MH370 - Theory by Yoichi Shimatsu

Is MH370 The Latest Casualty Of The Pentagon's Pivot To Asia?
By Yoichi Shimatsu
3-20-14

The closer that millions of online sleuths come to tracing the trajectory and destination of the missing Malaysian Airlines jetliner, the likelier it becomes that the National Security Agency and CIA will resort to disinformation, including the planting of falsified evidence, to throw off their pursuers in what increasingly appears to be an electronic hijacking by those spy agencies.

More layers of the ongoing cover-up are being hatched now that eyewitnesses at the Huvadhu Atoll, a diving area in the southern Maldives,, have reported sightings of "a low-flying jumbo jet.: South of Huvadhu Atoll, the closest U.S. military facility is Diego Garcia in the Chagos Islands. The joint U.S. Navy submarine and Air Force facility has underground hangers huge enough to conceal B-52 bombers, a convenient hiding place for a Boeing-777….

Pieces of the wreckage spotted by US ally Australia further south of Diego Garcia could be a decoy site, salted with physical evidence of airplane parts that have been moved surreptitiously….

Malaysia Targeted by Air-Sea Battle Plan

The case of a MH370 has been solely focused on the possibility of a route diversion by the on-board crew. Completely ignored in press releases and news reports so far is the elephant in the room, or perhaps a better analogy of a Great White Shark in the bathtub - the massive U.S. Navy and Air Force presence in the seas and airspace surrounding Malaysia.

There is absolutely no way that a flying object as large as a Boeing-777 could evade the 24-hour watch over the South China Sea and the Andaman Sea by NSA-USAF spy satellites, high-tech AEGIS destroyers, the new class of Littoral Combat Ships and P3 surveillance planes.

The reasons for targeting Malaysia becomes clearer by examining the bigger picture of an aggressive military build-up in the Southeast Asia region by the combined armed forces of the US, Japan and Australia under Washington's "strategic pivot to Asia" policy. This geopolitical strategy is carried out by the Pentagon and its military allies through the Air-Sea Battle Concept, which disperses Navy and Air Force fighter jets across a network of civilian airfields and secret landing strips.

Beijing is not the only target of the Air-Sea Battle Concept. Malaysia runs a close second to China on Washington's enemies list. Flight MH370, destined for Beijing, is the literal embodiment of the economic alliance and political relationship between : China and Malaysia, making the airliner a most convenient target.

Pressuring Kuala Lumpur

Located on the geostrategic Malacca Strait, Malaysia is a predominantly Muslim oil-producing nation with a "Look East" policy allying itself with Japan and China. Last year the Malaysian and Chinese governments established an economic alliance, which includes Asian access to world oil reserves. In the eyes of Washington and its allies, these are sufficient grounds to treat Kuala Lumpur as an adversary….

Warnings from Washington were repeatedly given to Malaysia over the past few years. In late August 2013, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel flew to Kuala Lumpur last year to pressure the Defence Ministry to cooperated with the strategic pivot through joint naval-and-air exercises directed against Chinese forces in the Malaysian-claimed islets in the Spratley group. These spits of rock and sand located off of Sabah, the Malaysian state in northwest Borneo, have names longer than their diameters, for instance, Investigator Reef and Mariveles Reef.

At the same time, a mystery force led by a claimant to the title of Sultan of Saah send a group of Filipino gunmen, allegedly trained by a retired American commando, attacked Sabah with a series of shootouts with the Malaysian Army. US counterinsurgency troops happened to be operating in the southern Islamic-dominated areas of the Philippines, where the "sultan" recruited his desperado guerrillas….

How to Knock Out Aviation Electronics

The flight paths of MH370 were not across uncharted waters, as news reports suggest, but over some of the world's most heavily watched maritime channels. As soon as the jet lifted off Kuala Lumpur, its communications signals and radar image were picked up by US Navy signals intercepts officers stationed at Changi Navy Base and Sembawang dockyard in Singapore, which are effectively bases for the 7th Fleet. Triple coverage would have been provided by USAF listening posts at Halim Air Base near Jakarta.

The Malaysian airliner would then been picked up by the many USN ships patrolling the South China Sea, in and around the Spratley Islands. Besides AEGIS radar ships, the Navy has dispatched a new class of Littoral Combat Ships, including the USS Freedom, to the pivot.

Beamed from one of these ships, a powerful type of radar called X-band or narrow-aperture radar could easily have disabled all of the planes. The advanced radar system, now used in electromagnetic warfare to knock out missile and planes, led to the unintended blackout of Los Angeles Airport (LAX) in April 2004….

As reported in the news, MH370 was steered toward the Indian Ocean by the insertion of a computer command into its navigation system. Since at least the 911 incident and possibly earlier, Boeing passenger jets can be remote-controlled by the US intelligence agencies. Any recently built American-built aircraft can now be electronically commandeered and operated like a drone.

The only question is whether the American government is willing to engage in such a reckless disregard innocent lives. That point has already been proven in countless drone strikes against civilian compounds in places like Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, the Horn of Africa and many unreported locales. Though illegal and immoral, death from the skies is official policy. Without any effective restraints, the Pentagon can easily eliminate the passengers of Malaysian Airlines.

Perhaps it is not too late to save any surviving hostages, but that task would require a commando team capable of rescuing them from inside a heavily guarded U.S. Military base in the center of the Indian Ocean and flying them to India, the only coastal country in the region secure enough from a Pentagon counterstrike. Rambo, are you ready?

Flying Under the Radar

After its electronic systems were knocked out, MH370 made a sharp left turn toward the Kra Peninsula along the thinly populated and insurgency-troubled Malaysia-Thai border. The jet dove to 6,000 feet and possibly lower, enabling it to evade detection by flying below the ground radar. Its path, however, was briefly picked up from the northern side, where the Thai Air Force bases a fleet of Saab jet fighters….

Then MH370 crossed over the Strait of Malacca and the Andaman Sea, which is crowded with commercial vessels and oil tankers. That particular section of the strategic passage is constantly monitored by NSA-CIA surveillance stations assigned to protect Indonesia's Sumatra offshore oil platforms operated by Exxon and BP. Just north of Phuket is the Thai Navy's 3rd Headquarters, where American servicemen keep track of all ship and airplane traffic over the Andaman Sea.

It is impossible, in short, with so many radar facilities and airbases in that oil-rich sea for any jetliner, especially along an unscheduled air route, to go unspotted. So somebody is lying, and perhaps everybody is lying.

The Impunity of Criminal States

The cargo manifest for MH370 has yet to be released…
The other possible motive is the human assets aboard the jet. The passenger manifest does not disclose the occupation or rank associated with the names. Was there a VIP on board of extreme high value to Western intelligence agencies?

The lesson of MH370 is that the Great Powers act in secrecy and with impunity. Wars of strategic interest are no longer waged openly but are conducted by proxy armies, mercenaries with guns, propaganda agents placed inside of human-rights groups, media blackmail, social media manipulation and spies in the sky….

The all-powerful hunters will become the frightened hunted, as is starting to happen now as millions of online users narrow down the destination of MH370.

Yoichi Shimatsu, former editor of the Japan Times Weekly, is a Hong Kong-based science and technology writer.

PS. I have removed some of the elaborations to shorten this long article.