bells may still be ringing but the clock is ticking as the debt ceiling tug of war heads into the eleventh hour what will happen no one seems to know just a month before a possible u.s. debt armageddon. and as everyone awaits the unpredictable answer for the u.s. debt the health care industry is going strong with profits soaring into numbers that will maybe leave you speechless so why then are health care companies in such good shape well americans suffer in sickness. plus trouble in the waters year two this is video from last year when the freedom flotilla hit rough seas on its way to

challenge the israeli blockade of gaza now this year the flotilla has been stopped by the greek coast guard we'll have the latest from the ground. and he's gone from that payor siege to a great jumpsuit and now germany strauss kahn is jumping right back into that power suit this after being released from house arrest in that alleged sexual assault case so now that he's aligned for a possible swiss political comeback was the mainstream media too quick to pry him. it's friday july first eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm lauren lyster and you're watching r.t. now let the countdown begin the united states has just one month to agree on raising the fourteen point three trillion dollars debt ceiling which the u.s. has already blown through and gone through deadlines to raise it now the treasury

today reaffirmed that august second is the deadline to raise it that is the drop dead date before the united states defaults on its debts now politicians despite this are still playing chicken with the debt ceiling making investors like the chinese nervous getting ratings agencies warning about the u.s. credit rating as we've seen all three do and all of this on the part of politicians is to try to get a deal done on deficit cutting that at the end of the day appears largely politically driven obama we heard this week blast lawmakers saying this. malia and sasha. generally finish their homework a day ahead of time. molly is thirteen sasha's ten. it is impressive that they don't wait until the night before they're not pulling all nighters. they're that. they're thirteen and ten. you know congress can do the same thing if you know you've got to do something just

do it now we've seen lawmakers retorts back some critics today say obama is hypocritical because he plans to have her vacation at camp david this weekend now we also in this whole debate seen u.s. officials make some very ironic comments about greece suffering their own debt crisis especially coming amidst the jitters that the u.s. is giving some of their own investors will take a look at ben bernanke has said he said if there were a failure to resolve that situation it would pose threats to the european financial systems the global financial system and to european political unity need while we have the united states according to an economist threatening the global financial system now geitner treasury secretary timothy geitner he said i think it would be very helpful to have europe speak with a clear voice over strategy it's very hard for people who invest in europe to understand what that strategy is when you have so many voices really kind of ironic given the multitude of voices that cannot agree in washington on the u.s. debt now economist top lawmakers and obama argue that failing to raise the debt

ceiling and a default would be a global financial armageddon this is the conventional wisdom others say that this is a scare tactic they argue the u.s. wouldn't really default it could pay its interest payments with other means others say the u.s. just needs to stop adding to its debt no matter what the cost and in reality all of that punctuates that no one really knows exactly what would happen to the world's risk free asset the u.s. government bonds its consider the risk free asset if it was a risk reading or if the u.s. agreed didn't agree to pay all of its creditors by raising the debt ceiling of course there's also the psychological aspect to factor in in markets some say ratings agencies have historically gotten it wrong so don't pay attention to them so all of this is punctuated really by a big huge question mark about what could happen so why play with that and make this a political circus for something that could end up. so scary and is so unknown larry spoke with les leopold to help him make sense of it help me make sense of it help

you make sense of it you economist and author of this book the looting of america i asked him you know some observers well the economist paul krugman as an example are saying that congress actually may fail to raise the debt ceiling something unthinkable the way things were going i asked if you think that could really be a reality. oh and i kind of doubt it but you know i'm not a fortune teller i spent my trying time trying to figure out how we got into this mess and how it is that the issue of debt has become more important than the issue of putting our people back to work and i think we have to remember is debt is the same thing as wall street wealth wall street cats and hedge funds get extremely wealthy off of our debt and we have to understand that the way they play with that when you talk about markets getting jittery investors that's half of the investors are more according to the f.b.i.'s work site hedge funds are half the half of the market action and they're looking for a way to profit off this they're going to profit if we solve the debt crisis in

