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The Koch Network Is Pushing Trump to Accelerate AI, Documents Show
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Article by Geoff Dembicki republished from DeSmog.
Koch, Inc., said in October that its real estate arm has been getting into the business of building data centers like this one in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Credit: Chad Davis/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Right-wing political group Americans for Prosperity, backed by oil and gas billionaire Charles Koch, sees data centers as part of a larger pro-fossil fuel agenda.
A political group created by oil and gas billionaire Charles Koch earlier this year wrote to a branch of the U.S. government making requests about artificial intelligence.
“To seize the moment and ensure that AI can meet its true promise and potential,” it argued in March to the National Coordination Office, a federal body tasked by Donald Trump at the time with developing an AI Action Plan, the administration should “clear the red tape” preventing “energy innovators” from supplying the massive amounts of electricity required to power new AI data centers across the country.
The comments were written by analysts with Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a Koch-bankrolled activist organization that supports right-wing causes and political candidates and spent more than $157 million to sway voters during the 2024 elections.
Strategy plans, policy documents, corporate communications and comments to the federal government reviewed by DeSmog show that Koch’s political operation is attempting to shape and help implement a U.S. AI technology agenda, which could ultimately profit Koch’s traditional oil and gas business.
Despite the Koch network’s ongoing disagreements with Trump on issues including tariffs, the vast political operation appears to have found common cause with the administration on ensuring that fossil fuels, and not renewable energy sources, are central to AI development, even as wind and solar remain cheaper and faster to build.
“Practical solutions can be identified that move our nation forward,” Americans for Prosperity wrote to the government’s AI and Energy Working Group in May. “We look forward to working with you and the Congress to assist in the identification of those solutions.”
Neither AFP nor Koch, Inc. responded to a request for comment.
‘Couched in Fear’
Charles Koch became one of America’s richest people through owning and overseeing an industrial empire with his late brother, David, that includes oil refineries, pipelines, petrochemicals and natural gas. Koch, Inc., formerly known as Koch Industries, is now embracing AI across its vast operations, which it has predicted will create “substantial economic value” for the company.
Koch, Inc., in 2020 announced a partnership with the AI software provider C3 AI, with the goal of improving “operating performance” across its products “ranging from refined oil, chemicals, and biofuels to polymers, automotive components, and forest products.”
Also around that time, the company led a $125 million investment in the San Francisco cloud computing startup Mesosphere, alongside the likes of Microsoft and Khosla Ventures. Other backers included Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm whose founders became prominent Trump supporters during the 2024 election.
Koch, Inc., said in October that its real estate arm has been getting into the business of building data centers in cities like Chicago, Kansas City, and Atlanta. The company argued in a news release that it “can provide the expertise and capabilities that major tech companies either don’t have or don’t think would be worth the time or effort to build on their own from the ground up.”
As Koch’s industrial empire invests in AI and partners with Big Tech, AFP is pushing the Trump administration to remove regulatory barriers on the technology.
Last March, AFP analysts Faith Burns and James Czerniawski disapprovingly noted there were over 800 state-level proposals to regulate AI. These efforts “are couched in fear of the technology,” they argued in comments to the National Coordination Office, and said the correct approach for government is “keeping itself out of the way to drive innovation.”
This is part of a larger political project that would also be beneficial to the Koch companies involved with producing, transporting and selling fossil fuels.
AFP argued in its March comments that the administration and Congress could make progress on accelerating AI by deregulating the power sector “to get abundant and affordable energy to Americans and leading AI companies.”
‘Radical Climate Dogma’
The quickest and most economic way to power all the data centers now being built is through renewable sources, industry data shows. That’s in part because nearly 80 percent of planned electricity projects in the U.S. are currently tied to solar and wind farms.
But Americans for Prosperity has thrown its political weight behind legislation that hobbles renewables in favor of oil, gas and coal.
It cited as a major victory the passage this summer of the Trump administration’s Big Beautiful Bill, a massive tax cut bill predominately benefiting America’s wealthiest citizens that included deep cuts to clean energy tax credits brought in under President Joe Biden.
The Koch political group ran a $20 million advertising and political campaign that it claimed “helped make this win possible through over 1,500 meetings with lawmakers, nearly 500,000 doors knocked, more than 475,000 phone calls, 725+ community events [and] over 100,000 letters sent to Congress.”
AFP presented the bill as a victory for fossil fuels. “It provides for a minimum of 30 offshore oil and gas lease sales,” its analyst Burns said in an advertisement posted on the group’s Facebook page. “And it makes available for lease four million acres of recoverable coal resources on federal land.”
