changed now a few years later and what we're seeing is something a lot worse than that what we're seeing is now a comprehensive failure of leadership and not just in politics which is the most visible kind of leadership but comprehensibly through american life and to some extent western life you know a failure of you with leadership in politics business in the media you know in the clergy. in education at every level and that makes for a very. nervous society all right james howard kunstler we're out of time thanks so much for being on the kaiser report quite welcome mats always a pleasure all right that's going to do it for this edition of the kaiser report with me max kaiser and stacy herbert i want my guest james howard kunstler you can find howard kunstler at consular dot com if you like to send me an e-mail please do so at kaiser reported r t t v dot our you are you can follow me on twitter so next time ask either saying by our.

culture's the same of you i can tell you that you know other people most of us were telling me to take your pick. for the melvin britain and argentina reagan sponsoring of the legal status and future of these islands is this dispute it.

russia's foreign minister says the risk of repeating a libyan style scenario is this foreign intervention in syria at moscow also warns that the west is building a case against the assad regime and that could be used to justify military on. hold so let's hop in the euro crisis as the euro zone troops signs assurances that still awaited from greek roots could lead to the only proud to have to implement an austerity program and return by a total of one hundred that sensibility euro bailout the same become true from default comes as movies and rating agency downgrade takes even stayed. on the clouds gathering of a term bond as russia's nutria predicts the west a might decide on a strike against iran in the polls they told those television sectors asians the

business state was behind monday's attack staunton the israeli embassy is in need aid georgia but several hundred in delhi. up next i'm going to show spotlight and in the studio today is called the gold special envoy for human rights ad the russian foreign ministry to discuss its latest report of human rights abuses around the world. hello again to welcome to. the show. today my guest in the studio is. the russian foreign ministry spurstow have a report on this and other countries has caused this hurt and slammed the. human rights record during some fierce criticism mainly critics say the report is

biased and just another round of the russian american battle yet the foreign ministry plans to publish such reports every year just like the u.s. department so can the russian rights watch out for really become common practice and all of these kind of reports reliable source of information war and mere diplomatic trip. to foreign ministries commissioner for human rights democracy and the rule of law. the world's most well known governmental human rights report is the us department of state it covers the record of the united nations members except the us and usually criticizes many governments for justice and violations the first country to respond to the american criticism was china which has been reporting on human rights since nine hundred ninety eight the russian report focuses on the u.s. to mentioning people in total bay prison and violation of the rights of american

muslims it also covers the european union nato members and georgia. i want to thank you very much for being with us hello thanks well first of all. the question. about your current position about. the job you're here keeping the position of the spur of a special envoy within the foreign ministry was established just this year. or two last year last year you had only been here a couple of months ago right so whose decision was it why was it decided in the kremlin in the foreign ministry or. well. has been established as you put it last year it was. more than a couple of months it was established last april actually and this almost a year time flies and the decision has been taken by the russian leadership obviously and of course. by the leadership of the foreign minister mr lavrov

and the idea was kind of. multi fall to profile even more our country russia in the field of human rights democracy and rule of law and those are very much interconnected in the interlinked elements obviously and spheres. to provide for additional opportunities for dialogue with our partners and when i say partners i mean they're quite a broad spectrum of those. countries. international going to asians and institutions non-governmental institutions. and also of course to monitor the first and foremost i will say to monitor the situation in the field of human rights democracy the rule of law. abroad and it means in the world where the underlying idea is their. human rights are universal this is the general recognition of the common recognition it's rained in the universal declaration and in the many other

documents in common and some on human rights it means their human rights are for everybody. all people have the right to enjoy here there but unity to enjoy human raise in the on the other hand all states have to to implement certain certain standards what a. why your day to day activities i mean other than writing this annual report will we be hearing from you some comments and major world events considering human rights and well i believe they're. already hearing it's not my first name on russia today and it's great to be back and i have already had an opportunity to provide some of my assessments on russia today and they said he and spotlight they would absolutely and hopefully the first but not last time but yes i've been commenting on different issues and situations in the humanitarian and human red

fields on a regular basis sometimes on a daily basis but on a regular basis and we. are putting some of the. commons on the ministers websites or they're easy to access and. also obviously dissipating in there in the drafting. of the reactions by the foreign ministry to two on the different issues which are within my my my scope and. you mentioned reports the report to hopefully to become annual. but it doesn't mean that they will wait for another year or two to. share some of our assessments and i'm sorry asians on how the human race situation develops in the world and we have different channels have been in there and this is my part of my job description

i've been there and i am in the regular touch with the russian and then foreign journalists and. with a definitely. with our media. journalists who read and journalists who are now on t.v. definitely there are different channels so we. think that it is absolutely important to monitor how the situation develops because quite a number of issues in the field of human rights in the field of human rights are common issues. i would say even ubiquitous sometimes and not a single country in the world today is immune to those issues let's mention some of them for instance racism racial discrimination. discrimination of ethnic minorities . for their intolerance in a broad sounds so it provides a great opportunity for cooperation well let's take

