public square." welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria. on today's terrific show, we'll take you around the world and back again. we'll start in china with the stunning scandal over the rising political star. this is a story filled with allegations of murder and spying and corruption and more. it has beijing on the defensive. i will talk to the new yorkers beijing correspondent evan about what it all means. then pakistan which had its own mini-scandal a year ago leading to the ouster of its famous ambassador to washington. we have the first exclusive interview with ambassador akani since then. he will tell us what happened to him and what's happening in pakistan. also, why in the world has immigration from mexico to the united states stopped in its tracks? we'll take a look. next up, the american elder statesman brent scowcroft on syria, iran, and the middle east, and how he feels today about the republican party which

he served for decades. >> do you prost krast nature, waste money, over indulge. what to do with your bad hakts and how transforming them could help you, your company, your country. first, here's my take. after months of meander,ing it seems that president barack obama's re-election campaign has settled on a theme. the problem is it's the wrong one. the buffett rule tax on millionaires has become obama's bumper sticker. the proposal is reasonable, but it does not deserve the attention obama is showering on it. it raises a trivial sum of money, $47 billion over the next ten years, during which period the federal government will spend $45 trillion. it adds one more layer to a tax code that is already the most complex and corrupt in the industrialized world. the focus on the buffett rule is also bad politics in the long run for obama.

while polls might momentarily show that it works, americans are generally aspirational, not envious. over the years voters tend to support a government that focuses on creating opportunity rather than one that just tries to reduce inequality. bill clinton and tony blair's great feat was to position themselves as pro-market, pro-growth, pro-opportunity progress sifz. obama should not friter away that asset. ironically, obama has been pivoting at the very moment that events in the real world are providing him with the perfect campaign issue. we are four years into the financial crisis. in the united states the government acted speedily and massively to stimulate the economy using monetary and fiscal measures. in europe by contrast governments quickly turned towards austerity programs, cutting spending across the board to reduce budget deficits. well, the results are in. the u.s. economy is expected to grow 2% to 3% this year. the euro zone is expected to

contract, to shrink by .3% this year. spain and britain have officially entered a double dip recession. the first time major economies have done so in 40 years. imf projections show that even germany's average growth rate over the next five years will only be 40% of america's. president obama started the year speaking about an economy built to last. he should return to the theme and frame this campaign as a choice between public investments on the one hand versus budget cuts on the other. he has substance behind his rhetoric. obama has proposed several important investment initiatives. a $476 billion enfrom a structure plan. a 5% hike in research and development spending. a job training program to help dislocated workers. incentives for manufacturing, funds to expand the pool of college graduates. also to increase science and

engineering students so he should ask americans to choose between these investments to spur long run growth versus massive budget cuts. in the midst of the economic crisis, warren buffett said his strategy was to invest in america. that's the buffett rule obama should follow. let's get started. >> this is a year of wholesale change in china. most of the country's all powerful standing committee will be replaced, but these are the planned changes. what beijing did not account for in 2012 was an all-out scandal. until a few months ago lee was a name known for few westerners, but in china he was a prince ling and the powerful head of the party. his campaign against organized crime had made him a champion of the new left, a throwback to the

days of mao in some ways. and then all of a sudden this powerful figure had a stunning fall. every day this fall has been chronicled on newspaper front pages around the world. it turns out he was corrupt. his wife had been detained in connection with the murder of a british businessman, and now he is said to have been wiretapping the most powerful man in china, the chinese president. it's not just one man's story, but the inner workings of china, which we rarely see. i'm joined by a journalist who follows these inner workings very closely. evan is the new york es's china correspondent, but he is here this week in new york. welcome. >> thanks. glad to be here. >> so this sounds like something out of a murder mystery. how do you think most chinese people are reacting. the news of this guy who was really one of the most admired people in china from what we

could tell has suddenly been now revealed to be a corrupt hack or is being kind of painted as a corrupt hack by officials. >> we're talking about the world's second largest economy, the most powerful men in charge. xli was going to be perhaps one of the nine people running the country this fall, and now he has been -- he has fallen from grace, and, of course, in the course of just a few weeks, and this has really left people's head spinning because in the chinese protester press they're being told every day this man was a criminal. this man who had been celebrated just a couple of months ago, and this is very hard for the party to explain to people. this is a problem that's hard to reconcile. >> and what is the -- in the chinese press he has been portrayed as a criminal and kind

