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Letter from accused ‘terrorist’ John Zakhariev, currently on trial in Sofia, Bulgaria

UPDATE (June 6, 2017) : As expected, Zakhariev has been found guilty of ‘training with a Kalashnikov with the intention of carrying out a terror attack’ and sentenced to four years in jail (Australian-Bulgarian John Zakhariev sentenced for terrorism, Nick Miller, The Age, June 6, 2017).

John Zakhariev (above) is a 21yo dual Australian-Bulgarian citizen currently on trial in Sofia, Bulgaria. Arrested in September 2016, John is accused of undertaking weapons training in Bulgaria in order to join Daesh in Syria. He denies all charges.

I was recently forwarded the following letter from John which I reproduce below:

======

Since the 20th of September 2016 I have been stripped of my liberty and locked up in the heart of darkness otherwise known as Sofia Central Prison. The reason being that the Bulgarian authorities allege that I came to this country in order to train with firearms in order to fight with Islamic State or Daesh. To date, after nearly seven months, neither me nor my lawyer have seen or been presented with any evidence by the prosecution to back up these absurd allegations. One would expect that there would be a huge burden of proof on the part of the prosecution to back up her claims, which she herself has proudly boasted in court is ‘irrefutable’. Yet to date all that the court has been presented with in terms of evidence are as follows:

Firstly, workers from the legal shooting range I attended in Sofia (four times over a four week period), who all testified that my behaviour was perfectly normal and that they never had any issues with me as a client. Furthermore they all testified that I stopped attending the shooting range in early August 2016. This is in complete contrast to the claims of the prosecutor that I continued to attend until the 19th of September. Other witnesses to testify include a police provocateur who was sent to befriend me at the Banya Bashi Mosque in Sofia, Muhammad Dabbousi. In his witness statement he claimed that I said to him that I love Daesh and that me and him have to go and fight alongside them and yet in court he claimed that I was merely talking about them in a neutral manner. He made no mention of the alleged attempted recruitment or anything about me saying that I love them. He even expressed shock when the judge presented him with his original witness statement, leading me to believe that the police wrote his statement for him and asked him to sign it without even looking at it: an all-too-common practice here in Bulgaria with its law enforcement. At this point I wish to note that all the witnesses from the shooting range testified that I was always accompanied by a man to the shooting range. I never went alone. I knew this man as Peter Petrov, who I strongly suspect was a police agent.

Secondly, the prosecution presented to the court statuses which people on my Facebook friends list wrote about the ongoing war in Syria which was pro-opposition in nature. I will now make a point here which is that I never commented, shared or even liked these statuses, nor have I ever corresponded with the individuals who wrote them. The prosecution has further sought to use religious books on my computer as evidence of my support for Daesh even though a court-appointed expert himself testified that the books, though conservative in nature, do not in any way promote violence and cannot be linked to the ideology of ISIS. In my view this further shows the sheer Islamophobia of the case against me where anything even remotely connected to Islam is labelled extremist or jihadist. Yet even more disturbing for me is the court’s unwillingness to allow my defence to present any evidence in my favour. On the 21st of December I told the court that I had already left Islam months before my arrest. I further told the court evidence which could be found to support my claims including a 12 page email I sent to Canadian ex-Muslim Abdullah Sameer titled ‘Notes on Islam’ where I point out several flaws in the Islamic faith and also its claims of being a perfect faith valid for all times and places. I also told the court about some anti-radical Islamic literature which could be found on my computer and which were all downloaded in the same period beginning in early August ’til my arrest on September 20th. I also informed the court about emails I wrote to the Canadian Tourism College and International Guide Academy in Denver, Colorado enquiring about courses available in 2017, which clearly show my intention to continue my studies and not to join ISIS. And finally I told the judge that my Facebook correspondence would prove that I am indeed anti-ISIS since I spent a lot of time on it refuting the ideology of ISIS to its supporters. I even told the judge that I was also in touch with ex-Muslims weeks before my arrest discussing the possibility of setting up a Council of ex-Muslims in Australia similar to the one in the UK. The judge ordered that all this evidence be gathered, which raised my hopes of receiving a fair trial. Yet on May 16th 2017 when after many delays all this evidence had been gathered and presented to the court, the judge suddenly did a 360 and refused to even look at the evidence and calling the request of my lawyer to examine the Facebook correspondence, emails and for an examination of the books ‘groundless’ and ‘unnecessary’ since there was already enough evidence gathered by the prosecution seemingly ignoring the fact that they only ever sought evidence which would support their case.

This decision by the court confirms my fears since day one of my arrest that I would be subjected to a show trial and denied a fair hearing. I have resigned myself to the fact that I will be found guilty even though I will always maintain my innocence and insist that I was the victim of a poorly-attempted entrapment operation, whose pathetic nature would be almost laughable if its consequences weren’t so serious.

