The unheralded demolition of a vintage brick industrial building on Notre-Dame East, part of the Lantic Sugar complex, has shocked some heritage people and irked Richard Bergeron, who has roundly criticized Transport Quebec, owner of the site. It’s part of the long-simmering plan to widen Notre-Dame into a virtual autoroute and, I’m afraid, typical of the transport ministry’s attitude to Montreal in general.
Updates from June, 2012 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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The family of Lin Jun has written a public letter saying what a terrible blow their son’s murder has been, and expressing gratitude for the support and assistance they’ve found here.
I’m seeing tweets about a candlelight vigil in memory of Lin Jun 9 p.m. Thursday at Peel and René-Lévesque.
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Tuesday night’s demo, the 50th in a row, was rather subdued due to rain, and there were no arrests.
Jewish groups have asked our protesters to knock it off with the Nazi salute.
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Ian
While I understand that calling the SPVM Nazis belittles the suffering caused by actual Nazis, I’m a bit surprised that a) the students don’t realize what an incredibly terrible photo op this creates, and that b) B’Nai Brith don’t understand that it’s meant to insult the police… or is this just bad reporting?
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steph
First the “Maple Spring’ was an insult to the ‘Arab Spring’, then the cacerolazos was an insult to the Chileans, now this? I’m totally baffled by this too. I wonder if it’s an attempt rooted as a retaliation towards Khadir and his view against Israel. I really wonder why it’s news. Hating the police isn’t something that’s new. It’d be more interesting if the media decided to try and answer the questions as to why the police are so hated.
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marco
@steph
I’ll try to clear up the confusion for you. When the conversation degenerates, one side will inevitably label the other side Nazis (see Godwin’s Law). Doing so trivializes the Holocaust. So don’t do it. -
steph
Jewish groups don’t hold a monopoly on Nazis comparisons. If they did they’d be trivializing all the other horrors that took place in WWII. I don’t think there’s supposed to be anything ‘educated’ about insults to start off with, so lets not get too intellectual with this. Insulting someone is either calling it exactly like it is (like when I was 7 and would say to my sister “you’re such a girl”), or trivializing it with a comparison to something it isn’t exactly (since logically no two things are ever alike) you poopey poo poo!
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Hamza
what? An armed group of uniformed thugs who viciously and repeatedly attack innocent unarmed people on a daily basis, receiving paycheques from an illegitimate government with collapsed public support allied with a tyrannical prime minister whose party fraudulently hijacked our federal election?
It’s only fascism when they start sending us off to camps. Then again, that’s when it’s too late.
Sorry Jews. God bless you but Six million other people died in the Holocaust too. It’s a world tragedy, not just a Jewish one.
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Ian
Not to pick nits, but as I recall the Nazis started carting off the socialists first, but we don’t need to get all Bishop Niedermeyer about it – the point is that the SPVM, while brutal and thuggish, are not as bad as the Gestapo. Let’s get real, here. FWIW Hamza even wikipedia puts the “inclusive” Holocaust death count at 17 million altogether. Also worth noting, 26.6 million soviet civilians died in ww2. So yes, calling the SPVM Nazis is both crass and uneducated.
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Ephraim
Only the FEUQ and Martine Desjardins did the right thing and acted immediately. CLASSE acted like the adolescents they have always been and said that they aren’t responsible for the actions of their members (so why should they represent them at the negotiating table, if they aren’t responsible for them?). Finally after realizing that this was going viral, CLASSE sent out a tweet to tell people to stop… a tweet!
The holocaust is estimated at about 17 million exterminated, 6 million of which were Jews, but the Nazis also killed Political prisoners, handicapped people, Gays, Poles, Conscience objectors, etc. (The Soviets themselves lost 20 million fighting fascism.) Stalin is estimated to have exterminated about 3 million under the symbol of communism, a red flag.
These are powerful symbols. Symbols that should be revered and not referenced for comparison.
That you don’t really know that a Nazi salute trivializes the deaths of millions, not just those that died in the holocaust, but the millions that fought this menace from this earth. Who’s to blame for this lack of knowledge, the students, the teachers or is this showing us the real value of a free education.