of awe bad apple, but this is also about a power struggle. >> this is the part that's especially awkward for the leadership because they have a case in which the details themselves are so spectacular. we've got a police chief fleeing to the u.s. consulate in chungdo seeking protection from the americans saying that his boss's wife has murdered an english businessman, poisoned him in a hotel. we've then got rumors coming up on the internet and then eventually being confirmed by western reporters that show that, in fact, the family had assembled an enormous fortune. perhaps into the millions -- or hundreds of millions of dollars. they were trying to move out of the country. the party has tried very carefully to say this is a criminal matter. regard this as one bad apple, but what we now know, in fact, is this is just the outward expression of what is a deep and intense political contest going on at the highest ranks of the communist party. >> but what we now have from the

"new york times" in this extraordinary piece of reporting that -- i mean, if it doesn't win the pulitzer prize, i will be stunned -- is that xhli was actually wiretapping senior chinese officials in beijing, including the president of china. i mean, this tells us of a level of intrigue that literally looks bizantine. >> this moves us from an agatha christy case to a watergate style of case. what you have is one part of the government using the full force and tools and apparatus of the state on another part of the government. that to a chinese reader and a chinese listener is alarming because this goes back to the very origins of the factional, very bitter fights that shape the communist party over the 1960s and 1970s. the communist party has succeeded in projecting the idea of unity, discipline, competence, professionalism. that's what it stood for three, four years ago. growth of 8%, 10% a year. it's now begun to look as chaotic, frankly, as it did in the late 1980s, and to a chinese

citizen, that's distressing, and i think that's a problem for the party because the party has sold itself to people over the last few years by saying we know communism is no longer a part of your life. we know it no longer means anything, but what we can do is deliver competence and stability. this begins to pull that into doubt. >> and if you look at the levels of corruption that seem to, again, be surrounding this, we pointed out to me off camera a fascinating report from the chinese central bank that talked about the numbers. tell that. >> 180 billion with a b. u.s. dollars that had gone from chinese treasury from essentially public money that had been taken overseas by corrupt officials. when that happened at the time -- frankly, a lot of us thought this can't be right. the did hes mat place is off. something is off. what we're now starting to think is that, in fact, it's plausible. that if there were -- if there

are enough people who have assembled thesis economic empires for themselves in the system, that quantity of money begins to be plausible, and what that means is a certain level of chaos beneath the surface of -- what we see on the sir fas is the ritual of everybody banding together, the system doing well. these are technocrats. what we are seeing is there is a disorderly layer to the chinese political system. >> so the leadership is going to try to present this as one very bad, corrupt, power-hungry guy, and it may well be, from thin their point of view, that they dodged a bullet here. he was clearly power hungry. he clearly was going to be a very difficult and unruly member of the nine-member standing committee. he seems to have been willing to use power in ways that certainly the chinese have not for 20 years. you know, wiretapping his superiors. they'll try to shut it down and say we got rid of the bad egg. will it work? >> i think for the moment they

are succeeding in containing the damage in the sense that this has not started a campaign of purges. the signal to us that this is going to become a larger political problem and it may, in fact, throw off the transition of leadership this fall is if we begin to see high level purges of either side of these idealogical debates, so, for instance, if other members of the bureau get into the crosshairs, if they start to go down, then we really need to be concerned about whether the political system at its highest level is stable. for the moment they have succ d succeeded in saying that xhli is a problem. we've rooted him out, and let's go back to business. i'm reasonably confident that they certainly will be making every effort to do it, and, remember, this is a dictatorship that does not have a dictator, and that is an unusual thing. it's something we have not really encountered before, and as a result, it's hard to predict whatsoever political animal it is. >> a dictatorship without a dictator and where the leaders transition out every ten years.

