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   Yogthos (yogthos@mas.to)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Apr-2023 04:35:20 JST Yogthos

   Canada was the first western country to propose the anti-communist alliance a ?

   https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/canada-in-the-world

   • pettter repeated this.
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     Yogthos (yogthos@mas.to)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Apr-2023 04:35:22 JST Yogthos

     in reply to

     NATO was expressly designed as a workaround of the newly-formed United Nations. The UN was supposed to help facilitate diplomacy, prevent conflicts like the world wars, but the UN gave communist and ‘third world’ countries the right to speak/vote. NATO didn’t have that ‘problem.’

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     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Apr-2023 04:58:43 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • pettter

     @yogthos @pettter Yeah, the US was a hegemonizing thalassic empire with a lot of very unsavoury skeletons in its closet. But in counterpart: the USSR was run by a bloody-handed tyrant with a track record for genocide in, for example, Ukraine (the holodomor, for starters), the Baltic Republics, Poland, and elsewhere.

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     pettter (pettter@mastodon.acc.umu.se)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Apr-2023 04:58:43 JST pettter

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     • Charlie Stross

     @cstross @yogthos The US, of course, has no track record of genocide whatsoever.

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     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Apr-2023 04:58:44 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • pettter

     @yogthos @pettter

     Not really true.

     The UN started out in 1945 as the anti-fascist alliance defined at Yalta. The USSR was one of the legs of that alliance. But then the Cold War brewed up when Stalin installed puppet dictatorships throughout eastern Europe. NATO was a direct response to fear of invasion by a bloodthirsty dictator who'd accidentally ended up on the winning side (remember he'd started out allied with Hitler? Cf. Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and Invasion of Poland).

   • Embed this notice
     Yogthos (yogthos@mas.to)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Apr-2023 04:58:44 JST Yogthos

     in reply to

     • pettter
     • Charlie Stross

     @cstross @pettter let's not forget what US has been up to just to give a bit of a balance to your narrative https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-u-s-did-not-defeat-fascism-in-wwii-it-discretely-internationalized-it/

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     pettter (pettter@mastodon.acc.umu.se)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Apr-2023 04:59:28 JST pettter

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     • Charlie Stross

     @cstross @yogthos Or, for that matter, the UK.

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     pettter (pettter@mastodon.acc.umu.se)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Apr-2023 18:23:45 JST pettter

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     • Charlie Stross
     • zeh

     @cstross @zeh @yogthos ....but the nonagression pact is from before the (first) Soviet war against Finland? What are you talking about?

   • Embed this notice
     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Apr-2023 18:23:46 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • pettter
     • zeh

     @zeh @yogthos @pettter "Forced into" after failing in Stalin's war of aggression against Finland?

     Methinks you're a tankie.

   • Embed this notice
     zeh (zeh@mstdn.io)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Apr-2023 18:23:47 JST zeh

     in reply to

     • pettter
     • Charlie Stross

     @cstross
     As for the German-Soviet nonaggression pact, it was a move that Stalin was forced into, as France and the UK refused to acknowledge the nazi threat and make an alliance. The dominant class in these countries wanted nazi germany to invade the USSR so they could then come in and rule over the weakened eastern people and territories.
     This is hinted at here, for ex: https://www.britannica.com/event/German-Soviet-Nonaggression-Pact
     1/2
     @yogthos @pettter

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     pettter (pettter@mastodon.acc.umu.se)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Apr-2023 21:35:31 JST pettter

     in reply to

     • Charlie Stross
     • Eleanor Saitta

     @yogthos @cstross @dymaxion I'd like to be untagged from this discussion, thanks.

   • Embed this notice
     Yogthos (yogthos@mas.to)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Apr-2023 21:35:33 JST Yogthos

     in reply to

     • pettter
     • Charlie Stross
     • Eleanor Saitta

     @cstross @dymaxion @pettter if we're focusing strictly on NATO, then let's talk about Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, and Syria. While all of NATO hasn't been involved every one of these atrocities, US is the key player in NATO and the rest of NATO members have provided support and direct involvement.

     These are some of the biggest crimes in human history that killed and ruined the lives of countless millions. This is what NATO stands for.

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     Yogthos (yogthos@mas.to)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Apr-2023 21:35:34 JST Yogthos

     in reply to

     • pettter
     • Charlie Stross
     • Eleanor Saitta

     @dymaxion @cstross @pettter Churchill oversaw a genocide in India where England was extracting food and resources while millions starved, but Europeans don't care about that since Indians don't have blond hair and blue eyes.

     https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/4/1/churchills-policies-to-blame-for-1943-bengal-famine-study

     Of course, we don't have to go that far back. War on terror that US and it's NATO puppets perpetrated massacred over 6 million people.

     https://bylinetimes.com/2021/09/15/up-to-six-million-people-the-unrecorded-fatalities-of-the-war-on-terror/

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     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Apr-2023 21:35:34 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • pettter
     • Eleanor Saitta

     @yogthos @dymaxion @pettter See also "Late Victorian Holocausts". Yes, yes, we know this. But we were discussing NATO (which post-dates the end of British occupation of India/Pakistan).

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     Eleanor Saitta (dymaxion@infosec.exchange)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Apr-2023 21:35:36 JST Eleanor Saitta

     in reply to

     • pettter
     • Charlie Stross

     @cstross
     We absolutely did that with the native American genocides. Hell, it's mostly still taught in glowing terms.
     @pettter @yogthos

   • Embed this notice
     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Apr-2023 21:35:37 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • pettter

     @pettter @yogthos Oh, they've got tons! But I'm going to go with Stalin being only a step behind Hitler in genocide at industrial scale. (Mao's was, I think, mostly unintentional—blundering incompetence.) And the US and UK at least saw genocide as a political/PR liability to be disowned or swept under the rug, not proudly used to terrify rivals into supine compliance.