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International Education and Imperial Penetration, Co-optation and Control.
By James Craven/Oomahkohkiaaiipooyii and Keith Chiefmoon/Onistaya Kopi
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Paper presented at the International Conference on "Migration in China and East Asia: Experience and Policy", May 20-21, 2010 at the Minzu University, Beijing, China, at the invitation of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences"
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“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country…We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of their fellow members in the inner cabinet…in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics and business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by a relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental patterns and social processes of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces, and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world. (Edward Bernays)
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“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country…We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of their fellow members in the inner cabinet…in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics and business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by a relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental patterns and social processes of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces, and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world. (Edward Bernays)
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“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it? The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point and within certain limits.” Edward Bernays
“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it? The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point and within certain limits.” Edward Bernays
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Introduction
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Introduction
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The historically generated and globalized systems of colonialism and neo-colonialism, as in the cases of imperialism and neo-imperialism, carry common denominators (nouns colonialism and imperialism) because they have some fundamental features in common. They also have some features that are different—hence the adjective “neo” differentiating them from the classical forms. What they all have in common is that they are all systems that belong to specific historical periods, and, they all involve control, domination and exploitation of some regions, nations and peoples by others. Each type of system incorporates specific, historically determined, dynamic, formulae or algorithms, of direct and indirect, levels, structures and specific forms, of both hard and soft power . The strategic goals of colonial and imperial powers involve penetration, control, domination and exploitation of nations, regions and peoples of the “peripheries” for the benefit of the policies and expanded reproduction of the metropolitan colonizing or imperial power centers.
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Classical colonialism and imperialism historically, have involved the more direct and physical penetration, taking, settling, holding and ongoing control of foreign territory through both distant and localized projections and transmissions of hard power; with some, but few, forms of soft power to follow. Generally neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism, involve projections of more indirect, and “softer” forms of power (economic, political, legal and cultural) from more distant bases transmitted through “dependent” and “captive” localized institutions and elites, with threats of hard power (overt military and covert operations) projections at the ready and certainly used when needed.
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Even with decreasing costs of transport and communications globally, imperial powers prefer the more distant and softer forms of power (the “velvet glove”) over the more direct, localized and overtly brutal forms of hard power (the “iron fist”). This is not only due to the fact that imperial overreach and high costs of standing foreign bases and settlements overseas create fiscal and other crises within and throughout the metropolitan colonial and imperial centers, but, also, because the contradictions are more intense and naked, and the real exploitative nature and real winners and losers of imperial or colonial rule, are much clearer and naked with the more direct and brutal forms of hard power projections. The inevitable “collateral damage” on non-combatants that comes inexorably with hard power projections often serve to recruit rather than dampen, resistance to foreign domination and is not consistent with winning “hearts and minds” in the peripheries.
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Even with decreasing costs of transport and communications globally, imperial powers prefer the more distant and softer forms of power (the “velvet glove”) over the more direct, localized and overtly brutal forms of hard power (the “iron fist”). This is not only due to the fact that imperial overreach and high costs of standing foreign bases and settlements overseas create fiscal and other crises within and throughout the metropolitan colonial and imperial centers, but, also, because the contradictions are more intense and naked, and the real exploitative nature and real winners and losers of imperial or colonial rule, are much clearer and naked with the more direct and brutal forms of hard power projections. The inevitable “collateral damage” on non-combatants that comes inexorably with hard power projections often serve to recruit rather than dampen, resistance to foreign domination and is not consistent with winning “hearts and minds” in the peripheries.
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Another factor in the increasing use of “soft power”, with international education at the forefront, is that the technologies of more indirect, covert, subliminal and softer forms of coercion, influence, “education” and persuasion are increasingly sophisticated, harder to detect, and, more effective, as they allow and facilitate the exploited to more directly, and even “voluntarily”, participate in their own exploitation. As the martyred South African freedom fighter Steve Biko put it: “The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” And as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe put it: “None are more hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.”
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At the core of the production functions of all social formations, and of both hard and soft power and the goals of their application, is education including international forms. Education provides the technical skills and personnel with expertise needed to develop the technologies of both hard and soft power as well as the most effective means for their global projections. Education sets the frames for what we are prepared to use our senses to discover (worthy versus unworthy topics) or even consider. Education shapes the prisms (paradigms) through which we use our senses, decide what of the data gathered by our senses we are likely to accept and reject, and, what sources and what “authorities” we are prepared to access, accept or reject. Education shapes how we see ourselves and our own socioeconomic and politico-legal systems relative to how we see others and their respective systems. Education shapes our views of what is sacred and what is taboo. Education shapes our views of history and which aspects of our own history or the histories of others are worthy of focus and consideration . Education shapes our view of what is science and scientific method and how they are conducted and applied. Education shapes what we take to be our dominant “culture”, values, and imperatives of survival and expanded reproduction of the systems we live under. Education provides the incomes for mass consumption as well as the tastes and preferences shaping what we consume; and what we choose or are induced and/or seduced to consume, both reflects and shapes, our dominant values as well as what we need to produce, how to produce it, and, for whom, production and resource allocations shall take place. Education teaches what words are worth knowing and using and which not; and education shapes what words mean or do not mean—including the concept of “education” itself.
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According to the neoconservatives (NC) and neoliberals (NL) in the U.S. and elsewhere, World War IV, the global war against terrorism, has been underway for some time. That begs some fundamental questions: What was or is World War III? When did it begin? Is it still underway? How is “victory” defined?
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Many of the neoconservatives, and neoliberals too, see World War III as a global war between systems and ideologies for “Hearts and Minds”; and, according to them, it has been underway since around 1980. According to these forces, socialism and communism are “existential threats” to capitalism and what they euphemistically call “democracy”. The neoconservatives and neoliberals too, see this global war between systems and their respective ideologies as a long and protracted one that will only end with the final and irreversible “triumph” of capitalism over socialism, and Western-style political pluralism, which they equate with “democracy” over single-party rule. They understand very well that the types of people, institutions, relations, and values necessary for socialist construction and its defense are very different than those necessary for the “social capital” and expanded reproduction of capitalism on a global scale (ultra-individualism, mass consumerism, selfishness, materialism, inability to delay gratification, get-rich-quick, etc).
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Many of the neoconservatives, and neoliberals too, see World War III as a global war between systems and ideologies for “Hearts and Minds”; and, according to them, it has been underway since around 1980. According to these forces, socialism and communism are “existential threats” to capitalism and what they euphemistically call “democracy”. The neoconservatives and neoliberals too, see this global war between systems and their respective ideologies as a long and protracted one that will only end with the final and irreversible “triumph” of capitalism over socialism, and Western-style political pluralism, which they equate with “democracy” over single-party rule. They understand very well that the types of people, institutions, relations, and values necessary for socialist construction and its defense are very different than those necessary for the “social capital” and expanded reproduction of capitalism on a global scale (ultra-individualism, mass consumerism, selfishness, materialism, inability to delay gratification, get-rich-quick, etc).
