Saturday, September 16, 2006

[parents] such is life

Most people are satisfied with two parents but I was avaricious and wanted three. The last one standing, my step-father Jack, has now passed away, so I have been informed today and I’m seriously uneasy about running this post as I’m not at all sure he’d approve, being such an unassuming man. Earlier in the day I could not have. On reflection, I think it needs to be posted and so - a few words at the end of the link.

[cuba] the other castro a little late

U.S. bid for `world dominance' assailed. Cuba's acting President Raul Castro on Friday assailed what he called the U.S. bid for world dominance. In his inaugural address at the NAM summit, Mr. Castro said the world today is shaped by the U.S. Er ... yes. and what?

[phonetic dictionary] second twelve

Here are the next 12 if you're up to them:

13 Carrion......................Continue
14 Castanet....................Go fishing
15 Chinchilla...................Aftershave
16 Condescending..........Greek Paratrooper
17 Counter-culture.........Retailing
18. Divest........................Princess's garment
19 Emulate.....................Dead bird
20 Equilibrium...............Sedative for horses
21 Equivocal...................Duet
22 Farthing....................Distant object
23 Felonious..................Monk
24 Flatulent...................Borrowed apartment

[fashion] how to dress within your budget

Nothing to wear? Tight budget? There are ways to get round it:

1. First take an inventory of your closet and make a list of things you really need. Buying from a list keeps you focused and curbs impulse buying.

2. Buy the best quality you can afford and train yourself to buy less often. These items will last longer, wear better, and ultimately, save you more money than buying inferior-quality pieces. Points 3 to 7 here.

[yesterday’s address] personal economy, delusion and debt

Consumers in the former Soviet republics are well on the way to the disaster which has befallen the west. WC Fields once said that you can’t cheat an honest man – he has to have larceny in his heart to start with and in a similar way, you can’t plunge a family into debt which lives within its means – they have to have the aspirations to start with. And when do aspirations become ambitions and ambitions – greed?

An oblique answer is: debt is something which happens when the rest of your spending is not in balance. Any debt other than mortgage debt is a symptom that something's wrong with a family's budget. [Elizabeth Warren MSNBC] Yesterday I addressed 89 young ladies and 2 young men on fashion and financial danger.

Friday, September 15, 2006

[phonetic dictionary] first twelve

Right, so here are your first dozen - more tomorrow:

1 Ad Hoc................... Cooking with wine
2 Adder.....................Tally clerk
3 Adenoid..................Irritated by adverts
4 Alimony..................Arab coins
5 Anenome................Foe
6 Antelope................Absconding insect
7 Aphrodisiac............Trapeze artists from Zaire
8 Badinage................Memory, sex, teeth
9 Barbecue................Awaiting haircut
10 Blackguard...........Negro sentry
11 Canteloupe...........Chaperoned
12 Capsize................Seven and three-quarters

[blogging yet again] ad nauseam

This business of blogrolls, you know - I don't understand it. I'm told there's a sort of etiquette to it so when I tried to follow that advice, the other party didn't always. One gentleman advised me today to ignore all of this because everyone has RSS feeds. Now I've seen these neat little tags and wondered about them but thought they meant Right Snivelling Sod, so thought I'd best not. The next mystery is this tagging business. Someone tags someone and someone else says don't tag me and the first says I didn't mean to and so on. Now what's this one all about? I'm beginning to think I need to enrol at Blog School, just to learn more than bog-standard stuff such as rewriting bits of html in the template. Are you as ignorant as I appear to be?

[global warming] the arctic is indeed shrinking

Aljazeerah is not where you’d expect to read about global warming but here it is. This one’s for the skeptics: arctic sea ice declined by 14 per cent between 2004 and 2005 in what some climate scientists are saying is a clear sign of global warming. Unusually warm temperatures in the region are shortening the winter ice season and have caused the perennial sea ice, which should stay frozen all year, to reduce dramatically. On Wednesday, Josefino Comiso of Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre outside Washington DC said: "The greenhouse phenomenon is actually becoming apparent in the Arctic. I’d love to read the sceptics’ argument. More here.

