Word: baath
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...first slogan was: "1965 shall witness fundamental developments in strengthening the foundations of the regime!" That seemed to rule out a coup. At 1:30 a.m. the radio came clean: the announcer read off four new decrees that will take Syria's wobbly Baath (Renaissance) socialist government far down the Marxist road and virtually wipe out private ownership of Syria's major industries...
...charnel house. In the midland city of Hama, mothers wailed over the bodies of dead sons, the famed Sultan Mosque lay in ruins, and the corpse of one rebel leader, riddled with 50 bullets, was contemptuously dumped by soldiers from an open jeep onto the sidewalk. The bloody-handed Baath (Renaissance) Party was again engaged in its favorite pastime: killing...
Nasser responded by denouncing Baath as atheistic, and the cry was picked up by Moslem religious leaders as well as by Syria's merchants and landowners, worried by Baath's militantly socialist program of nationalization and land reform. Hafez replied: "Allah alone knows who are atheists, and will punish them." The Baath regime in neighboring Iraq was toppled last fall, but in Syria the Baathists continued to preach class war, pitting workers, peasants and the army against everyone else. Early this month, Baath expropriated all landholdings over 25 acres and nationalized six of the country's largest...
...unrest spread, a 15-year-old schoolboy in a classroom in Hama (pop. 110,000) erased the Baathist slogan, "One Single Arab Nation with an Immortal Mission," and wrote instead, "The Atheist Baath Is Against God!" The boy was sentenced to a year's hard labor, and his classmates went on strike. The sheiks and mullahs of Hama's 65 mosques denounced Baathist oppression, and surging Moslem mobs filled the streets. The police opened fire and the battle of Hama began...
...after the French left Syria, Baath had 1,000 carefully selected members, and Aflak called the first national congress in a Damascus cafe. Two years later he was strong enough to help topple a Syrian government and served in the Cabinet for three months before resigning on the ground that he was of more value to Baath outside the government than...