social crisis of antiquity it was always the fear of a debt trap poor people would fall in to listen to those people who actually had the money they would end up having to sell off their lands or flocks of and fully their wives and children themselves into slavery or death so that the response was normally to put in some kind of mechanism a failsafe om in detaining a kings were simply declare a clean slate. all debts are cancelled the biblical jew believe course every seven to forty nine years there is cancellations now. so usually silver debt which was commercial debt was left alone but the consumer debt was wiped out and everybody to start over again in the middle ages had a different tack they mostly had usury laws so lending money at interest was illegal also get candidate self so there's always some kind of mechanism to protect others now what happens this time. the first thing they do they get rid of the usury laws they create institutions like the i.m.f.

or adopt institutions like the i.m.f. as a sort of global debt in force or other ones like the s. and p. you have this giant global bureaucracy essentially financial bureaucracy which is dedicated to the principle that no one can ever default. this is crazy and not only economically is it crazy but it's doing exactly the opposite of what people have historically done and if you look at the results it looks an awful lot like that terrible death trap that everybody was afraid of throughout human history so. you're saying that for the first time in five thousand year history of debt in credit we're in an era now where institutional a creditor is protected versus the debtor exactly in fact they need bankruptcy laws more difficult they've made lending at interest easier you know the usury laws that we did have were essentially abolished in the beginning of the eighty's here in america and similar things happened all over the world suddenly you. from the sort of welfare state model where people can have social

benefits this idea where you. get credit credit is supposed to save the world everyone is for a one k. the one whose mortgages the poor in the third world are going to be saved by micro credit. meanwhile the terms of the credit are skewed usually in favor of the creditors over the doubters now the result is that most americans i would like to make this point you know we're in a position which looks a lot like a that social disaster there are but who's afraid of aristotle we're here today he would think the distinction between someone falling into debt and selling their children into slavery and someone in debt renting themselves and their family into going to work for somebody else would be probably illegal istic distinction. now on the other hand i think there is reason to hope because well i mean we're talking five hundred years cycles here forty years is not that i mean maybe they got it wrong the first round but there's a lot of room to fix things up ok well on this area of subject of hope i was just

looking on the web and stumbled upon a story about kiva dot org which is a peer to peer lending site and over three hundred fifty thousand individuals in the first world have loaned money to three hundred fifty thousand people in the third world micro loans. exactly what you're saying was going on five thousand years ago they've extended credit. terms that are reasonable and they have boosted the economy in huge ways so i mean that's a hopeful sign i suppose you could say if that model could be embraced on a slightly larger scale correct absolutely i mean there's a million solutions and the one thing the world doesn't lack is smart people if we put our minds to this it would be very easy to come up with alternative money systems alternative ways to arrange these things i have friends in asheville who set up a alternative money systems with software that sort of anybody can use and they've

got thousands of people already hooked in who hardly use cash at all and there are many more they simply strange things directly with each other and there's a million ways to do it and the other thing is the political mobilization there's a real problem isn't that the lack of alternatives the real problem is the fact that anything is going to be cut off politically and that's why i think what's happening in europe is very hopeful i'm what we have in greece what we have in spain and it's beginning to spread to other countries the way i like to think of it is i think in two thousand and eight me kind of let the cat out of back you know for all these years in saying markets run themselves the people in charge they know what they're doing they may not be very nice people but they're incredibly competent in fact they're the only people who are running the khana me and of course we're also told debts are sacred and have to be repaid but we learned with the crash was that none of those things were true people had no idea what they were doing they did get bailed out markets didn't lend themselves so once we understand that money is actually a political arrangement it's a social set of promises that people make to one another well and you know if

trillions of dollars worth of debt can be dismayed to disappear if that's convenient for the big players when people are saying is. over right fine if those are the new terms that make sense but if democracy is going to me mean anything now it means everybody gets to weigh in on how promises are made and how their remit. and that's what people are calling for and demanding and i i think it's very promising a sort of new political movement actually one more question this is from twitter and if you want to ask questions on this show go to my twitter account at max kaiser and this is from result people the question is are you arguing that money quote in a sense of exact equivalence and quote is based on coersion not voluntary exchange i think that it originally emerged in that context and has been maintained remarkably much to that context if you look at you know where the first

circumstance for people started commuting values of figuring out the twenty seven of these equals three of those mostly legal cases in situations of potential violence i think that queens have been promulgated through military systems and i think. the current dollar system is closely tied i mean look at the international currency system the current the international currency is the currency of the largest military power that's that's not a coincidence all right david grammer we're going to have to stop there thanks so much for being on the kaiser report claims or having the closure of the book is called death the first five thousand years i recommend you pick it up that's going to do it for this edition of the kaiser report with me max kaiser and stacey armor and i thank my guests david graber if you want to say me now please do so kaiser report at our t.v. that are you until next time this is back on the same bio.