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International Education in History
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The use of International education by colonial and imperial powers as an instrument of power projection and rule has a long history. Even in Roman times, colonial and imperial power projections and intentions not only often brought with them genocide, but followed the two fundamental phases of genocide outlined by the originator of the word “genocide”, Polish Jurist Raphael Lemkin: 1) destruction of the “national pattern” of the groups targeted for genocide and/or foreign control over; 2) imposition of the national pattern of the colonial or imperial power conducting the genocide and/or power projections.
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Even today, some of the top universities specializing in geography, anthropology and foreign languages are found in Great Britain as the British colonial and imperial powers understood what the U.S. Imperium is only beginning to understand: that when you have direct rule and occupation of foreign territory by large numbers of well-armed foreigners, in fortified military bases with extra-territorial powers over indigenous peoples, it makes it very clear to the locals who are the rulers and who are the ruled. They also understood that overseas bases can be costly, can generate fiscal and other crises in the home metropolitan social formations, and, when surrounded by potentially hostile indigenous populations, are highly vulnerable to attack. So the British set up the “D.C” or “District Commissioner” system where only a relatively few highly trained colonial administrators ruled through networks of local elites (mostly mixed-race and lighter-skinned indigenous persons) recruited and trained in the universities of the colonial and imperial powers, trained and installed to rule and aid in the projections colonial and imperial power over “their own” people. The British, like the U.S. today, not only preached they were part of a global “civilizing mission”, but projected their own political, economic, cultural, legal and social institutions, values and systems as “universal templates”, that all nations must copy, if they were to have any hope of the levels, forms and rates of growth of “civilization” said to be modeled by the colonial and imperial powers.
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Missionaries, then as today, operating under various covers and fronts , including as “international educators”, were sent in as subcontractors in genocide and front men (and women) for colonial and imperial power projections and control . They followed the typical pattern captured in the phrase common among Indigenous Peoples of the Americas: “The 3-B system” or “Bible, Buck (dollar) and Bullet”. First the Bible, accompanied or followed by commercial interests, followed by military presences (troops and support bases) to facilitate more penetration and protect that which has occurred. The British, like many of their missionaries, understood, like the Roman Emperor Constantine who established Christianity as the dominant religion of the Roman Empire at the Council of Nicaea in the early fourth century AD, that in destroying existing indigenous institutions (“national patterns”) and replacing them with others, starting with, and then gradually co-opting, the existing institutions, such as sacred pagan holidays and rituals, was far more effective in ultimately smashing them and replacing them with others than in putting them directly and openly under siege . This meant that those seeking to smash the indigenous “national patterns” had to understand them, as well as local indigenous languages and/or had to hire, indoctrinate and train locals to do their bidding for them under various fronts and disguises .
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Missionaries, then as today, operating under various covers and fronts , including as “international educators”, were sent in as subcontractors in genocide and front men (and women) for colonial and imperial power projections and control . They followed the typical pattern captured in the phrase common among Indigenous Peoples of the Americas: “The 3-B system” or “Bible, Buck (dollar) and Bullet”. First the Bible, accompanied or followed by commercial interests, followed by military presences (troops and support bases) to facilitate more penetration and protect that which has occurred. The British, like many of their missionaries, understood, like the Roman Emperor Constantine who established Christianity as the dominant religion of the Roman Empire at the Council of Nicaea in the early fourth century AD, that in destroying existing indigenous institutions (“national patterns”) and replacing them with others, starting with, and then gradually co-opting, the existing institutions, such as sacred pagan holidays and rituals, was far more effective in ultimately smashing them and replacing them with others than in putting them directly and openly under siege . This meant that those seeking to smash the indigenous “national patterns” had to understand them, as well as local indigenous languages and/or had to hire, indoctrinate and train locals to do their bidding for them under various fronts and disguises .
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Like the British, the U.S. Imperium is looking to the future and to long-term power projections and more apparently indirect and covert rule. They have set up “educational exchanges”, bringing in selected elites and individuals with potential to become elites in their home countries or elsewhere, hungry for educational opportunities and statuses not available in their home countries, to be indoctrinated with world views, practical tools and paradigms consistent with colonial and imperial interests and their power projections. Many of these elites were specifically groomed and equipped with educational and other backgrounds that would not only allow them to capture and hold positions of power in nominally local, indigenous and “de-colonized” institutions, but also to act as educators, politicians, scientists, missionaries, carriers of culture and influence and intelligence agents against local populations, in service of foreign powers as well.
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International Education Today
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Foreign Language Studies and Exchanges
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With the pace, scope and depth of globalization increasing daily, the imperative for international education is seen as more critical today than ever before. Increasingly, the most remote peoples, regions and social formations are being integrated and articulated within a dynamic global economy run in accordance with capitalist principles and imperatives. Not only are more non-English-speaking people under the imperative to learn English, but many English-speaking people are under the imperative to learn other emerging influential languages as well. All sorts of programs and exchanges are being set up, some actually doing what they openly claim to be doing, some not. These programs are not only about learning different languages, but are involved in cross-cultural awareness, establishing cross-border relationships and even obtaining work abroad when unemployment rates rise in some home economies.
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Not all of the cultural and linguistic study and exchange programs are benign . In several of his books, former “economic hit man” (who worked for the U.S. National Security Agency helping to lure poor nations and despotic regimes into impossible-to-escape debt peonage) John Perkins discusses the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) now called SIL International, an ultra-conservative Christian evangelical group in the U.S. that specializes in the documentation, study of and training in rare and sometimes near-extinct Indigenous languages. They not only hold contracts to train Western intelligence services in these rare languages, they also allegedly train large transnational companies, like oil companies, to penetrate indigenous lands and cultures to force or co-opt them to turn over resource-rich lands and their resources to foreign companies by offering to move them to missionary reservations and to provide food, medicines and clothing in return for deeds to their lands. They are also involved in translations of the Bible into rare and near-extinct languages. Further, when one learns a new language, the specific constructs, terms, sources, vocabulary that one is exposed to and learns, along with those one is not exposed to and does not learn, serve to shape the paradigms, values, levels of useful knowledge and perspectives of that person learning with feedback effects on that person’s ideology, meanings of words and perspectives on various issues and interests even when operating in his or her own native language and in his or her own culture.
