Dr Kamal Wickremasinghe Courtesy The Daily News

Samuel Huntington, the neocon who presented theories that formed the foundations of the US and South African Apartheid government policy for decades, was also known as the Harvard political scientist without any apparent grasp of, or regard for, adopting a sound ‘methodology’ in formulating advice, and even scantier regard for any ethical issues associated with them.

As examples, Huntington advised the Apartheid regime of South Africa to reform” apartheid rather than eliminate it by increasing the repressive power of the state using duplicity, deceit, faulty assumptions and purposeful blindness.” Huntington’s advice to the neocon-controlled regime of Ronald Reagan was to – … sell intervention or other military action in such a way as to create the misimpression that it is the Soviet Union that you are fighting. That is what the United States has been doing ever since the Truman Doctrine.”

The anti-Russian and anti-Vladimir Putin propaganda blitz that followed the downing of a Malaysia Airlines plane over Ukraine last week killing 298 people, ostensibly by a missile, showed that the neocon-controlled US regimes still religiously follow Huntington’s advice.

The resonating noise from the Western corporate media echo chamber – always backed by unnamed” US-Army and Intelligence sources – points to a campaign orchestrated to establish the falsehood that the pro-Russian” rebels fighting a brutal separatist war in the northeast regions of Ukraine” were the perpetrator of the crime, with Putin’s complicity”.

The wire services and US television networks led by CNN have been playing the multiple roles of judge, jury and executioner to demonise President Putin in a manner unprecedented since the disgraceful, lie-based campaigns aimed at Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.

Key questions such as, just how the Malaysian Airlines MH-17 appeared in the area and the reasons for the flight to divert from its usual trajectory to fly over the restricted airspace are conveniently brushed aside in the neocon narrative of the dastardly massacre; Those interested need to visit the Malaysia Airlines official website to learn that MH-17 was directed” by Ukraine’s air traffic controllers to fly 500 metres lower than normal when the aircraft entered Ukrainian airspace!

The world has not been informed of the reasons for the strange” order by the National Security and Defence Council of the neocon-puppet government in Kiev who had previously banned all flights over the region, aiming to provide adequate safety and security for all flights of civil aircraft”. The fact that other leading airlines such as the Australian carrier Qantas, Cathay Pacific, Korean Air Lines and Asiana Airlines haven’t used the route for a few months adds to the intrigue.

The propaganda blitz began while the MH-17 debris was still smouldering

Barely 24 hours after the shooting-down of the Malaysian Airline plane, in a damning display of lack of humanity, and indeed any respect for the dead, President Barack Obama gave a press conference clearly designed to start the venomous anti-Russia and anti-Putin campaign.

Obama declared – Evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by a surface to air missile launched from an area controlled by Russian separatists inside Ukraine. We know that these separatists have received a steady flow of support from Russia. This includes arms and training, heavy weapons and anti-aircraft weapons” – statement by Obama was in fact an outline sketch of the major elements of the blitz executed by other US officials and the media, incessantly for the next week.

On Sunday’s Talk Shaw circuit, Secretary of State John Kerry announced the case, tentatively, that pro-Moscow separatists in Ukraine were responsible. Kerry was careful to ‘hedge his bets’ by qualifying his charges that a final conclusion” hadn’t been reached but there was A build-up of extraordinary circumstantial evidence” said Kerry. He promised a more definitive assessment by the US military and intelligence community” by the end of the weekend.

Kerry’s grounds for charging the separatists with the crime – based on such evidence as flimsy as separatists bragging on social media about the downing and then taking their posts down, the presence of gun-toting militants at the debris field were most unconvincing to inquiring minds. His reference to an Associated Press journalist witnessing a missile launcher in rebel-held territory close to the crash site was derisive; but the neocon aim was to feed the chooks”.

By Monday Obama appeared to have assumed that the neocon charges of rebel culpability had found credence when he called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to compel the separatists from hampering the investigation”, a charge later proven to be unfounded with the handover of the two black boxes by a senior rebel leader to the Malaysian investigators. He also made the ridiculously dishonest demand for a credible investigation and to end the misinformation” and propaganda”.

The next stage of the campaign based on so-called technical” evidence was led by those claiming to be defence specialists” with suggestions that the plane may have been shot down by a vehicle-mounted Russian-built Buk” missile system, obviously implying that Moscow supplied rebels in eastern Ukraine with anti-aircraft equipment. The charge was supported” by a video loaded on You Tube of a rocket launcher leaving the likely launch site, with one surface-to-air missile missing. Kerry continued to attempt to highlight a Russian involvement” by harping on the Russian support including the arming and training of the rebels, and demanding that Russia do the things necessary” to bring them under control.

In a fraud reminiscent of the ‘doctored’ recordings of communications between the pilot of a Soviet military plane who mistakenly shot down the Korean civilian plane 007 in 1983 presented by the US to the UN Security Council (UNSC), the Ukrainian security services claimed to have recorded a rebel commander telling a Russian military intelligence officer that they shot down a plane; Providing an incredible example of false testimony, shortly before Kerry’s television appearances, the US Embassy in Kyiv announced that the Audio data provided to the press by the Ukrainian security service had been confirmed authentic by intelligence community analysts”.

The neocon-owned wire services (Reuters, Associated Press, Agency France-Presse, Bloomberg and others) all reported – sourced from unnamed government officials – that Russia is suspected of providing separatists with the anti-aircraft systems that downed the plane, drawing a direct link between President Vladimir Putin and the attack.

