Special to Canada Free Press
A U.S.-based urban terrorist group has a new ally in its Canadian war against Money Mart and Western Union.
Canada's biggest daily newspaper, the relentlessly leftist Toronto Star, is helping ACORN's Canadian affiliate in its efforts to terrorize the two financial services companies. As Canada Free Press readers know, the Red Star is home to America-hating neo-communist columnists such as Thomas Walkom and Linda McQuaig.
The pairing actually makes a lot of sense. Both the Star and ACORN are on the far left and both have an impressive record of union-busting, but I digress. (The National Union of Public and General Employees, or NUPGE,
also supports ACORN.)
The Star's immigration reporter, Nicholas Keung,
wrote a feature article that used Rassel Mohammad, a Bangladeshi immigrant, as a prop.
When every three months he visits the Western Union counter at the local Money Mart Mohammad "pays a hefty price to help out his two widowed aunts and six school-age cousins in Bangladesh," Keung writes. Mohammad has to pay an $11 fee to make sure $100 makes its way safely to his relatives in his native country.
ACORN Canada's new president Kay Bisnath complains the fees banks and other companies charge for money transfers are "exorbitant." To help poor people, ACORN says it wants Western Union to charge no more than 5 per cent for overseas remittances.
In reality, ACORN doesn't give a farthing's cuss about Mohammad or any poor people. The group's goal is to overthrow capitalism and the democratic system. Poor people like Mohammad are merely pawns that ACORN uses to advance its radical political objectives.
ACORN, which used to employ President Obama, is hitting Money Mart and Western Union because it wants the companies to pay it protection money.
ACORN wants a cut of the remittance business. Remittances from overseas Bangladeshis totaled US$11 billion in 2010, or almost 25% of that country's Gross Domestic Product.
Cha-ching!
And, by the way, is 11 percent really too much to pay to transfer funds to Bangladesh?
There are plenty of reasons why Western Union might feel it necessary to charge an $11 fee for a money transfer to
Bangladesh.
With close to 159 million people packed into an area smaller than Iowa, 40 percent of Bangladesh's population lives below the poverty line. Residents are at high risk of contracting food or waterborne diseases such as hepatitis A and E, and typhoid fever. They are also at high risk for dengue fever, malaria, leptospirosis, and rabies.
A third of the country floods every year during monsoon season. Bangladesh is plagued by political instability, poor infrastructure, corruption, and inadequate power supplies.
Operating a business under such adverse conditions can't be easy or cheap.
But ACORN doesn't care. It just wants money to fund its radical political operations.
As Keung notes, ACORN "is targeting Western Union first because of its large share--17 per cent--of the global cross-border remittance market."
And if ACORN's targets don't cough up the dough, intimidation and violence will follow
As I detail in my new book,
Subversion Inc: How Obama's ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers, here's what ACORN did to another financial services firm based in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Liberty Tax Service was targeted by ACORN in 2005. More than 100 angry ACORN members showed up at the company's headquarters.
ACORN accused the company of charging excessive interest rates on the refund anticipation loans it offers to income tax filers. "All of sudden, four bus loads of homeless people pull up in front of our headquarters here in Virginia Beach," CEO John Hewitt said.
"They came pouring into the building like a Mongolian horde. There was screaming and fighting. One employee was bitten and another was scratched. They both had to go to the emergency room." The demonstrators were arrested and the company filed a legal complaint but withdrew it later because it would have been too expensive to pursue, Hewitt explained.
The company agreed to pay an ACORN affiliate $50,000 a year. "To me, it's just to stop them from harassing us," said Hewitt. "Even though I felt dirty by paying them money, I said, you know, it's a business decision."
Liberty Tax Service is just one of ACORN's many victims in the United States.
Now that ACORN has offices in Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, and Vancouver, expect the group's victims to start piling up in Canada.
