The first part: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/247313 In other words, Gladio was designed to instill fear in the civilian population so that they would consent to the increase of state authority and the elimination of civil rights and freedoms "in the name of state security". The BBC documentary^[Operation Gladio – Full documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGHXjO8wHsA] on the operation reveals that NATO member states were fully aware of the activities of fascist groups within Gladio. Another aim of these parallel armies was to break strikes and stage a coup should the Communists come to power anywhere in the West. In the name of Gladio, numerous terrorist acts were committed, such as the explosions at Peteano, Piazza Fontana and Bologna railway station (where 85 people were killed on 2 August 1980), the assassination of the leader of the Communist party in Belgium, Julian Lahaut, and many others. While in Eastern Europe the Nazis were being tried and executed for their crimes, in the "free world" they were transformed overnight from criminals to democrats, taking up leadership positions in West Germany^[Majority of West German Justice Ministry officials were ex-Nazis following WWII https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/report-majority-of-west-german-justice-ministry-officials-were-ex-nazis-following-wwii-469899], Japan, South Korea (these remain essentially the same officials and politicians as in the recently ended fascist regime). Former Nazis have also served in the leadership of NATO (Adolf Heusinger), the UN (Kurt Waldheim) and the EU Commission (Walter Hallstein). Moreover, according to investigations by the US Department of Justice, many of those who worked for various radio stations designed to broadcast "freedom and democracy" (in the style of Radio Free Europe) to Eastern Europe had been part of the Hitler Einsatzgruppen, responsible for anti-Semitic pogroms in the USSR. An example of a democracy steward working for these stations was Stanislaw Stankievich, under whose command babies of Jewish families were buried alive to save ammunition. ^[John Loftus, The Belarus Secret, New York 1982] We also have the more recent example of the fascist Azov battalion, trained and armed by NATO forces. **Modern barter in the world of capital. NATO member countries take resources and bring free market and political instability** NATO member countries are notorious for installing numerous dictators over the years and assassinating dozens of progressive leaders. It is instructive to ask the question: what is the logic behind these acts? Well, these dictators, in addition to numerous abuses, cases of torture and flagrant violations of human rights, have opened the door to investment by Western companies, have left resources and working people to be exploited by multinationals, have not imposed laws on working conditions or environmental protection, and have immediately trampled on trade unions. Many leaders were overthrown because they sought independence from the West, either by trying to develop a parallel industry to the private one in which Western companies were advancing capital, or by nationalizing the latter's enterprises. Some leaders were toppled simply for making economic agreements with the USSR, China or Eastern Europe, or for refusing to ban communist activity. Here are some examples found in Killing Hope: **Bolivia's** regime was overthrown in 1971 for nationalizing the Gulf Oil Corporation, Arbenz's Guatemalan regime was overthrown for taking land from United Fruit as part of land reform, Mossadegh's Iranian regime was overthrown for nationalizing Anglo-Iranian Oil, Juan Bosch's regime in the Dominican Republic was overthrown for initiating land reform and numerous public projects aimed at improving the situation of the people. In the case of Cuba, an embargo was imposed that cost the Cubans almost a **TRILLION** dollars, and the CIA brought swine fever to Cuba, thus drying up 500,000 pigs. Nor should we forget the NATO interventions in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan which brought not only destruction, poisoning of the population by depleted uranium bombs and sanctions which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children, but also some of the most corrupt governments. Libya has gone from having one of the highest life expectancies in Africa to a country torn apart by mercenary conflict and slave markets, all for the sin of wanting independence from the West^[Ben Norton, Media Erase NATO Role in Bringing Slave Markets to Libya https://fair.org/home/media-nato-regime-change-war-libya-slave-markets/]. **CONCLUSION** We are told in the press that NATO is a defensive organisation and that it is in our interest to support it, as it protects us from Russian imperialism. But what do the facts tell us, namely the hundreds of military bases all over the globe, the huge expenditure on the army that could be used for social services, the continued expansion and aggression against states that are not even close to the borders of any NATO member? We can only **CONFIRM** the fact that NATO is a defence organisation, but **NOT** one for the defence of working people, but one for the defence of Western capitalist interests, which go as far as collaborating with Nazis, exploiting children in factories, installing dictators and developing torture manuals to protect their sources of profit. And capital does not discriminate! Western capitalists would also like to reduce workers in the US and Europe to as miserable a state as possible, but the limits to exploitation are imposed on capital by labour, by the workers themselves. The death knell of exploitation can only sound if organised workers overthrow the rule of capital and establish the rule of labour. The workers have no reason to want the domination of one imperialist military bloc over another, but their historical task is to eliminate all military powers, to eliminate the system that gives rise to wars and exploitation.