Support for the charade from across the Atlantic came in the form of an opinion piece on the Sunday Times by the British Prime Minister David Cameron, urging President Putin to find a way to make the crash site more accessible and calm the strife between Ukraine and the rebels, with threats of fundamental change of the West’s approach to Russia” if Putin does not comply!

Inconsistencies in the incriminatory” evidence of Russian involvement

Russia made key arguments to suggest that the US puppet government of Ukraine, rather than the rebels, was responsible for taking down the Malaysian Boeing, pointing to several glaring inconsistencies in the evidence against the rebels – supposedly incriminatory – released through social media.

One of the fatal inconsistencies of the neocons’ case for the culpability of the rebels was that the national governor of the Donetsk region had admitted that the separatists were in possession of just one BUK missile unit, that was not operational – even if it was, it would be unable to reach a height of over 30,000 feet without central radar guidance which the rebels did not possess. The rebels have said that they only have shoulder-launched heat-seeking missiles fired from a portable air defence system, that can only reach up to 4,000 metres.

Lieutenant-General Andrei Kartopolov of Russia’s defence ministry challenged the American side” to produce the satellite images they claimed were confirming the missile was launched by the rebels, to the international community. He also announced that Russian radar surveillance had intercepted the activity of a Ukrainian Buk-M1 battery’s radar system in a populated area of Donetsk throughout the day on July 17 when the plane went down.

The Russian Ambassador to Malaysia Lyudmila Vorobyeva described the Obama administration’s claims of Russian involvement groundless and charged that Ukraine’s government could be responsible for shooting down the jet, reiterating that a Ukrainian fighter jet was flying no more than three miles from MH-17 before it was shot down. The US claims they have evidence of what happened, where is this evidence?” Vorobyeva asked. She went on to say, In Russia we are not playing these games that our Western counterparts are engaging in, blaming and accusing others without any evidence; She called for a thorough investigation that could produce evidence of responsibility for the tragedy.”

The Russian stance has always been the demand for a full and thorough investigation into the dastardly downing of the passenger plane. Russia proved its commitment by fully supporting a UN resolution proposed by Australia, calling for a full, thorough and independent international investigation” into the incident, demanding that those responsible be held to account and that all states co-operate fully with efforts to establish accountability”.

Who would have benefited from the shooting down of the plane?

The crucial need in determining the most likely perpetrator of this heinous crime is to establish a possible motive by asking the question as to Who would have benefited from the incident?” – a review of the week’s other major news helps in answering that particular question.

Just as the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH-17 was beginning to fall out of the sky with its 298 passengers and crew, thousands of Israeli soldiers backed by tanks were beginning a ground offensive in Gaza following 10 days of air, naval and artillery barrages.

The Israeli military onslaught on civilians in Gaza was masked by the perverse propaganda aimed at justifying it as an operation aimed at punishing terrorists – a response against rocket attacks on Israel by Hamas; In reality it is a ruthless assault of unlimited duration, extent, and intensity.

The Israeli offensive has so far mounted a Palestinian toll of over 600 civilians – mostly women and 121 children – since the Israeli aggression began on July 8 there have been more than 5,000 casualties over represented by more than 900 children. More than 500 homes have been destroyed by Israeli air strikes making 100,000 people homeless.

The MH-17 crash undoubtedly had the desired effect of diverting international attention from the launch of the Israeli invasion of Gaza, with the assistance orchestrated by the largely neocon-owned Western corporate media.

But the best chance of finding proof depends on a full and complete, objective investigation, as Russia has demanded.

It is notable that the MH-17 crash comes in the wake of another Malaysian Airlines flight that seems to have simply vanished in to thin air back in March – Flight MH-370 – carrying engineers, designers, prototypes, specifications and a chip foundry for the world’s smallest microchip, the KL series needed to build drones and mini-robots among its 239 passengers.

Hopefully, any investigation in to the current atrocity will be designed, managed and operated by trustworthy parties and individuals chosen for integrity.

One of the biggest risks in conducting a ‘useful’ inquiry would be the possibility of US government and its intelligence agencies submitting falsified evidence, as has been blatantly done by them in many instances before the UNSC.

Alvin A. Snyder, a former director of the US Information Agency’s television and film division, writes in his 1995 book, Warriors of Disinformation the disgraceful manner in which the accidental shooting down of the Korean Air Lines Flight 007 by the Soviet Union on September 1, 1983 was portrayed as the deliberate downing of a civilian passenger plane; Snyder provides the details of how USIA Director Charles Z. Wick formed a special task force to devise ways to achieve this objective.

On Sept. 6, 1983, the Reagan administration went so far as to present a doctored transcript – of 32 seconds of a 50 minute intercept – that edited out the exculpatory evidence – to the UNSC to convey the message that the Soviet Union had cold-bloodedly carried out a barbaric act. Ominously, similar transcripts have already been produced by the US and the Kiev puppet government, purporting to represent conversations between the rebels and Russian officials.

Following the Korean Flight 007 incident, the venerable British-American host of the ‘Nightline’ program on ABC News, Ted Koppel, famously noted – ‘This has been one of those occasions when there is very little difference between what is churned out by the U.S. government propaganda organs and by the commercial broadcasting networks.’

Nothing, unfortunately, has changed since 1983 and things have progressively worsened as the 2003 Iraq and 2011 Libyan episodes have proved.

Attempts to alter perceptions is a key element of the neocon modus operandi and the 298 deaths arising from Malaysian Airlines Flight MH-17 is another testimony of the helplessness of the world in the face of the ‘tenacity of evil’.