Okay I'll play. Which bureacracies are those Houlley?

There are equally virulent versions in corporate organisations as public ones. Just look at the shenanigans with corporates in post and pre-war Iraq in relation to private contract arrangements - admittedley done with the support of the political machine who are either incompetent or corrupt.

You should know better - I never underestimate the power of the bureacracy. It is government that forms policies and bureacracies that implement them, sometimes politicians can influence where the budget is spent despite what you hear about the autonomy of departmental secretaries. Sometimes the bureacrats are guilty of funnelling money to the top end while the bottom end drowns in the cesspit that remains.

Wherever you find human beings you will sometimes find failings the trick is to ensure there are checks and balances reduce the impact of those failings. I have worked with enough empire builders in my time so you are preaching to the converted. But on a positive note you will somtimes also find inspiration, dedication and creativity just as in any walk of life.

Dear davidf,
You disposed of Chomsky and Marx in little more than 100 words, most of it hyperpole and none of it fair or substantial.
What you appear to fail to realise is that the concept of human rights is a false pillar of the capitalist system that would be redundant in the kind of utopia Marx postulated. To paraphrase Slavoj Zizek, thinking critically requires us to jetison our "social" paradigm (actually state and capital, bereft of social, or species existence) and discern the problem in the way that we perceive the problem; that is the "form" of the problem that we stupidly subscribe to.
Capitalism and its concomitant ideology is nothing if not dynamic. Zizek, published this month:
"What has happened in the latest stage of post-68 capitalism is that the economy itself—the logic of market and competition—has progressively imposed itself as the hegemonic ideology. In education, we are witnessing the gradual dismantling of the classical-bourgeois school isa: the school system is less and less the compulsory network, elevated above the market and organized directly by the state, bearer of enlightened values—liberty, equality, fraternity. On behalf of the sacred formula of ‘lower costs, higher efficiency’, it is progressively penetrated by different forms of ppp, or public–private partnership. In the organization and legitimization of power, too, the electoral system is increasingly conceived on the model of market competition: elections are like a commercial exchange where voters ‘buy’ the option that offers to do the job of maintaining social order, prosecuting crime, and so on, most efficiently.

On behalf of the same formula of ‘lower costs, higher efficiency’, functions once exclusive to the domain of state power, like running prisons, can be privatized; the military is no longer based on universal conscription, but composed of hired mercenaries. Even the state bureaucracy is no longer perceived as the Hegelian universal class, as is becoming evident in the case of Berlusconi. In today’s Italy, state power is directly exerted by the base bourgeois who ruthlessly and openly exploits it as a means to protect his personal interests."
cont..

..cont:
Even the process of engaging in emotional relations is increasingly organized along the lines of a market relationship. Such a procedure relies on self-commodification: for internet dating or marriage agencies, prospective partners present themselves as commodities, listing their qualities and posting their photos. What is missing here is what Freud called der einzige Zug, that singular pull which instantly makes me like or dislike the other. Love is a choice that is experienced as necessity. At a certain point, one is overwhelmed by the feeling that one already is in love, and that one cannot do otherwise. By definition, therefore, comparing qualities of respective candidates, deciding with whom to fall in love, cannot be love. This is the reason why dating agencies are an anti-love device par excellence. What kind of shift in the functioning of ideology does this imply? When Althusser claims that ideology interpellates individuals into subjects, ‘individuals’ stand here for the living beings upon which ideological state apparatuses work, imposing upon them a network of micro-practices. By contrast, ‘subject’ is not a category of living being, of substance, but the outcome of these living beings being caught in the isadispositif, or mechanism; in a symbolic order. Quite logically, insofar as the economy is considered the sphere of non-ideology, this brave new world of global commodification considers itself post-ideological. The isas are, of course, still here; more than ever. Yet insofar as, in its self-perception, ideology is located in subjects, in contrast to pre-ideological individuals, this hegemony of the economic sphere cannot but appear as the absence of ideology. What this means is not that ideology simply ‘reflects’ the economy, as superstructure to its base. Rather, the economy functions here as an ideological model itself, so that we are fully justified in saying that it is operative as an isa—in contrast to ‘real’ economic life, which definitely does not follow the idealized liberal-market model."

I found a free link to the text I've recommended previously:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1961/man/ch01.htm
I strongly urge you to read it!
BTW, if anyone is blimpish, it's Geoffrey Robertson!!

Dear Squeers,

Thanks for that.
Just honing in on your points about the privatisation of functions that used to be the domain of the state. Naomi Klein in her book "The Shock Doctrine" provides a clear comparison between the two recent Iraqi conflicts in the ratio of private contractors (mercenaries) to traditional soldiers. She writes:
"During the first Gulf War in 1991, there was one contractor for every hundred soldiers. At the start of the 2003 Iraqi invasion, the ratio had jumped to one contractor for every ten soldiers. Three years into the U.S. occupation, the ratio had reached one to three. Less than a year later, with the occupation approaching its fourth year, there was one contractor for every 1.4 U.S. soldiers. But that figure only includes contractors working directly for the U.S. government, not for other coalition partners or the Iraqi government..."
Seems that there's much profit to be made in the theatre of war.

Dear Squeers,

You wrote: "What you appear to fail to realise is that the concept of human rights is a false pillar of the capitalist system that would be redundant in the kind of utopia Marx postulated. "

I am fully aware of Marx's view of human rights and don't buy it. I don't accept that human rights are a false pillar of capitalism. They are essential to a decent society. Social justice is also essential to a decent society.

As long as there are nations humans need protection against the power of the state. The mounds of corpses are a direct consequence of Marxist ideology.

Dear davidf,
a rather shrill rejoinder. And can you please stow the "corpses", their rhetorical effect has long since worn thin.

Nationalism is one of the bathetic illusions we hold on to. Ironically, while cultural distinctiveness means nothing more than the exchange rate, we go on kidding ourselves that it's deeper than that. It's not; nationalism is corporatism, nothing more. Anything that defines a human nation today is lost in the soup of imperial multi-culti. We are consumers, transcending all borders. Cultural predilections are fashion accessories. What can the US or Australia assert that's distinctive or culturally significant compared with their dispossessed indigenes? Nationalism/patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel--that's us.
<Chomsky [criticises?] the US for behaving pretty much the way in which one could expect the superpower to behave in a nation state system. He is blaming a wolf for being a wolf. That is akin to religious moralism.>
I don't know where to begin with this. The US is largely responsible for the state of "realism" the world finds itself trying to negotiate in. Indeed, on the subject of "corpses", what about the Japanese cities (not military targets), for starters, that it nuked? I'd say that set the agenda for international diplomacy for the foreseeable.
Chomsky tries to work with that extant 'reality'. Marx said the point of philosophy was not to understand our reality, but to change it!
Humans aren't good at voluntary change, so they just get dug in.
<It is unreasonable to expect those in charge of national governments to challenge the system under which they have power.>
They have power? I thought we were democracies; doesn't that mean collective power?
The UN is a lapdog, a convention of the system, a eunuch; it provides the rules for the only game in town.