Maître des Échecs 20.3.06 [FR]

Samedi 18 mars 2006, à 16h30, dans la salle faux-classique du Palais du Rhin à Strasbourg, le Professeur Jean-Luc Piermay m'a ouvert les yeux. On s'approchait de la clôture des travaux du colloque de Banlieues d'Europe sur le livre, nouvellement paru, de Jean Hurstel. Ô, Piermay! Vous m'avez donné une expérience-clairière, plus brillante que celles que Martin Heidegger n'en ait jamais évoquée. A brainwave! Ein Aha-Erlebnis!
Publcation originale à Huibs' UrbLog

Écoutez. La source, la racine de ma découverte n'est rien d'autre qu'une frustration. La frustration de ne pas pouvoir intervenir, de ne pas pouvoir interrompre le Professeur, lorsqu'il fit remarquer qu'on ne parle jamais des échecs, mais toujours des réussites de l'intervention urbaine. Les "best practices", quoi. Depuis des années, j'insiste que l'on va apprendre probablement beaucoup plus, si l'on parle des "worst practices", les échecs minables, les projets bêtement interrompus, les châteaux espagnols (comme le Space Park de Brème) qui écrasent encore un peu plus les gens au pied de leurs murs.

Mais, une nouvelle fois, j'étais en état d'échec moi-même, devant le Professeur. J'étais arrivé en retard, à cause de l'échec de ma voiture (photo). Symbole de mon échiquier plein de pièges et d'attrape-idéalistes. S'il y a un maître des échecs, c'est moi. Un maître international, bon, européen. Je les connais par coeur. Comme si j'en étais l'auteur, moi-même. Ce que je suis, d'ailleurs.

"Me voici!", j'aurais voulu dire. "Donnez-moi encore une heure de votre temps, et je vous raconterai des échecs, des échecs, et encore des échecs, l'un encore plus tragique que l'autre!- Vous êtes chanceux, comme par hasard, vous avez parmi vous, l'Échec en personne. Vous me demanderez: 'Mais comment est ce possible que vous avez survécu à tous ces échecs?' Et je vous répondrai: "Parce que j'en suis le maître. Je les maîtrise avec du papier collant. Avez-vous un échec qui vous menace? Appelez Huib! Le retapeur."

Et c'est ainsi, chers amis, en roulant pendant 5 heures de Strasbourg à Bruxelles, dans ma voiture-témoin des échecs de ma vie, que j'ai inventé mon nouveau rôle, après plus de cinq ans d'absence, dans le monde des projets urbains, celui du réenchanteur des projets en échec! En me connaissant déjà un peu, vous n'aurez pas honte d'avouer vos petites erreurs à l'Erreur personifiée. Suivent analyse, diagnose et ... retapage. Vous serez protégés par le secret professionnel du retapeur. Personne ne sera au courant.

Gérants de projet en échec - votre plombier polonais est arrivé! Ssssssssst...

(Publication originale: Le 20 mars 2006, sur 'Huibs UrbLog à l'e-urban website)

Saddam tried to capture Zarqawi

The Iraq super-blogger Juan Cole announces today in Informed Comment that newly released documents from the former Iraq Government indicate that in 2002, Saddam Hussein was on the lookout for Abu Musab Zarqawi, now the leader of 'Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia'.
Zarqawi was one of the main reasons, Cheney and Colin Powell (in February 2003 before the Security Council of the UN) found, to prove an alliance between Hussein and Bin Laden.
Ironically, these documents have been released, after many refusals, by the US army services in the Middle East, on the insistance of Weekly Standard editors. In every issue of the last months, there was an insinuating article, demanding those documents and implying some behind-the-screens manipulation by the State Department or non-conservative forces within the Army.
Our WS-friends, just returned from their annual love-boat-cruise in California, must face another deception. I am sure, they will overcome it and provide to us a truthful resume of these new facts. Their interpretation, if I may guess, will be something like: "You see: we were right - Saddam knew that Zarqawi was in his country!"

Charisma en charitas: Marai's Eszter 18.3.06 [NL]

Eerder een novelle dan een roman: Sándor Márai - De erfenis van Eszter. 1938. Groot dorp op het Hongaarse platteland. De onvergetelijke schurk Lájos, verlopen politicus en zwendelaar, komt nog een keer terug naar zijn geboortedorp.