a profit if we don't solve it what they don't want to see happen is that we would actually tax them heavily for and make them pay for the damage that they've done to the economy they're the reason why the economy crashed ok they're phony. sorry didn't mean to interrupt let me get in here then and i questioned you because you know there are different the jury's out as far as what would happen if the united states in fact didn't raise the debt ceiling and if it did defile i think it seems like the conventional wisdom is that this would totally shake global financial markets this would be a disaster on the proportion of some of the other crises that we've seen such as in two thousand and eight but do you think are you saying kind of sounds like you're alluding to that that maybe this wouldn't be as big of a deal as everybody is make it and i'm sure. when i think of jittery markets i don't think of mom and pop investors i saw the markets with shudder for awhile cares those markets are basically hedge fund play thinks the fundamentals that

could bring down the global economy are the high levels of unemployment the fact that we have not figured out how to put our people back to work that's the real problem and the fact that we still have a financial system run wild we have people making enormous profits while. all this unemployment is going on and they're making you through dubious activities it's hard to speak you're out our hedge fund person can make two point two million dollars an hour which is forty seven times what an average for it takes forty seven years for an average family to make that it's hard to figure out what they do that deserves that kind of income and that's a real problem too we solve the fundamental causes of the high levels of unemployment and that fundamental cause is not it's not it's not having a mechanism in sufficient finance to put our people back to work were exactly where we were in the middle of the great depression where keynes called the liquidity trap in other words interest rates are as low as they can go and it's still not

stimulating investment so what you needed was nasa the amount of government investment the last thing in the world you need is debt reduction in the short run an interesting thing for you to point out as yesterday was. the second round of the united states. quantitative easing that has created some of those low interest rates that you were talking about and all of that liquidity that hasn't spurred the economy though i want to go back to something you said you were talking about you don't really know what would cause a hedge fund manager to deserve so much income i want to as though about kind of the american eat those because right now as we see republicans demanding spending cuts but not tax increases we see this issue of you know a corporate jet tax be made kind of political fodder but the united states really is built on kind of a free market economy obviously and notions of the american dream that americans should be able to get rich and should be able to earn as much money as they can and if they can good for them so they are go given that do americans what rich people

and not want to have them have their taxes raised. well look americans have a lot of problems but you know what we're not that stupid it turns out that we can tell the difference between people who contribute to the economy and people who are ripping it off. when when a hedge fund person pays an income tax rate below the average american americans i think say hey you know what that's not that's not fair when they see that wall street created phony products in the rating agencies bless them with aaa ratings that are now worth nothing but yet they got to keep a profit and they're not paying this back and they took all these handouts and guarantees you know we feel like we're being ripped off we can tell the difference between a millionaire who's a movie star and an entertainer and a movie in a millionaire who's basically you know they're sort of a legalized version of a bernie madoff we can tell the difference and right now it's very hard for

financial elites to make the case that they're adding to our economy they are milking our stride and they need to be paying back paying back society for the damage that they've done there's less leopold economist and author of the looting of america now speaking of looting you can take this how you want but the united states has the most expensive health care system in the world get fewer americans can afford it more people are sick and people are getting poorer health insurance companies are getting richer don't believe me you don't have to let's look at some of the back up costs between two thousand and two thousand and six wages in the united states well those are the green line they have increased three point eight percent but that blue line that's health care premiums and they've increased by eighty seven percent now if the u.s. health care system were a country it would be the sixth largest economy in the entire world u.s. spending on health care is two times per capita what other industrialized nations spend your pocket and medical bills are a major factor and more than sixty percent of personal bankruptcies in the us

seventy five percent of those people of those bankruptcies they have health insurance now look at kind of the poverty. they say more people in one thousand nine hundred eighty five one out of fifty americans was on medicaid today that number is one out at six now u.s. health insurance profits what's happened of them want to give you a sense they increased by fifty six percent that's the profits at the bottom line in two thousand and nine when our earlier i spoke with mike adams he's known as the health ranger he is son of the guys are contractor clinical trial tester for some of america's biggest pharmaceutical companies what used to do and now he is one of their toughest critics i asked him why he thinks health care costs are so much more expensive and united states than in other countries here's what he said well at its core health care in america is based on profit not based on the idea of public service in other words the system doesn't really have a motivation to teach people how to be healthy to prevent disease or reverse disease or cure disease even instead it sort of traps people in