been here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.

both of. you. hello i'm john arbonne in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture in our conversations with great minds veteran war journalist and author edward g. or day joins me to talk about his latest book killing the crane comes an in-depth look inside his thirty years of reporting on some of the world's we just we will also get his take on america's current situation in afghanistan also last night the president unveiled the american jobs act before a joint session of congress so will both parties work together to pass this bill and one of the political implications of last night's speech and the internet's

daily take it's the new deal versus the raw deal of president obama's speech can finally put our nation back on the right track maybe. for the conversations of the great minds i'm joined with by edward sure our day is a journalist author and television and documentary producer since the late one nine hundred seventy s. he's reported from some of the world's world's harshest war and prices from africa to asia the middle east room for major european the major american publications including national geographic magazine the christian science monitor the international herald tribune and the financial times he's also written numerous books chronicling his experiences and insights on the people and politics that he's covered as a journalist he's also the founding director of the institute for media and global

governance based in geneva switzerland he first reported on afghanistan just before the soviet invasion in one hundred seventy nine and served as an eyewitness to some . that country's mulcher was events of the past thirty years his latest book healing the crane's reporter's journey through three decades of war in afghanistan is a personal account of the people wars and strife that has defined that nation for more than a generation and with our nation now stuck in a decades long war in afghanistan i think it's insights are much needed i would say welcome to the program but very much thank you for being with us killing the cranes cranes cranes well it goes back to a encounter i had with most who clearly was a friend of mine who was very severely wounded when the shah masood the great northern commander of the northern alliance was assassinated by al qaida actually today twenty ten years ago and. he was wounded severely with over two hundred

pieces of shrapnel i went to see him in two thousand and four in march two thousand and four and we talked a very long rather depressing conversation in kabul about the future of afghanistan the impact of so many wars since april nineteenth seventy eight's in afghanistan on the people he maintained they were a nation traumatized also wasn't quite sure where everything was going with the international community and as you walk outside we looked up into the this amazing night sky that you only get in afghanistan with all the stars and he said you know for me the end of march was always the time when you couldn't hear the sound of your voice for the migrating cranes and what he was referring to were these siberian cranes that would fly from the southern weapons with a wintered up to the north to siberia northern russia every march and then he said you know i haven't heard a single crane since being here and then he sort of touched my arm and said we even

killed all the cranes and i thought it was a very symbolic point it's have they i mean they're an endangered species you know . the martians but also. they they have been wiped out also in india and elsewhere but you know i think the war has probably had impact remarkable. some just like really simple stuff that most americans are confused about tragically. afghans are not arabs oh absolutely not that was a riff on that a little bit because i think most americans have the kind of fox news viewer you know all muslims are the same and are muslims are arabs and all muslims are somehow related to the saud bin laden. there are striking people. there are different diverse group of people that the pashtuns in the east in the south they're the tajiks the north and the very mediterranean people you have he has are as the minority shia in the central highlands are actually we believe to be the remnants of just. means of thousand any parent left one thousand

soldiers to maintain as for southern borders and so it's a very diverse people and as a nation it's somehow has existed but not necessary the way we think of it also during the one nine hundred eighty s. when united states china and other countries saudi arabia pakistan got heavily involved in afghanistan against the soviets the arabs came in and you know the at the arab legion here is the islamic legionnaires who gave support to the fundamentalist afghan groups but even you know the most fundamental mentalists afghans never liked the arabs they consider them arrogant and the the arabs consider them not real muslims and the arabs probably most famous for americans are the arabs who came in was osama bin ladin exactly and. the u.s. did the u.s. helped establish the taliban. indirectly absolutely during the eighty's we were the

cia provided most of that support through the pakistani i.s.i. the military intelligence organisation which was ludicrous because i saw i had its own agenda the american agenda was really to give the soviets their own vietnam was not really there for the afghans we talked a lot about freedom fighters supporting them and whatnot it all charlie wilson's were exactly exactly which also by the way the film misrepresented the situation we support of this rather nasty individual qubaty and hekmatyar who was an extremist hated americans killed a lot of moderate afghans and is now one of the leading insurgent politicians against the u.s. and nato in afghanistan so we created that we listened. we could nord a lot of the really good commanders inside afghanistan many who are moderates such as must suit were abdul haq and other one of the question and during the one nine hundred ninety s. after the civil war which was a brutal civil war the path of a callable where he was shelling more those killed as many as fifty thousand

