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treesahquicheSource
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Evidently, the only person in all of Western news media that Premier Wen Jiabao will talk to is Fareed Zakaria. I don't blame him; there are few people in news media in general -- whether it be Eastern or Western -- that are capable of presenting an interview in a way as thoughtful, impartial, objective, and non-judgmental as Dr. Zakaria.
The entire video is about forty minutes long, but it is more than worth it. The interview with Premier Wen is interspersed in relevant segments throughout the broadcast.
The main topic, of course, was economics. What does Premier Wen think about the way the US handled the financial crisis? How does the US stimulus package compare with China's stimulus program, which Premier Wen engineered? What is Premier Wen's take on and deconstruction of the trade and currency imbalance between the US and China?
I thought the segments where Dr. Zakaria directly and frankly asked Premier Wen about censorship in China -- especially Internet censorship -- were interesting, but not very enlightening as far as Premier Wen's answers went; he did some major waffling.
I wish I could have listened to Premier Wen without the voiceover translation. I much prefer subtitles when it comes to these things. Much of the nuance of his rhetoric in the original Chinese may have been lost in translation, since Chinese is one of those finicky languages with turns of phrase for oddly specific things.
treesahquiche( Click here for the video transcript. )
Fareed Zakaria: Build the Ground Zero Mosque (Newsweek) -- A more detailed and in-depth argument by Dr. Zakaria in favor of the Muslim community center.
Thoughts on Abe Foxman's Speechlessness Over Fareed Zakaria's Return of the ADL's Humphrey Award
The dispute between Fareed Zakaria and Abe Foxman is not over. Foxman's faux "shock" over Zakaria's reaction to Foxman's efforts to stop the building of an Islamic community center a few blocks from "Ground Zero" may be masking efforts by Foxman to have Zakaria exit by the same route as Helen Thomas and Octavia Nasr.
( Click for the full story )
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I love Fareed Zakaria, and how he stands up against bigotry, entitlement, and the worrying trend of Islamophobia in the West. He is truly an intellectual treasure and a bastion of rationality and compassion here in the United States.
treesahquiche( Click here for the related article, which basically says the same thing as the video. )
Fareed Zakaria is editor of Newsweek International. His e-mail address is comments@fareedzakaria.com.
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For all his thought-out opinions, approval of many of Obama's platforms, and mild disapproval of Republicans, it comes as a surprise that Fareed Zakaria is a) a conservative and b) not running for public office.
I agree with everything that he just said and wrote here. I also like how he very subtly called Bush out for not being a real conservative but mostly just someone really incompetent.
