Pedagogy vs. Indifference in Teaching Students History

Was sitting in the park texting this to myself today: In continued contemplation of a series of discussions i had lately, I concur with my own position. In lines with Howard Zinn, one cannot be neutral on a moving train. Be it objective journalism or responsible teaching, in alignment with postmodern thinkers like Foucault, nothing is ever objective. The objectivity that is considered idealism in a classroom or a media outlet, for me is an irresponsible cold-indifference. Take for instance my recent debate on whether my own middle-class high school system had a good history department or not, I felt that my high school history program in the 1990's was not worthy enough of praise. First off, the teachers were primarily football and track coaches. They taught history as if it was a game, a sense of trivia. They spoke of their favorite athletes more often than current history in the making in the 1990's. If they spoke of history it was history of the past. History, I learned after 9/11, when I started intensely reading global history and US foreign policy. History I learned was a tool for making change and making a voice. Never did my education in the 1990's focus on the genocides that were happening while I was a child, that were preventable: Rwanda, Somalia, Liberia, East Timor, El Salvador, Panama, the Balkans, and more. Instead, as products of American media great distraction, the 1990s was all talk about Clinton sex scandal, not his bombing of Iraq and Afghanistan, or the meddling of the 96 Russian election. Media diverted our eyes to focus on Tanya Harding, OJ Simpson, Amy Fisher and more. And our media and educators did not take a moral ground. One discussion I had recently with a friend was about the reason that journalists have to be objective. Objectivity in media is not brave, just as in the classroom. Relaying the information to students and viewers does have to be responsibly displayed, but the assumption there that listening ears know what is right from wrong and can make concerned opinions. ...However, if the observer has never been taught what is right from wrong, then all the objectivity is indifferent. For example, when a corporation poisons local drinking water be it in New York State or in Bhopal, India. If the observer is only seeing that this is good for business capital and these children are externalities, what does it say about the indifference from the media market system? As in the example of discussing why the US dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki when it has been proven that Truman knew the Japanese were going to surrender and he did not have to drop the bomb, it is not brave for a reporter or a teacher to just relay the information. Because what happens when we teach or report on the horrors of the Holocaust? We hope that our children or our citizens know that this was ethically incorrect, but as we see, there are many Americans who still embrace the Confederacy. A Teacher or Reporter has to do more than just objectively report on atrocities, they have to be brave enough to point out the crimes. It isnt enough to say that there are not two sides to discuss the Holocaust, the Nazis murdered innocent people. We also have to reflect on how many US corporations traded with the Nazis and knew it was wrong and did not get held accountable: IBM, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Ford and more. Otherwise there is no Code of Ethics, just sharing indifferent random facts. ... Obtaining facts and keeping the accuracy of the facts is vitally important. Facts can often as we have seen be twisted for personal gain. Hence the pretense for Bush-Cheney's false wars that callously invaded two countries that had nothing to do with 9/11, but whose private corporate interests from weapon sales to oil profits were obviously gained. It is our responsibility as journalists, teachers and parents to make sure we provide a Code of Ethics too, because if we don't than who will? We have to be brave to not be indifferent, we have to when we contradict our stances admit hypocrisy, so that we can be more accountable, and we have to acknowledge that if not us, then who?

Books on Sale: Worthy Insights and Real Life Experiences:

With the publication of my latest book Levitation's Defeat I have completed presenting the work that I have written over the last seventeen years of my life. Rather than keeping my work in storage just waiting to one day get published I have decided that self-publishing through Amazon's Create Space was a launching pad. Rather than being hidden away at least now someone like you may stumble onto my work and find value in the process. My books are in many words Biomythographies as Audre Lorde claims the term. Part of them are myth and part of them are biographies. My characters are not necessarily my own story but their lives and journeys parallel my own. Perhaps at times the genders, the races, the sexual identities differ from my own, but the directions and experiences here attempt to collect the human condition that individuals have been exposed to amongst this political and economic contemporary climate weathered within the first two decades of this new century.  

1) Levitation's Defeat: An American in Mexico                                           
2) Adjunct Lover: Teaching in America               
3) Apoplexy: My Year of Living in Malawi    
4) Soon Be Crossing Great Waters: Essays       
5) Braune and Rice: Unemployment in Chicago

6) No Strong Storm Denied: A Possible Future...          
7) Desiring Something Radical: From San Fran to The Hague 
8) Gravity of the Mouth: A Search for Democracy: Global Traveler.
9) The Pariah, The Parrhesiast, And The Tireless Flies: Teaching in Korea
10) Funneling to Junta: Washington DC or bust.             
11) Fueling a Devotion of Thought: Road Trips and Stories.

Before you Celebrate George HW Bush, What Should Be Spoken About Him:

All this talk of praise and family values of the former president are making me nauseas.  Tell that to the families in Iraq, Panama, Saudi Arabia, and more…

In the recent past, former President George Herbert Walker Bush has passed away. No matter how many people tell us that we should praise him as a past president, the truth is once one delves into factual history and researches this man, one cannot praise him. From all of the far left and far right texts, foreign policy and national agenda that I have read on this man, he deserves to go down in history as a true nasty bastard who did more against the preservation of Democracy and Liberty than to support its growth. No U.S. president or American political figure in the 20^thCentury has stirred such emotion to abhor than George HW Bush. He plundered democracy for Corporate Interest and made the world less safe for the global community. 

