By Michael R.Gordon, New York Times, Sept. 14, 2014

The offer from several Arab countries was disclosed by American officials traveling with Secretary of State John Kerry, who is trying to mobilize international support against the militants.

By Sara Bernard, The Atlantic, Sept. 11, 2014

[....] In its short history as a state, Alaska has earned an unnerving epithet: It is the rape capital of the U.S. At nearly 80 rapes per 100,000, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report, Alaska’s rape rate is almost three times the national average; for child sexual assault, it’s nearly six times. And, according to the 2010 Alaska Victimization Survey, the most comprehensive data to date, 59 percent of Alaskan women have been victims of sexual assault, intimate partner violence, or both.

But those numbers, say researchers, just skim the surface. Since sex crimes are generally underreported, and may be particularly underreported in Alaska for cultural reasons. “Those numbers are conservative,” says Ann Rausch, a program coordinator at Alaska’s Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. “They’re still staggering.”

The causes of the violence are complex and entrenched [....]

By Peter Pomerantsev, The Atlantic.com, Sept.9, 2014

[....] “If previous authoritarian regimes were three parts violence and one part propaganda,” argues Igor Yakovenko, a professor of journalism at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, “this one is virtually all propaganda and relatively little violence. Putin only needs to make a few arrests—and then amplify the message through his total control of television.” [....]

Now Russia is exporting its reality-reinventing model through the hundreds of millions of dollars that it spends on international broadcasters like the rolling, multilingual news channel RT (Russia Today) [....]

Organizations like the Ukraine-based StopFake.org have been working hard to expose disinformation in Russian and foreign media. But for every ‘fake’ they catch, Kremlin-allied news outlets produce a thousand more. These news organizations don’t care if they’re caught in a lie. They care only about clicks and being compelling.

Like its domestic equivalents, RT also focuses on conspiracy theories—from 9/11 truthers to the hidden Zionist hand in Syria’s civil war. Western critics often snigger at these claims, but the coverage has a receptive audience [....]

By David D. Kirkpatrick, New York Times, Sept. 7/8, 2014

[....] Sheikh Ajmi and at least a half-dozen others identified by the United States as private fund-raisers for Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise operate freely in Doha, often speaking at state-owned mosques and even occasionally appearing on Al Jazeera. The state itself has provided at least some form of assistance — [....] Qatar is finding itself under withering attack by an unlikely alignment of interests, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Israel, which have all sought to portray it as a godfather to terrorists everywhere. Some in Washington have accused it of directly supporting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria  [....]

Telegraph.co.uk, 6 Sept., 2014

A French journalist held hostage for months by extremists in Syria has identified one of his captors as a Frenchman suspected of later killing four at the Brussels Jewish Museum, saying the militant had took sadistic delight in mistreating prisoners.

Nicolas Henin said he often heard Mehdi Nemmouche, who he said was among his captors from July 2013 to December 2013, torturing Syrians who were being held in the same former hospital basement.

Once, Mr Henin told reporters, Nemmouche punched him in the face and then showed off his gloves.

"He was very proud, telling me 'You saw these motorcycle gloves? I bought them just for you, to punch you in the face. Did you like them?'  [....]

By Helene Cooper, New York Times, Sept. 5, 2014

The plan, formed on the sidelines of a NATO summit meeting with a new international coalition, is to attack Sunni militants from the air and work to bolster allies in Iraq and Syria.

Iceland's recent eruption.  Here are some spectacular pictures. 

When the Maidan protests started in Kiev late last year, Mishin followed them with increasing anxiety. He watched as young men in masks and the insignia of old Ukrainian fascist movements attacked riot police – some of them from the Donetsk area – with Molotov cocktails. He saw governors in the western provinces pulled out of their offices and roughed up by furious crowds. It seemed that the country was descending into chaos. When he heard a rumour that some of the young men from Maidan were headed for Donetsk, he believed it.

Associated Press via theguardian.com, 1 Sept. 2014

Pentagon announces operation against extremist network in wake of suicide bombing raid on Mogadishu prison

Secretary of State Kerry, in an op-ed that I believe just appeared tonight on the NYTs website, does not mince words in defining the elimination of ISIS as America's mission going forward.  

Here's Kerry, but I think everyone should read the entire piece. The timing of the piece is kind of strange, i.e. it's appearing on Friday night of Labor Day Weekend.  That is not exactly the time one generally chooses to reach a huge audience. Is that purposeful or is it guided by realities on the ground, or as a follow-up to the aggressive words spoken by British Prime Minister Cameron  and others over the last couple of days?  

IN a polarized region and a complicated world, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria presents a unifying threat to a broad array of countries, including the United States. What’s needed to confront its nihilistic vision and genocidal agenda is a global coalition using political, humanitarian, economic, law enforcement and intelligence tools to support military force.