Conspiracy Corner – A Week Of It

At 7:45am every Thursday morning, Matthew phones in his thoughts on the conspiracy theory of the week to Zac and the audience of bFM’s Breakfast Show.

Since recording the segment below, more news—which just helps to obfuscate things further—has emerged about the possible fate of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. It’s quite possible I’ll be revisiting the story this week (although if my laryngitis hasn’t passed, I might just be hissing into the microphone more unintelligibly than usual).

Still, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 wasn’t the sole topic of discussion last week; I spent some time talking about the dodgy dealings of Aotearoa’s politicians and went on a nice, long rant about how if they want is to trust them, then they probably should start acting in a trustworthy manner. Worth a lesson if you want to hear me being sincere mere moments before coming down with tonsillitis. Connected? Probably not!

Notes/script

The mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370; is it a conspiracy? Well, if it turns out to be terrorism, yes; terrorist activity is typically undertaken in secret towards some end. However, it’s just not clear that thee plane the flight went down or disappeared because of terrorists being onboard is in the pool of credible explanations; everything about the disappearance of flight MH370 is weird. It just disappeared off the radar and whilst the two passengers traveling on stolen passports is suspicious, if it was an act of terror, no one has stepped forward to take responsibility. Whilst it’s tempting to think that the flight disappeared because someone or some organisation wanted it to, we just don’t have enough evidence, and it might be years before we do; the blackbox belonging to the Air France flight which disappeared over the Atlantic was recovered some two years after the event.

Given this is a pre-record I’m imagining whatever I’ve just said will be completely out of date by the time of broadcast. I was going to make a passing reference to “Lost” at this point, but neither it nor the show ended up being particularly funny, so this meta-reference is all you get. I’m going to insert a few seconds of silence here for all our sakes, even though dead air is the anathema of good radio.

Meanwhile, dodgy dealings here in Aotearoa seem to indicate mysterious goings on in our halls of power. David Cunliffe’s latest gaff, hiding the identity of the donors to his leadership election via a trust, somewhat goes to show that we’re heading for a third term National government, since Labour seems utterly inept no matter who is theoretically running the party. Meanwhile, questions are being asked about John Key’s dinners with Antoine.

Tony Astle, the apparently celebrity chef who runs Antoines run two fundraising dinners for the National Party which brought in a whopping $160,000 dollars, and as the payments were lump sums, the identities of the donors is not evident. The Prime Minister thinks there;s nothing wrong with this arrangement; the notably right-wing, libertarian Mr. Astle did it out of love and the only reason why it all looks suspicious is that he took the monies of the dinners first and then donated the proceeds to the National Party. However, as some commentators have point out, it’s a bit of a pickle for the Prime Minister to lambast Cunliffe for his anonymous donations whilst being au faix about monies given to the National Party in a somewhat similar circumstance.

Add to this the Oraivda scandal Judith Collins, the current Minister of Justice, is currently in. She claims she popped into his husband’s milk company in China for a quick glass of lactose and it wasn’t her fault the company made it out to be an endorsement, whilst the opposition is pointing out that her so-called quick trip was scheduled, well advertised and she didn’t inform the proper authorities on her return about it, which looks suspiciously like the Minister trying to have things both ways. Frankly, with Cunliffe’s tricky dealings, the Prime Minister’s weird attitude to the Antoine’s donation, you can see why people are suspicious generally of the people who rule in our name. This kind of shady dealing, even if simply the result of incompetence, just makes it seem all the more likely that more terrible things are going on behind the scenes. Our political masters do not do themselves credit and seem to, some days, actively go out of their way to make it seem likely they are involved in conspiracies, whether big or small.