Some would say that now is not the time to speak of his faults, but speaking of them now continually may bring more awareness because currently his son and other past living presidents need to be held responsible. This man was not held responsible and got to live his long life in leisure; his victims did not. George HW Bush did not make mistakes; every political action that he followed through with was carefully planned and well manufactured. He did not often put his foot in his mouth professionally, regardless of his moments of inappropriately groping women off camera, but noted in the era of #metoo; like his contemporary, Dick Cheney, he would use precision and the corporate media support to enact his presentation with the American public as one audience and then behind closed doors with CEO’s provide them with the tools to keep the rich elite at the top regardless of the world of change socially evolving from post-WWII to today.  

George HW Bush was trained at an early age for his corporate governing role. His father Prescott Bush was a Senator and was a businessman with close ties to the steel industries that were benefitting during World War I and World War II. His own father had been linked with his business partners in Europe to selling weapons to Nazi Germany during World War II and knowing what the Nazi’s were doing with their weapons; teaching his son that business was more important than human life, he kept this message tight.

Like father like son (and like grandson), George Bush Sr. got his entry into American governance and politics, after he was a soldier during the war, by entering into the decades after World War II, as a member of the Central Intelligence Agency. The first phase of America’s century of global dominance had the CIA run by Allen Dulles; Dulles was a good friend with Prescott Bush. The CIA in its first few decades after the war was solely for rich white men from elite families. The fraternity, as writers Tim Weiner and Patrick J. McGarvey, a former agent confessed, had an agenda of special interests, above and beyond democracy. When leaders who were democratically elected that the corporate elite didn’t like, stable dictators were put in place to make sure capitalism was more valued than civil and human rights, from Guatemala to Chile to the Congo to Indonesia. This form of nurturing had been key to the leadership George HW Bush was bound to continue once his opportunity to get in the driver seat came about. 

When the next generation of CIA leadership arrived, around the start of the Richard Nixon presidency, which was a continuation of the World War II mentality that brought General Eisenhower to presidency and Nixon as his vice-president; George HW Bush became the head of the CIA. Four individuals who seemed to survive the Nixon Scandal unscathed in government were Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Henry Kissinger and George Bush Sr. With the exception of Kissinger, Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney would have heavy ties to corporate elite, especially in the oil and chemical industries. They were emblems of the War Industrial Complex. 

In the decade before the peak of George Bush Sr.’s key decade of power, he was already with precision taking the reigns as the head of the CIA under President Nixon, President Ford, and President Carter. There was no secret that he did not know about. He was not a civil rights advocate, a women’s rights advocate, he did not involve himself in any social or political issue that required speaking for the underdog and underrepresented. He was not concerned with the Governor of California, Ronald Reagan’s harsh tactics towards protestors against the Vietnam War or achieving Civil Liberty at home. What did matter to him was the growing awareness that the Middle East was getting restless. The Iran Revolution had disposed of an ally, oil-partner and dictator the Shah of Iran. 

Often when historians talk about the faults in President Jimmy Carter’s presidency, they mention that he seemed to always get the information just too late to really react to crisis in a timely manner. On his watch, the CIA was linked to the violence in Central America. In El Salvador, the dictatorship was worried about public unrest, and during its crack down, the Priest Oscar Romero was murdered. The Carter administration like previous ones and especially in the 1980’s gave weapons to dictators to use against their own people. International politics and the need for a president to act would often come to the president’s hands via the Central Intelligence Agency. The head of the CIA was George Bush Sr. and did he know that if he made a humanitarian president look weak in foreign policy, he would become Vice-President in a few years? 

A Vice-President can have no power or can have a significant influence on the most powerful position in the United States. Before Dick Cheney was the vice-president for George W. Bush, George HW Bush was the vice-president for Ronald Reagan. As Cheney was for Bush Jr., Bush Sr. was for Reagan. Evidence has come out that during the 1980 election, individuals in the Reagan campaign had negotiated with the Iran government during the Iran Hostage Crisis. They had negotiated with terrorists to release the hostages after the election rather than before the election so that Carter would not gain the rewards for the act of diplomacy. Hence, the CIA was not oblivious. In exchange, the Iran government would get weapons from the U.S. government. Reagan became President, George HW Bush became Vice, and Iran gained weapons to fight in the Iran-Iraq War.

While all of George Bush’s training as CIA chief during the 1970’s reflected on his direct knowledge globally of corporate America’s meddling overseas, the 1980’s would be his staple on history as Vice President and then as President of the United States. Reagan can take responsibility for the Iran-Contra Scandal; he can take responsibility for arming the CIA–backed counter-revolutionaries in Sandinista Nicaragua; all of the tens of thousands of human beings killed under the U.S. lead War on Drugs in South America; but George Herbert Walker Bush is responsible for continuing those very policies into his own presidency and he very openly in public gave Ronald Reagan and other individuals full-pardons for any crime that was committed by the previous president. Human beings died and were murdered but all the innocent individuals in Latin America and the Middle East were called externalities or collateral damage. This was never the America that supported Democracy and Human Rights.  This was the precursor to Bush’s White House Administration.