a system of dependence of disease treatment or the continuation of disease for example we have millions of americans on diabetes drugs and you know new research just released this week shows that diabetes rates have doubled in the last thirty years so clearly the system is not working and again that gets to the core because it's corporate greed driving it not any kind of motivation to really help people what are those motivators not present in other countries i mean you know these companies are multinational companies and what's unique about the u.s. is that the u.s. has really locked up the monopolistic health care system for example the f.d.a. are signs of monopolies to drug companies for molecules that normally would exist in nature for example staten drugs are based on a molecule that the drug industry actually sort of stole from. us it's called bio piracy and the drug companies do it all the time in the f.d.a. gives them a monopoly so that no one else can sell that molecule in a competing drug or even a natural supplement so in the u.s.

we have a monopolistic health care system that's designed to generate profits not public health but is that the. same in other countries that's not is that the paradigm there tail i mean i don't understand why for example cost company can have something cost x. amount in the united states but it would be different in another country you know it's interesting other countries are more open to generic drugs which to lower the cost of conventional health care also in other countries they're more open to alternative methods of health treatment or preventing disease but in the u.s. drug companies actually pay competing generic drug companies to keep their products off the market so that the monopolistic pricing can be held up for years longer than it normally would be so there's a clear example of corporations really betraying the public interest just so they can make more money and the u.s. has mastered that art it seems in the drug industry ok i want to talk a little bit about prescription drugs you mentioned and i want to bring up some facts can we bring up the graphic that we have about one of x.

related ok prescription drugs cost about fifty percent more in the u.s. than in other countries and there prescribe a lot more it appears that children for example in the u.s. are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants than children in europe nearly fifty percent of americans now use some kind of prescription drug yet in two thousand and eight the f.d.a. reported four hundred twenty six drug recalls look at two thousand and nine no there was a gigantic increase from four hundred twenty six to seven thousand nine hundred and forty two per scription drug recalls so why what's going on well another thing that's unique in the u.s. that helps account for that is that drug advertising is legal in the united states and has been ever since one thousand nine hundred seven and ninety eight when the f.d.a. legalized that and most other countries around the world drug companies can only advertise to the medical professionals through medical journals for example but in the u.s. they can advertise direct to consumers so they run a lot of ads they convince a lot of people that they're sick but they need medication often for things that

aren't even diseases like feeling sad from time to time it's not a disease it's a normal human emotion. but in the us medical system we've managed to engage in a lot of so-called disease mongering that lets people think they need a drug to control every aspect of their experience ok really quickly i want to keep this is actually going for just one more minute because i want to look at that despite all these costs the u.s. is not healthier look at these figures so grow up the graphic that we have about how people are so not healthy so according to the cia world factbook the united states had a higher infant mortality rate than forty five other nations in two thousand and nine that's when the country that spends the most on health care the united states currently ranks forty ninth and world life expectancy now compare that to one thousand nine hundred nine when the world health organization ranks the u.s. twenty four so it's jumped considerably and researchers attribute this to america's deteriorating health care system so i'm just i don't like you know from your perspective why for the country that spends the most on health care are people

considerably sicker than in other developed countries where there's so much waste and fraud in the system it really accounts for that for example many hospitals have been caught double billing for c.t. scans which are high radiation scans that generate as much radiation as up to four hundred chest x. rays and they'll scan patients two or three times so they can bill medicare for those scans it's just a profit fraud system and much the same is true in pharmaceuticals many medical procedures are really unnecessary but they're used to generate revenue so we're spending more money as you say but we're not getting the results something's broken we can't just fix this around the edges we need wholesale reform of the health care system with a focus on preventing disease not just treating disease and for the record the health care the health ranger does not think that that reform will ever happen given the political atmosphere in the united states that was the health ranger mike at. now to athens now where the protests we've been covering this up another story from developing the u.s. vote in the freedom flotilla to what was headed to gaza by reportedly set sail but

