Apparently my mind loathes the sort of cognitive dissonance imposed by an unsolved mystery so much that it will "self-correct" itself.

If you would have interviewed me candidly, in person, I would have told you that they finally found the wreckage and bodies just a few weeks ago, somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Yep, I dreampt it, then shelved it away with actual memories, accepting it as truth. My brain faked news footage, complete with a news ticker and everything, of boats anchored near floating pieces of the fuselage, claiming the recovery of several tens of fish-eaten skeletons.

So I see this headline, scoff, google "MH370 found", and realize that I've been had by myself (not the first time)!

I'm also anxious to see this debated. Some excellent sleuthing work here by Wise, but in his own words:

Why, exactly, would Putin want to steal a Malaysian passenger plane? I had no idea. Maybe he wanted to demonstrate to the United States, which had imposed the first punitive sanctions on Russia the day before, that he could hurt the West and its allies anywhere in the world. Maybe what he was really after were the secrets of one of the plane’s passengers. Maybe there was something strategically crucial in the hold. Or maybe he wanted the plane to show up unexpectedly somewhere someday, packed with explosives. There’s no way to know. That’s the thing about MH370 theory-making: It’s hard to come up with a plausible motive for an act that has no apparent beneficiaries.

Is Malaysia considered "west"? The majority of the passengers were Chinese, and Putin's pretty deep in bed with China at the moment. All of these motivations are pretty baseless, but at least the author acknowledges that. In fact, this lends legitimacy to the rest of his suggestions.