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Not all of the cultural and linguistic study and exchange programs are benign . In several of his books, former “economic hit man” (who worked for the U.S. National Security Agency helping to lure poor nations and despotic regimes into impossible-to-escape debt peonage) John Perkins discusses the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) now called SIL International, an ultra-conservative Christian evangelical group in the U.S. that specializes in the documentation, study of and training in rare and sometimes near-extinct Indigenous languages. They not only hold contracts to train Western intelligence services in these rare languages, they also allegedly train large transnational companies, like oil companies, to penetrate indigenous lands and cultures to force or co-opt them to turn over resource-rich lands and their resources to foreign companies by offering to move them to missionary reservations and to provide food, medicines and clothing in return for deeds to their lands. They are also involved in translations of the Bible into rare and near-extinct languages. Further, when one learns a new language, the specific constructs, terms, sources, vocabulary that one is exposed to and learns, along with those one is not exposed to and does not learn, serve to shape the paradigms, values, levels of useful knowledge and perspectives of that person learning with feedback effects on that person’s ideology, meanings of words and perspectives on various issues and interests even when operating in his or her own native language and in his or her own culture.
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Foundations, Institutes and “Expertise”
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There is a plethora of both established and new global foundations and institutes like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, etc., that organize international education exchanges, produce and distribute glossy publications, as well as operate as fronts (“think tanks”) for imperial interests and intentions. They have the capacity to give selected and favored academics and students forums and visibility for their academic publications, provide lucrative grants, provide research and teaching positions at prestigious schools and “think tanks”, and to establish all sorts of global working relationships and friendships that may be beneficial to imperial interests. They are presently looking to the future to find and cultivate young scholars and functionaries, potential future elites that can be recruited in the present to be placed in positions where they can rise in their respective countries and serve imperial interests in the future. Young academics are especially vulnerable to approach and manipulation in that as they are often young and have recent graduate degrees but little experience or publications, they can be given assistance with generating and publishing academic publications, in the right venues, that will fast-track them to upward mobility in academia at home and abroad. The young are often caught in a “Catch-22” trap where they cannot find employment or research opportunities because their resumes are light on experience or degrees from prestigious schools, and their resumes are light because they cannot find employment or research opportunities; these foundations offer them “Faustian Bargains” that allow them to instantly escape such traps or dilemmas. These foundations and institutes are also able to influence both foreign and domestic research directions, content and applications in service of imperial paradigms and interests and to shape perspectives on the debates and issues of the times.
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Leading “experts” with big names from prestigious educational institutions in the West, are brought in to the peripheries and marketed as if they were like any other commodity. Often, when one examines their work, especially in the social sciences and arts, their work is really quite pedestrian and not at all “advanced” from what scholars in the peripheries are doing. But there is the power of branding and “brand names” (individuals and institutions) that allow them to be invited and to form relationships and associations to serve imperial interests well into the future. They also act as “attractors” to and “spotters”, and even “recruiters” of young scholars of the peripheries who have heard of them by reputation as authors of texts or touted research, or as individuals with impressive titles and credentials and who seek their patronage to secure their own futures, often in the imperial centers to which they hope to emigrate, work and where increasing percentages remain . They are agents of brain drains that loot some of the most skilled and talented to the metropolitan centers of the Imperium.
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Leading “experts” with big names from prestigious educational institutions in the West, are brought in to the peripheries and marketed as if they were like any other commodity. Often, when one examines their work, especially in the social sciences and arts, their work is really quite pedestrian and not at all “advanced” from what scholars in the peripheries are doing. But there is the power of branding and “brand names” (individuals and institutions) that allow them to be invited and to form relationships and associations to serve imperial interests well into the future. They also act as “attractors” to and “spotters”, and even “recruiters” of young scholars of the peripheries who have heard of them by reputation as authors of texts or touted research, or as individuals with impressive titles and credentials and who seek their patronage to secure their own futures, often in the imperial centers to which they hope to emigrate, work and where increasing percentages remain . They are agents of brain drains that loot some of the most skilled and talented to the metropolitan centers of the Imperium.
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All sorts of Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs), more than 50,000 today, are involved in international education and exchanges. They are generally organized around specific single issues and are often titled to show their particular issues or areas of focus . Some not only act as fronts for various Western commercial and intelligence interests, but they help to dissipate or co-opt individuals with “progressive” or system-threatening ideologies and passions with forms and levels of “divide-and-rule”and illusions of effective action that often go with, and yet dissipate or mitigate or co-opt, political activism on single-issue causes or politics. They offer opportunities for travel, for global contacts, research and data bases , for internships, to embellish meager resumes, and, to give some comfort with the illusion of “doing something” about various global issues of the times. They recruit foreign students with specialized skills (foreign languages, mathematics, science, knowledge of foreign cultures and politics, computers, etc) in subjects that the educational systems of the West simply cannot or will not equip students from the Western nations to acquire and apply . They sometimes offer “in-house” and customized academic degrees and certificates that carry prestigious titles and are associated with prestigious educational, business and research institutions in the West and abroad. The give educational and politico-economic institutions in the periphery instant “credibility” and enhanced global standings with associations and exchange programs with prestigious institutions of the Western Imperium.
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Textbooks, “Culture”, and Educational Hardware and Software
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In the areas of exporting and adapting to local uses, textbooks, literature, music, fashion, movies, television programs and educational and other hardware and software, as forms of imperial soft and hard power projections, the U.S. and Western allies are making and stepping-up major innovations and campaigns. In all cases, major “discoveries” in brain science, cognitive psychology, anthropology, experimental psychology, economics, political science, pedagogy and other disciplines, associated with universal, as well as culturally-specific triggers, tactics and mechanisms of persuasion and the shaping of ideologies and agenda, are being incorporated. What is carefully, calculatingly and ideologically controlled in all these instruments of soft and hard power are the allowable versus non-allowable, content, scopes and depths of coverage .
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This is especially fertile ground as many teachers and researchers are, or feel, overworked, and thus hardware and software, marketed as packaged, glossy, structured, “state-of-the-art”, prestigious “brand name”, “easy-to-use-and-apply”, “labor-saving” and comprehensive, plus from the West and thus supposedly “superior” and “advanced”, are easily induced to adopt and use these tools marketed as labor-saving but in essence carriers of imperial culture and interests. Young graduate students, with heavy workloads, often assigned to teach undergraduate and foundational courses in various academic disciplines, are especially targeted by these marketing approaches. Plus, built into some of the hardware and software being exported are “backdoors” that allow surveillance of computers and their connections and applications from a distance. In addition, one of the oldest tricks in marketing is to design and price hardware and software to as to cause dependence on critical supporting services and complementary inputs from abroad.
