Guest essay by Eric worrall
Former Bolivian President Evo Morales, who served an unconstitutional third term and fled the country at the start of his even more dubious fourth term as president, has accused the USA of trying to steal his nation’s vast deposits of Lithium, an essential component of our green electric vehicle future.
Morales claims US orchestrated ‘coup’ to tap Bolivia’s lithium
Morales’s remarks come weeks after protests forced him to resign, abandoning his bid for unconstitutional fourth term.
25 Dec 2019 07:28 GMT
Former Bolivia president Evo Morales has claimed he was forced from office by a US-backed coup aimed at gaining access to the South American country’s vast lithium resources.
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“It was a national and international coup d’etat,” Morales told AFP in Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires, where he has been living in exile since claiming asylum. “Industrialised countries don’t want competition.”
Morales said Washington had not “forgiven” his country for choosing to seek lithium extraction partnerships with Russia and China rather than the US.
“That’s why I’m absolutely convinced it’s a coup against lithium,” he said.
“We as a state had begun industrialising lithium … As a small country of 10 million inhabitants, we were soon going to set the price of lithium.”
“They know we have the greatest lithium reserves in the world of 16,000 square kilometres (more than 6,100 square miles).”
Bolivia does have the largest confirmed lithium reserves in the world but they are widely thought to be of poor quality and the country lacks the infrastructure to exploit them profitably.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if there was significant foreign interference in Bolivia’s affairs. That Bolivian Lithium might be worth something someday.
But I think former President for life Evo Morales, who makes no secret of his taste for one of his nation’s other products, is rushing to judgement on who orchestrated his defeat.
via Watts Up With That?
December 25, 2019 at 09:30PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 