afghans during the soviet were kabul was untouched practically it was actually the civil war between amongst the afghans which destroyed the city it looked like brezhnev i was there ninety three badly badly destroyed after the age of the soviets this after they'd been sort of gets out and then when the taliban began to emerge many afghans actually supported the taliban because the taliban promised peace security and they did do that but when they came into power in kabul in september one thousand nine hundred six i began to repress the other minority groups such as the tajiks that was ours that was backs and in that time the u.s. was involved that particular unocal american company with a consortium to. exactly understand i mean i started pakistan india right exactly and from from the oil fields to the power plant that was being built by general electric i think it's exactly exactly and they supported they they prefer to have one governments. in afghanistan and the irony as well which people seem to forget

is that vice president cheney. made a grant of forty three million dollars to the taliban in the spring of two thousand and one so you know about the opium production so at the open and in fact they did i mean you look at the chart of opium production and there's this giant slow doesn't mean it was necessary stop because they were against opium it may have been a market hedge to get the prices so that's also a factor get out of the to get out of production to get them back exactly exactly take the money from shell exact. remark where you started. your observation your reporting from afghanistan in seventy nine the right or the soviet thing you know you've been there through through that through the american invasion i mean you know now through you know time. there's we talked about the mythology of charlie wilson's war that the movie and the mythology very much is that you know we bankrupted the soviet union with that. and yet we've

been there now longer i think than the soviets were certainly longer when it anywhere else. and then lodged in his videotape that he's out just before the two thousand world i think it was november two thousand and four said you know for every dollar that he spends and america is spending a million and his plan is to bleed a stright like you blood so it's just dry where it seems there's some truth to the war or or fallacy to the to the analogy between these two yeah i mean it's a it's an extremely costly war or involvement. in two thousand and one two thousand and two after nine eleven many people on the ground the information was there there were aid workers there were americans working for the usa ideally with the state department to get experience on the ground and also numerous international aid organizations such as care which has been there you know for sixty years the swedish pay. afghanistan which operated clandestinely during the soviet war. had

a lot of afghans working for they really understood the on the ground situation and the big warnings in two thousand and two was don't throw money at afghanistan and recognize that it will take many years possibly twenty or thirty years to bring about real recovery to bring an end to this conflict don't get involved militarily that is disastrous and a lot of recommendations you know keep small focus on the rural areas where eighty percent of afghans live and yet this was ignored we brought in the warlords who brought in a lot of the discredited politicians resistance politicians from the one nine hundred eighty s. who were thoroughly corrupt i mean they pushed themselves alongside the pakistanis and we put them into power the american ambassador i think it was an egregious and state to put in an afghan and as the u.s. ambassador to afghanistan because every afghan knew the guys baggage he didn't

understand afghanistan very well and they saw him with great admiration you know local boy done good and but he made the big mistake i think of nops allowing not bringing back the former king zahir shah get a few more years to live not because he was a great king in fact he was a lousy king but he represented a period of the one nine hundred seventy s. where most afghans look back i remember that as a nostalgic period of peace and he could have been used as a figurehead that would have brought together a lot of the afghans from different groups the pashtuns the tajiks but that was not so when people were actually quite excited about the americans coming with the international community coming and they thought finally an end to the war but that's just did not happen and when they saw that they brought in the warlords and these corrupt individuals one time. two thousand and two june two thousand and two with the first loya jirgah this is. grand assembly and many that wasn't before the

bombing started i don't know this is after the bombing this was june two thousand and two the bombing began october seventh two thousand and one this is the first attempt to bring about real democracy a lot of people including the women you know health workers educate educated afghan women thought you know now we're going to have a say and when they saw the warlords brought in or these individuals who. who who used the whole situation they realize they weren't going to have a say so disillusioned began to set him and and you know it was like this one mistake after another and these are were mistakes which didn't have to happen i mean the british women in two thousand and two two thousand and three promised tribal afghans at least in areas who were grown poppy saying allow us to destroy your crops and will compensate you the compensation did not happen so that left a lot of very angry farmers and farm is whether they're in canada or australia or afghanistan or the states they all think the same way they want

a product they can sell they want to make a living. f.d.r. i mean this is a big thing was up all the farmers. the according to cia factbook at the time that we began bombing afghanistan in two thousand and one the g.n.p. or the g.d.p. of that nation was two billion dollars so here you've got a country the second poorest country in the world with a g.d.p. a two billion dollars. the bush administration had effectively the year before at least reduced the opium if you know we don't know how but forty million bucks was a lot of money in a tree. it was reported the washington post. that the taliban had offered to arrest osama bin laden and turn him over to a third country not the united states which is the third country for trial if the bush administration would present any evidence that he was had something to do write a lot and i pretty much everybody was horrified a lot of how different would the world be if george bush it's fine arrest him.

