Some Americans chose to react to the Paris tragedy with embarrassing displays of xenophobia and bigotry. Others, however, chose compassion instead. A’s baseball player Sean Doolittle and his partner Eireann Dolan invited 17 Syrian refugee families to share in their Thanksgiving meal […] They are also launching a crowd-funding campaign to help sponsor Syrian refugee families who have arrived in Chicago.

In November 1999, Nancy Matthews arrived at Tehran airport at 3 o’clock in the morning. Susan Koscis followed directly behind her. Koscis had made the trip a few years earlier through an NGO called Search for Common Ground, when she organised a visit of American wrestlers. Nancy was now planning to find and bring Iranian artists back to the United States for an exhibition. Koscis and Nancy were cultural diplomats.

Boots on the ground are necessary for defeating them where they now freely organize and operate. The question becomes: Whose boots?

In the wake of the devastating terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13, Paris residents took to Twitter to offer accommodation to the stranded using the hashtags #PorteOuverte and #OpenDoor […] As a communication tool, the crowdsourcing power of social media again proved to be effective […] But what does this support, the “cause” in Facebook's words, actually deliver?

Palestine's 2015 Oscar entry, the Wanted 18, tells a tragically absurd story of how a herd of cows are hunted down by Israeli authorities, who did not look fondly on the community's attempts to be self-sufficient. Through archival footage, re-enactments and claymation, film-makers Amer Shomali and Paul Cowan use dark humour to tell this lesser-known tale of a farm gone rogue...

So ISIS takes pop culture, or soft power, very very seriously indeed, even if we don't. The attacks on Paris demonstrate their cultural focus most of all. They attacked restaurants, theaters, and sports events rather than military or political targets […] The forces that will defeat ISIS aren't the army, the navy, and the air force; they're Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. They have to involve themselves in the war.