From an Argentine socialist:
Dear friends, I am attaching a picture of the Arg World Cup Team holding a banner in support of the candidacy of the Grandmothers of May Square for the Nobel prize. I am sending it for good reason.
It seems to have been censored on every mainstream media outlet, including Internet concerns they control, because the main owner of the main private media group in Argentina, Ernestina Herrera de Noble, has a couple of stolen children. After a most protracted justice process, they are at last to undergo a confrontation of their DNA with data in the world famous National Genetic Data Bank of Argentina.
The CEO of the group has been reported as boasting long ago that he had obtained the kids for Mrs. Herrera de Noble.
In the midst of a war against the great media, the results of this comprobation are unfathomable.
And it is the Grandmothers who are behind the whole thing.
Please circulate as widely as you can.
Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist 
Hey Louis,
A bunch of anarchists are pushing a book called “Eclipse and Re-Emergence of the Communist Movement” by Gilles Dauve on me. Do you know anything about it or the author? Is it worth a read? Would love to read your written opinion on the subject, whether positive or negative.
Comment by Desmond — June 15, 2010 @ 3:39 pm
Dauve’s ideas seem similar to Loren Goldner’s. Frankly, I have little use for ultraleft communism, anarchism, etc. The problem is that it rests on idealist foundations as if basing yourself on Pannekoek rather than Lenin will prevent bureaucracy, etc. Dictatorship and bureaucracy emerge from material conditions, not the impurity of a leader’s thought.
Comment by louisproyect — June 15, 2010 @ 3:45 pm
I find the last sentence of your statement, Louis, to be a combination of incorrect and silly. I don’t think many people seriously believe that “the impurity of a leader’s thought” is the issue (if by this, one means just the private thoughts of an individual “leader,” rather than their positions or policies, or those of leading political parties and movements). Whether you agree with them or not, many people who draw from the work of Pannekoek or other dissident communists are arguing about what the programs of “revolutionary” political movements should be, not about political leaders’ private thoughts. I suspect you just put the line the way you did as a way to be dismissive. The claim that “dictatorship and bureaucracy emerge from material conditions, NOT …” the positions or policies of leaders, political parties, etc. would be, in my opinion, just plain wrong. Dictatorship and bureaucracy are results of both of these kinds of factors. Would you seriously assert that the latter make no difference, that given one set of “material conditions” specific political outcomes are inevitable? Under similar material conditions, it wouldn’t make any difference whether a leading political party sought to install a dictatorship and build up a repressive apparatus rather than avoiding such measures like the plague? I would direct you to the most famous line of the “18th Brumaire”: “People make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please …” Understanding the first half of that is important. I don’t have much use for idealism (don’t know anything about Dauve or Goldner, so I don’t know if that’s a fair characterization of their work or not), but I don’t think this sort of simplistic “materialism” is much better.
Comment by Alejandro — June 17, 2010 @ 1:31 am
I wish people were more responsible with talking about an era they know nothing about. I say this as one who lost two people during the 1976-83 dictatorship.
I dunno about you, but I got
— 542,000 hits when I Googled “abuelas de plaza de mayo”, 501 when I restricted the search to new items;
— 17,700 hits with “grandmothers of plaza de mayo” and 17 for news items only; and
— 2,300,000 results when I used your English version “Grandmothers of May Square,” which was new to me, and 250 news items.
Where’s the “censorship”?
Comment by Cecilieaux Bois de Murier — June 18, 2010 @ 3:08 pm
The censorship is about the soccer team holding up the banner.
Comment by louisproyect — June 18, 2010 @ 3:15 pm
I remember the old Argentinian captain, Zannetti, presenting an Inter Milan shirt to the leader of the Zapatistas.
Also Argentinian midfielder Veron has a tattoo of Che Guevara.
Being politically aware is not that unusual for the Argentinians.
Comment by James — June 20, 2010 @ 8:57 am