It was a powerful piece of technology created for an important customer. The Medusa system, named after the mythical Greek monster with snakes instead of hair, had one main purpose: to vacuum up vast quantities of internet data at an astonishing speed. The technology was designed by Endace, a little-known New Zealand company. And the important customer was the British electronic eavesdropping agency, Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ.

Dozens of internal documents and emails from Endace, obtained by The Intercept and reported in cooperation with Television New Zealand, reveal the firm's key role helping governments across the world harvest vast amounts of information on people's private emails, online chats, social media conversations, and internet browsing histories.

The leaked files, which were provided by a source through SecureDrop, show that Endace listed a Moroccan security agency implicated in torture as one of its customers. They also indicate that the company sold its surveillance gear to more than half a dozen other government agencies, including in the United States, Israel, Denmark, Australia, Canada, Spain, and India.

Some of Endace's largest sales in recent years, however, were to the United Kingdom's GCHQ, which purchased a variety of "data acquisition" systems and "probes" that it used to covertly monitor internet traffic.

America's election system is designed only to put on the theater of democracy with none of the substance

It is a virtual certainty that the American establishment will resort to election fraud to help Hillary Clinton. They simply do not know what to do about Donald Trump. America's election system was not designed to handle a phenomenon like him, a non-politician, a man with some genuinely fresh anti-establishment views, who quickly rides a wave of popularity to do a hostile take-over, as it were, of a major old-line party.

America's election system is designed to give the theater of democracy with virtually none of the substance, but even in the face of that reality, election fraud in America still has a long history. Even though we are usually talking about two establishment candidates representing two establishment parties, the competitive instincts of the two rival gangs, each eagerly seeking power and privileges and appointed offices for themselves and their adherents, have often resulted in vote fraud. How much greater is the impulse now in that direction to defend against a candidate who actually wants to change something?

Despite an unprecedented spectacle of the press acting as a national public disinformation system united in one goal, to discredit Trump, including even polls deliberately engineered with sampling errors to give a false view of what is happening, and a massive effort to build Hillary up into something she is not, a decent human being, the momentum for Trump continues.

Even if you don't have reliable numbers, you can just feel it from the very desperation of the establishment. The President spends much of his time flying around making insipid speeches for his party, the newspapers leap to publish every unconfirmed negative report about Trump or such absolute trivia as this or that movie star or pop star saying what an awful man Trump is. And you have to ask where all these voices were during decades of business deals in the great cities of America and other places which saw successful projects springing up all over with fanfare and publicity.

Did an exiled cleric try to overthrow Erdoğan's government?

At nine o'clock on the night of July 15th, General Hulusi Akar, the chief of the Turkish Army's general staff, heard a knock on his office door in Ankara, the nation's capital. It was one of his subordinates, General Mehmet Dişli, and he was there to report that a military coup had begun. "We will get everybody," Dişli said. "Battalions and brigades are on their way. You will soon see."

Akar was aghast. "What the hell are you saying?" he asked.

In other cities, officers involved in the coup had ordered their units to detain senior military leaders, block major roads, and seize crucial institutions like Istanbul Atatürk Airport. Two dozen F-16 fighters took to the air. According to statements from some of the officers involved, the plotters asked Akar to join them. When he refused, they handcuffed him and flew him by helicopter to an airbase where other generals were being held; at one point, one of the rebels pointed a gun at Akar and threatened to shoot.

After midnight, a news anchor for Turkish Radio and Television was forced to read a statement by the plotters, who called themselves the Peace at Home Committee, a reference to one of the country's founding ideals. Without mentioning the President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, by name, the statement said that his government had destroyed the country's institutions, engaged in corruption, supported terrorism, and ignored human rights: "The secular and democratic rule of law has been virtually eliminated."

For a time, the rebels seemed to have the upper hand. Provincial governors and community leaders surrendered or joined in, along with police squads. In a series of text messages discovered after the coup, a Major Murat Çelebioğlu told his group, "The deputies of the Istanbul police chief have been called, informed, and the vast majority have complied."

A Colonel Uzan Şahin replied, "Tell our police friends: I kiss their eyes."

"The idea that somehow [we] should delay this operation because of others' concern about the humanitarian situation in Mosul; that doesn't make sense."

~ Josh Earnest, White House Spokesman, 22 October 2016

On October 17, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi announced the beginning of the long-touted military campaign aimed at retaking the Iraqi city of Mosul from ISIS terrorists. The announcement was met with much applause in Western and Gulf State political circles, but there are justified concerns about an imminent humanitarian disaster accompanying the campaign.

The expected atrocities from ISIS have already begun: they have already reportedly executed 284 men and boys in the Mosul area, executed 16 citizens by throwing them off a bridge and forcibly taken at least 550 families from villages around Mosul into the city to be used as human shields.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) warned that more than half a million children and their families face extreme danger following the launch of the operation. In a UNICEF press release, Spokesperson Peter Hawkins said "Mosul's children have already suffered immensely over the past two years. Many could be forcibly displaced, trapped between fighting lines, or caught in the cross fire."