[taliban] more elusive than ever, not unlike hezbollah

Just read a fascinating piece in the Asia times entitled In search of the Taliban's Missing Link by Syed Saleem Shahzad. In essence, despite spending millions of dollars, US intelligence, five years after the ouster of the Taliban from Kabul, remains in the dark over the command structure of the Taliban. They have a tight high command from where - and this is the mystery - precise targets are relayed to the fighters in the field. Cracking this code is the key to putting a brake on the insurgency that gathers strength by the day. More here.

[blogger] a day to forget

Well, that was a pretty darned devastating day. First the water went off, then the lift had problems, then blogger went down, then three accidents on the road prevented me getting to work by car so I abandoned it, walked and collected it later, then everyone's blogger was back but mine wouldn't, then I stumbled on a way round it. The reason I immediately leapt to the conclusion of skullduggery was that last Wednesday it went down and a kindly hacker I know felt that it had indeed been infiltrated. I assumed the same had happened again. However, as P-G says, 'the assumption of incompetence before skullduggery looks valid here, particularly when dealing with blogger...'. May I thank fellow bloggers for their immensely helpful attitude, particularly P-G, Tim, Chris, Stephen, Black Quill and Prodicus [all in my sidebar] which only reinforced what I already knew - these gentlemen are just that. And Ruslan, thank you too. So hopefully we're all back in business.

[law] supreme court agrees to early release of transcripts

Some issues grab you immediately and some are subtle. This one is probably going to have ramifications. The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will make same-day transcripts of its oral arguments available free on its Web site, the quickest and most complete public access to its proceedings the court has ever offered. There is no sign that the court is about to yield to calls for live television coverage, which the justices have steadfastly refused. Yesterday's decision was almost revolutionary, court analysts said and it was too if you think it through for a few moments.

[nhs] why would it be any better privatised

Prodicus is ranting today against the ranters against privatisation of the NHS. I agree, especially about health care workers and bloody union shop rules and overlap of demarcation. And yet British Rail shows that privatisation is totally destructive and inefficient when the company responsible for one section is different to the one responsible for another. To whom does one complain? There's enormous self-interest in the NHS, yes - but how can you say it would be any better if privatised? History has not borne such suppositions out.

[mr eugenides] on the culpability of israel

Mr.Eugenides has posted a long piece on the culpability of Israel. My reply, in part, was this: On initial reading, it appears to me that the truly culpable in this were Hezbollah, for they knew the score precisely, from the beginning. Their barbs into Israel on a daily basis were simply inviting Israeli retaliation so that they, Hezbollah, could engender UN and world sympathy. They couldn't have cared a toss for the Lebanese people. The essential difference between the two parties, as far as I can see is that Israel struck out like a wounded beast and Hezbollah cynically manipulated the situation from the beginning. Others may differ from me on this.

[iceland] access to the leaders is a tradition

When it comes to replying to messages, some people in Iceland are more duglegur [diligent] than others. Eliza, at Iceland Review, has a theory that the more self-important a person considers him or herself, the less he or she deigns to respond to messages. She states though, that ironically, some of the country’s easiest people to contact are its current and former leaders. Like former presidents.

[petron oil spill] ... and still the tanks rust

"The worst is already behind us," Jose Campos, Petron vice president for marketing, said at a press conference in Bacolod City. Of the 2.19 million liters of fuel on board, about 1.8 to 1.9 million liters is still at the bottom of the sea. Environmentalist Gerry Ledesma disagrees, saying the worst is not over; the threat of a bigger oil spill continues as long as the bulk of the oil remains where it is. "When the wind changes and northeast monsoon hits, the oil will hit the Sulu-Sulawesi eco region. The tanker is being subjected to almost 1,000 pounds per square inch of underwater pressure that could cause the rupture of its holding tanks anytime." Petron says no, everything's fine. Trust us on this.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

[arnie] only the terminator could do this

You’d expect Arnie to denounce, sue or at the very least settle out of court over the tell-all book about his six year affair with Barbara Outland Baker, which gives a warts and all view of their turbulent love life. Instead, he gave a three-hour interview and comments on the allegations that "sometimes Barbara's recollection of events differs from my own". Then he wrote a foreword for the book. Arnie is up for re-election soon and one wonders what’s running through his mind. Then again, in California, this sort of thing helps. [Hard to know who to credit for this story – LA Times, the Telegraph or Reuters.]

