Did you catch Moammar Qaddafi’s 90-minute speech at the U.N. yesterday?
Noting that he was suffering from jet lag, the Libyan leader went off on a stream of consciousness rant that included a reference to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
In the latest conspiracy theory, Qaddafi laid the blame for Kennedy’s death on the Israelis, a new one for those of us who have been reading about Mafia and Cuban and CIA plots for more than 40 years.
The night before the Qaddafi speech I watched an advance DVD of a documentary that examines folks who have been swept up in the major conspiracy theories of the past 50 years — “New World Order” (IFC).
The film set for release on Oct. 13 takes us back to Nov. 22, 1963, and the infamous “grassy knoll” (above) where the president was shot. It then moves to the supposed contemporary global conspiracies hatched at the annual Bilderberg Conference where politicos and businessmen meet in private.
A good portion of the documentary is devoted to people who are convinced the 9/11 attack was part of another vast conspiracy.
Along the way we get mini-biographies of interesting characters such as the talk radio host Alex Jones — who makes Glenn Beck look sedate — and follow them to Bilderberg conferences and ground zero.
The movie earns points for presenting these possessed characters without too much sarcasm, but it seems facile to throw all of these conspiracy theorists into one big pot. To me, there is a big difference between possible non-Warren Commission explanations for how and why JFK was killed and the bizarre 9/11 theories involving the positioning of bombs throughout the Word Trade Center and someone linking their detonation to a perfectly coordinated attack by two hijacked commercial jets.
“New World Order” would have us believe that all conspiracy theories are created equal.
