VENEZUELA – Parody of Heard It through the Grapevine & Old Time Rock and Roll

Are we really going to be doing this whole thing again? We’ve had enough of regime change wars that leave the country we were “helping” in far worse shape and do nothing for us whatsoever except consume our tax dollars in very large amounts. And how can anyone believe that we’re motivated in Venezuela by a humanitarian crisis when we not only ignored the genocide in Yemen, we participated in it. When hypocrisy is that transparent only the super-dense among us can continue to believe those same lies that always drag us into another war.

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SOURCES
William Blum: America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy
Dr. Zoltan Grossman: A Century of U.S. Military Interventions
James Lucas: U.S. Has Killed More Than 20 Million People

LYRICS to VENEZUELA

Elliot Abrams is the person who
will steer the Venezuelan coup,
something the guy has done before
with fiendish horror piled onto death’s decor.
If the real purpose was democracy
Why send a master of atrocity?

Don’t you know that I heard it through the grapevine.
Breaking Venezuela’s spine,
then give them “help” that they can’t decline.
All following long-term design.
Money, money, well . . .

Heard it through the grapevine
Venezuela’s got the US coming. (repeat)

He likes an old-time US coup,
when no one knew what he was up to.
He covered up for the genocide
and lied to congress when he testified.

Always pretending that democracy
is a good reason for a killing spree.
The US aid is just a Trojan Horse
to sneak in weapons for the use of force.

We’ve done it many, many times before,
a trail of broken countries, what’s one more?
The US media will push it through.
They’d like an old-time US coup.

If you think US action there
is taking place because we care,
it’s like saying that Khashoggi died
at a surprise party that somehow went awry.
This ain’t for democracy or human rights.
It’s on their oil we’ve set our sights.

Don’t you know that I heard it through the grapevine?
Not something mainstream press would headline
Trump sent Abrams to the border line.
All following the same design.
Money money, well . . .

Heard it through the grapevine
Venezuela’s got the US coming. (repeat)

It ain’t the first Venezuelan coup.
The US tried it back in 2002.
It was a failure so what did they do?
They used a weapon sure to work, they knew.

More mighty than a WMD
Most deadly weapon in all history
Called “”Economic Sanctions” by decree,
it will make any country bend a knee.

And then the US media machine
sets the humanitarian smoke screen.
The devastation and the death come slow
and all the blame then falls upon the “foe.”

SOURCE MATERIAL

I HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE

“I Heard It Through the Grapevine” is a song written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong for Motown Records in 1966. The first recording of the song to be released was produced by Whitfield for Gladys Knight & the Pips and released as a single in September 1967; it went to number two in the Billboard chart.

The Miracles recorded the song first and included their version on their 1968 album, Special Occasion. The Marvin Gaye version was placed on his 1968 album In the Groove, where it gained the attention of radio disc jockeys, and Motown founder Berry Gordy finally agreed to its release as a single in October 1968, when it went to the top of the Billboard Pop Singles chart for seven weeks from December 1968 to January 1969 and became for a time the biggest hit single on the Motown label (Tamla).

The Gaye recording has since become an acclaimed soul classic, and in 2004, it was placed 81 on the Rolling Stone list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

In addition to being released several times by Motown artists, the song has been recorded by a range of musicians including Creedence Clearwater Revival, who made an eleven-minute interpretation for their 1970 album, Cosmo’s Factory; and has been used twice in television commercials – each time using session musicians recreating the style of the Marvin Gaye version: the 1985 Levi’s commercial, “Launderette”, featuring male model Nick Kamen, and the 1986 California raisins promotion with Buddy Miles as the singer for the clay animation group The California Raisins.

OLD TIME ROCK AND ROLL

“Old Time Rock and Roll” is a song written by George Jackson and Thomas E. Jones III, and recorded by Bob Seger for his 1978 album Stranger in Town. It was also released as a single in 1979.

It is a sentimentalized look back at the music of the original rock ‘n’ roll era. The song gained renewed popularity after being featured in the 1983 film Risky Business. It has since become a standard in popular music and was ranked number two on the Amusement & Music Operators Association’s survey of the Top 40 Jukebox Singles of All Time in 1996.

The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, who often backed Seger in his studio recordings, sent Seger a demo of the song during the recording of Stranger in Town. He said in 2006 (and also on the “Stranger in Town” episode of the US radio show In the Studio with Redbeard a few years earlier):

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