Redlines: May 7, 2025

Daily Dispatches from the Frontlines of Global Class and Anti-Imperialist Struggle

By Weaponized Information

Africa

Fortuna eyes Guinea investments after Burkina Faso exit, CEO says

Like a vulture circling the carcass of empire, Canadian mining firm Fortuna Silver doesn’t mourn its exit from Burkina Faso—it migrates. Not to withdraw from neocolonial extraction, but to replant its flag in Guinea, where the imperial leash is shorter and the security contract more stable. Burkina Faso, having dared to assert anti-imperialist sovereignty and expel French troops, has made itself a bad investment in the eyes of empire. So Fortuna pivots, chasing African minerals wherever comprador regimes still bend the knee. This isn’t development. It’s neocolonial extraction with a PowerPoint deck and ESG sticker.

US Navy accuses “spoofing attacks” across African coastlines

The Pentagon has a habit of hallucinating enemies when it wants a reason to deploy. Now it’s “spoofing attacks” off Africa’s coasts. Translation: the U.S. Navy wants a pretext to expand its footprint, cloak its gunboats in cybersecurity lingo, and further militarize Africa’s maritime chokepoints. AFRICOM frames itself as a peacekeeper, but in reality, it’s the tip of the spear in what Tricontinental calls hyper-imperialism—projecting force not to protect Africa, but to protect U.S. trade lanes and the profits that sail through them. Spoofing is the cover. Chokepoint imperialism is the mission.

Zambian President says Africa is “next economic miracle” in global pitch

Zambia’s President Hakainde Hichilema calls Africa the “next economic miracle.” But whose miracle? For Western investors, maybe. For Zambian miners choking on copper dust? Not so much. This isn’t a sovereign vision—it’s a TED Talk for neocolonialism. The real message is that Africa’s wealth is once again open for business, so long as it flows upstream to Wall Street and City of London. There’s no mention of debt traps, IMF diktats, or the fact that “miracle” economies are built on cheap labor and plundered resources. In other words: same scramble, new slogans.

Asia

Japan, China, South Korea seek ‘reboot’ as U.S. influence in Asia-Pacific wanes

When Japan, South Korea, and China talk “reboot,” it’s not because they’ve suddenly become friends—it’s because the unipolar operating system is crashing. The U.S. pivot to Asia, bloated with warships and semiconductors, has failed to halt the gravitational pull of multipolarity. ASEAN states are watching Washington’s tantrums over Taiwan and trade with growing skepticism, while regional power blocs seek alternatives to a declining imperial patron. This isn’t harmony—it’s hedging. And in the slow unbundling of U.S. hegemony, even former vassals are preparing their exits.

How China caught up to the U.S. in innovation

While U.S. think tanks scramble to redefine “freedom,” China quietly redefined the future. From 2000 to 2024, Chinese R&D spending grew 25-fold, overtaking the U.S. in patent filings, STEM graduates, and industrial AI integration. Yet Western media calls this “theft.” Why? Because what they fear isn’t innovation—it’s competition outside imperial command. China’s ascent exposes the myth that technological supremacy is the natural right of empire. In reality, U.S. dominance wasn’t innovation—it was monopoly enforced by financial piracy, sanctions architecture, and the looting of the Global South’s raw materials and brains. Beijing didn’t cheat the system—it built a new one.

India launches airstrikes on Pakistan, China expresses “concern”

India’s latest strikes in Pakistan—under the banner of “counterterrorism”—are not isolated actions but expressions of a regional ruling class in crisis, seeking legitimacy through militarized nationalism. As the BJP stokes sectarian tension and deflects from domestic discontent, war becomes a political campaign tool. China’s response—measured but pointed—reflects the precarious tightrope of a region on the edge. Beneath the surface lies a deeper danger: imperialist recalibration through proxy conflict, drawing South Asia into the orbit of U.S. containment strategy. “Concern,” in diplomatic code, means the powder keg is now armed.

Middle East

Saudi Arabia’s Oil Maneuver: OPEC, Russia, and the Weaponization of Price Shocks

This isn’t just an economic shuffle—it’s petropolitics with a sniper’s eye. By accelerating oil output through OPEC+, Saudi Arabia isn’t punishing Russia out of moral outrage—it’s tightening the imperial chokehold while pretending to play neutral.The Western press paints this as Riyadh disciplining Moscow. But when oil prices drop below $60, the real winners are the U.S. shale barons and Washington’s sanctions regime. Financial piracy doesn’t always need seizures—it can be engineered through price manipulation. Russia bleeds budgetary deficits, but Wall Street still smiles. Call it imperialist recalibration through the futures market.