Before continuing into President George HW Bush’s Crimes Against Humanity overseas that made the world more dangerous and directly contributed to the rise of fundamental terrorism; at home in the United States, George Bush made the country not just unsafe from outside terrorists, but he made America less healthy and less safe with his embrace of corporate interests from chemical companies, like Monsanto. In the early 1980’s there is a famous video easily available on the Internet of Vice President Bush walking around the laboratories of Monsanto. Monsanto, if you are unaware of still today, was a chemical weapon supplier for the United States’ military during the Vietnam War and, during the Iran-Iraq War, the former Nixon staff member Donald Rumsfeld, and top board member of Monsanto, had supplied chemicals to Saddam Hussein. The U.S. had propped up Saddam Hussein as the corporate oil elites new favorite dictator after Iran had its revolution. When Bush was walking around the lab of Monsanto, he was recorded saying that this is the future of America. Since, then and once Bush became president, Monsanto became the number one supplier of pesticides and fertilizers, number one property-rights owner of seed grain, and number one genetic modifier of foods. America is awash in cancers, diabetes, thyroid issues and other health hazards due to the leadership of George Bush accepting corporate profits over health standards inside our grocery stores.   

George Bush Sr. does not deserve any praise for his years of service in the United States. His service was solely for the corporate elite’s private monetary gains. He blatantly ignored the Constitution of the United States when once he became president he gave pardons to Reagan and his staff for illegal military activity. Then as President he invaded two nations: Iraq and Panama. He went into Iraq not because he cared about the freedoms of Kuwait. He went into Iraq because of oil. He wanted to send a message to Saddam Hussein that the Persian Gulf was off limits for him and that oil was more important to Bush’s special interest and not Saddam’s special interest. So many other countries had liberty and freedom threatened during 1989 and early 1990’s and President Bush did not bat an eye at genocide in the Balkans, genocide in Liberia, Somalia, Rwanda, Sudan, East Timor, and more. Yet, Bush never invaded any region that was not a significant trade destination. 

George HW Bush was no Nelson Mandela. Nope, Bush invaded the Middle East solely for oil. He invaded Panama for the benefit of the canal. In fact, not once during George Bush Sr.’s years in any political office did he criticize Apartheid South Africa; he supported, sometimes quite openly he supported, the racist regime in South Africa because one of America’s most important natural resources other than oil comes from SA: Uranium. Uranium fuels nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and is nearly always on the tips of the bombs that U.S. drops in every corner of the globe. Once Lockheed and Martin bombs are dropped, they not only kill people immediately, they deplete the soil and make the land uninhabitable for the next two or more generations. Uranium exposure is often linked to leukemia. Bush has always been a fan, since back in his father’s day, of corporations that utilize dangerous natural resources. As well, when it comes to the trade routes of such commodities they are also important to protect. 

When George HW Bush invaded Panama, he did not hesitate to mention that Noriega was a dictator who was holding his people in ransom because of drug money and power. However, anyone who has studied foreign policy knows that the number one consistently dominate force controlling and holding Panama back from any form of development is the United States, because the Panama Canal is vital for its easy and cheap access. If any government does not want to have the CIA wipe them out in Central America, they have to make sure U.S. corporate interest in Panama is protected. George Bush Sr. invaded, as he did in Iraq, and took out the dictators that he had previously assisted in getting into power. The U.S. put Saddam into power and they also put Noriega in power. Noriega had deep ties to the U.S. intelligence agency and Bush was the head of America’s intelligence agency. 

Undermining democracy and human rights overseas does not make America great. Wealth at the expense of other people’s happiness and survival is not wealth at all. George HW Bush was not only complacent with dictators, as we give Donald Trump beef about it in the past year, Bush actively put them into power and supported them. He stood in photos with Indonesia’s Suharto, South Korea’s Park Chung Hee, and the King of Saudi Arabia. He supported Apartheid South Africa, Pinochet’s Chile, and undermined democracy in Haiti when the population voted for Aristide. 

But it gets even scarier; the Bin Laden family has long been an oil business family in Saudi Arabia. George HW Bush has long been involved in oil companies, especially his post-Presidency companies the Carlyle Group, and its subsidiary Brown and Root. His business ties and personal communication with the Bin Laden Group is factual. He has often met the father and brothers of Osama Bin Laden. Michael Moore even in his documentary Fahrenheit 9/11covered the fact that the Bin Laden family was allowed to leave the country when all other flights were cancelled throughout the United States on the day of.  Other writers have covered these events as well. The pre-9/11 United States can remember when George HW Bush invaded Iraq during the 1990’s; however, many citizens are not aware that the U.S. at that time created a permanent military base in Saudi Arabia. This reflects America’s longstanding collusion with the crimes against humanity that the Saudi kingdom carries out. Some researchers say that Osama Bin Laden claimed that he only got more radical because of the first Iraq War and the creation of a U.S. military base in Saudi Arabia. Without Bush Sr.’s actions in Saudi Arabia in the 1990’s, fundamental terrorism from the region may never have been nurtured by those who survived the acts by atrocious dictators if the U.S. was not friend’s with atrocious dictators. 

