surrounding areas after a few days of clear skies fifty three have been killed in the fires thousands forced to seek medical help because of poor air quality president obama offers russia experts and equipment to help fight the blaze. russia holds memorial services to mark a decade since the sinking of the curse going to the barents sea a nuclear submarine sank during a naval exercise killing one hundred eighteen on board most of the crew were under thirty years old authorities have blamed a faulty torpedo for the tragedy the worst to hit russia since the fall of the u.s.s.r. . and a nuremberg court rules on a case brought by a fashion house popular with neo nazis the controversial german brand was defeated by a left wing political group it accused of putting its designs the logo of storage highmark teachers a stork with a hitler like mustache. i'll be back with more headlines and a half an hour but first the alona show and this time we take a look at the claims that the u.s. may be headed towards banquet bankruptcy stay with us here on r.t. .

welcome to the alone a show we'll get the real headlines in the end of the mersey we're going live to washington d.c. and today we ask the question is the government really bankrupt one boston university professor says if the i.m.f. numbers indicate that we are and we don't even know it all of this despite the fact that timothy geithner welcomed us to the recovery this week so is the government trying to keep the american people in the dark i'll speak to jager of the young turks about it and we've already introduced you to the ninety nine ers the people who have been unemployed for nearly two years but today they took to the streets of new york to say give us jobs or extend our benefits our key correspondent kareen important i was there and jill have details on that story next we'll bring you a new side to the immigration debate in the u.s. people who say political asylum get to stay in the country as long as they fit the

criteria but archie correspondent dina goes off you'll tell us how some people are abusing the system for their own benefit and with all the talk around immigration some are now calling for changes to the fourteenth amendment to the constitution but is that really the best way to fix this issue by taking away birthright citizenship we'll hear from both sides of that debate and then we'll tell you about a new book to give scientific proof to the claims that you have photos really do is we may not know if they're alliums or not but a number of generals pilots and other government officials told the author about documented incidents that have been kept secret that's going to be at the end of the show but now let's move on to our top story. the u.s. is bankrupt and we don't even know it those are the words coming from boston university professor of economics laurence kotlikoff now according to the professor a simple examination of the i.m.s. annual review of u.s. economic policy will lead anybody with a calculator to understand that are due is inevitable that in order to close our

fiscal gap the us needs to immediately and permanently double taxes and cut cut cut quite frankly speaking i want to know why we had to hear the following from laurence kotlikoff and not from our own government you know the people like tim geithner who just wrote an op ed in titled welcome to the recovery or earlier i caught up with her from the young turks in our l.a. studio and i asked him just that. right well of course we don't want it we don't hear from our own government because those are guys that want don't want you to know republicans and democrats they've got to deal should tell people what we've been doing otherwise they are fine and get quite angry and really there's a lot of problems here there's some more of that of the op ed that i disagree with but the part that i do agree with is the general idea that you know we've been you know taken for one side putting in another doing accounting tricks social security supposed to have a tool to have a trillion dollar surplus where is it well they already spent it and that's

a big big problem yeah i mean look of describes this as a six decade ponzi scheme essentially and he says and things are only going to get worse here in the u.s. what i want to ask you is what you don't agree with that in his statements. yeah you know i think that he makes it seem like social security has bigger problems than it does so security is actually totally solvent until twenty thirty seven so it's not like there's some sort of disaster around the corner but even after twenty thirty seven all the way to twenty eighty six you could still pay seventy eight percent of its benefits the problem is that social security and i think it's totally wrong to call social security a ponzi scheme in different time periods it has issues with payouts ok but but it gets through those issues so i it would be solvent the real problem is we already spent the money we were supposed to keep you remember when al gore you say oh we're going to put in a lockbox we're supposed to put the money in a lot bugs but is said we spend it on wars we spend on tax cuts for the rich and we

spend on just about everything else including democratic and republican prior priorities now they don't want to give the money back because they responded and that's a huge problem so it's not social security is what we did with the social security surplus. that doesn't sound like it is well you know one of the things that i found interesting is the way he lays us all out is that you know if you just look at the i.m.f.'s annual review here you can see you know it's all laid out for you that essentially according to the i.m.f. in order to close this huge gap that we have we need to adjust our g.d.p. by fourteen percent whereas currently our federal revenue is only fourteen point nine percent so he says that we have to double everything double all the taxes double all the cuts is that even possible. yeah you see that's another part of that i'm not sure i agree with that really it's in the weeds of economists arguing with one another because progressive economists would say that the situation is not that bad that the percentage of our g.d.p.