As it worked to help pass the Big Beautiful Bill, Americans for Prosperity was supporting the administration’s efforts on AI.
In late July, the Trump administration unveiled an AI Action Plan, which promised “to reject radical climate dogma and bureaucratic red tape” to ensure that the U.S. can “build and maintain vast AI infrastructure and the energy to power it.”
In a statement that was posted on the White House website, Americans for Prosperity’s Brent Gardner said the plan “will ensure America leads the world” on AI. That statement was included along with praise from the likes of Chevron, Palantir, Meta, IBM and the Heritage Foundation.
The plan itself had input from Dean Ball, who was recently an AI advisor at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and earlier a fellow at the Mercatus Center, a conservative think tank that’s received millions of dollars in funding from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. Ball was “intimately involved in the drafting” of the plan, according to a recent webinar on AI policy hosted by National Journal.
Ball said during the event that the build-out of data centers will likely mean that there’s “more gas, natural gas in particular, used in the United States than there otherwise might have been.”
Ball is now a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, a national non-profit whose supporters include the Koch-backed Stand Together Trust.
The Next AI Battle
The fallout of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill is already being felt across the renewables industry. Power “developers have canceled 1,891 power projects this year with a combined capacity of 266 GW, with clean energy accounting for 93% of cancellations,” according to analysis by the climate newsletter Distilled.
That’s not necessarily good news for AI, given that new natural gas and nuclear facilities can take much longer to build than renewables.
And there is now a growing backlash to the technology, with a coalition of over 200 environmental groups this month demanding a halt to new U.S. data centers, arguing they are “rapidly increasing demand for energy, driving more fossil fuel pollution, straining water resources and raising electricity prices across the country.”
But Americans for Prosperity has now made one of its political priorities getting federal “permitting reform” legislation passed, which would streamline or eliminate many environmental and other reviews on new energy projects such as data centers.
In a recent petition form sent out to its members, AFP claimed that permitting reform can help “ensure 24/7 reliable power as demand increases, particularly in regions experiencing surging data center growth and electrification trends.” It envisions such legislation as hastening “new pipelines, export terminals and delivery systems” along with expanding “LNG and crude oil exports.”
The Koch network is joined by a coalition of fossil fuel industry groups including the American Petroleum Institute and the American Gas Association, which in early December released a letter calling for passage of “a broader permitting package” around new energy infrastructure projects.
And the effort is also attracting interest from Big Tech.
Sponsors for a mid-December conference in Washington, D.C., that includes U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and features panels on “permitting reform,” “energy for AI,” and “American energy dominance” include the Koch nonprofit organization Stand Together.
Also listed as a sponsor: the tech giant Amazon.
Article by Geoff Dembicki republished from DeSmog.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
10 May 2026
Another Oil War, Another Perfect Reason to Stop Burning It
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Original article by Kyle Schmidlin republished form Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Explosions erupt following strikes at Tehran Oil Refinery in Tehran on March 7, 2026. (Photo by Atta Kenare/ AFP via Getty Images)
It’s a dirty business that’s ruining the planet and jeopardizing our futures in countless ways, of which this despicable war in Iran is just the latest and highest profile.
On February 28, President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started a war with Iran. Since then, violence has spread throughout the Middle East. On the first day of bombing, the US bombed an elementary school, killing more than 100 children. Iran struck back, hitting Israel and US bases in the region. Israel expanded into Syria and Lebanon, bombing apartment buildings in Beirut. A few weeks ago Israel bombed oil depots in Tehran, engulfing the sky in flames and raining toxic oil on a population bigger than New York City.
But all Americans can think of, naturally, is the price of gas.
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Oil is both a major driver of this war and, for now at least, the primary way Americans are feeling its effects. The war drives home the grim reality that we are hostage to this toxic ooze that burns dirty, poisons wildlife, causes cancer, and accelerates climate change. The necessity to wean ourselves off of it, as quickly and completely as possible, has never been more apparent.
An Oil Crisis of Trump’s Own Making
Even Trump is subservient to the whims and demands of the oil economy. Since he started the war, he’s tried desperately to control the chaotic effect his bombing campaign has had on global oil markets. Trump may not be bright, but he understands one very basic political reality: He can cover up the Epstein files, get away with all manner of fraud and graft, and even commit war crimes—but he cannot let the price of gas get too high.
