join me every photo on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to guests of the world of politics school this list i'm showbusiness i'll see you then. you know if putin said suddenly that oh if we recognize nancy pelosi has the president and i say say we're not going to talk with donald trump the world to be you know how arranged but of course the u.s. has a stereo exceptionalism and that no law applies to them and so they can do whatever they want but by the central banks buying gold as they are they are now coming to the conclusion that america has lost its mind and then when they run out of gold to buy i guarantee you they're going to start fishing around the clock markets.

toxic atmosphere bullying and harassment a damning report lays bad the working conditions of the world renowned human rights organization amnesty international employee suicides also ahead. great nations do not fly list wars. from troop drawdowns to border security on applauding the venezuelan opposition u.s. president delivers a wide ranging state of the union speech to congress. and his facebook turns fifteen it's a defense of the social media platform arguing it helps to empower people across the world.

five o'clock here in moscow and you're watching all to international live from with me david welcome to the program. leading a global human rights group is being accused by its own staff of bullying discrimination and the abuse of power national is one of the world's oldest humanitarian groups but a review of its workplace practices has revealed a toxic culture the wellbeing review was launched after to amnesty employees committed suicide within six weeks of each other last year. as the story. we're facing a situation where this world renowned human rights organization amnesty international is in the headlines for all the wrong reasons following revelations about a quote talk saying work culture in this organization that was discovered by an independent review carried out by the cantera group consultancy that found that things like bullying public humiliation nepotism discrimination over work are

widespread at amnesty international this was discovered following interviews and discussions with as many as seventy percent of staff and the situation has been described as quote a state of emergency or it has to do with the atmosphere and working culture in the organization that is very isolating i've never before worked in the place where everyone works so alone it's because of a system where everyone they scared stressed and overworked and thus can only focus on their own survival. there was a real culture of bullying right up until i left several years ago particularly of middle managers well this review found also what it described to be as martyrdom culture because of this reputation and status that amnesty international has throughout the world and according to this review the credibility of this

organization could now come under question and the organization the touts protecting human rights as its mission but is itself mired in a conflictual an adversarial culture will lose credibility as organizational rifts and evidence of nepotism and hypocrisy become public knowledge they will be used by the government and other opponents of amnesties work to undercut or dismiss amnesties advocacy around the world fundamentally jeopardizing the organization's mission and to reduce some numbers that were provided it was said that as many as over fifty percent of employees feel like they're not valued and as many as thirty nine percent have developed health and or mental issues as a result of the work that they do and in terms of the reaction we've seen from amnesty we know that they have found these conclusions troubling and have said that they will try to carry out some kind of reforms and all of this of course gets

revealed following two suicides of employees of amnesty international that took place back in twenty thousand within six weeks of each other that prompted a series of reviews including this latest one. the u.s. president has delivered his annual and highly anticipated state of the union address to a deeply divided congress from spoke at length about critical to mastic and foreign policy concerns as well as the perceived successes of his administration here are some of the highlights of the speech. i loudly pledged a new approach. great nations do not fight endless wars. we shared with the venezuelan people. their noble quest for freedom and we condemn the brutality of the more dero regime the united states is

developing a state of the art missile defense system. under my administration we will never apologize for advancing america's interests chairman kim and i will meet again on feb twenty seventh and twenty eighth in vietnam it is time to give our brave warriors in syria. a warm welcome home while the president was making his address protesters rallied near trump tower in new york to denounce the u.s. leader they criticized his administration's divisive policies and trump's campaign slogans. office to channel r.t. america was joined by a panel of experts to discuss the address and its implications and you can find it on our you tube channel he did attempt to reach across party lines more sort of that we've heard from any speech in the past where he really did reach out to democrats tried to find middle ground solutions on the issues he laid out the

points where he's going to stay to the right but he also came back to the middle terms of the foreign policy area he talked about food which wars everything that he talked about even though it was to show a very strong united states. what he's pursuing in these other countries may actually have the effect of prolonging a war we're also looking at him and talking about this in iran these are very scary times he may have to get an invincible military but we're so over overly committed now that if we go that route go any one of those routes we could we could get bogged down in another vietnam in many locations throughout the world for sure what we have in a speech like this is putting old neo con wine into a new america first rhetorical bottle and it's sad because i think he wants to get out of afghanistan he wants to get out of syria i think the one bright spot is probably korea but there are people of his administration who would like to take