I salute Martine Desjardins of FEUQ. It’s nice to know that there is at least one responsible adult in the group.
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steph
Does calling cops ‘pigs’ or ‘bœuf’ trivialize the billions of animals killed each year for food? Does calling students terrorists trivializes the horrors of 9/11? Basically the moral here is – don’t call people names, it hurts their feelings.
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Bill Binns
A TV show in the states sent reporters to the “Tea Party” protests to interview people. They find people who have signs that say “fascists” or “socialist” etc and simply ask them for the definitions of these words. It’s hillarious and would work so well here.
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Marc
By definition, fascism is the marriage of government and corportate powers. The “bailouts” of GM and Chrysler, that was fascism. The word has a very specific meaning and it’s being recklessly thrown around to the point where it’s basically used to describe someone who holds a dissenting opinion.
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Adam
Marc is absolutely correct. “Fascist” has a specific meaning that most people don’t understand.
And anyone who thinks that comparing the SPVM to the Nazis is legitimate is historically illiterate. But hey, while we’re at it, let’s go ahead and say that these student marchers are just as brave as the anti-Nazi resistance. Sophie Scholl and the White Rose were wimps compared with the bravery of our intrepid demonstrators. I think we can all agree that the risks they’re facing are pretty much identical.
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marco
@Marc
I have never seen fascism defined as you say. Can you source this? -
marco
@Marc
Never mind. I found some Glenn Beck show transcripts. -
MB
@marco I think Marc might have been conflating fascism and oligarchy. The latter doesn’t quite have the same “ring” to it even if it is closer to the truth.
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qatzelok
@ steph:”Jewish groups don’t hold a monopoly on Nazis comparisons.”
Can you prove that they don’t with at least one link to another group that builds billion-dollar victimhood museums?
“If they did they’d be trivializing all the other horrors that took place in WWII.”
What horrors? The good guys won, but some extremely innocent people got hurt along the way – but then got to colonize the Middle East. End of story, non?
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The city is planning to name a tiny square in Outremont after Kate McGarrigle, who died in 2010.
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Clément
Sigh. I miss Kate McGarrigle. I’m happy she’ll get honoured by the city.
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Ian
Ah, how lucky she wasn’t a dirty Jew like Mordecai Richler.
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Robert J
Richler openly hated the Quebecois.
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Ian
He spoke out against reactionary separatists and the absurdities of the language police; that’s not hate, that’s well-deserved satire. Of course we see that the powers-that-be still can’t deal with satire as in the case of Liberty and the People chez Khadir. Richler has done more to make Montreal an international landmark city than most other authors from here, not just because he’s a great writer, but because he’s a great writer about Montreal. If anyone’s surprised that Richler distrusted Quebecois nationalists, one only has to think back to the fascist parades down the streets of the Jewish neighbourhood in his youth, how Jews weren’t allowed to go to Catholic schools so inevitably ended up anglicised, and of course the “no dogs or Jews” signs on the beaches. This isn’t fiction, it’s a reality. As Richler pointed out (and it still holds true today), “Jews who have been Quebecers for generations understand only too well that when thousands of flag-waving nationalists take to the streets roaring ‘Le Québec aux Québécois!’ they do not have in mind anybody named Ginsburg — or, for that matter, MacGregor.”
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qatzelok
When anglo newspapers from the anglosphere report that “Montreal makes us think about Leonard Cohen, Mordechai Richler and Schwartzs,” they aren’t just using nepotism to create undeserved celebrity. They are also ethnic-cleansing the francophones of this city in their texts. Back-scratching and nepotism have many victims.
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Kate
qatzelok, please don’t use “ethnic cleansing” in such a vapid manner. I try to take you seriously but sometimes your hysteria overwhelms your logic.
English-speaking people will have been exposed to Cohen and Richler because they wrote in English. Cohen, as a recording artist, is better known than Richler, but Richler lived in England for some years and published there, so he had attained some visibility in their literary world before he returned to Canada. Those facts are not the result of some conspiracy – they’re just how those two careers worked out, giving both those men a boost of fame.
