This week’s podcast looks at the departure of Western countries from Afghanistan as the capital, Kabul, falls into the hands of the Taliban.
Former peacekeeper Elli Flén said he disagreed with the U.S. view of the Afghanistan operation, which focused narrowly on counter-terrorism operations.
"The President of the United States now says that America was not there to build a nation. Well, I was. And it was pretty clear to us that we were helping the Afghan army and the Afghan police take more responsibility for security. We were there building a safer Afghanistan."
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Flén said these political debates were, after all, “semantics,” and there was now more humanitarian need.
"I think the biggest concern is the real people who are still stuck there," said Flén. "And they feel betrayed. Whatever we do, whatever we decide and whatever our policy is, we should not take such swift action as we do now."
Charly Salonius Pasternak, Leading Researcher at the Finnish Foreign Institute, "participation in politics and society can be dangerous, and perhaps it is just a remark you make to people," said Salonius-Pasternak. "We support you rhetorically at least, maybe financially, in other words, but we can’t guarantee your safety. It would be placing cards on the table."
Climate action is needed, focusing on farmers
Last week’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has created gloomy reading. In the first podcast after the summer, we looked at the situation in Finland, emphasizing future budget negotiations and the Green Party’s pressure on agricultural measures to curb and limit climate change.
Liisa Pietola, Director of Environment, Climate and Nature at the Farmers Union MTK, said members are not happy that they are being pressured today to do more to combat climate change.
"I have to say that our farmers were quite injured," said Pietola. "They could not understand this because we have strayed from our path for at least two decades because we have tried to protect our waters by reducing tillage, adding green raven to our fields, so we have already adapted a lot of measures that we can see as climate measures because they also sequester carbon in the soil. ."
Until Sawala Climate activist group Extinction Rebellion, for his part, told us that although Finland’s agricultural sector is not exactly the same as other countries, farmers need to do more.
"While there are other areas that we may need to cut even more sharply in order to reach zero, we also need to address animal husbandry," said Sawala. "Methane is a very important greenhouse gas and also stays in the atmosphere for a long time, so the only way to reduce greenhouse gases to sustainable levels is to reduce the amount of meat consumed and the livestock we raise that cause these methane emissions."
Join the discussion!
This week’s presentation was presented by Egan Richardson and Zena Iovino with reporting Veronica Kontopoulou. Producer and was Mark B.Odom and the audio engineer was Pasi Ilkka.
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Source: The Nordic Page