Talk:Ba'athism - Knowledge (XXG)

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WP:REDFLAG, lack of notability, no evidence of existence, and more), and the same issues are present with the mention of the pamphlet here. These included that Coughlin mostly engages in polemics in this and other writings leading to an unbalanced POV tone that comprises demeaning language and conjecture at best, and there's no context or explanation for Coughlin's personal conjecture. In this quote, he claims it to be an Iraqi Mein Kampf then further egregiously claims it "nevertheless had a bearing on Saddam's future policymaking". Despite the substantial implications of this claim, Coughlin offers no explanation or reasoning to it. To say this pamphlet was instrumental in determining Iraq's foreign policy for any reason, nevermind without at least mentioning the pressures the Iranian Revolution put on the Ba'ath party is bizarre, unsubstantiated, and provably erroneous at best. As Coughlin's quote is directed to the Iran-Iraq War, this claim would be chronologically incorrect too, considering it was published the year after the outbreak of the war and following decades of poor, sometimes hostile, Iran-Iraq relations. The other source, the pro-war op-ed, manages to be in even poorer shape with further novel claims and odd spins though unsurprisingly uses Coughlin as its reference.

1272:, with a couple works that cite a source that cite RoF). The brief offhand endnote at the end of RoF, which is the only original information regarding the alleged pamphlet, says absolutely nothing about the pamphlet being like Mein Kampf or impacting Iraqi policymaking, refuting the claim made over at FTN and contradicting Coughlin. That is strictly Coughlin's own metaphor and fringe theory, respectively, and not substantiated in any manner. Unsurprisingly Coughlin's is the only work to make the fringe theory claim. Further, to claim the alleged pamphlet had a bearing on policymaking as Coughlin's fringe theory claims, other works would cover this in some way, but none do. As such, this disproves the allegation that this is a substantiated and mainstream claim. Let's take the most substantial Iraqi policymaking under Saddam's rule: before and during the Iran-Iraq War. Why is it no published work on the war, and to give some examples 1361:

it's unclear how much can be said for it as a reliable source in general, nevermind in the context of the article content which fares poorly. In the source, the context of the particular text in this article is a strange claim that a relatively nobody al-Husri, who had not been in Iraq since 1941 was a sort of overarching absolutist who determined the course Iraqi baathists policies and ties it in with a couple passing mentions of unrelated and mutually exclusive events. Nor was Husri affiliated with the Baathists. The passage is a hand-waving and inaccurate aside to the topic to make a unique claim with exceptional implications and with further hand-waving tie it to a couple unrelated events all within a few sentences. Further strange, there's no mention of Aflaq in that passage, who unlike al-Husri had some influence on Iraqi Neo-baathism and was the founder of Baathism overall. Overall this is an evident mix of

850:, and, I must say, Makiya makes quite an intriguing observation on pp. 119-120 when he notes that Iraq ultimately remained faithful to the Party's original vision of civilian rule—as personified by the Leader of Saddam Hussein, and with a vast bureaucracy/secret police effectively neutering the armed forces—whereas in Syria the Ba'th was "overwhelmed" by the tendency to "military rule" under the leadership of General Assad. "The legacy of Saddam Hussein is that he kept alive the original purist content in Ba'thism by realizing it in one country. He held the military at bay while cutting away at their power base, and eventually he transformed them into creatures of the Party that had nurtured him and that had been the obsession of his entire mature life." Perhaps it is not surprising that Syria got marginally better government as a result, although I wonder: Was Syria any less 1242:

site by a varied audience in line with Wiki policy and content discussion. A Wiki article where much of the discussion took place was deleted largely due deeply problematic content and sourcing issues including this. Further, Coughlin's claim is the epitome of a fringe theory ("In Knowledge (XXG) parlance, the term fringe theory is used in a very broad sense to describe an idea that departs significantly from the prevailing views or mainstream views in its particular field."), considering it is solely unique to him and is contradicted by every other work on Iraq, which make no such mention of this pamphlet with regards to Iraqi policy and presents many other well-established reasons, criteria, and explanations for Iraqi policymaking. Thanks.