======

SEE : BULGARIAN PRISONERS’ ASSOCIATION

See also : Accused Australian John Zakhariev criticised jihadist doctrine before arrest, Nick Miller, The Sydney Morning Herald, May 17, 2017 | Australian-Bulgarian dual citizen John Zakhariev pleads innocence over terrorism charges, ABC/AP, May 17, 2017 | Australian John Zakhariev grim about outlook for his Bulgarian terror trial, Nick Miller, The Sydney Morning Herald, May 17, 2017 | Australian John Zakhariev remains in custody as media barred from court in Bulgaria, Teodor Spasov, The Sydney Morning Herald, April 9, 2017 | Court delays John Zakhariev’s terror case after problems with tape recording, Lisa Millar, ABC, March 18, 2017 | Australian Government sent Bulgaria letter saying John Zakhariev was ‘interested’ in terrorism, lawyer says, Danuta Kozaki, ABC, March 14, 2017 | Aust told Bulgaria about NSW man: lawyer, AAP, March 14, 2017 | Sydney man John Zakhariev, 21, arrested in Bulgaria on terrorism charges, Rachel Olding, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 13, 2017 | Australian John Zakhariev held on terror charges in Bulgaria, Sam Buckingham-Jones, The Australian, March 13, 2017 | Former Sydney private schoolboy arrested on terror charges, Yahoo7 News, March 13, 2017 | John Zakhariev: Sydney private school boy to jailed terror suspect, news.com.au, March 13, 2017.

antifa notes (may 10, 2017) : United Patriots Front kicked off Facebook &c

United Patriots Front ~versus~ Zuckerberg

The keyboard warriors of the United Patriots Front (UPF) have been experiencing some technical difficulties on Facebook of late.

Ruh-roh. Poor old Facebook Patriots. Previously a ‘safe space’ for flag-waving twats, a few weeks ago the UPF Western Australia page was unpublished and then, a week or so ago, the UPF media page — which mostly published fanboy material and dank neo-Nazi memes — was unpublished. Finally, in the last day or two, the main UPF page, which had attracted over 120,000 ‘Likes’, has also been given the boot. Presumably, the UPF, which in terms of its public presentations has been reduced to two neo-Nazis in Melbourne (fuehrer Blair Cottrell and his sidekick Thomas Sewell) and one of their boofhead mates in Perth (Dennis Huts), will carry on as before, publishing new Facebook pages, and continuing to whinge and whine about bloody Muslims, rotten Communists, and African migrants. (Note that the UPF QLD page and UPF Bendigo pages remain up and running.)

As their principal means of communication with the Australian and, increasingly, American public, Facebook has been absolutely critical to the popularisation of the UPF and, moreover, its neo-Nazi leader Cottrell. Thus despite declaring, on more than one occasion, that accumulating Facebook ‘Likes’ was not the main goal of the UPF, after hitting peak derp in Bendigo in October 2015, its ‘Likes’ appear to have risen in inverse proportion to its ability to actually draw a crowd: the last UPF rally in Melbourne in November 2015 attracted barely a few dozen supporters, while the campaign to launch their political party ‘Fortitude’ in February 2016 was a complete fail. Since that time, most of their activity has been dedicated to circulating fake news and propaganda on Facebook, organising media and publicity stunts and, most recently, celebrating Hitler’s birthday at a local German restaurant.

Sad!

*Ralph Cerminara‘s Facebook page ‘Left Wing Bigots & Extremists Exposed’ also appears to have been unpublished.
**Fuehrer Cottrell, along with ex-UPF members Chris Shortis (Australia First Party) and Neil Erikson, are due back in court on May 23 to face charges of serious religious vilification, defacing property, willful damage and behaving in an offensive manner in public following a UPF publicity stunt outside Bendigo council offices in October 2015.

Reclaim Australia ~versus~ True Blue Crew

True Blue Crew Reclaim Flag-waving

For reasons best known to themselves, the Sydney-based arm of ‘Reclaim Australia’ has cancelled its proposed rally in Melbourne on June 12. Undeterred, the True Blue Crew (TBC) has organised a flagwit rally in Melbourne on June 25. Last year’s flagwit rally attracted around 100 or so participants, the TBC busing in several score supporters from Bendigo and Melton, their numbers supplemented by Christian fundamentalists belonging to Catch The Fire Ministries (AKA ‘Rise Up Australia Party’), a small group of whom used the occasion to engage in the traditional Australian practice of a haka (presumably in honour of their Pope, Sri Lankan migrant Reverend Daniel Nalliah). Also joining the TBC on the day was one of their most vocal supporters, alleged ‘terrorist’ Phillip Galea. Appearing on April 28, Galea ‘told a court he won’t be using mental health as a defence’, and will be back in court sometime in August for a committal hearing.


