This guy tried to attack me as I was filming the assault on the woman on the ground. This is towards the end of the video.
After a police arrived Ina-Maria tried to tell them what had happened. As she had seen the woman earlier. It is possible that the attack was actually homophobic in nature not racist. As it all happened very quickly it was confusing.
Moments later a second one of the three thugs involved in the attack turned up but fortunately a cop turned up to stop them confronting me and Ina-Maria.
Screenshots of the original assault of the woman - who was not arrested - as I approached.
And as he advances toward me.
This is the point at which the guy kneeling on the woman notices me and points - letting the guy on the right know it’s being filmed.
Sone more images of the second guy.
Bare in mind that according to the policeman and woman I spoke to these guys accused the woman of “spitting on their food” and it seemed they thought it was within their rights to hold her until police arrived. I told the police that it… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
The third guy here in the final picture was involved in the second attempt to attack me during which the short guy with the walkie talkie grabbed my phone and threw it into the street. As they approached I yelled for the police and the turned up just in time. A kind member of the… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Those above are video sills taken by the camera after the short guy grabbed it and threw it.
After I got my phone back I was told not to film anymore, more than once. Ina and I spoke to police explaining what had happened they kept repeating the story about the woman spitting which seems to have been the claimed justification by the three large strong grown men - one… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Once on the bus I took these pictures and was told again I am not allowed to by a police support officer wearing black. At this point I just wanted to get out of Bonn.
I am ok. [Thanks @markcubey for asking] and on my way home. But I confess a little rattled.
My understanding is that no one is as arrested, neither the women nor the three men. Ina remained long enough to hear from the woman and witnesses that the claimed spitting incident was… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
One final observation. This was not the only incident in that airport bus stop this evening that resulted in the police being called. Earlier a man came by and threatened an older gentleman in the bus stop by pointing to him and making a throat cutting gesture. A member of the… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
In conclusion this is what I saw immediately after the woman’s screaming started.
I’d like to hear from anyone who thinks this shows anything other than four large men assaulting a woman. And deliberately holding her in stress positions.
Ok so this is a bit weird, but in a kinda chill way so do bare with me and and I will be happy to answer questions afterwards. It’s about a castle on a virtual island in a massive online role playing game called Evony and it involves a possible but speculative discussion about @elonmusk and @X.
All will be revealed but first a picture or four actually from the game. More will come.
Ok. So here’s what I think is going on in a nutshell. I think elonmusk has invested in a MMORPG: a “Massive Multimedia Online Role Playing Game” which is a bit of a mouthful, called EVONY.
I liked its Twitter ads and finally clicked. It’s huge. Someone else can do the business story here which I am sure is interesting too.
But the this bit is weird.
The mysterious knight on the red horse arrived this morning beside my castle and he had some treasure.
I hadn’t a clue who it was so I grabbed the treasure and tried to kill the horse and rider as that’s what you do. But we got smashed badly.
This interview with working class Uk financial markets savant Gary Stevenson - who has just published an autobiography - is seriously terrifying. He now has a @YouTube channel it seems and I’ll post a link shortly.
James O'Brien meets Gary Stevenson | LBC via @YouTube
His prognosis for the collapse of social democratic nation state finances due to the very sharp rise in income distribution inequality in the UK is horrific.
The consequences of unfettered transfers of money over decades due to neoliberal economics initially and more recently quantitative easing driven transfers of wealth from the middle class to the top 5% of the population is the cause of his concern.
It’s very hard to imagine what can be done politically to rebalance this.
Thomas Piketty’s thesis which among other things warned about all of this based on long term historical analysis of wealth inequality appears to be colliding with Western Civilisation in a manner that threatens the very foundations of that civilisation.
Gary’s YouTube channel which addresses all this is here.
Well this was actually pretty good… very little crazy right wing stuff - none in fact - some light criticism of wokeness and a consensus that Hitler was a socialist or communist dictator not a rightwing liberal fascist - mercifully no discussion of Greenland Panama or Canada
The bit at the end was actually quite nice and agreement about ending the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.
Importantly and probably deliberately there was very little to zero overt electioneering - a little bit of criticism of Weidel’s Spitzencandidat competition from Weidle but nothing extreme.
So nothing imo that could be seen as being election interference IMO - nor any reason for the DSA to be concerned or to get involved.
I didn’t even hear any particularly overt endorsement that went beyond that you might hear in passing in a podcast interview.
It ended with a discussion of mars - Elon’s favourite subject of conversation - which was quite interesting including a reference to the Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy series and Douglas Adams.
From Weidel’s point of view though there was a lot of positive moderate exposure of her party and probably around 200k + listeners. Which may give her a bounce in the polls.
Also the final segment talking about space was quite delightful and genuine and portrayed the AFD Leader in a positive light.
And I’d say the two of them have both found a new friend.
This is an update thread on this OCCRP story on @StateDept and @USAID funding for several large investigative journalism projects which has had a lot of downstream impacts it seems. Especially in Europe,
The underlying original story about govt funding for investigative journalism projects was initially flagged by @ryangrim.
This organisation - OCCRP that not many people seemed to have been aware of - was responsible for a series of outstanding investigative journalism consortia projects including the Panama papers.
This is a leaked rough cut of the NDR (German public broadcaster north west Germany) investigation into what happened With the OCCRP story.
It was never officially published but was recently leaked publicly by Wikileaks.
With the benefit of hindsight arguably Wikileaks ought to be the international organisation that coordinates these large investigative consortia, though it’s not clear that they want to do so.
What is clear from the fallout from all of this is that the system that was in place for running these consortia is no longer fit for purpose.