'Russian President Vladimir Putin also will join remotely.'

Was there any possibility that he would be arrested in South Africa on behalf of the International Criminal Court? Were any of that country's first three presidents put on trial for supporting another dictator, Mugabe of neighboring Zimbabwe? Mbeki during his tenure promoted alternative remedies such as vinegar rather than antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) which saved the state’s funds at a cost of up to 365,000 lives. Some members of the 99 percent called for him to be tried for crimes against humanity. Was he? Sharpeville II took place on 16 August 2012, With 17 workers killed and 78 wounded by the police, the Marikana Miners’ Massacre was the most lethal use of force by South African security forces against other workers since 1976. Commissioner Phiyega said that the police had acted well within their legislative mandate. Ramaphosa and King Zuma share responsibility for this mass murder. Were there ever plans to put them on trial? In June 2015, while in South Africa for an African Union meeting, the former dictator of Sudan (and one of 15 on the ICC's most wanted list), al-Bashir, was prohibited from leaving while a court decided whether he should be handed over to the ICC for war crimes. Was he?

The answer to all the above is NO! It is futile to punish such odious individuals whilst ignoring the vicious conditions which made them possible. War criminals are not responsible for war, which is caused by the struggles between competing capitalist states over markets and economic resources. War will only end with the abolition of capitalism. The dictators of yesterday, and the dictators and leaders of today, with their frightening military machines, only reflect the preparedness of their workers to ignore the bloodshed of all the conflicts before, during and after the war to end all wars and still to die for capitalism.

I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth; I am a citizen of the world.
(Eugene V. Debs, 11 September 1915).

W. M. Hughes, Prime Minister of Australia during the war to end all wars observed: ‘The increasing intensity of competition for economic markets must lead to armed conflict unless an economic settlement is found. This, however, is hardly to be hoped for. Talk about peace in a world armed to the teeth is utterly futile’ (News Chronicle, 25 July 1936). And, more recently: 'A senior U.S. State Department official said Thursday that a massive Ukraine aid package ― which contains $4 billion in grants for allies to buy American-made military hardware ― is partly aimed at eroding Russia’s share of the global defense market' (US poised to bite into Russia’s global defense market share, Yahoo, 13 May, 2022).

'Americans see their country...'. Whose country?

'This great republic is a mockery of freedom as long as you are doomed to dig and sweat to earn a miserable living while the masters enjoy the fruit of your toil. What have you to fight for? National independence? That means the masters' independence. The laws that send you to jail when you demand better living conditions? The flag? Does it wave over a country where you are free and have a home, or does it rather symbolize a country that meets you with clenched fists when you strike for better wages and shorter hours? Will you fight for your masters' religion which teaches you to obey them even when they tell you to kill one another? Why don't you make a junk heap of your masters' religion, his civilization, his kings and his customs that tend to reduce a man to a brute and God to a monster? Let there go forth a clarion call for liberty. Let the workers form one great world-wide union, and let there be a globe-encircling revolt to gain for the workers true liberty and happiness' (Menace of the Militarist Program, 1915, https://tinyurl.com/33tstem).

'China poses no threat to the West, in fact, China has never invaded another country in its 70 year-long history. Compare that to Washington’s unbroken record of violence around the world.'

Socialists see no reason to have a debate about which nations belong in the 'imperialist" premier league as we workers have no country. We do not defend China's annexation of Tibet or their involvment in the killing fields of Cambodia, Korea and Vietnam. Modifying an old leftist slogan, we say: Neither Washington nor Beijing! No war but the class war!

‘Maduro recognizes Venezuela is still a capitalist-based economy…’ (Popular Resistance newsletter, 27 May, 2018)

'>The handful who did not, such as Rosa Luxemburg, were sent to prison.

'The question for the working class, then, is not that of British or German victory, since either event will leave them wage-slaves living upon wages. Under German rule those wages cannot be reduced lower than under British, for every British workingman knows that the masters who are shouting so loudly today for us to go and die in defence of our shackles and their shekels, have left no stone unturned to force wages to the lowest possible limits.

The question, then, before the workers, is the abolition of the whole social system of which war and unemployment are integral parts, and the establishment of society upon the basis of common ownership of the means of production—the establishment, that is, of SOCIALISM.'