Above : Phill Galea in happier times at the TBC flag rally, June 2016; just a few weeks later, he was arrested and charged with terrorisms.

Mastika ~versus~ Golden Dawn

“Mastika? We thought it said swastika!”



Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn (GD) is in all sorts of legal trouble in Greece, but in Australia is trying hard to move from the margins of Greek cultural and political life into its centre. Recently, a small group of GD members went on a publicity tour of Belmore in Sydney; the group then posted pictures of themselves distributing the Golden Dawn newspaper, including to two cafe workers at Mastika, who seemed quite happy to be receiving neo-Nazi propaganda. For its part, the cafe has disavowed any affiliation to or support for neo-Nazi politics. (It’s also closed its Facebook page.)

Nathaniel Jacob Sassoon Sykes ~versus~ Reality

“I’m not crazy! You’re the one that’s crazy!”

A few weeks ago, Nathaniel Jacob Sassoon Sykes was revealed as being a member of the (White) Australia First Party, Jewish, and a contributor to the world’s leading neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer. From this vantage point, Sykes tried his best to crank up The Internet Hate Machine and to direct it at various Australian public figures to whom he’d taken a particular dislike; a tricksy neo-Nazi, Sykes assumed the nom de guerre of ‘Hamish Patton’ while crafting his tasty insults. One of Sykes’ earliest targets was Muslim lawyer Mariam Veiszadeh, whom he lovingly described as a ‘towel-headed halal-harpy’ and a ‘country-shopping daughter of a goat-herding family of conniving peasant trash from the dunghills of Kabul’. Hurr hurr. In an article titled Waaambulance Please! Mariam Isn’t Happy! These Feels! and published on the Daily Stormer site on March 11, 2015, Sykes went into bat for a Queensland woman called Jay-Leighsha Bauman, who on that date appeared in Ipswich Magistrates Court ‘charged with using a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence’:

The charges stem from an alleged online hate campaign she directed at human rights activist Mariam Veiszadeh in early January [2015].

The allegedly expletive laden, anti-Islam campaign by Ms Bauman was unleashed on Ms Veiszadeh’s personal Facebook page, where police will allege she referred to the human rights activist as a whore, a prostitute and a rag-head and urged her to return to her “sand dune country”.

Later that month, Bauman was convicted and sentenced to 180 hours of community service.

Sykes’ Waaambulance article called upon the neo-Nazi readership of Daily Stormer to rally behind Bauman and boasted of the campaign’s success in being featured on ABC’s Lateline (Hate groups launch global attack on Muslim advocate, March 10, 2015). Perhaps wanting to avoid any legal repercussions for himself, however, at some point between March 11 and April 3, 2015, the authorship of the article was changed from ‘Nathan Sykes’ to ‘Hamish Patton’.

Before …


… & After.

antifa notes (april 24, 2017) : fakes and frauds and fascists and facebook

1) fake

A fake ‘Melbourne Antifa’ page has been published on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/antifamelb/; you can leave them a one-star review if you like. In any case, try Melbourne Antifa Info instead.

2) faking

Nathan Sykes – AKA Hamish Patton from the DailyStormer.com from Aussie Lads on Vimeo.

Jewish neo-Nazi, Australia First Party (AFP) member and Daily Stormer writer Nathaniel Jacob Sassoon Sykes (AKA ‘Hamish Patton’) has been confirmed as one of the contributors to the ‘United Nationalists Australia’ blog and Facebook page (which largely functions as an online shitsheet for the AFP).

Otherwise, Sykes’ mate Andrew Anglin, founder of the Daily Stormer website, is being sued in the United States (SPLC sues neo-Nazi leader who targeted Jewish woman in anti-Semitic harassment campaign, April 18, 2017):

The Southern Poverty Law Center, along with its Montana co-counsel, filed suit in federal court today against the founder of a major neo-Nazi website who orchestrated a harassment campaign that has relentlessly terrorized a Jewish woman and her family with anti-Semitic threats and messages.

The lawsuit describes how Andrew Anglin used his web forum, the Daily Stormer – the leading extremist website in the country – to publish 30 articles urging his followers to launch a “troll storm” against Tanya Gersh, a real estate agent in Whitefish, Montana. Gersh, her husband and 12-year-old son have received more than 700 harassing messages since December.

See also : The man behind the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website is being sued by one of his ‘troll storm’ targets, Abby Ohlheiser, The Washington Post, April 18, 2017.

