Breaking News

[Audio transcript]

This is Bob Avakian, with some breaking news for real— breaking into the bullshit brought to you by the capitalist-imperialist propaganda machinery (CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and the rest).

Recently, these so-called “news outlets” have been full of talk about U.S. “retaliatory strikes” in the “Middle East,” after an attack on a U.S. military installation in the country of Jordan killed three U.S. soldiers. This brings up a very important question that none of these media want you to think about: What the hell is the U.S. military doing thousands of miles from the U.S. in the Middle Eastern country of Jordan?!

The answer is this: What it is doing in Jordan is part of what the U.S. military as a whole is doing, with its guns, bombs, missiles, and other means of mass slaughter: killing huge numbers of people in the most monstrous ways, all over the world, so that the U.S. can remain the world’s “number one” capitalist-imperialist oppressor and destroyer of people and the environment (with the U.S. military itself one of the main forces rapidly devastating the environment).

And, here’s something else these capitalist-imperialist media don’t want you to think about: the recent attacks on U.S. forces in the Middle East, including this one in Jordan, are themselves in response to (or “retaliation” for) the massive, genocidal slaughter of Palestinian people that is being carried out by Israel, with the full backing of the U.S. Three U.S. soldiers killed in Jordan...nearly 30 thousand Palestinians, overwhelmingly civilians, including huge numbers of children, slaughtered in Gaza—with the number increasing every day.

And all this poses the growing possibility of a dangerous wider war.

As it turns out, the three U.S. soldiers killed in Jordan were Black. On the personal level this is, of course, a terrible loss for their families and loved ones. But this raises another big question: What in the hell are Black people doing in the military of the very system that has viciously, violently oppressed Black people, throughout the history of this country and right down to today?!

And what kind of system is it that robs so many people in this country of a decent life, murders and mass incarcerates them in the thousands and millions, and offers them a “way out” by becoming part of the machinery of mass slaughter that is the U.S. military?

The answer: a system, the system of capitalism-imperialism, that needs to be overthrown and swept off the face of the earth at the earliest possible time.

And right now is a rare time when the possibility for this is real—when a revolution , to bring this system down and bring something much better into being, could actually succeed. That is the biggest truth, and the most important “breaking news,” that I am bringing to you in these ongoing messages.