[global terror] jk rowlings trooble 't airport

Airport security staff in New York nearly stopped J K Rowling from boarding a flight home to Britain because she would not part with the manuscript of the keenly-awaited final Potter book. She would never have allowed her top-secret notes for book number seven in her check-in baggage. There have been restrictions placed on the size of carry-on baggage. "A large part of it is handwritten and there was no copy of anything I had done while in the US."

[usa] people we respect and people we don’t

Do you respect Tommy Franks? Colin Powell? Then what do you make of the latter’s opposition to George Bush’s attempts to reinterpret Geneva Convention restrictions on the interrogation of prisoners? The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism," Powell said. "To redefine [a portion of the Geneva Convention] would add to those doubts." John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence, warned that if the McCain version passed, the CIA would be forced to shut down its interrogation program. "If it goes forward as proposed, this will not allow for the CIA high-value terrorist detention program to go forward," Negroponte said. What do you think about this? Vote now, on the left sidebar.

[global economy] imf growth rate projections

The overall outlook for global growth is uncertain, said IMF chief economist Raghuram Rajan, due to: sharper slowdown in the US; increase in global inflationary pressures from tight labour and commodity markets; and an unwinding of global imbalances, particularly trade-related. He also urged the US to raise interest rates to dampen inflationary pressure. The IMF tipped China to expand 10 percent this year and India 8.3 percent.

[russia] ramifications of the killing

I ran a recent piece about Putin's popularity. On one level he's like every other leader - people are arch-cynical about leaders lining their own pockets and not giving a toss. But Putin has challenged the assumption and though he'll never be destitute, it's become apparent that he really is trying to ram through reforms or at least the basis for them, in the short time he has at his disposal. People want them; they are hungry for them. The dismay they feel at this gunning down is because, as my friend Alsu said earlier, 'We thought we were over all that. We thought all that stopped in '98.' I think she should be optimistic - this is going to make Putin all the more determined to shut down these b-st-ds and force the lawlessness down to a tolerable level. Related: Khodokorvsky, Russian mind, [in Russian].

[mob killing] the finance strikes at the heart of russia

I was driving my friend to Ikea [Ru] three hours ago and he asked me what I thought about the Andrei Kozlov killing. It’s the only topic of conversation over here just now. For the record, he was deputy chairman of the Russian Central Bank and an ardent banking reformer but more importantly, it’s the first sign that Vladimir Putin IS actually involved in reforms. Real reforms, I mean, not the ones trumpeted by the mouthpieces. This is directed fairly and squarely at Putin. Now those who know my blog have smiled wryly at my constant references to the Finance ad nauseam but how many more instances do you need? This time they've stepped over the line in their stark warning. The people ARE NOT HAPPY and a riled Russian is not a pretty sight.

[london] ken certainly knows how to make friends

First the Chavez deal, then this: Celebrations this weekend to mark the 350th anniversary of the readmission of Jews to England have been snubbed by a senior Jewish organization because of London Mayor Ken Livingstone involvement. My question - does anyone still love Ken?

[stop press] eris now named

I’ve rushed this extraordinary news to you today, shamelessly hacked direct from the Globe and Mail [including lifting their photograph and passing it off as my own]: The rock whose discovery led to Pluto's planetary demise [remember?] is now named Eris, after the Greek goddess of chaos and strife. Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology, said the name was “too perfect to resist.” Eris caused a quarrel among goddesses that sparked the Trojan War. Eris' moon is now Dysnomia, the daughter of Eris known as the spirit of lawlessness. 70 miles wider than Pluto, Eris is the farthest known object in the solar system at 9 billion miles away from sun. Now you can go to work [or sleep] in peace.

[scuttlebutt] tittle-tattle and jumping on the bandwagon

Canadian Press reports that Condoleezza Ms. Rice spent some time this week with Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay in his Nova Scotia riding. “Baseless speculation” says Rice herself. One American journalist who routinely covers Ms. Rice was kicking himself for not making the trip north … and that’s where I stopped reading. Was the comment Clive Davis posted about bloggers trying to be the media correct? This is where the blogger should step back and think, rather than join the bandwagon. Although it does make you wonder. If you were a single-hetero-African-American about to vie for the Presidency, would you be checking out possible talent or would your eyes be focused on the task ahead?