Context: translation of an article published on a Romanian blog, which you can view [here](https://cugetarimarxiste.wordpress.com/). The blog is aimed at Romanians, but some of its articles are relevant to people of all nations, so I am publishing one of them here ─ a short history and analysis of NATO these days. **Purpose of the North Atlantic Organisation. Words and deeds.** April 4 marked the 73rd anniversary of the founding of NATO in Washington, initially comprising the US, UK, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Canada, Portugal, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. The purpose of this military alliance, according to the West, was to defend the "free world" against a possible Soviet invasion. NATO was thus to be purely defensive against the Red aggressor. In reality, Western governments had no evidence that the Soviet Union was going to invade Western Europe after World War II. At the same time that they were talking about the threat from the East, the Pentagon and the British government were making plans to strike - with more than 300 atomic bombs and 20,000 conventional bombs - strategic points in the Soviet Union that had been depleted after World War II^[Ekaterina Blinova, From 1945-49 the US and UK planned to bomb Russia into the Stone Age https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/from-1945-49-the-us-and-uk-planned-to-bomb-russia-into-the-stone-age]. To draw the right conclusions, however, the following facts must be remembered **The** USSR suffered most from the war, having alone to deal with three-quarters of the divisions of the fascist armies, with the Soviets losing over 20 million men in the fight against fascism, so its primary interest was economic reconstruction; **The** Warsaw Pact was not established until 1955, in response to Western armaments, which had begun to militarise Germany and Japan again in order to oppose the socialist camp; **The** USSR had no aggressive intentions after the Second World War, and in fact demobilised its army at a much faster rate than the West, so that in 1951 France had 22 soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants, the USA 18, and the Soviet Union 12^[H.D. Meyer, The Last Illusion, New York, 1953, pg. 301]; **The** USSR spoke out against nuclear armament^[I. Stalin, Prohibition of Atomic Weapons, 1951], and the only country to use nuclear bombs was the United States - targeting civilians, not military targets. Moreover, the only country to threaten to use atomic bombs was also the latter, in three cases to be precise: in the French-Vietnam War, the US offered to help the French and sent aircraft carriers carrying atomic bombs^[William Blum, Killing Hope, pg. 122]; in the Korean War, when General MacArthur wanted to bomb China; during the 1965 US intervention in the Vietnam War; **CIA** and British services had intervened in Western Europe to stifle Communist influence in several countries - they rigged the Italian elections and were prepared to bring in the army to stage a coup if the Communists won the 1948 elections ^[William Blum, ibid., pg. 27]; they defeated Communist forces in the Greek civil war and installed a right-wing regime; they armed the Italian and Corsican Mafia to destroy the Communist dockworkers' unions in Italy and France ^[Michael Parenti, Democracy for The Few, 10th edition, pg. 145]. In none of these cases did the Soviet Union intervene militarily; **After** the collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989, NATO not only was *NOT* dismantled, but even added thousands of kilometres to its sphere of influence, contrary to its promises not to expand by even one inch ^[Los Angeles Times, Op-Ed: Russia’s got a point: The U.S. broke a NATO promise https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-shifrinson-russia-us-nato-deal–20160530-snap-story.html]. Moreover, according to data provided by William Blum in his book Killing Hope, the United States, from the end of World War II to the present, has: **The** overthrow of more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were elected by democratic vote without any kind of fraud; **Fraudulent** elections in at least 30 countries to ensure victory for politicians sympathetic to the US government; **Attempting** to assassinate at least 50 leaders; **Bombing** more than 30 countries; **Suppressing** popular movements against authoritarian governments in 20 countries. Even from these facts alone we can conclude that all the talk of defence against communist aggression is unfounded, especially if we consider that most of the governments overthrown by NATO forces were not led by communists nor had they engaged in military aggression. Naturally, the bourgeois will always be worried about the communist movement threatening to destroy the very system that keeps the capitalists as a class, so the fight against communism is one of the objectives, but the Soviet Union in Stalin's time did not in any way provoke the NATO member countries, but did everything possible to keep the peace. However, we still need to illustrate certain aspects of NATO's history to reveal its true character. **From enemies to friends. NATO collaboration with Italian, German and Japanese fascists after the war** As World War II drew to a close, Western governments considered using Nazis and fascists in all countries to fight communism and eventually invade countries in the East after the war was over. In this respect, the words of the American General Patton, who, seeing the inevitability of a war between socialist and capitalist countries, wanted to rearm several Waffen SS divisions to turn them against the Soviets, are very instructive. He calculated that they would reach Moscow in 30 days^[E. H. Cookridge, Gehlen: Spy of the Century (New York: Random House, 1972), pg. 57–58]. Also, while the Soviets had disarmed and imprisoned all German POWs, Britain was holding captured Germans in combat readiness, presumably to soon use the former Nazi armies for aggressive purposes.^[Georgi Zhukov. Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov. London: Cape, 1971, p. 657] After the war, the US recruited thousands of German war criminals under Operation Paperclip to use for scientific research, espionage, anti-communist propaganda, and to suppress strikes and popular movements in many countries. Former Nazis were given new documents and therefore new identities and lived their lives in luxury in the United States. The US military also made use of the research of Japanese scientists of the famous Unit 731 to cause epidemics that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people during the Korean War^[Hal Gold, Unit 731 Testimony (Yen Books, 1996), p. 125–126;]. In the late 1940s, Operation Gladio was implemented in Western Europe, which involved the creation of a network of secret armies throughout Western Europe, supposedly to defend the West in the event of a Soviet invasion. In reality, the secret armies were made up of groups of fascists - many of whom had served in the armies of Franco, Hitler and Mussolini - who received training and weapons from NATO to commit terrorist acts^[Paul Cudenec, The Sordid History of NATO-Sponsored Terrorism https://nevermore.media/2022/02/25/the-sordid-history-of-nato-sponsored-terrorism/?fbclid=IwAR0INZyGrVf-XbuIryApVgzfnuBz-C2f6ZCZrTTkHlkUCN4vg3f85bbtJ5M]. The true purpose of Gladio was revealed by Vincenzo Vinciguerra, a member of Ordine Nuovo - proudly bearing the label of a Nazi organisation - in an interview with the BBC: > You had to attack civilians...women, children, innocent people, away from any political game. The reason was simple enough. It should have compelled these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to demand more security. This is the political logic behind all the massacres and bombings that go unpunished, because the state cannot condemn itself or declare itself responsible for what happened.