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I've seen a lot of people online suggest that the Bolivian coup was CIA-backed to take control of their lithium production.
by cwkoss 7y ago
I've seen a lot of people online suggest that the Bolivian coup was CIA-backed to take control of their lithium production.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- chrisjc 7y agoFirst time I've heard this, although I've heard similar things about Afghanistan. If this is true, what have been the beneficial lithium-based financial outcomes of the intervention Afghanistan?
- aalleavitch 7y agoI've seen this too, and I don't think it's ridiculous at all. But I don't even think the CIA needs to have been involved. Private companies are now entirely capable of running their own disinformation campaigns and meddling in electoral processes. I actually think that it's less likely for companies to be going after the lithium than it is that they're going after the natural gas. BP has every incentive in the world to want to overthrow Morales.
- cwkoss 7y agoBolivia has 9 million tons of unexploited lithium reserves in their salt flats. "The region has 50% to 70% of the world's lithium reserves in the Salar de Uyuni salt flats." https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/11/bolivian-coup-comes-less-week-after-morales-stopped-multinational-firms-lithium-deal https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/11/bolivian-coup-c...
- aalleavitch 7y agoBetween that and the natural gas, Bolivia will be a key natural resource in the eventual solar-dominated energy economy.
- emmp 7y agoThat doesn't seem to track with the latest USGS numbers here. https://prd-wret.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium/production/atoms/files/mcs-2019-lithi.pdf https://prd-wret.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium... Bolivia doesn't even chart for reserves (i.e., extractable right now). Have they brought significant capacity online in the last year since this report was collected? For resources (extractable in principle) there are 62 million tons of identified resources worldwide, of which Bolivia has 9 million tons. That is a lot, about 15%, but certainly no where near 50-70%. Notably Argentina has 14.8 million tons. I guess I'm just curious if there are better sources or if I'm misunderstanding the USGS report.
- ksec 7y ago>Bolivia has 9 million tons of unexploited lithium reserves in their salt flats. "The region has 50% to 70% of the world's lithium reserves in the Salar de Uyuni salt flats." >I actually think that it's less likely for companies to be going after the lithium than it is that they're going after the natural gas. BP has every incentive in the world to want to overthrow Morales. So basically lithium is Quantum, and some organisation wants the world to hold on to most of the World's Lithium Reserves?
- jtolmar 7y ago[deleted]
- aalleavitch 7y agoThere's a pretty hilarious screenshot going around showing that the bot accounts tweeting support for the coup are not very sophisticated either (they're literally copy and pasted).
- tehjoker 7y agoI wonder if it's because they only have a limited number of agents and they are trying to cover all the leftists talking about the coup, so they are forced to copy paste as they read rapidly and switch accounts. They probably aren't using a pure ML solution as it'd look stupid. Also, anyone remember this? https://taskandpurpose.com/army-psyop-promotions https://taskandpurpose.com/army-psyop-promotions
- hutzlibu 7y agolink to that screenshot please ..
- aalleavitch 7y agohttps://twitter.com/smutcollecter/status/1194116947786551297?s=21 https://twitter.com/smutcollecter/status/1194116947786551297...
- CountSessine 7y agoSorry everyone - I’ll keep my puerile sense of humour to myself.
- aalleavitch 7y agoI assume, or at least hope, that this is an attempt at mockery. Only, CIA meddling in South American politics is a historical fact, and massively so. Where do you think the term banana republic comes from?
- CountSessine 7y agoMy post might not meet community guidelines. Removing.
- mtrovo 7y agoI don’t know if this is just made up bs or you’re talking seriously. Anyway you have my attention, any source or book recommendations about this topic?
- CountSessine 7y agoIt’s all BS. Sorry.
- joejerryronnie 7y agoLooks like somebody spotted the black helicopters flying over their house.
- CountSessine 7y agoUnderrated comment :P
- SerLava 7y agoYeah Morales was just about to give the profits from their lithium supplies to social programs etc. and suddenly he's sleeping outside.
- radicalbyte 7y agoIt's kind of the plot of the newly release season 2 of Jack Ryan..
