Interventions:
A Middle East Report Online Feature
Never
Too Soon to Say Goodbye to Hi
Elliott Colla
and Chris Toensing
(Elliott
Colla teaches comparative literature at Brown University and serves
on the editorial committee of Middle East Report. Chris
Toensing is editor of Middle East Report.)
September
2003
| Hi
magazine's translation of Suheir Hammad's poem appears online.
The
original poem, "exotic," by Suheir Hammad, is
posted on MERIP's website
(by permission from the poet). |
Despite its
deepening troubles in Iraq, the Bush administration maintains
an audaciously upbeat outward mien. From George W. Bush's macho
landing on an aircraft carrier in May to Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld's victory lap around the Mesopotamian battlefields in
September, the song Washington sings to the world strikes a chord
of triumph. No matter that most people outside US borders, and
some within, hear the sound of desperation in the American anthem
of the studied positive attitude. If they do not want to bask
alongside the US in the afterglow of hasty battle, they must not
be listening very well. In the summer of 2003, the State Department
began broadcasting a remix of this triumphalist tune in Arabic,
in the form of a slickly produced magazine called Hi.
Hi
is the latest joint venture developed by the State Department
and media consultants, in this case the Washington-based Magazine
Group, to "build bridges of communication" between Arabs
and the United States. Described by its editors as a non-political,
lifestyle magazine whose "target readership [are] Arab men
and women aged 18 to 35," Hi has become one of the
most high-profile elements in the post-September 11 campaign of
public diplomacy aimed at the Arab world.
In the wake
of the September 11 attacks, Congress rushed to restore State
Department public diplomacy funding slashed in the era of Jesse
Helms and Newt Gingrich. According to a September 2003 General
Accounting Office report, public diplomacy monies for the Middle
East have increased by 58 percent since 2001. The State Department
hired former Madison Avenue executive Charlotte Beers (since departed)
to design a comprehensive strategy for marketing the US in the
Arab and Islamic worlds, and launched the Arabic-language Radio
Sawa and the Farsi-language Radio Farda to beam American pop music
and brief newscasts into Middle Eastern households.
According
to long-standing theories in the field of public diplomacy, conflicts
between the US and foreign countries can be greatly ameliorated
if foreign populations can be made to see that Americans are people
just like them -- hence the near exclusive focus of Hi
magazine on cultural matters of "common interest" and
its assiduous avoidance of topics on which the US government and
Arab readers could be expected to differ. In its mission as cultural
ambassador, Hi certainly has its work cut out for it, since
Arabs know its cheery message co-exists with another universe
conjured up in Washington, that neo-conservative utopia where
grateful Iraqi crowds were supposed to welcome foreign occupation
with open arms, and where Iraq would magically morph into an American-style
democracy within a matter of months. Even as this fictional world
dissipated in the summer of 2003, Hi leaped onto Arab newsstands.
SPOTLIGHT
ON SANDBOARDING
With an initial
budget of $4.1 million, Hi hopes to capture enough market
share to become self-supporting through advertising. If the few
companies who have purchased space so far are any indication,
the magazine's audience will remain restrictively small and privileged.
It likes the daytime thrills of American-style water parks and
the nighttime pleasures of Hotels Intercontinental, it craves
fatty snack foods and prefers its chocolate Swiss, and most importantly,
it is forever transferring its dollars via Western Express.
The elite
character of the envisioned audience is signaled most clearly
in the title of the magazine itself. As the editorial staff explains,
"We decided upon the name Hi because of its connotations....
'Hi' is a word for exchanging greetings between people, and thus
is a starting point for conversation." In recent years, the
English word has in fact been integrated into colloquial Arabic
in some cities, but it is a word that is more associated with
the conspicuous consumption of young elites than with the lives
of regular folks. This seeming orientation toward wealthy hipsters
carries over into the editorial content. Hi magazine asks
younger Arabs to dream of affluent American lifestyles -- and
to shut off other brain functions.
Stoked
duner pictured in Hi magazine. |
The pages
of the inaugural three issues of Hi have been so airy that
its creators ought to have called it High magazine. Most
of the glossy, Arabic-language monthly is filled with light-hearted
articles on subjects like Internet dating, rock climbing and yoga,
each concluding with lists of websites directing readers where
to go for more information. In the July issue, author Robert La
Franco writes of breathtaking sandboarding sessions in California,
before quoting one stoked "duner" who crows, "The
Middle East is the Disneyland of sandsurfing." It seems that
Hi's editors actually imagine Arab youth living within
a short distance of acres of pristine sand dunes, eagerly awaiting
tips from California on how to enjoy them.