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This is especially fertile ground as many teachers and researchers are, or feel, overworked, and thus hardware and software, marketed as packaged, glossy, structured, “state-of-the-art”, prestigious “brand name”, “easy-to-use-and-apply”, “labor-saving” and comprehensive, plus from the West and thus supposedly “superior” and “advanced”, are easily induced to adopt and use these tools marketed as labor-saving but in essence carriers of imperial culture and interests. Young graduate students, with heavy workloads, often assigned to teach undergraduate and foundational courses in various academic disciplines, are especially targeted by these marketing approaches. Plus, built into some of the hardware and software being exported are “backdoors” that allow surveillance of computers and their connections and applications from a distance. In addition, one of the oldest tricks in marketing is to design and price hardware and software to as to cause dependence on critical supporting services and complementary inputs from abroad.
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Fashion, music, literature, movies and television programs are also used as instruments of soft and hard power. Embodied in their calculated content, forms and applications are the central message that “foreign” means superior, to be emulated and preferred, and that which is part of the culture and history of the peoples of the “peripheries” is “inferior” and, even the major alleged “cause” of any alleged “backwardness” in the nations of the peripheries. Not only are very lucrative export and domestic markets created with these types of commodities, but, in addition, the values and priorities associated with capitalism and the mass consumerism pushed by the imperial powers, can and do create forms and levels of debt peonage, dependence and loss of autonomy. People in the nations targeted by imperial interests, are learning, as are the peoples of the metropolitan centers, that when one defines “personal freedom” and prosperity in terms of what and how much one “owns” and consumes, instead of a person owning things, the things, and those who sold and financed them, may well wind up owning that person. These instruments of soft power articulate with and reinforce the forms of soft power in education as many young students, for developmental and other reasons, are attracted to “exotic” or “foreign” fashions, music, literature, movies and television and they may devalue their own societies that perceive to have failed to value and provide these trappings of “civilization” and “progress”.
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Exponentially increasing—in scope, depth and sophistication---innovations in optics, audio, graphics, film technique and genres, and, the like, applied to movies, television, music, literature, art and fashion, make the “suspension of disbelief” and escape from the realities of life easier and easier to effect on a mass level. Films and television get increasingly graphic and sensational with new and more intense levels of titillation (modern versions of the Roman “bread and circus”) are being demanded and those demands met. The same technologies employed to make masses “suspend disbelief” when they go to movies or watch television can be employed and are employed to create and nurture other kinds of beliefs in service of imperial interests. They are designed not only to indoctrinate, not only to draw in and titillate audiences with the “exotic” typically not found in local cultures, they are also designed to undermine and eventually destroy beyond recognition the indigenous cultures seen as obstacles to imperial expanded reproduction.
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Conclusion
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Conclusion
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By all accounts, in the U.S. and its allies, are increasingly eschewing, if possible, forms of hard power and the actual taking and holding, physically, of foreign territory. When hard power projections are necessary, the U.S. Imperium is developing more agile, rapid, flexible, precise, “smart”, transitory and lethal weapons and deployment capabilities rather than physically occupying and holding large areas of foreign territories. They are focusing more and more on developing very sophisticated forms soft power and methods of soft power projections and their applications for the reasons that have been discussed previously along with other reasons. But imperial soft power projections are not really that “soft” and non-coercive. If we define “coercion” as the force of obtaining consent or causing someone to act according to the will of others without fully informed and voluntary consent, then forms of soft power, especially when developed and applied to have subliminal effects or to limit or shape information to cause someone to act in accordance with the will and interests of others, then such power is also very coercive with its true concealed coercive powers but another coercive instrument.
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There is no doubt that international education offers many attractive and actual benefits for all involved and is imperative in a world of globalization and increasing interdependence, integration of nations, regions and peoples of the global economy. But the object of imperial soft power is to develop and assert the features, values, imperatives and interests of the imperial social formation as a universal template for all to emulate or to be in perpetual peril (subject to move overtly hard and coercive forms of power) with the failure to do so. With global crises and imperial powers increasingly cornered with mounting internal fiscal crises and socio-cultural-political decay, both the forms of soft and hard power projections are likely to be more reckless and desperate; the more one has and has acquired, the more one has to lose. Imperial power projections, like earthquakes and hurricanes, often with even more disastrous effects on both the victims and power projectors alike than those of hurricanes and earthquakes, cannot be stopped at present but can be understood. And it is in understanding their nature, origins, methods, instruments and intentions that those who are the objects and targets of these power projections can best protect themselves and their own sovereignty, self-determination, independence, cultures and socio-economic and politico-legal systems from gradual sabotage, erosion and eventual overthrow.
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END NOTES
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[1] The term “international education” is a general or all-inclusive term for the subjects, priorities, agenda, pedagogy, breadth, depth, relationships (“guanxi”) and physical/human/social “capital” associated with various educational programs.
[2] Bernays, Edward, “Propaganda”, Ig Books, Brooklyn, NY, 1928 and 2005 pp. 37-38; Edward Bernays, along with Walter Lippman were “credited” with being the pioneers of and leading contributors to the “science” of techniques of modern propaganda, advertising and persuasion employed in modern international education. Bernays took the approach that the most effective persuasion and propaganda was that which created the set of values, beliefs and tastes that led a person to believe that his choices were his own and not influenced by others. Bernays sought to create advertising and other forms of propaganda and persuasion that would not cause a person to jump up and go to a store to buy a particular product or brand, but that would cause him to be in a situation that demanded a particular product that would lead that person to the product that would then recommend itself. Bernays never really addressed the naked contradictions in his own statement vis-à-vis having a protecting a “democratic society” on the one hand, and, or versus, the ongoing and conscious “manipulation” of the masses by hidden elites on the other hand.
[3] “Hard Power” refers to instruments of covert and overt force and direct coercion. These may include war, military power, embargos, proxy military forces, denial of aid, sanctions, coercive diplomacy, bribery, debt peonage, alliances, and various kinds of covert operations. “Soft Power”, a term attributed to Joseph Nye of Harvard University, but actually originating with Chinese philosophers like Lao-tzu, refers to the power that comes from attraction and cooptation: the attractiveness of dominant economic, political, cultural, ideological and legal practices, relations, institutions and systems of one social formation acting to influence, draw in and co-opt the citizens, dynamics and trajectories of another targeted social formation. The new term “Smart Power” is now being touted by the Obama Administration to refer to the “optimum” combinations of hard and soft power that best achieve imperial strategic objectives which include the disguise of hard and soft power projections, their effects and in whose service (class interests) they are employed. Soft power can be and is used by non-imperial and socialist social formations powers such as China for ostensibly hegemonic purposes (see Kurlantzick, Joshua, “Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power is Transforming the World”, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2007 an. analysis of China's use of soft power to gain influence in the world's political arenas. and Young Nam Cho and Jong Ho Jeong, "China's Soft Power," Asia Survey,48,3,pp 453–72)
[4] In the West, particularly in the U.S., all sorts of new approaches and frontiers of “Brain Science” are being explored (by neurobiologists, cognitive psychologists, experimental psychologists, anthropologists, economists and biochemists), with the intent of finding new, more effective and more subliminal neuro-physiological mechanisms that can be used for more effective persuasion, mind control, interrogation, indoctrination, propaganda, marketing, political campaigns and “manufactured consent”. They are looking for both the universal and culturally-specific neuro structures, connections (synapses) triggers and physiological responses associated with various stimuli (colors, patterns, words, ideas, images, humor, etc) as they typically, and often subliminally excite or inhibit various neuro structures, chemicals (e.g. nor epinephrine, dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine, histamine) , and processes associated with pleasure, pain, fear, familiarity, fight-or-flight, and other responses (e.g. cortico plasticity, neurogenesis, neural differentiation).Their work is increasingly being incorporated into marketing, design and content of educational hardware and software, textbooks, political campaigns. For an overview see: Gardner, Daniel “The Science of Fear: How the Culture of Fear Manipulates Your Brain”, Plume Books, N.Y. 2009; Shermer, Michael “The Mind of the Market: How Biology and Psychology Shape our Economic Lives”, Holt Books, N.Y. 2008 and “The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule”, Holt Books, N.Y. 2004; Ariely, Dan “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions; Revised Edition”, Harper Books, N.Y. 2009.
