More on Malaysia, Tibet

Malaysia: It doesn't happen often, so I might as well hail the moment when it arrives: something I agree with has appeared on the WSJ's editorial page. Last known occurrence, nearly a year ago, here.

This latest instance is from the Asian WSJ, which is more interested in reality than is the US mother ship and whose ongoing rhetorical target is less the dreaded "liberal fascists" of the United States than the actual fascists and other repressive forces of East Asia. Its editorial today about the arrest of Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia is strong, clear, and right. It begins as follows and continues in similar vein:

The last time Malaysian democrat Anwar Ibrahim was prosecuted on a trumped-up sodomy charge, we wrote that the government's "crude measures will exact a heavy price in terms of lost credibility." Ten years later, Malaysia's current political leaders should take note.

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Tibet: Recently I recommended Melvyn Goldstein's short book about the hotly-contested history of China's relations with Tibet.

I decline to be drawn into the exhausting and irreconcilable historiographical controversies on this topic and will post no further retorts or elaborations on it. (Previous illustration of irreconcilability here.) But in the spirit of the open marketplace of ideas, I offer this link to a denunciation of Goldstein and other "Running-Dog Propagandists" by the exiled Tibetan activist Jamyang Norbu. The article's principal argument against Goldstein is that his  scholarship and knowledge of Tibet are so impressive that his policy conclusion, that the outside world should not insist on Tibetan independence, is all the more damaging to the free-Tibet cause. Read and judge for yourself.