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himself. It's an obscure claim that is contradicted and has no basis, and his own lack of substantiation of the exceptional claim indicates as much. Exceptional claims require exceptional sources and there is no source or substantiation other than a one-liner by Coughlin. To keep things on track and for clarity, this is only one of a few issues in this discussion. I wished to address this one in full in this comment since a misworded question at FTN with a response answering the wrong question caused some confusion.

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different to the dynamics of fascisms where a majority group oppressed a minority. At least in the intent of the party's founding was the desire to have a coalition of different ethnicities and religious practices united under the flag of Arabism. This effectively relegates the designation of 'Arab' to be a linguistic one. This obviously morphed into an entirely different beast in the '60s but there are definitely inexactitudes in the idea that Baathism promoted an Arab supremacist philosophy.--

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argument or evidence to back this up. He also claims that US and UN intelligence and inspections prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq doubting the alleged existence of WMDs was part of Iraqi deception and that Blair and Bush were right. While the source itself is neither balanced nor reads like any typical biography, the couple sentences regarding the pamphlet by a relative of Hussein are a passing note in a book that is a biography on Hussein himself, and is out of context

74: 53: 357: 336: 367: 620: 688: 462: 441: 1342:. Even assuming the pamphlet exists, despite escaping the historical record since its initial assertion in 1989, the fact its only original independent claim and all available information is a couple sentences at the end of a book that self-describes as including "rumors and stories" as a sidenote to an unrelated bibliographical citation demonstrates the insignificance of this trivia. 262: 1514:) is a reputable publisher and Halliday's assertions are in no way controversial in the academic literature. It is the former Ba'athist government of Iraq, not Halliday, that identified the Feyli Kurds as of Persian origin and engaged in a campaign of mass repression and expulsion against them. I am not persuaded by your latest argument for deletion, namely that this content is 553: 252: 472: 231: 22: 1539:, which itself admits to be a small (~dozen employees) indie publisher. And on the second part, yes it is Halliday getting things mixed up. He did not at all write this to be a claim by the Ba'athists that they are Persian, which to juxtapose, he makes clear later on with the Persian-Zionist settlement analogy. Your stating otherwise is evident OR. So yes, the 1285:, makes any mention of the and pamphlet and its alleged directing policymaking per the Coughlin fringe theory, even with the post-2003 secret records taken from Iraq that many of these works draw from? If it had such a bearing on Saddam's policymaking, then why did he give back territory to Iran in 1990 still held from the war as a show of goodwill, 1232:

polemic statement (even throwing Nazi comparisons in there) with no basis but Coughlin's personal conjecture not supported by anything else within his work or any other work. The only original/independent claim of this alleged pamphlet, which Coughlin cites, is a brief endnote from 1989 briefly naming it, did not claim such a thing, either.

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Rather, it was alleged to be a small snippet of very commonplace Mideastern language of calling people dirt/mud or animals put into writing by a minor Iraqi figure whose only "importance" was being related to the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. For this reason and those above, its inclusion is out-of-place in this Wiki article.

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including commonplace vernacular written by a nobody Saddam personally despised, even removing him from a mayoral position, played an impactful role on Iraqi policymaking. To reiterate, Coughlin is the only one making this claim, and worse, it is not substantiated or even considered by him anywhere else. But let's take this further.

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referring to Muslims as "terrorists" in a tweet, and an editor putting it in a Knowledge (XXG) article on American political ideology or Republican Party ideology and political positions. The leader of Iran during the 1980s, Ayatollah Khomeini, referred to the Iraqi government as "infidels", but rightfully, we don't see this in

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propaganda come to mind), but a source's reliability is also contingent on 1) the content being used and its context, coverage, and verifiability within the source and 2) the exceptionality of the claim in question (not only if it has a publisher) among other things. Another point is that Coughlin isn't

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Throughout the entire article the spelling of Ba'ath, that being whether or not the apostrophe is including, is inconsistent throughout the entire article and can be odd at times. I understand this is a small issue but I wanted to confer with others before independently changing the spelling of Baath

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despite its top leader repeating this statute through the long conflict. The content on the pamphlet in the article is also a combination of unsourced and poorly sourced. A passing trivial sentence in a yellow journalistic op-ed overall comprising trivia whose focus is apart from that of this article

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Well i've recently added the "racism" template, but was reverted. I would herewith like to extend a discussion about Ba'athism, as an Arab national-socialist movement, which has widely been accused on driving Arab supremacy and racist policies against non-Arabs. Ba'athism is certainly also promoting

