ties in to whistleblowing in that it's about revealing the truth i worked as a model while i was writing my ph d. mainly as an art nude model for artists but also for photographers and that's why when i began to get very interested in whistleblowing when his revelations came out which were of course highly relevant to my line of work i began to think what can i do to actually have an impact as wow on the situation to raise awareness but also to raise money for it and because i had quite a few photos and some of those photos had never been used in other projects i decided i would donate this to this cause as it were and to try to raise money to support these organizations with those photos but this is not really a novel way of attracting attention i mean we have seen everybody doing that from students to grammys so i guess at this point there's a risk of it being perceived not just an act of distancing but simply as a prank i wonder if it doesn't trivialize the ordeal of whistleblowers who pay

a very high price for what they did yes yes and i mean that is the first or it is something that we've seen everyone from grannies to you know the fireman's calendar you know it participate in these kind of new calendars and in fact that's where i got the idea i did think there are a lot of charities and a lot of good causes they do make new calendars to raise money for their cause and that's kind of what i saw it as a little bit of a tongue in cheek. kind of idea however i don't think it would be right to say that it trivializes the plight of whistleblowers in fact i think that the situation we're in right now is not one where we're so much facing a trivialization issue as perhaps a marginalize ation issue so what i'm trying to say to people is don't go out and buy a calendar of any odd model i mean i think just about every model has under the sun from here to timbuktu has a calendar of themselves every year give your money to this project and give it to a cause of the facts you know i know that you're selling there's calendars on. your

website and you promise to use the proceeds to how we can lakes and other activist organizations i wonder how well are they selling so far quite well actually i've actually been quite positively surprised at the reaction that it's received because of course i was i was asking myself will this work will this be something that people come out and support and yes indeed i've been sending calendars from here it was really over the past few weeks so very very well far better than i had hoped now what we see on those calendars essentially some racy photos a few decks the post again some facts about whistleblowers and that activities but you know i fully understand your noble intention but i think the way those calendars are designed are. sort of putting a time chin on your visual rob. because behind them because your body clearly wins over those tiny little lines so i wonder what do you say to those who say that you are trying to. promote at the expanse of people who are indeed suffering

for what they believe well i would there's a couple of points to be made here why i don't i don't work as a model anymore i'm thirty three which is like ninety and model years so it's not something i'm doing i'm actively pursuing anymore so to be honest it's probably i don't really view this as helping my career of you this is a thing running the risk of hindering my own career and i mean i don't mean to set myself up as in any way comparable to for example tells a magazine or edward snowden are julian i saw an extreme raft with the work they have done i'm just saying i'm in a position to do this this is what i have because i have been working as a model for all of these years and this is like the contribution that i would like to make i think everyone should really think about the contribution they would like to make to this issue because i do think it's probably the most important issue confronting the world today that encourage everyone to get out. think about what

you can do to help out in this regard now you speak very highly of the whistleblowers and i wonder given your higher respect high regard for them i wonder if you had any chance to reach out to our songes or snowden's people to ask them if they would like dire cost to be presented in such a fashion i haven't been in contact with these people i don't feel that this is something that depends on it depends on whether i approve of them or they approve of me so to speak i think this is my point is that this is an issue which really affects everyone it affects me it affects you it affects all of your viewers and i think everyone has their own way to working towards that and doing the things that they can do to forward that so i do think it's part of probably one of the in a way. disadvantages really i think of people who oppose some of the things that have been happening in our government recently to kind of argue about who should be

doing what's all the time and whether or not everyone is ok with everything that everyone else does but since you are trying to are all for your own moral support and to raise their awareness about this issue don't you think you know some of those people should be consulted you just said it's not something that you would like to do for self promotion the you're trying to support them so why don't you think that opinion is relevant here i do i do think that of course you know everyone's opinion is is to be respected however i do think that. this idea that every action that anyone takes must always be free approved by everyone else isn't really the way forward for anyone who really opposes these government actions i don't think that i mean these are my images. i've chosen to support this cause and it's about the fact that a lot of people who have engaged in was. blowing up to in the past have been

shunned or jailed or otherwise punished for their actions and they have been exonerated later for what they did now what i think is very interesting about your own case is that you have a very soul ethic and to make background and you have a long history of writing and talking about transparency and accountability western democratic system something that i'm sure is very close to the whistleblowers heart of the fact that you have to turn to nudity to get people's attention doesn't mean that people in the west are no longer interested in those issues i think people are interested in these issues i think that of course as an academic you might write an article that's forty five pages are one hundred pages or for example my thesis was something like three hundred pages long it might not be that you can really expect someone who works a full day in a normal related field to come home and want to delve into a three hundred page pieces on any given topic no matter how relevant it is for

