perfidy

Ba'ath Party 

When time permits, please explain precisely how you believe Aflaq, and you can throw Gamel Abdel Nassar in there as well, were influenced by the Nazis. Citations a plus. 

Weapons and Camps 

I have not heard about chemical weapons stores. The only camp I've heard about was in the north of Iraq, in nominally Kurdish/U.S. controlled territory. Please elaborate, and citations are a definite plus. If it's Fox News, I don't believe them. Ever. At all. If they told me the sky was blue on a sunny day without clouds I would think them liars. 

To Hitler 

I obviously made up the Cheney-Rumsfeld thing. They never burned down the Capitol, nor did they invade Canada. That was a) the British b) the Fenians. 

Environmentalism 

Your brief mention of Marx in conjunction with environmentalism reminds me that I've recently been complaining about the inclusion of environmentalism into the leftist political umbrella. That's actually counter to Marxist thought. According to Marx, nature exists to be dominated by man, its resources plundered, and the cause of industrialization under the dictatorship of the proletariat advanced. Environmentalism is actually anti-Marxist. 

But of course, not every leftist is a Marxist. But every leftist should be pro-labor. Environmentalism usually runs counter to the interest of labor. Someone has to be paid to cut down trees. Therefore, if a virgin forest is slated for the chopping block, it will create jobs. If environmental restrictions make it such that a factory cannot be built somewhere, the residents of that area will have fewer jobs. Therefore, I submit that environmentalists are in fact anti-labor. They stand in the war of people having jobs. 

Environmentalists who insist on all preservation all the time, even at the expense of employment, are phony leftists. I'm generally sick of their ilk. Veganism affects no one but the vegan. The animals and animal products they don't eat will be eaten by someone else. If a vegan joins habitat for humanity and builds a house, great. But they can't say they're leftists simply because they won't eat a cheeseburger. That little tangent aside, unwavering environmentalism at the expense of labor isn't left-winged. It's just environmentalism. 

Speaking of phony leftism

And now back to false Communism. There have been Communists, but not Communism. There have been Communists since Engels. Stalin, Mao, and Castro, however, weren't three of them. The crux of the issue is global revolution. Stalin, who proclaimed that socialism in one state was legitimate, started the whole thing. On the other hand, his rival Trotsky kept trying to advance the goal of global revolution, as did Castro's associate Ernesto 'Che' Guevara. But there is no such thing, according to the strict letter of Marxist law (as written by Engels), as socialism in one state a la Stalin. The strict letter of the law is that Communism is achieved only once the national boundaries of countries have been eliminated from the map and there is only one governing body across the globe, that is, the global dictatorship of the proletariat. Revolutions start in countries, they finish in a world. 

Marx's only provision for a government was the interim between the onset of revolution and the final stage of the dialectic. During that interim, the vanguard of the proletariat was to steer matters previously tended to by governments, until the global revolution was complete, the means of production firmly in the hands of workers, and the dictatorship of the proletariat assured. Then, there was to be a withering away of the state. But Stalin, Mao, and Castro, for example, conveniently forgot about the withering of the state. They did not gradually reduce the state, transferring means of production and control to the workers, but rather increased the role of the state. In other words, they did the opposite of what real Communists are supposed to do. How can anyone really be anything if they do the opposite of what members of that thing are supposed to do? For example, if I said I was a vegan and kept eating the flesh of animals and cheese, I would be doing the opposite of what vegans do, and could not therefore legitimately call myself a vegan. 

There have been Communists, but not Communism. Communists in power, like anyone in power, sought to hold on to their power, thus preventing the withering away of the state. Instead, so-called Communists in power ensured, as Rosa Luxembourg predicated, that, "the dictatorship of the proletariat would become a dictatorship over the Proletariat." Thus the prophecy was left unfulfilled, and Communism never happened. After all, Communism was part political and economic philosophy and part prophecy. Since the ultimate aim was never achieved, Communism was never achieved. Communists tried to bring it about, but they either died before they became dangerous (as in John Reed's case), were exiled and later assassinated with an mountaineer's ice pick (as with Trotsky), or were purged at some point, in numbers too great to even comprehend. 

On other matters 

I'll let other stuff go without commentary from me for now.