The mopping up of Islamic militants in Southeast Asia continues. Philippine authorities have arrested Adzhar Mawalil, an Abu Sayyaf gunman linked to the 2000 kidnapping of Western tourists from a popular dive resort off Sipadan in neighboring Malaysia and a host of other grisly crimes including the beheading of seven Filipino workers.

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Typhoons in the Philippines and heavy rains that have caused major flooding in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam have failed to head south where rain is sorely needed to douse forest and possibly peat fires that have ensured the annual re-run of the dreaded haze.

Last week in Washington DC, there was a sight that once might have seemed strange: A Vietnamese military officer giving a speech about his country’s national defence.

Speaking at the National War College, Lt. Gen. Vo Tien Trung – the first member of the Vietnamese military to speak in the United States since the end of the war between the two countries in 1975 – touched on myriad topics as he stressed Vietnam’s independence from entangling military alliances and emphasised the important role that diplomacy will play in resolving current disputes.

Trung’s speech comes on the heels of an agreement signed between the United States and Vietnam in September, which was widely seen as giving Hanoi an added measure of security in its ongoing territorial spat with China over the Spratly Islands. While dialogue and negotiation are naturally the preferred methods with which to resolve the dispute in the South China Sea, it’s also true that the two countries have the military means to back up their rhetoric. As a result, the memorandum of understanding that Hanoi was able to ink with Washington is of vital importance to the Vietnamese government.

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Nationalism in Malaysia is a peculiar thing. And, at the end of the day, it’s more about being Malay, Muslim and from Peninsula Malaysia as opposed to any of the other religious or many ethnic groups who have called this country home for centuries. Royal connections also help.

The West Malay Islamic influence permeates across the country, often reinventing history with its own spin. Anybody who questions this is to be cast aside with the Christians, Shiites, Buddhist and Hindus who struggle to believe Malaysia is a secular country.

In recent weeks, two people have emerged from the back rows of history to help recount that past. The first was pushed to the fore by PAS Deputy President Mohamad Sabu, or Mat Sabu as he's better known, who stirred up a hornet’s nest by portraying Mat Indera as some type of original freedom fighter.

The Laos files from WikiLeaks underscored the country’s underdevelopment, endemic corruption in the bureaucracy and the fragile state of its environment. But we already know that. What makes the cables interesting is the kind of frankness that we don’t often get to see or hear from diplomats’ public statements.

For example, here’s how the US Embassy in Vientiane described the poor and unequal economic conditions in the country:

‘Although GoL (Government of Laos) ministers and officials with salaries of less than S75 per month sport villas and cars worthy of Monte Carlo, GDP per capita is still officially less than $400...Unemployment is epidemic, underemployment is endemic, crime is rising, and the investment climate is among the least hospitable in the world.

‘There is almost no rule of law or basic human freedom in Laos, and education is in the hands of a corrupt and ideologically hidebound ministry that uses ADB money to build a grandiose but unnecessary new ministry building while rural children sit on logs and try to remember what a teacher looked like.’