I'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.

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."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/11/bolivian-coup-c...

That doesn't seem to track with the latest USGS numbers here. 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.

Between that and the natural gas, Bolivia will be a key natural resource in the eventual solar-dominated energy economy.

>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?

[deleted]

There'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).

I 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

link to that screenshot please ..

That 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.

> 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.

thanks for explaining those other details.

Yeah Morales was just about to give the profits from their lithium supplies to social programs etc. and suddenly he's sleeping outside.

I 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.

That 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

"stepped down" seems extremely euphemistic in this situation

I 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!)

I read an older articles that German compaanies were seeking access to Bolivian lithium deposits. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-bolivia-lithium/g...

It's kind of the plot of the newly release season 2 of Jack Ryan..

I 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?

My post might not meet community guidelines. Removing.

I 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?

It’s all BS. Sorry.

Looks like somebody spotted the black helicopters flying over their house.

Underrated comment :P

The 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.

First 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?