>> a dictatorship with term limits is something we've never encountered before. the last time we had a political crisis like this in china was 1989. you have to remember, that was i time when china's economy was smaller than spain's. there was no internet. what happened in beijing was interpreted and broadcast to the public around china in whatever way the party wanted it to, and at the time it was still a crisis. after all, 1989 was teen man square. right now china is stable. the streets are quiet. but this is a hugely volatile moment because you've got the internet, which has a way of interpreting things in all kinds of unpredictable ways. china so far is still growing fast. the economy is still growing. people are reasonably satisfied. it cannot afford, frankly, to have political disarray because it doesn't have that kind of cushion and protection. >> evan, thanks very much. it will be fascinating to see what you write about on all this for "the new yorker." up next, a scandal that's shaken the core of america's relations with pakistan. i'm going to speak to the man at the center of it, the man who

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next week will mark the one-year anniversary of the death of osama bin laden. you might say my next guest was collateral damage. hussein was until last november pakistan's ambassador to the united states. he was known for deftally naf gating the corridors of american power, but his tenure came to an end when the pakistani-american businessman made a stunning public accusation he claimed that in the days after the navy seal raid on bin laden's compound, hakani asked him to pass a memo to then chairman of the joint chiefs of staff michael mueller. he just said this memo asked for american help to stop a potential military coo in pakistan. memo-gate created a huge scandal

in pakistan and angered the country's powerful military. hakani was summoned back to islamabad where he resigned his post, was denounced as a traitor, and has lived in fear for his life. he says he still gets death threats daily. he is back now in washington, and he joined me there to talk about the larger issues arising from his case. >> the whole thing has been basically an example of how a mountain can be created out of a mole hill, but primarily, how the divisions in pakistan are very strong between those like myself who have a vision of a pluralist pakistan that is part of the modern world and those that think that pakistan should be a state that should be zenophobic. >> a lot of people regarded the speed and scale of the kind of attack on you as being an example of the military's power in pakistan, where they took the leaking of a memo, even if it

existed, and managed to have you arrested. you were immediately charged. your life seemed to be under threat. does the military have that kind of capacity? >> first, let me say that i was not formally arrested. yes, my movement was restricted, but i was never arrested. i was never charged. there is no legal or fom charge against me. what happened was it's not just the military, by the way. it's unfair to just blame the military. pakistan society is extremely polarized, and that polarization includes judges, journalists, generals, politicians, all people who have adopted a world view, and i happen to have the different world view. the president of pakistan and the elected leadership of pakistan embraces that world view, but did not have the strength at that time to assert the world view. then, there was this whole media trial which kept on saying this is treason, this is treason, you asked the americans to intervene in pakistan's domestic politics.

a, there was no threat of going after bin laden and being found in pakistan. in fact, the military was very embarrassed by that fact that he was found there. so there was no coo that we needed to avert. the so-called claim that i actually sent or asked somebody to send a memo to admiral mueller has already been set right by general jones who was the intermediary. he says, yes, he sent me an e-mail, and i forwarded it to mueller. mueller didn't take it seriously, and jones says but i was never told it was from hakani or from anybody else, and the individual concerned who was at the heart of all of this , he has changed his story several times, and he has a long history. >> when we look at u.s.-pakistani relations, it does not seem that things are on the right track. it fields as if there is deep distrust between the pakistani military and the u.s. military. there is deep distrust at the level of the civilian government in the sense that there's a

sense that they cannot actually govern, they don't have any power, and if you look at sfw like the drone attacks, for example, the number of drone attacks have dropped dramatically, in part because of very strong objections from the pakistani side, retaliation of various kinds. where is this relationship going? >> fareed, let's be clear. the mistrust is not just between american institutions and pakistani institutions or american government and pakistani government. the mistrust is between the pakistani people and the american people. pakistani people have a narrative in which the united states has repeatedly betrayed pakistan, have left it in the lurch. it came to fight the soviets in afghanistan, and then left in a hurry without caring about the fall-out for pakistan. it promised assistance and withdrew it. the american narrative is that pakistanis cannot be trusted and that pakistan pursues a nuclear weapons program which they promised at one time that they wouldn't do, that pakistan is

