Tag: terrorism

Harvard scrubs ‘How to Blow Up a Pipeline’ film info from website

Harvard Law School scrubbed its website of an event page advertising a screening of the film “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” amid concerns about endorsing violence.

Internet archives show the event page was removed sometime between Friday and Tuesday when The College Fix noticed it was gone. A post advertising the screening on Harvard’s Systemic Justice Project website also was removed prior to the event.

“How to Blow Up a Pipeline” is a fictional story about climate activists who blow up a section of pipe in Texas, according to the film’s website.

The trailer opens with a man building a homemade explosive and ends with police arriving at the site of a pipeline that has been blown up. The characters call the bombing “justified” and “an act of self-defense.”

It is unclear if the Wednesday evening screening was canceled, rescheduled, or still took place.  The Fix contacted the HLS Film Society, communications office, and event moderator Professor Jon Hanson by email and phone Tuesday asking if the event had been canceled. None replied.

The Fix also reached out to the film society, Hanson, and the communications office March 28 with questions regarding the concerns about the film endorsing violence and university organizers’ stance on peaceful advocacy.

The film screening drew criticism online in recent weeks, including concerns that Harvard may be supporting violent activism. Critics include U.S. Rep. Mike Bost, an Illinois Republican, who said in a March 28 post on X that violent acts like those portrayed in the film are the reason he supports harsher penalties for eco-terrorism.

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Reuters Has Ulterior Motives For Reporting That Iran Tipped Russia Off Before The Crocus Attack

Reuters cited three unnamed sources to exclusively report on Monday that Iran had allegedly tipped Russia off about a then-impending major terrorist attack after learning about it from ethnic Tajik ISIS-K terrorists who were detained after the group’s early January attack in Kerman. The information lacked specific details, but the outlet editorialized that “It is harder…for Russia to dismiss intelligence from diplomatic ally Iran on the attack” than from the West, the latter of which they claim that it downplayed.

Accordingly, Reuters wrote that this “raised questions over the effectiveness of Russian security services”, thus exposing the ulterior motive behind this report. The West has done all that it can to deflect from Russia’s accusations that Ukraine was tied to this terrorist attack via the evidence that its investigation has uncovered. This includes claiming that the vague warning that the US passed along to Russia was obtained from spying on ISIS-K, not on Kiev like this analysis here compellingly argues.

By including an Iranian dimension into the emerging narrative of early warnings ahead of the Crocus terrorist attack, the West via Reuters wants to further deflect from its own and Ukraine’s involvement in what happened while simultaneously discrediting the Russian security services. This analysis here debunks the false narrative that President Putin downplayed ISIS-K threats in the run-up to the attack, yet the West is doubling down on that claim, largely in response to evidence implicating Kiev.

To be sure, there’s a chance that one or some of those ethnic Tajik ISIS-K terrorists that Iran detained in January might have heard about the group’s plans to attack Russia, but that’s altogether different than them having knowledge of the then-impending Crocus plot. Russia already knows that it’s in that group’s crosshairs after they bombed its embassy in Kabul in September 2022. Without specific information, whether from Iran or anyone else, nothing on the home front would have changed in response to that.

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Russia Demands Ukraine Arrest and Hand Over SBU Head Vasyl Malyuk, After He Admits on TV Role in Terror Attacks

Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has come out and unveiled Moscow’s demand that Ukraine authorities hand over all people connected with terrorist acts committed in their territory.

The list surprisingly even includes the head of Kiev’s SBU Security Service, Vasyl Malyuk.

Besides the recent ‘bloody Crocus terrorist act’, the attacks in question include bombings that killed the daughter of a prominent nationalist philosopher, a war blogger, and another incident in which a writer was seriously hurt.

While the investigation by the Russian authorities indicate that the traces of all these crimes lead to Ukraine, in the case of Malyuk there is a voluntary admission on TV.

“We will not officially admit this in any way, but at the same time I will tell you some details,” he said in an interview with a Ukrainian TV channel.

Reuters reported:

“‘Russia has turned over to Ukrainian authorities its demands … for the immediate arrest and extradition of all those connected to the terrorist acts in question’, the [Russian Ministry’s] statement said.

The ministry statement said those to be handed over included SBU head Vasyl Malyuk, who has acknowledged [in an interview with Ukrainian television channel ICTV] his service was behind attacks on the bridge linking Crimea to the Russian mainland […].

‘The Russian side demands that the Kyiv regime immediately cease all support for terrorist activity, extradite guilty parties and compensate the victims for damages’, it said.