them so i do think there is interest there i do think people on the whole do realize the gravity of the situation especially in regards to for example n.s.a. surveillance but also in the fact that our democratic system. isn't functioning as well as it did and there are serious concerns for the future so i think people are interested i think however there is and i can say for myself as well just because i'm interested in something doesn't necessarily mean i would like to sit in a dark corner and speak to two people about it for the rest of my life i like to get out and i like to enjoy life i like to have fun i think people like something that's a little bit splashy or a little bit of humor for all those wow now speaking about the gravity of the situation julian assange have spanned more than a year and they are quite aware and amber see chelsea manning is facing thirty five years in prison edward snowden's face is still pretty much up in the air and while there was some initial public discontent. and following that revelations by now it

has essentially gone back to normal and people are no longer really excited well at least from my perspective about that so much. is it likely do you think that we will see anyone else blowing the whistle on the government's wrongdoing given that even when you have such substantial revelations such scandalous revelations as for example. made by edward snowden since that even something like that is still unable to change the way governments are operating yes i do think i do think there is a lot of lethargy in our system and i do think an issue is that our representative system isn't really necessarily valid representative we do people every four years to make these decisions however wealth and campaign finance plays a very large role in the electoral process and of course once elected the those

representatives aren't beholden to their constituents to do to act as their constituents would like them i mean we saw that in the united states recently where more than ninety percent of the population was in favor of gun control and yet measures weren't taken in the u.s. congress so i do think that. even if people are interested no one likes to be to be interested and to be frustrated no one likes to put a lot of effort behind something and then see nothing happen so our big problem with our democracy i feel in the way that we exercise it is that there are barriers to participation and when you know that you're going to complain you're going to complain but nothing happens i think a sense of what does creep in there but since you present yourself as such heir a vocal supporter of whistle blowing do you think it makes sense for the whistleblowers to risk everything to risk you know that livelihood possibly even live to you know go public with their revelations like that and then see that nothing really changes what's the point. of blowing the whistle when everything

you're going to do is essentially you know ruin your own lives but nothing else well first of all this isn't over yet and that's why i think it's very important for everyone really to get on board and do whatever you can to help this this cause i mean yes. it isn't prison but that is under appeal. edward snowden at the moment to has a temporary permission to remain in russia so we have to see how that situation develops so i wouldn't say that things have have been without any effect at all we have seen based for example on chelsea manning's revelation and a lot of investigation on the part of the united kingdom into atrocities that were committed in iraq and possible violations of international human rights and humanitarian law committed in iraq the danish government has announced that they're going to investigate their forces actions in iraq we do have some maybe tentative reforms of the way the fisa court operates in the united states based on the n.s.a. surveillance scandal that snowden has revealed we have brazil and germany have put

forward and gotten indeed a general assembly resolution on the issue of of data protection or surveillance of surveillance and we also have the e.u. pushing very very strongly to strengthen their rules on data protection and on surveillance so i don't think that you could say at all that this hasn't had enough after i think it has had some good effects already and i would hope that that would continue we have to take a short break now but when we come back people in the west are proud of their democracy is but is their ability to make decisions about the future of their countries really so much greater than in non democracies that's coming up in a few moments and will depart.

as a new physician i swear. to. the best of my ability and judgment. i will prescribe as my patients. i will not give deadly doses to anybody. or advise others to do so. i will never do i. don't deserve to die. while come back to worlds apart from rear discussing the state of global democracy with a model an academic crossland fuller now since we talked about beautiful bodies earlier i wonder if. you what do you think about an allergy that i long

sort of how than my mind i really think that there is a lot in common between the idea of natural beauty and the idea of democracy because people who are naturally attractive they up until a certain point they sort of take their looks for granted they don't work for that and i think that time later on into complacency and then letting themselves go and i think it's a similar thing with democracy when you're born into a society when you take your liberties for granted you tend to be much less vigilant and proactive about those rides and liberties and i think the united states is a very good example here because in the early years they were they they had a pretty strong genuine democracy and that by now i would argue has degenerated into a system where money and power mad at my. much more of their opinion of the majority what do you think about this comparison yes i think there's a lot to be said for about i would say that our i did quite

a lot of research into the concept of democracy of course obviously and i look back i really really was where i started and i would say that as much as what you said is true i think the way our represent of democracy is kind of internally flawed. because if you look at ancient athens actually they practiced democracy in a completely different manner and in fact the founding fathers of the united states would constantly say that they were not trying to institute a democracy that thought democracy was horrible they wanted to have we institute a republic and they purposely designed the institutions to as they put it exclude the majority of from participation and to exclude collective participation to the greatest degree that they could now in the beginning that wasn't really so harmful and in the beginning there were many things that militated in their favor for the system that they set up because of course hundreds of years ago if you want to govern a large area of wind and a large number of people your only choice was really to elapse representatives and

