the groups behind a protest last month outside the US Consulate in Toronto.

The rally was to support convicted American cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamar (nee Wesley Cook).

The rally managed to attract about two dozen people, as you'll be able to see in the video below. That's a rather remarkable achievement, given that it was endorsed by exactly 33 organizations.

(This is further proof of the assertion that there are only a few radical crazies in Toronto who have created a large number of groups to which these same few people have cross-memberships in order to create the impression of greater numbers.)

One of the speakers was an organizer from the Communist newsletter BASICS. Following a rambling speech about conspiracies and praising violent revolutionaries, at about the 9:22 point of the video, he says "we haven't had any threat of insurrection or any, you know, revolutionary uprisings in Canada quite for, for quite some time, right?  But that that doesn't mean that operation is not still in play."

His speech contains what appears to be both advocacy of a violent revolution designed to overthrow our democratic, constitutionally-based government and the suggestion that it is being planned right now.

It's interesting to see CUPE, CUPW and a faction of the NDP associated with that. I haven't heard of them issuing a statement repudiating what was said at that rally. But then, is that really such a surprise?

One speaker at Canadian Union of Postal Workers sponsored anti-Israel conference admits support for terror, another heads organization that threatened South African Jews

One of the speakers at the Canadian Union of Postal Workers' increasingly anti-Semitic-looking "Montreal BDS Conference" is none other than Ewa Jasiewicz.

Jasiewicz was a participant in the recent flotilla aimed at disrupting Israel's sea blockade of Gaza. In public, the anti-Israel activists pretend that they are not there to help Hamas, but want to bring aid to the people of Gaza. But among themselves, they tell the truth. Watch her from the 7:45 point in the video at the end of this post. Jasiewicz admits that the purpose of the these "peace activists" is to help the "fighters" and the "armed resistance." It should be noted the "armed resistance" Jasiewicz speaks of is Hamas' random lobbing of missiles into civilian areas in southern Israel, an act described by the United Nations as a war crime.

A rather amusing part of the video comes at the 6:00 minute part when she is disingenuous to the point of being ridiculous by trying to explain that when Palestinians in Gaza say they want to "kill the Jews", they don't really mean Jews but just the "Zionists." (Those silly Gazans keep forgetting to use the code word in public!)  This preposterous dissembling from Ms. Jasiewicz is characteristic of the bizarre psychological contortions these alleged "peace activists" engage in to try to mask their support for bigots and violent fanatics.

There really isn't much more that needs to be added to her words. She reveals that these liars hiding behind the "anti-war" mask aren't interested in peace, but want to facilitate the murder of Israelis by Hamas, a group that the Canadian government has designated as a terror group.

Yesterday with regard to the appearance at the bigots' conference by notorious anti-Semite Bongani Masuku, Jonathan Kay, in the National Post, observed :

As of noon Tuesday, Mr. Masuku was featured on the conference web site under the heading of “keynote speakers” — along with CUPW President Denis Lemelin. By early afternoon, after Mr. Masuku’s participation has been highlighted on the blog Eye on a Crazy Planet, his name had been scrubbed in favour of other officials from his organization, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, known as COSATU.

The status of Bongani Masuku's participation remains unclear for now. But the conference still currently boasts the appearance of Sidumo Dlamini, Masuku's bigoted boss at COSATU, who invoked conspiracy theories reminiscent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion with his claim that Zionism is "a version of global racist domination." Dlamini is the sort of bigot who leads an organization that decided to protest against Israel, not by protesting in front of the Israeli Embassy in South Africa, or at the South African legislature, but by marching (illegally) through a Jewish neighbourhood as a clear message of threat and intimidation.

These are the people that CUPW are sponsoring to speak in Canada. The same kind of people who are behind the CUPW-sponsored "Sea Hitler". The leadership of CUPW needs to be held responsible for what they are doing.




UPDATE: And naturally, it wouldn't be an anti-Israel hate fest without the participation of Canadian tax-dollar leech John Greyson.