that we have is a deficit every year or even overall debt is within the parameters of normal and if you remember back in the clinton years when we started running a surplus people had excellent projections as to how quickly we could recover now as it is we of course instantly trashed that surplus so on i'm stuck somewhere in between these two poles of economists thinking i think it's a really bad because i think we've got a tremendous amount of debt for every man woman and child in america but at the same time i don't think the sky is falling if we do the right things but the problem is i don't think we're ever going to do the right things i mean i'm a real deficit hawk if i want to balance the budget the way i do it is we have to get to the same tax policy in this country and lou what obama's going to do yet he's get taken away seven hundred billion dollars for the top two percent of the country so he's going to bring the tax rates back to what they were under couldn't pull those top two percent but he still give me a three point one trillion dollar tax cut for everyone else i don't think that

that's responsible i wouldn't give that tax cut i don't think it makes sense and my god on the pentagon we spend more money on defense than the rest of the world combined that is not sustainable that's how we got this debt and this deficit but that's something that we obviously don't like to talk about you know right now obama is touting as his new plan to double our exports over the next five years and yet now we have figures coming out that our trade deficits have only reason that our exports are just sagging so i mean i don't really see how that could happen how we could double our exports and i'm very very curious maybe you have thoughts on this as to what it is that we are going to export what are we going to start producing that other parts of the world especially the asian countries can't do it cheaper. yes an excellent question and you know it seems to me that obama's from so dull exports is a politician's promise i could be proven wrong and i'd love to be proven wrong but

one of the ways he's trying to do it now is b. says we don't have the manufacturing base we used to use just a couple weeks ago they said all right well then we'll start selling more weapons to the rest of the world. that that's not the right answer and in fact people are worried that once china or india has the more advanced weaponry that their engineers will just simply pick it apart and then make it on their own and they will have accidently want up all sure and more jobs and bring weapons to the rest of the world that only you know we have to certain degree at this point so i'm worried i'm really worried the problem is that's a band-aid the real solution is fixing our manufacturing base and our economy overall and i'm not sure we're headed in the right direction it at this point on that yeah why far only solution is just to like you said make war weapons that definitely doesn't seem like a good one but you know what i think people across the u.s. despite you know that they don't necessarily get all these figures they can't make predictions for the future but they're suffering right now people are starting to go crazy i don't know if you saw the images from atlanta yesterday where thirty

thousand people came out just to get on a list for public housing i mean it's getting really bad how far do you think it could go you know what next do we have to see to realize that this is a serious issue. what you really hit upon something here and i and i saw those videos and what that showed us is what the people in washington in new york don't see because the power base in this country they don't feel the pain you know how much their income went up over the last ten years as everybody else was suffering and as we have this enormous unemployment etc the top one percent had a two hundred and eighty one percent gain in the last ten years per household their assets went up nine hundred seventy three thousand dollars almost a million dollars for the top one percent per household so they don't see that paid to them and all their friends they look rather like what we're doing fine and yet everybody is you still got your carrier yeah you still got your champagne everybody's fine except people in the rest of the country are not fine and then

which they see it on television oh my god what happened what would happen is we don't have jobs anymore and of banks that you gave all that money to they're hoarding the money and they're not giving it out in credit to businesses that can create jobs the system is totally broken and the people in d.c. in the people in new york don't get that yeah that's definitely it's a bad situation you can look at it on t.v. that doesn't mean that you're going to relate but you know i don't know are we really bankrupt and we don't know it perhaps not but we're definitely in trouble again thanks so much for joining us and giving us your thoughts on it. thank you. we're taking a break but still to come on tonight's show ninety nine er's people have been out of work for nearly two years rallied in new york this afternoon we'll have a live report on their message for wall street and d.c. coming up and in my i'm over it tonight on a few words for the obama administration and their gross and mishandling of the get most trials.

