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James Fallows

James Fallows - James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States, and once worked as President Carter's chief speechwriter. His latest book, China Airborne, will be published in May.
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James Fallows is based in Washington as a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He has worked for the magazine for nearly 30 years and in that time has also lived in Seattle, Berkeley, Austin, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, and Beijing. He was raised in Redlands, California, received his undergraduate degree in American history and literature from Harvard, and received a graduate degree in economics from Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. In addition to working for The Atlantic, he has spent two years as chief White House speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, two years as the editor of US News & World Report, and six months as a program designer at Microsoft. He is an instrument-rated private pilot. He is also now the chair in U.S. media at the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, in Australia.

Fallows has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award five times and has won once; he has also won the American Book Award for nonfiction and a N.Y. Emmy award for the documentary series Doing Business in China. He was the founding chairman of the New America Foundation. His two most recent books, Blind Into Baghdad (2006) and Postcards From Tomorrow Square (2009), are based on his writings for The Atlantic; he is at work on another book about China. He is married to Deborah Fallows, author of the recent book Dreaming in Chinese. They have two married sons.

Fallows welcomes and frequently quotes from reader mail sent via the "Email" button below. Unless you specify otherwise, we consider any incoming mail available for possible quotation -- but not with the sender's real name unless you explicitly state that it may be used. If you are wondering why Fallows does not use a "Comments" field below his posts, please see previous explanations here and here.

More on Malaysia, Tibet

By James Fallows
Jul 18 2008, 7:55 AM ET

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.
______

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.



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