'We will coup whoever we want': Elon Musk and the overthrow of democracy in Bolivia'
https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/we-will-coup-whoever-we-want-elon-musk-and-the-overthrow-of-democracy-in-bolivia/
On July 24, 2020, Teslas Elon Musk wrote on Twitter that a second U.S. government stimulus package is not in the best interests of the people. Someone responded to Musk soon after, You know what wasnt in the best interest of people? The U.S. government organizing a coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia so you could obtain the lithium there. Musk then wrote: We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.
Musk refers here to the coup against President Evo Morales Ayma, who was removed illegally from his office in November 2019. Morales had just won an election for a term that was to have begun in January 2020. Even if there was a challenge against that election, Morales term should rightfully have continued through November and December of 2019. Instead, the Bolivian military, at the behest of Bolivias far right and the United States government, threatened Morales; Morales went into exile in Mexico and is now in Argentina.
At that time, the evidence of fraud was offered by the far right and by a preliminary report by the Organization of American States; only after Morales was removed from office was there grudging acknowledgment by the liberal media that there was in fact no evidence of fraud. It was too late for Bolivia, which has been condemned to a dangerous government that has suspended democracy in the country.
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Musks admission, however intemperate, is at least honest. His company Tesla has long wanted access at a low price to the large lithium deposits in Bolivia; lithium is a key ingredient for batteries. Earlier this year, Musk and his company revealed that they wanted to build a Tesla factory in Brazil, which would be supplied by lithium from Bolivia; when we wrote about that we called our report Elon Musk Is Acting Like a Neo-Conquistador for South Americas Lithium. Everything we wrote there is condensed in his new tweet: the arrogance toward the political life of other countries, and the greed toward resources that people like Musk think are their entitlement.