Colonial Crisis Talk: JPost Declares Iran’s Fall—But Not the System That Birthed It

The Jerusalem Post is already dancing on Iran’s grave—but it’s a strange celebration of contradictions. They hail the collapse of the Islamic Republic as a triumph of freedom, while praising the Trump-backed sanctions regime that’s starved civilians and turned basic medicine into contraband. They list poverty, protest, and economic ruin as proof of the regime’s failure—without acknowledging that U.S.-backed maximum pressure is designed to do exactly that. What’s crumbling isn’t just Iran’s theocratic oligarchy—it’s the credibility of an entire Western imperialist narrative that sees suffering as righteous when it serves empire’s ends.

Houthi spokesperson confirms Israel not part of any ceasefire deal

Ansar Allah made it plain: there’s no “ceasefire” with Zionist occupation. While U.S. diplomats scramble to contain escalation in the Red Sea, Ansar Allah continues to target ships linked to Tel Aviv—exposing the fragility of imperial chokepoints and the waning credibility of U.S. naval supremacy. This isn’t just resistance; it’s a strategic evolution in asymmetric counter-imperial logistics. Every drone strike on a shipping lane is a message: as long as Palestine burns, so will empire’s sea lanes.

Central/South America and the Caribbean

The Timber is Soaked in Blood, But the Profits Are Clean

Deep in the Colombian Amazon, the trees don’t just fall—they’re executed. What The Guardian politely calls the “blood timber trade” is just capitalism doing what it’s always done: killing for profit. Indigenous leaders are being hunted like game by paramilitaries and mafia contractors to make way for illegal logging operations that feed the insatiable hunger of Western corporations. And let’s be clear—this isn’t some accident or oversight. The EU and U.S. import this lumber with full knowledge of its origins. That’s the beauty of “free trade” under hyper-imperialism: it launders death through supply chains, slaps on a “sustainably sourced” label, and sells it at a premium. The Global North gets garden furniture; the Global South gets mass graves.

Panama Stands Up: No More Yankee Troops, No More Stolen Copper

The people of Panama are marching, again. Not for better wages or electoral scraps, but for sovereignty. Tens of thousands poured into the streets to reject a backroom deal that would station U.S. troops on their soil and reopen the ecocidal Canadian-run copper mine. This isn’t about “development” or “security”—it’s about imperial lockdown. The U.S. wants to militarize the canal zone under the guise of stability, while foreign firms dig out Panama’s resources and ship them north. It’s a two-pronged spear: chokepoint strategy meets resource plunder, dressed up in the language of “investment.” But the people aren’t buying it. They see the script and they’re ripping it up in real time.

From Caracas to Moscow: A New Axis of Dignity

While the empire scrambles to reassert control over “its backyard,” Venezuela and Russia are flipping the board. Presidents Nicolás Maduro and Vladimir Putin just inked a sweeping strategic pact covering energy, defense, and tech cooperation—part survival strategy, part multipolar declaration. Washington calls it “authoritarian collusion”; the rest of us call it decolonial realignment. After two decades of sabotage, sanctions, and a failed coup puppet in Guaidó, Venezuela is still standing—and now it’s got friends with oil rigs and missiles. The Monroe Doctrine is dying, not with a bang but with a handshake. And to every colonized people watching, it’s a reminder: you can say no to empire, and live to tell about it.

Europe

MAGA Marches East: Trump’s Europe is Fortress, Not Friend

Trump 2.0 isn’t just a domestic death spiral—it’s a global export. According to a recent ECFR analysis, the technofascist regime now occupying the White House is actively reshaping U.S. policy in Europe to dismantle NATO “liberalism” and install a new order of ultranationalist isolationism fused with military aggression. Europe isn’t being abandoned; it’s being repurposed. Under the guise of “burden-sharing,” Trump’s imperial doctrine demands militarization without multilateralism—Europe as a garrison, not a partner. This is settler logic applied transatlantically: arm the periphery, torch the treaties, and call it sovereignty. MAGA isn’t retreating—it’s just shedding the velvet glove.

Macron and Merz Play Empire Lite: Competing to Manage Decline

From Berlin to Paris, the petty managers of European capitalism are squabbling over who gets to steer the Titanic into the iceberg. As Politico reports, Macron and German CDU leader Friedrich Merz are locked in a soft-power brawl over “shared leadership” of Europe’s Ukraine policy. But this isn’t strategy—it’s shadowboxing. Both are tethered to Washington’s war machine, both chant the mantras of “security” and “stability,” and neither offers a vision beyond subservience to U.S. diktats. In the theater of imperial decline, all roles are tragic, but some are more ridiculous than others.

