 Folks, I know that it's a Monday in 2020, but regardless, I still have some surprisingly good news. The coup in Bolivia, the coup attempt in Bolivia by the United States government, has officially failed. Because they held an election, and the socialists didn't just win. They won big. They won in a landslide, according to exit polls, capturing 52.4% of the vote. The Socialist Party, MAS, formally run by Ivo Morales, has won big. So much so that there will be no need for a runoff election in November. And this was such a decisive victory that the fascist president, the individual who let me remind you declared herself the president after Ivo Morales was ousted, Janine Agnes, even she was forced to concede. And this led to people dancing in the streets in the middle of the night celebrating this victory. And fascists such as Fernando Camacho, crying as the results came in. And after the news broke, former president of Bolivia, Ivo Morales, stated that he will be returning to his country because he was exiled once the fascists came to power. And he was in Argentina, but he's coming back. So this is just phenomenal news. And before we get into the specifics here about this, I just want to explain to you why this is so important. This situation could have been absolutely deadly if the fascists hung on to power. Because back when the United States government overthrew the socialist government in Chile, Salvador Allende, guess what happened? Pinochet came to power. And he was one of the most brutal dictators the world has ever seen. So we were looking at a situation where Janine Agnes could have been as brutal as Pinochet. And there were already signs that this was a very violent and repressive regime that we were seeing starting to emerge. So that's one of the reasons why this is important, because lives are probably going to be saved, countless lives, because this election went this way. And second of all, it also signals that the United States government is losing its influence in Latin America. Because what did we just try to do a year ago, a little over a year ago? We just tried to overthrow Maduro in Venezuela and install Juan Guaido, our puppet. That failed, and now our coup attempt here in Bolivia also failed. And yes, you should question our motives, because I don't think it's a coincidence that the countries that we always target and want regime change in happen to have a lot of resources. In Venezuela, they have the number one oil reserves in the world. In Bolivia, lots and lots of lithium, which private corporations in America want. So this is a victory for the people and for the world, quite frankly, for the international socialist movement. So for more details on this, we go to Jake Johnson of Common Dreams, who explains a year after former Bolivian president, Evo Morales, was ousted in a military coup that installed a brutal fall rate regime. Morales ally, Luis Arque, declared victory in the South American nation's high stakes presidential election early Monday after exit polls showed the socialist candidate with a large advantage over his two main competitors. Quote, democracy has won Arque, who served as Morales finance minister, said in an address to the nation after one exit poll showed him leading the race with 52.4% of the vote and former president Carlos Mesa in a distant second with 31.5%. Right-wing candidate Luis Camacho, an ally of unelected interim president, Jeanine Agnes, won just 14.1% of the vote. That's astonishing, according to the survey. The Washington Post reported that if the exit poll numbers are confirmed by the official count, which was being tabulated slowly late Sunday, it would be more than enough to avoid a November runoff and claim outright victory. Arque characterized his apparently decisive victory, which Agnes was forced to acknowledge as a mandate to continue the policies of the Morales government, which lifted millions of Bolivians out of poverty and expanded the nation's economy. I think the Bolivian people want to retake the path we were on, Arque said Monday. Twice postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, Sunday's election was a do-over of last year's presidential contest, which was thrown into chaos after the U.S. dominated organization of American states, OAS, leveled baseless allegations of fraud by Morales who was eventually forced to resign and flee the country under threat by Bolivia's military. The coup against Morales sparked a wave of indigenous-led protests that were violently repressed by the Bolivian military and police forces, which were granted sweeping immunity from prosecution by the anti-Indigenous Agnes government. The OAS allegations were indeed the main political foundation of the coup that followed the October 20th election three weeks later. Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote last month. But they provided no evidence to support these allegations because there wasn't any. This has since been established repeatedly by a slew of expert statistical studies. So this really is just excellent news. However, the question is, why did this happen in the first place? Why was there a coup attempt? Why did the OAS declare their electoral victory fraudulent? Well, this is about lithium. This is what Evo Morales said. But I want you to hear it from Evo Morales himself because he explained in an interview with Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept that this really was a lithium coup, as he called it. Because what they were doing was they were taking the money that they were making from lithium in this country and they were helping to lift people out of poverty using their country's resources to benefit their own people. And