that one as well we spend ten times as much as the russians three times as much for the chinese not enough money isn't our problem here is because the strategy is all wrong i think he knows that but if you look around that big room in there those are the very people who will not let him do what i think he wants to do including also the people he's appointed to his administration i was really excited that he started out with criminal justice reform some of the changes that he made with a second chance were good for all americans but after that you can pretty much for the entire rest of the speech away because he went back to his partisan bias ways particularly when talking about the wall so much division what do you say is the rhetoric is uncalled for and it overshadows the good that he does do because we're so caught up to do good in the next thing you know tim is like he's tweeting and has disavowed everything positive so you know what he's going to. talk about talk about actually there was a moment so i felt like i was watching mom and dad look over their group and while we didn't see mike pence face that very often we did see nancy pelosi is in it

sometimes you could tell she was kind of like looking at her children ok you better behave no no not now and i would say across the board i am actually surprised pleasantly surprised at how civil because we do know that there were people that were quite upset with the president and the congress i do want to go around go quick and say. what do you think is going to happen tomorrow like with everything else of president trump you can say one thing but it comes next i actually got to say are we going to get more information via twitter from trump you know he's going to react to that response and he's not going to like it ok tomorrow called civil war resume similar to what we were doing a lukewarm civil war resumes. i'm going to say i hope we have bipartisan change and we can have to work across party lines the civil war going to. be good and i hope for the best but i think as my my colleagues say it's going to be back to business as usual and went on. and we're probably going to see what we have to see trying to do which is compare everything that he said to what obama did just like the employment growth and women which started under obama and india i hope that he

continues this talent of choosing unity choosing greatness and choosing victory over vengeance if he keeps this up i think we'll have a much more unified country a delegation of the taliban is in moscow today peace talks claiming the u.s. has to withdraw hoffa its troops from afghanistan by may i discussed this earlier with our correspondent maria for national. taliban represents is here in the russian capital how are the talks progressing well first of all we have to say that the taliban movement has come here to moscow after they had intensive talks with the american side but to clear away the u.s. special representative for afghanistan reconciliation mr heller's out and we heard following these meetings from mr howard's out that there was a draft framework agreed on a very controlled sweep troll from afghanistan we also heard from american president on trump that america is ready to pull out its troops from this country

but the deadline was never mentioned finally and wednesday we heard from the deputy head of the political branch of the taliban movement based in doha that the end of april is the time when we should see at least half of america's contingent out of afghanistan let's take a listen. the u.s. is vow to walk us through its military contingent would leave afghanistan starting from early february and to be completed by april two committees will be established both will define the schedule for the withdrawal of the remaining troops taliban is very powerful incredibly influential on the ground and they are according to various sources controlling more land in afghanistan than the official government so of course this is a forest everybody should consider and no one can ignore their main condition has always been and remains a complete withdrawal of all foreign troops from the territory of their country.

i mean you can believe. weeks you know we agreed each other in two points one is all. foreign forces were withdrawing from afghanistan they seem to have had a positive impact these top. in the afghan conflict yes it is a positive tendency but there is a skepticism as well because not everybody shares this optimism about these peaceful africa because it is clear that after everything is over the taliban one. probably will play a very important role in the future of afghanistan politically maybe even rule in the country and i spoken to the member of parliament of kenya some parliament. these peace conference they had of human rights commission and she has told me that

the reason vost part of. any society progressive dynamic part she believes that is not ready to go back to when the taliban was ruling the country because this is quite conservative or is there this is an islamic for us so at the end of the they believe it could be quite controversial so they don't want to go back this is one of the concerns and another concern is of course the security situation on the ground the talks i go in the u.s. for is now this peace conference in moscow but we see them bargains continuing in the taliban continue their attacks on the country's army so people are still dying there so. i mean the p's is still not there the situation is still dramatic but at least something is going on so we have to wait and see. as facebook turns fifteen its founder has published an impassioned defense of the social media platform. the science has been

a force of good and has helped to revolutionize the ways in which people communicate it comes as the company faces increasing scrutiny over how its handling uses personal information as it has the details. if you're. yeah mark wouldn't say that for nothing last year transferred facebook data to cambridge and living in violation of free data policy personal data mined from nearly eighty seven million facebook users the largest security breach in the company's history this is this is a challenge for our cloud companies and that was a big mistake and i'm really sorry that this happened i'm sorry you think having to do so much damage control must have definitely taken its toll on facebook but apart from their fiftieth anniversary mark zuckerberg and co have another great reason to throw a big party not only they didn't lose money actually they've set