Even if French writers from Quebec get translated to English, I’m betting very few of those translations get publishing contracts in other English-speaking countries. There’s too much competition, and unless I’m mistaken, nobody writing here is on the kind of universal plane of excellence that makes people elsewhere clamour to read their work. If I’m mistaken about this I’d be happy to be enlightened.
To be fair, if you read the review pages of the Globe and Mail, the Guardian, the New York Times, it’s a rare translation of any work that gets a lot of attention. Canada, the US and the UK (plus Australia, Ireland, etc. etc.) are cranking out plenty of work in English. It’s not due to an evil conspiracy that their papers mostly take an interest in what’s written in English.
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Ian
I challenge you to find a quote from any of the newspapers to that effect – I think you may in fact be quoting me, though I would have written “Schwartz’s”. If you are quoting me, I only brought it up to note that outside of Quebec very few people know anything about Québecois culture. It’s not just because the evil Anglo empire doesn’t report on it, it’s because the Québecois are pretty insular and don’t try to get the word out to English-speaking North America, and that, frankly, there’s not a lot of effort to attract an anglophone audience to the cultural output of the Nation of Quebec. What’s more, much of the French vs. English drama that is so importance to us here is irrelevant in teh ROC – Balconville has been available in translation for decades, but further west than Ottawa nobody understands the issues. The ROC thinks the Quebecois are just Canadians that speak French. They really don’t understand that there is a separate culture. The thing I think a lot of Quebecois don’t realize is that English Canadians face a lot of cultural hurdles too, in that we’re a second class English-speaking culture on the continent. For artists like Cohen or Richler to make recognized impact outside of Canada is actually a super big deal that we should all be proud of.
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Clément
Wow, this started out as a post about a beautiful person, a great singer who was equally loved by both anglos and francos.
Yet, somehow, it turned into a hate discussion about politics and language. Nice job! -
Ian
Well only one person mentioned hate, but hey, don’t let me stop you from feeling offended. Yes, McGarrigle was a lovely person by all accounts, loved by both anglos and francos. Like I said, how fortunate she wasn’t a dirty Jew like Richler or all she’d have named after her is a piece of broken park furniture, if that.
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Clément
Yeah, you’re right Ian, no hate or negativity at all in your uplifting comments. I stand corrected.
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Ian
Well, soon you’ll be able to sit corrected in a nice little park on Laurier between Querbes and Durocher.
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Jack
@Clement, right on!
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Steve Quilliam
Kate McGariggle will have a tiny square named after her in an area where she lived and i think it’s a nice gesture by the city.
In the same vein Mordecai Richler has had a Gazebo (not a piece of broken park furniture) named after him. It is located in a very popular park, very visible and easily accessible than the tiny little place for Kate McGariggle plus the Richler family greatly approved of the initiative after they refused the city’s idea of an alley way.
Oh, and by the way, @Ian, Saul Bellow has a library named after him in Lachine. So much for being a ”dirty jew”, as you say !
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Ian
Huh, how about that. I had no idea they’d named a llibrary after Saul Bellow in Lachine, or that he was born in Lachine.
FWIW the gazebo the city named after Richler has been unusable for a couple of years now – the city removed the flooring so homeless people wouldn’t sleep in it. I admit I’m bitter about Luc Ferrandez trying to block naming anything after Richler, who has done more to immortalize Montreal worldwide than Ferrandez could even dream of.
But yeah, I was being needlessly bitchy about McGarrigle, you’re right, it’s a nice story and it’s really very lovely that the city named a park after her right by where she used to live.
Sorry for being a jerk about it.
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qatzelok
@ Kate: “English-speaking people will have been exposed to Cohen and Richler because they wrote in English.”
Yes, anglos have an aversion to reading “forners.” This is what tribalism does to people. And it is what anglo mass media has done to the anglosphere: turned anglos into insular hicks with no respect for other cultures. /Michel Brule
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jeather
I’m not entirely convinced that anglos (who are, apparently, a monolith of really terrible, boring people who all live in the suburbs) have any reason to respect people who consistently insult them.
