The Doug Noll Show

Doug’s guest is James Miskel, Ph.D., an international security expert working in the field of post-conflict peacemaking and peacebuilidng. Jim describes the evolution of international peacemaking as it evolved from the 1970s forward In the 1970s, most of the conflicts were between adjoining nations. Typically, the UN would broker a ceasefire and send in a multinational peacekeeping force to secure the borders of the two countries. The important element was that the peacekeeping force was present with the mutual consent of the warring parties. The primary role of the peacekeeping force was to assure that th terms of the ceasefire were maintained by all sides.

In the 1990s, peacekeeping evolved into nation building. The UN and other international groups began to assist war-torn countries to re-establish a civil society through the rule of law, civil administration of government, and government service infrastructure. In the mid-1990s, international peace missions become actively involved in the affairs of countries experiencing civil war or insurrection. Thus, the scope of peacekeeping and peace building expanded dramatically.

Jim describes some of the 16 current peacekeeping missions in place around the world. The largest peacekeeping force, 17,000 strong, is active in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In total, there are 75,000 soldiers from the UN, NATO, the EU, and the African Union acting as peacekeepers around the world.

Much of the civil wars and civil insurrections of the past 20 years, particularly in Africa, have been caused by unscrupulous leaders who have stirred up tribal and clan hatreds. In many cases, these animosities did not exist beforehand. These have been difficult situations because civil society has been nearly destroyed. Thus, post-conflict reconstruction is a major focus of peace building. The situations are additionally challenging because the new government typically has little expertise in the rule of law, the judiciairy is non-existent, and therefore, contract and property rights are nonexistent. Without assurances of contract and property rights, foreign investors are unwilling to enter post-conflict countries. And, Jim says, without critical foreign investment, local economies cannot grow.

Jim says that the great danger of the 21st century may be in the mega-cities developing in near Asia. Some urban populations are nearing 15 to 20 million people. Most of the population growth is coming from migration, not from births. The cities themselves are unable to provide basic infrastructure services such as law enforcement, sanitation, and education. This forces the national governments to focus on the urban problems. The outlying regions are ignored, causing further lack of economic and civic development. As the regional and national governments fail to meet the needs of the urban citizens, the seed for further civil war, insurrection, terrorism, and unrest will be planted.

Fighting among children is not new. Nevertheless, there is a big difference between sibling spats and learning the skills of peacemaking. How do we teach children to resolve conflicts peacefully? How do we give them the values peace, collaboration, and cooperation? And how do we do this while empowering them to make good choices and judgments about their relationships with peers and adults? These are tough questions and Doug’s guest gives us some answers. Naomi Drew is recognized around the world for her work in conflict resolution and peacemaking. She is the author of six widely used books. Her landmark book, Learning the Skills of Peacemaking was one of the first to introduce peacemaking into public education. “Peaceful Parents,” Naomi’s on-line newsletter, has a broad international readership. The Kids' Guide to Working Out Conflicts, the latest of her six books, was honored with four national awards including the National Parenting Publications Gold Award for Children's Resources. Naomi talks about an epidemic of cruelty sweeping through the school systems. Recent surveys show that 80 percent of middle school and 75 percent of primary school kids say that kids are mean to each other on a consistent and persistent basis. This epidemic is relatively new and seems to be caused by chronic stress and fear and by media emphasis on violence, cruelty, meanness, and sarcasm as being cool ways of dealing with conflicts. To a kid, meanness and sarcasm look cool and hip.

Doug and Naomi talk about reactivity as a central cause of conflict. Naomi teaches a technique to kids she calls Stop, Breathe, and Chill. The idea is to rehearse situations where you might be put down, treated cruelly, or disrespected and practice being less reactive. Naomi teaches kids how to replace angry thoughts with calm thoughts. Doug and Naomi talk about how violence creates a perception of power, but has the opposite effect. Violence actually takes power away from the offender.

