Global

Enas Ikhlawi is a young Palestinian journalist committed to documenting and reporting about settlers' attacks against Palestinian villagers. Her goal is to inform the public, hold settlers and IDF attacks to account, and ensure that underrepresented voices of Palestinian villagers are heard. She also led a women's program in Hebron.

Sadly, that came abruptly to an end yesterday Monday January 5, when heavily armed IDF soldiers stormed her home in the town of Idana, west of Hebron in the occupied West Bank. According to her brother Raafat Ikhlawi, "After breaking down the doors and arresting my sister Enas in a brutal manner, she was dragged away violently without a hijab or warm clothing. After significant pressure, we were allowed to give her a coat. So far, we do not know her whereabouts or the reason for her arrest."

While activists link it to efforts silencing coverage of settler attacks, the arrest fits a pattern of over 21,000 detentions since October 2023 in Gaza and the West Bank, many without trial amid rising tensions and no immediate comment from Israeli forces.

The elements behind Trump’s war on Venezuela are fourfold.

They center on the theft of Venezuela’s oil; the removal of Cuba’s primary lifeline; the protection of the dollar-based petrodollar; and Trump’s desperate need to deflect attention from the deepening quagmire that is the Epstein scandal.

And the ultimate question they raise is: will his blatantly illegal violation of U.S. and international law finally result in the impeachment and removal of Trump from the White House or the 2026 mid-term elections lead to an end of his destructive control of the U.S. government.

The lethal litany of reasons for Trump’s invasion is led by the U.S. seeking Venezuela’s huge reserves of oil—it supposedly has 303 billion barrels compared to the U.S. with but 45. After Venezuela is Saudi Arabia with 267 and Iran with 208 and then the list drops by 100.

This Administration, elected with a promise to end forever wars, has since taken America to war against Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Somalia and Nigeria, while funding genocide against Gazans.

It has invaded Venezuela, kidnapped its President, Nicholas Moduro, and his wife; pledged to “run” the county, and to appropriate (steal) Venezuela’s extensive oil reserves. Venezuela spent approximately $ ZERO for its defense in 2024.

This is not Pax Americana. It is Pox Americana from War-a-Iago.

As a Member of House of Representatives, I challenged in court and in Congress President Clinton over Serbia, President Bush over Iraq and President Obama over Libya, each time working with members of both political parties to take action to insist on Congress’ co-equality, and its constitutional responsibility to decide when America should offer the treasure of our youth and our precious financial resources to be taken from peace to war.

Even a remote possibility of U.S. ground troops being sent to invade and occupy Venezuela ought to shock America’s moribund peace movement into action.

Lolwah Al-Khater is a prominent Qatari diplomat and the current Minister of Education who is known for her significant contributions to Qatar's foreign relations and education sector. Al- Khater is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Oxford in the area of Oriental Studies. Al-Khater is a female rising star in the Arab world. The name Lolwah translates to "pearl" in Arabic.

The Arab world is witnessing a new wave of young women rising to prominence and shaping the future with their bold vision, creativity, and influence. Lolowah Al-Khater the Qatari diplomat is one among those women.

This woman speaks the truth, a quality that is rare among kings and presidents in the Arab and Muslim world and only those whom God has blessed can utter it. She is truly an honor to all Muslim women. Al-Khater supported the Palestinian cause through the media and showed the world that the Palestinian issue is the most important issue in the world. May God reward her immensely.

It was 2002 when Delcy Rodriguez, sworn in today as President of Venezuela, came to my apartment in London well after midnight to tell me, a BBC television reporter, that the US was planning to kidnap, and likely assassinate, the then-president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez.

The coup, Rodriguez said, was planned for March, but I could not get the BBC to send me there on the basis of Rodriguez’s inside info. In fact, there was no coup in March. Chavez was seized on April 2.

President Chavez was kidnapped and flown by helicopter to a prison on Margarita Island off the Venezuelan coast. But President George W. Bush had let Venezuelan plotters operate the coup, and they were incompetent.

Chavez, the first Black and Indian president in Venezuela’s history, was guarded by a young soldier who was the same color as Chavez. He handed Chavez his cell phone. Chavez reached his Air Force generals who made it clear to the plotters — most of them white (race matters here) — that they would be bombed into oblivion unless Chavez were returned in 48 hours to his desk. The coup leaders brought back Chavez within hours.

The law firm Wisner Baum is known for its successful litigation against Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer and the cancer-linked H2 blocker Zantac. It was recently cleared to bring a RICO lawsuit (”Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) claiming that Eli Lilly and Takeda engaged in a decade-long conspiracy through mail and wire fraud to conceal the risk of bladder cancer linked to their drug Actos. The trial is set for November 30, 2026.

We spoke with R. Brent Wisner, the firm’s managing partner and lead trial attorney, about the trial’s implications.

MR:. Before we talk about your RICO suit, please tell us who Takeda is and what the drug Actos, pioglitazone, is.

RBW: Takeda was originally a chemical company. They wanted to break into pharmaceuticals...and have become one of the biggest ones in Asia by a lot--they’re huge. They made a lot of money off of Covid vaccines.