[5] As Napoleon Bonaparte put it: “History is merely the fable that has been agreed upon”.
[6] The term “World War III” was allegedly coined by Pak Bo Hi, formerly of the South Korean CIA (KCIA) and a close lieutenant of the cult leader Moon Sun Myung, head of the so-called Unification Church, a Theo-fascist cult with extensive resources and a global reach through various fronts, who characterized “World War III” as a global war, between systems and ideologies, socialism versus capitalism, as a protracted global war, for “hearts and minds”.
[7] By “existential threat” it is meant that a certain system or ideology is deemed a strategic threat merely by its existence even without any covert or overt acts of aggression or threats by that system or ideology against others. Those who use this concept of “existential threat” understand, and intend, that when systems, values and institutions of one system outperform those of another in terms of what matters most to the masses, they can and do act as “attractors” (soft power) of people and allegiances to new systems away from others. They intend that capitalism, their versions of Western “culture” and nominal political pluralism (equated with “real democracy”), will act as attractors of the allegiances of peoples away from socialism or any forms of indigenous sovereignty, self-determination and independence. Even as China has been a leading creditor of the U.S., and even as China has not given signs of any hegemonic intentions or hostility against the U.S., even as China has been a victim of terrorism including by Al Qaeda, Bob Woodward, in his book “Plan of Attack”, Simon and Schuster, N.Y. 2004: “When all the intelligence was sorted, weighed and analyzed, Tenet [then head of CIA] and Pavitt agreed there were three major threats to American national security. One was Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist network…A second major threat was the increasing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, WMD—chemical, biological and nuclear…The third was the rise of China, especially its military, but that problem was five to fifteen years away” (p. 12) It is quite clear that the policy makers in the centers of the U.S. Imperium do not believe in the peaceful competition yet coexistence of differing socioeconomic and politico-legal systems and regard the mere existence of socialism anywhere as a threat.
[8] The term “social capital” has come back into new usage and meaning relative to its origins. Since in mainstream economics “capital” means anything that has been produced and used to produce something else, then physical capital refers to tools and the like, human capital to human skills, education and experience, and social capital refers to institutions that foster hope, trust, social cohesion, cooperation and buying into the dominant system and its core values and relationships. Among neoclassical economists they now use the term to refer to relationships of reciprocity (you do for me and I return the favor and we both maximize our individual utility functions by appearing to cooperate, yet we remain, it is alleged, “individualist maximizers”). Education is not only central to and part of the definition of human capital, it is essential to the development, content and protection of the social capital of systems as well.
[2] Bernays, Edward, “Propaganda”, Ig Books, Brooklyn, NY, 1928 and 2005 pp. 37-38; Edward Bernays, along with Walter Lippman were “credited” with being the pioneers of and leading contributors to the “science” of techniques of modern propaganda, advertising and persuasion employed in modern international education. Bernays took the approach that the most effective persuasion and propaganda was that which created the set of values, beliefs and tastes that led a person to believe that his choices were his own and not influenced by others. Bernays sought to create advertising and other forms of propaganda and persuasion that would not cause a person to jump up and go to a store to buy a particular product or brand, but that would cause him to be in a situation that demanded a particular product that would lead that person to the product that would then recommend itself. Bernays never really addressed the naked contradictions in his own statement vis-à-vis having a protecting a “democratic society” on the one hand, and, or versus, the ongoing and conscious “manipulation” of the masses by hidden elites on the other hand.
[3] “Hard Power” refers to instruments of covert and overt force and direct coercion. These may include war, military power, embargos, proxy military forces, denial of aid, sanctions, coercive diplomacy, bribery, debt peonage, alliances, and various kinds of covert operations. “Soft Power”, a term attributed to Joseph Nye of Harvard University, but actually originating with Chinese philosophers like Lao-tzu, refers to the power that comes from attraction and cooptation: the attractiveness of dominant economic, political, cultural, ideological and legal practices, relations, institutions and systems of one social formation acting to influence, draw in and co-opt the citizens, dynamics and trajectories of another targeted social formation. The new term “Smart Power” is now being touted by the Obama Administration to refer to the “optimum” combinations of hard and soft power that best achieve imperial strategic objectives which include the disguise of hard and soft power projections, their effects and in whose service (class interests) they are employed. Soft power can be and is used by non-imperial and socialist social formations powers such as China for ostensibly hegemonic purposes (see Kurlantzick, Joshua, “Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power is Transforming the World”, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2007 an. analysis of China's use of soft power to gain influence in the world's political arenas. and Young Nam Cho and Jong Ho Jeong, "China's Soft Power," Asia Survey,48,3,pp 453–72)
[4] In the West, particularly in the U.S., all sorts of new approaches and frontiers of “Brain Science” are being explored (by neurobiologists, cognitive psychologists, experimental psychologists, anthropologists, economists and biochemists), with the intent of finding new, more effective and more subliminal neuro-physiological mechanisms that can be used for more effective persuasion, mind control, interrogation, indoctrination, propaganda, marketing, political campaigns and “manufactured consent”. They are looking for both the universal and culturally-specific neuro structures, connections (synapses) triggers and physiological responses associated with various stimuli (colors, patterns, words, ideas, images, humor, etc) as they typically, and often subliminally excite or inhibit various neuro structures, chemicals (e.g. nor epinephrine, dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine, histamine) , and processes associated with pleasure, pain, fear, familiarity, fight-or-flight, and other responses (e.g. cortico plasticity, neurogenesis, neural differentiation).Their work is increasingly being incorporated into marketing, design and content of educational hardware and software, textbooks, political campaigns. For an overview see: Gardner, Daniel “The Science of Fear: How the Culture of Fear Manipulates Your Brain”, Plume Books, N.Y. 2009; Shermer, Michael “The Mind of the Market: How Biology and Psychology Shape our Economic Lives”, Holt Books, N.Y. 2008 and “The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule”, Holt Books, N.Y. 2004; Ariely, Dan “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions; Revised Edition”, Harper Books, N.Y. 2009.