a record in profit for the final three months of twenty teeing it almost reached seven billion bucks privacy issues illegal dot harvesting and not doing enough about what the russians were up to all attempts to bring the tech giant to account made people on capitol hill realize the many many times that marks our cover has had to apologize and the takeaway for me for that is that we can't rely on self-regulation that facebook is not going to regulate itself and that we have to pass some laws well for now realizing and saying that way too often hasn't led to much action is facebook really being regulated the answer is no and with all that big money could they care less well to keep enjoying that comfort at least for now they once hired some very smart and influential people like joe kaplan as the

president said in his remarks president the president the president laid out in his speech yes here's george w. bush and here's mr kaplan he used to have an important job in the second bush administration and here you can see what he's up to now. being called facebook's policy boss who else would be behind zuck shoulder at all these troublesome government hearings. now that is him again alongside mariah jordan the tech giant's director of public policy guess what she worked for the white house administration to anything from the democrat era. there you have it. and he was once in charge of writing what president obama says here they are an american century. welcoming. of everybody. who was spiers to do something oh that was emotional well nowadays his

dealing with economic and social impact issues at facebook and that's just a few career twist examples it helps to know people i mean even better if the people you know no more right people. still to come this hour a danish national has been given a six year sentence for his affiliation to a bond investor. after this break. but holds his hands to. put themselves on the line to get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president and you. want to be. to the right to be

press this is what the four three in the morning can't be good. i'm interested always in the waters about how. they sit. as a presidential candidate donald trump lambasted america's endless and wasteful wars but as president he has surrounded himself with a division who have made defending and advancing american empire a full time career why did trump cave and what could be the consequences for him and his president.

welcome back to the program a new york times opinion piece earlier this week has claimed controversially that the corruption is hard wired into russian society and its very nature. corruption is in russia's d.n.a. sharing is not the russian wait. the piece is accompanied by a menacing photo of la tamir putin a number of russian words thrown in for dramatic effect including those meaning lies and disinformation one however has been mistranslated as it means compromising material and not compromise the article and some of its small spirit claims was met with harsh criticism from a number of journalists and readers of the publication. imagine a new york times op ed casual stating corruption is in the jews' d.n.a. but as long as we're talking about russians these kind of groups xenophobia is totally fine corruption is in russia's d.n.a. this is racism masquerading as analysis it's also undermines the author's argument

because if true who can blame the lawyer scary photo by the way. this photo in the article are reminiscent of the hearst papers in a phobic and hysterical war fever drummed up to so papers before the spanish-american war it is designed to build up hatred and not knowledge and it's not the first time that russia's critics have made reference to genetics either a former u.s. national intelligence director once said the russians are genetically driven to co-opt and manipulate legal and media analyst lionel told us he thinks that the new york times piece is outrageous. i don't even know the adjectives though the words are you shocking disgusting deplorable racist let me make this very very clear if you had replaced the term russian with any other ethnicity nationality group of people there would have been. just a cavalcade an avalanche of attacks you would have been indicted for that.

rush back. that goes without jay that. i never thought i could say this we always say well this hits a new low lower journalistic. netgear a new chasm of the this has no depth this is the black hole of journalism this is so much so so consumed so. the gravity is so intense that light kitty scape truth can't escape i mean this is for lab or gas stake. now of russian court has sentenced danish national tennis christianson to six years in prison for his affiliation to the jehovah's witnesses the religious group was banned in russia in twenty seventeen since being treated as an extremist organization and then his foreign minister has expressed his concern. deeply concerned by the sentencing of dennis christensen again calling on russia to

respect freedom of religion the danish will continue to follow closely and assisted in its christians should he decide to appeal this forty six year old jehovah's witness dennis christensen was arrested back in may two thousand and seventeen in the russian city of aureole and it was just a month after the russian law determined this u.s. based jehovah's witness religion to be an extremist organization now the new law was tied to a number of incidences in which the religions followers for beta blood transfusions to their children ultimately leading to the death of several terminally ill children so the supreme court ordered the group to disband and the confiscation of its property although christensen continued to use it to raise funds and to distribute literature so he was therefore the first to be arrested under this new law and today his six year sentence makes the first conviction under the law as well and many western human rights organizations have already called for