are. its own. do you think the property. really belongs to you. tonight i've got a word or two for the obama administration again as you know military commissions for guantanamo detainees have begun and we spoke of the omar kotter case the man

who was only fifteen when first detained and who many consider a child soldier well it's obviously bad legacy step number one but i also want to bring up the case of ibrahim a cosi look cook of osama bin laden for some reason this is considered a revealed catch for the u.s. the cook was as close as we could actually get to the nine eleven mastermind and a military commission has now sentenced this man to fourteen years in prison keep in mind this is after we've already been detaining him for the last eight but aside from all the obvious problems here with the get no let me tell you about the detail that really got me apparently cosies sentencing hit a snag because according to the judge the u.s. military ignored orders to develop a plan specifying how prisoners would serve their sentences after the conviction of the guantanamo tribunals as in where they would go are they kidding me i mean listen i understand that the obama administration is trying to clean up the mess that the bush administration created when they detained and tortured people in

a secret prison that they put in cuba but if you really want to clean it up if you really want to fix the situation and she will lease to come up with a plan first of all where you're going to put these people once the very new and very inexperienced military commissions and system sentences them it just baffling to me how sloppily this is being done but were you thinking you can't be in that big of a rush it's been a year and a half since you stepped into office so we get that the government doesn't really care about how these treat these people how they treat these people but at least try to act like. now here on the show we've already introduced you to the ninety nine ers the people that have been living on unemployment for almost two years now and today more than a hundred of them took to the streets of new york to say that they've had enough with the risk of unemployment benefits running out and no jobs lined up these people want the government to know that they're stuck r.t.

correspondent kareen important i was at the rally today and she now brings us a few more of those details marina first of all you know tell me what you saw out there how many people were out there what were they saying. hi alona well there was dozens upon dozens of people gathering on wall street right across the street from the new york stock exchange of course sending a signal not just to washington but also to the financial industry to all the financial investors and all of those that were involved or blame for being involved for the interim financial crisis what these people are saying in a nutshell is washington you have two options create jobs for us or help us out meaning extend unemployment benefits beyond ninety nine weeks those in attendance have already exhausted their unemployment benefits or coming close to exhausting them in november and they say up until now they have lost their homes they have lost their cars they have lost their possessions or sold their possessions just to stay afloat and many say the situation is going to become much more dire if

washington does not step in to help the people in need let's take a listen. in you had ninety nine news about a week ago they actually booed a brains out because they became ninety nine is a mortgage those are the mortgage ninety nine is when you don't know when you ran out and they can't take you the obvious i want to work on this you know i mean that's what's so frustrating people want to work and that's the frustration that there are no jobs i have asthma medication that i can't afford right now there's gas electricity i pay back no more cable t.v. i sold my t.v. i have no air conditioning. i've sold a few other things to. now alone of that last woman we heard from ron she told me she's she's sixty seven years old and she has already gone through her entire savings her retirement fund and she said that before her

unemployment benefits expired work sauce that last year some time the doctors told her she needed a surgery and under even medicaid she had to play painted a deductible of twenty five hundred dollars she didn't have it so she actually raised the money on facebook to be able to pay for a surgery that she needed to have and she looked at me and said she barely has any hope left that she's never been married she doesn't have children she doesn't know who even cares about the situation she isn't in she's not the only one there are a lot of people out there that really feel desperate like they have nothing but i'm just curious those people who were out on the streets of new york today what industries are they used to work in when they when they were employed before they lost these jobs. well that's a good question and i asked i asked them that question myself and we i have spoken with people at that event and spoken with them that works in all different industries some working in the health care industry others who are working believe it or not in the finance industry and the advertising industry the p.r.

