just try reading. some of your. report that claim the u.s. is imposing sanctions directly against iran's supreme leader in the wake of the drone shooting look at how washington stands on the country it seems to be pulling in different directions. the trump administration's middle east peace plan is rejected by palestine which critics accusing washington of trying to bribe the arabs into making political concessions to the israelis. and the parents of critically ill palestinian infants taken from gaza to better equipped hospitals in israel are being denied access to their children with an exit permit a much harder to obtain for adults.

a very warm welcome to the program from all of us here at r.t. h.q. in moscow and should joining us this hour. the u.s. is introducing a major sanctions against iran including the country's supreme leader that's according to media reports the escalation comes in response to iran's downing of a u.s. military drone which the islamic republic says violated its airspace but washington has expressed doubts over who is really to blame for the attack. we expect the president to announce an additional round of sanctions in response to iran's downing of an american unmanned vehicle the president also had doubts as to whether or not the downing of our unmanned aircraft was actually authorized at the highest levels but we're not convinced that it was authorized is at the highest levels. the drone downing prompted

a furious reaction from washington preparations to strike iran were minutes away from being put into motion before donald trump intervened he later claimed he wasn't calling off the attack just postponing it but he also says that he doesn't want to kill anybody unless it's absolutely necessary political opponents of the president accuse him of creating his own crisis. was president trance decision this week to call off that strike the right one. so it's like somebody setting a fire. to. pull the paper in and putting it out he helped create the crisis and then he stopped the attacks as art is acres down and reports washington's messages regarding iran are getting increasingly mixed. just do it to run a marathon or to start a war as good a motto as any now according to iran the so-called b. team of instigators ran out of breath whispering in donald trump's ear obliterate iran into a beating it's just do it the b.

team being advisor john bolton the emirates israel and saudi arabia a rare moment of unity between the latter bolton tried so hard apparently trump said this i have 2 groups of people i have dubs and i have hawks you have some hawks john bolton is absolutely a hawk is up to him he'd take on the whole world at one time ok it was almost mission accomplished until the us president decided otherwise at the last moment and saw all hawks turned against him there and the way that he announced it it shows weakness and it's not in our interest but what happens when our adversaries understand that he's never going to follow through with president trump was being urged by outside advisors not to carry out the strikes we don't know who they are or why he would share with them people not in the chain of command or in his defense circle incredibly classified information about a military strike on iran critics went as far as to accuse donald trump of changing

his mind under the influence of tucker carlson a celebrity fox anchor now something fastings happily the very people in some cases literally this same people who lured us into the iraq quagmire 16 years ago are demanding a new war this one with iran the. president to his great credit appears to be skeptical of this very skeptical how truly the media has never come closer to serving as the 4th branch of power even john bolton the mother of all hoax had to take trump's side saying that the president didn't just chicken out neither iran nor any other hostile actor should mistake u.s. prudence and discretion for weakness our military is rebuilt new and ready to go if if he you know started out with the wrong decision and had the advisors saying to attack iran you know people would criticize and then if you cancels it

then they'll criticize them for you know not. showing resolve it's kind of assumed by a lot of people that the democrats are not the war party but it's not a party of peace and a lot of democrats want to show their toughness by saying you know we've got to stand up against iran and it could be just that as trump himself has been saying that he's neither a sinner or saint everybody was saying i'm a warmonger. and now they say. and. i think i'm neither you want to know that i'm a man with common sense and that's what we need in this country's government says not starting a conflict with world war 3 potential is good sense indeed he had when it comes to other statements on iran by trump and his servants alike well see for yourself we are prepared to talk to iran without preconditions right but iran needs to understand that we will never allow them to obtain

a nuclear weapon so is it no preconditions or one precondition it's like telling a kid they won't get candy until they eat their greens but then immediately giving them all the candy and it's not the only thing take this for instance when you think message or trying to send you with this i. i think they want to negotiate and now how about this donald trump who's taken the time and pleasure tearing into the iran nuclear deal but now wants an agreement over his own i don't care which what kind of a deal it can be separate or it could be totally one on one talks whether it was or is a one on one talks you and the ayatollah or you're going to resonate you can have nuclear weapons and if you want to talk about it good otherwise you can live in a shattered economy for a long time to such a consistent inconsistency doesn't help understand what exactly washington wants from its foreign policy people need to have a lot more certainty that they're dealing with somebody who has some integrity.