- PKop 7y agoThen it should not come as a surprise that Venezuela sits atop the largest oil reserves in the world. I'm sure that's just a coincidence as well... Just like Iraq, Libya, Syria, Russia, and Iran are/were all somehow involved in either directly selling oil/gas for currencies other than the petrodollar, or were indirectly enabling oil trade in currencies other than the petrodollar (and gold). Some background: Iraq: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Iraq/Iraq_dollar_vs_euro.html http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Iraq/Iraq_dollar_vs_euro.h... Venezuela and Iran: https://www.mintpressnews.com/petrodollar-warfare-the-common-thread-linking-venezuela-and-iran/255123/ https://www.mintpressnews.com/petrodollar-warfare-the-common... Libya: "All about oil or all about banking?" https://ellenbrown.com/2011/04/16/libya-all-about-oil-or-all-about-banking/ https://ellenbrown.com/2011/04/16/libya-all-about-oil-or-all...
- aalleavitch 7y agoThe US government isn't being subtle at all about the fact that they are deliberately destroying Venezuela's economy in order to drive a regime change that would be more friendly to privatized oil operations. Venezuela has been completely dependent on US oil sales for a long time. Of course, they started losing that when the US started shifting where it gets its oil from (including Iraq). I don't think that anyone involved in the decision to put sanctions on Venezuela wasn't incredibly aware that they were going to turn it into a failed state. I think that was very deliberate.
- Nasrudith 7y agoThe concept is called resource curse and well understood - it lends itself well to corruption because the source of money doesn't depend upon well functioning infastructure, government, or the populace. Just bribe enough people to bully everyone else to retain power essentially - and they demand it.
- mc32 7y agoThat doesn’t sound like the reason he stepped down. It looks like he didn’t have popular support but people sympathetic to him in order to garner support put out this plausible narrative to garner populist support
- cwkoss 7y ago"stepped down" seems extremely euphemistic in this situation
- mc32 7y agoI dunno. A few other leaders-for-life like Mugabe, dos Santos, Zuma all stepped down due to popular pressure. Morals had the Supreme Court rule that the term limits in the constitution violated his human rights to seek a fourth term ! (He had the excuse previously that the new term limits reset the number of terms he had served!)
- NotSammyHagar 7y agoThat seems silly and preposterous. There's no shortage of lithium. There is a shortage of manufacturing capacity of finished products. That's where the squeeze comes in. Batteries is the current limitation in production capacity. There's also not enough demand to be mining existing lithium supplies, just like there is not enough demand to do us mining of rare earth materials. On the npr program I listened to about Bolivia this morning, it seemed to be the previous president had basically violated the constitution by running again. Which is separate from the process by which a new president is chosen.
- the_af 7y ago> On the npr program I listened to about Bolivia this morning, it seemed to be the previous president had basically violated the constitution by running again. The situation is more complex than that. First, historically the racist far right in Bolivia was just aching for a reason to kick the indigenous president out (there is a now deleted tweet by the now semi-legally acting president outright stating she doesn't like "Indians". The far right Camacho, one of the key instigators of the coup, vowed to "never again let the Pachamama in the government"; the Pachamama being an indigenous and non-Christian deity). Second, while it was legally dubious for Evo Morales to run for a fourth term, it was deemed legal by a court from Bolivia and it was accepted by the OAS (yes, the same OAS which later claimed there were "irregularities" with the voting -- so this isn't an organization that particularly sides with Morales). Finally, before being kicked out (er, "suggested by the military to resign", which in Latin America carries ominous undertones), Morales had finally accepted to have completely new elections, as suggested by the OAS. By this point the instigators of the coup had already seen they had the upper hand and accepted nothing less than the president's resignation. So no, the re-election of Morales was not the cause of the coup. It was merely an additional argument they used to force him out.
- NotSammyHagar 7y agothanks for explaining those other details.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dwd 7y agoI can only see one scenario where there would be a need to depose the Bolivian government in the short-term as the lithium isn't currently being mined. That would be if they were planning on giving a Chinese company a 50-100 year exclusive mining lease, possibly as part of a belt and road deal. While production would mostly go to China it could still affect global demand and prices and give China a lot of leverage in the lithium market.
- pkaye 7y agoI read an older articles that German compaanies were seeking access to Bolivian lithium deposits. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-bolivia-lithium/germany-secures-access-to-vast-lithium-deposit-in-bolivia-idUSKBN1OB206 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-bolivia-lithium/g...