After nearly twenty years of conflict, the United States is, once again, attempting to extricate itself from Afghanistan. This year, the US and the Taliban signed an agreement that was intended to be a first step towards an intra-Afghan peace deal and US forces began withdrawing troops. But for the time being, the peace process remains tenuous, and Afghanistan is still being used by Russia and the US as proxy war. Over the past few years, Russia has tried to present itself as an ascendant global power, expanding its influence in Syria, Ukraine, as well as Afghanistan. But Putin's government is also grappling with a raging pandemic and an economic crisis. Markos Kounalakis recently discussed Russia's delicate political moment with Steven Pifer. He was ambassador to Ukraine, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, and was a senior director for Russia and Eurasia at the National Security Council.
3 August 2020
WorldAffairs: America’s Longest War
United States forces have been fighting in Afghanistan for almost twenty years, making it the longest war in American history. But for many Americans, the conflict only became top of mind again after hearing reports that a Russian military intelligence unit offered bounty money to the Taliban for killing US soldiers. In this episode, we take a closer look at how the war in Afghanistan has served as a proxy conflict between the US and Russia and how it fits into Russia’s global agenda. Former US Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry joins co-host Ray Suarez, followed by a conversation with Jennifer Glasse of Al Jazeera.
The Guardian: How Nespresso's coffee revolution got ground down
For the people who sell it, the way coffee looks has long been as important as how it tastes. Until the late 19th century, beans were prized for their size, colour and symmetry. Nespresso applied a similar approach to its capsules: they started rather plain, in greys and golds, but evolved into a full spectrum. Red means decaffeinated, with darker purples and greys for the stronger, more intense flavours. “You are trying to give people visual clues about the origins of the product,” said Spence. “People prefer the taste of things when they think they have made a choice about it.” The Nespresso system made every customer feel like a connoisseur: you had to make a choice every time you put a capsule in the machine, even if it was just between black or purple. [...]
One crucial factor behind Nespresso’s rise, unmentioned by Gaillard, was timing. In 1998, Starbucks arrived in the UK, and elsewhere in Europe from 2001. (Although not in Italy, which somehow held out until 2018.) Previously it had been difficult to get a decent coffee anywhere outside Italy. At Starbucks, you could enjoy Italian-style coffee, which is to say freshly made and with frothy milk, marketed with Italian-style language. According to the historian of consumption, Jonathan Morris, Nespresso capitalised on these new tastes: “When customers started to ask how they could have [Starbucks-style coffee] at home, Nespresso was the best-placed product to take advantage of that.” Between its Fortissio and Vivalto pods, it had the cod-Italian ready to go, too. [...]
Unlike plastic, used by many of Nespresso’s rivals, aluminium is 100% recyclable, but there is a big difference between offering recycling facilities and getting consumers to use them. Nespresso says its global recycling rate is 30%, and that 91% of its users have access to one of its 100,000 collection points around the world. But some experts have suggested that just 5% of Nespresso pods are recycled. Even if Nespresso’s figure is accurate, with a conservative estimate of 14bn capsules being sold each year, and 0.9 grams of aluminium per capsule, that means 12,600 tonnes of Nespresso aluminium end up in landfill annually, enough for 60 Statues of Liberty.
Politico: ‘Hating Joe Biden doesn’t juice up their base’: Key swing state slips away from Trump
It’s a very big problem in a swing state that’s central to his Rust Belt path to victory. Four years ago, Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate since 1988 to carry Pennsylvania, in part by winning older and suburban voters, as well as blue-collar white workers in ancestrally Democratic areas. Now, with less than 100 days till Election Day, surveys show those voters are eyeing something different yet again. [...]
“Joe Biden — his party is not in power — so just by definition, he’s the candidate of change. That’s a huge advantage,” said Democratic Sen. Bob Casey. “No matter what Hillary Clinton did with her campaign schedule, she was running after eight years of a Democratic president. So when you’re running after eight years of your party, you are not the change candidate.”
Democratic elected officials, party leaders and strategists in Pennsylvania said that Biden is ahead because of Trump’s mishandling of Covid-19 — which is particularly risky to seniors — as well as his broken campaign promises to workers about spending big on infrastructure and rewriting trade deals to benefit them. They believe voters like Biden because he is known as someone who can work across the aisle to solve the nation’s problems. [...]
In a call with reporters last month, Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien touted the fact that Republicans have registered more voters than Democrats in Pennsylvania — about five times as many — since 2016. The team said it is working to identify first-time or infrequent voters who support Trump, something it successfully did in 2016.
VICE: Donald Trump Is Getting Less Popular by the Day
Fifty-two percent of Americans polled disapprove of Trump’s handling of the protests, while just 36 percent approve. Even among older Americans, who were most likely to approve of Trump’s response, a clear majority (54 percent) disapproves. (Nineteen percent of respondents overall said the presence of federal agents “doesn’t have much effect one way or the other.”)
Trump gets similarly bad marks on relations with Russia (36 percent approval, 63 percent disapproval) and his handling of the pandemic (34 percent approval, 66 percent disapproval), the issue that’s dominated American life since March and which could decide the election.
On all three topics, the only groups more likely to approve of Trump’s handling of the issue than not is white voters without college degrees and Trump’s fellow Republicans. According to Ipsos, 64 percent of Republicans said the presence of federal troops made the situation better, as did 42 percent of white voters without college degrees.
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