sense of principle and when they say one thing they stick to it and trump is not that kind of a person you can't really bargain you make make you know major deals that affect the future of your country with somebody who turns on a dime and says something else. you know moments after he said something different so i think he's going to have a very hard time convincing. he serious if he offers some kind of a deal to. the parents of critically ill palestinian infants who have been taken out of gaza for better treatment in israel are being denied access to their children that's because permits are far harder to obtain for adults our team at the parents of 2 children who died while they were separated

ringback. by and when i was 7 months pregnant and they diagnosed it as early labor but since i had in vitro fertilization they didn't have the necessary his abilities. my application was very urgent and i should have gotten approval very quickly from the coordination office because the lives of the mother or children could have been endangered but it took the coordination office 5 days. to get us t.m. and they said my surgery went fine and the stitches would be removed in gaza i told them i'd least want to stay to breast feed the babies and they said no i kept crying it wasn't easy for me to leave them i didn't know they would leave or die

and i went home devastated. one day i felt so bad i was exhausted and the same night i heard that one girl had died her name was malaki she died one week after i went home. but they're all sort of going with after a while they told me the other child was not doing well they didn't say he was dad then they said he had to sit in the blood then they told me that he's heart stopped . someone called me from the cards nation office and told me you have 10 minutes to get ready and go pick up your daughter so my husband told me some important to go right now and pick her up to the shop so much during those 5 months i had to endure a lot of suffering and depression but thank god all of that went away when i saw my

daughter. israel justifies its land air and sea blockade of gaza by arguing that it prevents local militant groups from wanting attacks the un though has criticized it hogarth the israeli body responsible for. nation between the palestine palestinian administration and television stressed r t it is sis in delivering health care despite having the responsibility for it this is sions for human rights israel and israeli medical and geo says most children travel without their mothers or fathers according to them more than $7000.00 permits were issued for minors from gaza last year and fewer than 2000 for parents. who's from the end joe told us more about the situation. there is no specific period to have a d.c. in inquiries for permits it can be one moment and it can be

half a year we had cases where people waited for more than one year in a permit or to have any kind of decision regarding their inquiry the situation between the kids and their parents influenced their psychological and social situation and we know that it also influenced their recovery and the process of treatment that. the trumpet ministrations peace plan for the middle east has been slammed before even being officially unveiled for allegedly trying to bribe the palestinians into giving up certain political ambitions and offers them $50000000000.00 worth of investment in exchange for key concessions thousands of palestinians have taken to the streets in gaza to protest against the peace plan demonstrators burned american flags and portraits of the u.s. president marked with the words deal of the double they're demanding a complete boycott of the upcoming washington backed peace conference in bahrain r.t. if you have explains why palestine isn't buying into the money talks. trump

not generous. freyr and merciful who outs would offer palestinians such generous conditions such great perks and amazing bonuses that someone else is presumably going to pay for it is the deal of the said nothing you know and just as with great deals it's totally secret political side and the economic side are 2 very robust efforts our thought was that it was better to put the economic plan 1st makes sense when you were offered a job anyone would want to do how much you get paid rather than what the job is and this pays great 50000000000 do. as an investment though they have no idea where that's going to come from a 1000000 jobs in what's left of palestine unemployment slashed to shreds and still the palestinians are unhappy 1st lift the siege of gaza stop the israeli

