July 28, 2006: Read the fine print ...

The link above is for this article only.

Family believes Canadian soldier is still alive in Lebanon Mike Blanchfield, CanWest, July 28, 2006

www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.ht
ml?id=fd795b02-aed3-400b-a6d8-e7c2dbbdf666

[....] One of the Defence Department's leading experts on peacekeeping suggested Harper demonstrated a lack of understanding when he questioned why four unarmed UN monitors, including Hess-von Kruedener, remained at their southern Lebanon post only to be killed.

"I think it shows the prime minister was not adequately briefed. He needs to know what the function of military observers are," said Walter Dorn, a professor specializing in UN peacekeeping and monitoring missions at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont. [....]

What if the terrorists are using the UN post as a shield or hiding behind civilians -- women and children? See links on these posted today.



I like to know a bit more of the background of "experts" quoted in news articles so I searched ... a quick perusal will show how strong his particular bias is. Were there any military to speak from another perspective?


Who is Walter Dorn?
www.rmc.ca/academic/poli-econ/dorn/index_e.html

Walter Dorn is an Associate Professor at the Canadian Forces College and co-chair of the Department of Security Studies. He is cross-appointed as an Adjunct Associate Professor with the Department of Politics and Economics at RMC, and a faculty member of the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre. He is a scientist by training (Ph.D. Chemistry, Univ. of Toronto), whose doctoral research was aimed at chemical sensing for arms control. .... His interests ... both international and human security, especially peacekeeping and the United Nations.

He has extensive experience in field missions.....a district electoral officer with the United Nations Mission in East Timor. ... with the UN in Ethiopia (UNDP project) and at UN headquarters as a Training Adviser with UN's Department of Peacekeeping Operations. ...research in conflict areas in Central and South America, Africa and South East Asia. [Has he ever served in the military? Or has he been attached to the UN?]

Since 1983, he has served as the UN Representative of Science for Peace, a Canadian NGO ....

... Pearson Peacekeeping Centre ....

[....] In 2001/02 he was the inaugural DFAIT Human Security Fellow (academic), and is using the fellowship to write on a book tentatively titled "The Emerging Global Watch: UN Monitoring for International Peace and Human Security".

A list of his publications is instructive -- only a sample:

PAXSAT: A Canadian Initiative in Arms Control [See below for more.]
Peacekeeping Satellites: The Case for International Surveillance [i.e. UN]
Satellite and Airborne Surveillance For Arms Control: Workshop Report
UN Should Verify Treaties
UN Verification: Case for a UN Verification Agency


Consider his views as posted at RMC and elsewhere in the context of the current movers and shakers at the UN ... for example, the Human Rights Council:

Member states include: Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Cuba, Indonesia, Jordan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa, and Tunisia. Non-member states include: Egypt, Iran, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Kuwait, Libya, Mauritania, Oman, Qatar, Sudan, Syria, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

How effective has the United Nations actually been? See Romeo Dallaire's book on Rwanda for example.


Satellite and Airbourne Surveillance - Walter Dorn - Research at ... The UN has a right to know what is going on at least to the same extent that any ... For PAXSAT A, which is designed to identify weapons in space, ...



Canada Pulls Out of Peacekeeping G & M, 27 March 2006
From The Pugwash Group website:
www.pugwashgroup.ca/events/documents/2006
/2006.03.27-Dorn.article.htm

Walter Dorn, no Conservative I would guess, has harsh words for Canada's new government. He seems quite anti-US and pro-UN. Would he be a Liberal? NDP? A globalist?

[....] Canada is disappointing the UN and its own long-standing peacekeeping tradition, not only in the field, but also at UN headquarters. [....]