send them somewhere where they could talk to each other and make decisions for themselves right that was just a necessity because of the technology of of the time but it's not necessarily the world that we're living in now where that representative system of having to send people to represent you is as necessary as it was so the world has changed a lot that has of course played into this situation but i mean in the beginning of the united states i mean they had slavery women of course couldn't vote or have any rights so looking back into the past and saying that you know everything was better back then and things have degenerated also isn't really true people have spent a lot of common a lot of the twentieth century fighting in fact the civil liberties. and now we have to fight again i mean that's the nature of politics really i think also in that was there is a tendency to equate. democracy with elections and the popular idea is that as long as you go to the polls every so often then they locked one of the guys that he see you know on television democracy is served but if you look at the studies of how

much time people invest into studying candidates proposals or whether those candidates indeed leave off to the election promises i think the big picture really really disheartening and i wonder if you think that democracy in the west is really too trivialized to reach our lives through you know elections debates complaints what have you to the extend of losing its most substantive part which is active participation active engagement of the people almost on a daily basis in the affairs of the country and people actually making decisions about the fate of their country yes that's true i mean i'm not i'm not the first person to say it and i probably won't be the last i mean the kind of democracy we have in western countries is what we call thin democracy we need a democracy the kind of fulfills the bare essentials. politicians were voted in so people have actually asked in the government. almost always not by

a substantial majority almost always because they felt that while they disagree with something of that party's platform and of course have no remains of control in the party once that elected they're not as bad as the other guy is sort of thing and then after four years we kind of forget about it maybe we saw one or two petitions but those petitions don't have severely have results it is true that a democracy a true democracy should depend on active participation of citizens almost on a daily basis that's what was the case in athens i mean people did participate almost on a daily basis and they made decisions for themselves it's very hard to ask people to participate when they don't become decision maker you know it's very hard to ask someone please sign another petition you can submit that but then someone else will make that decision or. for someone else who's going to make decisions for you for the next four or five years are however a law and it's not very exciting because you have no responsibility really at the

end of the day right and of course it's very easy to complain and it's very easy to criticize the message you wish and where we know that we're never going to have to make those decisions ourselves so it's also true that recruiters are politicians quite a lot for decisions but we don't know have a clear idea what decision we would have made in that particular situation but i think it kind of breeds a generally responsibility and yes why should people inform themselves when they won't be called upon to make those decisions for themselves so it is something that kind of leads to more and more and more less thirty as opposed to being really democracy meant people power and i think this issue of participation is really crucial for distinguishing democracies from non-democracies because you know into telling tearing authoritarian societies people are expressly denied participation but in democracy is participation is emphasized but i wonder if in your research you came across any studies that tried to match about not just participation the i mean how many people turn up at the polls but the quality of the participation i

guess my main point is were there what we call democracy is simply an appearance of control without having real levers of power yes i think there is a lot of truth about it is a sort of semblance of control and yes i've come across many many studies in the course of writing my thesis some of which measure and participatory levels which are quite low most of the things that are passed off as participation and really vaunted in our society such as you know protest or something don't often lead to any results at all and that's why people become lafarge because it gets boring after a while to do something that you know doesn't have any results i'm not saying protest can never lead to a result but i think it has to be something you know on the level of a million man march there needs to be a lot of pup. backing before as if facts are our fault and of course the problem with that is that it's extremely inefficient you have people going through years and years and years of hardship to try to influence

a change because there really is no direct mechanism in our democracies to allow for that in fact they're all constructed in a way that kind of actually inhibits change it's interesting that you say that especially because the claim that the number of democracies keeps on growing is constantly being made by a petition and if you look at the democracy index for two thousand and twelve. purports to say that substantial gains were made around the world with advancement of democracy especially with the arab spring and what was particularly curious even funny to me is the economist intelligence unit speech is responsible for compiling these annual democratic index particularly noted. as the country that made the greatest democratic advancements in two thousand and twelve which is a real joke to anyone who is even faintly familiar with the station in this country going back to that metaphor of beauty that we. discussed previously don't you think

that democracy has become a bit akin to beauty standards there's a sort of a pressure on countries to look democratic to. look a certain way regardless of what their underlying political health or political system may be yes i think so i think where we're living in an age where despite the wealth of information we have like never before we live in a in an age of very narrow narrow expectations be that you know standards of beauty like you're saying or be that what democracy is it all has to do with measuring a very narrow set of data did you have elections have you centered the press things like that which are you. easily measurable perhaps but don't give a clear picture of the reality of the situation and that's true we live in a society of excessively narrow ideas and narrow ways of measuring things that