the United States government, mostly large multinational corporations, private companies, they didn't like that they weren't getting a piece of the pie. So this ended up leading to a coup. And Evo Morales puts it concisely and explains quite simply, this is about lithium and that's it. Not a North American company is judged. Of course, they are always with the mentality of competitiveness and in addition to that, they are with a mentality of privatisation. And in our policies, no, the state is going to industrialise it. There may be partners, but fundamentally, they have to pay for services. In terms of lithium, we had a proposal of 41 plants. The majority of the industrialists of lithium, for example, hydroxyl of lithium, carbonate of lithium, crude of potassium, there was the plant of battery, the others for insumers and the others for their products. Their products for medicine and food. And I'm not an expert, but I had to understand, debating with the technicians, as ministers, vice ministers, managers of the lithium issue. And last year we came in and we inaugurated a plant, as I mentioned earlier, of crude of potassium, we are exporting. And we are exporting lithium, but from the pilot plant, next year we are going to inaugurate the plant of the carbonate of lithium industry. So if I feel that that energy sector is so important, that from Bolivia, I even had the opportunity to put the price of lithium for the whole world, but with participation from Europe, China, Asia, and from outside the United States, that doesn't support it. That an Indian handles that, and as a state in addition to that. So if I am convinced, this is a coup of state of lithium. This was a lithium coup d'etat, that's what he called it. Now with Venezuela, John Bolton admitted, the quiet part out loud, remember in an interview with Fox News where he said, you know what, really would be nice if American companies and Venezuelan companies, of course, got access to Venezuela's oil. So this is always about natural resources, always about natural resources. And they didn't work this time. And it's funny because these private companies who wanted access to Bolivia's lithium, they were so confident that they could actually carry out this coup successfully, that they were literally bragging about it because Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, when confronted about his company, monetarily benefiting from Bolivia's lithium, said, we will coup whoever we want, deal with it. Yeah, seems like not so much anymore, right Elon? So I know that you're gonna say, Mike, you're oversimplifying the situation. No, it really is that simple. It really is that simple. You just have to connect the dots. And I wanna go to a tweet from Artie Hale, who has the most concise summary that we need. If someone is confused about this situation, show them this tweet because it explains perfectly what happened. So for those unclear about Bolivia's situation, one, Bolivia democratically elected socialists. Two, US wanted Bolivia's lithium. Three, socialists said no. Four, US claimed fraudulent elections. Five, US overthrew socialists. Six, evidence showed US lied. Seven, socialists won general election again. Eight, imperialism lost. And this is a happy ending for now. We don't know what the future will bring, but for now, this is a really huge rebuke of fascism in Bolivia. And it's a message to the US government that we are not going to allow you to continue to destroy our democracies, so private companies, private American corporations can make money off of us, make money off of our suffering. So you can install brutal regimes that repress our people. And you do so under the guise of promoting democracy. Like this is really phenomenal news. And let me just say what's obvious here. This proves that socialism really is the antidote to fascism because the material conditions that lead to people becoming so desperate that they're even susceptible to being radicalized into fascism, those are all addressed with socialism. And guess what? They experienced socialism under Evo Morales and it was working. His government lifted millions of Bolivians out of poverty because rather than just taking all of the resources that Bolivia has and hoarding it, they actually benefited the people. They used the resources of Bolivia to create social programs that lifted people out of poverty and it worked. But in order to make sure that a population can benefit off of their own natural resources, you have to make sure that you resist imperialism by the US government and other countries as well. And it's been difficult because the United States has a lot of influence in the region. This has been basically their backyard. Latin America has been their backyard and they've been dominant, but now they're starting to lose that influence and that's a really good sign. And this isn't just good for Bolivia. I mean, it's really great for Bolivia, but this shows that the international socialist movement is growing. It's more powerful. It's legitimized now. So this is great. I look forward to seeing Evo Morales returning to power, maybe being part of the party again. This is just honestly, I'm a little bit shocked by this news because when I saw the news roll in on Sunday evening, I thought, okay, we'll sleep on this and see because nothing good could come of this horrible, wretched year. It's not possible. And I was proven wrong. My cynicism was proven wrong. And this is just honestly such great news for people in Bolivia and around the world. You know, it's a message to the US government. You can't do what you want when you want for purposes of monetary gain for private corporations. This is great news.