christensen's release the verdict against dennis christensen is a disgrace it's. shocking that in post soviet russian authorities are putting people through their ordeal of a criminal investigation and prison for nothing more than their peacefully practice in their faith his case is emblematic of the grave human rights violations including the rights to freedom of expression peaceful assembly and religion in the country now we've yet to hear many reactions from russian officials as the whole ordeal is generally less talked about in russia but the kremlin spokes person dmitri peskov said that there clearly were reasons for the arrest although he was unaware of the details now back in december when russian president vladimir putin said that religious organizations should not be labeled extremist groups and that the matter needs to be looked into further so we'll bring in the details as this developing story further continues. back in around thirteen minutes time with more but first make sure you stay tuned to for going underground.

sure the sand here from us and. our overall problem with a small. amount of good armor on our property and our brothers plastered on the floor for them to care that they're. only allowed compatible i don't touch and then you cut them and kick and nail on what i have to lose each other for trial for all that it. never worked out. then i'm all in my machine little subtle it does show the thing and marred the. numbers up around the hey how do you want to do it.

because its whole feel plus choice forgone the i'm yours or your pay i think time in syria says. british. civil. law for them after a couple fronts around the receptive to for jim and then oil for hope that are for the middle class. and the only i think is a leader still must execute. the lunar mission irish. trayner and n.o.a.a. . and there's a number you know not. can if you cut out all of them ok if there. was not an animation any it will be like the battle they have laid the wooden astley of

a kid was. i don't know that i'm going to get. some of that having. given people. who give the nightly. what the how they were sold our d. s. when i last saw him now and not go again meanwhile gordon would go before. why didn't know what our knowledge of was so on out in just. one else chose seemed wrong. why don't we all just don't call. me all yet to shape our just to come out ahead and in detroit because of the trail.

when so many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground. i'm after newtown see we're going on the ground the day after donald trump state of the union and there's even british governments follow the u.s. playbook on regime change in oil rich venezuela coming up on the show as a u.k. cross party report claims saudi arabia was torturing women activists we speak to a yemeni man detained for fifteen years in guantanamo bay without charge about allegations of government sponsored violations of the geneva conventions and we

don't need this fascist group thing on the day one all reagan would have been one hundred eight we look back at the song banned by the b.b.c. the name checking him with it's all seven seventeen months and where the news find out who's bashing who about a brac sit back stop under the british army really have a shoot to kill policy against civilians in afghanistan all this and more coming up in today's going underground refers to reminder that you can get a job with the story of british intentions to deport former u.k. army veteran to a morgan today on a flight to jamaica on a you tube channel but now to even more sinister deportations in a country which like france has witnessed mass weekly protests against neoliberalism serbia it's women to old they feed despite not knowing the language or anybody there has been put into serving fifteen years of the u.s. torture camp in occupied cuba guantanamo without any charges following his release

he has been contacted by former inmates in saudi arabia's prisons with claims of torture claims echoed in this week's cross body report that included a friend of prince harry's wife meghan marc. cool once was a book called from guantanamo is out soon and he joins me now via skype from belgrade months are welcome to going underground ultron predictably didn't mention going tanya miller the say the v union does exist in around seventeen years how do you remember us torture after being there fifteen years with no charge imagine a boy nineteen years old was shipped to guantanamo to an where it was like a cemetery was like we were there we were not alive or not dead but we weren't like in between life and death so when we get there i like from two thousand and especially when you get that come back straight and comes out we want to. be with them targets and started applying some. shit the ccny still interrogate detainees

and it was like hell really i. watched some deniz lose their mind break down i mean i was nineteen years old i had to know why i was there and the problem you know going state we had i thought that he disconnected to the to the world outside i was afraid confused. then was going to happen to me we thought like they're going to kill us because we. the situation we were before the cia or a petition with thought is going ok they got to get up and think of us and they were going to got that they said that we are going to clear guys and put you in the embassy they told us yes he said the world is not brought you here we are working for the purpose of interrogation to get information the what do you want to see i mean that's what it is what you what i saw in the cia black site i thought yes why not because it will get killed if it and i was nothing and force feeding is a u.s. policy in texas right now for those seeking asylum from promoted jean.