Oil makes all our lives dirtier and less safe. Fighting wars so we can dig it up until it’s all gone—or until we are—is as stupid, reckless, and self-destructive a thing as any animal has ever done.
From a strategic perspective, then, the focal point of the war quickly became the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow passageway out of the Persian Gulf that pinches down between southern Iran and the Omani Musandam Peninsula. The strait is an essential shipping lane for 20% of the world’s liquefied natural gas (LNG), as well as a third of the global fertilizer trade. With essentially uncontested control of the strait, Iran has closed it to “enemy-linked” ships. Iran insists that non-hostile ships pay a toll in Chinese yuan, which is an attempt to undermine the supremacy of the petrodollar.
The crisis at the Strait of Hormuz is entirely of Trump’s own making, and has triggered an erratic series of threats, pleas, lies, and bargaining from him as he tries to keep his stupid war from grinding the global economy to a halt. Trump has even threatened to deploy the US Navy to escort ships through the strait. One has to wonder how sailors feel about being offered up as bodyguards for Qatari tankers, thrown into a situation where they would be wide open for Iranian drone and missile attacks.
Trump the Oil Imperialist
Trump sees this war almost entirely through the lens of oil. As part of alleged ceasefire negotiations, Trump claimed Iran “gave us a present… worth a tremendous amount of money… it was oil-and-gas related.” That turned out to be Iran allowing 10 oil ships through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump also implied that those high gas prices causing so many people pain at the pump are actually good for the country. Because the US is a net exporter of oil, Trump said, “When oil prices go up, we make a lot of money”—perhaps forgetting that most Americans do not own oil companies.
Compare Trump’s constant talk of oil with the Bush administration’s 2003 invasion of Iraq. In 2003-06, calling Iraq a war for oil was considered a conspiracy theory. Dissidents and war critics were driven out of polite conversations for even bringing it up. Insinuating that the troops would ever be deployed for such an ignoble purpose was treated as beyond the pale, if not treasonous, by Fox News and the Bush White House.
This time, there’s next to no pretense of nobility in Trump’s war. While lots of motivations, with varying degrees of believability and logic, have been given—ranging from halting Iran’s nuclear capabilities to ushering in Armageddon—the Trump administration is perfectly open about the centrality of oil to their war mission. In a way, it’s almost refreshing to hear a politician speak so forwardly about their imperialist intent, even if it does lay bare the villainy of the US empire.
In addition to the Strait of Hormuz, Trump is focused on Kharg Island, a small island in the Persian Gulf that handles up to 90% of Iran’s crude oil exports. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who is among the most bloodthirsty war hawks on the planet, encouraged Trump to seize Kharg Island (and compared such an operation to Iwo Jima, in which 7,000 Marines died—no skin off Lindsey Graham’s back). Trump himself then said, while discussing his military options, “My favorite thing is to take the oil in Iran.”
Trump has long openly fantasized about using the military to conquer oil fields. In 2013, before his political career really started, he tweeted, “I still can’t believe we left Iraq without the oil,” and he repeated this urge to plunder Iraq’s oil during the 2016 election. To Trump, this is just how the world works: If your guns and bombs make bigger holes and explosions, you get to just take whatever you want, anywhere in the world. There is no right, no wrong, no law.
This also tracks with how Trump has handled the oil industry in Venezuela. Last year, Trump started claiming that Venezuela had stolen, or “unilaterally seized and sold American oil.” This claim was a reference to Venezuela nationalizing their oil industry and evicting American oil companies. Then, in January, the US military abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, an astonishing breach of international norms. With Maduro gone, Trump began shadily directing Venezuelan oil revenue into an offshore Qatari account.
The Need to Wean Ourselves off of Oil
Such oil imperialism long predates Trump. Just ask other offenders of the US oil monopoly, like Muammar Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein. Oil is the locus of US foreign policy. The US military itself is the single largest institutional polluter and user of fossil fuels. It’s a dirty business that’s ruining the planet and jeopardizing our futures in countless ways, of which this despicable war in Iran is just the latest and highest profile.
The simple answer to all this madness is to wean ourselves off of oil. It won’t be easy, and we’ll probably never be fully rid of it, but we aren’t even trying. There are a million ways we could start cutting back, a million investments we could make toward a future that is as oil free as possible. But Trump is doing everything he can to keep us addicted to it, including starting an unpopular and illegal war.
Trump has always been particularly pro-fossil fuel. He loves the nonsensical phrase “beautiful clean coal.” He calls green energy a “scam” and has repeatedly made the utterly deranged claim that windmills cause cancer. His administration displays a psychotic obsession with destroying green energy initiatives, most recently paying a French energy company $1 billion to cancel a wind farm and instead invest in oil and gas.