‘Ukraine’s violation of its obligations under anti-terrorist conventions will result in it being held to account in international legal terms’.”

Here are some other excerpts by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

“Other barbaric terrorist attacks using explosive devices cost the lives of journalists D.A. Dugina and M.Yu. Fomin (V. Tatarsky), led to the serious injury of the writer E.N. Prilepin and the death of his driver A.I. Shubin, the death of five people as a result of the explosion of the Crimean Bridge, 42 people were injured in an explosion in a cafe in St. Petersburg.”

It does seem odd for a warring party to demand another to comply with treaties and conventions.

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‘Operation Anti-Migrant’: Russia Starts Mass Deporting Muslims After Moscow Concert Massacre

Russian authorities have begun deporting large numbers of Muslims in the wake of last week’s deadly Islamist state attack at a Moscow concert hall, in an effort that has been reportedly dubbed “Operation Anti-Migrant.”

According to The Moscow Times, anti-Islamic sentiment has soared in the aftermath of the attack, in which at least 144 people were killed and hundreds of more were wounded or in critical condition. Islamic State has since claimed responsibility for the massacre.

The Times notes:

Authorities in St. Petersburg have been deporting migrants en masse in the week since the deadly attack on a Moscow region concert hall, the legal rights group Perviy Otdel said Friday. More than 64 foreigners were deported from the city’s Vyborgsky district on Thursday alone, the NGO said, citing one of its unidentified lawyers.

…

A number of buses carrying migrants were also headed to St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo International Airport on Friday afternoon, they added. The countries where the migrants were being sent to were not specified, though it is known that labor migrants in Russia mostly hail from poor Central Asian countries.

The four men accused of carrying out the attack were from Tajikistan, a majority Muslim country that does not share a border with Russia.

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Did The US First Catch Wind Of The Crocus Terrorist Attack By Spying On Kiev?

This accounts for why the US only passed along vague information to Russia since it assumed that the GUR wouldn’t go through with the Crocus plot after ordering them to call it off, but Washington still wanted to discredit its rival’s government and security services, ergo its embassy’s provocative warning at the time.

The New York Times (NYT) cited unnamed sources on Thursday to report that “The adversarial relationship between Washington and Moscow prevented U.S. officials from sharing any information about the (Crocus terrorist attack) plot beyond what was necessary, out of fear Russian authorities might learn their intelligence sources or methods.” This vindicates President Putin, who the West hitherto claimed had downplayed terrorist threats in the run-up to one of the worst attacks in Russian history.

Without actionable intelligence and informed only of the US’ vague warning that large gatherings like concerts could soon be targeted, his security services were unable to stop the plotters, thus meaning that Washington is partially responsible for what happened by withholding specific information about it. Just as scandalously, this bombshell also prompted speculation about the exact sources and methods that America employed to first catch wind of this attack.

While it’s possible that the US learned about this from spying on the radical Telegram channel whose curators reportedly recruited the culprits, such as if the CIA had a mole inside that preacher’s team, the case can compellingly be made that this might have actually been brought to its attention by spying on Kiev. Last spring’s Pentagon leaks confirmed that the US has been spying on Zelensky, which Ukrainian officials told CNN was “unsurprising” but still left them “deeply frustrated”.

Those documents also confirmed that the US was spying on Ukraine’s military-intelligence service GUR as well, from whom they learned about a plot to attack the Russian port of Novorossiysk on the first anniversary of the special operation and then ordered them to stand down to avoid provoking Moscow. Seeing as how the Washington Post (WaPo) reported half a year later that the CIA rebuilt the GUR from the ground-up after 2014, it’s obvious that they embedded moles within that institution from the get-go.

They don’t always learn about terrorist plots ahead of time since their infiltration of the GUR and other Ukrainian government agencies isn’t total, but they’re still usually able to conclude sometime afterwards that Kiev was responsible whenever a serious attack happens in Russia. Such was the case last May when the NYT reported that Kiev was responsible for the Kremlin drone attack, in which piece they also reminded their reader that it was behind other attacks up until that point too.

These include the assassinations of Darya Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky, cross-border terrorist raids into Russia’s Belgorod Region, and the Nord Stream II bombing. About that last-mentioned one, the claim of Ukrainian complicity might very well be a preplanned red herring for deflecting from American involvement after Seymour Hersh served as the conduit for dissident members of the Intelligence Community (IC) to inform the public that their country was the one that ordered that attack.

