Elon Musk and the CIA try to Overthrow the New Democratically Elected Government in Venezuela
by Brian Shilhavy Editor, Health Impact News
The people of Venezuela just recently completed their national elections, voting to keep the incumbent president, Nicolás Maduro, in power for a 3rd term.
Because the U.S. did not back Maduro during the elections, but instead his opponent, Edmundo González Urrutia, the U.S. did what it usually does when their favorite candidate did not win, and employed the U.S. Mocking Bird media to run smear campaigns against the winner, while the CIA has allegedly taken measures to try and depose him, which has now caused riots in Venezuela.
This is how “democracy” is defined in the United States today. It means regardless of what the people want as voting citizens in their own country, if they do not choose the candidate that the U.S. and the CIA want in power, then they will do everything they can to cause a coup, and getting the U.S. Media to print their lies, which of course today also includes Elon Musk’s X platform.
So with almost one voice, both on the Left and on the Right, the U.S. Media has declared that the elections in Venezuela were “not fair”, as they claim that “other countries” also agree with them that the elections were “corrupt.”
Of course many “other countries” have also congratulated Maduro and accepted the election results, such as Russia and China. See:
What is the U.S. basing their claim on that the election results were not accurate?
They are basing their claims on exit polls done in Venezuela by the US government-linked firm out of New Jersey named “Edison Research,” which has reported links to the CIA.
US gov’t-linked firm is source of exit poll claiming Venezuelan opposition won election
Venezuela’s opposition and US media outlets claim there was fraud in the July 28 election based on an exit poll done by US government-linked firm Edison Research, which works with CIA-linked US state propaganda organs and was active in Ukraine, Georgia, and Iraq.
Venezuela’s opposition has claimed that it won the July 28 election, accusing President Nicolás Maduro of “fraud”.
The supposed evidence that Venezuelan opposition leaders and their allies have cited to justify this claim is an exit poll produced by a firm that is closely linked to the US government and does work for US state propaganda outlets that were founded by the CIA.
A New Jersey-based company called Edison Research published an exit poll on the day of the election projecting that right-wing candidate Edmundo González Urrutia would win with 65% of the vote, compared to just 31% for Maduro.
This poll was cited by Venezuela’s far-right, US-backed opposition leader Leopoldo López, as well as by billionaire oligarch Elon Musk and Western media outlets like the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Reuters.
Many polling firms inside Venezuela are run by opposition figures and are notorious for their political bias. The most respectable independent firm in the country is the pollster Hinterlaces, which estimated in its exit poll that Maduro got 54.6% of the vote, compared to 42.8% for González.
Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) ultimately reported that Maduro won the election with 51.2% of the vote, whereas González received 44.2%, and eight other opposition candidates got 4.6% combined. These results were close to what Hinterlaces projected, but very far off from what Edison Research claimed.
The US State Department, which has backed numerous coup attempts in Venezuela, refused to recognize Maduro’s victory. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the results into question.
On the other hand, independent electoral observers said the vote was free and fair. Monitors from the US National Lawyers Guild wrote that their delegation in Venezuela “observed a transparent, fair voting process with scrupulous attention to legitimacy, access to the polls, and pluralism”. They strongly condemned the opposition’s “attacks on the electoral system as well as the role of the US in undermining the democratic process”.
Although Edison Research’s exit poll has been widely cited by the US media to cast doubt upon Venezuela’s electoral results, it is by no means an impartial observer.
In fact, Edison’s top clients include CIA-linked US government propaganda outlets Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, all of which are operated by the US Agency for Global Media, a Washington-based organ that is used to spread disinformation against US adversaries.
Edison Research has likewise worked with UK state media outlet the BBC.
In addition to Venezuela, Edison has previously conducted suspicious polling in Ukraine, Georgia, and Iraq – areas of the world that have been deemed highly strategic by the US State Department and targeted by Washington’s relentless meddling.
Edison’s international research is managed by the company’s Executive Vice President Rob Farbman. He was also cited in the press release on the Venezuela exit poll, and was listed as the contact for the study.
The US firm’s website notes that “Farbman manages Edison’s international research with a specialization in the Middle East and Africa for clients including BBC, the Voice of America, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty”.
When it started, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was called “Radio Liberation from Bolshevism”, before changing its name to Radio Liberation in 1956 and Radio Liberty in 1963.
This US state propaganda outlet was a key tool of information warfare during the first cold war against the Soviet Union and its allies.