But the fluff
is intentional, and as managing editor Fadel Lamen asserts, it
is part of what makes Hi unique. "This is a lifestyle
magazine," Lamen says. "It's a new phenomenon in the
Arab world to do a lifestyle magazine that doesn't touch on the
political." In a press release on March 19, the editors state
the official line: "[Hi] will fill a niche between
political news publications and glossy beauty and fashion magazines
by offering cultural information about the United States not readily
available in the Middle East. With its vibrant editorial and eye-catching
format, we hope the magazine can serve as a springboard for greater
dialogue and understanding between young Arab readers and young
Americans." The editors repeat this line in Arabic in the
September issue, which opens with an unsigned letter to the editor
(perhaps an amalgam of several) asking, "Why is Hi
empty of political content?"
The
spotlight on sandboarding, a pastime limited to a tiny subset
of Western tourists in the Arab world, so soon in the magazine's
life span might beg the question of whether the editors are already
exhausting the available grist for the mill of inter-cultural
dialogue. The better question, however, is not whether there are
enough innocuous lifestyle topics to round out the pages of Hi
in perpetuity, but rather whether, as a whole, these topics
are truly "non-political." Not only is there is something
profoundly political about the editors' assertion that the magazine
contains no politics, but Hi's process of presenting its
content as non-political involves a significant amount of repression
and revision.
SINS OF OMISSION
What is truly
remarkable in Hi is what is left out. For instance, the
feature story in the August issue, "Arab Music Invades the
West," describes the current synergy between Arab and Western
pop artists. Such Arab stars as Shakira, Cheb Mami and Khaled
are hailed as cultural ambassadors opening up American ears and
minds. The article merely reels off a number of pop collaborations
as if they have no context or consequences outside the immediate
milieu of MTV. The story begins by highlighting one such collaboration,
"We Want Peace," sung by American Lenny Kravitz with
help from Iraqi pop star Kadhim al-Sahir, Palestinian-American
oud player Simon Shaheen and Lebanese tabla player Jimmy Haddad.
With lyrics like "It's time to get together, it's time for
the revolution," and "In a war there is nothing to gain
and so many people will die," the song suggests that culture
might have something to do with politics. Furthermore, it was
richly provocative of Kravitz to choose an Iraqi collaborator
on a song that hit the airwaves just as bombs were being dropped
on Baghdad. But, in a magazine whose avowed message is non-political,
such seemingly obvious connections are not drawn in the narrative.
Rather, author Jonathan Lesser points out that American artists
like Kravitz have found ways to use Arab melodies in their music,
yielding a danceable fusion that goes beyond "East and West."
For Lesser, "the Arab beat has an unrestrained magic that
creeps into your body. Your body can't help but to move to it
-- it's like Latin music."
Similarly,
Lesser refers to the Palestinian-American oudist, Simon Shaheen,
but not to his outspokenness on Palestinian issues. The article
mentions Sting's highly visible partnership with Cheb Mami, which
included a rai-inflected joint appearance at the 2001 Super Bowl,
but omits information pointing to the political undertones in
their collaboration which partly account for their popularity
among younger Arab and Arab-American audiences. For
instance, in April 2001 Sting and Mami performed in Jordan at
a benefit concert whose proceeds went, in part, to Palestinian
victims of the current low-intensity war in the Occupied Territories.
When Sting and Mami played the Pyramids in Egypt, they
were both photographed wearing kaffiyyas -- again to symbolize
their support for the Palestinian cause. But such oversights are
exactly the point: in Hi, there are no serious political
or even cultural implications to this emerging collaboration between
Arab and Western artists. Arab music becomes a decoration that
can be added to the tapestry of American pop culture without seriously
reconfiguring it. In sum, the article presents little more than
a list of token Arab artists "making it in the US,"
a hit parade which seeks to show that Americans are tolerant and
open to Arab culture.
NO POLITICS
ALLOWED
| 
Cover
of September 2003 issue of Hi. Yellow headline reads "Conflict."
