Turkey, vaunting itself as a rising power, has the most clout: as one of Syria's main trading partners it should be pressing Mr Assad harder to call off the tanks and give his people a proper electoral choice.
African leaders have been extolling the union's new vitality, for instance by vaunting its ambitious (though not yet effective) peacekeeping operations in such places as Sudan's war-ravaged Darfur province.
Some, such as the kings of Morocco and Jordan, two non-Gulf survivors, have given political ground without losing their dignity or their ultimate power; Morocco's bolsters his authority by vaunting his ancient dynasty's heritage.
WITH Turkey vaunting itself as a model for the Arab world, the tendency is to see its 50-year-old goal of joining the European Union as dead.
If you've not heard "Business Time", a song vaunting the pleasures of getting it on in as hormone-pumping a manner as Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On", then check out the second outing from New Zealand's fourth most popular folk parody duo.
France's oldest spirit, Armagnac, is celebrating its 700th birthday with a new marketing push vaunting its "40 virtues" as a drink that is good for the body and good for the soul.
The latter, ill-advisedly, once confessed in public to having slept with thirty women, but even he, vaunting swordsman though he is, would have to concede that never have more people asked him, out loud, whom he will get into bed with — and more, more galling still, what exactly he will be prepared to do when he lies there.
"Growing Pains" is at least her fourth album in a row to be accompanied by a round of interviews that find her vaunting a newfound sense of self and some measure of hard-earned happiness.
Nonetheless, film cannot live on foodie jokes alone, and "The Trip" would be just too mild and miniature, like a baby scallop, were it not for its one, vaunting thrust of fanciful wit.
Vaunting his own obscure novels and commingling his wretched blather about reality and appearances with the refined aperçus of poor Benjamin, who deserves to rest in peace, Henric proceeds to drop more august names in a few pages (Rimbaud, Joyce, Baudelaire, Artaud, Genet, Kafka, Proust, Céline, Lacan, and the indispensable Bataille) than there are drunks in a phone booth.