a look at the history of international human rights reports here's a story from spotlight again. one of the first ever reports and human rights was produced fifty years ago by amnesty international the only named in six days so thank you one commission on human rights becoming active in condemning human violations which were also documented in an annual report ten years later another international organization joined in it was human rights watch despite so many international bodies doing the job the u.s. state department decided on the issue in itself and he writes from. in the end in seventy six and you document often contain scathing and now it says on abuses originally in the u.s.s.r. and later russia another country highly criticized in the us state department report china decided to strike back and came up with its own account of human

rights violations in one to ninety eight russia has always alleged the u.s. state department report was biased and question the right of any nation to bear. however december two thousand and eleven so russia's foreign ministry issued its own report on human rights. well the us department of state the united states was criticized criticized by the soviet union by rochelle a later for these reports of this kind we said i remember that america is positioning itself as a judge for other country for their situation human rights so why did russia decide to follow this example well first of all. i am working in the in the foreign ministry of the russian federation and definitely as our minister sergey lavrov actually put it yesterday during his press conference on the. year

two thousand and eleven. our foreign policy is not an ideological foreign policy and it is. very much preventing one and. that's why when we criticize we do not criticize our radiological. for their logical reasons we have we do. observe and one of the how the situation stands in the united states and some other countries we do. i would lie on certain issues which they have and they do have certain sort of problems. we and it's very important we be using ourselves not just on some conjectures we're basing l. cells on the assessments given by a pretty much authority if international is admitted of but russia as we remember it the foreign ministry for one has reacted pretty angrily every time we were

sharply criticized in reports of this kind especially in the united states report for the situation human rights in russia we did give them and their angry reaction so what kind of reaction do you expect that your report which is also pretty critical. will have the wall where. you mentioned. anger reaction will we react in a negative sense sometimes maybe you can say angrily when a criticism of our foreign policy we could this is no our practices and situation in russia or in the field of human rights e's a biased one when it is a strange one and unfortunately in the in the state department's reports. quite a number of. assessments and conclusions are falling into this category

the best way we have to react but we do not to react angrily to any criticism which is a constructive one because the issues do exist and i would country the problems do exist and we are we are now leadership is absolutely right to do it need it but efforts are being done and when the do to take a leadership is when efforts are not when efforts are underestimated then definitely we have we have to point to point to it and the reaction to our report. let's. maybe distinguish between two sorts of reactions or reactions one is official reaction and we have heard official reaction for. on the department of state which you mentioned in the form demanded states from finland from some other countries and i must say that those reactions there as official it would have been pretty much. i can see in the way

constructive or maybe you reserved were not definitive negative air although i would expect some of those countries which have been mentioned in our reports and maybe not to be governments not to be very much happy with some some provisions of the report well you talking about the official initial reaction we'll talk about the unofficial actual tour boyishly in the minutes after we take a break just a reminder that constantin is our guest and. resistance is not politics but a culture. is

couldn't get. on its own. cultures of resistance on our team.

wealthy british scientists it's time to. go. to. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy comes a report on our. welcome back to spotlight i'm just reminded that my guest in the studio today is constantin they'll go off russian foreign ministry special envoy for human rights democracy and the rule of law. he just told us about the official reaction to your human rights report which you call constructive what was the. general what are the i'm going to the reaction what kinds of unofficial reactions have you got of what the

angry. official reaction is i will say that the reactions for instance in some media yes there has been critical reaction to. the reports it depends upon. upon the media upon the newspaper and by the way in some newspapers reaction once again was quite. acceptable and even quite positive some other of the have been criticisms well what are you to judge. this rings a bell rings a bell. and moves to the point that we felt he had the target because well. the idea behind the report was to once again it was it is based on objective sources and objective information from international human rights organizations in the human rights council the un and so on and so forth but they do you want to point out to underline the existence of problems even in those countries which count

themselves as the developed democracies you know what sources of information do you use when you prepare your report. i would say why the variety of i mentioned some of them for instance. assessments and conclusions from the universal periodic review of the un human rights council. also the assessments given by such i was well known non-governmental organizations as for instance amnesty international or human rights watch or someone here also we also used definitely some of the some of the national sources not only russian sources. and also quite a number of open sources by the way in serbia information to be. very much in the in the open domain so. you said something about who used to jab or

maybe a who has the monopoly to judge nobody has the monopoly to judge others and does everybody have the right to judge. well i would say that. well we all have sort of the right says states and it's not too probably to judge use of judges not be the right word to. underline the existence of problems yes i think every every country has this right and we will he did this very important struggles you don't consider. your paper to to to be judging we are not judges we're judged you're trying to highlight the problem with highlight their our lives and we are a we are making it clear clear the problems do exist many of them are trans border as we call them problems or common issues and problems and a very important message you know report and i hope that this message has been taken and we heard that it is taken by many that we invited to even broader and