Oil makes all our lives dirtier and less safe. Fighting wars so we can dig it up until it’s all gone—or until we are—is as stupid, reckless, and self-destructive a thing as any animal has ever done. With a little bit of will and some leadership, we could control our greed and addiction. If we were able to do that, we might not find ourselves charging into the Middle East on such a regular basis, burning through American lives and treasure, killing countless men and women and children, and making the rest of the world hate us.
Original article by Kyle Schmidlin republished form Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering.
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1 April 2026
Trump prefers peace but ready to ‘unleash hell’ in Iran: White House
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This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks at the White House Press Briefing room in Washington DC., United States, on March 10, 2026. [Celal Güneş – Anadolu Agency]
US President Donald Trump favors a peaceful resolution with Iran but is prepared to escalate sharply if Tehran fails to accept the “reality of the current moment,” the White House said Wednesday, Anadolu reports.
Washington postponed planned strikes on Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure after “productive conversations” in the last three days, spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told reporters.
She said if Iran fails to accept that it has “been defeated militarily,” Trump will ensure the country is “hit harder than they have ever been hit before.” She added that the president “does not bluff and he is prepared to unleash hell.”
Leavitt also warned Tehran against “miscalculation,” claiming its last miscalculation had cost Iran its senior leadership, navy, air force and air defense system. Any further violence, she said, would be the result of Iran refusing to accept defeat and come to a deal.
She said the administration does not consider congressional authorization “necessary” for strikes against Iran, and acknowledged no specific timeline exists for the first oil tanker to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, though officials are working to realize it “as quickly as” possible.
Leavitt said the US has destroyed more than 140 Iranian naval vessels, including nearly 50 mine layers, in “the largest elimination of a Navy on the face of the planet in a three-week period since World War II.”
She added that during the weekend, the US dropped several 5,000-pound bombs on an underground facility used to store anti-ship cruise missiles and mobile missile launchers positioned along the Strait of Hormuz coastline.
Trump, Leavitt added, wants to see a Iranian leadership that is “much more favorable” to Washington, willing to cooperate with the US and no longer chanting “Death to America!”
READ: Strait of Hormuz situation ‘will not return to the past,’ Iran says amid escalating Mideast tensions
Talks continue despite Iran’s reported rejection
Asked about Iranian state television reports that Tehran rejected a US 15-point plan to end the war, Leavitt said talks have not broken down. “They have not. Talks continue. They are productive, as the president said on Monday, and they continue to be,” she said.
On the reported plan, Leavitt urged caution, saying she had seen a plan “floated in the media” but that the White House had never confirmed it. “There are elements of truth to it, but some of the stories I read were not entirely factual,” she added.
The US has reportedly sent Iran a 15-point plan, outlining steps on Tehran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, as well as maritime security in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran rejected the proposal, saying any ceasefire would occur on its terms and timeline, and outlined five conditions for ending the war, including a complete halt to “aggression and assassinations.”
On possible face-to-face talks, including reports of a potential meeting in Pakistan, Leavitt said nothing should be considered official until formally announced by the White House, cautioning against getting “ahead of our skis” on any talks planned for the weekend.
She also dismissed claims by former counterterrorism director Joe Kent, who alleged the US had shifted its red line from preventing a nuclear weapon to preventing nuclear enrichment to justify the war. She said Kent “resigned in disgrace,” calling his assertions “ridiculous and laughable,” and saying his accusations carry “zero credibility.”
The US and Israel have struck Iran since Feb. 28, killing more than 1,300 people, including then-Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, prompting Iranian retaliatory strikes across the region and a severe disruption to global oil flows.
READ: Hebrew media: Iran sets five conditions to end war with US and Israel
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25 March 2026
China Reaffirms Vow to Aid Cuba Amid Trump’s ‘Inhumane’ Economic Strangulation
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Original post by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi shakes hands with his Cuban counterpart, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, in Beijing on February 5, 2026. (Photo by Lin Jian/X)
“China firmly supports Cuba in safeguarding national sovereignty and security and opposing external interference,” a Beijing spokesperson said.
As the Trump administration weaponizes its economic privation of the Cuban people in hopes of ousting their socialist government, China on Tuesday reaffirmed its pledge to help alleviate the island’s worsening oil shortage.