President Clinton, President Obama and President George Bush Jr. have all bowed down to the Saudi King; they have shaken hands of dictators and have also all have supported the U.S. corporate elite from Monsanto to Exxon to Lockheed and Martin. If President Trump dies tomorrow, are you going to say now is not the time. Popular opinion says that many of us would cheer. 

Real ethics isn’t about wishing a former President’s family sadness on the day that Bush Sr. died; real ethics is holding him accountable for his crimes and acknowledging the President’s lack of Ethics in supporting dictators and corporate interests over human life. His family has a history of mass-murder from Prescott Bush selling weapons to the Nazi’s to George HW Bush and his son bombing and killing tens of thousands of innocent families in Iraq, Panama, Afghanistan, and more; and none of them apologized or gave those families “blessed day.” 

When Charles Manson died people said good riddance. This guy George HW Bush has callously executively ordered the murders of over 500x times the amount of people that Manson had killed. Capitalism and the corporate media ignore the facts. History can at least come clean and tell the truth. If Bill Cosby had died and no one else knew that he was a serial rapist but his victims and you, would you feel that it was important to let the world know and not let him carry the title of a real family man? George Bush Sr. was a murderer for the 1% and he was coldly indifferent to their deaths. Is that not a characteristic of a sociopath? When President Trump uses tear gas on women and children at the border of Mexico, who travel from Central America, remember, George HW Bush had made those nations unsafe due to his CIA and governance meddling for twenty years. When people say that Hitler was a good politician but ignore his crimes; why does a Democracy have more of a right to kill than any other form of governance? From petroleum to uranium, from weapon sales to canals, George HW Bush plundered human life for profits in Iraq, Panama, from South Africa to El Salvador, and more untold. If he cared about family values, he wouldn’t have destroyed so many families.  George Bush Sr. was also no real family man, mistresses, nonconsensual groping, and all.  

Update on Publications:

With the publication of my latest book Levitation's Defeat I have completed presenting the work that I have written over the last seventeen years of my life. Rather than keeping my work in storage just waiting to one day get published I have decided that self-publishing through Amazon's Create Space was a launching pad. Rather than being hidden away at least now someone like you may stumble onto my work and find value in the process. My books are in many words Biomythographies as Audre Lorde claims the term. Part of them are myth and part of them are biographies. My characters are not necessarily my own story but their lives and journeys parallel my own. Perhaps at times the genders, the races, the sexual identities differ from my own, but the directions and experiences here attempt to collect the human condition that individuals have been exposed to amongst this political and economic contemporary climate weathered within the first two decades of this new century.  

1) Levitation's Defeat: An American in Mexico                                           
2) Adjunct Lover: Teaching in America               
3) Apoplexy: My Year of Living in Malawi    
4) Soon Be Crossing Great Waters: Essays       
5) Braune and Rice: Unemployment in Chicago

6) No Strong Storm Denied: A Possible Future...          
7) Desiring Something Radical: From San Fran to The Hague 
8) Gravity of the Mouth: A Search for Democracy: Global Traveler.
9) The Pariah, The Parrhesiast, And The Tireless Flies: Teaching in Korea
10) Funneling to Junta: Washington DC or bust.             
11) Fueling a Devotion of Thought: Road Trips and Stories.

Levitation's Defeat: An American in Mexico

Newest Book from Last Year's Life in Tehuacan, Mexico:

When one is asked to help strengthen an institition, this does not necessarily mean that the individuals involved are interested in making such changes. Miranda is an American teaching at a university in Mexico between 2016 and 2017. Her and Alex are United States Peace Corps Response volunteers in a cultural and professional exchange in the city of Tehuacan. Alex is a New Yorker with some highly interesting friends. Miranda's diverse identity as an adopted American from Russia with indigenous Buryat roots leads her to having to justify her choices in life while teaching responsibly. She learns the challenges that befall the higher educational system in Mexico and is willing to highlight the beauty of the culture and people that are being burdened by modern day politics.

The narrator is a character known as Miranda. She was chosen as a protagonist because several of my lesbian friends shared with me that they do not like to read novels any more because they cannot find protagonists that they can relate to. The author hopes this novel provides enough justice to inspire their voices.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1986476995/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521204775&sr=1-12

Adjunct Lover

The Newest Book to be published by Michael Neiman is now available.

Synopsis:

The Adjunct Professor is a paradigm for the best and worst of the American education system; reflecting on the declining appreciation of teachers when universities care solely for more money at the top of the hierarchy, Eliot Mead is an adjunct looking to survive financially while to thrive in the classroom responsibly. Eliot shares his experiences and his mistakes inside and outside of the classroom. Perhaps through the use of shared experiences, readers can better understand the challenges that Adjunct Professors face teaching at multiple schools, debating on whether or not to participate in the teacher's union, finding the time and resources to effectively manage work and personal life; as well as, trying to anticipate annual salaries when course loads are never a given to effectively achieve Affordable Healthcare. There is not just one standard to follow. Eliot Mead will be as honest as possible in his confession even if it takes him down in the process.


https://www.amazon.com/dp/198603500X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1519916308&sr=1-1

Soon Be Crossing Great Waters

This is the Newest and final book of 2017: this completes the 9 books I self-published that represent over twelve years of writing.