more intensive international catering why is your report so selective because it's mainly situation in the united states and in major western western countries. as we call them countries of europe why are you so selective doesn't that make you biased when you become selective because we're not judging. the u.s. so this is what you care about well the u.s. report well the u.s. report it depicts a describes the situation in all other countries of the world with one exception yes which is the united states of course the. you can guess why but. we do not follow this pattern we do not want to mention a country only for the sake of mentioning it but we wanted to show once again bit easier and problems exist everywhere including in the most developed code and called democracies and it is it is not just to criticize for the sake of

criticizing it is to invite those countries and others to more cooperation are you biased. well well to be to be frank do you feel that you are sort of biased i don't know but i don't think we're biased i mean if you if you look and if you read the report and i believe you did it. there is nothing in that report which is not altogether which is altogether unknown to the international community or which isn't being mentioned by those as it was with this is another what's the point what's the point of making a report based on paper is already published by international organization like you mentioned the un is think there's limits on software and the others they're all already open figures what's the point of putting them together in here in other point of the point is to give a different angle a different attitude of well we do generalize we do systematize a little bit definitely we're not just a company will be asleep. we. we're not cooking it when we are we're not just

compiling and the idea is to. express our views on just to make it clear that we do observe certain issues and problems in number in a number of countries and there are quite a number of countries i mentioned in our report and. that scope of the report. this essentially will remain unchanged because it develops i mean it depends upon big developments in the field of human rights which we can. i mean we don't exclude that maybe some other countries can begin to mention the next time so we'll see well about other countries and this is a nerve the thing that makes me think i think when i read your first report of some wise you you mentioned you speak a lot about the united states about europe but this report does mention some countries where the situation in the field of human rights is world.

worse or not at least not better than in the united states and some european countries some of the russian neighbors why aren't you mentioning them why aren't you interested in the situation there will be better or worse you know i always remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder you know you never you never know what it is if you have difficult to say better or worse but. i tried to describe the logic which we followed when we prepared the first and. i would like to underline this is the first report and the first experience in russia but if we can just which you mentioned well there are certain issues obviously i mean even worse than even the kremlin says once in a while that they are concerned with the human rights situation for example in belarus right and the foreign minister has said right on the on one occasion yeah it does a lot of the absence of. the sort of country in our first report doesn't mean you

are happy does not mean that we do not know and good morning to the situation we're going to do this of course and we do not. underestimate the problems which exist now but are we. as i said i would report is not the one only channel through which we can can we are with experts so there are other channels including in the russian foreign ministry. the russian policy of russian foreign policy is becoming more and more problematic which is good the reason why i've started talking about a bill the rooster countries like syria which are more dependent russia is there i think that that the criticism coming from moscow towards countries like belarus and syria would be more effective than criticizing the united states don't you don't you agree why do you think we're not criticizing them. we are definitely we do express our views including. those countries which you mentioned and not only but once again there are different channels and we are doing. speaking of syria we are

doing a lot as a russia to. promote the political process to which would result definitely obviously in bettering the situation in the field of human rights but political process not the external external interference in the syrian matter so we are contributing and we are of course frankly telling our friends and partners when we see certain things which are wrong i mean in the field of human rights we don't get it could you give us an example of the human rights violation that there is cited in your report that wasn't common knowledge i mean for for for for the white audiences in some country before you published it before you made it made a film. it will have for me probably to my to guess what was not known to the wider. public but i would like to i would land one issue. which

we unfortunately face and witness on their more and more regular basis which is not good you know and it means i'm speaking about territorial. proliferation you know or projection of the u.s. law. i would say that the united states and the. we have seen a number of instances when the russian citizens have been illegally extradited to the united states from the third countries without with all due notification of the russian of the russian government and under the consular convention under the international law in general. this is a very worrisome trend and we have been underlying it. constantly to our american partners and. i can different to refer to a number of cases but. here's one we just say mr boot has one of yes there.

is another case where the recently just a few days ago another russian citizen has been extradited from switzerland to the united states mr is that i mean and once again it is very important that all the necessary. for mellitus and provisions of international law are followed by the u.s. government all these cases these cases i mean russian citizens rights abused abroad are they your priority or your. concern about for example the the rights. of the citizens of other countries being violated finitely it is a huge priority definite so you go or see other russians abroad well i am i am working. for the russian foreign ministry and i'm a russian diplomat obviously the legitimate rights and freedoms of russian citizens this is a big concern for me for my government for the russian foreign ministry but i am also i am also. monitoring a lot of the implementation of human rights in general you know in general thank

you thank you very much for being with us and just to remind you that my guest today was consigned to russian foreign ministry special envoy human rights and that's it for now from all of the spotlight will be back with more comments on what's going on in and outside russia until then our team can take you.