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Robert H
Ian, you make an excellent point about Cohen and Richler’s popularity outside of Canada. Indigenous culture in Canada faces substantial hurdles on both sides of the linguistic divide. Even if Québec did a better job of promoting its flourishing cultural scene–novels, music, movies, theatre, television–the going would still be tough as the anglosphere, especially the U.S. is notoriously unreceptive to–non-english media. Jay-Z could fill an arena in Montréal or Québec City, but could Loco Locass do the same in New York or Los Angeles? At least, Québec’s limitation is also its strength, which unfortunately cannot be said for english Canada’s singers, writers, actors, and artists. The McGarrigle sisters managed to carve out a career in the world of folk and acoustic music that extended beyond Canada, despite the tendency of their countrymen and fellow artists to succumb to the overwhelming, irresistible gravitational pull of the American pop-cultural industrial complex. Given the existing conditions, any Canadian artist or performer of any sort who makes an impact outside of Canada, particularly without leaving Canada, has indeed done something extraordinary and worthy of admiration.
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Kate
@qatzelok, I don’t know your background, but I fear you’re showing some cultural ignorance here.
Lots of works not originally written in English are valued within the English canon, from all the Greek and Latin classics through people like Tolstoy and Proust and more recent writers as diverse as W.G. Sebald, Irene Nemirovsky and Haruki Murakami. Yes, people tend to read them in translation, but that’s always so. Walk into a Renaud-Bray and your eyes will be assaulted by the quantity of books on display translated from English to French.
I think you’re trolling with the Michel Brulé, so let’s leave it there.
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Thousands are marching in city streets against, among other things, legislation creating massive fines for people violating anti-protest laws; some activists also had their houses searched.
I wonder if Moscow will discover casseroles next.
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Tuesday afternoon, Superior Court will address the challenge to Bill 78 brought by the student associations with support from unions and community groups.
In other news connected with the protests, Yalda Machouf-Khadir has been released on bail.
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Bill Binns
Lets hope the law is shot down and the police get back to enforcing all the laws that existed before May 18th and that they do so with great enthusiasm.
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qatzelok
Bill, you mean like the laws controlling public expenses and the selection of public contractors? Maybe the laws regarding banking, or the natural laws about what can and can’t be done to the environment? Our current regime(s) are basically lawless, so I don’t know what kind of legal utopia you want to ‘return’ to. Ignorance might be bliss, but you can’t “go home” to it once you’ve been around the block.
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Hamza
All the laws before May 18th are still valid after May 18th
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An American Who Stumbled Upon This
This has little relevance to your respective political discussions, however, I couldn’t help but observe how civil and, for the most part, error-free are the comments are on here. It is so vastly different from reading the comment section of any American blog/newssite. Y’all are a well-educated lot. Yeeehaaa. Um, sorry redneck humor. Sigh. You can take the American to civilization, but, you can’t civilize him. Anyway, you folks have a wonderful country. Don’t destroy it by mirroring our right-wing policies.
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Ian
Thank you, weary traveller. If you want to see how stupid Canadians can be, go check out our national broadcaster, the CBC. Comments on cbc.ca are just as reactionary and misinformed as anything you’d expect from your brethren in Yanquistan. :)
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Hamza
please ignore the hate. We Canadians are proud of our CBC, just like i’m sure many Americans are proud of the great work NPR and PBS do on a daily basis.
Journalism shouldn’t be a for-profit enterprise, case closed.
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Ian
I wasn’t talking about the journalism so much as the comments associated with each article, although the CBC seems to have increasingly conservative slant as of late, at least as far as certain issues like the student movement in Quebec are concerned.
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Le Devoir has a terse statement from a law professor opining that preventive arrests are illegal in Canada and that their growing use is a concern. I doubt this kind of legal advice will change the trend, though.
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TiGuy
Ce type d’arrestation est illégal sauf dans les cas prévus à l’article 31 du Code criminel. Ce pamphlet banal de madame Sylvestre ne fait aucunement l’analyse des gestes spécifiques posés par la police. Franchement, je m’attendais à voir un peu plus de rigueur et de profondeur de la part d’une prof de droit.