Emboldened by his recent abduction of socialist Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on legally dubious “narco-terrorism” charges, President Donald Trump is ratcheting up pressure on a people already ravaged by 64 years of what many critics call Washington’s “economic terrorism” and decades of actual terrorism committed by US-based right-wing Cuban exiles.
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Cut off from the Venezuelan petroleum that provided around 75% of Cuba’s imported oil just a few years ago, the island is suffering a worsening energy emergency. The Cuban government has responded by strictly rationing fuel and seeking alternate sources of oil such as Mexico and, to a lesser extent, Russia.
“I would like to stress again that China firmly supports Cuba in safeguarding national sovereignty and security and opposing external interference,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said during a press conference.
“China stands firmly against the inhumane actions that deprive the Cuban people of their right to subsistence and development,” he added. “China will, as always, do our best to provide support and assistance to Cuba.”
As is usually the case when Washington tightens the screws on Cuba, everyday Cubans are suffering the most.
“You can’t imagine how it touches every part of our lives,” Marta Jiménez, a hairdresser in Cuba’s eastern city of Holguín, told CodePink co-founder and frequent Common Dreams opinion contributor Medea Benjamin, who traveled to Cuba last week with a group to deliver 2,500 pounds of lentils.
“It’s a vicious, all-encompassing spiral downward,” Jiménez continued. “With no gasoline, buses don’t run, so we can’t get to work. We have electricity only three to six hours a day. There’s no gas for cooking, so we’re burning wood and charcoal in our apartments. It’s like going back 100 years.”
“The blockade is suffocating us—especially single mothers,” she added, “and no one is stopping these demons, Trump and [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio.”
The United Nations General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly every year but once since 1992 to condemn the US blockade on Cuba. Last October, the UNGA voted 165-7 against the embargo, with 12 abstentions.
Original post by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
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11 February 2026
Fight builds against U.S. plan to deprive Cuba of oil
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Original article by W. T. Whitney, Jr republished from People’s World under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/
A driver refuels others wait in a long line behind to fill up at a gas station in Havana, Cuba, Jan. 27, 2026. | Ramon Espinosa / AP
The U.S. president issued an executive order on Jan. 29 “declaring a national emergency and establishing a process to impose tariffs on goods from countries that sell or otherwise provide oil to Cuba.” The order mentioned “confronting the Cuban regime” and “countering Cuba’s malign influence.” “I think we would like to see the regime there change,” declared Secretary of State Rubio, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the day before.
Cuba faces catastrophe. At work now are the cumulative effects of six decades of the U.S. economic blockade, a tightened stranglehold during the two Trump administrations, increasingly desperate living conditions, worsening shortages of essential goods, serious electrical power shortages, and the cut-off of oil from Venezuela after the U.S. invasion there on Jan. 3.
Mounting humanitarian danger and U.S. assault on Cuba’s sovereign independence are moving the international and U.S. Cuba solidarity movements into action.
The matter is urgent. In a statement, the U.K. Cuba Solidarity Campaign declares that, “This latest escalation…will cripple the electricity system and devastate every aspect of daily life” in Cuba. Th organization predicts:
“Hospitals without power. Incubators and life-support machines unable to function. Emergency surgeries carried out without light. Schools and workplaces forced to close. Bakeries unable to operate. Fuel shortages preventing the transport of food and medical supplies. Food spoiling in fridges and freezers. Hunger, illness, and suffering will spread. This is a deliberate attack on an entire civilian population, intended to inflict pain, deprivation and desperation. It is cruel, calculated, and it will cost lives.”
Victory for U.S. imperialism over Cuba’s socialist revolution would have dire implications. A European analyst explains that, “Cuba remains the only living example of a country that continues to attempt socialist construction on the basis of social ownership, planning, and working-class power, rather than market dominance and capitalist accumulation.”
Trump’s executive order sanctioning suppliers of oil to Cuba prompted a crescendo of statements supportive of Cuba, including from many Communist Parties of the world, from China, Russia, Vietnam, the Arab League, the African National Congress, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, multiple Cuba solidarity organizations, organizations of Cubans living abroad, and the World Federation of Trade Unions.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel commented on Jan. 30 that, “Under a false pretext and empty arguments, peddled by those who engage in politics and enrich themselves at the expense of our people’s suffering, President Trump seeks to stifle the Cuban economy by imposing tariffs on countries that trade oil with Cuba as is their sovereign right.”
Denying U.S. accusations, Cuba’s Foreign Ministry insisted that Cuba “does not harbor, support, finance, or permit terrorist or extremist organizations.” Nor does Cuba “harbor foreign military or intelligence bases” or represent “a threat to the security of the United States.”