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman threatened on Monday to destroy the Hamas movement "completely" in case of any possible hostilities sparked by the militants.

"If Hamas imposes the next war on Israel, it will be their last... It will be their last confrontation, because we will completely destroy them," the minister said in an interview with the Al-Quds newspaper.


The defense minister added that Israel meanwhile had no intention of starting a new war in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, in Lebanon or Syria.

Turkish artillery and tanks have aided Kurdish fighters in advance on the Islamic State stronghold Mosul, according to the Turkish PM. Baghdad has repeatedly called on Ankara to refrain from anti-ISIS operation in the city.

Artillery and tanks of the Turkish army have shelled positions of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) near the jihadists' key city of Mosul. According to the Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim the military action followed a request by the Kurdish Peshmerga forces.

"The Peshmerga have mobilized to cleanse the Bashiqa region from Daesh [ISIL]. They asked for help from our soldiers at the Bashiqa base. So we are helping the tanks with our artillery there," Yildirim, said as quoted by the Anadolu news agency.

A number of human rights and aid organizations have urged the United Nations to deprive Russia of its seat on the UN's Human Rights Council (UNHRC), AFP reported on Monday.

More than 80 international organizations have signed the appeal, with such groups as Human Rights Watch, CARE International and Refugees International among them, AFP says.

The move was prompted by Russia's involvement in the anti-terrorist campaign in Syria.

The signatories asked the UN member states to "question seriously whether Russia's role in Syria which includes supporting and undertaking military actions which have routinely targeted civilians and civilian objects renders it fit to serve on the UN's premier inter-governmental human rights institution," AFP reports, citing the text of the appeal.

Democratic National Committee (DNC) lawyers responded on October 14 in support of their motion to dismiss the class action lawsuit against the DNC and former chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, maintaining that a fair and balanced Democratic primary is just a "political promise."

"Courts have uniformly rejected attempts to litigate on the basis of purported political promises, including 'statements of principle and intent in the political realm'" wrote the DNC lawyers. "These decisions have not always been explicit in their reasoning, but they reflect the long-standing judicial understanding that, because they inherently raise serious questions of justiciability and threaten core First Amendment rights of political speech and association, "[p]olitical squabbles are not as easily resolved in federal courts as are some other disputes." Wymbs v. Republican State Exec. Comm. of Fla., 719 F.2d 1072, 1077 (11th Cir. 1983) (citing Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 281-85 (1962)); see also Berg, 574 F. Supp. 2d at 529 ("[V]oters are free to vote out of office those politicians seen to have breached campaign promises," but "[f]ederal courts ... are not and cannot be in the business of enforcing political rhetoric"); Dornan v. U.S. Sec'y of Def., 676 F. Supp. 6, 7 (D.D.C. 1987) (holding action based in part on political promise nonjusticiable); see also O'Brien v. Brown, 409 U.S. 1, 4-5 (1972); Irish v. Democratic Farmer-Labor Party of Minn., 399 F.2d 119, 120-21 (8th Cir. 1968)"

Last month, Human Rights Watch released a damning report emphasizing that soccer's governing body, Federation International du Football (FIFA), should render a decision on Israel Football Association (IFA) teams that are being played on occupied Palestinian land.

The teams in question, Beitar Givat Ze'ev, Beitar Ironi Ariel, Beitar Ironi Maale Adumim, Ironi Yehuda and Hapoel Bik'at Hayarden are all based in illegal settlements in the West Bank.

The regions are in territory that is being disputed by the Palestinian Football Association (PFA). The PFA argues that by playing teams in those regions, the IFA is violating FIFA rules that state that one member may not play games in the territory of another affiliated member without their approval. The PFA insists it does not want any matches played on Palestinian land. They point out that the IFA is using sport to legitimize the occupation and illegal settlements.

Sari Bashi, the Palestine/Israel Director at Human Rights Watch told me via email that this issue is crucial to regional politics and to sport. President Gianni Infantino is the leader of the world's governing body of football and ought to resolve this as quickly as possible. "As part of his stated commitment to transparency and human rights, President Infantino should provide the public with a detailed update of the Council discussion," she writes. "And a timeline for deciding whether FIFA will stop sponsoring matches on land that has been illegally seized from Palestinians."

Two Pakistani civilians and an Indian soldier have been killed in cross-border firing in the disputed region of Kashmir, officials from the two sides say.

Pakistan's military said on October 24 that two civilians, including a 1-year-old baby, were killed in the village of Janglora, and seven others were injured in the overnight exchange of fire.

The Indian Army said a guard from India's Border Security Force was killed and another injured.

Both countries accused the other of resorting to unprovoked firing and shelling.

Tensions have been rising since India accused Pakistan-based militants of launching an assault on an army base in Indian-administered Kashmir in early September that killed 18 soldiers.