Subhead reads "over dividing the waters of the Colorado
river." |
Indeed, the
real challenge facing the Hi editors will not be to find
material about Arab and American cultural collaborations. Rather,
it will be how to ensure that the politics of such partnerships
are kept out of the story. Here, the example of Hi's July
2003 treatment of Palestinian-American Suheir Hammad's participation
in the Russell Simmons Def Jam Poetry Slam series on HBO is instructive.
It is hard to imagine how one could blanch the politics from the
work of a poet who, after the September 11 attacks, wrote such
lines as: "one more person ask me if i knew the hijackers
/ one more motherfucker ask me what navy my brother is in / one
more person assume they know me, or that i represent a people."
Yet, in its translation of Hammad's poem, "exotic,"
a translation which was not authorized by the poet or her agent,[1] Hi somehow manages to do so.
In a cry
against the (white American) racial gaze that objectifies her,
Hammad writes in English: "don't wanna be your exotic / women
everywhere are just like me." But in Hi's hands, the
charged term "exotic" is transmogrified in Arabic to
"farada," a scarcely used term which means, roughly,
"singular." The above lines become: "I will not
be that unique woman / The woman object of desire / All women
might be my likenesses." The translation as a whole is nonsensical,
because it removes the context of US racism and racialized sexism
spoken to by Hammad's poem. Hi deletes -- without informing
its readers -- more than half of the poem's lines, such as those
in which Hammad draws explicit connections between herself and
a wide spectrum of women who share similar historical experiences
with American and colonial racial stereotypes: "harem girl
geisha doll banana picker / pom pom girl pum pum shorts coffee
maker / town whore belly dancer private dancer / la malinche venus
hottentot laundry girl..." In place of these lines, the Arabic
version adds language so vague as to be meaningless, and more
importantly, language that does not appear in Hammad's original:
"arise / fly me far away / from worldly things / and tangible
things / that might lead us / to deviation or chaos / or estrangement."
By softening the tone of the poem and eliding, even rewriting,
its forthright anti-racist, feminist politics, Hi attempts
to present Hammad as just another pop Arab artist who is gaining
popularity in the US. The charged racial context of her Arab-American
poetry is literally whitewashed by scribes under the supervision
of the State Department.
The
omission of politics in Hi is generally more oblique. A
splashy spread in the September edition, for instance, profiles
Arab-American comedians who "are using humor to fight negative
ideas and strengthen mutual understanding." In the profiles,
comedians such as Dean Obeidallah and Helen Maalik tell the interviewer
how the September 11 attacks compelled them to address their Arab-American
identity during performances, but there is no supporting detail
to help readers judge if their comedy is effective. Obeidallah,
who is half-Palestinian, says, "I haven't lost my right to
tell jokes about officials in the US government, even the president,
just because of my Arab roots." But Hi doesn't let
Obeidallah tell one of these jokes. Indeed, the best and most
forthright illustrations of how the comedians' humor might break
down stereotypes -- excerpts from their actual comic routines
-- are missing from the article. Only Egyptian-American Sherif
Hidayet is given the microphone: "Arab TV broadcasts programs
that might give a bad impression of American society, like the
scandal-mongering 'Jerry Springer Show' or the real-crime show
'Cops.' In America, on the other hand, we also have a program
that is great at showing negative images of Arabs -- the nightly
news." Oddly enough, some American audiences might interpret
Hidayet's crack to reinforce, rather than redress, ethnic stereotypes.
DISTANCE
LEARNING
Arab exchange
students studying in the US are the subject of the centerpiece
of the July issue of Hi. The article begins on a frankly
Orientalist note: "It is said that the Egyptians are industrious,
the Jordanians hospitable, the Saudis clever. The Moroccans are
known for their richly diverse cuisine. The Syrians are distinguished
by their ancient markets. And of course, one can't ignore the
Lebanese acumen for entertainment and tourism...." In fairness
to the authors, the point of this assertion, despite its manifest
superficiality and bad taste, is to assert that the US and Arab
countries share something in common: diversity. It is not uncommon
to hear Arabs making similar generalizations about other Arabs,
though usually in the context of jokes. In this sense, Hi's
rhetoric seems like an attempt to adopt an authentic idiom, but
the context makes it fall flat. To reduce diversity to such caricatures
seems to mock the concept of tolerance which figures so crucially
in the article that follows. It is an odd note on which to begin
an article that, equally oddly, asserts that "America opens
its doors wide to Arab students so that they can enjoy freedom
of thought and gain from intellectual experiences."