theft of our land resources and funds give us our freedom of movement and control over our own borders and space territorial waters etc then watch us build a vibrant prosperous economy as a free and sovereign people the platen or well the pay will be discussed in bahrain this week and the palestinians aren't going and neither of these release which isn't great considering that this is the palestinian israeli peace deal. we're not going to turn this workshop the economic situation should not be discussed before the political one is laws there is no political solution will not deal with an economic solution. what the palestinians need to understand is that the again some and get lose in this case you apparently lose most of your country but still make the gas and coast really nice 40 kilometers of pristine

beaches millions of tourists with great palestinian coups even oh yeah about losing half your country part under certain circumstances i think israel has the right to retain some but unlikely on of the west bank i get why people think this is going to be a deal that only the israelis could love i understand the perception of that i hope everyone will just give the space to listen and let it settle in a little bit yeah i forgot to mention draft of a plan have leaked and according to them palestinians will be forced to give up 60 percent of the west bank it will be forbidden for palestinians to have an army and they'll have to pay israel for protection for ever and if they refuse to go along the us will sanction them to kingdom come also they still have no idea who pays for all of this if it's private investors the palestinians will then have to pay them

back presumably if so in effect the palestinians have been asked to. told to give up most of their country in exchange for a loan hill of a century or more like deal of the millennium if you go by how absolutely one sided and absurd it apparently is all this is. does not show that the us is. a fair. mediator between the palestinians and the israelis basically referred to a mr burleson years are not capable of ruling themselves this vision violates international resolutions and international law. and you know what it is the palestinians their basic rights and then makes it almost impossible yes or no external impossible that means is that i would be allowed to continue to control

the resources of the palestinians in the west bank and the stickers on them and that means that it's no longer possible. assault through. a list of. men looking for an education job in engineering in the netherlands may find it increasingly harder to get a place at one university well explain why after a short break. some time old shows were like a honeypot. everyone believe that it was all on stable and on the reliability of russia but they thought that everyone was great over that russian businessman they wanted to do business in the west because they feared some could take everything away from them in russia which now is the opposite dave's business is outside of russia were snatched less is frozen the whole blog the student whine about.

what politicians to do something to. put themselves on the line. to get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president i'm sure. it was something i wanted. to do like the press which is what the 4 korean people are. interested in the long. welcome back a dutch engineering university is going to offer its positions for academic staff

exclusively for women for the time being and only if no suitable candidates are found will they've been be offered to men the irene carey fellowship program will give a female employee a starter package of 100000 euro to spend on their own research that has been created to fix a gender balance among the university's academic staff and is expected to recruit more than 100 women in the coming years its rector believes the university suffers from gender bias. b. attach great importance to equal respect and opportunities for women and men we are aware that we are suffering from an implicit gender bias we're now using the fact that plans to expand our academic stuff considerably in the coming years can be used as a means to make a big step forward in one fell swoop. we cross live to discuss whether or not these programs are really needed with our guest kate smurf weight stand up comedian and political activist and you know a lot of media commentator t.v. and radio host now kate if we can start with you what do you think do these schemes

are they really necessary to increase the number of female employees. well if you look at what the university is saying they're actually saying that over the years they've tried lots and lots of other things they've tried what you might call soft measures kind of like trying to create an environment that they think is going to encourage women to common you know sending the message out and the progress that's being made is incredibly slow and it's really difficult because inequality it's a self like reciprocating process equality inequality breeds inequality because if young women don't see women in positions of power doing the jobs that they might want to do it slows their progress through without women at the top it's harder for women to break through so they're just taking this opportunity to as they say take a big step forward and they're saying we know that women have to go through a great deal more than men do to get into these top jobs so we're going to reach out and they're going to offer the jobs to women and if they haven't found the right candidate after 6 months then they'll open the jobs up to guys so it's not

