Globe Briefs March 31

Globe Briefs March 31

Printers at Princeton, other college campuses hacked with anti-Semitic message

Printers at a half-dozen college campuses in Massachusetts and Rhode Island were hacked with an anti-Semitic, racist flier in a breach of the schools’ computers that also turned up at several other colleges across the country.

The flier reads: “White man, are you sick and tired of the Jews destroying your country through mass immigration and degeneracy?” It also says: “Join us in the struggle for global white supremacy,” which is bookended by two large Nazi swastikas.

The source of the hacking, which occurred March 24, is not yet known, according to Robert Trestan, executive director of the New England Anti-Defamation League. The Web address of the Daily Stormer, described by the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center as a neo-Nazi website, is included on the bottom of the flier.

Copies of the flier were discovered in printers and fax machines at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Smith College and Mount Holyoke College, all in western Massachusetts, and at Northeastern University in Boston, Clark University in Worcester, and Brown University in Providence, R.I. They were also reported at Princeton University, DePaul University in Chicago and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

“It’s concerning because it is so widespread,” Trestan told MassLive.com. He described the hacking as a troubling development because it represents a security component. “This represents a new strategy to anonymously disseminate anti-Semitism,” he said.

Trestan has been in contact with law enforcement and college officials and reported there is no indication of any public safety threats to Massachusetts students. The FBI would not confirm or deny any investigation, the Boston Globe reported.

In an email at UMass Amherst, chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy wrote, “As a campus community, we condemn this cowardly and hateful act,” the Globe reported. The newspaper also cited a communication from leaders at Smith College who rejected the flier’s message as hateful and intended to shock and intimidate.

“The contents have no place in our community,” the email said.

At Northeastern, where more than 20 printers were involved, the school put up a firewall to prevent further attacks, its spokesman, Michael Armini, told the Globe. While that mitigates the risk, “it cannot be completely eliminated,” he said.

A statement on the ADL national website said the Daily Stormer was created in 2013 by Andrew Anglin, a 31-year-old neo-Nazi.

“Regardless of whether Anglin or one of his supporters sent the flyer to campuses, the Daily Stormer promotes virulent anti-Semitism on a daily basis and attracts thousands of visitors each day to the site,” the ADL website stated.

Netanyahu denies receiving perks from French Jewish alleged fraudster

A French journalist said he had proof that a defendant in a major fraud trial set to begin in Paris donated funds to Israel’s Likud party and gave personal favors to Benjamin Netanyahu before he became prime minister.

Arnaud Mimran, a French Jew whose trial is set to begin in May for allegedly defrauding, with several partners, the European Union out of 282 million euros, about $315 million, allowed Netanyahu to use a large apartment in Paris, according to Fabrice Arfi, a journalist for the Mediapart news site. He shared the findings of his investigation with Ha’aretz, which published a report about it last Friday.

Netanyahu’s office denied the claims.

Netanyahu had used the apartment on Victor Hugo Avenue since the early 2000s, according to the report. He and Mimran were photographed together in Monaco near France in 2003 when Netanyahu was Israel’s finance minister and Mimran was already suspected of crimes separate to the ones for which he will stand trial.

In 2000, Mimran was investigated on suspicion of insider trading in the United States and agreed, together with his partners, to pay a fine of $1.2 million, Ha’aretz reported. He also donated an unspecified amount of money to Likud officials in France, the report said based on findings shared by Mediapart with Ha’aretz.

Mimran, who was convicted of tax offenses in France in the late 1990s, is accused of using front companies to collect VAT returns from France on carbon emissions permits that he bought from countries that did not collect VAT on them, like the Netherlands. Known as the carbon emissions scam, it is believed to have caused billions in damages in 2009 by fraudulently exploiting the differences in how industrialized nations encouraged reducing emission of greenhouse gases.

The Prime Minister’s Office told Ha’aretz that “the innuendos in this report are false and ridiculous.” Netanyahu met Mimran in France when Netanyahu was a “private citizen,” read the statement, when the Mimran family was “well-known and respected in France and there were no legal allegations against it.” Netanyahu “didn’t ask for anything from, didn’t receive any contributions from and didn’t give anything to the Mimran family,” it said.

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