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Forgot to mention there's a a copyright violation from Halliday, too. Some of the article text is copy-pasted from Halliday. In addition, the source itself is published by a small indie publisher Lynne Rienner and given the addition of dramatic language and unique conjecture in much of the book, so

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While others' unfamiliarity with the matter of this very obscure fringe claim is understandable and expected, please note Hob Gadling and I are two users who have been deeply involved regarding this precise issue, which has over years of discussion reached unanimous conclusion in discussions on the

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apply here as well: "Information provided in passing by an otherwise reliable source that is not related to the principal topics of the publication may not be reliable", and this particular quote in the scope of the source, is out of context and not explained in any manner. Just a passing off-hand

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and you'll find no such bizarre claim that a practically no-name person calling people dirt somehow dictated Iraqi government policymaking, not to mention the chronological inaccuracy noted earlier. Rather, you'll find a detailed description of terrorist attacks, border battles, political disputes,

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Agreed, along with the op-ed source faring as bad or worse. Moreso, the Flies pamphlet itself in general is badly sourced with the only original content being a brief off-hand claim in an endnote by Makiya as described above (WP:REDFLAG claims if not claims in general should be providing a lot more

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RS and VER, the WP:INDISCRIMINATE trivia-like information, and redflag issues are still in play. Considering this is the only point you're making, and it is wrong, you really aren't making a case for its inclusion in light of many other points made. Worse, there's still some copyright violation in

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As a juxtaposition, the following paragraph about marriages is verifiable in Sassoon's book but part of the information there is stretched from a contextless quote as to bring about a much broader but at least partly false conclusion. However, while Knowledge (XXG) is not about what's true or not,

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More important than the argument over whether fascism (in the broad sense that I would agree Ba'athism falls into) is right-wing or left-wing, is the allegation that Western fascists support Assad on the basis of political themes associated with neoconservatism/right-wing liberal internationalism,

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Your response only proves the point I made to him, your posts leave no room for any sort of civilized discussion or consensus-building, instead they're a mash of walls of text, tag spamming and baseless accusations. Even after getting banned once for edit-warring you still continue defending your

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won't get you anywhere. I already stated that the Iranica source shows Persians were deported (from Najaf and Karbala) in addition to the Feyli Kurds. In this case there are simply two sources, each describing one different individual instance of deportation. Constantly spamming tags and walls of

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As an addition to the original comment in this section, the inclusion of the Flies pamphlet is out-of-place and there isn't detail or explanation as to how it was part of Ba'athist ideology such as content regarding Aflaq's ideas. It appears to be the equivalent of a sacked US Republican ex-mayor

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are demonstrably applicable and Coughlin's unique fringe theory is contradicted and unsubstantiated. While other fringe theories like Flat Earth have many supporters and work hard to substantiate this fringe theory, there is no backing or substantiation for Coughlin's fringe theory, not even from

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with dozens of sources including intelligence records and any work on the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq war such as Jeffrey Record's "Wanting War" covers this in excruciating detail. Regarding Coughlin's strange claim that the alleged pamphlet calling people dirt somehow guided Iraqi policy, that is a

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Furthermore, the very minimal information available on this (thus far unverifiable of having existed) pamphlet isn't related to Ba'athism. This pamphlet was never claimed to be written as a treatise on Ba'ath ideology, such as writings by Aflaq or al-Bitar, or a policy of the Iraqi Ba'ath regime.

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Probably the most interesting fact about this pamphlet is the few details to ever exist on it originate from a brief off-hand endnote in the 1989 book "Republic of Fear", a book which the author Kanan Makiya admits to include "rumours and stories" with "no firmer basis in fact". No other work has

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The Coughlin source overall is riddled with disproven claims, degrading conjecture, and the author's strong personal notions. For a couple examples regarding famous events, he extensively claims that Iraq and Saddam were behind 9/11 and long-time ally and supporter of Al Qaeda, but with no actual

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me and bringing in your own OR and conjecture. On top of that, it's also not really related to this article's topic. Also your opinion on an author does not trump the fact that the publisher is a no-name indie publisher and that the content in question has been verifiably proven to be wrong. For

