Friends, they say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and this is one scary picture, and a picture that says a lot. I’m talking about this one. It shows the leader of Communist China with the leader of genocidal Sudan, on parade in Khartoum. And it is, I’m afraid, the future — China in Africa, thugs banding together (as they always have, it is true).

Anyway . . . nothing like a cheery note to begin a Monday on!

‐Couple of things to say about the Palestinian Authority, where Fatah people and Hamas people are slaying each other. (By the way, a reader wrote me to point out that the media are very keen on calling actions in Iraq a civil war. But they don’t say the same thing about the PA. Interesting, huh?) According to this article, Abbas will meet his Hamas counterpart in Saudi Arabia.

I have to ask, Why Saudi Arabia? That’s a long way to go, for two guys who live in the same, small neighborhood.

Also, the article tells us that “masked men in black uniforms” fought from the roof of a mosque. This makes us think, for the hundredth time, If Arabs use their places of worship in this way, why should the rest of us be so, so gingerly? But that is a verboten question.

Finally, Iranians seem to have been found among the Hamas gunmen. And why wouldn’t they be? It is as natural as finding Soviets among the Cuban Coms, back in the old days.

‐As you know, I sometimes think America is crazy — and that we have descended into irredeemable stupidity. Another exhibit: A Los Angeles psychologist brought suit against the California Angels baseball team. Why? Because the team had given tote bags to women during a Mother’s Day game — and not men.

Friends, this is an insane country.

On the bright, sane side, the suit was thrown out (as this article tells us). But on the less bright, less sane side: “An Angels spokesman said the team has changed its policy since the 2005 promotion.”

Oh, please don’t change. Please. If we give in to the crazies — why, the crazies win! And then the entire country will be exactly like our college campuses. The Left owns everything under the sun. Must they have major-league baseball, too?

‐Here is what Gerald W. McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, had to say about the minimum wage and the Senate: “As they play their political games, low-income workers continue to wait for their first raise in a decade.”

Really, there is a man or woman who hasn’t had a raise in a decade? Really? Is the country so dumb that union and other leaders can get away with rhetoric like that?

That itself is a dumb question!

‐By the look of it, the Bush administration will do something about agri-welfare. And high time, too. And a tricky political business it is. I say: Good luck.

‐I saw a headline, “Ginsburg Laments Solitary Role on Court,” and I thought, That’s funny — there are plenty of other liberals on there. Her fellow Clinton appointee Stephen Breyer, for example. But then I read, “U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Friday that she dislikes being ‘all alone on the court’ nearly a year after the retirement of Sandra Day O’Connor.”

Ah, Ginsburg meant that she was a woman. I am constantly impressed by the gulf between me and my fellow man. I would never in a thousand years have thought of Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a woman on the Court — I think of her as a liberal Clinton appointee.

‐Did you hear the latest threatening talk from Vladimir Putin? As this AP report tells us,

Putin denounced the possible deployment of elements of an American missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, scoffing at U.S. claims that they would be aimed at intercepting missiles from Iran. He said Russia would take unspecified retaliatory measures.
“We consider such claims unfounded, and, naturally, that directly concerns us and will cause a relevant reaction,” Putin said. “That reaction will be asymmetrical, but it will be highly efficient.”
As he has before, Putin said Russia’s latest Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missiles were capable of penetrating missile defenses and added that Moscow is developing more effective weapons against which anti-missile systems would be “helpless.”

Great. Just great. Does any decent nation have anything to fear from U.S. anti-missile defenses? Indeed, does any decent nation have anything to fear from America’s offensive arsenal?

‐As I’ve noted many times before, Alvaro Uribe, president of Colombia, is an hombre. His father was killed by terrorists, and Uribe is unflinching in his daily fight against these SOBs. For the latest, check out this article. The lead: “President Alvaro Uribe on Thursday ordered the seizure of assets belonging to demobilized paramilitary leaders after the killing of a woman who was leading a campaign to reclaim land stolen by the illegal militias.”