The Global South Remembers, While Europe Forgets

As the EU pouts in its corner of history, leaders from Africa, Asia, and Latin America arrived in Moscow to commemorate Victory Day—the anti-fascist defeat of Nazi Germany. People’s Dispatch reports a visible contrast: former colonies honoring anti-fascist struggle, while former colonizers boycott the memory altogether. Europe, drunk on NATO nostalgia and neoliberal amnesia, now paints Russia as the new Reich. But the Global South knows better. It remembers who shed blood to crush fascism and who financed it. In this new Cold War, remembering the old one properly is itself an act of resistance.

North America

Canada Dodges the Empire’s Middlemen: Supply Chains and Sovereignty

A Canadian CEO is making headlines for cutting out U.S. middlemen and forging direct trade ties with China, sidestepping Washington’s geopolitical chokeholds. In a world where the dollar is backed not by gold but by gunboats, such a move smells like insubordination. The technofascist regime in D.C. wants to gatekeep the entire global logistics chain—from Pacific ports to the Prairie supply hubs. But capital, ever pragmatic, is fleeing imperial inefficiency. This isn’t anti-capitalist resistance—it’s bourgeois recalibration. Yet every rupture in U.S. hegemonic circuitry marks a crack in the imperial motherboard.

Trump Throws a Tantrum as Mexico Says No to the U.S. Military

In true Yankee fashion, Trump tried to barge across Mexico’s sovereignty with boots and drones, only to be told no by President Claudia Sheinbaum. Trump called her “scared” for rejecting U.S. military “help” to combat organized crime—help that historically meant death squads, disappearances, and airdropped cocaine. Let’s not pretend this was about crime. This was about control. About extending technofascist counterinsurgency into Mexican territory under the banner of “cooperation.” Sheinbaum said no, and Trump pouted. For the first time in a while, Mexico drew a line—and didn’t flinch.

Mexico Stands Its Ground on NAFTA 2.0—But at What Cost?

President Sheinbaum has pledged to defend the USMCA free trade agreement—a treaty forged in the fires of imperial blackmail. On the surface, it’s a pragmatic move to preserve market access. But beneath it lies the deeper tension of post-NAFTA North America: Mexico remains locked in a system of neocolonial dependency, where sovereignty must constantly be traded for stability, and labor is cheap so Wall Street can stay fat. Sheinbaum’s balancing act—defying military occupation while defending neoliberal treaties—shows the limits of reform inside an imperial framework. The question remains: how long can Mexico walk this tightrope without falling off?

United States

Student Debtors Face the Guillotine Again: Welcome Back to Capitalist Discipline

After a brief pandemic-era pause, the debt machine is roaring back to life. CNBC reports that millions of student loan borrowers are about to face collections, wage garnishments, and tax refund seizures—all for the crime of wanting an education in the heart of the capitalist empire. This isn’t a glitch; this is the system working as designed. The U.S. doesn’t fund education—it commodifies it, financializes it, and then weaponizes debt to discipline an entire generation into submission. Biden offered “relief.” Trump offers open-air debtor’s prison. Two wings of the same technofascist bird.

Reshoring is a Fantasy—The Empire Can’t Build, Only Bomb

The U.S. wants to “reshore” manufacturing to cut dependence on China, but reality is getting in the way. Warehouses are full, infrastructure is crumbling, and there’s no industrial workforce left—just app contractors and gig serfs. Empire outsourced not just production but competence. Now it wants to rebuild domestic supply chains without rebuilding the class that makes production possible. That’s not just bad planning; it’s imperial senility. The empire of bases has become a base without empire—armed to the teeth, but unable to stock a shelf.

Technofascism Renames the World: “Arabian Gulf” Is a Map-Maker’s War Crime

In a move as petty as it is geopolitical, the Trump regime has announced it will rename the Persian Gulf the “Arabian Gulf” in all official U.S. communications. This isn’t a cartographic correction—it’s psychological warfare. A crude attempt to inflame Iran, pander to Gulf monarchies, and signal that the empire’s war isn’t just military, but semantic. This is imperialist map-making in the 21st century: you don’t just bomb countries—you erase them from language, history, and identity. When you can’t win wars, you rename oceans.