Lots of noise is being noised about the Supreme Court's 5-3 decision ruling the military tribunals contrary to military law and the Geneva Convention. Some folks seem to be under the impression that this means the end of Gitmo, or that the Administration has been told that everything it's doing is Bad and Wrong.

It isn't, and it hasn't.

What the Administration has been told -- and admittedly quite sternly -- is that it acted without the support of the law. That is, Congress never told the Bush administration it could set up tribunals like this. The Uniform Code of Military Justice does not contain any definition that can be applied here. It's also been told that its information gathering methods are a violation of the Geneva Conventions and that the Conventions do apply to these detainees.

We interrupt our calm review of the electoral situation in various other nations to take a look at something more specific and a bit less calm.

Today, the US Administration made perfectly, brazenly clear what its principles are in persuing Mr Bush's War, and they can be summarised more or less thusly:

• We don't torture. No, really. Honest. Although it may depend on how you define 'torture'.
• But we do abduct people we've decided are 'enemy combattants' and take them places we're not going to tell you about.
• What we're doing is legal by US law, and that's the only law we actually care about.
• These people have information. No, we don't know what information they have—if we knew that, we wouldn't need to...um...talk to them
• This is the kicker The information we've pried...er...extract...er...obtained from these people has helped save European as well as American lives, and therefore the Europeans should shut the fuck up.

That, in a nutshell, is the message that Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice is carrying on her trip to Europe. The very last part in particular. Not, "Hrm, OK, I see you have some concerns here. You're all democratic nations and your demos are pretty pissed, so maybe we should talk about this." But, "Shut the fuck up, and tell your people to shut the fuck up. We're the Global Police and we're keeping you safe."

Now, I'm not known for being much of an internationalist. I don't believe there's any such thing as international law, I don't believe the UN is much more than a corrupt money sink that hosts an occasionally useful debating club, and I don't believe that all uses of force are inherently bad or wrong.

But how in hell can we claim to want to spread democracy when we're doing everything we can to suppress it, manipulate it, or discredit it?!

So, we in the United States had another Erection...er...Election Day yesterday. It's a necessary ritual, and in some cases honestly instructive and interesting. But really, this year's election produced no surpises, and while some people will be looking for any signs -- any signs whatsoever -- for hope that our long national nightmare is nearing an end, this election really didn't provide it.

On the off-chance that anyone from outside the US is reading this, this year was what we call an 'off-year' election, meaning that it was focused entirely on local and state business, rather than federal business. School board elections, local tax referrenda, mayor and city council races, ballot initiatives, a couple state governor races, that sort of thing.

It's the sort of Election Day that pundits hope will give some guidance toward the next federally-focused election -- in this case, November 2006, when all of the US House of Represenatives and 1/3d of the US Senate go back to the polls. Specifically, there are an awful lot of people hoping for signs that the next great political revolution is coming and that the Bush Doctrine of cronyism, executive privilege, warmongering and lying about it, is about to be trashed out by the American Electorate.

For those of you wondering just how much hope there is for this sort of thing, I refer you to this editorial from 8 November 2005's New York Times, in which we have the interesting specatcle of one of the world's most respectable newspapers coming right out and saying that the king and his cronies are finks. No beating around the bush (pun intended) here. They're all but openly calling for Bush and everyone associated with him to resign. They know it won't happen, but the gauntlet was thrown.

The point here is that, for good or ill, no such signals got sent by yesterday's election.

[Click 'read more' below to, well, read more :-D ]