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

[patriotism] the dilemma of the expat and the immigrant





Norman Tebbit, [who seriously does not pull the wings off flies, as Tony Robinson once suggested], once asked about immigrants: 'The cricket test - which side do you cheer for? Are you still looking back to where you came from or where you are?' The Russians put it more directly - it's where you were born. A girl I know said it was the language you spoke. And what do you do when they take away your football team, the Crazy Gang and send it to Milton Keynes and now you can only attend Spurs games? Where are your loyalties then?

[reportage] beat-ups and inaccuracies

I don’t like inaccuracies about Britain, the US, France or Russia. James Kilner for Reuters has written an inaccurate article: Russia's latest explosion of race violence … an alliance of locals and Moscow-based extremists … entire ethnic group driven from a town. The article portrays armed gangs roaming around looking for non-Russian looking people. "This is unique," is the more accurate comment by Maria Lipman, a political analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center. Seriously inaccurate reportage.

[religion] pope benedict, peace be upon him, savages mohammed, peace be upon him

Pope Benedict today in Bavaria [using a quotation, admittedly]: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." Now this is quite significant firstly, because he has been trying to open dialogue with the Muslims in the last few days, secondly, he said it in Bavaria and thirdly, the strength of the language at a time where his papacy has not been noted for undercutting the former pope [as distinct from in his Cardinal Ratzinger days]. The question is what he’s trying to achieve by this?

[economy] something rotten in the state of iceland

Yes there’s greed everywhere – even in sleepy hollow. Budget supermarkets in Iceland have raised food prices in many instances by 10-20 percent since January and the price index for comestibles has gone up by 6.4 percent. The Icelandic Federation of Labour states that there has been a notable increase in the price of dairy products. The price for bread and grains has also gone up, whereas the price of fruit and vegetables tends to rise and fall according to the season. Last year there was a major price war between chains, plus some of the comestibles are produced domestically. In other words, there’s no real excuse.

[education] harvard to level the playing field

Harvard College announced yesterday that it will end its early-admissions program, such programs having become a focus of many top high school students seeking their top choices, in exchange for a particular school securing and holding in potential talent early. Harvard did not require this and many say it has the luxury of dropping the program which they do not have. There may be some altruism in this but there may also be some cynical game-playing. The stakes are high.

[biometrics] n … o … spells no, nein, non, nyet!

TUC speech: The sophistication of document forgery means we can only be confident of people's identities if we have their biometrics: their fingerprints, irises and digital measures of their face. By April 2008 … fingerprints taken … biometrics to get through border control. By April 2009 work or study … biometric identity cards. The first ID cards will be issued by 2009. Note that – tacked onto the end? You truly think it’s just the migrants? You really believe this? All people, not just migrants, are to become Tuttles and Buttles in their boxes and we’ll be in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil before 2012.

[madonna] how low can one sink

Was there ever a sadder case than Madonna? Bereft of meaning in life, she dabbles in kabbalism, otherwise known as Judaism for the Lost and dutifully, she now spits on the cross. Aging, she relies on shock to maintain her career and she’s not doing all that badly either. "It was beautiful," said Katya Glasunova, [18], after seeing the song on the cross. "We don't have a right to judge. This is her vision." The young – ever ready to embrace sleaze and tat in the name of liberty and tolerance. What is it with film and music? Why must it be the popinjays who strut about airing their dirty linen and receiving the adoration of the media and the masses? Integrity is now consigned to the gutter.

[tony blair] did he technically break the law

Prodicus says Tony Blair broke the law yesterday at the TUC conference. Blair hinted very strongly that the official figures released tomorrow would show that unemployment is falling and Prodicus goes on to show that, according to the NSO code of practice, this constitutes breaking the law. I wonder if parliamentary privilege extends that far and reflect on when the last time was that a PM was impeached. I also reflect on his honeymoon period in office when he was the media's darling - the teflon PM. Oh how the mighty are fallen and how savagely people turn.