we'll put him on trial in the hague or something like that you know we'll present the evidence and by the way here's a couple billion dollars to rebuild your country and we're just we're spending. just spending a thousand billion there now so things like how different would the world be if that there are two aspects one was in two thousand and one there was actually a growing alliance being developed by must suit and some other moderate commanders and they were bringing in a lot of. who were becoming totally disenchanted with the pakistani dominance the dominance of the arabs and the dominance of saudi raid it would be we cannot forget saudi arabia both were supporting the taliban massively but there was this this just allusions because of the arrogance and the dominance and pakistan of the i so i always saw to run afghanistan and you know afghans don't take kindly to outsiders regardless whether they're americans or al-qaeda. so this was building up with the

russians and anyone else a list of thirty forty players this guy. actually and so this is growing and mustard warrant us about this and went on. assassinated killed september ninth one of the reasons was to give a present to the trial about them because they'd already taken eighty percent of the country and most it was was the last significant commander to resist the title but they were also afraid that the taleban were in the process of collapsing and that this might have happened but this was ignored by the bush administration and by blair tony blair in the u k. and after nine eleven. but you have to know the taliban were primarily illiterate people they call taliban that means scholars they weren't scholars they were illiterate you had a leadership perhaps of thirty forty people who probably knew what bin laden was up to globally most mossad on had no clue it really didn't care you know they they

really didn't and they were a faction in a civil war so i think you know heads we've gone with that there was already the basis of the new alliance and. now suit and i will hook wanted to involve the taliban in this new broader law because that's the only way it's going to work even today you have to involve any everyone even after the soviet war when the soviets left the regime the communist regime and the message and others wanted to bring in former communists as long as they accepted the notions of you know had bush taken that offer there might be a stable afghanistan that i think to be a very good chance there was no need for this war absolutely nothing from this war a conversation with journalists at work will continue or we come back just.

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welcome back to conversations with great minds tonight i'm joined by journalist and author edward as your day as latest book killing the cranes chronicles his experiences as a journalist in afghanistan during three decades of conflict in that nation you actually explain saw the three decades. ago white hair. there you know. it's what what are the lessons from from that this thirty years that you've seen in afghanistan that americans and americans and europeans i mean you know we're all in this dance together it seems should know that we don't know or that we seem not to be whether it's a policy level or the average person level should know to understand how we go forward. i think to understand what's happening today you've got to go back to the one hundred eighty s. you have to look at the past thirty thirty five years what happened in afghanistan

and also the fact that even slightly further during the sixty's and seventy's the u.s. and the soviet union were competing with each other out aiding each other as much as possible but what it did do was it produced a lot of americans including peace corps for example a lot of people there i think two thousand. who learned a great deal about if you have a sense we do have knowledge. people within the us eighty and other institutions but the fact is we have to understand that afghans have always disliked foreigners who have imposed themselves it doesn't matter who they are were they were they were always welcomed foreigners as long as they remain as guests i mean i didn't know that quote in your book right exactly and i didn't counter it you know once i did it was at the time bin ladin in one nine hundred eighty nine and this is the point i made to him he said this is not your jihad what are you doing here and i said i will be here as long as my hosts allow me to be here but i will leave if they

require me to leave because i'm sure you will leave if your hosts require you to leave and that in fact did happen in the early one nine hundred ninety s. the afghan was rioting kicked out the arabs including the likes of bin laden because of this arrogance because they were there and not for afghanistan they were there for their own agenda and so everyone has been involved with afghanistan has been for their own agendas and not for the agendas of the afghans so i think what has to really pay attention to that what's happened so. here we are now you know with flypaper you know sickly. and you know ahmed karzai his brother half brother whatever just recently assassinated you right the levels of corruption mind boggling cynicism here in this country about. our's eyes former associations are welcome but you know. what what we do.

that's that is if you were advising the president well i would say first of all forget any military options you know everything has been run by the military and you know why allow generals to decide and i feel very sympathetic to a lot of the soldiers we've asked them to become soldiers aid workers development workers relief workers i mean you name it you can expect them to do that afghanistan can only be resolved i think through proper and effective recovery including investment it's going to be in of evolve people who understand afghanistan and it's going to be led by afghans themselves the trouble with the military is that you know many go in for six months that's the first and maybe a year they cannot possibly begin to understand afghanistan in that period and in fact i was in the u.k. recently and talked to two world marine officers who were returning next morning to helmand and they were extremely angry.