Could It Be a Super Villain's Work?

If you are unaware of the loss of a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 (flight 370) that was last heard from about an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur on a flight to Beijing, China then you must not have turned on a TV or listened to a radio news show for the last week. The transponder stopped pinging and the mystery began. Nothing but mixed signals and unconfirmed reports since. The Malaysian military claimed it picked it up on radar and tracked it. Yet, this was not confirmed by the Malaysian government.

The US is helping in the search and now we have reports that the engines on the plane have their own transponders which attempts to link up with a satellite if the engines are running. Allegedly, these signals went on for some 4-5 hours. Which means the plane was not down at sea, as was originally suspected.

Speculation abounds... Now the story involves the possibility that the plane was the victim of piracy, that it was taken and flown to some unknown location for some unknown purpose.

This reeks of the plots of numerous Hollywood movies. All it lacks is some meglomaniac with virtually unlimited funds with a secret army. Perhaps SMERSH is behind this and Putin is giggling maniacally in some dacha outside Moscow as he moves flags and toy soldiers around a huge map laid out on the floor.

Or maybe it's the Koch brothers and some evil scheme to take over the world.

I doubt any of that, it's the stuff of movies and spy novels by Ian Fleming. But I learned something... the Chinese have at least 9 satellites that can be used for surveillance. I learned that because it was reported that they sent 9 satellites to search for that missing airliner. You don't think they'd send all of their satellites, do you?

Meanwhile, the Russians have the Crimea in their hands, are threatening the rest of Ukraine and Putin seem bent on re-establishing the old Soviet Union and there doesn't seem to be much we can do about it beyond sanctions, the CIA is spying on the Senate (or has been) which now makes the Democrats angry though they couldn't be bothered by the NSA intercepting emails and phone call data, what happened in Benghazi on September 11th, 2012, the IRS targeting conservative groups, or the fiasco that was called "Fast and Furious."

It's a strange world in which we now live.