involved in supporting militants and terrorists. >> is that fair? in other words, from what you can see, from what you saw, isn't it true that the pakistani military wants to retain ties with the taliban because it wants to have influence in a post-american afghanistan? >> fareed, it's such a liberating feeling not to be the ambassador right now so i can actually say what i feel, but even then i will say something that i said on your show once before. pakistan does have security concerns in afghanistan. it would not be appropriate for pakistan to not respond to the reality that afghanistan should not be used as a staging ground for any kind of military or covert operations against pakistan. the u.s. would not have accepted a soviet base in mexico during the cold war. that said, i think that there is a paranoid mindset 234 in pakistan that does not allow rationale discourse, and if the

matter is discussed in a rationale manner in which the paranoia is set aside, and by the way, the paranoia runs wild in pakistan. i don't know how much to follow the pakistani media, but in everything there's a conspiracy theory. >> directed by the cia? >> directed by the ceo and directed by the american government. there's an conspiracy to take over the world, a term that nobody in america follows. i know there are many people in america who are zionists and many people of indian origin, but i have never heard of the indo-zionist lobby here. there are things that are fed there. you know that even in the most free media environment, people believe what they're told and then their opinions are shaped by that. so in case of afghanistan also, pakistan and the united states can come to terms with an arrangement that can work for both. we are not there yet. we are not there yet. and i think to get there it's important that those groups can pose a threat to american

security. they need to be -- >> and that means going into north waziristan and taking on the hakani faction and other groups like it. >> >> dealing with all those factions that pose a security threat to the united states. pakistan will have to eventually do that, and at the same time do you think -- >> it's been ten years that we've been asking. >> i understand your frustration that it hasn't happened in ten years. how will it happen? at the same time the americans need to push harder and make the point that we are willing to embrace and understand your legitimate security concern. >> pleasure to have you in the united states. glad to see that you're safe, and we look forward to talking to you again. >> thank you very much. >> that was hussein hakani talking to me in washington. up next what in the world. we've come to believe that millions upon millions of mexicans are entering the u.s. every year. well, the new data shows that net migration is actually zero. how, why, up next. ze a neighborhood in brooklyn...

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for you for our what in the world segment. this past week the supreme court deliberated over a controversial arizona immigration law. it comes amidst a climate of hostility. just look at the republican

primaries. >> that means completing construction of a high-tech fence. >> i will build a double walled fence. >> going to have a fence. it's going to be 20 feet high. it's going to have barbed wire on the top. >> the fence in question guards one-third of america's 2,000 mile-long border with mexico. supporters of harsher laws argue that three out of every five illegal immigrants are from mexico. but just as american hostility is reaching a crescendo, the problem might be disappearing. i was struck by a pew report i saw this week. it says a historic pattern of migration has been reversed. comparing two recent five-year blocks, the report finds that not only has the number of mexicans immigrating to the u.s. declined from 3 million to 1.4 million, the number of mexicans going the other way back home that is doubled. 700,000 mexicans in the u.s. moved back between 1995 and 2000. 1.4 million between 2005 and

2010. the decline in illegal immigrants is no surprise. even president obama has spent more on immigration enforcement than his predecessor. what is surprising, however, is the drop in net legal migration. this has several explanations. the u.s. economy is weaker. on the other hand, mexico's economy is doing better. its gdp per capita now is $15,000. about one-third that of america's. some of mexico's competitiveness is due to in fact yashg the north american free trade agreement. because it avoids u.s. tariffs, its exports work out to be cheaper than china's. last year mexico did $400 billion worth of business with the u.s. that's more than argentina and brazil combined. but whatever the set of reasons behind the pew findings, immigration is always determined by both pull and push. the need to leave a place is as crucial as the lure of a new

destination. so are we losing our lure? if that's the case, that's actually not good news. the u.s. has always benefitted from being demographically dynamic. a major advantage we have over japan, europe, and even china is that our population will continue to expand, and it's been expanding with young people who are hard-working, and full of drive and pay lots of taxes. look at this data. the median age in the u.s. was about 37 years in 2010. china's was lower. 34 years. but come 2050 that down mick is reversed thanks to decades of beijing's one child policy and american immigration. the median age here will be 40, but in china it will hit nearly 49 years. an aging country creates a deficit of workers and a surplus of retirees who spend.