Soon Be Crossing Great Waters

Between 2011 to 2014, the author gathered insight on the direction of global activism from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street, from One Billion Rising to Femen. He reflects on inspiration from Gloria Steinem to Wangari Maathai, from Leymah Gbowee to Grace Lee Boggs, and from Julia Kristeva to Claudia Jones This is a collection of essays on Political Activism, Social Theory and Current Events. In his synopsis...Soon Be Crossing Great Waters!


https://www.amazon.com/dp/1981681973/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1513635971&sr=1-9

No Strong Storm Denied!

Newest Book: No Strong Storm Denied!

As the future of the 21st Century is nearing a potential apocalypse, Kristen Holden and Cumber Lutz are seeking an education in New York City in 2011. One has the dreams and determination to create great monuments of true heroes, so that historic names do not vanish from history. The other is sharpening her journalistic skills. On the opposite end of history, in the post-apocalyptical 22nd Century, Fredrick and Burton are racing across the landscape and attempting to survive amongst dire conditions. The time in between these adventures is No Strong Storm Denied!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1981342818/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1513121656&sr=8-13&keywords=michael+neiman

Fueling a Devotion of Thought: 2001

Newest Book: Fueling a Devotion of Thought: 2001 by Michael Neiman

Fueling A Devotion of Thought is a collection of novellas and short stories that the author created just prior and post 2001, during a time of national transformation and awareness. From road trips cross country to hiking forest trails in the Gila National Forest and the Everglades National Park, from New Zealand to suburban New Jersey, from labrynths in bookstores to substitute teaching, the characters are bright and insightful as they reach personal realization.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1979931992/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1512340945&sr=1-7

Braune and Rice: 2006

Newest Book: Fiction/Literary:

Braune and Rice: 2006

Calvasco Braune has taken the chance on love and has gone to Chicago in 2006. His unconventional lifestyle and his high ideals face many challenges of sustaining his love, just as unemployment hits. Will his love survive, will his friendship with the narrator endure, or will time decide his fate?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1979713324/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1511366748&sr=1-3

The Pariah, The Parrhesiast, And The Tireless Flies

Newest Book to reach Amazon: The Pariah, The Parrhesiast, And The Tireless Flies: 2007

In 2007, the author journeyed to South Korea and taught at the standard after-school English academy. The education model significantly clashed with his own ideals. This is his advice and warning to individuals eager to teach in Korea. The narrator also traveled to Japan, China, Vietnam and Malaysia in 2007. He saw how interconnected the United States and East Asia are, and how much the US had shaped the politics in acceptance or resistance over the last eighty years. The US had significantly harmed each nation, and the lessons we learn as Capitalism has made each a significant trade partner, can help the global citizen understand the complexity of the human condition. Can we learn from the 20th Century to make a better 21st?

by Michael Neiman https://www.amazon.com/dp/1979283206/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_x_kC7bAb8KNS1V1

Funneling to Junta: 2008

My Newest Book to hit Amazon:

Funneling to Junta: 2008: Political Fiction

Jack is a self-doubting CIA agent back in Washington DC during the last year of the Bush Administration and the first year of the Obama Administration. As he decides on how best to come to terms with the truth...all that is left is...Funneling to Junta!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/197923728X/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1509487997&sr=1-4

Desiring Something Radical

Another New Book worth reading: "Desiring Something Radical: 2004" by Michael Neiman https://www.amazon.com/dp/1979074852/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_x_Z088zbZD7A13S

This is the story of Ruby Lee, who in 2004 had to deal with the reacclimatizing to the American culture after living in Mozambique. She comes back to the brutal re-election of George W Bush, and she heads from the east coast to San Francisco, just in time for Governor Shwarzennegger to take office. Seeking an answer to political frustration, over consumerism, and anti-intellectual madness, she heads to a forest in Oregon fighting forest fires to then challenging economists in Holland.

Apoplexy: My Year in Malawi: 2002-2003

Apoplexy: On A Thin Line Of Grass With Waves of Color by Michael Neiman https://www.amazon.com/dp/1978262884/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_x_FpZ6zb5FBK08M via @amazon

In 2002, while President George W Bush pushed for war in Afghanistan and was soon to invade Iraq, I went off to join the US Peace Corps to show the world a different side of America that was not promoting violence, but promoted compassion and respect. This was the literary memoir that I wrote that year in Malawi. This is a story of a volunteer who Early Terminated his service and was unable to say, 'mission accomplished.'

Pick up your copy today!!!

Gravity of the Mouth: A Political Rant

IF YOU HAVE BEEN READING MY BLOG AND YOU LIKE WHAT YOU READ, MY NEW BOOK FROM MY JOURNEY DURNING 2010 TO INDONESIA, THAILAND, INDIA, TURKEY, KOSOVO AND UKRAINE JUST CAME OUT!!!!