Also in doctrine, the Canadian Forces leadership is replacing the time-honoured concepts of peacekeeping and peace-support operations with the "three-block war," a term coined by a former U.S. Marine Corps commandant. It advocates combining peacekeeping and humanitarian activities with war-fighting, all in the same mission -- an impossible task. An enemy-centred mentality is creeping inexorably into the Canadian military psyche. The previous notions of negotiated consent, impartiality and minimum use of force (formerly criteria for Canadian participation in peacekeeping) are being replaced by a more aggressive goal of "a high-intensity fight" against the "armies of failing states," to use the words from a recent army poster.

Unfortunately, Canada can no longer be called a committed peacekeeper, and certainly it is no longer the prolific peacekeeper. [....]

Should peacekeepers just walk up to the terrorists and forcefully say "Stop!" That should do it. Then sit down over tea and crumpets and settle the details peacefully ...




PAXSAT: A Canadian Initiative in Arms Control
(Looking Out for Peace from the Sky) By Walter Dorn on his homepage at RMC
www.rmc.ca/academic/gradrech/dorn22_e.html

This article first appeared in Peace Magazine, October/November 1987, p. 17-18.

[....] There have been diplomatic PAXSAT briefings in Europe and at the United Nations but most members of the peace movement do not know what PAXSAT is.

PAXSAT is a study of the feasibility of using satellites operated internationally to verify certain arms treaties. These are treaties, currently under negotiation by countries like Canada, under which two satellite types, PAXSAT A and PAXSAT B, could become very central. The first type of treaty is one banning the use of weapons in outer space. Talk along these fines is going on in Geneva both bilaterally (between the U.S. and the USSR) and multilaterally (in the forty-nation U.N. Conference on Disarmament). PAXSAT A could spot weapons in space. [....]

PMag v02n6p32 -- Peacekeeping Satellites for the United Nations
www.peacemagazine.org/archive/v02n6p32.htm

Peacekeeping Satellites for the United Nations; ... Walter H Dorn. IN 1978 THE GOVERNMENT OF FRANCE PROPOSED a bold, ...

Peace and Environment News: Dorn's Morale Booster by Harry Musson, May 1990
www.perc.ca/PEN/1990-05/musson.html

[... Dorn] offered both criticism of NATO and a timely call to action.
The astounding changes within the Soviet sphere of influence, and the opportunity this presents for peace and disarmament, ....

...doctoral candidate in chemistry ... belongs to the Chemical Sensors Group ... Science for Peace. [....]

He was ashamed however, of Canada, and its support for Washington in the current European negotiations on a new security system. The U.S. must take full blame, he said, for their footdragging and stonewalling on disarmament issues. He said it reminded him of U.S. behaviour at the United Nations.

Dorn is a passionate supporter of the U.N. and believes it should have a leading and catalytic role in building structures for peace and security (a role adamantly rejected by the U.S.). Dorn recounted his disgust at Washington's behaviour ....

Whilst Dorn ... U.N. ... he envisaged a global institution .... to assess military imbalance and threats.

Dorn felt that the recent Open Skies conference was very illustrative of how limited, cautious and American oriented Canada's position is in these matters. [....]

Verification should be taken out of military hands and put into an international civilian agency. What Canada gives to Open Skies, Canada should give to a U.N. agency! Similarly he felt the Soviet position on Open Skies common aircraft and the sharing of data to be an inherently greater confidence builder. If, as is planned, each nation were to individually fly over 'enemy' territory and keep collected data to itself as a secret, then this is spying. But if the information were to be shared, then it would really open up both skies and minds.

The U.N. Verification Study Group meets this July and is chaired by Fred Bild of External Affairs. Dorn felt that peace activists should focus on this important meeting and pressure our reluctant government to return to its peace-making traditions and confront U.S. intransigence. [....]

Open Skies kit ... Canadians in Support of the Helsinki Process

An activist, as well.




Canadian Pugwash Group: Canada Pulls Out of Peacekeeping -- Walter Dorn
www.pugwashgroup.ca/events/documents/2006/
2006.03.27-Dorn.article.htm


International Peace Operations Summer Institute - Core Faculty ... Walter Dorn
summerpeace.acadiau.ca/core_fac_old.html