Haaretz: American Jews Are Funding the Far-right Dream of Greater Israel. We Have to End This - Now

Unfortunately, funding Canary Mission to silence dissent against Israeli policies is just the tip of the iceberg. A new report released by IfNotNow - "Beyond Talk: The 5 Ways the American Jewish Establishment Supports the Occupation" - shows us how, in word and deed, the entire Jewish communal apparatus defends and deepens injustice in Israel/Palestine. We should not be shocked, but we should be angry.

Jewish establishment organizations fund the dispossession of Palestinians, lobby politicians to empower Israel’s march toward full-blown apartheid, and celebrate the Israeli politicians leading that march. Many Jewish educational institutions erase and deny Palestinian narratives to keep kids ignorant of reality - and punish critical voices.[...]

The American Jewish community’s active participation in injustice goes far further. Unquestioning support for, and defense of, the Netanyahu government has emboldened the Israeli far-right’s war to gradually dominate all of "Greater Israel." The Israeli right knows it can do whatever it wants on either side of the Green Line without so much as a word from American Jews – or, of course, from the Trump White House.

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Al Jazeera: On fake investigations: From Kavanaugh to MBS

The Saudis should have hired what in Hollywood they call a "script supervisor" before they opened their mouth telling the world what happened to Jamal Khashoggi. So far, they have gone from flat denial to having Khashoggi start a fistfight with 15 cutthroat butchers the Saudis had sent to cut him to pieces. Right now, they are shooting a martial art movie with Khashoggi cast as Bruce Lee.

The Saudis know the world is not stupid, but they also know for a fact Jared Kushner is in their pocket. According to Intercept's sources, Mohammed bin Salman bragged that the president's son-in-law and Middle East adviser is "in his pocket" months ago. It is payback time. Trump will try to sell this cover-up by the Saudis the same way he sold the FBI's cursory report on Kavanaugh.[...]

He produced a "fake" FBI investigation - one that simply going through the motions and did not even interview the primary suspect or accuser, and issued a secret report the public could not see, as his Republican accomplices rushed the nomination through a hasty vote cast almost entirely on partisan lines just a few weeks before crucial midterm elections. And Trump and his Republican cohorts won. Professor Ford and countless sexually abused women like her lost.[...]

Like a real estate crook (he is) who refuses to see he has made a bad investment in a building he bought, Kushner is singularly determined to sustain the Saudi-Zionist alliance in a manner that, in his estimations, neutralises and eliminates the Palestinian national aspirations. Kushner sees the key to his ambitious desire to destroy and eliminate the last bastion of Palestinian resistance in this particular Saudi prince.

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CityLab: The Improbable High-Rises of Pyongyang, North Korea

On September 9, North Korea celebrated the 70th anniversary of its founding in its usual manner: with a vast military parade. But ballistic missiles––a mainstay of the autocratic nation’s famously theatrical displays of might––were conspicuously absent. In their stead, uniformed construction workers marched and torchlight parades spelled slogans like “economic construction.”[...]

Since assuming control over North Korea following his father’s death in 2011, Kim Jong-un has personally inaugurated one new apartment building each year, gaining the nickname “builder-president” in the process. This construction preoccupation is hardly new: Partly as a mechanism of social control, Kim Il-sung built cultural centers in small towns across the country, and Kim Jong-Il went on a monument-building spree during the country’s dark “special period.”[...]

It may be slight stylistic improvement over the nation’s previous obsession with Stalinist and Brutalist styles, which alternated from oppressively gaudy to oppressively spartan, but construction quality in North Korea remains suspect. Like earlier projects such as the infamous 3,000-room, never-opened Ryugyong Hotel, many of the new developments likely sit empty, serving as Potemkin show projects. But visitors have reported that even in occupied buildings, interiors are often shabby, with poor access to basic amenities like hot water. In 2014, a brand-new 23-story tower collapsed, reportedly leading to the execution of Choe Yong-gon, then deputy minister of construction and building materials.

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Haaretz: Why Are Some pro-Israel Voices Speaking Out Against Jamal Khashoggi?

Even as gruesome allegations emerge that he was tortured, murdered and dismembered after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, some Israel supporters have joined other figures on the right in describing Khashoggi as a terrorist sympathizer and fierce opponent of Israel. Their goal appears to be to counter a portrait of Khashoggi as a Saudi reformer and free speech activist, and perhaps derail pressure building on the White House to punish Saudi Arabia for his disappearance and presumed murder. [...]

Purveyors of the attacks on Khashoggi said they wanted to set the record straight. Other observers suggested that the public fight over Khashoggi’s reputation has to do with a number of issues central to the latest crisis in U.S.-Saudi relations: cultivating Saudi cooperation in the diplomatic fight against Iran, keeping the Saudis on board the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and maintaining the kingdom as a bulwark against violent forms of radical Islam.[...]