[5] As Napoleon Bonaparte put it: “History is merely the fable that has been agreed upon”.
[6] The term “World War III” was allegedly coined by Pak Bo Hi, formerly of the South Korean CIA (KCIA) and a close lieutenant of the cult leader Moon Sun Myung, head of the so-called Unification Church, a Theo-fascist cult with extensive resources and a global reach through various fronts, who characterized “World War III” as a global war, between systems and ideologies, socialism versus capitalism, as a protracted global war, for “hearts and minds”.
[7] By “existential threat” it is meant that a certain system or ideology is deemed a strategic threat merely by its existence even without any covert or overt acts of aggression or threats by that system or ideology against others. Those who use this concept of “existential threat” understand, and intend, that when systems, values and institutions of one system outperform those of another in terms of what matters most to the masses, they can and do act as “attractors” (soft power) of people and allegiances to new systems away from others. They intend that capitalism, their versions of Western “culture” and nominal political pluralism (equated with “real democracy”), will act as attractors of the allegiances of peoples away from socialism or any forms of indigenous sovereignty, self-determination and independence. Even as China has been a leading creditor of the U.S., and even as China has not given signs of any hegemonic intentions or hostility against the U.S., even as China has been a victim of terrorism including by Al Qaeda, Bob Woodward, in his book “Plan of Attack”, Simon and Schuster, N.Y. 2004: “When all the intelligence was sorted, weighed and analyzed, Tenet [then head of CIA] and Pavitt agreed there were three major threats to American national security. One was Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist network…A second major threat was the increasing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, WMD—chemical, biological and nuclear…The third was the rise of China, especially its military, but that problem was five to fifteen years away” (p. 12) It is quite clear that the policy makers in the centers of the U.S. Imperium do not believe in the peaceful competition yet coexistence of differing socioeconomic and politico-legal systems and regard the mere existence of socialism anywhere as a threat.
[8] The term “social capital” has come back into new usage and meaning relative to its origins. Since in mainstream economics “capital” means anything that has been produced and used to produce something else, then physical capital refers to tools and the like, human capital to human skills, education and experience, and social capital refers to institutions that foster hope, trust, social cohesion, cooperation and buying into the dominant system and its core values and relationships. Among neoclassical economists they now use the term to refer to relationships of reciprocity (you do for me and I return the favor and we both maximize our individual utility functions by appearing to cooperate, yet we remain, it is alleged, “individualist maximizers”). Education is not only central to and part of the definition of human capital, it is essential to the development, content and protection of the social capital of systems as well.
[9] Lemkin, Raphael, “Axis Control in Occupied Europe”, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, D.C. 1944; Genocide is defined as: ...any of the following acts committed with any intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. By “national pattern” it is meant the dominant institutions, cultures, relations, power structures, systems of governance and traditions of a given nation.
[10] Freedom of religion is protected by the Constitution of China; but cult practices and intentions are not and for good reasons. Although some mainstream religions like Roman Catholicism have powerful cults like “Opus Dei” within them, mainstream religions can be differentiated from cults in that typically cults, unlike the mainstream religious denominations: a) have closed and layered dogma with followers allowed to know true dogma and intentions of the cult only in stages according to how trusted the followers are; b) covert, coercive and deceptive recruitment practices; c) internal controls for monitoring and deterring exits of members; d) various forms of calculated covert and overt mind control and programming; e) hegemonic intentions and intolerance for the very levels of diversity of thought and religious pluralism that they demand for themselves; f) coerced isolation from family members and friends not in the cult; g) covert rituals and practices and retribution against those who reveal them; h) hidden agenda and ultimate objectives known only to trusted insiders; i) a charismatic and autocratic leader with absolute, unquestioned and unquestionable authority. An example of covert intentions from one of the “sacred texts” of the Mormons:
"You will see the constitution of the United States almost destroyed. It will hang like a thread...A terrible revolution will take place in the land of America...[T]he land will be left without a Supreme Government...[Mormonism] will have gathered strength, sending out Elders to gather the honest in heart...to stand by the Constitution of the United States...In these days...God will set up a Kingdom, never to be thrown down...[T]he whole of America will be made the Zion of God." (Joseph Smith, May, 6, 1843, founder of Mormonism, quoted in "One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church" by Richard Abanes, Four Walls Eight Windows Press, NY. 2002, p xvi)
"Listeners of KSL Radio's "The Doug Wright Show" were surprised on November 9, 1999 when Wright's guest, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch (a devout Mormon) quoted the infamous "White Horse" prophecy. The prediction by Mormonism's founder, Joseph Smith, contains what has always been the Mormon American Dream--i.e. the transformation of the U.S. government into a Mormon-ruled theocracy divinely ordained 'not only to direct the political affairs of the Mormon community, but eventually those of the United States and ultimately the world." (Ibid.p.xvii)
[11] This pattern continues today with many “mainstream” religious denominations and some cults as well, continue to offer educational exchanges and programs that act as fronts for economic, political, cultural, military and intelligence power projections from metropolitan centers of the Imperium to the targeted regions of the periphery. Their names often change as they are exposed, but some like the Mormons, Scientology, the Unification Church under Moon Sun Myung, Falun Gong, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Lyndon LaRouche, wealthy, virulently anti-communist, ultra-conservative, pro-capitalist, and often heavily connected with or used by Western intelligence services, retain their parent organizational names and operate through fronts with “high-sounding” names, to conceal their true origins and intentions. Some organizations like the Cult Awareness Network (CAN) have gone bankrupt and have been taken over by cults themselves (Scientology) but still give some useful lists of currently operating cults (their competitors) and others that have taken over what the Cult Awareness Network used to do before being taken over (International Cultic Studies Association or ICSA http://www.factnet.org/cris_org.htm).%20These cults, along with “mainstream” religious denominations, mostly Protestant and Evangelical, are increasingly involved in teacher exchanges and “Teaching English Abroad” programs to nations hungry for mass education in English the lingua-franca of global politics, culture and economics; they not only raise money for their respective institutions, but act as spotters for local men and women to be recruited as local agents for them as well as to serve as agents for foreign intelligence services and commercial interests.