Fortunately for the mixed-up Jewish neo-Nazi, Sykes’ own organisation and promotion of similar troll campaigns directed at various public figures in Australia remains entirely lawful and er, kosher. Further, Anglin is happy to have a Jewish man contribute to his hatesite.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

3) whatever happened to … ?

April 4, 2015 was the date of the first series of ‘Reclaim Australia’ rallies; a second took place on the weekend of July 18/19, and the third and final series of rallies on November 22, 2015. Since that time, one other rally has been organised under the auspices of Reclaim, in Sydney on January 29, 2017, while a further rally is scheduled to take place on June 12 in Melbourne. Otherwise, the network has given birth to a range of other groups and projects, including the United Patriots Front (UPF), True Blue Crew (TBC) and Soldiers of Odin (SOO), each of which has staged its own events and activities.

Oh, and speaking of the TBC, their #BFF Phillip Galea was in court again last week:

An alleged extremist accused of plotting an attack against Melbourne’s anarchists engaged in “preparatory” acts rather than an actual terrorism attempt, a court has heard.

Phillip Michael Galea, 32, appeared in the Melbourne magistrates’ court on Wednesday via video link charged with collecting or making documents to prepare for terrorist acts between November 2015 and August 2016.

The anti-Islamist [sic] is also charged with acts in preparation for a terrorist act between September 2015 and August last year.

Magistrate Charlie Rozencwajg said Galea was charged with plotting, not with attempting to commit an attack. Galea’s defence team requested access to tapes and other prosecution materials.

Rozencwajg granted the request amid hopes the case could be expedited. He said Galea had allegedly engaged in preparatory acts of plotting attacks against various locations inhabited by Melbourne’s anarchists [?!] and the Melbourne Resistance Centre.

Prosecutors are relying on evidence contained in secretly recorded phone conversations during which Galea allegedly talks to other people about his plans.

Galea allegedly said: “They thought what I was planning before was dangerous. They’ve got no idea.”

Police allege Galea also researched homemade bombs, ballistic armour and guns.

The matter was adjourned until 28 April.

When Reclaim Australia first emerged, its figurehead was Shermon Burgess (AKA ‘The Great Aussie Patriot’), while in October 2015 Novocastrian John Oliver (Patriots Defence League of Australia), Wanda Marsh from Adelaide, and Liz Shepherd (AKA ‘Catherine Brennan’) in Sydney appeared as its putative leaders on Seven’s Sunday TV show. In 2016, the trio appear to have gone their separate ways, and there now exists two iterations of ‘Reclaim Australia’: one an incorporated association (including Oliver), the other under the control of Shepherd. It was this latter grouping that organised the rally in Sydney in January and is organising the Melbourne event in June (which has drawn the support of whatever remains of the TBC and assorted other dregs).

Prior to this, in May 2015, Burgess abandoned Reclaim to establish the UPF, which held its first, ‘anti-communist’ rally in Richmond that month, a feat which the TBC attempted to replicate in Coburg a year later. (Burgess abandoned the UPF to neo-Nazi and convicted stalker Blair Cottrell in late 2015.) The UPF held two more major rallies in Bendigo that year, on August 29 and October 10, both in opposition to the construction of a mosque, and one tiny rally in Melbourne (in November). The October rally attracted as many as 1,000 participants — the largest rally to be organised by either the UPF or Reclaim. Buoyed by this apparent groundswell of support, in November the UPF announced that it would be forming a political party, ‘Fortitude’, and in February 2016 they held meetings in Orange, NSW, Toowoomba, QLD and again in Bendigo in order to promote it. Sadly, the party never formed, and the UPF spent most of the rest of 2016 shedding members, engaging in publicity stunts, tagging along on other demonstrations, being a minor nuisance, and gathering tens of thousands of ‘Likes’ on Facebook.

Recently, Burgess has been posing online as one half of Facebook page ‘Nationalist Uprising’ (previously: ‘Australian Settlers Rebellion’), talking up the threat (((bankers))) pose to the Western world, and opining that national socialism is actually A Jolly Good Thing. This has provoked local (Melbourne) crank and Pauline Hanson fanboy Avi Yemini to denounce Burgess as a ‘Nazi’. At the same time, the other half of ‘Nationalist Uprising’, Neil Erikson, has been trying to further distance himself from his neo-Nazi past (he has a criminal conviction for harassing a Melbourne rabbi and was active in various neo-Nazi projects for around 15 years or so), partly by way of cuddling up to … Avi.