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U.S. History of Using ISIS

Back in 2015, the Guardian published a fascinating report titled Now the truth emerges: how the US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq, which detailed how U.S. and British intelligence were supporting Islamic jihadist rebel groups in Syria with the objective of overthrowing the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The report included a link to a leaked 2012 Department of Defense document about U.S. support for these rebel groups in Syria, including ISIS. This report stuck with me, and I was a reminded of it a couple of years later when Assad was accused in April 2017 of using chemical weapons against Syrian civilians.Buy New $47.97 ($0.53 / Count)(as of 02:32 UTC – Details)

Notably, this chemical weapons attack just happened to occur the day after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson publicly announced that regime change in Syria was no longer official U.S. policy. In other words—we were told—the day after the U.S. announced it was getting off Assad’s case, he committed an atrocity (of zero military value) that would guarantee that the U.S. recommit itself to getting rid of him.

Though most of the legacy press endorsed the assertion that Assad’s forces were behind the attack, a few discerning reporters noted that it could have easily been carried about by one of the Islamic jihadist groups operating in the region to make the Trump administration rethink its abandonment of its regime change objective. Sure enough, a couple of days after the chemical attack, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced that he was reconsidering his announcement the week before.

Now comes the news of a major terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall in Moscow that has left hundreds dead and injured. The U.S. government claims the attack was carried out by ISIS-K, which has reportedly taken responsibility for it. However, Kremlin officials have alleged that some of the gunmen were trying to escape into Ukraine, utilizing a ‘window’ of support from across the border.

Buy New $63.95 ($5.95 / Ounce)(as of 11:17 UTC – Details)The U.S. government just issued a statement condemning the terrorist attack in Moscow, but this reminds me of U.S. government doublespeak about ISIS back in the 2012-2017 period—that is, publicly condemning ISIS while secretly supporting it in Syria.

My concern now is that the attack on the Moscow theater was—like the Re’im music festival massacre in Israel last October—designed to provoke the absolute maximum violent response.

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Putin Beyond ISIS: Moscow Terrorist Attack ‘A Link in a Series of Attempts by the Neo-Nazi Kiev Regime’

On the ground, Russian forces behaved in a modified, more acute way after the false flag terrorist attack ultimately organized by Ukraine claimed the lives of hundreds of Moscow civilians.

But on the world stage, Russian President Vladimir Putin is playing a longer game, waiting for the investigations to demonstrate as clearly as possible the link.

Yesterday (26), in a Kremlin meeting, Putin acknowledged that the attack was carried out by Islamic militants but suggested it was also to the benefit of Ukraine and that Kyiv may have played a role.

Alexander Bastrykin, head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, said the death toll had risen to 139, with 182 people wounded.

Reuters reported:

“‘We know that the crime was carried out by the hand of radical Islamists with an ideology that the Muslim world has fought for centuries’, Putin said in remarks posted on the Telegram messaging app.

He did not directly mention Islamic State, and repeated his previous assertion that the assailants had been trying to flee to Ukraine, saying there were “many questions” to be examined.

‘The question that arises is who benefits from this?’ Putin said. ‘This atrocity may be just a link in a whole series of attempts by those who have been at war with our country since 2014 by the hands of the neo-Nazi Kiev regime.

‘We know by whose hand the crime against Russia and its people was committed. But what is of interest to us is who ordered it’.

Putin said the purpose of the attack was to ‘sow panic’. But as Russian forces were advancing through the Ukraine war theatre, he said, it could also be intended to ‘show their own population that not all is lost for the Kiev regime’.

Meanwhile, both the US and France push the ISIS story as hard as they can.

11 people have been detained, including the four gunmen, who were arrested as they made their way to cross into Ukraine.

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Moscow Detains 11 Terror Suspects, False Flag Theories Abound, Death Toll Rises To 115 And Will Likely Climb

Russian authorities point finger at Ukraine, as fugitives in car try to cross Ukrainian border.

“The terrorists involved in the attack on the concert building tried to escape to the Russia-Ukraine border,” the Central Investigation Department of the Russian Federal Security Service now reports. “The terrorists planned to cross the border and had contacts on the Ukrainian side. The terrorist attack was carefully planned.”

The death toll from yesterday’s terror attack in Moscow has risen to 93 and will likely climb.

Intelligence agencies have detained 11 people, including four terrorists, who were directly involved in an attack on the Crocus City Hall, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said in a statement.

“The activities of intelligence and law enforcement agencies have resulted in the detention of 11 people, including four terrorists, who directly participated in the terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall,” the statement reads, reported Russian state media agency TASS.