[12] The exception to this pattern of practices was the British and U.S. systems of Indian Residential and Board Schools in the U.S. and Canada where they had a slogan that captured the two phases of genocide referred to by Lemkin: “Kill the Indian, Save the Man”. In these cases, “education” meant a direct, violent, overt and unapologetic assault on the “national patterns” of the Indigenous nations with only marginal or ersatz attempts to impose any “national pattern” or integrate Indigenous peoples into the dominant “national pattern” of the colonizing or imperial powers. See Churchill, Ward, “Kill the Indian, Save the Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Residential Schools”, City Lights Press, San Francisco, CA, 2004.
[13] In the context of China, Martin Jacques reports: “Until 1900 the idea of reform was virtually always articulated within a Confucian framework—with an insistence on the distinction between Chinese ‘essence’ and Western ‘method’ (or, in the famous phrase of Zhang Zidong (1837-1909) ‘Chinese learning for the essential principles, Western learning for the practical applications.’) Jacques, Martin “When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order”, Penguin Press, N.Y. p.90; Among the foreign influenced uprisings in Chinese history, the Taiping Uprising (1850-64) that cost an estimated 20 to 40 million lives, was according to the historian Paul Cohen, guided by an ideology that was a ‘bizarre alchemy of evangelical Christianity, primitive communism, sexual Puritanism and Confucian utopianism’. (Quoted in Jacques, Martin, Ibid. p.87).
[14] This was taken from the internal bbs system of one of the top universities of China in 2006 where significant changes were made after this message, from a former teacher of English left this message: From the bbs system at [deleted] University, China:
Hi! How are you? I hope you are doing well in school and feeling happy. I am back in New York now and miss all my students at [deleted] very much. But there is another reason that I am writing to you. There is something I must tell you. Something very wrong and dangerous is going on in the foreign languages department at [deleted] University. What is going on at [deleted] University? Almost all the other foreign teachers at [deleted] University are members of a cult. What is a cult? A cult is a type of religion that is illegal in China and most of the world. A cult is a very dangerous thing. Why are cults so dangerous? A cult tricks you into joining it and then it slowly takes you away from your family, your friends, your career, your country, and your life. Almost all the other American teachers in the foreign languages department at [deleted] are members of a cult called “Mormonism. They are not at [deleted] to teach you. They have come to [deleted] as secret missionaries and want to try and make you become Mormons too. Why does [deleted] allow them to be here? [deleted] University doesn’t know that they are Mormons. They have found a corrupt person in the [deleted] department and have paid [this personj] a lot of money, and given [this person] many gifts, so that [this person] will lie to the department and tell them to hire Mormons to teach English at [deleted]. Why do the Mormons want to teach at [deleted]? Mormons believe that they must brainwash every person in every nation into becoming one of them. Maybe this sounds impossible, but they are very rich and powerful and are now the fastest growing religion in the world. Their members take orders from one man, one voice who can command them what to do and what to think. Now they have their eyes upon China, and that is why they have come to [deleted]. As you know, [deleted] is the [one of the] most famous universities in China…many famous political leaders all went to [deleted]. The Mormons know that [many of] the future leaders of China will likely come from [deleted]. They believe that if they can make the students at [deleted] into Mormons, then their church will control over China. If they are so dangerous, why let them teach here? As I said, they have found a corrupt administrator in the department of [deleted], and they have paid [this person] so much money that [this person] is willing to betray [this person’s] people and nation. The [deleted] English Summer Camp is completely run by the Mormons and taught by the Mormons. Starting next semester ALL of the English teachers at [deleted] University will be Mormons. What do they want to do to the students? They want to make you a Mormon. If you are a Mormon then you must obey the Mormon Church without question. You must give your money to the Mormon Church. If your families are not Mormons then you will be forced to leave your family and not see them again. If your friends are not Mormons then you will be forced to leave them and not see them again. How do I protect myself? These are the words that they use: Mormon, Mormonism, L.D.S. (acronym for Later Day Saints), BYU (acronym for Brigham Young University, a Mormon recruitment center, not a real school). If any of the foreign teachers at [deleted] say they are Mormon, LDS, Latter Day Saints, or if they say they went to BYU or Brigham Young University then BEWARE. What is BYU or Brigham Young University? BYU or Brigham Young University is a school in the United States. But its real goal is as a recruitment and training center for Mormons. Many [deleted] students have been tricked into attending BYU. They are told they can go to America and attend a famous school, and then they are trapped at BYU and brainwashed. Please be very careful. What can we do? The only thing you can do is to warn the other students so they know to protect themselves. A student who becomes a Mormon will soon be taken away from China and from their family and their lives. I love you all and it pains me that Americans are doing such terrible things in China. Not all Americans are like this. It is only a few, the ones we call Mormons. Please be careful of them and do not agree to become one of them.
[15] Perkins, John “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”, Plume Books, N.Y. 2006, pp. 166-67, 183, 184;
[16] Increasing percentages of foreign students in the West are choosing to remain to live and even state their original intention was to emigrate permanently from their countries of origin in seeking foreign studies opportunities. “After a Brief Decline, Foreign Ph.D. Graduates are Staying in the U.S. at Near-record Levels”, Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, February 3, 2010, http://orise.orau.gov/news/releases/2010/fy10-20.htm
[17] NGOs are typically broken down into: BINGOS (Business-friendly International NGOs); CSOs (Civil Society); DONGOs (Donor-organized); ENGOs (Environmentalists); GONGOs (Government-operated); INGOs (International like Oxfam); QUANGOs (quasi-autonomous); TANGOs (technical assistance); GSOs (Grass-roots support); MANGOs (market advocacy); CHARDS (Community health and development); They are not subject to international law as are states and thus often act as proxies for governments.
[18] These foundations, institutes and sources of “expertise” have a powerful influence in generating and maintaining libraries, data bases, metrics, categories and constructs, and research connections that are used by various governments and media. With the megaphone effect that comes from well-endowed patronage, they take on the aura of the only official and “reliable” data and research bases from which to draw. Their publications are typically glossy, rich in graphics and other visuals that sometimes hide meager content as well as rhetorical intentions, as they play their roles in generating the “acceptable” metrics (categories, indicators and methodologies) by which the respective and relative performances of competing systems, governments and their policies are measured and judged. Those who can set the systems of measurement not only affect what is or is not being measured, but also they affect the actual values of the measurements and outcomes of those measurements.
[19] See “New Study Finds U.S. Math Students Consistently Behind Their Peers Around the World”, American Institutes of Research, November, 2005; http://www.air.org/news/documents/Release200511math.htm; “U.S. Teens Trail Peers Around World on Math-Science Test”, by Maria Glod, Washington Post, December 5, 2007, http://www.air.org/news/documents/Release200511math.htm; “International Test Scores: Poor U.S. Test Scores Tied to Weak Curriculum” by Pascal D. Forgione, http://4brevard.com/choice/international-test-scores.htm; “Between 1980 and 2000, the percentage of Ph.D. scientists and engineers employed in the United States who were born abroad has increased from 24% to 37%. The current percentage of Ph.D. physicists is about 45%; for engineers, the figure is over 50%. One fourth of the engineering faculty members at U.S. universities were born abroad. Between 1990 and 2004, over one third of Nobel Prizes in the United States were awarded to foreign-born scientists. One third of all U.S. Ph.D.s in science and engineering are now awarded to foreign born graduate students.” Wulf, William A. “The Importance of Foreign-born Scientists and Engineers to the Security of the United States”, statement to the U.S. House of Representatives, September 15, 2005.