Doug asks Naomi about bullying. In the survey research, 40-50% of the kids said that bullying is a serious problem. Naomi tells Doug that bullying causes depression, is related to suicide, and has been linked to the school shootings of the past 10 years. Naomi believes that schools must adopt and enforce an anti-bullying culture. Essentially, kids have to be taught to be kind and compassionate with each other. Doug and Naomi talk about how important teachers are in modeling kindness, compassion, and non-bullying behaviors. Doug asks Naomi about cyber-bullying. Naomi says that this is hugh unintended consequence of instantaneous communication. Through cell phones, text messaging, social network sites, cell cameras and the like, kids can catch other kids in embarrassing or stupid moments and broadcast that to 50 or 100 or an entire school in seconds. All kids are now highly sensitive to the fact that anything they do or say can be turned against them. This is breeding a new form of fear and paranoia among kids. Naomi talks of as a Lord of the Flies mentality as kids armor themselves against bullying and embarrassment. The challenge is to teach kids not to respond tit for tat. Kids subject to cyber bullying have some options open to them.

Doug asks Naomi about the difference between a bystander and an upstander. Naomi teaches kids how to intervene in bullying and effective techniques for defusing difficult social encounters.

Doug’s guest is Dr. Ellis Jones, the author of The Better World Shopping Guide. This book is a comprehensive, up-to-date, reliable set of rankings on the social and environmental responsibility of businesses and corporations in a form that people can actually use in their everyday lives. Doug and Ellis talk about how Ellis’s training and experience in conflict resolution and international peace building led him to look at the fundamental problems of the world. As a result, Ellis began to focus on the effects consumers have in the world. He tells Doug that most consumption is unconscious. With some awareness, however, all of us as consumers wield enormous economic power. By consciously applying that power, with sacrificing one bit of comfort or cost, we can collectively shift the world.
http://www.betterworldshopper.org

Ellis and Doug talk about the five key issues that inform Ellis’s work:

HUMAN RIGHTS: sweatshops, 3rd world community exploitation, international health issues, divestment, child labor, code of conduct;

THE ENVIRONMENT: global warming, rainforest destruction, pollution, recycling, renewable energy, greenwashing, toxic waste, eco-innovations, illegal dumping, sustainable farming;

ANIMAL PROTECTION: factory farming, animal testing, humane treatment, wild animal habitat;

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT: family farms, local business support, volunteer efforts, sustainable growth, philanthropic donations, nonprofit alliances, establishing foundations;

SOCIAL JUSTICE : fair wages, fatalities, union busting efforts, health & safety records, discrimination based on: race, gender, age, ability, religion, sexuality, ethnicity. All of the company and product rankings are based on these five issues.
http://www.betterworldshopper.org

Ellis explains his research and data analysis procedures for creating the rankings. We visit his website www.betterworldshopper.org to look at the rankings for beer and ice cream. As we walk through the rankings, Ellis explains why some companies receive an A while others receive an F.
http://www.betterworldshopper.org

Ellis tells us that the second edition of Better World Shopper will be out in October, 2008. In addition, the rankings can be downloaded onto an iPod so that they can be used in the supermarket as we shop. Ellis tells us that the book is available at all the usual places, but a socially conscious person would purchase it from the website -
http://www.betterworldshopper.org

Mothers-in-law are the stuff comedy acts are made of, but for anyone who's suffered at the hands of their monster-in-law, it's no laughing matter. Sally Shields should know - her rocky relationship with her mother-in-law had her dreading holidays and avoiding phone calls. Things turned around for Shields when she discovered easy tricks for transforming this contentious relationship, and how a scarf and a shower curtain factored into her successful equation. Sally Shields is an author, speaker, award-winning pianist and composer. She is the recipient of the Editor's Choice Award from the International Library of Poetry, and a frequent contributor to various magazines. Winner of the 17th annual Great American Jazz Piano Competition, her first book, Modern Jazz Piano, is the standard theory manual for several music programs, including Princeton University. She performs worldwide, most recently with bestselling author and musician James McBride. Shields was a finalist in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest and her music is currently featured on the ABC TV daytime drama All My Children. Her latest book is THE DAUGHTER-IN-LAW RULES: 101 Surefire Ways to Manage (and Make Friends with) Your Mother-in-Law! Doug and Sally talk about how Sally learned to turn a frustrating and unhappy relationship with her mother-in-law to one of friendship and happiness. Sally’s moment of truth came when her husband told he was tired of being in the middle of the two of them. From that point on, Sally looked at every zinger that hit her as an opportunity to learn and grow.
http://www.theDILRules.com

