 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. In today's episode of International Roundup, we have Prabir Purkayastha talking to us about the supposed aid to Venezuela and also the current situation in Haiti. So Prabir, let us begin with the so-called aid that the United States is so keen in pushing into Venezuela and the concerts that are being put up just to build a narrative around it. Let us look at the issue, what is humanitarian aid which is being talked about. We must understand humanitarian aid goes in under conditions where there could be war, there could be very, very unsettled conditions, civil war and so on. So all aid agencies know that aid should not be politicized, least of all humanitarian aid. So this is something which is a standard practice of the days where Red Cross was established or Red Crescent was established and this has been essentially the guiding principle of trying to operate in difficult conditions. So this attempt to politicize humanitarian aid, this is I think something which is extremely dangerous for the world and you can see the so-called humanitarian aid going to Venezuela where there is no talk about either, shall we say, large-scale outbreak of disease or starvation. All pictures under Venezuela that we see, people are healthy. There is a food distribution system run by popular committees which is providing food to the people. Yes, there are dislocations. Yes, there are problems because of the sanctions that are there but that is the economic issue which is a separate issue today. But when you talk about humanitarian aid, both the United Nations and Red Cross have come out openly against politicizing humanitarian aid. Let's look at the other side. We have an ongoing humanitarian crisis of a major magnitude that is there in Yemen. We know that there is at least 18 million people in deep distress without water, without medicine, without food or very, very low amounts of food reaching Yemen because of the blockade by Saudis and the allies of the United States. In fact, the United States and Great Britain are helping with the targeting of weapons, bombs, missiles and so on in Yemen. On this, there is no attempt to talk of humanitarian aid and you can see that there's a silence in the global media about it but when it comes to Venezuela, where the United States has declared tacit war, economic war right now but also preparation for war, then you suddenly talk about humanitarian aid. Mr. Branson who runs an airlines organizing or orchestrating and orchestrate the bridge in Tachira where supposedly life constant is taking place. I'm sure people are there, that's at the point. They have been probably carted there in buses, made to stand over there, they hold up placards and posters and we know how crowds can be organized but that's really not the issue. So the question is the politicizing of aid which is what's happening here. The second issue and this is an important one, what does this so-called delivery of aid mean? Elliot Abrams who's now been designated by Mr. Trump as the key official in charge of Venezuela, he delivered quote unquote food aid to Nicaragua and as we now know that they were really smuggling it weapons. Recently also we have found that there have been flights which were interacted in Venezuela which had weapons and it was being brought in by an airlines deeply connected to the CIA in different ways including the black ops what are called getting people from different locations taking them to black hole locations where they could be tortured. This is what's called the renditions. Rendition is a nice word, rendition flights. At these planes, this organized airlines which was operating this or the air charter which was operating it was deeply involved in all of this. So aid within quotes, is it aid or do those aides have bullets, guns, other ammunition and so on? Is it food as ammunition or is it real ammunition? Mr. Abrams being involved raises the big question the nature of the same and the fact that it is being sought without the permission of the host country but the host country hasn't asked for such an aid and the fact that it is being sought to legitimize an attempted coup in Venezuela speaks volumes about the nature of this so-called life concert in Tachira and the so-called food aid. In any case, it's only $20 million of aid that U.S. is talking about. The sanctions on Venezuela cost $30 million a day. The amount of food that Venezuela supplies to its people through its food committees is far, far greater every day than what this supposed aid is. I think that exposes the hypocrisy of this so-called humanitarian aid. Talking about the aid and the so-called aid that often is used to smuggle weapons I guess there's a neighboring country that actually got the benefit of this aid, which is Haiti. Recently we had talks of the whole internet just going up in flames regarding armed United States citizens in Haiti. That's an interesting issue because five soldiers from the U.S. origin, we will not say United States soldiers they're heavily armed, we don't know what their credentials are. There are also other nationalities because I think there are eight people to all told who were caught with arms. So we don't know what this was all about but I think Haiti has a much more important context and it has a very close connection with Venezuela and we need to remember that. Haiti in fact is the first anti-slave successful revolt when the over through the French colonial rule and the settler colonial state which had brought slaves from Africa in the sugar cane plantations. It the defeated Napoleon's army, something which Europeans would have difficulty in believing but they did. And that led to the French withdrawing from the mainland of the Americas. The Louisiana purchase doubling the size of then United States. But leaving that history out, let's look at the history with Venezuela. Older history and the more recent history. The older history is that Simon Bolivar was helped by Haiti in his fight against Spanish colonialism. So in fact there's a deep debt and this is what Chávez says that we have deep debt that Venezuela owes to Haiti when he was making available to Haiti cheap oil and it is the cheap oil which the Venezuela gave to Haiti which helped them tide over their oil crisis which is a huge increase in oil price which Haiti was facing. And the second part of it was that he also put a lot of the proceeds of the oil in a fund called the Petro-Carib Fund. It is a looting of the fund by the regime which the United States had put in place and this is the second president that United States has supported in Haiti post the earthquake. That is the root of the current uprising and unrest in Haiti. And the fact that though Haiti got all this help from Venezuela, unfortunately for the people of Haiti, the Haitian ruler supported the recent attempt to unseat Maduro. And that combined with the Petro-Carib Fund loot is what brought the Haitian people on the streets and the demand for the president to resign. President has not resigned. He has said he's going to take measures. Things are bad in Haiti. They have been firings. They have been mass brutal, they have cracked down on the protesters. Protesters are continuing. They seem to have quietened down a bit but it's very much something which is simmering in Haiti because this absolute poverty in Haiti, they have been sanctioned in different ways by France and now the United States for a very long time. The price they are paying is for liberation in the Americas. That's what we have to remember, both against slavery and against settler colonial states. And the fact that the United States is continuing those policies is also interesting. I think the last part of it which I would like to draw is the so-called alliance which is trying to put Guaido in place as the so-called interim president is essentially of settler colonial states, Canada and of course the United States and ex-colonial states like France, UK and Spain. I think that speaks volumes of the so-called rule-based international order they want to set up. Interestingly, they use the word rule-based international order, not international law. That's all for today for the International Roundup. 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