by independent bodies by federations and analyzed throughout europe never in russia the result over the last four years a biathlete has never tested positive. point in the is a by athlete who brought a gold home from sochi and he and his team mates. or leaders of team russia and were both two main hopefuls for winning medals and south korea as well they're both world champions and in all of their years competing neither has ever tested positive for doping and that's one of the reason the outlets the decision as an injustice the tone of the statutory will not please everyone that's obvious but there are still questions about the integrity of the decision makers since when can we can do this in sportsmen to punish the guilty is obvious to ban the russians that don't for the rest know the i.o.c. has promised to publish the full list of eligible athletes on sunday just under two weeks before the start of the games leaving an appeal unlikely and that means that a number of russian athletes who are still reeling from the fact that they will not

be able to compete under their own flag will now be hit with another blow others said to be excluded from the list are prominent hockey players and figure speed skaters again all of whom have never tested positive for doping and yet they will not be forced to watch the games from the sidelines with forty three other other teammates who have been hit by bans earlier and another gold medalist who is also thought to be excluded speed skater victor on that he thought korean by birth which means that his dreams of competing in his home country are looking rather dim at this point and while condemnation of the decision has continued to flow in that's unlikely to change the i.o.c. is mind. while a number of international cleats as well as heads of committees have condemned the bombing of never tested positive for substances the head of the boat during the olympic committee says everyone who broke the rules must be punished that the measures taken against russian athletes have been politically motivated indeed one french. also said he believes the finger is being unfairly pointed at the whole

country and also from the international buy off the on union this is it the head of that has claimed the organization has not been involved in the decision making process. rush enough police from seven different disciplines including these are said to be missing from the list of eligible competitors five prominent russian short track speed skaters three biathlon champions and a two time world champion cross country skier none have ever tested positive for doping also a number of russian ice hockey players bobsledders figure skaters who did not even participated in the sortie twenty fourteen olympic games they're missing from the list of those eligible to go to sport unions federations they've already demanded that the i.o.c. clarify its decision the i.o.c. has claimed it wants to give way to a quote new clean generation. the wanted to give clean russian athletes the

opportunity to participate and give a young and new generation of clean russian athletes the opportunity to be at the olympic games and be ambassadors for a new clean russian sport. well us cashmore a sociology professor at aston university in the u.k. says until the russian hysteria is ongoing and time has run out for the athletes to appear be a limb picked tournament itself is an invitation only event and that means that the organizers have the power to exclude nations or individuals willy nilly they can do it as they please there is some kind of attempt to ostracize russia russia is the bad guy of sport at the moment has been for the past twelve eighteen months we know that it isn't getting a fair shake and we haven't seen evidence to support these allegations that there is state sponsored doping but the world or most of the world at least seems to have

accepted that there is some kind of systematic doping going on in russia because of that reason i think that anyone who is associated with russia is automatically lumped together with a nation that is collectively guilty of doping which is not to say of course that the rest of the world isn't taking dope. to enhance their performances in sport because i think every other country is participating in some kind of doping but the point is that russia has been stuck with that label and that stigma is going to be awfully difficult to erase in the years to come the closer it gets to the the start date with a couple weeks away now of course the more difficult it is to appeal this decision it's going to be too late to go to the court of arbitration for sport it's unlikely to get a favorable decision from that court so in other words they've excluded them in the full knowledge that they won't be there in in korea to compete. told us

democrats are claiming that russian bought sarra once again attempting to manipulate public opinion this time by amplifying calls for the release of a potentially explosive congressional memo on social media caleb maupin brought me up to spec on the details earlier. well according to the democrats there is yet another russian conspiracy against the american way of life now this is all regarding the hashtag release the memo there is a memo that has been seen by top republican leaders that purportedly had allegedly shows vast misconduct by the f.b.i. in their investigation of trump in russia and possibly spying on donald trump now there has been a huge call on social media for this memo to be released now the democrats say that this is a kremlin plot and they are calling on facebook and twitter to reveal the role of russian bots are in allegedly promoting this hash tag release the memo we are witnessing and doing it by the russian government through kremlin linked social

media actors directly acting to intervene and influence our democratic process we urge your companies to need to take necessary steps to expose india to beat accounts involved in this influence of grecian now how do they know that it's russia that's to blame for this social media upsurge well all of the citations in their letter is simply media reports that are rather unsubstantiated now what's particularly interesting is that this cache tag release the memo it was started by top republican leaders who saw the memo called it job dropping were outraged by its content and demanded that the american people be aware of how the f.b.i. was conducting its work i had that same shock feeling i was like wait a minute this actually happened from our justice department and this f.b.i. that's how serious this is there has been a real attempt to undermine this president kind of the type of information that we need all americans to see immediately the american people deserve. they must

