In the run-up to an annual Israeli Independence Day celebration at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, university president Sally Kornbluth assured student organizers that an unauthorized anti-Israel encampment—located in the same area where the Jewish students planned to hold their event—would be cleared in time. It wasn't, prompting school officials to walk back their promise and press the Jewish students to reschedule or relocate the event, messages obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show.
As an alternative to a primary election, Illinois law allowed for a party to get its candidates on the ballot for General Assembly spots by party slating procedure, along with collection of a requisite number of public signatures on nominating positions. A number of Republican challengers have been proceeding accordingly.
But over the course of just 30 hours on the first days of this month, the Democratic supermajority changed the law to retroactively disallow that procedure, thereby barring challengers from the November ballot as Republican party candidates.
In yet another damning development for the 'safe and effective' crowd, AstraZeneca has announced the worldwide withdrawal of its Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, branded as Vaxzevria, due to a rare but serious side effect. This decision marks the end of the vaccine once hailed as a "triumph for British science" by Boris Johnson and credited with saving over six million lives, The Telegraph reports.
The Columbia University custodian who took on a pro-terror protester during the seizure of Hamilton Hall said he was “freaking out” when the mob stormed the building while he was working — an experience that’s left him too scared to return to campus.
Mario Torres, 45, was caught in the violence when rioters took Hamilton Hall on April 30, with the father-of-two caught on camera wrestling with demonstrator James Carlson, who The Post revealed to be the scion of millionaire ad execs.
Torres said he is too afraid to return to campus and fears losing his job.
Torres said it was clear the seizure of Hamilton Hall was well planned given the protesters quick work and coordination, with the custodian noticing that even the cameras were covered.
The worker said he was trying to “protect the building” when he came across Carlson, 40. He was able to pin the trust-fund kid against the wall and rip off his hoodie, exposing his face.
Carlson was arrested and identified as the scion of millionaire ad execs who also owns a $3.4 million Brooklyn townhouse. William Farrington
“I was freaking out,” Torres said of the frightening altercation. “At that point, I’m thinking about my family. How was I gonna get out? Through the window?”
While Torres was able to make it out of Hamilton Hall before the protesters locked down the building with makeshift barricades, he said the experience has left him shaken and unable to go back to Columbia.
“They should have protected us a little bit more,” he told the Press. “Even when I left the building I did not see one public safety officer. What’s that about? We had to fight our way out.”
Demonstrators set up makeshift barricades to seal off Hamilton Hall. Getty Images
As he finds himself unable to go to campus, Torres now fears he’ll lose his job.
He said his fears are only exacerbated by his decision to speak out against the school.
“Is Columbia going to retaliate and find a reason to fire me? Is someone going to come after me,” he asked. “So I’m taking a big risk doing this, but I think that they failed. They failed us.
“They should have done more to protect us, and they didn’t,” Torres added.
Protesters stacked chairs, tables and desks to block the doors. Getty Images
A GoFundMe has raised more than $21,000 as of Tuesday morning to support Torres and provide him with legal counsel should he find his job in peril.
Columbia University did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Torres’ comments come as the Transport Workers Union, which represents many of the university’s janitors, said it would sue the Ivy League school after a handful of staffers were allegedly mistreated when Hamilton Hill was seized by protesters.
“This is appalling, disgusting and we are not going to stop until we figure out every means of legal recourse,” the union’s president, John Samuelsen, told The Post on Tuesday.
“Frankly, Columbia cannot be relied upon to protect their blue-collar workers.”
“The school could have done more to, A, prevent this and, B, to be there for us when we needed them,” he added, noting that he feels “abandoned” by Columbia.
Torres was working in Hamilton Hall when the mob stormed the building, breaking through glass and barricading the entrances as they sought to occupy the historic building named after founding father Alexander Hamilton that was home to a similar 1968 protest.
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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