Erikson hopping into bed with Yemini is slightly … odd … but comprehensible given how much they share in common, including but not limited to a pathological hatred of Muslims (along with dirty rotten stinkin’ commies: Public Enemy No.1 according to the new #BFFs), and joint opposition to non-White immigration (Yemini has likened African migrants to human garbage). Given that Yemini and UPF fuehrer Blair Cottrell — whom Erikson has denounced on many occasions as a ‘Nazi’ — have been making eyes at one another these last few months, it may even be that Erikson and Cottrell will kiss and make up at some point — perhaps while the pair are sitting together in court?

Of course, the other person Erikson and Cottrell have been jointly charged with — following the UPF stunt in Bendigo in October 2015 — is Chris ‘The United Nations is attempting to install the Pope as leader of a new world government!’ Shortis, who left the UPF to join the AFP last year. Slightly coy when under Cottrell’s fuehrership, the Christian fundamentalist bizarr0 is now openly promoting White nationalism (Cottrell continues to wear a mask), and has very grave concerns over the ‘Judeo-‘ in Judeo-Christianity, the poor boy. Note that all this is occurring just as fellow AFP member & Daily Stormer writer Nathaniel Jacob Sassoon Sykes has been exposed as … a Jew!

They’re a weird mob, and the weirdness extends to Nick Folkes and the Peanuts (‘Party’) For Freedom, who like AFP (and UPF) also apparently oppose ‘White genocide’. (Folkes himself has ‘mixed race’ children — which would seem to suggest that there’s one law for Nick; another for the rest of us: LOL!) Thus, in the latest in a seemingly endless parade of dingbat publicity stunts, on Easter weekend in Sydney, Folkes and a half-dozen or so other Peanuts picketed a childcare centre, babbling on about its dastardly dedication to committing White genocide thru integrated care. The fact that non-White folk, presumably residents and/or citizens, joined in the idiocy is somewhat remarkable … though it should also be obvious that the patriotik and White nationalist milieu in Australia is shot thru with such absurdities and contradictions.

Finally, to return to Cooma, when he’s not picking fights with the TBC 600kms away in Melbourne, Burgess can of course be found blathering away on Facebook, regurgitating half-digested and very dank memes produced by cranks like Alex Jones (see below). Oh, but while it remains unclear if Burgess has cleared his debt of $170,000+ to Sutherland Shire Council, on the weekend the keyboard warrior from Cooma was kicked off that rascally ‘Zionist’ Zuckerberg’s site. Peter Grace explains:

See also : antifa notes (april 12, 2016) : hard times for patriots. Oh and on the subject of ‘Reclaim Indonesia’, see : Trump’s Indonesian Allies In Bed With ISIS-Backed Militia Seeking to Oust Elected President, Allan Nairn, The Intercept, April 19, 2017.

4) Some Dare Call It Stupidity

The King of the Konspiracy Kooks, Alex Jones, has had his lawyer admit in court that he’s, like, ‘playing a character’ (see : President Trump’s Favorite Conspiracy Theorist Is Just ‘Playing a Character,’ His Lawyer Says, Maya Rhodan, Time, Apr 18, 2017). This has not gone down too well with at least some of his fans, but the wanker who hounded families of the Sandy Hook massacre is also insisting others’ respect his privacy in his custody battle with his former wife (see : Sandy Hook truther Alex Jones asks for privacy in custody battle ‘for the sake of my children’, Cleve R. Wootson Jr., The Washington Post, April 22). For anyone who cares, an interesting profile of Jones was published in RS a few years ago. See : Meet Alex Jones, Alexander Zaitchik, Rolling Stone, March 2, 2011 (‘The most paranoid man in America is trying to overthrow the ‘global Stasi Borg state,’ one conspiracy theory at a time’). Otherwise:

What do you get when you combine an atomized, alienated public that possesses a deep and justifiable mistrust in institutions with a floundering press-political-entertainment complex that’s desperate to hold our nanoscopic attention spans? You get a nation of half-assed shamuses who’ve traded genuine political argument for paranoid fantasies about alien masterminds, lizard overlords, and government airplanes dispersing mind-control mist over population centers, not to mention presidential candidates who think and talk just like conspiracy theorists.

That’s Corey Pein (Protocols of Moron, Magical Thinking, The Baffler, September 20, 2016). His podcast, News from Nowhere, is also recommended listening, especially, in this context, episode one, in which he ‘considers the role of conspiracy theories in the 2016 US presidential elections, with special guest appearances by Alex Jones, Donald Trump, the John Birch Society and an assortment of Holocaust deniers and the politicians who pander to them, such as Green Party vice presidential candidate Ajamu Baraka.’ Closer to home, Jason Wilson contributes his conspiratorial insights in Conspiracy theories used to be a fringe obsession. Now they’re mainstream, The Guardian, April 13, 2017. See also : Alt Wrong, Richard Cooke, The Monthly, April 2017:

Given that Hanson is so often described as “speaking for” ordinary Australians, or ordinary people, or a silent majority, or a real Australia, one wonders why these constituencies have chosen a champion who isn’t much good at speaking at all. Hanson is not just inarticulate by the standards of a politician; she is inarticulate by the standards of ordinary people. It would not be difficult to enter an average pub or RSL club and find someone more knowledgeable, nuanced and capable of stringing a sentence together, and on just about any topic. But that is not what Pauline Hanson is for. Her similarity to Trump is much exaggerated (for one thing, she did not mount a hostile takeover of the Liberal Party), but they do share one critical component: their relationship with language.