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noted here and on WP:FTN, it's full of debunked ideas among other problems, including this quote. I am not sure if a book full of refuted claims and the author's own fabrications pandering to wartime fervor sales is an ideal criteria for reliability (pieces of similarly atrocious and bigoted WW2

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For what it's worth, Saqi Books is a self-described indie publisher just like Lynne Rienner, which hurts your case. If you have any argument to refute all of the above issues with this content in this article (including continued copyright violation), feel free to add it. Otherwise, please stop

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The interesting thing about the Baath in Syria was that they were, for the first 2 decades of their existence, a party that was majority minorities. This isn't to say that they were incapable of racism or fascism but that the dynamics of the fascism (if it existed) would have been significantly

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There was a misunderstanding over a misworded question over at the WP:FTN but that's been resolved and is of no consequence. In my last reply here, I provided reliable sourcing against the advocacy of fringe theories that Iraq was behind 9/11 and that a pamphlet (to this day unproven to exist)

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With respect to Hob Gadling's WP:FTN question, are you asking for a "reputable source" regarding Iraq not being behind Al Qaeda and 9/11, contrary to Coughlin's claims? While this is practically universally accepted in academia and common knowledge as well as verifiably proven, there's a whole

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It appears that section: 'Allegations of being racist' is highly editorialized and uses some rather strongly colored language like for instance when they compare Saddam's father-in-law's book to a poor attempt at an arab mein kampf. That is not by any means an objective nor wikipedia-worthy

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Originally, since 2012 the statements were correctly attributed to Halliday. Why the attribution was removed was not substantiated, and why his specific word use that amounts to POV now that it is not in the source author's voice is also unclear. Including word use like "blatant racism" and

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This Coughlin quote was originally removed from an article regarding the alleged Flies pamphlet, following a unanimous Talk page discussion on its faults. The article itself had since been deleted from Knowledge (XXG) for a number of reasons (lack of good sourcing, out of context sourcing,

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like the War on Terror. It's certainly true that fascists in the West tend to support Assad, but the particular reason offered is unsubstantiated-- I would say unsubstantiated because it's incorrect, but I'd at least like to see something better than an opinion piece cited for the claim.

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text doesn't make your arguments even remotely sound, and neither does twisting my words to create some sort of strawman. The fact that you keep consistently coming back to vandalize the article and continue your failed edit-war is a clear sign of disruptive editing. --

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than this). Combined with its irrelevance to an article specifically on political ideology, unless we take Coughlin's strange quote at face value, on analysis mentioning the pamphlet is overall out of place on this article and more or less Knowledge (XXG) in general.

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Given that both branches of the Ba'th Party ended up governing in a superficially similar manner, it can be difficult for outside observers to ascertain precisely what, if any, ideological factors may have motivated their split. I'm currently reading

1172:, thanks for the comment and I agree the book has a publisher, but to clarify, the discussion isn't if the book as a whole is a fringe theory (although it is full of it), but this very particular content. It's even more important to look at other 1544:

play here. Also, Qahramani44 added some of their own personal OR touch: for example, Halliday writes the migrants/communists were not a myth, but rather that it was a myth to compare it to "Zionists settling Palestine", which an obvious case of

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Sorry, but these personal attacks still do nothing to refute the clearly demonstrated Original Research from your last edit on the article. This is quite the opposite of the "civilized discussion or consensus-building" to which you refer.

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compared right against the source, and POV. An admin intervened again as a result of your edit warring. Your continued personal attacks and false accusations do nothing to refute the demonstrated OR. That your response to the admin

1623:"over the decade and a half after coming to power, the Ba'th party organized the expulsion of Iraqis with Persian origin, beginning with 40,000 Fayli Kurds, but totalling up to 200,000 or more by the early years of the war itself." 899:

No, because they were economically socialists, they had a centrally planned economy, and rejected Marxian Socialism for its materialism, but they were still socialists. Fascism is Socialism anyway, just non-Marxian Socialism.

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The removal of the comparison part changes what Halliday charges the myth to be, from migrants and communities in the Gulf being comparable to settlers in Palestine, to the migrants and communities themselves being a myth.

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by stating something rather different from the source. On top of everything else, there's no point made for why the same thing should be copy-pasted in two articles. This, of course, is underlined by your evident stalking

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are of Persian origin, which is blatantly wrong as they're two separate cultures as that Wiki article is keen to make clear, with sourcing. I'm not sure why you are defending such obvious inaccuracies among other issues.