 

Huis en vrouw die hij twintig jaar tevoren zich nog niet had toegeëigend, vallen hem in de schoot. Ongelooflijk knap en strak verteld vanuit het perspectief van Eszter, de eens versmade jongere zus van zijn overleden vrouw. Nuchtere tante Nunu en integere notaris Endre ten spijt.

 

Kan het nòg beter geschreven worden? Is er al een toneelstuk of een fim van gemaakt?

(8 maart 2006 gepubliceerd in: To the Lighthouse)

Health Care Privatization: U.S. (2)

In my search for information on the consequences of privatization of health care, I found that Slate (26-02-2006) offered a good overview by Michael Kinsley, founding editor of the web review:

The hideous complexity of President Bush's prescription-drug program has reduced elderly Americans—and their children—to tears of bewildered frustration. The multiple options when you sign up, each with its own multiple ceilings and co-payments; the second round of red tape when you actually want to acquire some pills; the ludicrously complex and arbitrary standards of eligibility, which play a cruel and pointless game of hide-and-seek as they lurch up and down the graph paper like drunks: Suddenly a mystery is solved—so, this must be what he means by "compassionate conservatism."

The economist discusses here the overall costs of the programme, that vary from an estimated $737 billions to (now) $678bn. That is up from $400bn when the programme was first proposed. But what interests us here over all, is that the extra costs are almost entirely an extra benefit for drugs-companies. Kinsley continues:

What's shocking about this, more than the numbers (hundreds of billions of dollars are hard to fathom), is that Bush's drug benefit comes without even a theory about how it will be paid for. Even after nearly three decades of Republican abracadabranomics, this may be a first. A transparently phony theory at least pays tribute to the hypothesis that money doesn't grow on trees. Not even to bother coming up with a phony theory is an arrogant insult to democracy. It raises "because I said so" to a governing philosophy.

Indeed, there is nowhere a benefit to be seen: neither to sick people, nor to the national economy.

The classic Republican phony theory is, of course, supply-side economics. Every proposed tax cut from before Reagan until Bush's own has been defended on the grounds that it will pay for itself by stimulating new economic activity. This is a theory based more on faith than on evidence, but at least it's a theory.

Bush's other big attempt at a domestic initiative—Social Security privatization — came with a theory: Investing in stocks pays better than government bonds. So, you can close the looming gap between Social Security revenues and benefits—and even give the oldsters a bit extra—by letting folks invest for themselves at least part of what the government is now investing for them in those dismal bonds. The theory had a comically obvious flaw: How can society as a whole divert money from government bonds to private stocks as long as the government is still spending and borrowing as much as ever? But, at least, as I say, it was a theory. At least it paid us the compliment of obfuscation. Better to be duped than ignored. Bush's proposed Health Savings Accounts—as a way to cover the uninsured and restrain the rise in health costs—come with a theory that may even have some merit.

And Social security has not been reformed in the US, as we know. Bush campaigned for it in 2004 and 2005, but got no response. It is mostly forgotten now. The untransparency of the health care reform helped to get it through House and Senate, after the interests of pharmaceutical companies had been secured.

So, what is going on now? We can tel you: A big game of superbenefits to the pharmacos:

[..] pills are also a characteristic postindustrial product, like software or movies: They can cost billions to develop but can be mass distributed for practically nothing. Conventional supply-and-demand economics offers a compelling explanation of how an "invisible hand" sets the price and distribution of brooms or spaghetti sauce so that the benefit to society and individuals is maximized. But it has almost nothing to say about Fosomax or Windows or Brokeback Mountain. Conventional compassion, however sincere, is little guide to what you do about a lifesaving drug that costs $100,000 a year. And spraying government subsidies on the insurance industry and other big companies does not equal using the power of the free market to solve these problems.

The Dutch version of Bush medicare stands since 01-01-2006. Insurance companies are struggling to get exclusive contracts with hospitals and pharma-furnishers. The patient comes last. And the worst is still to come: elderly people (risky clients) being exiled from one company to another, higher contributions (12% rise announced for 2007)...