[football] draconian measures sometimes the only answer

Johnathan Pearce accepts that while market economics and sport do not always mix and the most powerful clubs and participants will dominate a sport so much that they destroy the very competition that makes sport enjoyable, this ignores the fact that sporting institutions like the Football League or Formula 1, the America’s Cup yachting race or whatever are voluntary associations of likeminded people who want to create a set of rules in order for people to have, well, fun. However…

[menezes] promotion questionable but so was menezes

The Menezes situation Commander Cressida Dick is to become a deputy assistant commissioner and Britain has a right to be flabbergasted. However, am I the only one who thinks that, accepting for one moment the crass actions of the officers involved, nevertheless the point stands that Menezes did act in a highly questionable manner on the day, at a highly charged time, in a highly charged atmosphere and despite warnings. The actions of the officers were actionable - that is so and yet ... and yet ... Menezes cannot be held non-culpable for his. And dearly he paid for them. That's all.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

[hezbollah] how they stayed out of range

During the Lebanon thing, didn’t it ever strike you as strange how Hezbollah was so elusive? I mean, they hardly ever seemed to be present when the blistering Israeli attack struck and then they’d pop up somewhere else and unleash a barrage of rockets. I think I’ve just read the explanation in the Asia Times and if it is so, then Israel now has a dire problem on its hands. Main points here.

[coincidence] same story, with variations

Is it just a coincidence that Vox Day, Tim Worstall and the Pedant General should all run posts on favourite books on the same day?

[blogosphere] uk versus us blogging

Interesting comment on Clive Davis’ site today that the reason why the US blogs have made such an impact and we have so significantly failed is that in the UK, most are either trying to emulate the media or go into competition with it or both. [They] remain niche blogs, largely ignored by the mainstream. Clive Davis’ comment on this comment is a little more positive.

[courtesy of norm] 5 candidates in line for the UN Secretary-General

Norman Geras mentions a Guardian article which lists possible replacements:

# Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid al-Hussein of Jordan;
# Ban Ki-moon, the South Korean foreign minister;
# Shashi Tharoor, a UN under-secretary of state, from India;
# Nirj Deva, British Conservative Euro-MP.

I can’t get this to come to 5 candidates but Norm assures us it is so.

[psychology] the art of quick chicken sexing in iraq

It’s twilight and you’re on guard duty in a war zone, say in Iraq. A group of twenty men approach from the distance, wishing to parley and they appear friendly. Suddenly, your captain opens fire and you follow suit and later, it appears the captain was correct and it was the enemy after all. How could he have known that? Richard Horsey posits, in his tome, that chicken sexing follows the same procedure, in quickly and reliably determining the sex of day-old chicks. And the Japanese are the masters at it. More here.

[conversational notes] of true evil and nourishing obscurity

Had a visitor yesterday who’s into the occult. He took the point of view that the real evil hides in the tall grass and his bunny is the one who breaks cover. ‘So the real evil nourishes obscurity?’ I asked. ‘Well yes, you could put it that way.’ On another matter, he said that his fellow computer firms are now running scared because Microsoft has come to an arrangement with the security services to hit unlicensed dealers [virtually all of them] in this former Soviet republic. This man is way out on the edge - interesting place to dwell. He's also going to Britain next week.

[men& women] they'll get the cash, one way or the other

One of the Perry Mason novels touched on this issue. What if you were mega-rich but you wanted people not to know that? Perhaps you wanted to be treated in an ordinary way, to know who your true friends were. What if you married and didn’t let on you were worth millions? Then you divorce and your wife gets a pittance. Good move? A Canadian judge thought not.

[police] just a normal day at the station

An ad for the Victoria Police on their site

The Office of Police Integrity, in a joint operation with the Ethical Standards Department, has charged three detectives from Springvale, Victoria criminal investigation unit with possessing weapons, theft and handling stolen goods. The investigation also found that heavy drinking sessions and watching pornographic videos were a regular feature at the station. Makes the little old lady on the street feel more secure, doesn’t it? More here.

Monday, September 11, 2006

[usa] stand tall, america, on 9/11

Mr. Eugenides went much further than I today, with his tribute to the memory of Catherine Fairfax MacRae. I can only say that we understand how deeply this day affects the heartland of America and to all your people, we say, 'You're not alone.'

[blogosphere] on blogging, hate mail and the whole biz

Very interesting piece by Prodicus today on the whole blogging biz and he concludes with: Still, I am encouraged by the comment of an experienced blogger, vastly better-known than I, who said one hasn't really arrived in the blogosphere until the hate mail starts. As I have, until this evening, escaped that, then I know my humble place and yet DK, with his cult following, also seems to have escaped. Prodicus raises questions I touched on here once before and some new ones as well.