Socialist Standard, (September 1914)

'The death of the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign marked the end of any meaningful push toward economic justice in the US. Ever since then all political oxygen has gone into ramping up culture war hostilities that won’t put a single cent into any struggling American’s bank account.'

The rapid right remains concerned...

'Sanders new book It’s OK To Be Angry About Capitalism reads like Marx and Engels’ 1848 Communist Manifesto. The only difference is that in their manifesto, Marx and Engels clearly underline the positive role that capitalism played throughout history. Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, doesn’t have a single good word to say about capitalism and – here he resembles Marx and Engels – calls for a working-class revolution to raze the capitalist system to the ground' (American Thinker, 10 March).

Å Hardly!

The status quo is safe - Sanders is all bark and no bite. Defining what 'democratic socialism' means to him, Sanders said: 'I don't believe government should take over the grocery store down the street or own the means of production, but I do believe that the middle class and the working families who produce the wealth of America deserve a decent standard of living and that their incomes should go up, not down. I do believe in private companies that thrive and invest and grow in America, companies that create jobs here, rather than companies that are shutting down in America and increasing their profits by exploiting low-wage labor abroad' (Slate, 15 November 2015).

The American Marxist Daniel De Leon would have identifed Sanders as a reformist lap dog! 'As a poodle may have his hair cut long or his hair cut short, as he may be trimmed with pink ribbons or with blue ribbons, yet he remains the same old poodle, so capitalism may be trimmed with factory laws, tenement laws, divorce laws and gambling laws, but it remains the same old capitalism. These “humaniitarian parts” are only trimming the poodle. Socialism, one and inseparable with its “antirent and anticapital parts,” means to get rid of the poodle' (The Daily People, 2 November 1908).

'Instead of flying the despicable Israeli flag, thousands of Palestinian flags, outlawed by the Netanyahu government, should be proudly flown. Palestine will be free!'

How will workers fare in an independent Palestine under a new set of leaders, some drawn from Hamas or the PA (both seems unlikely if a report in The Guardian from 23 October, 2018 tittled 'Palestinian security forces routinely torture critics, rights group says' is to be believed)? Little seems to have changed: ' On the streets of Ramallah in recent weeks, a popular slogan has been recycled from the Arab Spring revolutions which swept the Middle East in 2011: "The people want the fall of the regime"' (BBC, 7 September 2021)..

'Some 2.54 million people in Israel, including 1.118 million children, live in poverty, according to a report released yesterday by the Latet non-profit aid organisation. Nearly 652,000 families – nearly 25 per cent of households in the country – are living in poverty, the study found' (middleeastmonitor, 21 December 2021).

Little wonder then Norman Finkelstein stated in 2014:
'If you ask my personal preference, I would say that I don’t believe in two states; I don’t believe in one state; I happen not to believe in any states.'

'Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead. When independent-thinking people (and here I do not include the corporate media) begin to rally under flags, when writers, painters, musicians, film makers suspend their judgment and blindly yoke their art to the service of the “Nation,” it’s time for all of us to sit up and worry' (Arundhati Roy, c. 2008).

'Chomsky: The Global South is calling for some negotiated settlement to put an end to the horrors before they get worse. Of course, the Russian invasion was a criminal act of aggression. No question about that. Ukrainians have a right to defend themselves. I don’t think there should be any question about that either...

Barsamian: The lunatics seemingly control the asylum. What signs of sanity are out there to counter the lunatics?

Chomsky: Plenty. There’s lots of popular activism. It’s in the streets. Young people calling for the decent treatment of others. A lot of it is very solid and serious. Extinction Rebellion..'.

Once upon a time he had some better ideas including:

‘Presupposing that there have to be states is like saying, what kind of feudal system should we have that would be the best one? What kind of slavery would be the best kind?’ (Manufacturing Consent, 1988).

‘A democratic revolution would take place when it is supported by the great mass of the people, when they know what they are doing and they know why they are doing it and they know what they want to see come into existence. Maybe not in detail but at least in some manner. A revolution is something that great masses of people have to understand and be personally committed to’ (Linguistics and Politics, September–October 1969, New Left Review).