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Glenn Greenwald Speaks at McGill U. Exposing Growing Surveillance State and Saudi’s Sponsorship of 9/11

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(CRC- Oct. 24) McGill University featured journalist Glenn Greenwald on October 23, with over an hour and a half speech on the surveillance state that has become more entrenched since September 11, 2001, not only in North America but also in Europe. This speech came at an especially sensitive time, since the Ottawa shooting that had left one soldier dead had occurred a day earlier, and many media outlets were quick to attack Greenwald for having published an article a mere 40 minutes before the shooting warning that it was "expected" that acts of violence would be unleashed against Western nations given the war-like imperial behaviour of those governments towards a large section of the Muslim world.

In his article, Greenwald also made the point that legislation had just been introduced into the Canadian parliament to expand the powers of CSIS and CSEC which should be taken under consideration when evaluating the real motives for such attacks. At the time of his writing, Greenwald was using the example of the Canadian soldier that was killed near Montreal, in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, several days prior by Martin Couture-Rouleau, a 25-year old French-Canadian who had ‘converted’ to Islam.

The timeliness of Greenwald’s article and McGill lecture before and after the Ottawa shooting undoubtedly resulted in a much larger audience than would have come under "ordinary" circumstances, with a full attendance of 600 people (the seating having had been totally filled a full 20 minutes before the lecture even began)!

The Committee for the Republic of Canada had the opportunity to get one question in. The organizer (asked about the resolution introduced in the U.S. Congress (HR428) by Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) to declassify the 28 pages of the 2002 Joint Congressional Committee Inquiry into 9/11 that pertain to Saudi Arabia involvement in 9/11 and asked for Greenwald to comment. Greenwald responded by bringing up the fact that a leading chorus of active and former statesmen, exemplified by Sen. Bob Graham, who have read those pages, have asserted that it does implicate the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 9/11, and that changes the entire narrative of everything we are doing in the Middle East. It had a very good effect on the audience of mostly young people, many of whom you could hear the tone of amazement in their voice.

After the event, several CRC organizers and two contacts were able to distribute about 400 leaflets on 9/11 and Canada to a very open audience.

It is notable that the coverage of the Greenwald event by CTV fraudulently painted the picture that the presentation was only focused upon his acknowledgment of the rage which was caused by his recent article which had been published 40 minutes before the Ottawa shooting and featured a critique of Canadian foreign and domestic spying and war. The reality is that such an issue was only introduced by Greenwald in the first 10 minutes of his presentation of one and a half hour duration. The rest of the presentation involved a valuable critique and analysis of the emerging surveillance state, cultural manipulation, psychological warfare and more. [Mek]