Many people, who do not look beyond the vision or the rhetoric to the reality, still think of labor unions as protectors of working people from their employers. And union bosses still employ that kind of rhetoric. However, someone once said, “When I speak I put on a mask, but when I act I must take it off.”

That mask has been coming off, more and more, especially during the Obama administration, and what is revealed underneath is very ugly, very cynical and very dangerous.

First there was the grossly misnamed “Employee Free Choice Act” that the administration tried to push through Congress. What it would have destroyed was precisely what it claimed to be promoting — a free choice by workers as to whether or not they wanted to join a labor union.

Ever since the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, workers have been able to express their free choice of joining or not joining a labor union in a federally conducted election with a secret ballot.

As workers in the private sector have, over the years, increasingly voted to reject joining labor unions, union bosses have sought to replace secret ballots with signed documents — signed in the presence of union organizers and under the pressures, harassments or implicit threats of those organizers.

Now that the Obama administration has appointed a majority of the members of the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB leadership has imposed new requirements that employers supply union organizers with the names and home addresses of every employee. Nor do employees have a right to decline to have this personal information given out to union organizers, under NLRB rules.

In other words, union organizers will now have the legal right to pressure, harass or intimidate workers on the job or in their own homes, in order to get them to sign up with the union. Among the consequences of not signing up is union reprisal on the job if the union wins the election.

But physical threats and actions are by no means off the table, as many people who get in the way of unions have learned.

"Athiest who mocked Jesus and Muslims hit with Asbo," from The Asian News, April 26 (thanks to Twostellas):

An atheist who left leaflets mocking Jesus, Islam and the Pope in an international airport's prayer room has been given an Asbo.

Harry Taylor, 59, from Salford, left home-made posters at Liverpool John Lennon Airport three times in 2008.

The self-styled philosopher denied three counts of causing religiously aggravated harassment, alarm or distress but a jury unanimously found him guilty in less than an hour.

One leaflet showed a smiling crucified Christ next to an advert for a brand of 'no nails' glue. In another, a cartoon depicted two Muslims holding a placard demanding equality with the caption: "Not for women or gays, obviously."

Islamic suicide bombers at the gates of paradise were told in another: "Stop, stop - we've run out of virgins."

Another leaflet depicted the Pope with a condom on his finger.

Taylor, of Griffin Street, Higher Broughton, told Liverpool Crown Court he was sexually abused by Catholic priests as a youngster.

But he said he bore no grudge against religious people and claimed he was merely trying to convert them to atheism. Taylor, who is unemployed and on medication for depression, said it was 'preposterous' to suggest people could be incited to violence by cartoons.

He had adapted newspaper and magazine cartoons and added captions of his own.

But some went way beyond exercising freedom of expression, prosecutor Neville Biddle said, including one that linked Muslims to attacks on airports.

It emerged in court that Taylor was convicted of similar offences in 2006.

He left offensive leaflets in Manchester city centre churches St Ann's and the Hidden Gem.

Judge James told him: "Not only have you shown no remorse for what you did but even now you continue to maintain that you have done nothing wrong and say that whenever you feel like it you intend to do the same thing again in the future."

Taylor's Asbo bans him from carrying religiously offensive material in a public place. He was also sentenced to six months in jail, suspended for two years, ordered to do 100 hours' unpaid work and pay £250 costs.

The United Nations has been busy this past week celebrating International Women’s Day and convening a conference at UN headquarters in New York of the Commission on the Status of Women. A key focus of the Commission, according to the website of the UN’s Division for the Advancement of Women, is “sharing of experiences and good practices with a view to overcoming remaining obstacles and new challenges.” Unfortunately, the one place where women will see ingrained bad practices in dealing with sexual harassment against women in its ranks is the United Nations itself.

A case in point involves a lawsuit brought by an American citizen and United Nations employee, Cynthia Brzak, who worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, in Geneva. She claimed that Lubbers improperly touched her after a December 2003 business meeting in his office. Lubbers resigned in 2005 because of the scandal. However, he does not have to worry about ever facing justice in a U.S. court because he has permanent immunity as an ex-United Nations employee. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on March 2, 2010 that the United Nations is absolutely immune from such a lawsuit, and that its former employees also have immunity.

If the United Nations’ leadership were serious about walking the walk itself, instead of preaching about gender rights to everyone else, the UN could have waived its own immunity and the immunity of its staff with respect to claims of sexual harassment acts by its employees – or, in this case, its former employee. That did not happen. Instead, reprisals against Brzak allegedly followed in the wake of her complaint and continue to this day.

Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General, ran interference for Lubbers even to the point of allegedly disregarding the findings of an internal UN investigation and exonerating him. The current Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, is ducking the issue and has allowed the UN’s legal staff to vigorously assert the immunity defense rather than waive it.

Ban Ki-moon addressed the Commission on the Status of Women High-Level Event marking International Women’s Day, one day after the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ immunity decision shielding the UN and Lubbers from liability came out. Ban Ki-moon said that as a son and husband, a father and grandfather to girls, and as UN Secretary General, it is his duty to fight for gender equality and women’s empowerment, which are fundamental to the very identity of the United Nations. He can start in his own backyard.

In light of all the attention the United Nations is bestowing on women’s rights during the conference of the Commission on the Status of Women and Ban Ki-moon’s self-described personal involvement with the issue, I asked his spokesperson, Martin Nesirky, whether the Secretary General had any comment on the latest development in the sexual harassment case against the United Nations and Lubbers. Not surprisingly, he did not. When I persisted on when we can expect a comment on this women’s rights issue, he replied with a riddle: “Do we know how long is a string?”

I addressed the same question to Rachel Mayanja, Special Adviser to the Secretary General on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women. Oblivious to the irony of her specializing in gender issues and the advancement of women at the United Nations, she professed ignorance of the facts of the sexual harassment case against the United Nations and Lubbers. And she defended the UN’s use of immunity “to protect the interests of the organization.”

The fact is that the United Nations has a serious problem on its hands with sexual abuse and harassment cases, most notably in its peace-keeping forces, but at high managerial levels as well. Instead of serving as a role model on an issue that it purports to champion, the UN is fighting judicial accountability for the actions of its own employees.

Threats and harassment are becoming increasingly commonplace for Jewish residents in Malmö in southern Sweden, leading many Jews to leave the city out of fear for their safety.

"Threats against Jews have increased steadily in Malmö in recent years and many young Jewish families are choosing to leave the city," Fredrik Sieradzki of the Jewish Community of Malmö (Judiska Församlingen i Malmö) told The Local.

"Many feel that the community and local politicians have shown a lack of understanding for how the city's Jewish residents have been marginalized."

Last year there were 79 crimes against Jewish residents reported to the police in Malmö, roughly double the number reported in 2008, according to the Skånska Dagbladet newspaper.

"That probably doesn't tell the whole story because not everyone chose to make a report. Perhaps they fear they will add to an already infected situation," Susanne Gosenius, a hate crimes coordinator with the Skåne police, told the newspaper, which has published series of articles about the growing anti-Semitism in Malmö.

In addition, Jewish cemeteries and synagogues have repeatedly been defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti, and a chapel at another Jewish burial site in Malmö was firebombed in January of last year. [...]

Skånska Dagbladet highlighted the case of Marcus Eilenberg, a 32-year-old father of two who has decided to move to Israel.

"My children aren't safe here. It's going to get worse," he told the newspaper. [...]

He blamed part of the problem on passive local politicians who he believes have failed to openly distance themselves from anti-Semitism and refuse to act when members of the Jewish community find themselves under constant threat. [...]

When asked to explain why Jewish religious services often require security guards and even police protection, Reepalu said much of the violence directed toward Malmö's Jewish community come from members of extremist right-wing groups, a theory which baffles Sieradzki.

"I'm not saying we don't have problems with neo-Nazis, but the threats aren't as concrete," he explained.

"More often it's the far-left that commonly use Jews as a punching bag for their disdain toward the policies of Israel, even if Jews in Malmö have nothing to do with Israeli politics.

"It's shameful and regrettable that such a powerful politician could be so ignorant about the threats we face."

In addition to the far-left, Sieradzki said that a "very small segment" of the city's growing population of Muslim immigrants from Arab countries in the Middle East are also responsible for growing anti-Semitism.

"This is a small group of extremists who have decided to go after Jews wherever they are in the world and regardless of their relationship to Israel," he said....

Activists from 17 countries across the region met in Cairo for a two-day conference ending Monday and concluded that harassment was unchecked across the region because laws don’t punish it, women don’t report it and the authorities ignore it.

The harassment, including groping and verbal abuse, is a daily experience women in the region face and makes them wary of going into public spaces, whether it’s the streets or jobs, the participants said. It happens regardless of what women are wearing.

via Harassment across Arab world drives women inside – Yahoo! News.