In an era
when Attorney General John Ashcroft's "special registration"
program for non-citizen Arabs and Muslims is the subject of teach-ins,
the life of Arab students on US campuses is presented as free
of complications. One Lebanese student on a Fulbright scholarship
says, "The Americans were really different from what I expected.
People are very friendly. I had the impression that they were
closed, but I found that they were interested in their neighbors
and wanted to interact with them." Nevertheless, she "had
some real fears about people's interactions with me. Most Americans
don't have a good impression about Lebanon." But, the authors
assure their readers, "She was happy to find that people
were hungry for information about her country and wanted to learn
about it." A Yemeni student who was scheduled to arrive in
the US on September 11, 2001 found his plane rerouted. In his
profile, he says, "Americans are very tolerant, and can handle
any ethnic or religious difference" and that he "was
not anxious about the few who do not like foreigners." Invited
to speak on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks,
this student was impressed by his American hosts: "You found
people really listening to you, wanting to know what you felt
and what you think about these issues." Another student who
was the target of racial threats and hurled objects says, "For
the most part, this behavior is the exception, not the rule."
Arab-American
and Muslim American organizations which tracked the post-September
11 backlash would concur with this student's overall conclusion,
though their reports also list numerous chilling examples of the
"exceptional behavior," sobering details that are absent
from the Hi story. But it would be wrong to be disappointed
that Hi does not deal in greater depth with the more difficult
aspects of Arab student life in the US, because that is not the
point of the magazine. Rather, the article tries to argue that
the US is a hospitable place for Arab elites to study. Again,
this message involves a bit of whitewashing. For example, to paint
US universities as a popular destination, the authors present
statistics showing that the number of Arab students in the US
rose 21 percent between the academic years 1997-1998 and 2001-2002.
This seems impressive until one considers a November 2002 study
by the Arab American Institute (AAI), which found dramatic drops
(56 percent for self-sponsored or company-sponsored students and
12 percent for state-sponsored students) in Arab enrollments in
the academic year 2002-2003. AAI reported that a major reason
for the declined enrollments was student concern that "delays
caused by new visa procedures would make them ineligible to start
their programs on time."
The contradictions
are not lost on Hi's target audience. In the September
issue, a reader, one Hussein from Cairo, asks the editors to explain
why the magazine extolled the virtues of US campus life when it
is so famously difficult for Arab students to acquire entry visas.
(The editors promise that the October cover story will provide
the explanation.) Meanwhile, to encourage Arab students to return,
the Hi story in July offers a list of Internet resources
for researching study at US universities. Another item describes
the internship possibilities at American multinationals. No mention
is made of the huge budget cuts throughout the public university
systems of the country -- but again, such details would be off-message.
Some readers of Hi might never even notice the changes
on US campuses: in a follow-up piece published in the August issue,
Hi reports on "distance learning" opportunities
for Arab students, presumably those who would like a college degree
from the US, but would rather skip the rigmarole of obtaining
a visa.
"ALL
ABOUT DIALOGUE"
Readers might
finish an issue of Hi without appreciating the full extent
of its sometimes subtle fiction, but it is hard to imagine them
missing the patronizing tone. As the magazine's editors have repeatedly
asserted, what is innovative about Hi is that it beckons
its readers to engage in dialogue. As Christopher Ross, special
coordinator for public diplomacy at the State Department, told
the press, "One of the most important features of this magazine
is its emphasis on interactivity, on connections.... Wherever
it's possible, we have invited people to submit opinions, comments,
recommendations, stories, questions about the US.... It is all
about dialogue, through the magazine and the website." (Corrective
note to the editors: since the 1870s, Arabic newspapers have regularly
published letters to the editor.) To this end, the magazine has
set up a website that posts (so far skimpy) readers' comments.
Within its pages, this invitation to dialogue is made in the form
of a small box that follows each article.
It is in
these boxes that the arrogant tenor of the Hi project comes
through most clearly.
Surprisingly,
the patronizing tone is not accidental, but rather the consequence
of Hi's understanding that its readers are immature. As
Ross put it to the Washington Post, Hi is trying
to "build a relationship with people who will be the future
leaders of the Arab world. It's good to get them in a dialogue
while their opinions are not fully formed on matters large and
small."