Sally explains that she learned three principles about her relationship with her mother-in-law. First, she had to learn to reach out. Sally realized that her mother-in-law was just as self-conscious as she was. Second, Sally learned that she had to be authentically nice, even when the zingers hurt. Finally, Sally learned that she, not her mother-in-law, had to go outside her comfort zone to make the effort to build a great relationship. Doug explains how these principles are really fundamental peacemaking skills and attitudes applicable in any conflict.
http://www.theDILRules.com

Sally tells stories about how she learned to create peace with her mother-in-law. Sally says she learned to borrow something, ask for advice on a trivial matter (and follow it), and call Mom weekly. On Mom’s special days, her birthday and Mother’s Day, send a card and flowers, with the card being written by husband. Sally explains how to ghost write the card, buty the flowers, and set everything up to look like its coming from husband, the son. Mom will know and the DIL will get a lot of brownie points. Doug wonders whether young wives worry about subservience to mothers-in-law. Sally points out that she chooses to engage with Mom on her terms to create friendship, respect, and peace. That means, says Sally, that you have to be willing to be a bit vulnerable. It doesn’t mean that you become a doormat.
http://www.theDILRules.com

Sally gives out three more important tips: Don’t criticize Mom in front of the husband, ever; use INCS to solve immediate issues with Mom, and don’t imitate Mom where anyone but your closest girl friend can hear you. INCS means Identify the problem, Make a Note of it, Create a Rule of Behavior for yourself when it happens, Solve the problem. Sally’s book THE DAUGHTER-IN-LAW RULES: 101 Surefire Ways to Manage (and Make Friends with) Your Mother-in-Law! is available onher website, www.theDILRules.com and Amazon.
http://www.theDILRules.com

Fear is a good thing when you might be facing a sabre-toothed tiger. It motivates you to do something: Fight or Flee or disappear into the landscape by freezing. However, fear in our complex modern society can, and often is, debilitating. Drug addiction, relationship problems, violence and abuse, and even war are all caused in large part by unconscious reactions to fear. So one of the central components of transforming conflicts of all kinds into peace is working with fear. My guest on this show has helped people deal with their fears for over a quarter century. Helene Rothschild earned a Bachelor and Master of Science Degree in Health Education at Brooklyn College, in Brooklyn, New York and she taught in High School for six years. She received a Master of Arts degree in Marriage, Family, Child Counseling from the University of Santa Clara, in Santa Clara, CA. For 26 years she has been counseling, speaking, and teaching her unique therapeutic technique. Helene's goal is to assist people all over the world to "love themselves to peace" which she believes to be the key to health, happiness, success, and our greatest contribution to world peace. She has been a published author since 1985. Her newest book is a manual for life. The title is, "ALL YOU NEED IS H A R T!, Create Joy, Love and Abundance NOW!" A Unique Guide to Holistic And Rapid Transformation is available on her website www.lovetopeace.com. The key to inner peace is to get in touch with your fear and then release it. Helene and I talk about how most fear-driven behaviors originate in early childhood. Early experiences create scripts that play over and over throughout our lives, creating emotional chaos.
http://www.lovetopeace.com

In any intimate relationship, there are really three relationships. Two of the relationships are relationships we have with ourselves. No relationship will truly be intimate unless both of the partners have high self-esteem. In other words, Helene says, they have a good relationship with themselves. The third relationship is based on communication—the bridge between the partners. When a relationship is dysfunctional, it is because there is low self-esteem or poor communication. When anger arises it is an indicator of fear, hurt, or powerlessness. In relationship conflicts, the key to good communication is being able to say how you feel, e.g., “I feel afraid.” “You” statements should only be used to compliment; otherwise, there is blaming and accusing.
http://www.lovetopeace.com

One major constraint on freedom is poverty. The response to poverty varies from country to country. Populism is a common response, as shown by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Populism is the free market’s greatest enemy. Eventually, Populism decays into and an East Germany, or a Cuba, and the slide is already happening in Venezuela. Free markets will pull us out eventually if we concentrate less on giving things away and more on elementary and high school education. China, Korea, and other Asian cultures are way ahead of us in preparing the young for a successful future. If you want the details of how we’re losing the competition from fifth grade on, read Alan Greenspan’s new book, or walk across the campus at Caltech and MIT.