they want to know what's in this document sadly much of the mainstream media will not be covering this today but in this house on this day let us know that indeed we are still one nation under god and willing to protect life now they hash tag release the memo originated with top republican leaders concerned about the activities of the f.b.i. and now it's been taken up by millions of americans however it looks like the democratic party which seems to be quite concerned about the calls to release the memo is falling back on their old canard russia did it. to something a little different in the competitive world a video gaming almost half of all players are female according to the latest tests but that has not translated into jobs for women in the meal dominated industry fighting the trend a group of women in sweden launched a gaming review website with thought and e-mail contributors the founder of the

platform sais they want to question gender rules and help bring women to the forefront so let's get into this now because joining us live on the program is blogger gamer known as gamer mom helen greiner political commentator and you're both very welcome to the program how then can we start off with you i suppose the obvious point here is how would this web site have been received if it had been a male only launch instead. it was just males i don't think think. that's no one would. that would have been violent you don't go to be like christ saying that women aren't allowed to me to movement except for jumping on who i think has to be honest i used to have jokes in the area but now it's i actually lose jobs to men. i have lost several shops. all across the

u.k. to men. now with a reasonably ok gaming has historically been a meal dominated industry with a lot of female gamers stating the abuse that they faced online while playing if we want i suppose more women more girls to get involved and feel a little bit more comfortable surely that small step should be welcomed. i think it's there's no doubt told that there is sexism within the gaming industry and by that what i mean is that at least half of all those the game regularly are women and yet when it comes to the amount of women in the development of games and indeed the number of women who are the pictures characters in games there are very few i mean i am not a gamer myself but i know people that do game regularly and they admit that yes it is a problem and of course there have been a number of campaigns across the world in australia in particular to to to see the

impact of women in the gaming industry amplified and increased but having recognised as a problem i'm not sure that this is the best way to go about it the idea that you can just simply separate out women from men and that you can have women only forums i think is a bit one nine hundred seventy s. is a bit one nine hundred eighty s. perhaps and it's not the way that the real world works i think that if there is a genuine desire to counteract and to tackle sexism within the gaming industry the best way to do that is to get on the front foot and to be vocal and to challenge sexism wherever it's found in to to make a stand against it but not to retreat into women only safe so let me sum up point then to helen the argument there was essentially saying is that this sort of idea simply reinforces stereotypes such as women needing to be essentially safe spaced. you know i don't think i have been an all female web

site is the right time so to be honest i would say in a perfect wells would like it to be a fifty fifty split having not having it so there are male reviewers and female reviewers but in a fair way it fact it would be great if we just didn't even bother with putting the names on the articles because i don't really think that he actually care who's written out. but was that not the problem really a lot of women in gaming were saying that hold on we're not getting the opportunity to hover say we're not getting a byline we're not being allowed to write because men simply don't think we can write about gaming so maybe they weren't being given the opportunity so something like this possibly is a step in the right direction to getting that kind of turned around somewhat somewhat yes it's yeah like i said i don't think i fully agree with the whole all female trope but it is it is getting the traction it is getting the interest being

on the news that we think it's getting the information out there that there is a problem i mean i started playing games at the age of five back then it was weird for girls to be playing video games that was just like and point only thing but as you said now it's pretty much fifty fifty girls and boys five play games most in fact for minecraft it's actually more girls that actually play minecraft than boys but in the actual world of gaming it's just not the case only to sort it out. if we if we just widen the spectrum are we perhaps seeing you know there's been a lot of support for this or are we seeing the me too movement carving on through online gaming now is that is that the latest situation are that gaming is now in the spotlight. well i think that there are a number of trends across society gaming might be one of them where feminists vocal

feminists want to actually push back against what they still continue to see is this sort of mythical patriarchy that is oppressing them and being micro aggressive towards women and there is a movement i think across all sections of society to challenge that and that may or may not be a good thing but my my what a question is this is that you know are there not bigger more important things for feminists to focus on the gaming industry i think the other question that needs to be asked is the gaming industry itself perhaps is the source of a lot of sexism because if you look at the content of some of the games where women are depicted as prostitutes or as people that can just be regular grand theft auto for example you know women in in these games are very often depicted in a very negative way why would one want to be involved in an industry that depicts women in that way and i think in particular of there's a video game assassin's creed where the idea is that you progress through different levels and you assassinate people you know the whole of the game industry to will not hold it but

a large part of it depends upon violence and sex and the kind of things that actually i find very distasteful and i think that that is something that if women want to tackle sexism in the video games industry that's where they want to start if they don't start challenging why is it that women are depicted as as prostitutes why would we as a women wish to actually be put on screen in a video game as an assassin and that's where i think a lot of the sexism in the industry is found you might be in a good position to answer this what efforts if any in fact if you want to just answer that point first before i get there i see a very young lady there. to be honest i used to find lower craft to back in the day my daughter styled who i thought she was this amazing sexy woman who could kick butt and amazing things that was not seen in any of the video games that's on. the way that she gets presented to me it was perfect i