a question of saying guys can't work there if the if the job if the only person who can do the job is a guy then he'll just wait 6 months and then he'll get the job but i think it's a wonderful opportunity to say we know women are facing loads and loads of obstacles on their way to these jobs and the way to solve that yet is that it's a wonderful idea to say let's make a special a special effort to say let's find the right women and bring them up through and give them the opportunities that they're missing out on so many other places around the world. university says they're trying to fix are wrong what's wrong with that. well there's nothing wrong with trying to fix a wrong of course and there's nothing wrong with trying to produce a quality at every measure if you possibly can for women and every other group of people but when it comes to discriminating specifically against men that's one problem i have with this but secondly and i think perhaps even even more more

imperative is the fact that from this point on if a woman had. a high powered job at that particular institution everyone's going to know that she had special advantages to get there i feel like that is in its own way very sexist and very biased against women i prefer to let the natural course play out and and yes facilitate in every way that you can to be you know inclusive for women but the reality is that men and women are different as men and women do have different competencies and even preferences in the job market and so sometimes i think we have to let what is natural happen rather than to artificially inflate those numbers and risk making women look like they don't have the competency to be there without that form of discrimination against men. but you need to say that when you see when you see women in positions of power in these universities you're going to say oh she must have got there because of a special system that set up to help women but honestly right now when i see men in

positions of power i think most of them are only there because the system is totally set up to favor men i don't look around even you know the government big companies working but around the world when i see their board of directors and it's white guys white guys white guys white guys i don't think those are the 10 guys best qualified to run this company i think while we live in a system that isn't giving everybody else a chance isn't it time we let people through and i think i think that they're all women out there who have absolutely the skills to do this job and i think to believe otherwise is to hold a set it doesn't shoot there are women out there who are capable of doing it and i think most people though. find them. i understand and i think it's important that women are given opportunities and equal opportunities as well i don't know that shutting men completely out as a mom of boys i don't know that i think that that's the best tack to take i also i don't know if there's a struggle to make it on a male dominated world. i didn't interrupt you and i don't really want the shouting

man are up to me thank you and as a woman as a woman in a male dominated field who has managed to do ok despite discrimination that i've definitely incurred as many women have i would still rather i would still rather fight and win then have a participation trophy which is what this is tantamount to what i would argue you say that you fought and you know you've got to where you are in a male dominated world new overcome obstacles i would argue yeah you know you've got you've done great but maybe you deserve to do brilliantly maybe you deserve an even better job than the one you've got maybe you deserve a better salary than the one you've got i think when i look around there are lots of women i know who've overcome obstacles but i don't feel like they've overcome obstacles but have they really reached their full full potential no you would have gone much further if you hadn't had to spend so much time and energy overcoming these obstacles and i think you and i and lots of women that i work with have the skills to go on and do much better things and i think we have to be looking around us and finding those women and you know lifting them up and i think that's great

and it's not that men won't have those opportunities all they're putting on it is a 6 month lag so they're just saying give women the 1st look in and if that doesn't work out and let's remember this is one university we're not we're not implementing this on a global basis for all jobs it's one university saying we know we can do better than this we know that there's women out there who are capable of these jobs and we're going to take a step to make sure that we use our latest expansion program to find them and build a university with a better gender balance than they've had so far well and you know along those lines as you're talking about how this is a special system that's been set up maybe that will end up having an opposite effect where these women know that they've been given this chance and they're going to do their absolute best in these jobs is that not a possibility. i think women will do the best in those jobs anyway and i think that they're going to feel a lot better about them if they feel like it wasn't some sort of special set aside i think just speaking for me personally i think there's a real inherent danger in this and i hear it in our culture whispered all the time

you know is this person in this position because of a description you know you have a $5050.00 shot at being a woman or a man and being a woman in and of itself is not an accomplishment and we all enjoy our struggles struggles and life and any man that got in that position one of my sons got in those position he will have overcome struggles as well but but i don't think that we do any groups anything in playing identity politics especially where we're shutting down an entire group of people just to give something to another group of people i think it sends a message that those people somehow weren't competent enough and couldn't earn it and i think that's very dangerous for women i think it's very dangerous i want to ask you you were talking about how there's this 6 month period and that's very true that they're saying after 6 months then they will also look at men for the position but is it really better to leave a post empty for 6 months rather than just hiring a qualified ma'am. well it really depends what the job is doesn't it if you're

