Iran, Harvard, and Neo-liberalism

Iran-Nukes and the Harvard Imperialist Tradition...

I've just seen an Asian Voices program on the World PBS channel.  They addressed the question  "Is Iran's nuclear program a threat to the rest of the world?"

First, they had representatives and journalists from Iran explain what it was, what it wasn't, and why Iran insists on its rights to develop its nuclear industry, and how little uranium enrichment it has actually done or plans to do - not even enough for a research reactor, so far. 

This was followed by a Harvard professor and think-tank expert, who represents the Kissinger-Powers axis of U.S. hegemony theory.
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Harvard Guy:
International agencies have repeatedly investigated or passed resolutions against Iran and its nuclear enrichment program.  Therefore, Iran is a serious problem and we shouldn't let up the pressure on them to end their nuclear program. 
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As if this "international", Security Council, IAEA policy had nothing to do with US pressure, responding to Israel's vengeful, paranoid view of the world??? 

If we were serious about Iran's nuclear program being a threat, we'd have to acknowledge that every other nuclear program in the world - especially among non-signatories of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, like Israel, India, Pakistan, and others - is a much greater one, since they have actually built and tested nuclear weapons.  And there are very good reasons for a total moratorium on all further nuclear fuel or weapons-grade uranium/plutonium processing.  It's called Fukushima, which at this very moment, threatens to render most of Japan and much of China and Korea uninhabitable for decades, if not centuries.  Instead, we're talking about Iran, which doesn't have enough nuclear fuel or enriched uranium to build a single bomb - even if they wanted to build one.  But Fukushima threatens to release the radiation of 10,000 Hiroshimas.  The Japanese government has declared itself helpless to defuse that time-bomb, and the rest of the world hasn't even started, after 2 1/2 years, to help them. 

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Is Harvard the problem? 

I'm beginning to think that there is a consistent pattern in "Harvard" thinking and policy.  They always pretend that the embargos and sanctions against "terrorist" countries (like Iran or Cuba) is an open, democratic, scientific process, when in fact they are all CIA, NSA, and other "secret government" operations, with very different purposes than what journalists are allowed to tell us (or even Members of Congress or the President might know). Call Harvard "CIA U" from now on, but so is Yale, Princeton, and several others.  And so, they keep stoking the fires for new wars, US corporate hegemony, etc. 

Remember, Teddy Roosevelt was a leading Harvard alum at the time, and those attitudes dominate to the present day.  Instead of "Inventing the Future at MIT", the title of a Stewart Brand book about the Medialab, we might identify a parallel process of "Inventing Neo-liberalism at Harvard."  There's an old saying that "Harvard alumni own the world, and MIT runs it for them."  Too true, I'm afraid.  Stanford, Berkeley, and Silicon Valley have given them a run for their money, though - to the further detriment of the planet and those of us forced to live here in poverty and deprivation.

Although I'm no fan of Neoliberalism, there is some sort of theoretical justification for it, so long as "human rights", free trade, and the other liberal shiboleths are somehow included in the package.  In fact, it's better described as Military Keynesianism or even Disaster Capitalism, somehow made palatable by another Harvard economist, Josef Schumpeter (an Austrian contemporary and friend of Hayek), and his doctrine of "creative destruction."   Although that works on the micro-level, in the theory of the firm and economic and/or technological advancement, it has little to do with actually bombing and killing people, which is what Military Keynesianism and Disaster Capitalism are all about.

And I shouldn't forget Princeton, either.  Indeed, it might have an even more storied past, when it comes to fomenting wars and dictatorships (not to mention slavery and feudalism).  I've had several close friends who were Princeton grads, so I know of what I speak.  In fact, I was trying to figure out how I could use a recently-gleaned fact to play a kind of practical joke on them - especially with respect to the rhetoric of Jews vs. "anti-Semites" and "Holocaust deniers." 

In 1938, Einstein finally decided he needed to get out of Germany.  As a Nobel Prize winner, of course, he had his pick of jobs.  He chose Princeton's Center for Advanced Study, over many prestigious alternatives.  (Was it a blessing or Divine Providence that the younger and lesser-known Karl Popper, faced with the same alternative, could only find a post in New Zealand?) 

After much soul-searching, and being informed that he was the #2 choice of Princeton students for "Greatest Living Human", or something to that effect, he decided to go there. Unfortunately, Einstein was not told, apparently, that the #1 choice in (early) 1938 was Adolf Hitler.  Seriously. 

Perhaps it merely speaks to Einstein's exemplary intellectual and moral courage.  But it also teaches us an historical lesson.  No one rises to greatness by evil means - or  even just shrewdness and ability to manipulate the system.  If a person had the ability to organize and destroy half of Europe, in the name of racism and "Nordic superiority", he certainly deserves at least a Nobel Prize.  Perhaps that was the Norwegian Parliament's thinking about Obama.  He is such a man, and they wanted to pay him off in advance.  No matter how you twist it, you cannot claim that a Nobel Prize is an insult - no matter how many mass murderers have been named its "Laureates." 

Had Hitler been given the Nobel Peace Prize in 1936, perhaps his evil designs could have been forestalled.  Or, like Churchill, they might have given it to him for Literature (Mein Kampf), rather than Peace.  Remember, he was trading in the same kind of capital the Zionists use, today.  Germany  was dishonored in the Treaty  of Versailles.  Wilson's 14 Points were disregarded.  The world economy was destroyed by the demands for reparations and the inflations designed to reduce them.  There was no "Truth and Reconciliation" process, and Americans by the millions believe to this day that the Great War was all Germany's fault.

Hitler played on this victimization of his  homeland, which, after all, was Austria, not Germany.   Somehow, he captured the sense of betrayal and despair in a Germany which hadn't been defeated on the battlefield, but due to American intervention.  Although Germany hadn't surrendered (it was an "Armistice" - a cease fire with negotiation, not a surrender), but the Germans were soon disarmed and put under military occupation.  This was dictated by the the French and British who had started the war, or at least made it inevitable.  And when you consider that the  British King, Russian Czar, and  German Kaiser were first-cousins, who had played together as boys - all grandsons of Queen Victoria - the senselessness and pettiness of that 40  million dead made Hitler, a decorated common soldier, into the savior of his nation and people, much as Napoleon had been. 

So, don't  be too harsh on the Princeton boys.  After all, it was their own university President, Woodrow Wilson, who created Hitler, and millions of other Nazis, National Fronts, and Neo-Imperialists of all kinds.  Ask Donald Rumsfeld, who studied philosophy there.