industry took one woman actually holding her resume one woman actually gave me her resume to pass on if i knew anybody that could help her get a job this woman worked for the n.b.a. she worked for cable but she worked for a lot of different corporations and now these people tell me that they've tried to get jobs in retail stores they've tried to get jobs working as a waiter or waitress and they are denied and that's why they are losing hope at this point but they feel that they're going to continue doing what they can and rallying as much as they can because they believe that the system they paid into the unemployment system they deserve to have that system there for them when they need it. you know merida i'm going to play devil's advocate here a little bit because they think that they deserve this but a lot of people could could look at these people and say you know of course you're not going to have the same job with these two that you used to this is a recession you're going to have to you know maybe not even work in retail maybe you're going to have to work at mcdonald's but there are jobs out there i mean to be unemployed for two years how long do you expect the government to take care of

you only when is enough enough. you know what i smiled and laughed a little bit because a woman who told me she would work at mcdonald's at this point that hurst her circumstance is so difficult she told me she would take that job at mcdonald's i said how long do you want the government to help you and she said well you know what i would prefer for the government to make better decisions on how it spends its money rather than spending tens of billions of dollars on wars and what's happening outside the borders of this country many of these ninety nine ers many of those that are soon to be the honors say that their elected officials are not focused enough on domestic issues and on the issues that they believe are bringing this country to its knees very quickly i just want you to clear up a detail for me so if these people actually want the government to stop running credit checks if they're looking at possible candidates for jobs why would they want to do that. that's right alone because these people have gone through all the

money that they have saved up and some of them at this point don't pay their rent and they they don't pay their mortgage because they can't afford to and then they've moved on to their credit cards and exhausted all the credit that they have so if they go and apply for a job and the employer sees that their credit is not good they're not going to understand the circumstances are not going to understand these people could potentially be good employees they're just going to see that they have a terrible credit score and they won't get a job it's such a catch twenty two situation of people that are just in a desperate circumstance and are trying to stay afloat well it's definitely hard out there before we even covered a story where employers or even considering people that are currently unemployed or jobs because they think that you must've been the bottom of the barrel and that's why they cut you so it's definitely tough out there thanks very. all right coming up the battle over illegal immigration from mexico is a hot topic here in the u.s. but many people are coming in from other places around the world by using the u.s.

asylum system r t correspondent dina softly reports on that issue when we come back . more news today. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. showing operations around the day. wealthy british study done. time to. go to. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy

with my stronger no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on our. well here's another side of immigration debate that's taking center stage in the us political asylum for immigrants legal or illegal is granted the ability to stay in the u.s. if they fear returning to their homeland for fear of persecution but as our t. correspondent dina kosofsky reports some are abusing the political asylum process to give illegal immigrants a free pass into the u.s. . when it comes to immigration issues in the united states the. these are the pictures become accustomed to thank god but this kind of immigration story we are here today to announce the indictment in an enormous asylum fraud case

in which six defendants filed three hundred eighty fraudulent asylum applications over the course of four years is sometimes overlooked the lead defendant is thirty three year old david lynn lynn's five defendants all had roles in his organization translator or bodyguard assistant driver lynn's driver fifty six year old deed of was represented by this man attorney jeff miller what lin did was he sat down and counseled these people pretending to be an attorney charging the families about seventy five hundred dollars for for ball. and counsel them to furnish false information to the government or embellish information that would qualify them for political asylum thirty five year old lin is in jail now leaving behind hundreds of thousands of dollars that were found here in his home in this quiet neighborhood in the suburbs of philadelphia lived

a man who ran the biggest immigration fraud scheme this town had ever seen making it even harder for those who hoped for political asylum to actually seek it the real harm here is look at three hundred eighty applications that are clogging up the system and when a system is clogged immigration officials have to be even more careful and skeptical about the claims they receive we have an entire fraud detection a national security division that works on those types of cases so as far as making sure that the immigration benefit goes to the right person we're always on the lookout to make sure that we do not provide a benefit to somebody who should not receive the benefit right behind me is the u.s. citizenship and immigration services headquarters here in washington d.c. now we weren't allowed access inside because of the sensitive nature of the proceedings where hundreds of books are seeking political asylum but the way the