On ‘conservatism’ in the US, also worth listening to is Corey Robin on the Reactionaries’ Minds Under Trump (The Dig, Jacobin, March 28, 2017): ‘What a moment to read, or to re-read, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin, political scientist Corey Robin’s 2011 collection of essays — especially if you need to disabuse friends and family of the notion that Trump is some historic degradation of conservatism’s good name rather than a malignant, nasty outgrowth of a long history of violent reaction against left movements for equality.’

antifa notes (january 30, 2016) : Black Rose, UPF and moar

Black Rose

On Thursday night in Newtown an altercation occurred outside of Black Rose anarchist infoshop involving Ralph Cerminara (Australian Defence League/Left Wing Bigots & Extremists Exposed Facebook page) and Dan Evans (Reclaim Australia and principal organiser of the February 6 PEGIDA rally in Canberra) on the one hand and two or three people at the infoshop on the other.

Charges laid following brawl – Newtown
NSW Police Force Media Release
January 29, 2016

Four men have been charged following an alleged brawl in Newtown last night.

Just after 8pm (Thursday 28 January 2016), emergency services were called to a service station on Enmore Road, following reports of a brawl nearby involving men armed with poles, bottles and fluorescent light tubes.

On arrival, officers attached to Newtown Local Area Command located a 37-year-old man [Ralph Cerminara] and a 36-year-old man [Daniel Evans] suffering minor injuries.

They were assisted at the scene by Ambulance Paramedics, before being taken to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in a stable condition.

Both men were arrested this morning (Friday 29 January 2016) after leaving hospital, and taken to Newtown Police Station.

Police also arrested two men, 21 and 23, at the scene.

They were also taken to Newtown Police Station.

The 23-year-old man was charged with affray, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and being armed with intent to commit actual bodily harm.

The 21-year-old man was charged with affray and being armed with intent to assault.

The two younger men were refused bail, to appear in Newtown Local Court today.

Both the 37-year-old and the 36-year-old were charged with affray; with the younger man also charged with being armed with intent to commit an indictable offence.

They were both granted strict conditional bail, to appear before Newtown Local Court on 18 February 2016.

See also : Four arrested over brawl outside Newtown service station, Megan Levy, The Sydney Morning Herald, January 28, 2016‎ | Newtown petrol station brawl: Members of rival political groups allegedly fight using fluorescent lights as weapons, Jessica Kidd, ABC, January 28, 2016‎ | Four men charged after Sydney brawl, Channel 9 (AAP), January 29, 2016 | Rivals armed with fluro tube, pole and golf club brawl outside anarchist bookstore, Emma Partridge, The Sydney Morning Herald, January 29, 2016 | Political rivals used broken light, metal pole and golf club in battle, police say, Matt Bamford, The Daily Telegraph, January 29, 2016.

Cerminara — a valour thief and close comrade of Shermon Burgess (‘The Great Aussie Patriot’), has previously been arrested for trying to provoke a fight in Lakemba in December 2014 and generally tries to make mischief by filming himself harassing Muslims and leftists on the streets; videos which are later uploaded to his Facebook page. In recent months, Black Rose has become the focus of his ire. He published this video on November 14, 2015:

Otherwise, the incident has provoked the usual response from ‘patriotik’ folk — and anarchists and other anti-fascists should expect further attacks.

blahviolence

Walter Benjamin, eat yr heart out.

United Patriots Front

In February the UPF is embarking upon a promotional tour for its yet-to-be-registered political party, ‘Fortitude’. They’re planning on holding public rallies in Toowoomba, Queensland on February 13; Orange, NSW on February 20; and Bendigo on February 27. Chris ‘The United Nations is attempting to install the Pope as leader of a new world government!’ Shortis has been announced as the party’s candidate for the Senate in Victoria at the next federal election.

UPFnazi

In other news, neo-Nazi UPF supporter Nathan Davidson has been charged with “drug trafficking, dealing in the proceeds of crime and firearm-related offences” (Man faces court after guns, drugs, large sum of cash seized at Wanniassa, ABC, January 15, 2016). See also : Man arrested after drugs, weapons and cash seized from Wanniassa home, Michael Inman, The Canberra Times, January 15, 2016.