Today, it has continued disseminating disinformation about countries like Venezuela, Cuba, China, Russia, and Iran.
Edison’s corporate clients include Big Tech monopolies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Oracle, which have billions of dollars of contracts with the CIA, Pentagon, and other US government agencies. (Source.)
Elon Musk’s History with the CIA and Participating in Coups
Elon Musk also got involved in propaganda against Maduro and the election results, which prompted President Maduro to call him out and challenge him to a fight.
Norton documented how this is not the first time that Musk has worked with the CIA in trying to overthrow foreign governments, even having admitted to it once on Twitter in 2020 regarding Bolivia, which produces lithium used in Musk’s batteries.
Venezuelan opposition and Elon Musk misrepresent TeleSUR charts to claim “fraud”
To claim there was supposed electoral fraud in the July 28 election, Venezuela’s US-backed opposition used another deceptive tactic, distorting charts that were published by the Latin American media outlet TeleSUR.
In their disinformation campaign, Venezuela’s right-wing opposition got a big helping hand from Elon Musk, the billionaire oligarch and owner of Twitter (now known as X.com).
He also is actively supporting Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
The billionaire Tesla CEO backed a far-right coup in 2019 against Bolivia’s democratically elected socialist President Evo Morales. Following the putsch, a critic on Twitter accused “the U.S. government [of] organizing a coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia so [Musk] could obtain the lithium there”. The oligarch responded writing, “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it”.
After the vote, Musk echoed the unsubstantiated claims of the opposition, claiming there was “major election fraud by Maduro”. As purported proof, Musk shared the suspicious exit poll from the US government-linked Edison Research. (Source.)
In 2022, as Musk was in the process of buying Twitter and taking it private as his own bully pulpit, MintPress News published an investigative report on Musk showing how he is “A Massive Pentagon Contractor.”
Some excerpts:
ELON MUSK IS NOT A RENEGADE OUTSIDER – HE’S A MASSIVE PENTAGON CONTRACTOR
Elon Musk’s proposed takeover of Twitter has ruffled many feathers among professional commentators. “Musk is the wrong leader for Twitter’s vital mission,” read one Bloomberg headline.
The network also insisted, “Nothing in the Tesla CEO’s track record suggests he will be a careful steward of an important media property.”
“Elon Musk is the last person who should take over Twitter,” wrote Max Boot in The Washington Post, explaining that “[h]e seems to believe that on social media anything goes. For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.”
The irony of outlets owned by Michael Bloomberg and Jeff Bezos warning of the dangers of permitting a billionaire oligarch to control our media was barely commented upon.
Added to this, a host of celebrities publicly left the social media platform in protest against the proposed $44 billion purchase. This only seemed to confirm to many free speech-minded individuals that the South African billionaire was a renegade outsider on a mission to save the internet from authoritarian elite control (despite the fact that he is borrowing money from the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia in order to do so).
Musk has deliberately cultivated this image of himself: a real life Tony Stark figure who thinks for himself and is not part of the established order.
But behind this carefully constructed façade, Musk is intimately connected to the U.S. national security state, serving as one of its most important business partners.
Elon, in short, is no threat to the powerful, entrenched elite: he is one of them.
TO UKRAINE, WITH LOVE
Musk, whose estimated $230 billion fortune is more than twice the gross domestic product of Ukraine, has garnered a great deal of positive publicity for donating thousands of Starlink terminals to the country, helping its people come back online after fighting downed the internet in much of the country.
Starlink is an internet service allowing those with terminals to connect to one of over 2,400 small satellites in low Earth orbit. Many of these satellites were launched by Musk’s SpaceX technologies company.
However, it soon transpired that there is far more than meets the eye with Musk’s extraordinary “donation.” In fact, the U.S. government quietly paid SpaceX top dollar to send their inventory to the warzone.
USAID – a government anti-insurgency agency that has regularlyfunctioned as a regime-change organization – is known to have put up the cash to purchase and deliver at least 1,330 of the terminals.
Starlink is not a mass-market solution. Each terminal – which is, in effect, a tiny, portable satellite dish – has a markedly limited range, and is useful only in hyper-local situations. Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, estimated that the 10,000 Starlink terminals were allowing around 150,000 people to stay online.
Such a small number of people using the devices raises eyebrows. Who is important enough to be given such a device?
Surely only high-value individuals such as spies or military operatives. That the Starlinks are serving a military purpose is now beyond clear.
