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THE column title is an allusion to the Roman dictator Julius Caesar's pained cry, "Et tu, Brute" in William Shakespeare's tragedy, on seeing that one of the assassins out to kill him in the Roman Senate is his friend and protégé Marcus Junius Brutus.
I see a parallel between Caesar's pained reaction and Malaysia's current protest over China's demand that it stop drilling for oil and gas in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the South China Sea (SCS). Kuala Lumpur had placed much trust in the strength of its supposed "special relations" with China as proof against Chinese predatory moves to take all of the waterway, including Malaysia's sovereign rights to its EEZ. What China has done to Vietnam, the Philippines and other claimants in the SCS dispute, it is now aggressively doing to Malaysia.
Saddest death scene in literature
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