Gravity of The Mouth: 2010 by Michael Neiman

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1977879314/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_x_gIP3zbT59VWPX via @amazon

Benefits of Factual Chisme...Gossip

Whether one is in the United States or in Mexico, and probably many other cultures, factual gossip has a beneficial outcome. Many may disagree, but this is because negative behavior and so many do it is not healthy. Gossip or the Spanish 'chisme' makes people understand ethical and moral behavior. What is acceptable and healthy behavior and what behavior people in society actually participate and get away with that is harmful to progress: corruption of power, stealing, lying and institutional negligence.

The fine line of positive gossip and negative gossip can be very thin but that does not mean one should avoid it completely then. This line is two-fold: 1) is it factual or fictional; 2) does it harm someone and put them in physical danger. Well, is what the person doing actually harming others physically? Then it should be stopped. An example of unnecessary chisme is talking about who is sleeping with who.

Sex is not important gossip for change or healthy behavior. For example, when a Director of a university office is sleeping with his secretary behind his wife's back or has an illegitimate child from a previous affair that everyone knows about. That is not beneficial gossip. Or that his new lover is already sleeping with another teacher; this is not important gossip. It is their personal life and it reflects that they are untrustworthy people in their personal lives. It could give you a healthy warning not to trust them. But everyone knows that already. The important public fact here is that because one is another's direct supervisor, this is a manipulation of power. A positive leader in a university or corporation does not abuse his power to sleep with people that they directly supervise. This unethical behavior is understood across cultures. It is a sad fact that it continues, interrupts daily work in the offices, and it makes everyone else in offices uncomfortable when they have to witness it. Just as is the reverse, someone of a lower ranking in an administrative position sleeping with a supervisor or former president of the school, so that she can get her own office. This too, reflects on a behavior that one learns to think is acceptable, but everyone sharing the gossip understands that this behavior does not lead to actual respect from others or individual self-respect.

Aside from scandal and affair, a healthy benefit of chisme is learning about who has respectable behavior that will help the institution progress and when this is a university, any forms of obstruction to student education is harmful and irresponsible. For example, a previous Director, who luckily left the university he was at, was clearly a sexist pig with no respect for women. He would talk crudely about females when they were not around, in open meetings about academic issues he would cast off female students as not worthy of being educated, and he would openly disrespect his female counterparts. This behavior is highly unprofessional and outdated. When people spread chisme about him, this information can warn others about what is not appropriate, and as well can be a useful tool for the benefits of shame.

Shame is positive outcome from factual gossip. It can teach the individual, if they are mature, to process their wrongful behavior and be more responsible and not repeat negative acts. Gossip can make people when they are exposed to a public eye know what they are doing is unethical and unproductive. When in a pack of wolves, one wolf acts out harmfully, the rest of the wolf pack excommunicates the wolf from the others; that wolf becomes ashamed and knows that he has misbehaved in a way that is unprogressive for the benefit of the whole pack. Shame can be effective with people too.

When a person is shamed they can follow with self-reflection and positive change or they can be immature, find scapegoats for their behavior, make excuses and even resort to violence. When a university has a protest by teachers and students because of corruption; this exposes to the greater public, citywide or statewide, that the president of the school is not doing her job. The shame of the president's lack of work to make a university progress could make her change her behavior.

Like shame, constructive feedback can also be an effective outcome from gossip. It can also clarify how mature an individual is when responding to the shared information. For example, when a newly appointed Director tells students and staff to be punctual, but then allows other teachers, whom she favors, or students to be late and absent, she is showing a double standard. When she tells her teachers that they are the problem for lazy student grades and outcomes, she shows no support. And when she is intimidated by her staff trying to improve their skills and appear smarter than her, she tells them not to go to any more professional development courses. Now when she is confronted with her actions that everyone has been discussing, she could have been respectful and responsible with balanced behavior and learned from her faults. But instead, she punished others and proved that she was not a mature, effective leader. That is why she continues to fail in the eyes of an ethical majority. Positive Gossip, the sharing of facts, will persist.

Not all gossip is negative. Positive chisme can be beneficial in moving a larger collective ethical understanding. Those who are acting corruptively, partaking in lies, cheating or exploiting others from higher positions or to get higher positions, will be made ashamed or will set the standard of behavior that is inappropriate. Gossip or chisme with factual and informative data can help set a standard that could lead towards progress in institutions, whether in academics, government or corporate climates. It is a tool that has survived in the oldest cultures and contemporary spaces.

Let’s Get This Straight … Justifications:

The historian Howard Zinn once said, “You Cannot Be Neutral on a Moving Train.” Sometimes you have to stand up for justice. Sometimes you have to say words that are honorable, and sometimes you may lose your job for it. … I will miss my Mexican friends, my fellow co-workers, and my students. I am certain that I will see them again in our future. I was relieved of my post as a Peace Corps volunteer at the Universidad Technologica de Tehuacan on June 15, 2017.

Due to some objective observations that I posted on the Internet during the week of June 7, 2017, while the university was experiencing protests, those in power at the institution seemed to detest me for their own irresponsibility and manipulative practices. As if I had made their actions more knowledgeable to the public. Yet the Directors and the Rectora’s office have transparently been abusing their authorities at the University for a long time running.  Everyone can see this who works there, yet many choose to avoid comment.