was stopped by the greek coast guard and turned back one minute off the coast now this comes after a year just one year after israeli commandos killed nine turkish activists on a political let challenging a naval blockade of gaza on open sea now this international hotel is trying to set out again to challenge the blockade but it's less and less likely to happen with these reports now with this is all developing but we're going to go try to get the very latest on the ground there in athens on the phone with us is adam shapiro she is one activist adam thanks so much for being with us so obviously there's been a lot is going forth about exactly what happened with the click tell of which was supposed to that there was this american vote you're an activist you've been organizing that your wife without their support what happened. first. one of the posts of the post a little we had all together started this mission one of the new us so try to make its way today i was concerned for national waters where due to meet with the other

ships you know we should continue to depart. about. twenty minutes. waters be reclusive came up to the ship from entrance with a couple of larger cutters and then. coast guard those wearing masks in carry automatic weapons. down into it and pulled up alongside the ship. i mean to you to get me to board the ship there was a standoff for some time. in the carpenter's try to challenge the coast guard really do with the rest. of the trip with the score to back into a port where pulled in a couple of hours ago and our seniors are starting to make their way. we don't know yet the status of that ship whether it's complicated or not we still have.

seven other ships that are ready to leave getting ready to leave and two of our ships earlier this week have been sabotaged so you know way the flotilla has already begun it began actually last saturday when one ship left. with the attacks on our ships this act occurred last year israel is really you know already attacking. you know if you go in there we are getting many interviews we are doing a lot of work immediately here with watching what's going on and already it's quite causing quite a stir around the world including israel not just about the flotilla but more importantly about the blockade of gaza ok i want to get in here because you mentioned you know israel is already thinking action but this is the greek government keeping up on tell about from bank bailout or turning around in the greek government has reportedly voted to stop all boats from setting sail so i think what activists is quoted as saying it's like they move the blockade from gaza

to greece why this reaction from the greek government. actually seeing the outsourcing of the blockade to greece we know we saw we heard prime minister netanyahu comments yesterday where he thanked. prime minister papandreou for basically doing israel's work for it and what we know behind the scenes that israel has been putting as well as the united states has been putting a ton of pressure on the greek government and as i'm sure look your viewers know the greek government is having a very weak position because of its economic problems that are very popular government and it. can certainly fall prey to such pressure and we believe although we don't have concrete evidence of this we do believe that both united were putting economic pressure on greece as well ok well what is next i mean when you write that . do at this point obviously there's you know you suffered some setback you have a clear statement from the greek government what are you going to do or even proceed self yes we will continue to challenge we're going to challenge the cabinet

decision which i will lose here believe me legal order will be challenging is required we will be. blockaded. understand perhaps never before a little bit better what it would be like to be. get out into open sea which is right in front of us in the ports where we are. to. see right in front of them. well certainly ironic parallel that you draw recently appreciate you giving us that on the ground. you know account at exactly what is happening now is adam shapiro with the free gaza movement on the phone with us from athens greece we've heard moammar gadhafi and his son are facing charges from the international criminal court the u.s. welcomed the charges but now we hear from the libyan leader's accused son archie

spoke one on one with the fall islam khadafi in his first interview since the charges were filed he said first that nato offer the regime an under the table deal that would be the charges dropped if they followed through with it he also denies that either he or his father ordered the killing of civilian protesters in libya as they're accused of doing but here's what he said about the mistakes he says the qaddafi regime did make to the lesson. that was told we delayed by. weapons specially for pressure of the mistake by the way we did that. with the strong army because we thought it was for three americans the other friends before him. so. not to build a strong and modern army was a big big perceive because we thought most of our problems and know we are useful country. and the only more nor local to be normalisation we do business live as it

is it was our mystic to be very tolerant with our enemies safety darby also said this is why he believes the west is trying to get rid of his dad. country is a piece of cake rich full of does oil and we have more than one hundred billion dollars deposits abroad so we have to show the skin that it and we have to get of mr gadhafi because he is the only obstacle between. us and the cake it's as simple as that he also believes the west is in such a hurry and into carry out this nato operation because they want to get a piece of the cake as soon as possible take a listen little of levels fall and having they want to finish the soonest possible because they are hungry. iow they want to share the

