We have seen the show, we applauded for Punch and his stick (we were kids after all), yet there is no punch this time around, punch was mixed with watermelons, pineapple, cranapple juice and blackberry juice, with a few added distilled options and he got served in a room a small meeting room on 405 East 42nd Street, New York. The meeting room had a limited population, primarily what most meeting rooms have in that building, so there is nothing special about that, and it is just like the meeting on the use of Sarin in Ghouta 2013, for some reason the important question of WHO was avoided by a whole range of paperback politicians (as well as spokespeople of the UN), so I am not surprised to see the next axe job in Al Jazeera (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/qa-agnes-callamard-drone-strike-killed-soleimani-200711080404877.html). You see the stage is a lot larger and we need to be aware. Not the question, even as the staged outcome is not one anyone not Iranian can agree with, the stage is larger and that needs to get the forefront.
So even as there is no objection to the set ‘UN’s Agnes Callamard on drone strike that killed Soleimani’, anyone who has any clue on the massive amount of stages that Qasam Soleimani was connected to sets a stage we cannot agree with, so as the article gives us “I had been speaking with a number of experts for the last year or so about focusing one or more of my thematic reports to the UN on weapons, particularly those being tested or under development, and what these may mean for the future of policing, warfare and, ultimately, the protection against arbitrary killings.” Now consider ‘the protection against arbitrary killings’, we do not disagree with this premise, as to why the Houthi stage against Saudi Arabian CIVILIANS is a much larger stage. The fact that experts have given evidence that Houthi forces have no options for produce Iranian drones, they have no expertise in building the drone, deploying the drones and managing the inflight stagers of drones sets a much larger decor in all this, the report, or at least the Al Jazeera version of it, goes out of its way to make sure that Iranian involvement in all this is averted. Why is that?
It is also set to the question that gives us: “we have entered what I have described as the second drone age, characterised by an increasing number of states and non-state actors using them, and by drones becoming stealthier, speedier, smaller, more lethal and capable to be operable by teams located even thousands of kilometres away.” It is a decent answer and I find little to oppose it, yet the stage we see in the Middle East is largely avoided, and it cannot be avoided. It is the approach that we see with “operable by teams located even thousands of kilometres away”, the optionally avoided “operable by teams located beyond the strategy of the involved theatre” is the question, she is setting the stage of a limited amount of state actors, optionally invalidating the involvement by Iran, again, why is that?
Finally there is “Drones are not unlawful weapons. What need to be regulated is both the technological development and their usage. The use of drones … must be lawful under three bodies of law: The law of self-defence, international human rights law, and international humanitarian law.” No one disagrees with that, yet the stages in several fields is not the technological side, it is out there, it is the stage where players like Iran deploys their drones via Houthi and Hezbollah forces and the report (read: UN Essay) was written to avoid all that. In a stage where Iran has ignored the existence of both International Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law, we see the need to chastise this report on a few lacking merits.
So when Agnes Callamard gives us “Thus far, courts have largely refused to provide oversight to drones’ targeted killings extraterritorially, arguing that such matters are political, or relate to international relations between states and thus are non-justiciable. A blanket denial of justiciability over the extraterritorial use of lethal force cannot be reconciled with recognized principles of international law, treaties, conventions, and protocols, and violates the rights to life and to a remedy.” We find it hard to disagree with this, but in all this, the larger stage of proxy wars (and therefor Iran) is left out of the equation, out of a equation that matters NOW, so why is that?
It all coincides with “The killing of General Soleimani shows how dangerously close the world has been to a major and deadly crisis”, a stage whether valid or not is optional, but the lack of references that Saudi civilians have been under attack on well over half a dozen stages is left unexplained, as such we could wonder why the hatred of aka Eggy Calamari in regards to the Saudi people is not asked. This is the third report that attacks Saudi Arabia (without proper evidence) or negates the attacks on their civilians, all whilst those attacks were show with evidence and the stage of the refineries is show to a degree that it should have been impossible for Houthi forces to be THIS successful, the attack amounts to a person buying tickets to three different lotteries and getting the jackpot on all three of them, it is statistically so far out of reachable stages that it boggles the mood on how certain players were willing to put their name on such a disgraceful place of strategic thinking.
I am left with the stage where the UN is massively setting the stage to Iranian needs, all whilst Iran has not now, not ever shown any humanitarian resolve, and there is decades of evidence in that bucket. So what is the UN, specifically Agnes Callamard playing at?
So as the article ends with “War is at risk of being normalised as a legitimate and necessary companion to peace. We must do all that we can to resist this deadly creep.” In that stage, can anyone explain why the absence of the actions of Iranian and Houthi forces give light of the avoidance of the deadly creep? No one disagrees that the entire drone stage is setting a much larger stage, a stage we never held before, yet doing so in a way that keeps a player like Iran out of reach of it does not really solve anything does it? And as for Qasam Soleimani? I mentioned his actions on several occasions, as such we need to read that UN Essay with a different light. The fact that the life and attacks under Soleimani does not get the 50 pages of disclosure is a much larger stage and optionally that is not up to the UN, but ignoring that whilst it matters as to why he was killed, optionally with the entire Iraqi stage as to why he was there in the first place is a little bit weird, but perhaps Agnes had some of that funky punch in the meeting room, I do not know, I am merely hazarding a speculation.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 