Cuba soon may be unable to import any oil at all. According to a Financial Post report on Jan. 29, “Cuba has 15 to 20 days left of oil left as Donald Trump turns the screws.”
As explained by analyst Gabriel Vera Lopes, Cuba itself produces 30% of the 120,000 barrels of oil (BPD) used in the country each day. Venezuela in 2025 provided up to 35,000 BPD, representing 29% of the total. Mexico sold Cuba 17,200 BPD during the first nine months of 2025, until oil exports lagged due to U.S. pressure.
Vera Lopes indicates that even oil sent for humanitarian reasons will be blocked, as will be the small amounts of oil sent to Cuba through China or Russia. Apart from oil produced in Cuba itself, all that remains is oil from Mexico. Crucially, “The new executive order now appears to be aimed directly at Mexican supplies.”
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, speaking to reporters on Jan. 30, highlighted humanitarian considerations and respect for international law. Insisting that Mexico’s government will negotiate with officials in Washington, she stated that “contractual considerations,” not political pressures, accounted for the PEMEX oil company’s recent suspension of shipments. Sheinbaum added that “ Mexico will always stand in solidarity, always seeking the best way to support the Cuban people.”
Mexico has been sending only 1% of its total oil production to Cuba. Up to 84% of it goes to the United States. In fact, Mexico and the United States have a mutually dependent but asymmetric relationship as regards hydrocarbon products. Maintaining that relationship may take precedence over Cuba’s needs.
Mateo Crossa’s recent article appearing in Monthly Review titled “The Shale Revolution, U.S. Energy Imperialism, and Mexico’s Dependence” is relevant. He writes:
“In the context of the Shale Revolution positioning the United States as the world’s top oil producer and as the leading exporter of refined oil, Mexico has become the largest market for the United States, importing $30 billion worth of refined oil in 2023—accounting for 28% of the $107 billion the United States exported that year.”
He adds: “This pattern highlights a troubling shift in energy dynamics, with Mexico increasingly locked into a subordinate role that weakens its economic autonomy and energy independence…. Mexico has not only become the largest importer of U.S. natural gas but also plays a pivotal role in the broader U.S. imperial energy strategy, serving as a platform for liquefied natural gas exports to Asia.”
Cuba solidarity activists in the United States are responding. In a communication shared with the International U.S.-Cuba Normalization Coalition Committee, labor activist Mark Friedman, associated with the Los Angeles Hands off Cuba Coalition, stated:
“We need to go on an emergency footing and reach out to those forces who in the past have not been willing to take a stand.… We need to fight for unity in the Cuba solidarity movement.”
At an emergency meeting of the coalition on Feb. 1, emphasis was given to significant expanding the existing material aid campaign for Cuba, outreach to the labor movement and to activists mobilizing against ICE and U.S. wars, local teach-ins, and a focus on defending Cuba’s sovereign independence.
Renewed action now on Cuba’s behalf is continuation of the struggle for Cuba that began in earnest in the United States under the leadership of Cuba’s national hero, José Martí. Revolutionaries inside Cuba who opposed the U.S.-dominated pseudo-republic (1902-59) carried it on. Anti-imperialist struggle intensified after 1959 with the defense of Cuba’s socialist revolution.
Under unprecedented threat now, the revolution’s fall would undo the long struggle of untold numbers of people against U.S. imperialism.
Fidel Castro, in his “Second Declaration of Havana” of Feb. 4, 1962, gave voice to Cuba’s struggle against U.S. Imperialism. A relevant excerpt follows:
“In 1895, Martí already pointed out the danger hovering over America and called it by its name: imperialism. He pointed out to the people of Latin America that more than anyone, they had a stake in seeing that Cuba did not succumb to the greed of the Yankee.… Sixty-seven years have passed. Puerto Rico was converted into a colony and still is a colony…. Cuba also fell into the clutches of imperialism. Their troops occupied our country. The Platt Amendment was imposed on our first Constitution, as a humiliating clause which sanctioned the odious right of foreign intervention. Our riches passed into their hands, our history was falsified, our government and our politics were entirely molded in in the interest of the overseers; the nation was subjected to 60 years of political, economic, and cultural suffocation. But Cuba was able to redeem itself.… Cuba broke the chains which tied its fortunes to those of the imperialist oppressor…and unfurled its banner as the Free Territory of America.”
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Original article by W. T. Whitney, Jr republished from People’s World under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
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5 February 2026