Listen, “do you think Maduro is a dictator?” (Extraordinary Threat on Unusual Sources)

Not so long ago, the Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War hosted the Canadian book launch for the Canada-based coauthors of Extraordinary Threat, Joe Emersberger and Justin Podur. Here are some snippets of what Joe and Justin had to say:

Joe Emersberger: “(When) you talk about U.S. involvement in Venezuela, well, it’s always been involved, since before Chavez, but in 2002 Chavez was briefly overthrown by a military coup, and the inspector general of the U.S. State Department said, ‘Well yeah, we were involved in providing all kinds of support to people who were involved in the coup,’ but then it was no big deal…The idea that we have the right to do these kinds of things — it’s just so deeply entrenched that, even when they admit to these things, they don’t see a problem…So it’s important in its own right, but it’s also important as a…case study,  to understand how we get bombarded with this propaganda that just basically intimidates everyone into assuming, yeah, ok, maybe everything the U.S. does is not right, but maybe Maduro is a bad guy and we should hope that he gets overthrown.”

Justin Podur: “One of the things that I’ve admired about my coauthor over the years, Joe, is that he doesn’t do this kind of conciliatory, concessionary, bargaining approach to argumentation about imperialism. So, when they try to get you to meet them halfway like, ‘Well, U.S. imperialism is bad, but Venezuela is kind of bad too, or Cuba’s kind of bad too’…no, we’re not going to meet you halfway. When you talk about the rhetorical and physical strategies of Israel, they don’t do that, pro-Israel people don’t meet you halfway,  they never make any concessions — and you know, we’re more concerned with the truth, not defending the Venezuelan state…and we don’t make concessions to half-truths…When you talk about Maduro, he is as much a duly elected, democratically elected (if you want to call any of these systems democratic, as any western leader that’s called, in these ‘paragons of democracy’ like Canada or the U.S.”

Listen above or at Unusual Sources