Keep going, Alvaro.

‐Several years ago, I tried to commission a piece on Fences of the World — this was when Israel’s security barrier was hot. Saudi Arabia has one with Yemen, India has one with Bangladesh, there are dozens in Northern Ireland, of course. And Mexico — most blessedly and thrillingly! — has one against the poor Guatemalans (and I mean “poor” in all senses).

I thought of this never-written article when reading this report, headed “Pakistan to Fence Border with Afghanistan.” What excellent news. And I love what President Musharraf said: “No one has the right to criticize unless they come up with an alternative solution . . . If there is no [other] solution, we will do it our way.”

You tell ’em, Pervez.

‐From Thursday, 1/25, to Thursday, 2/1, NRO published my “Davos Journal,” and you may find it in the Impromptus archive: here. In my last part, I said I’d tell you a little something about London, where I flew post-Davos.

I mainly wanted to tell you about David Pryce-Jones’s book launch — actually, it was the launch of two of his books. He has recently published Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews, and Safe Houses, a novel. The latter is not yet available in the U.S., only in the U.K. — but thank goodness for Amazon.co.uk, which works just fine. Safe Houses is a brilliant, probing, and elegant thing, its every paragraph an achievement. The novel has to do with the war — World War II — and post-war Germany and other key questions. Anyone who reads it is doing himself a favor.

And so it is with Betrayal, and, frankly, with the entire Pryce-Jones oeuvre. Get these books, whether in print or out of. Get the novels, the histories, the everything. The variety of P-J’s books reflect the range of his mind, and they amount to almost a life’s education.

The party for Betrayal and Safe Houses was held at a smart London bookshop — and it was attended by le tout British conservatism, or close to le tout. There was Paul Johnson, and John Gross, and Tony Daniels, and Roger Scruton, and William Shawcross. (Funny to think of Shawcross as a conservative, but life makes you such, if you are too audacious for liberty.) Shawcross was wearing a lapel pin with the British and American flags conjoined. It seemed to reflect his book Allies, which is about Blair and Bush.

Jonathan Foreman was there too, and he represents those flags in his very person. Douglas Murray was another guest, and so was Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of the superb Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. There were some Yanks about — our friend Roger Kimball, whose house, Encounter, has published Betrayal; and Donald Kahn, the indispensable philanthropist.

And two famed British historians of Spain were there: Raymond Carr and Hugh Thomas. Carr, in fact, was David Pryce-Jones’s tutor at Oxford, after David had had enough of the notorious A. J. P. Taylor. Meeting Carr for the first time, I said, “So, you’re the one who rescued David from A.J.P.!” He laughed heartily and said, “So I am!” He and Paul Johnson reminisced about riding in Carr’s MG — they have a dispute about what color it was. Carr is so tall, I’m amazed that he fit into an MG.

Anyway, it was a grand evening, for a grand man, and grand books, and I wish you had been there. Everyone else was!

‐Care for some music? From my New Criterion archive, the January “New York Chronicle” is here. And some reviews from the New York Sun?

For a review of the New York Philharmonic, under Riccardo Muti, with the violinist Vadim Repin, soloist; and for a review of the Takács Quartet, go here. For a review of an Opera Orchestra of New York performance of Rossini’s Otello — no, not Verdi’s, Rossini’s — go here.

For a recordings roundup, go here. This gives you the Capuçon brothers, Renaud and Gautier (violin and cello), and Joan Sutherland. And for an Evgeny Kissin recital disc — all-Chopin — go here.

This disc includes several impromptus, and I thought you might like to hear what Stephen Wigler has to say about them, in his liner notes — in light of the title of this column:

The impromptu claims to be an improvisation. It gives this impression through the spontaneity of the melodic idea and the apparent simplicity of the composition, in which nothing smacks of effort or concentration. These are the rules of a game — art concealing art — that never failed to captivate Chopin.

Have a good one, y’all.