system is set up is it becoming all too easy to take advantage of it in this country things like social security medicaid medicare you have programs that help people educational programs and one of the programs you have is a political asylum program for those kinds of programs are vulnerable to people that want to take advantage of because if you make false claims through the government. made up played. a major benefit a benefit that comes with the ring. and a hope that some time shattered when reality sets in for r t d n a soft ski. well gene is here in the studio with me to give us a few more details on this story you know this is the part of the immigration debate that i feel like is ignored by a lot of people it's definitely the other side of it how many people would you say a year to seek political asylum in the u.s.

what countries do they come from what's interesting we got a pretty good data from the u.s. citizenship and immigration services that showed that for this year for twenty times a little over thirteen thousand people filed that of those thirteen thousand a little bit over three thousand actually got those claims granted so they were able to stay in the united states sounds very interesting alona because the top country both for applications filed applications granted is trying them now for applications filed in mexico is number two for applications granted it's nowhere to be found on the list and it's interesting because we think about the immigration debate here in the united states it almost always at least for now with the immigration law almost always focuses on the united states and mexico russia is number six on the list of cations granted but this is a pretty lengthy process it can take anywhere from two months to two years but that was very interesting data so china seems to come out on top in both of these things that is very interesting that mexico is number two and it's completely ignored do

you think that some people from certain countries perhaps get to milk the system more because they feel like the u.s. government is going to be more apt to to accept it you know that if you're from china you really do need political asylum and they you know because of attitudes they way they are they think that if you're in mexico you can you're going to cross the border anyway well the whole system and i think that the attorney jeffrey miller really explained it well he said the there's a conspiratorial nature in any system whether it is medicare social security medicaid any kind. a welfare system where the government provides you services and so some people say hey if we do this if we make up some story of persecution of rape and torture and we don't get away with it we can reap all the benefits that the government has essentially given to us you know when this claim is accepted and that's the core of the problem here because it's one thing if someone crosses the border illegally it's another thing when they go through the process quote unquote legally but what they're telling the immigration official is completely false and many times get away with that you have to question that part of the immigration

system as well well of course you know there are all of the contradictions as the people in these cases that actually do go through all the paperwork the proper process they can take advantage of it what are some examples who are the kind of people that do seek political asylum for what reasons it's pretty much people who are desperate to stay in the united states and so what this guy david linden the kingpin of all this did was what he did was he said hey i can have you have a green card in six to eight months if you pay me eight thousand dollars for a person in ten to twelve thousand for a family and what he did was sort of pose as a lawyer as a translator and condition these people to lie to make up stories for example which is also one of the defendants he ended up being david lynch driver he said that his wife would be raped if they returned to pakistan for example you know they use their religion argument someone is jewish there may be persecuted if they return to their country anything having to do with religion nationality political opinion

sexual orientation these are the claims that they use in order to try to seek asylum here so when people do use these claims clearly i mean they have this david lean case i'm assuming that it's not the only one of the government is aware that there are people that try to take advantage of it try to you know play their own game with the system so what are the effects that do they do you think they start you know letting fewer people in because of it or do they finally you know wise up as. start actually checking these people out well the press officer for the u.s. citizenship and immigration services did point out that there is a division that to tax fraud a national security division within that system but you know these things still you know there are still loopholes in there and people still get away with this the problem is that what you have now or what you had is over three hundred fraudulent applications that were literally clogging up the system i mean from philadelphia to chicago and so people who five legitimate claims said you know why is it taking so

long to have my application process and this is why because not only do you have claims but you have a whole division that has to deal with whether or not the claim is true or not that's how bureaucracy words are you got to do it is definitely a side of the debate and i said the immigration system that a lot of people don't look at things of which are it's our debate on the immigration issue continues in just a moment john mccain attempts to pick yet another fight with iraq obama but does he have anybody else to bother with tonight's tool time moment and should the fourteenth amendment be overturned immigration debate is getting so heated that some lawmakers are actually advocating to change the constitution we'll have a panel on that coming up.