The United States of America has adopted McGall University’s protest protocol in order to “more easily carry out extrajudicial killings.”
According to a leaked document obtained by The Twice-a-Weekly, the Obama administration adopted the protocol in order to “obscure” the legal framework surrounding the killing of “American citizens and the Other.”
The document, dated March 2012, shows that Obama adopted McGall University’s Provisional Protest Protocol – released in February 2012 following a highly-technical and musical raid of McGall administration offices by daring bandits – because it felt the document “laid out in clearest terms the legal imprecision which characterizes application of the law in the contemporary world order.”
The document also deals specifically with the issue of when and how the president can order the killing of a U.S. citizen, concluding that “activities which continue beyond the normal operating hours of the Nation” can be met with “the full force of the United States military…and all of the guns in here, baby.”
Citing the McGall protocol at several points, the document says that an “informed, high-level” official of the U.S. government may determine if someone “deserves” to live, depending on whether or not the target has been “recently” involved in “activities” posing a threat of a violent attack and “there is no evidence suggesting that the target has renounced or abandoned such activities.” The memo does not define “recently,” “deserves,” or “activities.”
In a key passage in the document – which is unsigned – it argues that, regarding “human beings on planet Earth […] the law and other paperwork will not immunize them from a lethal operation.”
This so-called “death-clause” is widely believed to have been adopted following talks held between Obama and McGall University Vice-Principal (Counting and Adding Up) Mantony C. Assi. Obama was said to be “inspired” by the “utter audacity” of Assi’s work on McGall’s provisional protocol, which included clauses prohibiting protests that “implied threats to persons” or “impede[d] the conduct of University activities.”
“Neither of those clauses had ever appeared in a legal document before,” said Obama. “But then they were put there, and stayed there. I have to say I was very inspired by Assi’s work.”
“Following the successful adoption of rules like that at a public institution of higher learning in a place frequented by people who can reasonably be expected to know better,” said Obama, “I feel it is safe to assume not enough people care and so I will get away with this egregious abuse of power.”
The document does not specify the “minimum legal requirements” for launching a killing spree, insisting that “all murder” would be constitutionally justified as long as the United States is engaged in an “armed conflict,” as defined by Assi in 2012.
Assi famously defined “armed conflict” as “those activities that contain the potential for implied disagreements.”
The paper justifies the exclusion of the courts by arguing that “judicial enforcement of such orders would require the court to supervise the president and his national security advisers” and so be “incompatible with the Obama administration’s aims and goals.”
The document also provides one of the most comprehensive accounts of the wider international legal framework that was inaugurated by McGall’s provisional protest protocol, and that the U.S. believes supports its controversial drones policy.
Principally, the document shows that the U.S. now believes the words “implications, imply, and implied” are now interchangeable with “think, thought, and perhaps,” and, further, that the word “different” has now “been successfully replaced with the word ‘threat,’ as was planned in the 2001 White Paper, ‘What to do about the Other.’”
The leaking of the document, with its dense legal argument justifying the targeted killings of U.S. citizens, is certain to escalate the arguments that have been swirling around the issue.
Speaking to the New York Times, Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s national security project, denounced the memorandum as “a profoundly disturbing document,” adding: “It’s hard to believe that it was produced in a democracy built on a system of checks and balances. It summarizes in cold legal terms a stunning overreach of executive authority: the claimed power to declare anyone a threat and kill them, far from a recognized battlefield and without any judicial involvement. What was that damn University thinking?”