Los Angeles Times Shills for Communists on Business Section Front Page

That's longtime local communist and union activist Paul Krehbiel at the photo, where he's featured at the front page of the Los Angeles Times' business section: "Learning how to be a union activist." He's wearing a militant clenched-fist solidarity shirt, red, with the slogan, "Stand With Wisconsin."

Krehbiel is the author of a memoir, Shades of Justice, and his biography states:

Since 2003, he has been active in the campaign to end the war in Iraq, working with the Coalition for World Peace, US Labor Against the War, and the Iraq Moratorium.

Coalition for World Peace is one of the many groups closely aligned with the World Workers Party (WWP), a Marxist-Leninist apparatus that backed Moscow's invasion of Hungary in 1956 and the Soviet army's brutal suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968. The Coalition for World Peace is listed as an active affiliated group at the homepage of United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ). Here's this at the UFPJ at Discover the Networks:

UFPJ was officially created on October 25, 2002 in the Washington, DC offices of People For the American Way. Its initial membership consisted of approximately 70 organizations. Prior to UFPJ's founding, the anti-war movement had earned a reputation as a hodgepodge of radical elements. All the large-scale peace demonstrations to that point had been held under the auspices of International ANSWER, an organization aligned with the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party; Global Exchange, headed by the longtime pro-Castro communist Medea Benjamin; and Not In Our Name, a project organized by Ramsey Clark and fellow leaders of the Revolutionary Communist Party. United For Peace and Justice was created explicitly to put a milder face on the anti-war movement, although from its inception UFPJ shared with the aforementioned groups a passionate hatred for the United States and for capitalism.

The Co-Chair and principal leader of UFPJ is Leslie Cagan, an original founder of the Committees of Correspondence (a remnant organization created by the American Communist Party upon going out of business) and a strong supporter of Fidel Castro since the 1960s; Cagan proudly aligns her politics with those of Communist Cuba.

The breadth of UFPJ's agendas extends well beyond anti-war activism. Passionately anti-American, this group condemns virtually every aspect of U.S. foreign policy and domestic life. It impugns America's "daily assaults and attacks on poor and working people, on women, people of color, lesbians/gays and other sexual minorities, the disabled, and so many others." It asserts that "the government treats all immigrants as potential terrorist threats until proven innocent, in violation of the Constitution," thereby "expanding the scope and depth of racial injustice within the U.S." ...

UFPJ has campaigned against American support for Israel's construction of an anti-terrorist security fence in the West Bank, which it describes as an illegal "apartheid wall" that violates the civil and human rights of Palestinians.

UFPJ is a signatory to the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a hardline anti-Zionist (anti-Semitic) organization that attacks Israel as an "apartheid state."

And back over at the CFWP homepage, we see that Krehbiel's group was a leading organizer for the March 21, "Mass March and Rally in L.A.," and the link there takes us to the announcement at the ANSWER Coalition's page, "List of March 21 Organizing & Transportation Centers." (More on ANSWER here.)

The Times article gushes about the workshop Kreibiel was offering at Pasadena City College, where young students attending "munched on the free chocolate chip cookies and potato chips they were provided..." (Right. Free, of course.) The article notes a couple of times how organized labor is trying to match the energy and effectiveness of the tea parties, and quotes a Teamsters union hack agitating to take back the streets: "Those are our streets, that's where we need to be."

And buried on page B4 we find this bland acknowledgement and evasion:

The Troublemakers School in Pasadena and five others like it held this year across the country were organized by Labor Notes, a Detroit nonprofit funded by membership dues and course fees, as well as donations from pro-labor individuals. There's no question this group leans heavily left: One student carried pamphlets about a meeting for anarchists.

Leans left? You think?

Here's the Labor Notes' manifesto from its 1993 conference, hosted at the Encyclopedia of Trotskyism Online (Marxist.org).

The bottom line is that we see yet again another mainstream media outfit reporting rapturously on the organizing activities of hardline communist cadres. It'd be nice if the tea parties got a fraction of such fawning reporting by the nation's media establishment.

Typical.

Linked at The Rhetorican, "Oxymoronic Juxtaposition of the Week." Thanks!