The saying, or thought process is, that “if you are not obediently with me, even if you are neutral, then you are against me.” That is how the individuals in power think at this institution and they take no responsibility for their negative actions. When a child breaks something in their parents’ house, they often confess and express guilt. These individuals are not children, and yet they cannot confess to their guilt: negligence to student needs, exploitive work time of female administrative staff, the firing of staff for reasons not backed with quality evidence; they just fear their own opacity and accountability, such as firing lawyers and accountants, individuals with ties to the media, or the administrative staff, who were doing their jobs well, but knew too much information or were willing to speak up.

The week of June 14, 2017, the week after the protests, was tense and uncomfortable to witness. Even though on the previous Friday, government officials came into the school and gave the voice of solidarity with the protestors; admitting that the Rectora and her office were neglecting her duties as a principle at the university, which were the same observations that I had concluded with, in solidarity with the Mexican governments’ decisions; it appears that the week after the protests showed limited change. Staff began to return to the robotic roles of office behavior of duties and expectations, classes commenced, and even many teachers went back to uninspiring standard lecturing of students. Were innovation, opportunity, and change at a loss? Rather than admitting guilt, those individuals in power, clearly appeared to attempt to revert to their ways before the protests, hoping this would not be noticed.

One of their first acts was to get rid of the American on campus. The relieving me of my post was unjust. I was the scapegoat. I was easily blamed because I speak loudly. It is my New York nature to speak out. I did not go on the grounds during the protest for a clear reason, the week of June 7^th. I did not want the individuals at the school to manipulate the media and information, claiming that it was the American who started the protest, and that he was the one that was the problem. This Protest was the voice of the Students, the Administrative staff, and the Teachers. This was their standing up for their rights as participants in higher-education to make a higher standard at the university and not to have the entire university regress to a campaign ticket for just one individual Rectora/President.

            Those in power are ungrateful; those in superior positions are ungrateful of their staff and teachers, and even of their hardworking students. They are ungrateful of all the work I did and my fellow coordinators to try to improve the institution. The administrators and the faculty, who work hard, give their best energies to commit to a quality of education standards that allow the school to carry on under the quickly declining lack of accountability at the institution. From dirty water, no toilet paper, limited technology, limited investment in improving teachers with training and professional opportunities, lack of scholarship money, lack of practical hands-on activities in student’s majors, and more; yet all these levels of quality are achievable and the ability to excel above these standards is reachable. Where is all this money going? It is hard to speak truth to power when the directors, they know who they are, and the Rectora’s staff, do not want to seek transparency and admit to collusion.

            I am still trying to think of the best words to use here. I appreciate and I respect Peace Corps’ decision to allow me to close my service early without any marks on my profile. But I am also willing to admit that I am disappointed that they were not willing to investigate the situation further before releasing me from my service. I had warned them for months not to trust a specific counterpart, director in the university, who manipulated and disrespected my candid work, for his own benefit. The failure, when I sought to assist and further advance employee’s at the university for a nomination process that would train them and give them opportunities to bring new skills to their jobs, which would better advance the school, was due to his meddling and clear corruption; but my organization still listened to him rather than reaching out to reliable sources. My organization has had a history of trying to avoid controversy and suppressing stories. Certainly, my case is not extreme in comparison to cases, as seen in the country Benin in 2011, when a counterpart actually killed a female volunteer for reporting his raping of female students.

            No. My case is not extreme. But maybe it could have been. I am frustrated with the university that I was working in. In deed, I witnessed many activities that limited and suppressed growth. The university has so much potential and the possibilities to strengthen students, administrators, and teachers are great to make a powerful institution. Those chances are still reachable with the right, quality leadership. I have a commitment to Honesty and Justice. If my letter and previous letters on FaceBook do not appear Objective to you, it is because there is a simple fact. When one sees shit on a table, Objectively, it is clear that what is on the table is shit. One cannot be any more neutral about the facts on the table. The people in power do not want you to admit that the shit is theirs, on the table. But it smells and it is rotten. I cannot just bury my head in the sand when I see obstruction. I have too much passion to ignore and too much passion to limit myself to artificial diplomacy. That is where Peace Corps and I diverge in direction.

            The truth is the Directors and the Rectora of the University do not have a deep commitment or passion for education. They do not care about the individual well-being of workers and students. For them, these are just numbers and pesos for their daily routine to improve their selfish power and to maintain hierarchy. Just analyze their continual actions over time and one can see the genuine or lack of genuine commitments and ability to make the most of constructive feedback. They want the slim financial necessities so that they can continue to put funds in their own pockets for political and commercial benefit. They do not want to improve the quality of their job, to make a positive pedagogical institution for the overall community. Education should not be a political agenda. The students should be educated to the best that the school offers so that they can develop the skills to make a greater Mexico. They should not be trained just to be factory workers for American, German or Japanese companies. They should be guided through the innovative thought process that helps them achieve new technological goals.  