Another neo-Nazi UPF supporter, Phillip Galea, was due in court on January 27 (Police on the hunt for missing stun guns amid fears of use by extremists, Angus Thompson, Herald Sun, January 13, 2016). Gallea was arrested by police after meeting up with UPF member John Wilkinson (‘Farma John’) in Sandringham at the beginning of the year:

Det Sgt Tierney said Mr Galea met anti-immigration ­activist “Farmer John” Wilkinson, as well as other UPF members, across the road from a UPF barbecue at Sandringham Beach on January 3.

The court heard that Mr Wilkinson told police on January 7 that he had bought up to 22 stun guns, and that police were still searching for seven of these.

Previously, Wilkinson gave the following stirring address at a Reclaim Australia rally in Melton in November alongside Casey councillor (and deputy president of the Rise Up Australia Party) Rosalie Crestani. According to the Herald Sun:

Farmer John, from United Patriots, spoke to the crowd while it chanted “No Muslims in Melton”, and threatened more violent action. “We’re going to burn every mosque down if they build them … Let’s stick it up them,” he said.

*smh*

… in Bendigo

On Australia/Invasion/Survival Day, the UPF paid a visit to Bendigo. Among other things, they went to the house of a man, Jason Godwell, they believed had registered ‘United Patriots Front’ as an ABN. The home visit was filmed and uploaded to the UPF Facebook page, and as well as being named and having his address published, Godwell was denounced to the UPF’s 30,000+ followers. (Subsequently, the video was deleted.) Godwell himself later stated that he had not registered UPF and was a victim of identity theft. Having been publicly named by the UPF as a Bad man, Godwell further claims that he was forced to abandon his home and the care of his child.

JG1
JG2

Maajid Nawaz /// PEGIDA /// Tommy Robinson/Stephen Yaxley-Lennon

Former Islamist Maajid Nawaz is currently undertaking a brief tour of Australia. You can listen to an interview with him on ABC radio here (January 27), while a critical account of his political evolution has been published in New Republic (What Does Maajid Nawaz Really Believe?, Nathan Lean, January 27, 2016).

Curiously, Nawaz makes explicit reference to the role of neo-Nazi grouplet ‘Combat 18’ in ‘radicalising’ him as a teenager; in Melbourne, there have been numerous reports of ‘Combat 18’ stickers popping up around town in the last few months, meaning former Creatard Patrick O’Sullivan and his nazi chums have been more active than usual. Coincidentally, some wanker stuck a sticker up in Chapel Street Prahran reading “Cure AIDS, kick a poofter to death”.

Nawaz is also famed for helping to establish the Quilliam Foundation, a UK-based project which claims to attempt to ‘de-radicalise’ Islamists and other ‘extremists’. Its most famous success story is (was) Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (‘Tommy Robinson’), the former leader of the English Defence League (EDL), who announced (in conjunction with the Foundation) his resignation from the group and the anti-Muslim movement in October 2013. The mouthy little gobshite claims that the Foundation paid him thousands of pounds to resign in a move that many saw as a bribe: Robinson stepped down, and Quilliam took credit for bringing about his departure. The money, Robinson said, went to pay “my wife’s rent and help with basic bills, [and] in return Tommy Robinson would be their poster boy.”

Fast-forward a year or two and Yaxley-Lennon is back, baby, this time as the spokesperson for PEGIDA UK, and will be addressing a rally in Birmingham on February 6. On the same date, another dozen or so anti-Muslim protests are planned, while in Australia, neo-Nazis, fascists, racists and a motley assortment of other bigots will be converging on Parliament House in Canberra. See : Pegida meets with European allies in the Czech Republic, Deutsche Welle, January 23, 2016.

See also : Muslim mainstream snubs counter-extremist, SKYnews (AAP), January 29, 2016 | Former Islamic extremist: ‘The far Left is helping ISIS’, Trevor Treharne, The West Australian, January 27, 2016. (Oddly, Nawaz gives props to the Kurdish struggle against ISIS; a struggle whose leading edge is ‘far left’.)

BONUS STICKERS!

I have a stack of stickers to give away to good homes. If you’d like some, leave a comment, send me an email or contact me via my Twitter account or Facebook page.

AFAstickers

Review : 2015 : Neil Erikson ~vs~ Rob Sparrow

I thought I may as well provide a brief summary of the year in blogging + activism.

Well … next post, maybe.

Before I do, a few days ago (December 30), I became aware that local neo-Nazi Neil Erikson had published a video on his Facebook page claiming that I am Monash academic Professor Rob Sparrow.