Canadian Union of Postal Workers to sponsor anti-Israel conference featuring speaker found guilty of anti-Semitic hate speech

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers seems primarily interested in two things.

Ensuring the rights and good working conditions of Canadian postal workers and cooperating on providing efficient postal service to Canadians aren't either of them.

Fighting "Globalization" and inserting themselves into "liberation struggles" that have a remarkable tie-in to the interests of the Communist Party and the International Socialist movements seem to be their priorities.

CUPW, as readers of this blog will know, are co-sponsors of "The Sea Hitler" (the boat some Canadian Islamist and Communist groups want to send to interfere with Israel's Gaza blockade) and have allied themselves with some of the most virulent anti-Israel bigots in Canada.

But now the radical leadership of CUPW may have crossed the line into sponsoring outright anti-Semitism.

CUPW is co-sponsor of a conference set to occur in Montreal for October 22-24 called "Montreal BDS Conference". For those unfmiliar, BDS stands for "Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions" and these actions would be directed at Israel. The BDS movement is part of an ongoing campaign by Islamic and leftist radicals to try to deligitimize the middle east's only genuine democracy.

Canadian Liberal Party and parliamentary Opposition leader Michael Ignatieff referred to this phenomenon, when discussing the odious effort called "Israel Apartheid Week" which is closely tied to the is "BDS" movement as a "global campaign of proclamations, boycotts and calls for divestment, which originated in the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001. Like “Durban I,” IAW singles out one state, its citizens and its supporters for condemnation and exclusion, and it targets institutions and individuals because of what and who they are — Israeli and Jewish.  [It] goes beyond reasonable criticism into demonization."

One of the speakers that CUPW is proud to present at the BDS conference is Bongani Masuku, South African labor union COSATU International Affairs Secretary, who was found guilty by the South African government's Human Rights Commission of anti-Semitic hate speech.

For information on Masuku, we have this from The Canada-Israel Committee's website:

What precisely did Masuku say that got him into so much trouble? Here are a few examples:

"We want to convey a message to the Jews in South Africa that our 1.9-million workers who are affiliated to COSATU are fully behind the people of Palestine… Any business owned by Israel supporters will be a target of workers in South Africa” [Source: Address at COSATU-Palestinian Solidarity Committee rally in Raedene, 6 February 2009].

"COSATU is with you, we will do everything to make sure that whether it’s at Wits University, whether its at Orange Grove, anyone who does not support equality and dignity, who does not support the rights of other people must face the consequences even if it means that we will do something that may necessarily cause what is regarded as harm …" [Source: Address at public meeting on Wits University Campus, 5 March 2009]

The implications of Masuku’s statements were as clear as day, at least according to the South African Human Rights Commission:

In its findings, the SAHRC found that Mr. Masuku “surely intended to incite violence and hatred that was already potentially imminent amongst these two groups.”. The Commission also noted that other comments by Mr. Masuku were “intimidating and threatening” and noted that other comments made by Mr. Masuku could only mean that “unless South Africans agree with his views they should be forced to leave South Africa.”

In sum the SAHRC stated that “the comments and statements are of an extreme nature that advocate and imply that the Jewish and Israeli community are to be despised, scorned and ridiculed and thus subjecting them to ill-treatment on the basis of their religious affiliation. A prima facie case of hate speech is clearly established.”

By sponsoring Masuku, an advocate of  "violent liberation struggle" (read: "terrorism') CUPW is providing yet another example that bears out the truth of Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney's assessment:, "so much of the criticism Israel faces is motivated by a dangerous form of anti-Semitism that tries to hide behind anti-Zionism and is represented by a coalition of the far left in the West with extreme currents of jihadi Islam that seek the destruction of the Jewish nation. They seem to believe that the Jewish people are the only people in the world that don't have a right to a homeland."