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criteria. For example in terms of attribution, Coughlin is the primary source as this claim is throwing in his personal opinion, which falls into fringe theory purview with the warning "extreme caution is advised". As

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completely unique and original fringe claim by Coughlin himself. Absolutely none of the thousands of books, studies, articles, intelligence, records, etc. regarding Iraqi foreign policy have ever claimed such a thing.

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when Coughlin's claim alleges the opposite policymaking? The answer to these and many other questions is all the same: because it's an original fringe claim made by Coughlin himself and is contradicted and

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to me and I am wondering if you have reputable sources to back it up and, if so, whether it really warrants deleting the quote, or if we should just mention the book's criticisms alongside the quote (under

714:; a discussion will now take place over on Commons about whether to remove the file. This gives you an opportunity to contest the deletion, although please review Commons guidelines before doing so. 970:

Shouldn't this have a suggested reading section? I'd like to read something about Baathism by a Baathist, so I know I'm getting their ideas at the source and I'm not reading a misrepresentation.

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to attempt to confuse readers and distract from his own repeated edit warring over multiple pages. He still also has no interest in any kind of compromise or actual discussion.

1518:(i.e., Ba'athism). After considering the argument, I find that the rhetoric and policies of one of the two Ba'athist states in the world is relevant to the topic of Ba'athism. 1076:

were part of the original discussion on the other Talk page. Please share any thoughts you may have on the inclusion or exclusion of the Coughlin quote and Flies pamphlet.

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Fascism is not socialism or better is not marxism socialism, fascism is far right, mussolini hitler hated marx and commies and leftists, arab socialism is far right

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a single-party statehood, thus some also connected Ba'athism with fascism. Opinions and sources would be welcome in this discussion - please share your thoughts.

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I waited almost a year for a response to my previous talk post to do this. I got zero responses so I just made the changes persuant to the discussion on the

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I am not under any obligation to "disprove" your OR to your satisfaction, especially because your rationales for deletion are ever-changing, but Saqi Books (

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Why the time period was changed from what's in the source is unclear but is evident OR. In addition, Halliday does make the unfortunate error of conflating

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or Persian origin, but that's another discussion, but as far as this particular matter goes he specifically points out Faylis in the expulsions as well.

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the difference is Sassoon covers this topic in more than a passing sentence or two of questionable trivia and has some form of basis for his statements.

413: 1338:. This has been problematic on other articles, and there's no argument or sourcing on what makes this spontaneous, questionable trivia encyclopedic aka 213: 1889: 318: 90: 1949: 494: 1934: 1899: 203: 1652:"brought to the for the chauvinist myth of Persian migrants and communities in the Gulf being comparable to the Zionist settlers in Palestine" 389: 1914: 308: 1879: 951: 888: 1613:

While the continued edit warring is problematic, the claim of "Fixing OR" in the edit summary is demonstrably incorrect, and rather adds

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and more that led to the war. It's not a matter of balance, but rather a single unique fringe claim not supported by anything else.

380: 341: 1658:"promoted a myth of Persian migrants and communities in the Persian Gulf region to be comparable to Zionists settling Palestine." 776: 741: 1141:, i.e. reputable publisher, citations, NYT best-seller. While I don't doubt the honesty of your research, it's still looks like 1894: 666: 162: 141: 1416:

is very clearly trying to simply make "disappear" these reliable sources simply because they are critical of Ba'athism, using

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Saddam was loved by fascists like Assad tooo, Saddam crushed the commies and Assad is an ally of commies but is more fascist.

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Can we add Ba'athism to the Category: Fascism because they are Third Position they opposed both communism and capitalism.

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Can we have some sort of citation as to the flag? It seems peculiar that the ba'athists would use a Palestinian flag.

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Another example OR is removing part of the last sentence from what's in the source, which changes the meaning.

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and the seemingly implied importance in this article of what is evidently an insignificant pamphlet plays into

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was to afterwards come to this Talk section and make more personal attacks is counter-intuitive and uncivil.

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We need a citation to the political position of Ba'athism because the position in the infobox is unsourced.

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provided anything more. They all copy to varying degrees and cite this questionable endnote directly, i.e.

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which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —

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which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —

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which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —

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