Vietnam

America and Britain are still fumbling for policies to deal with nationals joining the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In Holland, meanwhile, authorities faced a more cheering task: sorting out Dutch motorbikers who've joined the Kurdish Peshmerga against Isis. To accomodate freelance counter-jihadists, the ever-progressive Dutch have amended their rules against joining foreign armies, Agence France-Presse reports. The three Dutch Peshmerga we know of so far belong to a biker club called 'No Surrender',  whose chief concerns were heretofore limited to motorcycling and brawling with Hell's Angels. Speaking of Hell's Angels, Dutch hog-heads aren't the first to take interest in a foreign freedom-fight.

As the Libya crisis drags out, and Bashar al-Assad orders a crackdown in Syria, many have begun to doubt whether the changes seen in Tunisia and Egypt will actually spread to the rest of the Middle East. One former British ambassador recently suggested that perhaps the peoples of the Middle East preferred a mixture of authoritarianism and democracy — and that Britain should accept this; not impose its values and views.   But there is plenty of reason for optimism. The first is to look at the countries that have transformed themselves over the course of the last fifty years. Powerhouses like India and Brazil, but also smaller countries such as Vietnam, were mired in poverty, maladministration and the consequences of war.

He was known as brash and abrasive. A gale force wind. The "bulldozer" some called him based on his time bullying Slobodan Milosevic during the Dayton negotiations to end the Bosnian War in the 1990s. However, veteran US diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who died last night, had a far greater register. When he visited London before assuming his latest post, as President Obama's AfPak envoy, he surprised the US embassy staff by travelling alone, with no bag-carrying entourage, and exhibiting none of the airs he was expected to have. His first experience of the Balkans was not as the all-mighty diplomatic trouble-shooter, but as a normal citizen eager to highlight the plight of the refugees. He braved sniper fire and dangerous roads to document Yugoslavia’s tragedy.

Anyone who has ever been on a protest march or felt the heady frission of student rebelliousness should check out Hugo Rifkind's piece in the Times today. A really subtle piece of reporting, with no hint of the usual establishment sneer. What's fascinating about his observations the history of student revolt is how similar the present wave of sit-ins is to the protests of the past. The latest generation of student revolutionaries use the Israeli action in Gaza as their starting point but their real gripe is with global capitalism. They know as little about the realities of life in Isreal's occupied territories as their precursors in the 1968 "events" knew about Vietnam. Their unwitting alliance with the Islamic extreme right is unfortunate.