Donald Trump Jr. retweeted one of the earliest attacks on Khashoggi, from a correspondent for the PJ Media conservative website. The correspondent, Patrick Poole, had posted photos of interviews Khashoggi had conducted in the late 1980s with Osama bin Laden, who went on to found al-Qaeda and to plot the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. [...]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has touted emerging ties with Saudi Arabia and other countries as validating his strategy of downplaying peace with the Palestinians, believing he can make Israel at home in the region without the Palestinians. Bin Salman was a key figure in this strategy.

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From soldiers to monks: the end of a monastery founded by veterans of the Second World War

There was a surge of American GIs joining monasteries after the end of the Second World War, seeking solace and refuge in a violent and increasingly complicated world. It was at this time that the Abbey of Our Lady of the Holy Trinity, a Trappist monastery in the town of Huntsville in Utah, was founded, and at its peak it housed 84 monks. Some 70 years later, only a handful of elderly men remain, and without a younger generation to continue the legacy, the monastery has been forced to close its doors. This poignant short film from RadioWest quietly observes the monastery’s last moments, as the elderly monks commence their final, sparsely attended service and pack their bags for an uncertain future.

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IFLScience: We May Have Discovered Who Built Stonehenge, And The Mystery Just Got Deeper

By sifting through the remains of 25 people buried in pits within the henge, the researchers, led by the University of Oxford, were able to work out where in the world they had spent most of the life. Many of the buried people there were, unsurprisingly, local to the nearby area of Wessex.

However, 10 of the people appear to have come from west Wales, at least 200 kilometers (124 miles) away. Given that this was the year 3,000 BCE, that's pretty unusual.

To add more fuel to the intrigue, it looks likely that the non-local people were from the Preseli Hills in west Wales, the known source of the henge’s bluestones. These are the smaller stones in the inner circle of Stonehenge, as opposed to the iconic large sarsen standing stones. [...]

“It is hard to identify any particular reason these two places should have been connected. There is no evidence for any other strong connection in terms of trade,” he added.

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IFLScience: A Startup Backed By Peter Thiel Has Churned Out 20,000 Doses Of Magic Mushrooms, And Is Making More

That work comes amid a recent resurgence in the study of psychedelic drugs like mushrooms and LSD for mental illness. While most of the research is being led by universities and non-profit research institutions, Compass, a for-profit company founded in 2016, sees itself as helping to fill in the gaps. [...]

Compass has also secured scientific oversight from respected researchers like Tom Insel, the former director of the National Institutes of Mental Health, and David Nutt, the former UK government drug czar, who serve on its board of advisors.

So far, Compass claims it has made two 250-gram batches of psilocybin, the equivalent of 20,000 doses of 25 mg of the drug. Although some of that will be tested for stability, the rest has been shaped into capsules. Those will soon be shipped to a handful of sites in Europe and North America, where Compass plans to use the psilocybin in clinical trials.

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Nautilus Magazine: Seeing Sounds

One in 25 people have synesthesia, perceiving the world in unusual ways. An experience with one sense automatically leads to perception in another sense: for example, seeing colors when listening to music. Now researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and the University of Cambridge report clues into biological origins of such variations in human perception. They studied families with synesthesia, and describe genetic changes that might contribute to their differences in sensory experience.

Some people with synaesthesia may see sounds, while others may taste them or feel them as shapes. This kind of sensory cross-talk comes in many forms, and develops during early childhood. It has been known for over a century that synaesthesia runs in families, giving a strong hint that inherited factors are important.[...]

Professor Simon Fisher, Director of the Max Planck Institute, who led the research, said, “We knew from earlier studies by the Cambridge team that no single gene can account for this intriguing trait; even families who experience the same form of synaesthesia are likely to differ in terms of specific genetic explanations. Our hope was that the DNA data might point to shared biological processes as candidates for involvement in synaesthesia.”

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Reuters: Chilean court orders Catholic Church to pay damages over abuse: report

Chile’s Court of Appeal has ordered the office of Santiago’s Archbishop to pay $450 million pesos ($650,000) to three men who alleged they were sexually abused for decades by Chilean priest Fernando Karadima, a local newspaper reported on Sunday.

Citing a copy of a leaked judgment, La Tercera said the three judges who heard the case on Thursday found in favor of an appeal for “moral damages” against the church for allegedly covering up the crimes. The case was previously rejected by a lower court for lack of evidence. [...]

Legal experts have said it could pave the way for more claims amid a new climate of discovery which has seen hundreds of people come forward to allege they were abused and criminal prosecutors launch scores of new investigations.[...]

Now 88 and living in a nursing home in the capital, Karadima has always denied accusations of abuse. He was never charged by civilian authorities because the statute of limitations on such crimes had expired. He was found guilty of sexual abuse in a Vatican investigation in 2011, and last month was defrocked by the Pope.

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