Attempt To Kill Argentine VP Not an Internal Matter: Neo-Nazi Pattern Emerges

An attempted assassination Sept. 1 of Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, in front of the apartment building where she lives in Buenos Aires, left the nation in shock. It led to unprecedented mass demonstrations of support for her on Sept. 2 in the capital—reportedly of 1 million people—and in cities around the country. The attempted assassination failed when the would-be assassin—the 35-year-old Fernando Sabag Montiel, born in Brazil but a naturalized Argentine—attempted to fire two shots at Fernández’s face at point-blank range, but his loaded pistol jammed.

President Alberto Fernández gave a nationally televised speech on the night of Sept. 1, declaring the attack on the Vice President was “the most serious incident since we recovered democracy” in 1983, one of “extreme institutional gravity.” He announced the country would effectively shut down Sept. 2 so that people could go out on the streets to support “peace and harmony.” The country is now operating in emergency mode.

It would be a mistake for Argentines and foreign observers alike, to attribute this event to internal politics. The pattern that is emerging from initial investigations is the same one seen in the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York on May 14 of this year, or in the massacre at a Christchurch, New Zealand mosque in March 2019, in which the perpetrators were neo-Nazi admirers of Ukraine’s Azov Battalion.

The lumpenized, intermittently employed Montiel is tattooed with the symbols of the Nazi Azov Battalion—the Black Sun (Sonnenrad), the Azov swastika, as well as the German Iron Cross.

NATO’s CCD Escalates Drive To Target Opponents of War as ‘Infoterrorists’

On Sept. 1 and 2, representatives of NATO, the U.S. State Department, and other European nations gathered again in Kiev under the auspices of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) and its now-notorious Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD), to accelerate their plans to impose dictatorial thought-control over the globe, in the name of fighting “Russian disinformation.” This is the operation which EIR has demanded be shut down in its just-released dossier, titled “Kiev’s ‘Info Terrorist’ List: ‘Global NATO’ Orders a Hit on Advocates of Peace.”

The occasion was an international roundtable on “Combatting Disinformation in the Conditions of Military Operations.” The CCD reports that ambassadors and representatives of 24 countries took part, and named 18 of the participants. Among the names released were those of two “senior experts” from NATO’s Strategic Communications Center, and diplomats and “experts” from the U.S., France, Germany, Sweden, Poland, and Canada, as well as the Baltic nations.

Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, and CCD acting head Andriy Shapovalov were the hosts. Shapovalov set the terms for debate:

“Today, our goal is to form an international hub for countering information threats at the national and international level.” He insisted that international law must recognize “info-terrorism” as a crime, and anyone committing such a crime be declared an “information terrorist” and subjected to measures such as are applied to actual terrorists. “Only in this way will we be able to effectively protect Ukrainians and citizens of partner states from information crimes, in particular, information terrorism,” Shapovalov said, according to the summary reports published by the CCD and the NSDC.

Danilov called the “information front” as important in winning war as fighting on the battlefield. He stated outright that the CCD had been created in preparation for the war they were planning. “We understood in advance that there would be a war; that’s why in March 2021, the Center for Countering Disinformation was created by Presidential Decree,” he said.

Judge Rejects Biden Plan For Half of Seized Afghan Funds To Go to 9/11 Victims

U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn argued Aug. 26 that the families of 9/11 victims cannot sue to claim billions of dollars of Afghan funds frozen by the United States. Of the $7 billion in seized funds held in the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, President Biden said he would direct half for aid to Afghanistan and the other half to 9/11 families and others who have won legal judgments against the Taliban.

But Judge Netburn argued that the $3.5 billion could not be used in this way, first, because “Da Afghanistan Bank is the central bank of a foreign state. This means it is entitled to immunity from jurisdiction and its property is entitled to immunity from execution. Second, even if there was jurisdiction, the court is constitutionally restrained” from authorizing use of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act to take the funds. “Only the President may recognize the government of a foreign sovereign nation. Courts may not do so directly or by implication,” she argued. “

Netburn’s analysis is not the final ruling, but it has drawn support from a member of the steering committee of the September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. “As the daughter of a 9/11 victim,” writes Leila Murphy, “it makes me sick to think that Afghan victims of atrocity are being deprived of necessary resources during a time of great need. I am relieved that the judge has taken a step toward the only legally and morally correct approach—making the entire $7 billion available to Afghans to deal with the economic crisis we helped cause.”

Ukraine Admits Planning War Against Russia Since December 2019

Oleksii Danilov, Secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, stated on Aug. 26 that the Zelensky regime had launched its preparations for war on Russia with its deliberate rejection of any compromise options offered in the last Minsk Agreement session in December 2019.

“We have been preparing for a war, and preparing very massively. And the fact, that as of today, we have already weathered 180 days of the war and we are on our own territory, we haven’t yielded it, this indeed shows that we have been gearing up for the war,” Danilov told the NTA TV channel, according to TASS.

“And our preparations for the war began after Dec. 8-9, 2019.... When on Dec. 8-9, 2019 in Paris, our country’s President Zelensky did not agree to those conditions offered to us by Russia, France, Germany.... He said: ‘No, friends, there will be no Minsk-3, we will stand up for our country.’ The following day we began to realize that a big war with the Russian Federation was imminent,” Danilov told NTA.

Indian FM Jaishankar Supports Argentine Bid For BRICS Membership

Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar visited Argentina Aug. 25-26, the last leg of an Ibero-American tour which also took him to Brazil and Paraguay. In Buenos Aires, he met first with President Alberto Fernández, who was accompanied by Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero, to discuss the potential for expanded trade and cooperation in a variety of fields, with a goal of surpassing the $6 billion in bilateral trade reached in 2021. Following the meeting, Cafiero commented that one of the topics of discussion was Argentina’s possible entry into the BRICS (Brazil Russia, India China, South Africa), “to strengthen an agenda for the Global South without the polarization” that adds to world tension.

For his part, Jaishankar noted, that “in terms of the polarization seen today, countries like India and Argentina that have an independent point of view can work more closely together.” A communiqué issued by Argentina’s Foreign Ministry reported that Jaishankar “ratified his country’s support for Argentina’s entry into the BRICS, to contribute in this way to strengthening and amplifying a voice in defense of the interests of the developing world and the Global South, in the context of great world uncertainty and polarization.”

World Food Program Issues New Alert on Global Food Crisis

The UN World Food Program (WFP) issued a new warning on Aug. 19 regarding world hunger in the face of drought conditions in many parts of the world, where the situation in the Horn of Africa is particularly dire. The WFP website noted:

“As many as 828 million people go to bed hungry every night, the number of those facing acute food insecurity has soared—from 135 million to 345 million—since 2019. A total of 50 million people in 45 countries are teetering on the edge of famine....

“From the Central American Dry Corridor and Haiti, through the Sahel, Central African Republic, South Sudan and then eastwards to the Horn of Africa, Syria, Yemen and all the way to Afghanistan, there is a ring of fire stretching around the world where conflict and climate shocks are driving millions of people to the brink of starvation.”

WFP calls the current global situation a “seismic hunger crisis.” “The world needs to act now to protect the most vulnerable communities from the threat of widespread famine in the Horn of Africa,” WFP Executive Director David Beasley said on Aug. 18. He added, “There is still no end in sight to this drought crisis, so we must get the resources needed to save lives and stop people plunging into catastrophic levels of hunger and starvation.” The WFP estimates it requires an extraordinary $22.2 billion to reach 152 million people in 2022, with many potential donor nations facing crises themselves, making it challenging for them to donate funds.