When the school fires lawyers and accountants, who have such blatant data, this sends the public red flags. But they say this is how it is, here. I feel like my criticism of the university authority is parallel to my disgust in the American President Donald Trump’s actions and lack of passion for moral and ethical standards. Trump firing Comey because Trump is being investigated, makes me reflect that I was fired by the corrupted Directors, because they did not want to have their abusive behavior and coercion revealed. Former President Jimmy Carter once said, when he was president, that we have a “Crisis of Democracy.” What we have today is a “Crisis of True Leadership.” Take responsibility for your own actions and do not blame others for your lack of education or community standards. No excuses, Just Results.

The result of my being expelled from the university was because I was not obedient and blind.  When one sees protestors risking their jobs and lives to stand up for injustice in a declining system, why should I ignore the voice that they promote? Their voice makes the world better and the school better. In the end, even though I was not physically in the protest, I was blamed for my moments of blunt honesty on the Internet and in public, when surprisingly my US President tweets atrocious, malicious comments on a daily basis. Why is someone in a diplomatic position, not sending Trump home, and relieving him of his service?

I have no regrets. I have no regret in directly telling the Director, who manipulated the situation to get me expelled, the truth about his character and lack of ethics. Besides, the same conclusions that I had come to, were the same conclusions that the Mexican government stated on the Friday of the closing of the protest, that the Rectora was not experienced enough and was neglecting significant aspects of her job. She could have followed the next week after the protest with positive change and begin building trust with the students and faculty. She could have been creating an environment that made thousands of individuals at the school begin to see the possibility of voting for her in her plans of running in a future election. She has decided that she is a terrible politician, who does not care about individual votes or trust between her average citizens and her self-focused political ambitions. What frustrates me the most about her is that she claims to be a candidate that says she cares about Women’s Rights, but the individuals, who have been exploited the most at the university under her leadership, are the women who work in the administrative offices for overextended hours and for very little pay, and when they speak up, they get fired.

I will miss the important people at the university, and the important people are not the insecure directors or the negligent Rectora. The important people at the school are the students, the administrators, and the faculty, who follow a quality of standard that is truthful, goal driven, and promoting the ethics that the university deserves. I am aware, just as many, that the protest was not the end of the problems of the school, but the start of the process to hold people accountable for making the decisions necessary for success. Several of us refuse to be silent.   

Where in the World Did my Blog Go?

Rather than ranting on and on, I found an outlet for my work. After 5 years of working in Community Colleges in New Jersey and City Tech in Brooklyn, I found an opportunity since July 2016 to teach at a University in Mexico. Rather than listening to American media only provide 2% coverage of the real Mexico, I found my way here to learn just how diverse and how beautiful Mexico is. The people are diverse as the landscape and the culture is rich and overwhelming. It is sad that politicians rant and rave about a place that they know so little about.

Another reason that I came to Mexico was that after teaching students in the USA with immigrant parents or immigrants themselves, many students from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and more, I felt it was part of my responsibility to see where my students originated from before seeking the American Dream and to work so hard once they arrived. I learned a interesting quote in Spanish from a friend, "que chingalo, hazlo todos modos" - What the fuck, just do it anyway!

Gentrification is Unethical

Gentrification is Unethical. The rising rate of rent in New York and Washington DC, and most probably other American cities is obvious. It is a clear whitewashing of neighborhoods, pushing hardworking working class poor out of neighborhoods that they have lived in for decades into isolated crowded neighborhoods unseen, or even worse into the streets.

Homelessness and ghetto-ization seem parallel with not only the clashing image of affluence that makes one wonder how can anyone afford to live in such neighborhoods in Prospect Park, Long Island City, or near Union Station, but what jobs are fuelling their economy and no one else’s; but it also parallels the refugee crisis in Europe from Syria. It seems only in due time that poor income Americans, many immigrants to the US, will be marching out of these cities completely in droves. Unless they stage a protest on a major scale, but that is most likely not going to happen due to being too busy to make ends meet and fending for one’s own. Only leaders from a socio-economic class level may temper and tamper some noise. Yet America is also more equipped for any such demonstration with its militarized police force.

In the light of Europe’s declining populations, an influence of immigrants could significantly help the waning nations; however, fear of losing cultural identity makes many EU nations appear resistant and racist. In America, the gentrification, or pushing housing levels to rates only the wealthy can afford, mostly white dominant, is racist as well; this stark reversal, and yet the aware and unaware privileged should resist moving if it is driving those who cannot afford away. It is almost in drastic comparison to Israeli settlements that are intentionally ignoring Palestinians, as if their right to existence is nil to none. This is Unethical.

At least in Europe, the residing can afford to embrace human beings fleeing an immediate violent threat between homeless emigration or death, by showing open arms of assistance. In America, this could be true too, the gentrification is a slow process but it is accelerating. If it were not for greedy landlords or wealthy elites wanting a stark image of hierarchy of affluence, the ability to keep prices affordable would be a simple action. Instead, the rise in apartment trends in cities like New York, in Queens and Brooklyn, and in Washington DC, should follow the trend of Tom’s Shoes, for every pair bought another is donated to someone who needs a pair; for every new escalated apartment,  another should be donated for a  family in need.