The video features Erikson, driving in his car, while watching a video on his phone of an exchange between Rob and other panelists on the subject of ‘political correctness’ (you can watch the video here). The convicted anti-Semite and neo-Nazi activist states:

That guy there [points at Rob]: his name is Doctor Robert Sparrow, Monash University. Now for the past ten years, patriotic and nationalist groups, have been fighting an enemy. An unseen enemy. This is the most cowardly of the pond scum of the left. He’s the king of the pond scum. Andy Fleming has spent over a decade, sitting on his little gay computer, taking down patriot’s photos of their children, of their houses, and storing it on his hard drive. Then he then spreads it to all the anarchists, around the local area, so the anarchists go and attack these people’s houses. He’s been blamed and accused of causing a fire bomb of a man, a patriot’s letterbox, a few years back. He’s even been behind the anarchist violence on April 4, July 18, May 31st, August 29. All that anarchist violence where they were bashing old women, desecrating war memorials, it all come from Andy Fleming. And that, my friends, is Andy Fleming: Doctor Robert Sparrow, the biggest fucking coward in our nation. So spread the word patriots, and let’s expose this piece of shit. Catch yas.

A short while later, the video was removed and Erikson uploaded another. Minus the criminal accusations above, it widens his, er, critique, to include Rob’s siblings, Jeff and Jill Sparrow. Titled ‘Slackbastard AKA Sparrow Family’ and published on December 30, Erikson states:

How you goin’ patriots? Well we discovered who slackbastard is, some guy named Robert Sparrow. Now he’s a lecturer, at university: he talks about anarchy, he’s all edgy and shit because he wears like loopy earrings, he teaches all the kids money’s bad, capitalism’s bad, [I’m?] edgy. Now that is slackbastard. We also found out who his brother is, Jeff Sparrow, who’s a edgy communist journalist. He writes for some shitty news agencies online like Overland and shit, so he’s like real edgy communist [indecipherable] … tell everyone how to spend their money. Not only that they gotta sister named Jill Sparrow, who’s a socialist and she started Socialist Alternative, in Melbourne. Now get this, if you watched the news a couple of months ago, some crazy woman was being dragged out of a government building by police, she had red hair, she had her child breastfeeding off her breast, screaming like a disheveled mess. That’s their sister Jill, she’s a socialist, she’s edgy too, they’ve been doing this since they were young. But guess what, they grew up in the most richest suburb in Victoria: Brighton. They’re spoiled little fuckin’ rich kids. When’s the left wing gonna learn, you gonna let these little spoiled, little spoiled brats tell you what to do with your cash? It’s disgusting. Have a happy new year, and fuck the left wing. Catch ya later.

Note : The protest Erikson refers to took place in early November. See : Mum Refusing To Leave Refugee Protest Evicted By Police While Breastfeeding Child, Max Chalmers, New Matilda, November 5, 2015.

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This second video has been spread widely among Erikson’s fascist comrades, including by Shermon Burgess (‘The Great Aussie Patriot’), while similar material — claiming that Professor Sparrow is the author of my blog — has appeared on neo-Nazi blogs like Whitelaw Towers, Nick Folkes’ Party for Freedom Facebook page, Facebook pages belonging to Dr Jim Saleam’s Australia First Party and presumably elsewhere. Accompanying the material is commentary of the sort one might expect: promises of bloody revenge, homophobic diatribes, commitments to harassing Monash University (several Facebook users admit to phoning Rob’s office and leaving abusive messages), a handful of skeptical inquiries, and so on. A sample:

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So what evidence does the bRanes trust present in order to prove that I’m Rob? While Erikson offers none, Burgess pops on his science hat in order to proclaim:

science

LOL.

In that other place known as reality, this is obviously not the first time that some fascist bizarr0 has claimed to know my ‘real’ identity: in March last year James Gilhome claimed that I was some bloke called Robert Godino; the year before that, the Australia First Party & Co. alleged that I was James Hutchings (after the party received a letter from a lawyer, I suddenly became ‘Andy’ Hutchings, James’s non-existent brother). And so on and so forth.

In conclusion, despite the falsity of the claim, like previous such excursions, this latest ‘outing’ will likely take some weeks or even months to subside. In which context, it’s important to remember that Burgess’s 41,000+ Facebook followers are entirely gullible and will believe absolutely anything he says — and that Facebook is entirely happy to facilitate his racism, xenophobia, and general abuse of Muslims in Australia (see also : 2015: The year that angry won the internet, Mike Wendling, BBC, December 30, 2015). The same rule applies to the far fewer numbers who pay attention to the diatribes of Neil Erikson, the online poutings by the Australia First Party, and/or the assorted other fascist grouplets and random bigots that have volunteered to take up the cudgel against Professor Sparrow.

Morans.