The vocal anti-Semite Masuku is the sort of individual that Denis Lemelin, President, Canadian Union of Postal Workers, as a speaker and sponsor of this conference, is willing to be associated with. CUPW leadership and their descent into anti-Semitism is a disgrace and an embarrassment to its membership. They should be held responsible and called out for their bigotry.


h/t Blazing Cat Fur

Hurt Feelings and a Trial Run for The Sea Hitler on Lake Ontario (and their affiliation with Maude Barlow's Council of Canadians)

Sensitive Canadian enablers of terrorism and Iranian arms smuggling don't like being called names.

So two of them put their little brains together to compose a page called  "Name-calling won't sink Boat to Gaza." 

David Heap, a French instructor at the University of Western Ontario and Dylan Penner, who is the Media Officer for The Council of Canadians, the NDP affiliated organization headed by Maude Barlow, co-penned a petulant whine, riddled with paranoid chestnuts like:

 "Name-calling in the media, just like intimidation visits by CSIS agents to our homes, will not deter us from our goal."

I don't know why these half-wits are so sensitive to criticism. Evidently, they are so oblivious to ridicule that they posted a link on their website to an interview on The John Oakley Show where the Canadian Gaza Boat's leader is made to look like a fool and leadership of The Canadian Union of Postal Workers who support them are depicted as bigoted morons who are deceiving their union's membership. Or maybe they just believe in the old adage, "there's no such thing as bad publicity."

Anyway, it appears the crew-in-waiting for The Sea Hitler have caught the sailing bug and are going to attempt a fundraiser on a boat on Lake Ontario this September 25th. For $75 to $1000 you too can have falafel balls on Lake Ontario to the strains of middle eastern undulating tongue music.

Knives and pipes in case of boarding by the Toronto Harbour Police are optional but recommended.

You can tell Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas Prime Minister of Gaza, that he's a pig fornicator and have the Sea Hitler deliver your message

The politburo running the Canadian Union of Postal Workers are big supporters of The Sea Hitler, the boat the Canadian enablers of terror hope to use to break Israel's blockade of Gaza designed to keep out Iranian arms shipments.

As reported on the neo-Marxist website, rabble.ca:

CUPW called on Canadians to back efforts to break the siege by sending their Gaza-bound mail via the Canadian Boat to Gaza. The Canadian Boat to Gaza is urging those who wish to break this ban to send with us postcards with messages of support to the besieged strip. Article 25 of the fourth Geneva Convention guarantees the right to personal correspondence with family members under occupation.

"As postal workers, we know very well that cutting off mail creates suffering and hardship for people, who are isolated from their loved ones," said Denis Lemelin, National President of CUPW. "How many more abuses will the people of Gaza have to endure?"

Lemelin omitted that as postal workers, they're evidently too stupid to figure out how to turn on a computer and send an email. But that's another matter.

If Syd Ryan's CUPE and the CUPW pony up $300,000 worth of union dues from the unsuspecting dupes they are supposed to be representing in labour matters unrelated to international conflicts, The Sea Hitler may sail and they can carry your message of support.

This is too good an opportunity to be missed. Send a postcard to the address below and let Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas Prime Minister in Gaza, that he's a disgusting terrorist who becomes aroused at the site of a sow's behind. Make up your own message.

The Canadian Boat to Gaza is eager to carry mail to Gaza if the ban is not lifted soon" said Sandra Ruch, spokesperson for the Canadian Boat to Gaza. "We will make every effort to deliver any mail we get to the postal authorities in Gaza. We ask senders to limit mail they send us to unsealed postcards of greeting and support to loved ones keeping in mind that it, as well as the rest of our cargo, may end up in Israeli hands if our boat is pirated."

While Sandra Ruch may lack the intelligence to comprehend the meaning of words she uses, like "pirated", her point is well taken. Send your message of support. preferably in Arabic or Hebrew, to this address. I'm sure it will be appreciated:

Canadian Boat to Gaza

C.P. 92087, Portobello
Brossard, Quebec
J4W 3K8

MORE: See Blazing Cat Fur's artistic rendition of The Sea Hitler's journey on a stamp.