cake. slake for them leaving is like fast food like mcdonald's fast because of the should be fast fast for fast airplanes. for students prostitute to the. i want to point out that saif gadhafi got his ph d. from the london school of economics he spent a lot of time in europe he's very known as westernized he was instrumental in negotiating libya giving up weapons of mass destruction he's viewed as a reformer and on occasion criticize the qaddafi regime so all of this really begs the question you can hear how this is affected his change of tone as far as what is the right way to do diplomacy and to. make military policy foreign policy so you have to ask is the u.s. that is pushing for reform in the region are they working for it or against it so watch this interview in its entirety you can go to our website it's all posted up there the entire thing twenty minutes great interview at r.t.

dot com. big news today on main stream media dominic strauss kahn the former head of the international monetary fund was released from house arrest this because news has come out that sexual assault charges levied by a accuser they're not looking so good the accuser is looking so credible and his case may actually collapse a different you know from the mainstream press today than they were saying about d.s. k. when the story of the alleged sexual assault originally broke take a look. dominique strauss kahn has gone from a power suit to a great jump suit more details emerge about her husband's numerous past transgressions and a position to run you know they need someone who's not sitting in a jail cell records and. sometimes things are look differently that is what allowed him to have this lifestyle that he's had sort of having these transgressions and there's strategy of blaming the victim they're

going to spend tons of money on investigators experts whatever they have to do to impugn her credibility so was he already guilty in the eyes of the mainstream press and what now may have been a mistake and at what price joining me now is chris chambers he is a journalism professor at georgetown university and we celebrate your analysis so you know we saw all of those reports it was such a big story when this pro it was d s k already convicted in the eyes of public opinion in a court of public opinion. convicted i mean he fits this paradigm of you know villain you know the victim being the with the villain being you know the pew cartoon figure was based on these stereotypes and mediums and you've got the. european french you can you mauled into this kind of creature and then at the same time i mean this coincides with the whole behaving badly thing with you know

foreign old john edwards so i mean it's not really a convicting kind of thing it's just it's a soap opera a reality show so much attention is paid to really being vilified by the mainstream media paraded out and. you know that famous kind of iconic image of the perp walk which is or so up in arms about in france where now happens is the damage already done cannot be undone even if these. you know really yes it can because here because here's what happens reality sets in the complexities of our legal system so i was fierce jr there's complexities make it to the mainstream media though they don't and that's the thing so then the damage is done well is but here's the thing they don't care about that and in this situation i mean this this guy is he's a citizen of france he's been he's been. convicted accused of i don't know i know.

this crime here in the united states however i mean we're in terms of how our particular television media and say the blogosphere and internet pundits work that doesn't matter it's all fear it's all ratings it's all you know machinations and bringing opinion into it doesn't matter what happens this guy has fulfilled his role and then on the other hand you have the victim now who was the slaughtered lamb kind of victim you know filling that role in the opera and now she comes into you know the third world. took all kind of illegal alien type you know so we can play to that stereotype and mean we're going to. because we're almost out of sure they can the mainstream media. and higher life oh yes they can responsibly they can but this isn't the situation i mean i might be for the victim ironically but for different reasons than we're speculating on when this

case first broke all right well we're going to leave it at that time that we were covering gaspé and now i just want to point out we're talking about why people didn't know it i am not quite ready to be learning about it and that was pressed cameras journalism professor at georgetown university with that analysis. and that is our news for our team america this week but you want to be sure to tune in next week it's a prince and the popper prince william and his new wife kate are headed to los angeles where they will make a stop on skid row i assure you our team will show you a side of that visit you will not see on the mainstream media and california blood lust the death penalty costs the state a whopping three hundred million dollars per execution meanwhile schools there are crumbling social programs are being cut is the cost of the death sentence in lives and money far too high we'll take a look at that and finally scientology we have heard all about it thanks to tom cruise and others but parts of the religion are.