absolutely love her and still do now i don't think i don't know i don't even care about the whole like for example in street fights so there was a character who would slap a book and that actually got removed because people thought to be sexist and i had no problems with that i have no problem with that so i didn't mind because it's just against me it's fun and exciting i didn't see it as sexy it was just like they have a silly little pose that she did but it's clear that. the big problem i pads we've been as a whole is actual players themselves what i go on what i used to play things like boardwalk raft back when halo first came up multiplayer online game. that's what a sexist comments really got bats and they still i refuse to use voice come over watch one of my favorite games currently because i know and i do hear them

they will say horrible sexist comments to any female people who actually speak the voice comes that's a major issue that is just just swiped away to start you know whatever it's just a silly little kid whatever but it's not that is a serious problem i mean that god does seem to be want one of the issues here that whenever somebody brings up a problem such as that the issues are swept away or saying if you counted i could leave that's wrong right. absolutely wrong i think that if you want to play games online then you shouldn't be subject to the sexist abuse and harassment but the reality is that you're getting into a world where in your fantasy world you are driving around in a car shooting people raping women and acting in a borat fashion and in a way that you were you to do that in the real life you would you would end up in prison for the rest of your life why is it that the women wish to be involved in

that kind of environment and then they're surprised when they get you know they are the subject of sexist comments i mean it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy isn't it if you want to if you don't want to be subject to sexist comments then perhaps it's best to avoid games where women are portrayed as people who can just be shot and rates and that might might issue really is why would anyone want to be part of that kind of culture i find that kind of culture of boring i mean there is obviously a massive difference between those that want to play minecraft on online and those that want to get involved in the fantasy world of shooting and raping people but that's my bigger my bigger issue is that you are bound to attract sexist homophobic nasty individuals to that kind of fantasy world that you know so therefore if you delving into that fantasy world don't be surprised when they come back to you when they say things that you feel you find offensive not just just don't just go near is it's obvious to me how in gaming is an apparent culture. yes

like i said i have seen parts of the game as well since the age of five when sons of twelve gave me my first master system. and i can play never since i'm now thirty two. still play games i have my x. box that i play online i have my computer i buy online i don't really see why i shouldn't be allowed to play video games online in fear of these horrible horrendous comments being made to me just because i'm an image but actually i should be able to enjoy a hobby our efforts being made to engage a greater number of female developers on should there not be a focus on how games are are props marketed and sold because we do know a video games are widely marketed cater to a meal audience even though as we find out lately half of players globally are partly female. there is.

the number of women coming forward. go ahead allan to. start as it's going to say as he finds most games these days. really for both genders there are. maybe save the worst the worst offenders reading over girly games like the bar and stuff they're the worst because they are just slapped the little girls in front of them and that horribly made horribly designed by people who have no idea of what little girls night or anything they just think oh the girls like to play with whole scenes and they like to pressure the seams and they like to. style hair isn't the fashion shows and that isn't always true not all of. it lost their twenty seconds to you in the debate this hour. ok i hope the one thing that comes out of this is that women do come forward into the gaming industry and they

are able to have a positive influence upon the gaming industry and perhaps humanize the gaming industry and that not only can we see an end of the sexism that is rife in the industry but we actually see an end to those kind of games the glorify violence and rape and that we actually see gaming become a much more humane and much more enjoyable environment for those that don't want to fantasize about shooting and raping people ok that's the thoughts of political commentator on helen drawings blogger and gamer known as gamer month thank you both for spirited old debate thank you. ok that is the news for this hour i'll be back in exactly half an hour's time with more global. h.q. here.

hello and welcome to cross talk where all things considered i'm peter lavelle days ago the u.s. secretary of defense james mattis updated and revived america's global defense strategy it is a dark vision of the world and calls for a massive defense spending what he calls a defense strategy critics say is a blueprint for wars without it. cross talking endless wars i'm joined by my guest michael de la hosts in washington he is a professor of strategy at the johns hopkins university also in washington we have

christopher he is a former army police sergeant iraq war veteran and contributor to the hill newspaper and in person bill we cross to philip giraldi he is a former cia counterterrorism specialist who is now executive director of the counsel for the national interest or a generally girls in effect that means you can jump in anytime you wanted i always appreciated philip let me go to you first and percival i read the report and i and i will repeat what i said in my introduction i found it to be rather dark vision of the world is less about defense strategy then preserving or advancing had gemini around the world and i find it remarkably lacking in any kind of discussion of international law go ahead philip. well yes i mean international law did not enter into it yeah it is not a as it describes itself a defense strategy it's an often strategy and essentially what it does it takes away any genuine threats against the united states and against the american people