Indeed, in a matter of weeks, Starlink has become a cornerstone of the Ukrainian military, allowing it to continue to target Russian forces via drones and other high-tech machinery dependent on an internet connection. One official toldThe Times of London that he “must” use Starlink to target enemy forces via thermal imaging.
Dave Tremper, Director of Electronic Warfare at the Pentagon, sang SpaceX’s praises. “How they did that [keeping Ukrainian forces online] was eye-watering to me,” he said, adding that in the future the U.S. military “needs to be able to have that agility.”
ROCKETMAN
Such a statement is bound to get the attention of SpaceX chiefs, who have long profited from their lucrative relationship with the U.S. military. SpaceX relies largely on government contracts, there being almost no civilian demand for many of its products, especially its rocket launches.
Musk’s company has been awarded billions of dollars in contracts to launch spy satellites for espionage, drone warfare and other military uses.
For example, in 2018, SpaceX was chosen to blast a $500 million Lockheed Martin GPS system into orbit. While Air Force spokesmen played up the civilian benefits of the launch, such as increased accuracy for GPS devices, it is clear that these devices play a key role in global surveillance and ongoing drone wars.
SpaceX has also won contracts with the Air Force to deliver its command satellite into orbit, with the Space Development Agency to send tracking devices into space, and with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to launch its spy satellites.
These satellites are used by all of the “big five” surveillance agencies, including the CIA and the NSA.
Thus, in today’s world, where so much intelligence gathering and target acquisition is done via satellite technology, SpaceX has become every bit as important to the U.S. war machine as more well-known companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing.
Without Musk’s company, the U.S. would not be able to carry out such an invasive program of spying and drone warfare around the world.
Indeed, China is growing increasingly wary of this power, and is being advised to develop anti-satellite technologies to counter SpaceX’s all-seeing eye. Yet Musk himself continues to benefit from a general perception that he is not part of the system.
From its origins in 2002, SpaceX has always been extremely close to the national security state, particularly the CIA.
Perhaps the most crucial link is Mike Griffin, who, at the time, was the president and COO of In-Q-Tel, a CIA-funded venture capital firm that seeks to nurture and sponsor new companies that will work with the CIA and other security services, equipping them with cutting edge technology.
The “Q” in its name is a reference to “Q” from the James Bond series – a creative inventor who supplies the spy with the latest in futuristic tech.
Michael Griffin, left, meets with Musk, right, in 2005 at NASA Headquarters in DC. Renee Bouchard | NASA
Griffin was with Musk virtually from day one, accompanying him to Russia in February 2002, where they attempted to purchase cut-price intercontinental ballistic missiles to start Musk’s business.
Musk felt that he could substantially undercut opponents by using second-hand material and off-the-shelf components for launches. The attempt failed, but the trip cemented a lasting partnership between the pair, with Griffin going to war for Musk, consistently backing him as a potential “Henry Ford” of the rocket industry.
Three years later, Griffin would become head of NASA and later would hold a senior post at the Department of Defense.
While at NASA, Griffin brought Musk in for meetings and secured SpaceX’s big break.
In 2006, NASA awarded the company a $396 million rocket development contract – a remarkable “gamble” in Griffin’s words, especially as it had never launched a rocket before.
As National Geographicput it, SpaceX, “never would have gotten to where it is today without NASA.” And Griffin was essential to this development.
Still, by 2008, SpaceX was again in dire straits, with Musk unable to make payroll. The company was saved by an unexpected $1.6 billion NASA contract for commercial cargo services.
Thus, from its earliest days, SpaceX was nurtured by government agencies that saw the company as a potentially important source of technology.
NUKING MARS & BACKING COUPS
Like Henry Ford, Musk went into the automobile business, purchasing Tesla Motors in 2004. And also like Henry Ford, he has shared some rather controversial opinions.
In 2019, for instance, he suggested that vaporizing Mars’ ice caps via a series of nuclear explosions could warm the planet sufficiently to support human life.
Musk also attracted attention when he appeared to admit that he worked with the U.S. government to overthrow Bolivian President Evo Morales in 2019.
Bolivia is home to the world’s largest easy-to-extract lithium reserves, an element crucial in the production of electric-vehicle batteries. Morales had refused to open the country up to foreign corporations eager to exploit Bolivia for profit.
Instead, he proposed developing sovereign technology to keep both the jobs and profits inside the country.