Following
an article on yoga, Hi asks: "What sort of yoga do
you prefer?...Have you tried yoga? What are the popular forms
of exercise in your country? Send us your answer to the magazine's
Internet address.... We will translate your contribution into
English so that the American people can see it."Alongside
this invitation is a list of yoga styles -- Ashtanga, Jivamukti,
Power Yoga, Hatha -- presented blithely as if Hi was being
marketed to residents of Marin County. In another article, on
the merits of the Atkins Diet, the editors ask: "Have you
tried the Atkins Diet? Did you achieve your desired results? What
were the difficulties you faced? Was it easy for you to avoid
starches and sweets completely, so as to maintain the Atkins diet,
or any other diet? Write to us...and we'll publish your letter
on our website." Will the lack of mutual understanding between
Arabs and Americans be remedied by dialogue on dieting? Ignoring
this, the real question becomes: why do the editors write in a
style reminiscent of that used to speak to American pre-teen children?
Condescension in fact riddles the pages of the magazine.
From its
first issue, Hi has attempted to get conversation going
between young American men and women and their counterparts in
the Arab world. But, as the questions show, this conversation
will not go very far. In a section entitled, "Questions from
America," Sarah from Morgan Hill, California, aged 26, asks
readers in the Arab world: "Do you get American television
programs like 'Friends'? If yes, which is the most popular character?
(Personally, I love Chandler)." On the letters page of the
September issue, a Jordanian named Tariq replies that he prefers
Joey and Phoebe. Tom, 31, asks from San Francisco: "Is there
any encouragement for students to complete their university studies
outside their country of origin?" Meanwhile, in a section
called, "Questions for America," Muhammad 26, enquires
from Amman: "Which is the coldest US state during winter?"
From Beirut, Maya, 23, asks: "Where do the late-night comedy
talk-shows get their material?" Yusra, 26, from Tunis asks:
"Are there Internet sites that provide information on travel
to American tourist landmarks like Hollywood and Disneyland?"
It is hard
to believe these are the sole or most pressing questions on the
minds of young Arabs and Americans, but in the universe of Hi,
these are not just the most important topics of conversation,
they are the only topics of conversation. The kind of dialogue
offered by Hi is one where all substance, and especially
all politics is avoided -- except as regards issues which have
no bearing on the Arab world. In seven words that capture this
dynamic perfectly, large-point type on the cover of the September
issue screams "Conflict." Then in smaller type, the
headline continues: "over dividing the waters of the Colorado
river."
CONQUERING
WITH CULTURE
In a sort
of manifesto published in July, the Hi editors claim they
want to correct celebrity-driven images of the US by introducing
Arabs to "those millions of Americans who labor from dawn
to dusk in the factory," not to mention "the fathers
and mothers who take their kids to soccer games." But working-class
Americans have yet to feature very prominently in the pages of
Hi; despite its populist rhetoric, it remains focused on
repackaging the images of celebrity Americans. Tony Shalhoub speaks
of his experiences as a Lebanese-American in Hollywood. Lebanese-American
Rony Seikaly tells readers about his years in the National Basketball
Association. Another item focuses on the Sundance Film Festival,
and still a fourth features six celebrity chefs and their outrageously
delicious culinary creations. One exception to this rule is a
story on US Latinos, entitled "Many Ethnicities: One Country."
Yet, even as it enumerates the social and economic hardships faced
by many Latinos, the article cannot resist paying undue attention
to Tito Fuentes and Jennifer Lopez. To be sure, this editorial
strategy conveys something true about the middle-class American
sensibility promoted by mainstream corporate culture: an America
in which nearly everyone is affluent or has the opportunity to
be affluent, and in which lifestyle and consumption habits are
more important than ideas or politics.
Perhaps some
will be tempted to dismiss Hi's embrace of commercial pop
culture, its two-dimensional boosterism about American life and
its reluctance to engage meaningfully with the substance of American
politics, whether at home or abroad, as the spawn of evanescent
right-wing dominance. But the magazine is the brainchild of the
State Department, supposedly the most sensitive organ of the foreign
policy apparatus. Moreover, in many ways, Hi embodies key
tenets of theories of public diplomacy espoused by the centrist
core of the foreign policy establishment.