our demographic advantage holds true against a number of countries. look at this chart. in blue you can see the share of seniors in a number of developed countries right now. in 2000. in red you'll see the percentage of seniors. they are projected to have in 2050. again, we have a smaller share than most of the developed world. we're projected to be better off demographically than france, the united kingdom, korea, spain, and, of course, japan. this demographic advantage is entirely due to immigration. the united states actually has a fertility rate that is not so different from european countries, so our population gains and these are gains in young people come entirely from immigration. the pew study shows how we've clamped down on illegal immigration, but it also shows that mexicans don't want to come here as much legally as they did before, so actually it's a mixed picture. in trying to one-up each other by building bigger and higher fences, demonizing immigrants

and hoping that they will self-deport, we seem to have forgotten that it is the spirit of acceptance and hospitality that has made america so attractive to legal immigrants for centuries. let's hope we can stay that way. >> the arab spring has not yet hit the palestinian issue. but it will. do you guys have as that offer better highway fuel economy than the chevy equinox? no, sorry, sir. we don't. oh, well, that's too bad. [ man ] kyle, is that you? [ laughs ] [ man ] still here, kyle. [ male announcer ] visit your local chevy dealer today. right now, very well qualified lessees can get a 2012 equinox ls for around $229 a month. on our car insurance. great! at progressive, you can compare rates side by side, so you get the same coverage, often for less. wow! that is huge! [ disco playing ] and this is to remind you

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>> i'm canadian crowley in washington. fareed zakaria gps will be back in 09 seconds, but first, a check of the top stories. one person is dead, 16 others hospitalized after a sports bar tent collapsed during a storm in st. louis. st. louis cardinals baseball fans had gathered at the bar's tent to celebrate the team's victory yesterday. a source tells cnn that republican presidential candidate newt beginning rich will end his white house run wednesday. the former house speaker is expected to express his support for the presumptivetive republican nominee, mitt romney. there's a newly revealed account of the asass face of robert f. kennedy. nina rhodes-hughes ownering the left in this picture, was a witness to the murder and tells cnn there was a second shooter on the night that kennedy was fatally wounded in a los angeles hotel in 1968. a federal court is considering rhodes-hughes' story as part of a challenge to the conviction,

who was sentenced to life in prison as the lone killer of kennedy. those are your top stories. reliable sources at the top of the hour. now back to fareed zakaria, gps. it is one of my strongly held beliefs that to get wise perspectives on the present, it is unquestionably helpful to look to the past, and in that vein today i welcome brent scowcroft. he was national security advisor to two presidents. gerald ford and the elder george bush. before that he served the nation for 29 years in the air force with a final rank of lieutenant general. welcome. >> thank you. >> i want to talk to you about all kinds of things but let's start with perhaps the most urgent issue that would be on your plate if you were national security advisor right now. what to do about syria. this is a situation in which the united states has publicly said it wants to see the end of the

assad regime. assad is being helped by iran. he is slaughtering his own people. what would you do? >> it's not by accident that syria has never really known a democracy. it's a very complicated country ethnically, religiously, culturally. if assad left tomorrow, the syrian problems would not end. it is very difficult to know what to do. i think sanctions are in the long run probably the most useful thing. assad can go until one of two things happens. either his military seizes to support him or splits, and the business community deserts him.

>> are you a military man. do you think that no fly zones, arming the rebels, any of these measures that are clearly meant to be military measures short of war, could they work? >> they could turn what is now an insurrection kind of activity into a full civil war. >> short of the frame of that, can you make violence more extreme, but solving the problem is not going to do it, i don't think. >> so you -- you would counsel that the president to be i think humanitarian help, i think it would be fine, but i don't think that that kind of intervention

can be decisive, and i really think that in the longer run, sanctions are likely to be pour heavily influential. >> you were significant earlier that you thought a no-fly zone, for example, could simply expand the civil war, so you would not be in favor of it. >> no. well, well, things like that -- it would create a full civil wrash it would not be enough to transform the situation, i don't think. i think we would have to have troopsz on the ground. either ours or turkey's or somebody's to do that. >> if you were to advise mitt romney, what would you say of the principle areas where you would have disagreements with the obama administration? >> well, i believe -- well, one of them is the peace process.