He was overthrown by a U.S.-backed far-right coup in November 2019. The new government quickly invited Musk for talks. When asked on Twitter point blank whether he was involved in Morales’ ouster, Musk responded,
Even before Elon Musk purchased Twitter, I warned the public that his goal was to make Twitter into the world’s largest surveillance tool, similar to China’s WeChat back in 2022. See:
Twitter was formerly a publicly traded company, but when Elon Musk purchased it, he made it private, retaining most of the stock, with Larry Ellison’s Oracle and Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding Company also owning some stock.
Because it is a private company now, Musk doesn’t run into the same problems he does with his largest company, Tesla, which is still a publicly traded company ruled by SEC laws.
Last year (2023), Twitter was rebranded to X, as he continues to reform Twitter into an “everything app”, with new features coming onboard such as bio-metric logins via face scans. See:
Since the previous Twitter had banned many accounts that were deemed “Right Wing/Conservative” as well as those, like Health Impact News, who exposed the corruption in Big Pharma, Musk proceeded to reinstate many of these accounts so that he could collect the data on these users, which he is now using to train his own “anti-woke” version of AI.
Many of those on the Right have been very pleased to be reinstated and began starting to use the platform again, probably totally unaware that everything they do on X is data that is being used and sold to the highest bidder, including the intelligence agencies.
I knew it back then, which is why I chose not to reopen the Health Impact News account on Twitter when we got the notification that our account was being reinstated. See:
But now, Elon Musk is defining the “New Right” as well as the definition of “Free Speech”.
Here is a previous article I have published on this Big Tech version of the “Right”, which includes wealthy Mormons such as film producer Jeffrey Harmon of Angel Studios, who produced the psyop film “Sound of Freedom.”
And as I have previously reported “free speech” for most on the Right just simply means allowing speech they agree with, while censoring “liberal” speech they don’t agree with.
A perfect example of this twisted view of online censorship and “free speech” is easily seen in this recent article published on Children’s Health Defense, originally written by Jeffrey A. Tucker of the Brownstone Institute.
During Trump Assassination Attempt, Free Speech Worked Brilliantly
There is only one major social media platform that is relatively free of censorship. That is X, once known as Twitter, and owned by Elon Musk, who has preached free speech for years and sacrificed billions in advertising dollars in order to protect it
There is only one major social media platform that is relatively free of censorship. That is X, once known as Twitter, and owned by Elon Musk, who has preached free speech for years and sacrificed billions in advertising dollars in order to protect it.
If we don’t have that, he says, we lose freedom itself. He also maintains that it is the best path to finding the truth.
The crisis that broke out after the attempt on Donald Trump’s life put the principle in motion. I was posting regular updates and never censored.
I’m not aware of anyone who was. We were getting second-by-second updates in real time. The videos were flying along with every conceivable rumor, many false and then corrected, alongside free speech “spaces” in which everyone was sharing their views.
During this time, Facebook and its suite of services fell silent, consistent with the new ethos of all these platforms. The idea is to censor all speech until it is absolutely confirmed by officials and then permit only that which is consistent with the press releases. (Source.)
However, for those of us who do not define “truth” by political bias and can actually think for ourselves instead of having someone tell us what we should think, I easily documented several times during the Trump shooting where X posts presenting evidence that did not support the Right wing’s narrative quickly disappeared from X. See:
(UPDATE: The video from X that was in this article has also now been removed from X. I had a saved copy, of course, which I put on our Odysee channel.
Elon Musk is NOT a champion of free speech and ending online censorship! His platform is censoring anything contrary to the official narrative of this event as he himself has publicly endorsed Trump now.
My second question is, why is the “graphic image” of an alleged dead Thomas Matthew Crooks that was all over the media yesterday, now disappearing? The one I put above (on the left) is the only one I could still find today.
But I saw several yesterday, and today they have been removed from Twitter.
Could it be this image is being scrubbed from the Internet because most of the blood on his face is very clearly DRIED blood, suggesting he had already been dead for quite some time BEFORE that photo was shot? (Full article.)
X is clearly not pro “free speech” but only pro Conservative Right Wing speech, including Zionism.
X has clearly become the new “Fox News on Steroids” on social media, as evidenced by one of the first things Musk did after purchasing Twitter, which was to buy out Tucker Carlson’s contract from Fox, who had at the time the most popular show on Fox, and host it on X instead.
If you are trusting Elon Musk to tell you the truth, you are the classic example of someone who is falling for the “sheep in wolf’s clothing,” and actually trusting in Satan’s version of the “truth.”
Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? (Matthew 7:15-16)
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)