An influential
paper published in July 2002 by the Council on Foreign Relations
calls for massively increased expenditures on public diplomacy.
Chief among its recommendations is that these efforts "increase
customized, 'two-way' dialogue, as contrasted to conventional
one-way, 'push-down' mass communications, including an engagement
approach that involves listening, dialogue and debate." The
paper also recommends greater involvement of the private sector
in selling US policies abroad, even the creation of a Corporation
for Public Diplomacy. Most importantly, however, the Council's
authors argue that to increase foreign "receptivity"
to US policies, "we should find ways to tie them more closely
to our cultural values, including the nation's democratic tradition
and extraordinary capacity for self-criticism and self-correction.
Values that should be highlighted include strength of family,
religious faith, expansive social safety nets, volunteerism, freedom
of expression [and] the universal reach of education." If
the bipartisan consensus at the heart of American foreign policy
thinking believes that US social safety nets are "expansive"
and US education "universal," and that skeptical foreigners
can be won over by "cultural values," it is no surprise
that the editors of Hi believe these things as well.
The pages
of Hi read as if the State Department's public diplomacy
team has realized the futility of their self-appointed task to
help Arabs understand US foreign policy and encourage a meaningful
exchange of ideas. In its present form, Hi suggests to
its target readership that the US administration has no substantive
reply to sincere questions about US policy, nor even to adult
questions about US society and culture. At a time when the US
really ought to be engaging in frank dialogue and genuine debate
about ideas with people from the Middle East, it is hard to imagine
Hi failing more spectacularly. There are no ideas in the
pages of Hi and the terms of its "dialogue" are
ones that grown-up readers will resent.
NOT UP FOR
DISCUSSION
A dubious
truism advanced by American commentators these days is that the
Arab press is moribund and censorious, if not brimming with hateful
incitement. While aspects of this pronouncement are true, it has
been puffed up by journalists like Thomas Friedman, and the pro-Israel
translation project Middle East Media Research Institute, to the
point where it is now accepted wholesale by people who do not
know Arabic, but think they have access to the total range of
opinion expressed in Arab media. In this atmosphere, the State
Department may honestly believe that its lifestyle magazine fills
a void in the Arab world.
But in its
many failings, Hi is not particularly unique or innovative:
it is only the latest in a series of public relations drives to
divert attention away from the conflicts exacerbated, if not fostered,
by US policies in the Middle East. Again, the words of the Council
on Foreign Relations paper are helpfully blunt. "Some of
the animosity against America is related to serious policy issues.
We cannot always make others happy with our policy choices, nor
should we.... We should not leave the impression that all differences
are resolvable or could be if we could be nicer or more empathetic."
Exhibit A in the Council's report is US support for Israel, which
the authors contend can be better explained to the world with
reference to the constraints imposed on Washington by democratically
expressed domestic opinion. Public diplomacy, the Council avers,
"does not mean that the US should change policies in order
to make them easier to sell." Hi reflects this mentality
with its implicit message that, while sandboarding and yoga are
up for discussion, US Middle East policy is not.
Should they
return to the drawing board, the public diplomacy mandarins might
recall how the Egyptian historian al-Jabarti reacted to the French
occupation of his country in 1798 by trying to read what the French
proclamations actually said. The French Directorate, like the
Bush White House today, understood it was on a mission to bring
enlightenment to a barbaric world. Napoleon, like the State Department,
hired a group of Arabs and Arabists who would translate a series
of pronouncements designed to quiet the natives through public
relations. What Napoleon's printers hadn't appreciated was the
extent to which Arabic literary style rested on the study of correct
grammar and the appropriateness of discourse to the audience addressed.
In the end, few if any Egyptians were convinced of the chief French
proclamation which announced, in infelicitous Arabic style, that
they had come to liberate them by the sword.
Al-Jabarti's
critique showed that Napoleon's proclamation was not just filled
with lies, but was in the end incomprehensible as a gesture of
cultural communication. Certainly, there are important differences
between Napoleon's proclamations and the unctuous Hi echoing
from Foggy Bottom. Yet both expose, for Arabic reading publics,
a spirit of arrogance and disingenuousness that is remarkably
similar. If al-Jabarti were here today to read Hi, he might
say that the evangelical bloody-mindedness of imperial power has
changed little in 200 years.