i believe that -- the arab spring has not yet hit the palestinian issue. but it will. i think timing is essential to move that process before we have another debacle. >> but that's -- in effect, you want the united states to be more forceful and presumably press for a settlement, if anything, the republicans nowadays are criticizing president obama for having done what few men measures did he take. >> yes. >> and so the republicans are wrong. >> well, republicans are -- i think both sides are wrong because i think those -- the small measures that the administration took at the outset of the administration, like phobinging on settlements, was a mistake because i think

nothing short of a comprehensive approach in which each side has to give a little here, to get a little there and overall it's a structure that meets the needs of both sides. i think that is the solution that has not been pressed. >> are you comfortable with the republican party these days? >> well, many parts of the party call me a rhino. >> republican in name only. >> republican in name only. i don't think i've changed my views at all. >> you think the party has -- >> i think the party has moved. >> do you think -- are there any prospects for a change? it feels as though it's moved a lot since you were in office. >> well, i think -- yes, i think there are prospects for change because the attitudes go up and down. you know, i still remember -- you wouldn't. 1964 and barry goldwater, who

ran a very conservative campaign, and when he was badly defeated, the republican party turned to nelson rockefeller and ronald reagan and other moderates, so, you know, the -- we're continually reinventing ourselves. >> always a pleasure to have you on. >> nice to be with you, fareed. >> we will be back. >> when you go through a major life event, your habits change. even if you're not aware of it. if you get married, the type of coffee you change -- you buy changes. if you get a divorce, the type of beer you buy changes. when you have a child, all of your shopping habits are up for grabs, even if you're not completely aware of it. [ male announcer ] the cadillac cts sport sedan was designed with near-perfect weight balance from front to back... and back to front.

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more than 40 3erz of the actions people perform every day -- that you perform every day are not actually decisions you make, but they are the product of habits. we like to think of habits as straits that can't be changed, but it turns out that habits are malleable. knowing how to change them has profound implications not just at the personal level, but also for companies and governments. my next guest has a new book that explores this theme shaw is the author of "the power of habit." he is a reporter for the "new

york times". he joins me today. >> thank you for having me. >> tell the story. paul o'neil who later becomes treasury of the secretary is ceo of alcoa. when he first comes in, alcoa is not doing well at all, but he focuses on worker safety. >> right, exactly. >> why? >> everybody expected him to focus on productivity and efficiency, but he said worker safety is his number one goal, and it's because he recognized that if you -- that there are these things called keystone habits within organizations and if you can change this one habit, you set off a chain reaction. that's exactly what happened within alcoa. by focussing on worker safety, he actually transformed the entire organization and within two years they were at the top performer in the dow jones industrial average. >> you look at one of the things that goes on here is that people have more ability to change. they have more will power than they think they have. >> in the last decade our understanding of the science of habits has been completely transformed by neurological studies, and what we understand now is that every habit has these three components.

a cue, a routine, and a reward. if you diagnose these cues and rewards, you can begin changing automatic behaviors in ways that we never really thought were possible previously. >> so give me an example of what one would think of as a bad habit that you can change. >> smoke issing a great example, right? ? the last decade smoking rates have plummeted in the united states. part of the reason why is because we now understand why people smoke. there's these cues, such as the time of day, that triggers the whatever. more importantly, it's delivering a reward that nicotine actually gives you this energy. so now interventions go in and what they say is they say don't just try and quit smoiking. replace it with coffee, with exercise, with go sg that gives you that same reward, and we've seen an incredible decrease in the number of people smoking and their ability to quit. >> and when you look at a company like starbucks, it also tries to produce certain kinds of habits when dealing with, for example, disgruntled customers. >> that's exactly right. one of the interesting things about starbucks is that they have to sell customer service

along side that $4 latte. they're dealing with a work force that's often 17 years old, high school graduates. they have to teach them these life skills, and what they do is they design specific habits to use in corporate settings. when an angry customer comes up, that's a cue for what they call a latte method, which is you listen and you thank them and give them a free cup of coffee, and then the reward is that basically you solve this problem. they take decision making out of the equation. they make the response automatic, and customer service productivity go up enormously. >> target tried to measure some of these issues. how did it do it? >> target has this really interesting project. as most of corporate america of intensely studying shoppers' habits, and target used this to try to predict which women were pregnant by studying how their shopping habits changed. they got so good that they can essentially assign every woman who comes regularly through their doors a pregnancy prediction score and estimate their due date within two weeks. >> why is that important to shopping? >> well, what target knows is that when you go through a major life event, your habits change.

