Bolivia coup

[Twed]

https://twitter.com/kevinmcashman/status/1193703918624108544

Is this accurate? Don't know where to get reliable information from anymore. I don't trust the news networks and I don't want to accept information from inside of my bubble without question.

[greenman]

Very little coverage(a sign of the future I suspect ala Thailand) but Morales does seem to have resigned after being told to do so by the Military.

[peanutbutter]

The lack of coverage is astounding, isn't it? That Twitter thread is the first remotely detailed summary I've seen.

[Urinal Cake]

Not a coup just some guys disagreeing about some stuff.

[Blumf]

Not saying it is US based meddling, buuuut....

http://www.lithiummine.com/lithium-mining-in-bolivia

A vast patch of white that can be seen from space, which one can mistake for an icy glacier, across the lower South American continent is the southern Bolivia's Salar De Uyuni, is the world's largest salt flat - an expansive desert of over ten billion tons of salt covering nearly 5,000 square miles.

It is located in the Potosí and Oruro departments in southwest Bolivia, near the crest of the Andes, and is elevated 3,656 meters (11,995 ft.) above mean sea level.

It is covered by a few meters of salt crust, which has an extraordinary flatness across the entire area of the Salar and contains 50 to 70% of the world's lithium reserves, which is in the process of being extracted.

[greenman]

The lack of coverage is astounding, isn't it? That Twitter thread is the first remotely detailed summary I've seen.

We had coverage of some police joining the protests against him shown prominently but this is buried in the latin American section of the BBC website where almost nobody will see it.

I suspect Bolivia will vanish down the news hole for a few decades of right wing pro US rule with any lithium profits heading out of the country.

[madhair60]

Coup there it is

[idunnosomename]

I don't Bolivia it!

[imitationleather]

No need to be so salty.

[Famous Mortimer]

It's a fucking disgrace, with the news this morning being "Morales leaves office and goes into hiding amid allegations of election fraud" while not mentioning it's a military fucking coup where the police were on the side of the people doing the coup.

[Satchmo Distel]

The thread is driving me Caracas.

[Jasha]

Thought this was about beef tea

[Hank Venture]

It's just so blatantly obvious why this is getting less than a percent of the coverage that Venezuela got. Depressing.

[KennyMonster]

It's a fucking disgrace, with the news this morning being "Morales leaves office and goes into hiding amid allegations of election fraud" while not mentioning it's a military fucking coup where the police were on the side of the people doing the coup.

He's a bit lefty so it doesn't matter.

[peanutbutter]

AOC tweeted in opposition of it there, so it's at least garnering a bit of attention now. Given the demographics involved, this one is gonna be an all out civil war surely?


When has there been a good military coup?


Edit: Bernie just tweeted too

[KennyMonster]

It's just so blatantly obvious why this is getting less than a percent of the coverage that Venezuela got. Depressing.

I actually don't get what is blatant about the differences here?

[Twed]

Presumably things get a lot of coverage when they can associate the word "socialism" with "general badness", as if South American socialism is anything like what people are even dreaming about in the West.

[NoSleep]

It's just so blatantly obvious why this is getting less than a percent of the coverage that Venezuela got. Depressing.

The coverage is equally fraudulent, though.

[Hank Venture]

Oh, yeah — terrible coverage if any at all.

[pcsjwgm]

The new "president" is an extreme-right, anti-indigenous Christian fundamentalist:
https://twitter.com/jacobinmag/status/1194641261724127232
https://twitter.com/_waleedshahid/status/1194658741054050305

[Urinal Cake]

Look just because you have masked military men doing your bidding it doesn't mean you're the villain.

Seems like the intensification of US activities in South America again. They arrested Max Blumenthal (left wing journalist) and were about to arrest Medea Benjamin (Codepink founder) on what seem to be exaggerated charges relating to Venezuelan protests. First Bolivia then Venezuela then Peru/Paraguay/Ecuador etc. If Lula gets elected in Brazil again it's going to really kick off.

[pcsjwgm]

Perhaps "second thoughts" about the OAS's flawed analysis should have been had before green-lighting a fascist military coup.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/07/world/americas/bolivia-election-evo-morales.html

[Bernice]

Some very shady weasel words from the OAS in that NYT article.

The O.A.S. said it stood by its statistical analysis, because it successfully detected early initial indications of fraud.

"It's a moot point," the organization's head of electoral observations, Gerardo De Icaza, said in response to questions raised by the new study. "Statistics don't prove or disprove fraud. Hard evidence like falsified statements of polls and hidden I.T. structures do. And that is what we found."

...

The O.A.S. consultant who conducted their statistical analysis, Professor Irfan Nooruddin of Georgetown University, said the new study misrepresented his work and was wrong. He did not provide details and did not share his methods or data with the authors of the study, despite repeated requests

...

For his part, Mr. De Icaza, with the O.A.S., said that, broadly speaking, the data from Bolivia's most recent elections was too flawed to draw any meaningful conclusions.

"You're are doing a statistical exercise on documents that are falsified," he said. "The question is not whether the false numbers add up. The question is whether they are false or not — and they are."

Given it was their claims about statistical anomalies which sank the election in the first place, and Morales was the one who agreed to them conducting the audit.

I'd be interested to see what their evidence of fraud is, and if it's generalised or comes exclusively from the side of the socialists (I suspect the former). I assume the results of their investigation are published somewhere but I can't find them.

I don't know enough, either, about the legitimacy or shadiness of Morales going ahead with the election after losing the 2019 referendum, but I find it odd that the NYT phrases it thus:

To run for a fourth term, Mr. Morales subverted laws, staffed the electoral council with loyalists, and ignored results of a referendum that banned him from seeking re-election

When even the OAS declared it a legitimate election based on the Bolivian Supreme Courts legitimate ruling that term limits were unconstitutional.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Mr. Morales subverted laws, staffed the electoral council with loyalists

None of which comes close to the illegality or anti-democratic nature of a coup.

[pcsjwgm]

Exit polls show that MAS, led by Morales's successor Luis Arce, have an overwhelming lead in the Bolivian election.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/bolivia-election-evo-arce-mesa-camacho/2020/10/18/205b6b5c-0f11-11eb-8a35-237ef1eb2ef7_story.html

Hopefully the right-wing regime respects the result of the election, and Arce doesn't turn out to be another Lenin Moreno.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

As long as there's a big margin of victory I expect the CIA will scale back interference from military intervention to just the basic full suite of capitalist South American subterfuge: total economic warfare, mass propaganda, targeted assassinations, corporate lobbying and so on

[Famous Mortimer]

As long as there's a big margin of victory I expect the CIA will scale back interference from military intervention to just the basic full suite of capitalist South American subterfuge: total economic warfare, mass propaganda, targeted assassinations, corporate lobbying and so on

While you're no doubt right, it's just nice for people to have a win for once. The baddies have admitted defeat, as far as I can tell, no danger of it being thrown out as illegitimate, I'll take it in the unmitigated pile of slop that is the news every other day.