Joanne McNeil: Strange plots are food for thought

What happened to the passengers of flight MH 370? Photo/Thinkstock

Last we heard of Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370, which vanished mysteriously, mid-flight in March, an international fleet was searching the deserted waters and deep dark seabed of the Southern Ocean 2000km off Western Australia for wreckage.

Speculation included everything from pilot suicide, shot down by unidentified foreign military and terrorist hijacking to leaky unidentified cargo or an electrical fire overcoming all on board with toxic fumes. Then the trail went cold, upstaged by fresh alarums and side shows with more clear-cut villains and conclusive plots.

The latest conspiracy theorist to cross my threshold claims the aforementioned unidentified cargo (labelled lithium batteries) was actually some fiendish new weapon, accompanied by three passengers with essential information on its operation, all bound for China.

In what begins to sound like a B-grade action movie plot, my informant reckons the plane was hijacked by the CIA and flown to a US military installation on the Maldives Islands to stop the apocalyptic weapon falling into Chinese hands.

Who knows what happened to the passengers? In the movie they might have been shot, drugged, turned into zombies, moved to Guantanamo or given new identities and sworn to secrecy because the future of civilisation depends on it. It seems unlikely.

But then unfortunately the kind of boys-own world where patriarchal, militaristic super powers stuck in Cold War mode stockpile weapons on grand hypocritical pretexts appears to be the kind of time-warp we inhabit still, so I suppose the theory is as credible as any.

Another ongoing mystery is how cricket ever became associated with fair play. Apparently it was a disreputable, corrupt and devious game associated with mob violence until laws were introduced in the 18th century, after which crusty old fools thundered sermonising nonsense from English pulpits about cricket being "a moral training that encourages a love of fair play that operates far outside the cricket field", which was probably another example, along with music and architecture, of corporate religion hijacking popular culture to promote its own agenda. Recent revelations of alleged match-fixing in the contemporary professional game, now a product rather than a pastime, are no surprise.

Top sportspeople (pawns in every code) have been promoted so successfully, by corporate sports bodies hijacking popular culture for profit, as such God-like, saintly role models and leaders that it is considered scandalous when they reveal feet of clay.

And speaking of old fools the trial of entertainer Rolf Harris, 84, on alleged historic sex charges and the vilification of US billionaire and sports team owner Donald Sterling, 80, for alleged racist remarks stink of the selective exhibition of celebrity scapegoats.

Of course racists, warmongers and sexual predators are indefensible but they were hardly rare.

I am old enough to remember when most of the patronising dead white warmongering heterosexual males - who ran the show unchallenged before the peace movement, feminism and human rights emerged in the latter 20th century - took it for granted the right to exploit women and other alleged inferiors for their own purposes was definitely cricket. Were every such culprit to be tried in the expensive justice systems of the Western world now though, we might as well kiss the global economy goodbye.