even if you're not aware of it, if you get married, the type of coffee you change -- you buy changes. if you got a divorce, the type of beer you buy changes. when you have a child, all of your shopping habits are up for grabs. even if you're not completely aware of it. target knows that they can get the right coupon why n your hand at the right time, you'll start buying from them. >> i suppose the fundamental question is can you change habits? >> absolutely. absolutely. that's the biggest insight that we have. it's not just personal habits. it's habits within companies, organizational habits, habits across societies. what we've learned in the last decade, particularly from newerlogical studies is any habit can be changed. it doesn't matter how engrained the behavior is or how old the person is. if you can identify the cue and the reward and understand what's driving the behavior from a newerlogical spers picture, the craving, then you can change that behavior. you have to be deliberate about it. ceos have to actually think about their organizational habits. they can't just kind of try and do it on the fly. good ceos, jack welch, when you

talk to them, they talk about organizational habits and how importants it is to get them right. >> what habit have you changed? >> well, i have actually lost, like, 30 pounds, and i'm training for the new york city marathon now. so it's -- >> attribute it to this? >> i got to say, i mean, it sounds like i'm selling snake oil, but it's actually true. i'm an investigative reporter for "the times." i'm not given to fashion trends, but if you understand the sense and figure out how to take apart these habits, can you stwul change your life in these really important ways. >> best of luck on the marathon. >> thank you. thank you so much. >> thanks for joining us. >> up next, how kazakhstan has benefitted from borat. don't miss it. ♪

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this week former liberian president charles taylor was found guilty at a war crimes tribunal at the hague. that brings me to my question of the week, which is who was the last head of state convicted at an international war crimes tribunal? was it, a -- stay tuned, and we'll tell you the correct answer. go to cnn.com/fareed for more of the gps challenge and lots of

insight and analysis. you can also follow us on twitter and facebook and remember, if you miss a show, go to itunes. you can get the audio podcast for free or you can buy the video version. go directly there by typing itunes.com/fareed into your browser. this week's book of the week is paul krugman's latest "end this depression now." whether you love him or hate him, you have to pay attention to him, and this is the fullest expression of his economic policy views. the big book or the big target depending on how you feel, but either way, you have to read it. it will be in bookstores monday. and now for the last look. when the movie "borat" cultural lernkz of america for make, benefit, glorious nation of kazakhstan, premiered in 2006, kazakhstan's government banned the film and threatened to sue its star. six years later kazakhstan's foreign minister is thanking borat, crediting the film with a large tourism booths.

he called it a great victory and a number of applications for tourist visas to kazakhstan has grown ten fold. now travellers can't look to borat as an accurate depiction of the country, so how should they prepare for a trip? well, they could watch this 67 minute promotional film about the glorious country's history and recent axhooechlts entitled in the stir ups of time. this one stars a different brit. former british prime minister tony blair. the film features carefully selected clips from an interview with blair who applauds the nation's diversity and progress. >> i think, you know, you got to say the progress is remarkable. >> it proudly celebrates their recent accomplishments, political, educational, industrial, economic. grab your passports. you are now an expert on kazakhstan. there were a few statistics that could not fit into the 67 minute video. kazakhstan ranks 172nd out of 196 countries in terms of press

freedoms. 120 out of 183 in terms of corruption. 137 of 167 in the economist 2011 democracy index. its president won the election with over 95% of the vote. on second thoughts, maybe there is a lonely planet guide out there somewhere. the correct answer to or gps challenge question was, d, admiral carl doniz. his name is mostly lost into history, but he took over as germany's head of state after adolf hitler's death. one week later germany surrendered. for those of you who guessed president bashir of soedan, nice try. he was indicted by the icc, but he has not been convicted. thank you for being part of my question. i will see you next week. stay tuned for reliable sources. here's an eye opener.