[hewlett packard] patricia dunn fighting for her corporate life

Patricia Dunn, chairwoman of Hewlett-Packard Co, is saying, "This is not a job I asked for or a job that I particularly wanted." That’s as well for her because she’s on the way out. This is the third piece I’ve run on the lady and the situation steadily worsens, rather than redeems itself. Why? It's the Tricky Dicky Syndrome all over again. For those who could care, don’t you feel just a little sympathy for a beleagured woman who got it wrong, even if she has been back-stabbing in a big way? This is her side of it.

[americas] largest earthquake in the gulf of mexico in 30 years

Salient facts: The largest earthquake to strike the eastern Gulf of Mexico in the last 30 years sent shock waves from Louisiana to southwest Florida Sunday, but did little more than rattle residents. The epicentre is an unusual location for earthquake activity, but scientists recorded a 5.2 there on Feb. 10. The earthquake did not have any effect on oil operations in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the American Petroleum Institute. Have you noticed a large increase in seismic activity in the last few years or am I imagining it? More here.

[far-east] china wants e. u. to allow arms sales

Was there ever a more chilling headline than the above? Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has urged the European Union to lift its ban on arms sales imposed after Tiananmen Square and the reason he gives is that China has made significant progress in protecting the human rights of Chinese people. Really? China has suddenly become a dove? France is in favour, but others in the 25-nation EU have failed to reach agreement. More here.

Sunday, September 10, 2006

[spoiler] answers to usa quiz

As promised earlier today, answers to the quiz on the USA. Click on sidebar photo [right] for the actual quiz.

[looking back] pelham grenville wodehouse, 1881 - 1975

P.G. Wodehouse needs little introduction. Those who already know will be familiar with most of this. Those who don’t are in for a treat. "I believe there are two ways of writing novels. One is mine, making a sort of musical comedy, without the music and ignoring real life altogether; the other is going right deep down into life and not caring a damn.... " - Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

[in brief] thought for the day

If at first you don't succeed, try, try, again. Then quit - no use being a damned fool about things.

[world trade] they’re talking but they’re not saying anything

So now Brazil’s foreign minister, Celso Amorim, says the whole world order is under threat if stalled discussions on reducing trade barriers cannot be revived. The whole point of Doha was for the emerging economies to benefit but this was either unbelievable naïvety or cynical rhetoric. If Britain can’t get France to bend on CAP and France can’t get Britain to relinquish subsidies and if Europe can’t get the US to reduce tarrifs, which they can't, then where does that leave the emerging nations? Nowhere of course. There is no WTO, except in name.

[travel] chinese mysteries unearthed

Better you go to the page rather than I lift the piece. Graham Simmons writes: Some of the world's most intriguing sites have still somehow managed to escape the Lonely Planet circuit. An example is Sanxingdui, a mind-boggling museum of bronze artefacts unearthed in China's Sichuan province between 1986 and 2001. Their origin is as yet a total mystery. Even more mysterious is why Sanxingdui, just an hour by road from Chengdu (the capital of Sichuan) is not more widely known. A nice piece.

[wales] more uses for sheep than meet the eye

Say what you like about the Welsh but don't say they're not original. Creative Paper Wales has won an award for making cards and gifts from sheep droppings. The company collects Snowdonia sheep droppings, sterilises them and recovers the undigested fibres. It has won a $49,000 Millennium Award for its Sheep Poo Paper products. Would you like to receive a Sheep Poo card from your beloved? Also, it's good to see that the Milennium cash has been so wisely disbursed.

[syria and iran] strange bedfellows indeed

I’ve just been wading through pages and pages of Syrian related articles, trying to get a line on what it’s about. Why is Syria a pariah in the Arab world? Why is the US strangely ambivalent on the country, compared to, say, Iran? The closest I can get is Rick Francona, a former U.S. military attaché in Damascus and a Middle East analyst for NBC News, who says: “Bashar’s not the leader his father was. He’s a technocrat. He never consolidated his power; he’s trying to please too many people and he’s deluding himself.” Here is an analysis cobbled together from various sources.