Season 2 starts with a look back at the last half year of world newz
So it's been a while and we're sorry to have let you waited so long, dear listeners. But here we are again with season 2 of the Newz of the World. We browse Wikipedia's history records to summarise what has happened since we left you and try to get a grip on what was important, interesting and noteworthy.
Mark Fonseca Rendeiro
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Tim Pritlove
Bristol, United Kingdom
Links:
- Source Code Berlin
- Wikipedia Events of 2014 and 2015 List
- Europe’s Overcrowded Prisons; Making Better Criminals
- Minsk 2 Ceasefire Agreement Is About More Than Weapons
- Saudi Arabia Constructing Wall to Keep IS Out
- US-Cuba Talks Continue
- The Interview (2014)
- Comandante (2003)
Thank you, finally a new episode :)
Hey Mark, Hey Tim,
it is nice to hear from you again. I found it interesting that Tim mentioned the material regarding the downing of MH17 published by correctiv.org and DER SPIEGEL. (Maybe worthwile providing the link, apparently only in german: http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/gesellschaft/mh17-wer-hat-die-boeing-ueber-der-ukraine-abgeschossen-a-1011983.html) I did not notice that this story was referenced by any other media. I am not one of these guys believing in a media regime that wants “us” to keep away from any truth, neither in something like the “Lügenpresse” (term from german right wing populist movement protesting against an “Islamicsation” of Germany/Europe and immigration towards Germany, insinuating that “the” press is generally lying and intentionally misinforming). Maybe I just missed reference by other medias, but this made me skeptical if the prove provided is so conclusive after all. Noticing that the quality of journalism of DER SPIEGEL dropped significantly over the years and many of the articles dealing with the situation in the Ukraine are very close to pure propaganda or to say at least very much biased (and I am as the former student of polish studies do not have a positive attitude towards the Russian state) I began to suspect that DER SPIEGEL jumped at the opportunity to make a headline story with the help of the material from correctiv.org. Furthermore correctiv.org is a very young platform and hoped to boost their crowdfunding campaign with that story.
Personally I am quite convinced that there is an russian involvement in this downing and I agree with Tim that anything different would be very implausible, but watching theses materials did not strengthen my personal believe in this.
Best regards.
Tobias
Assuming you read German, this critique of Correctiv’s findings might be of interest: https://www.freitag.de/autoren/gunnar-jeschke/correct-v-korrigiert This is not an official Freitag article. Jeschke is a former National People’s Army officer and has some familiarity with the Russian missile systems. His criticism based on this expertise sounds plausible but of course I know next to nothing about military hardware.
Jeschke seems to favour the idea, that the plane was shot down by a fighter jet. Now, it’s much more difficult for me to fit this into the overall situation. Because in the end, if the separatists — though Correctiv claims it was actually a crew of Russian soldiers that manned the system — shot MH17 down, because they thought I was a military target, that’s a tragedy and one can certainly discuss the criminality of this act, but this kind of thing happens in a hot war zone. But if a fighter jet attacked MH17 to me it would seem much less likely that it whoever did this was not deliberately targetting civilians for an advantage in a propaganda war — what else could be the reasoning behind such an attack — and that would be truly callous and criminal.
Aside from that and more to the point the kind of objections that Jeschke advances reminded me that there is an actual science behind this and physical evidence. With a tall claim of presenting the conclusive version of events I think you would have to incorporate most if not all of the physical evidence, explain and discuss it. Correctiv seems to have gone the route of collecting assessments from experts,some unfortunately but possibly for good reasons under pseudonym, instead of dealing with the physical and other evidence directly. (Making an investigatory body with neutral experts much better suited to the task than a group of journalists in this particular case.) All of the assessments fit their narrative, I think there are no discussion of inconsistencies or alternative explanations… So yes, in the end, I’m also not convinced by their work.
Hi Ad, thanks a lot for the link. Read it with interest.
nice to have u back guys !!!
Glad you are back. Missed the newz.
Tim, I believe you are now obliged to pretend you are no longer in Europe. :D
lets celebrate, this is a good day.
Welcome back.
Finally a new episode. It’s great as always, but I’ve got an issue with Tim’s statement regarding German prisons.
There’ve been two historic types of facilities for criminals in Germany. First, there was the so called ‘Zuchthaus’ wich translates to something like ‘correctional facillity or raising-house’.
This facilities aimed at training people not fitting into society or even contradicting the emperors/rulers/dukes point of view by use of very brutal methods.
‘Zuchthäuser’ have been all over Germany even before the German Empire exsisted, but with it, even members of the political opposition, like social democrats for instance, were imprisoned. Finally the Nazis used them to ‘educate’ jews and so on even before there’ve been concentration camps.
Prisons on the other hand are regarded as facilites where criminals are ought to be jailed. Nothing more.
As the federal republic of Germany was founded ‘Zuchthäuser’ and regular prisons were disesthablished and replaced by ‘Justizvollzugsanstalten’ – ‘justice-execution-sites’.
These institutions are ought to combine the ideas of the former ‘Zuchthäuser’ and the regular prisons in a more human way. While a criminal individual has to serve its sentence just like in a regular prison, there are efforts to help them integrating in the society afterwards.
These efforts are consisting of psychological, educational and legal support as well as of the offer to learn a profession. Many prisoners in Germany are working in order to finish their apprenticeship, others are even doing their A grades while they’re imprisoned.
It’s also worth noticing that prisoners working in a German prison get paid a small wage. I know about at least one person wich did his A grades in prison. He worked there as a car mechanic too. He studied afterwards without any financiall issues, because he saved his wages earned in prison for exactly that reason.
So nowadays there are no ‘prisons’ in the old fashoined style here in Germany. Criminals are getting a second chance, and many of them are integrating well, espacially those who finish an apprenticeship.
And even despite the many issues this system still has, like being expensive and so on, I do appreciate this modern, more human approach of handling criminals over here in Germany.
BTW: It’s totally normal to repair the cars of your instructors or their acquaintances while you do your apprenticeship. In German prisons they also repair police cars and so on wich I regard as totally fine.