don't necessarily represent reality and indeed are unsuited to do so and there is also a very significant push on the part of the if europe and the united states to improve the quality of democracies abroad but despite that i think those country is a very resistant to any domestic changes especially the united states where the system is recognised by everyone to be outdated ruby and actual colleges and just two parties alternating in the white house but at the same time. the chance the chances for any substantial reform seem to be very very low why do you think is that is there a sense in the west in terms of your democratic development do you i don't know me reach the end of history yes i think i think that's true i think i think there's not much of an awareness of the fact we do we do have that certainly that sense of we have achieved the most in this in this regard other states should seek to emulate this this is as good as it gets that's really the message that it's put

across again and again and again and it's very very misleading it can it can get better than this this isn't as good as it gets it would be possible to have a society where people have more of a say are indeed even complete say in a decision making process so i think that's definitely the case with kind of how the ourselves up as the you know the pinnacle of development it will never this will never change and of course that's wrong i mean ever everything has changed you know the roman empire once thought they would last forever too right i mean everything changes and everything has to change but dr fuller do you think that people really want that change because in the industrial societies at least technologically real ready have a capacity for direct democracy so you can you know ask people of the unions digitally on pretty much any issue but i wonder if walters really want that you know that responsibility of making the. which would require you to be engaged all the time which would require you to make those decisions which could be quite exhausting sometimes which would require you to take responsibility for your

actions and stupid from a very convenient and psychologically sometimes constant comforting pretax of blaming the politicians you know it's all their fault do you really think that people want that to happen. whether they really want to have these fully functioning democracy in back countries or maybe it's just more convenient for them to leave in their current circumstances run essential blame a shifted to somebody else yeah that's that's a valid point i mean we are we are living in a sort of comfort zone where it's nice to complain but not really have to put yourself out there putting yourself out there is quite scary and making those decisions is of course very scary because you might be wrong right so of course the kind of natural tendency is why don't we stay here where we are that's comfortable we know we know this so i think people have to really will have to make a choice at a certain point but i think that the idea that things will stay as they are or we

have to kind of jump you know to jump forward and to take more responsibility ourselves is a false one i don't think we can stay where we are it's kind of like the choice between privacy and security it's a false choice really things are getting worse we do live in a society where the rich are getting immensely richer the poor are getting poorer we're not staying static nothing stays static and i think at a certain point we have to take the chances that this new technology offered us and goes for go forward because at a certain point staying where we are is going to be untenable we're not going are where we are we're always moving either bop words or forwards you don't have a choice and fortune unfortunately that is unfortunately it is it is a big responsibility it is a scary thing to have to take charge of your life it is exhausting in some ways. you know in a way the price of freedom and the price of self-determination it is an exhausting business it's not easy and that's i think one big message i would have about democracy real democracy isn't easy real democracy is really hard well dr fuller we

have to leave it there but thank you very much for your time and to our your if you like the show please join us again same place same time here on the part. i know. tanya laid it well tell me how you were my little grandson. i don't know. i don't like. being cut off. except to as an ecovillage that the spiritual side is destructive.

i try to convince her and try to preach that it was a sect but it's dangerous but she had to leave it was a story she had lost her mind. you know you she will come back i know it was and i will wait what would you even if it means i must wait until my dying day. i know c.n.n. the m s n b c news have taken some slightly but the fact is i admired their commitment to cover all sides of the story just in case one of them happens to be accurate. that was funny but it's closer to the truth and might think. it's because when full attention and the mainstream media works side by side the joke is actually on we're. going to look.

at our teen years we have a different brain. because the news of the world just is not this funny i'm not laughing dammit i'm not hi. i'm that. you got a sense of the jokes well handled and they said ok. on june sixteenth one thousand forty one we had

a graduation party at school and the war broke out. the shops were always full of goods. in september grad was plucked. one day mom went to sort out all the shelves were empty. in november the. warehouses it was the main storage place for all the food in the city people eating the earth because it had small traces of sugar in it i tried to eat it as well but i couldn't. move. incredibly heavy bombing. it was a direct very shelter and everyone was buried underneath. all of the dead .

straight to live pictures for you here on r.t. international as opposition leaders in kiev have been urging protesters against violence as the city split by barricades and. killed and that's. why full physicians' clash of the geneva two conference on syria even before the. warring sides of the conflict sit down for direct talks. and n.s.a. whistleblower edward snowden reportedly asking russian authorities for more protection amid mounting death threats.