like isis and its shifts the defense burden onto being competitive with other countries in the world most specifically russia and china and the sensually it creates a. case if you want to call it that for spending vast amounts of more money on defense basically to promote american interests which have nothing whatsoever to do with defending the country ok well that was my reading as well michael weigh in on that ok of course and i think we would all agree that the united states has the an adversarial relationship with russia and china i can accept they all have their own national interests and they will pursue them however the way shifting away from terrorism taking away even talk of the climate i got this feeling reading of what we're going back into the nineteenth century of great power struggles here but

difference is these powers have nuclear weapons go ahead michael. well this is primarily an exercise in strategic rhetoric and as such it lays out a kind of highly aggressive ceremonial strategy what you might call a fierce face strategy and that is simply because the u.s. has entered historical period where its leadership is declining and will eventually find itself say like spain did in the early seventeenth century in a position where it can no longer orchestrate the kind of hedge i'm on extatic this that hit had come to define itself on and so my sense is the u.s. is staking out highly aggressive histrionics and theater in order to maintain others fear and in

order to cloak the increasing insecurity that we feel because as as you said peter although we are pursuing a kind of endless war strategy as spain found out in the seventeenth century endless war feeds on itself and at the very end of that you're kind of used up and that's where we are now we're entering into a kind of twilight period that may last as long as it did for spain as long as forty years before we finally give up and say well we can't do this anymore ok chris or let me read some of the words from james mattis when he was introducing the report here but i found quite bewildering here to those who threaten america's experiment in democracy if you challenges you it will be your longest and worst day so what does this have to do with national security i mean who is attacking america's democracy other than the democratic party cheating bernie sanders and

possibly the d.o.j. trying to undermine in a legally elected president of united states i find it really quite galling that the defense secretary is talking about democracy when one can make the supposition that it's very challenge in the u.s. itself go ahead chris. sure i think that you know secretary madison is a marine he understands war i understand war and i think that taking this position he's asserting himself he's establishing a tenner on the on the global stage and we're just sort of stating the obvious that these are global powers on the on the end of a long history i mean post world war two the main power players have in some ways stayed the same but the u.s. role has expanded i actually look at this a little bit differently in reverse and i think we want to the u.s. is focusing on nucular deterrence and the idea of this strategy is focused back on deterring nuclear powers namely north korea from continuing to be aggressive while reducing endless war i think we've seen i think russia and the united states as

both seen the experience of endless combat with forces that are sort of magic things like isis you know we there's ways to control those without having those endless conflicts so it's a recalibration focused on principled security networks in asia and preventing those kinds of conflicts and yes china and russia are powerful nation states they're sovereign and and those who are the traditional you know sort of power players and so we're just focused on the basics ok you know philip can i read to you some more own words from the from the secretary quote we will develop it during coalitions to consolidate gains we have made gains i repeat gains we've made in afghanistan iraq syria and elsewhere to support the lasting defeat of tears as we sever their sources of strength and counter bear about iran i mean gains i don't know what he's talking about whatsoever the candidate trump said that he didn't want to go down the path of nation building well the united states now is involved in nation building in part of syria ok that it path is being continued here i can't

see any gains in the countries that i just mentioned i don't know what he's talking about. you know i don't either i think that he's completely delusional if there's another comment in the report or by mattis where he said the report basically says and confusion by the russians chinese and iranians between civic issues and military issues now what country in the world has has confused civic and military issues more than the united states so i really don't get this i think that there's certainly have been no gains nothing but there's asters in those countries that he cited and there's other stuff in this report i'm sorry it's not a conventional allaying gallup of american strategy moving forward. it's this is more so a a a ticket for mischief on the part of the. administration and if there's a if we go to the issue of nuclear weapons obviously nuclear weapons should be

a major issue and there's a common here that basically says that the in the report that the united states when confronted with with the issues of national importance like the standard of living of americans will be able to use nuclear weapons in a first strike capacity and this is quite incredible stuff and that's a good in that kit includes countries that do not have those kinds of weapons i would like to point out is well ok you know michael you know i'm really kind of confused here is that and i want to ask the same question of christopher is it is this donald trump's foreign policy because it's very stark contrast to what he ran on ok everything that's going on right now from from yemen to syria again. in being targeted here i mean it seems to be such

a continuation there doesn't seem to matter who's the president of the united states it's the deep state that decides who our enemies are and how those they will be dealt with a. ok because i do i can't the contrast is so great that i've never seen it from a candidate to a president in my lifetime go ahead michael. well candidates get captured when they move from the campaign and from their own voice however authentic or inauthentic it is and then they get a subservient into the imperial worldview of the imperial city and the courtiers or the deep state if you want to call it that instead reshape their worldview and in many ways the over arching sensibility in washington today in terms of strategy is one of tremendous anxiety and insecurity now and so a grandstanding strategy a grandstanding strategy that looks like it's doing.