“There are also reactions [to what happened at Crocus City Hall] that raise more questions. This certainly concerns comments from Washington, which said it saw no signs that Ukrainians might be involved in the terrorist attack,” Zakharova said on the Rossiya-24 television channel.

“If there is no such evidence, then neither the White House nor anyone else is in a position to postulate anyone’s innocence,” Maria Zakharova said

“What grounds Washington officials are using to draw any conclusions in the midst of the tragedy about someone’s noninvolvement is a big question,” Zakharova added. “If the US or any other countries had reliable information on that it should have been provided to the Russian side immediately. If there is no such information neither the White House nor anyone else has the right to indulge anyone,” she noted.

“To be honest, the reaction of the UN Secretary-General’s secretariat raises not simply questions, but big questions, as he stated, I mean the secretariat of his representative, that they are saddened by reports of shooting,” the spokeswoman said, adding that all adequate people, even considering various emotional level, had similar reaction: terror, shock, bewilderment, unconditional condemnation and compassion.

“What does sadness about shooting mean? Maybe no one else, but the United Nations and the secretariat of the UN in particular, and Secretary-General of this structure, and [UN] member-states should see what the rest of the world sees now, a bloody terrorist attack, and unconditionally condemn it,” she stressed.

Questions also have flooded the internet about a possible ‘false flag’ created by the Putin administration itself.

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US Intelligence Says It Knew ISIS-K Was Planning Terror Attack On Moscow

The initial reports that ISIS has claimed responsibility for the terror attack in Moscow appeared rumor at first, and has still been subject of widespread scrutiny and debate, however, US media and government officials are saying that the Islamic State (or ISIS-K) statement is authentic. “A branch of the Islamic State claimed responsibility on Friday for the attack in Moscow that killed at least 40 people and injured about 100 others, and U.S. officials confirmed the claim shortly afterward,” The New York Times writes late in the day. 

What’s more is that US intelligence knew there was to be an imminent attack on Moscow: “The United States collected intelligence in March that Islamic State-Khorasan, known as ISIS-K, the branch of the group based in Afghanistan, had been planning an attack on Moscow, according to officials. ISIS members have been active in Russia, one U.S. official said,” according to more from NYT.

The Kremlin had earlier in the day demanded answers of Washington explaining why the US Embassy in Moscow issued an alert earlier this month for all US nationals to avoid public venues and be extra vigilant. We previously reported on that early March embassy notification here. NY Times continues, citing US officials: “After a period of relative quiet, the Islamic State has been trying to increase its external attacks, according to U.S. counterterrorism officials. Most of those plots in Europe have been thwarted, prompting assessments that the group had diminished capabilities.”

Importantly, Russian state media and sources have been slow to report the ISIS-K claims, nor have state officials identified any culprits or group at this late hour. Russian media in general has not reflected Western press reports concerning the claims that ISIS-K was behind it, likely pending a deeper and ongoing investigation. It is possible that some of the gunmen may still be at large.

Speculation continues to run rampant, and there’s as yet been little that’s confirmed from Russian security services and authorities.

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THIRTY FIVE YEARS AGO, 270 PEOPLE WERE KILLED WHEN PAN AM FLIGHT 103 CRASHED: EVIDENCE INDICATES THAT CIA WAS BEHIND IT

On the evening of December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 traveling from Frankfurt to New York crashed over Lockerbie, Scotland, after a stopover at London’s Heathrow Airport, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew along with 11 civilians on a residential street.

Following a three-year joint investigation by Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), arrest warrants were issued for two Libyan nationals, Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah.

A Scottish court found Fhimah not guilty, though Megrahi was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. 

In November 2022, Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, a former senior Libyan intelligence official, was kidnapped from his home and charged with two criminal counts related to the bombing—it was alleged that he set the timer before the bomb went off.

U.S. officials say that Mas’ud admitted during an interview with Libyan law enforcement following the overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi in 2011 that the Lockerbie bombing was ordered by Libyan intelligence and that he and others who participated were personally thanked by Qaddafi for their roles.[1]

However, the former director of that prison, Khalid al-Sharif, denies that Mas’ud ever made such a confession while he was there. Sharif, now living in exile in Turkey, was one of the top leaders of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an Afghan-based group that was listed in 2004 as a terrorist organization, though this designation was removed in 2015 after it participated in the 2011 U.S.-NATO-supported armed revolt that toppled Qaddafi’s secular national government.

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