Leadership is a quality that many claim to have but unfortunately seems to be in short supply. How many of us can say that our bosses inspire us, support us, help us improve, and motivate us to do our very best? And honestly, how many of us really work at leadership ourselves, at home, at work, or in the community? Leadership is important and its particularly important for solving problems and effectively working out disputes and conflicts in the office. We are going to look at leadership through the eyes of an expert.
Craig W. Ross is President of Pathways to Leadership Inc., a leadership development company in business for over 15 years. For almost a decade, Craig has partnered with CEOs and high-level executives around the world to increase productivity and bottom line results through the development of healthy work cultures. Craig brings high energy and a dynamic approach to executive coaching, keynotes and the transformational Pathways to Leadership® program he facilitates to companies worldwide including Owens-Illinois, Procter & Gamble, Gerber, Nestlé, Mazda Motor Company, CIBA Vision and many others.Craig has a B.A. in English from the University of Minnesota and M.A. in Curriculum Instruction and Design from Colorado Christian University. The three attributes of great leadership are self-awareness/self-control, the ability to communicate with some charisma, and the ability to focus people’s minds on what is important.
http://www.pathwaystoleadership.com/

Focus-foward questions are one way to focus minds out of the past and into the future. He ability to ask well-phrased and well-timed questions is a leadership skill that pays huge dividends. We will always focus on a good question and leaders learn to use our innate curiosity through good questions.
http://www.pathwaystoleadership.com/

Jerks in the office are a huge problem. Dysfunctional office behaviors cost billions of dollars each year in lost productivity, not to mention lawsuits and claims. The real secret to dealing with the elephant in the office is to not fix people. Instead, develop some self-awareness. Am I focused on that jerk? If so, why? Can I put my focus in a more productive place? Teaching people how to do that is a critical part of leadership. Trying to fix people or setting down behavioral rules are simply not effective. Thus, leaders have to be thinking about working with the minds in the office to deal with the elephants.
The Peacemaker’s Bookshelf looked at the book Mediating Dangerously by Kenneth Cloke.
http://www.pathwaystoleadership.com/

A caller asked if the elephants ever go away. Doug felt that the elephants never go away and always provide us with lessons to learn about being aware, conscious, and even spiritual. Craig agreed and felt that elephants come in different shapes and sizes. As we learn to deal with the elephants through our own increasing awareness, they become less of a problem.
http://www.pathwaystoleadership.com/

Marilyn and I talk about conflicts. We observe that conflicts are often necessary to point out things that need to change. Conflict is also an opportunity for spiritual growth. Cat calls in from North Carolina and adds her sense that conflict is necessary and how we approach conflict determines whether it is healthy or destructive. We begin to talk about what listening is really about. Marilyn points out that because so many of us live in fear, listening is very difficult.
http://www.reenchantplanetearth.com

Marilyn talks about listening with your whole body. By this, she means that we have to listen to ourselves as well as listen to what the other person is saying. Listening to ourselves means being aware of every emotion and feeling as it passes through us. At the same time, we are aware of the emotions flowing through the other person. This is a bit challenging in the beginning, but, as Doug points out, becomes like riding a bicycle with practice.
http://www.reenchantplanetearth.com

Not everyone is aware of what they are feeling in the moment. One of the basic tools of peacemaking is to create a safe, sacred space where feelings can be experienced without fear. Lynn calls in from Long Island and points out that this can allow people to speak honestly and authentically. Marilyn gives the example of a conversation with the principal of her step-son’s school. Marilyn observed that the principal was listening to her own fear rather than listening to her step-son. Once the principal understood the concept of listening, the conversation completely changed. Doug asks Marilyn about her energy model. Marilyn describes the work of Stewart Gellis and the being energy, the doing energy, and the dreaming energy. Being energy is about connection and relationship. Doing energy is about action, critical thinking, and analysis. Dreaming energy is about creativity. We tend to live in one energy to the exclusion of others, which leads to imbalances in life. When we are living in the three energies simultaneously, we are in balance with the Universe. When one or more of the energies is missing, conflict arises. One model of peacemaking suggests that peace comes from re-balancing and awakening the missing energies.
http://www.reenchantplanetearth.com

Marilyn describes her philosophy behind the Re-Enchant Planet Earth project. Re-Enchanters are global citizens interested in sustainability. One purpose of reenchantplanetearth.com is to connect people. Another purpose is to allow a space to talk about fear. By talking about what our fears are, we lessen the power fear has over us.
http://www.reenchantplanetearth.com