More on this story. "Christian hoteliers received violent threats over Muslim guest 'insult,'" by Jonathan Wynne-Jones in the Telegraph, December 12 (thanks to James):

Christian hoteliers Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang have received hate mail after they were accused of insulting a Muslim guest because of her faith.

The couple said they have been "living a nightmare" since they were charged in July with a "religiously-aggravated" offence of causing harassment, alarm or distress.

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, the couple have told of their relief at being cleared of insulting Ericka Tazi, a Muslim woman who was staying at their hotel.

They said that they had suffered emotionally and financially since the prosecution began, received threats warning they would be attacked and nearly lost their business due to an 80 per cent decline in takings at their nine-bedroom hotel, the Bounty House in Aintree, Liverpool.

"The last nine months have been a nightmare for us," said Mr Vogelenzang.

"We've been drained emotionally and financially. We have, sadly, received some threats and hate mail. That has been upsetting.

"Our business has almost been destroyed."...

The hotel had been reliant for much of its business on a local hospital, which routinely referred outpatients to stay, but hospital chiefs put a stop to this once they heard about the court case....

Being a leftist Anti-Zionist means not only never having to say you are sorry, such as when you get your facts all wrong.  It also means that you have an obligation to represent yourself as a victim of harassment.   Armchair martyrdom is as fundamental a part of leftist ideology as anti-Americanism and hatred of Israel.

In his now-famous essay from July, 1976, “The Intelligent Co-ed’s Guide to America,” Thomas Wolfe wrote about how desperately American academics wish to feel persecuted.  A pretense of being persecuted today seems to do wonders both for their ego and for their web traffic.  The entire “Zionist Lobby” is largely an invention by these same people, anxious to show that they are being oppressed by an evil nefarious conspiracy.  You just need to wave your stigmata and denounce the “Neo-Conservatives,” the “Rightwing McCarthyists,” and – of course the Jews.  Whining about being persecuted seems to be the leading participation sport of today’s far Leftists and the radical armchair postureurs.

As documented recently on this web site, Joel Beinin, the Israel-hating pro-Hamas sometimes-Maoist professor of Middle East Studies at Stanford University is just such a persecution whiner.  Here is what we wrote:

‘“McCarthyism” seems to be Beinin’s third favorite “m” word, after Marxism and Mao, and he applies it liberally to anyone who dares to criticize him. Beinin wrote a 2004 article called “The New McCarthyism: Policing Thought about the Middle East.” In it, Beinin denounced the Ford Foundation’s decision to withdraw funding from any university grantee that finances the promotion of “violence, terrorism, or bigotry or the destruction of any state.” What worried Beinin was that such restrictions could potentially hurt a “Palestinian student group [that] called for the replacement of the state of Israel with a secular, democratic state,” meaning one seeking the extermination of Israel.’

Beinin went on to declare that Bay Area Zionists silenced him and prevented him from giving a talk to a school in San Jose.  The San Francisco Chronicle checked and reported that no one at all from the local Jewish Community had even spoken with anyone at that school.

Well, the good professor is back.  Over the Thanksgiving weekend he widely circulated the following epistle, which we reprint for you here in full, spelling errors and all:

26 November 2009

I arrived in Israel at about 15:00 on Wednesday, 25 November afternoon to visit my mother, brother, and sister who are Israeli (and US) citizens resident in Israel since 1973.  My mother has been ill, and this visit was prompted primarily for that reason. I have visited Israel dozens of times before – most recently December 2008 – and resided in the country for extended periods on several different occasions.  Yesterday, for the first time since my first visit to Israel in 1965, I was detained without explanation at Ben-Gurion airport for nearly two hours and ultimately interrogated.  The questioners asked questions that they surely already knew the answers to.  The asked, for example, my profession and my email.  My position as Donald J. McLaughlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History at Stanford University and my email are a matter of public record, easily obtainable from the website of Stanford’s Department of History.  The questioners also asked whether I had travelled (sic) to “other countries in the region” which, since they had my passport in their hands for the better part of two hours with all the relevant visa stamps, was also not obscure information.  My luggage was not searched nor was I asked any question remotely related to the security of Israel except whether I had traveled (sic) to Iran (I was there once, for two weeks, in 1970 when Israel had warm relations with the Shah’s regime).

It therefore appears that this “investigation” had no purpose other than to harass and intimidate me.

Upon leaving I was told that I would be contacted further by one “Amos” from the Ministry of Defense.  For my convenience, I was given his phone number: 054-*******.

Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History
Professor of Middle East History
Joel Beinin
Contact in Israel: 054-565-2320

The main reports about the horrific suffering by Beinin at the hands of the security personnel at Israel’s airport have been on web sites run by Israel’s own predominantly-Arab Stalinist communist party and on one of its front groups named “The Left Bank.”

Now the above Beinin hysterics about being “intimidated” need a dose of deconstruction.  Beinin routinely travels to countries that happen to be at war with Israel, and has visited Iran, which happens to be officially on record as calling for the annihilation of Israel and its population.  By his own admission, Beinin’s passport is bristling with visas from such countries.  One would expect even the sleepiest airport passport inspector at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport to sit up and take notice of someone coming into the country with such visas.  Most passport inspectors at Tel Aviv airport, by the way, are teenage girls.  So you can imagine the terror and intimation experienced there by the poor professor.

Now Beinin’s insistence that the airport security staff must have known who he is rings a bit curious.  I did a search of the Hebrew web, and – sure enough – there are some internet mentions of him in Hebrew, but almost all of those are on the web sites of communist party and its fronts, which the airport inspectors may not visit on a regular basis.  There are two mentions of Beinin’s getting sued by Los Angeles journalist Rachel Neuwirth for his posting false smears about her.

What about Beinin’s claim that being questioned about his travels in belligerent countries constitutes “harassment” and “intimidation?”   (We have only his word that the questioning took two hours, and no mention at all of his being offered cookies and tea; I have waited in that airport for longer just to get a guitar case out of the belly of a plane!)   Well, an acquaintance of mine named Julia is an Israeli Jew born in Libya, a fact noted on her Israeli passport, and you would not believe the hassle she goes through every time she wants to come to the United States for a visit!  My wife was questioned at length and searched at Tokyo airport after 9-11 because her passport says she was born in the Middle East.

More to the point, Joel Beinin is an anti-Israel hate propagandist, someone who has made a career out of rationalizing anti-Jewish terrorism and endorsing Arab demands for Israel’s annihilation.  Other countries routinely bar hostile propagandists for far less provocation.  Canada banned ultra-leftist and Saddam’s agent George Galloway from entering, and also banned some other radicals.  Canada also banned a controversial rap group from entering.  The US banned Tariq Ramadan due to his terrorist connections.  It has banned others for security reasons, including Cat Stevens, the British author Sebastian Horsley, a pro-LSD Canadian psychologist, and at least one Israeli.  The UK banned radio host Michael Savage (along with 15 other people) for being insensitive to Moslems, and tried to ban Dutch politician Geert Wilders.  Egypt has barred Hamas members from entering.  The Ukraine banned the mayor of Moscow from entering the country because of things he said.

Now as it turns out, Israel almost never prevents anti-Israel propagandists and anti-Semitic hate-mongers from entering the country.  For example, it rather stupidly allows lots of “anarchists” from the “International Solidarity Movement” and similar pro-terror groups to enter the country and then to attack its policemen and soldiers as their attempt to help Palestinian terrorists.  The only two anti-Israel propagandists of note who have been barred from entering Israel in recent years were: 1.  Norman Finkelstein, a Neo-Nazi who was fired by DePaul University and who was barred from entering Israel due to his intimate ties with the Hezb’Allah, and 2. Richard Falk, the anti-Semitic retired professor from Princeton who was barred from entering Israel as head of an anti-Israel UN propaganda “commission.”  (When Falk arrived earlier as a private person to give university lectures, he was admitted.)

Anti-Israel fanatics, like Noam Chomsky and the Swedish journalist who recently invented a medieval blood libel about Jews stealing the body parts of Palestinians, have been admitted to Israel freely, although they never would be if I had anything to say about it.  Even Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, whose nasty diatribe, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, has become the Koran for Israel-bashers and Jew-haters around the world, were welcomed in Israel for a speaking tour.

It goes without saying that Beinin has never expressed any criticism of the fact that Israelis are prohibited altogether from entering Iran and most Arab countries.  Some of those countries prohibit entry to Jews from anywhere.  In Saudi Arabia you will get expelled and beaten to a pulp if you have a Hanukka Menorah or a Christmas tree.

Of course the greatest irony in all of this is that Beinin was not banned from Israel at all, in spite of being a fanatical pro-terror anti-Israel propagandist.   He was simply interviewed by an alert young passport inspector, suspicious of all those visas in Beinin’s passport from countries seeking Israel’s annihilation.  For Beinin, however, the incident was a priceless opportunity to wave his stigmata and show the world what a persecuted martyr and victim he is.  His questioning in the airport proves he is being intimidated and harassed by them damned Zionists!