[20] In my classes I do an exercise on the first day of class to illustrate ideological framing and manipulation. I ask my students, who are seeing their textbook for the first time, how, not knowing anything about the author of the text, they could judge the likely ideology and rhetorical intentions of the author. Usually I get answers like “from the preface” or “from the biography of the author.” I then ask them to look in the subject index of the text and given them a list of constructs to look for: imperialism, neo-imperialism, racism, sexism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, genocide, etc. I then ask the students if they can define these terms and if they have anything to do with economics. I then ask them that if they cannot yet define these terms, how will they ever learn them if they have been omitted from the text? Attitudes, agenda, expectations, values and allegiances can be as effectively shaped, perhaps more so, by what is carefully omitted from examination as what is examined even from an ideologically jaundiced perspective.
[21] See: Soft Power and US Foreign Policy: Theoretical, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Parmar, Inderjeet and Cox, Michael Routledge, 2010; Lukes, Steven "Power and the Battle for Hearts and Minds: on the Bluntness of Soft Power," in Berenskoetter, Felix and Williams, M.J. eds. Power in World Politics, Routledge, 2007; Mattern, Janice Bially "Why Soft Power Is Not So Soft," in Berenskoetter and Williams; Nye, Joseph “The Powers to Lead”, NY Oxford University Press, 2008; and “Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, N.Y.; Fraser, Matthew, “Weapons of Mass Distraction: Soft Power and American Empire”, St. Martin’s Press, N.Y. 2005).
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34. Parmar, Inderjeet and Cox, Michael (eds) “Soft Power and U.S. Foreign Policy: Theoretical, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives”, Michael Routledge, NY, 2010
35. Bamford, James “The Shadow Factory”, Doubleday, NY, 2008; “Body of Secrets”, Anchor Books, NY, 2002; “A Pretext for War”;
36. Winks, Robin “Cloak and Gown: Scholars in America’s Secret War”, Collins-Harvill, London, 1987;Bernays, Edward “Propaganda”, IgBooks, Brooklyn, NY, 1928 and 2005
[15] Perkins, John “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”, Plume Books, N.Y. 2006, pp. 166-67, 183, 184;
[16] Increasing percentages of foreign students in the West are choosing to remain to live and even state their original intention was to emigrate permanently from their countries of origin in seeking foreign studies opportunities. “After a Brief Decline, Foreign Ph.D. Graduates are Staying in the U.S. at Near-record Levels”, Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, February 3, 2010, http://orise.orau.gov/news/releases/2010/fy10-20.htm
[17] NGOs are typically broken down into: BINGOS (Business-friendly International NGOs); CSOs (Civil Society); DONGOs (Donor-organized); ENGOs (Environmentalists); GONGOs (Government-operated); INGOs (International like Oxfam); QUANGOs (quasi-autonomous); TANGOs (technical assistance); GSOs (Grass-roots support); MANGOs (market advocacy); CHARDS (Community health and development); They are not subject to international law as are states and thus often act as proxies for governments.
[18] These foundations, institutes and sources of “expertise” have a powerful influence in generating and maintaining libraries, data bases, metrics, categories and constructs, and research connections that are used by various governments and media. With the megaphone effect that comes from well-endowed patronage, they take on the aura of the only official and “reliable” data and research bases from which to draw. Their publications are typically glossy, rich in graphics and other visuals that sometimes hide meager content as well as rhetorical intentions, as they play their roles in generating the “acceptable” metrics (categories, indicators and methodologies) by which the respective and relative performances of competing systems, governments and their policies are measured and judged. Those who can set the systems of measurement not only affect what is or is not being measured, but also they affect the actual values of the measurements and outcomes of those measurements.
[19] See “New Study Finds U.S. Math Students Consistently Behind Their Peers Around the World”, American Institutes of Research, November, 2005; http://www.air.org/news/documents/Release200511math.htm; “U.S. Teens Trail Peers Around World on Math-Science Test”, by Maria Glod, Washington Post, December 5, 2007, http://www.air.org/news/documents/Release200511math.htm; “International Test Scores: Poor U.S. Test Scores Tied to Weak Curriculum” by Pascal D. Forgione, http://4brevard.com/choice/international-test-scores.htm; “Between 1980 and 2000, the percentage of Ph.D. scientists and engineers employed in the United States who were born abroad has increased from 24% to 37%. The current percentage of Ph.D. physicists is about 45%; for engineers, the figure is over 50%. One fourth of the engineering faculty members at U.S. universities were born abroad. Between 1990 and 2004, over one third of Nobel Prizes in the United States were awarded to foreign-born scientists. One third of all U.S. Ph.D.s in science and engineering are now awarded to foreign born graduate students.” Wulf, William A. “The Importance of Foreign-born Scientists and Engineers to the Security of the United States”, statement to the U.S. House of Representatives, September 15, 2005.
[20] In my classes I do an exercise on the first day of class to illustrate ideological framing and manipulation. I ask my students, who are seeing their textbook for the first time, how, not knowing anything about the author of the text, they could judge the likely ideology and rhetorical intentions of the author. Usually I get answers like “from the preface” or “from the biography of the author.” I then ask them to look in the subject index of the text and given them a list of constructs to look for: imperialism, neo-imperialism, racism, sexism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, genocide, etc. I then ask the students if they can define these terms and if they have anything to do with economics. I then ask them that if they cannot yet define these terms, how will they ever learn them if they have been omitted from the text? Attitudes, agenda, expectations, values and allegiances can be as effectively shaped, perhaps more so, by what is carefully omitted from examination as what is examined even from an ideologically jaundiced perspective.
[21] See: Soft Power and US Foreign Policy: Theoretical, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Parmar, Inderjeet and Cox, Michael Routledge, 2010; Lukes, Steven "Power and the Battle for Hearts and Minds: on the Bluntness of Soft Power," in Berenskoetter, Felix and Williams, M.J. eds. Power in World Politics, Routledge, 2007; Mattern, Janice Bially "Why Soft Power Is Not So Soft," in Berenskoetter and Williams; Nye, Joseph “The Powers to Lead”, NY Oxford University Press, 2008; and “Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, N.Y.; Fraser, Matthew, “Weapons of Mass Distraction: Soft Power and American Empire”, St. Martin’s Press, N.Y. 2005).
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