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This reminds me of Argentina's recent history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War

by Cieplak 15y ago

Fargren 15y ago
I've lived in Argentina for twenty years, and I have to say there's a huge qualitative difference between this and la guerra sucia.During those years, there was actual fear that if you fought against the dictatorship, your your family or our friends could disappear without a trace any day. Nothing like that is going on today. There's certainly repression and police brutality, and signs of a police state, but on a completely different level. A few days back I saw a list of people who allegedly where every single person that has died because of state mandated police action since the end of the dictatorship. The list is 66 people long. While this makes sick to my stomach, I have only to go to my college and look at the wall to see a list of people from that college that died during the dictatorship. That list has close to one hundred and fifty people on it. Just from one college. There's just no point of comparison. Most of this people simply banished, there corpses were never found, the women were probably raped, some of their kids taken and raised by the people who tortured them to death. The current tendency towards a police state sucks, but I find it very hard to compare it with what happened between '76 an '83.
- smokeyj 15y ago
  If you accept the police state now, you can expect that list to grow much larger than 66.
  - Fargren 15y ago
    I don't accept anything, I just think the comparison between what is happening now and what happened in the '70s is flawed. The difference is humongous. Not only because the number of people who died is smaller, but because there there's a huge difference between a person that is killed by a gunshot during a protest(violent or not, there were cases of both) and a person who just vanishes in the middle of the night and isn't heard of again.
pvarangot 15y ago
Oh, the military dictatorship of 1976 in a political discussion... Argentina's version of Goodwin's law still stands. The problem with that type of reasoning is that when going 30 years into the past and trying to discuss about a very specific fact, in this case being mass surveillance by state of the art technology, things get really blurry and arguments get bizarre. While one could argue a modern dictatorship could use current technology to silence its enemies in a more brutal and effective way, another position to take would be that electronic surveillance is easier to evade than actual spies following you or infiltrating your political organization. One could also explore the possibilities that arise by technology being used by the enemies of the dictators. For example, maybe Astiz cover would have been blown by someone in Madres de Plaza de Mayo when discovering his real Facebook profile/online identity.

This reminds me of Argentina's recent history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War

by Cieplak 15y ago

This reminds me of Argentina's recent history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War

Fargren 15y ago

I've lived in Argentina for twenty years, and I have to say there's a huge qualitative difference between this and la guerra sucia.During those years, there was actual fear that if you fought against the dictatorship, your your family or our friends could disappear without a trace any day. Nothing like that is going on today. There's certainly repression and police brutality, and signs of a police state, but on a completely different level. A few days back I saw a list of people who allegedly where every single person that has died because of state mandated police action since the end of the dictatorship. The list is 66 people long. While this makes sick to my stomach, I have only to go to my college and look at the wall to see a list of people from that college that died during the dictatorship. That list has close to one hundred and fifty people on it. Just from one college. There's just no point of comparison. Most of this people simply banished, there corpses were never found, the women were probably raped, some of their kids taken and raised by the people who tortured them to death. The current tendency towards a police state sucks, but I find it very hard to compare it with what happened between '76 an '83.

smokeyj 15y ago
If you accept the police state now, you can expect that list to grow much larger than 66.
- Fargren 15y ago
  I don't accept anything, I just think the comparison between what is happening now and what happened in the '70s is flawed. The difference is humongous. Not only because the number of people who died is smaller, but because there there's a huge difference between a person that is killed by a gunshot during a protest(violent or not, there were cases of both) and a person who just vanishes in the middle of the night and isn't heard of again.

pvarangot 15y ago

Oh, the military dictatorship of 1976 in a political discussion... Argentina's version of Goodwin's law still stands. The problem with that type of reasoning is that when going 30 years into the past and trying to discuss about a very specific fact, in this case being mass surveillance by state of the art technology, things get really blurry and arguments get bizarre. While one could argue a modern dictatorship could use current technology to silence its enemies in a more brutal and effective way, another position to take would be that electronic surveillance is easier to evade than actual spies following you or infiltrating your political organization. One could also explore the possibilities that arise by technology being used by the enemies of the dictators. For example, maybe Astiz cover would have been blown by someone in Madres de Plaza de Mayo when discovering his real Facebook profile/online identity.