"German aerial photographer Tom Hegen specialises in documenting the traces we leave on the earth's surface. His work provides an overview of places where we extract, refine and consume resources with his latest series exposing the “Lithium Triangle.”"
tomhegen.com/collections/th…
The images are of the Soquimich lithium mine in the Atacama desert, run by leading mining operator Sociedad Química y Minera (SQM)..
euronews.com/green/2022/02/…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociedad_…
"People associated with former senior managers in the company were in 2016 and 2017 investigated by the Chilean national police in relation to allegations of tax evasion and bribery..kown as "the SQM Affair"
2013:"The $400 million plant expansion, would allow the Chinese-backed SQM to eventually produce as much as 180,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate a year.. water has become a key sticking point for the expansion plans of both SQM and competitor Albemarle.."
reuters.com/article/us-chi…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQM_case
SQM is currently under indictment and investigation for diverting funds to different politicians in Chile. The SQM Case is closely related to the Penta Case, since defendants from both cases overlap and it is the same type of crime. ..
2018: "Chile’s antitrust regulator FNE said on Friday it would open an investigation into the effects on the market of Chinese miner Tianqi Lithium Corp’s purchase last month of a 24 percent stake in SQM, one of the world’s top lithium producers."
reuters.com/article/us-tia…
english.elpais.com/elpais/2015/01…
2015:"Chilean law forbids foreign nationals without voting rights to make donations to Chilean political campaigns. But in September 2013, Foreign Affairs Minister Heraldo Muñoz organized a luncheon on a luxury yacht in NY to raise funds for Bachelet"
"Minister Muñoz, who was UN Development Programme Director for Latin America &Caribbean at the time of the event, wrote a statement saying that they had only received funding from Chilean nationals.
But Mario Paredes said foreigners were also present at the luncheon..
“Puerto Ricans, #Dominicans ... people from several countries.” Although he did not say whether they made donations to Bachelet’s campaign, Paredes had handed out an invitation written in English stating that participation was “possible with a $1,000 donation...
🤔
"Yachtgate has affected the nation’s top leaders.
Meanwhile authorities have announced plans to formally accuse Penta owners and Pablo Wagner, former president Sebastián Piñera’s ex-undersecretary for mining, who faces bribery & money-laundering charges"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penta_case
"Julio Ponce Lerou is a Chilean billionaire who is the principal shareholder of Soquimich.He is a former son-in-law of Augusto Pinochet."
"Lithium: draining the desert - The rush for minerals threatens communities and ecosystems in Chile and Argentina.."
lab.org.uk/lithium-draini…
2022: "Bill Gates already poured millions into this startup racing to figure out how to get more lithium for the EV industry. Now he's in for a second round of investment as lithium scarcity becomes critical."
🤔
archive.ph/9MqVx
"Mangrove Lithium, just attracted funding from BMW i Ventures and Bill Gates' fund"
To support sustainable startups and entrepreneurs, the BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt launched the accelerator program RESPOND operated by UnternehmerTUM
namastecar.com/bmw-group-invi…
Quandt Family and the Third Reich
"A phalanx of billionaires are backing a new mining initiative in Greenland, in what they hope will boost access to minerals used to manufacture electric cars"
thedailybeast.com/jeff-bezos-and…
"The source of the billionaire money is an initiative founded by Bill Gates, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, whose investors include Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Jack Ma, Ray Dalio, and Michael Bloomberg. Gates founded Breakthrough Energy in 2015.."
"The Greenland project is a joint venture between a publicly traded British firm, Bluejay Mining, and KoBold Metals, an American company that is paying $15 million for a majority stake in the operation. Breakthrough Energy is one of KoBold’s principal investors;..
the venture capital mega-firm Andreessen Horowitz is also a backer."
"Amnesty International has documented cases of human rights violations in overseas mine facilities used by battery companies, including use of child workers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“The glamourous shop displays and marketing of state of the art technologies are
a stark contrast to the children carrying bags of rocks, and miners in narrow manmade tunnels risking permanent lung damage,” said Mark Dummett, a researcher at Amnesty International, in a 2016 report."
amnesty.org/en/latest/news…
Christopher Bettinger at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, proposes a solution to the lithium issue.. bio-batteries 👀
2013 : newscientist.com/article/dn2472…
"the skin pigment melanin has been repurposed for the first time to make batteries"
Bioelectronics, sometimes called the next medical frontier.. Large corporations are increasingly interested: a joint venture in the field has recently been announced by Alphabet, Google's parent company, and pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).
web.archive.org/web/2020122311…
"Albemarle’s lithium sales surge after supply contracts renegotiated"
mining.com/web/albemarles…
Compared to last year, Albemarle now expects the price at which it sells its lithium to jump at least 225% in 2022 and adjusted profit in its lithium division to rise at least 500%.
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