talking about you know hiring a doctor for a hospital i don't want to go to hospital and and look around and not be a doctor but this is an academic institution and much as i love reading scientific research papers i've never woken up in the morning that i must have 600 milligrams of scientific research paper or i'm going to die this is not the kind of job which cannot possibly be left open for 6 months in fact it's very very common that these kind of academic positions are left open for a lot much longer than that while they search for the right candidate there is no point in you know hiring a person for the wrong specialism for the wrong field somebody with the wrong qualifications or somebody whose research isn't aligned with what the university is working on these are academic positions and it's very much in the nature of academic positions that leaving a position open for 6 months is absolutely normal and standard that's very much what i mean i'm wondering what. kate kate what if what if the research they're doing is for example on cancer or something and it's it's now postponed for 6

months how many people are going to die because that research didn't get out there in time because we were all obsessed with making sure once special group was equally represented i say let the best people in that hold on a minute at least have the positions and i believe that women will be equally represented in that group because i think women are perfectly competent to get their. well let me answer that question the short answer is that we know when it comes to academic research that it's really really important to have a wide base of people doing that research and there are lots of instances actually in the past where we've seen research being done by all male groups and when we look at the research when it's published we realize that it's not as widely a political as it could be because it's failed to take into account female viewpoints and female experiences so you know how many lives are being lost because research into all sorts of aspects of human life is being undertaken with a uniquely male perspective and that means that women are missing out this is very serious i mean there's for example we know that women are more likely to get injured in car accidents because crash test dummies are built with the average

weight and and shape of a guy and so testing how car crashes and safety features affect women is actually been held back by the fact that we've focused on assuming that everybody is male and working with this very male environment so in actual fact we are already you know losing lives because we take this very male focus and it's women who are missing out and this is the sort of thing that having a sort of unexpected thing that having a gender balance university faculty will actually result because they'll be a wider range of viewpoints and so we'll be thinking more about making sure that whatever research we're writing one of research we're doing covers not just the experience that men have but also the experience that women have and i mean that's hugely important do you know kate we don't have very little time left as i do want to hear her rabbit time out of you one more time gina if you want to go ahead and make your point and then kate think you know. the problem is this is the rabbit trail you know then what about people of small stature what about children should

they be involved in the research i mean you can take that as far as you want to take it i'm saying i think it's dangerous and detrimental and frankly sexist to say that women should be you know the only people considered it for any sort of scientific job science is supposed to be based on facts not opinions and if that's the case it doesn't matter who's there is to be the best person. well they're actually not saying that women are going to be the only people who are considered for any kind of academic job they're saying that they are aware that there is an imbalance in their faculty and they're taking an opportunity where they're bringing on a large number of new members a stall for a new academic professionals and they're saying we're going to try to use this opportunity to improve the gender ratio around to this is not about every job around the world this is a small measure one university and i really hope when it's successful that all the universities go home and when would be a good time for us to do this what steps can we take and this is never going to solve the global issue of gender inequality but it's a small step on the way and hopefully it makes people think about all the small

steps they can take and if everybody can take a few hate steps consciously and deliberately we might end up in a world where we actually get towards that position that we're going to have to leave it here genuine fairness of equality kate's mirth wait stand up comedian and political activist and you know a lot of media commentator t.v. and radio host thank you both for joining us on the program today thank you good to be with you that's your news breakdown for this hour thank you so much for tuning in. thank. you. my objection to breaks it is not that i'd like to hear you but it without the mollifying influence of the e.u. the brits are going to be exposed face on head on to people like boris johnson and jacob mog who are who are.