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Hamza
Le Devoir is the only mainstream source i trust on the crisis
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joe
@Hamza
Don’t you mean LeDevoir is the only source that espouses your point of view? Isn’t that what it comes down to, your shared bias? -
Hamza
No
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Ian
I find La Presse to be giving fairly decent coverage, too. Besides JdeM it seems to be mostly Anglo media that’s misrepresenting the facts when they’re not outright distorting them. Even the CBC has a distinct anti-student slant. As an Anglo I’m beginning to find it quite embarrassing.
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anon
I also find the coverage by La Presse reasonable. I am fairly disheartened by The Gazette and the CBC on the other hand, my two normal sources for news…
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Peel Street was flooded by a broken water main on Tuesday morning, this following a sinkhole further south on the weekend when an old sewer collapsed under the street.
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The Journal has got hold of police photos of a satirical drawing they found at Amir Khadir’s house, a spoof on Delacroix’s Liberty leading the people, in which the Bananarchiste takes the place of Liberty and Khadir figures as the man holding a rifle. However, the tone is sombre, and verges on suggesting the image might mean charges for the artist, if not for Khadir himself.
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Ian
Oh no, satirical art? Terrists, clearly.
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Kate
Tweets are taking it very seriously indeed, e.g. could the fallen figure of Charest constitute a threat?
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Michel
Needs a bit of black velvet for that extra je ne sais quoi.
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qatzelok
Look where fascism is taking us: the wrong satire could land you in jail soon.
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marco
Having a picture of you killing your co worker on display in your living room does indicate a serious mental issue though.
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qatzelok
marco, are you able to deduce people’s mental health by the artwork they keep? If so, Jojo Savard is trying to channel you.
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Tux
I’m with qatzelok on this. I’m not a fan of Charest but this is satire, it’s art, not a threat. Bill Watterson’s Calvin made disturbing snow men. Does that mean Watterson was crazy? It’s dangerous saying someone ‘is’ something based on the company they keep, the books they read, the music they listen to… you can’t judge a book by its cover. Come on!
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ant6n
Seems kinda odd the police would take pictures in smoebody’s private home, then distribute them. Feels like a breach of privacy to me.
Anyhoo, this Khadir fellow is pretty wonky, not really party leader material. I wish Quebec Solidaire found somebody a bit less funky to represent them, otherwise it’s hard to take them seriously – and it’ll probably hurt their numbers, they are polling in the low double digits these days.
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qatzelok
@ ant6n: “this Khadir fellow is pretty wonky, not really party leader material.”
Well he’s not a corporate-owned drone like the candidates we’ve become used to. If you want more Obamas, then just say so. Then explain why nice poster graphics and the right mannequin features are more important than sound policies and the common good.
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ant6n
I think Layton wasn’t ‘corporate-owned’. And he was much more appealing to the people, and didn’t say and do wierd things all the time. It’s strawman to say that just because I think Khadir doesn’t have the seriousness and decorum of an opposition (or government) leader, that I am endorsing that candidates should be ‘corporate-owned’.
Asking for another leader for a party exactly is exactly focussing on sound politics and the common good – I may like the ideals of the party, I don’t like their leaders. -
JaneyB
This seems like quite a breach of privacy to me. Is it even legal for cops to do this? (What that means these days, I’m not so sure…). Obviously it’s satirical; what do you get lefty politicos for their birthdays? A bookshelf can only hold so much Gramsci…
And on that note, when is Don Charest’s birthday? – maybe we could chip in and get him a copy of the Civil Code of Quebec and The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms!
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steph
At first I was kind of shocked that the police would invade his privacy like that, but seeing as it’s actually a poster on sale by Mise en Demeure, it’s the equivalent of the police releasing to the press that there was a Warhol poster in Khadir’s house. If anything it’ll get Mise en Demeure some publicity and they might sell more 7$ posters.
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Ian
I’ve got Kropotkin, Lenin, Marx, Engels, and Bakunin on my bookshelf – I’m probably looking for an Austro-Hungarian emperor to assassinate. But wait – I have a Bible, the Koran, a Jewish Prayer Book & the Upanishads – I must be a religious zealot!
This whole thing is so stupid I can’t believe it’s even being reported. From the cops, no surprise, but I expect better from the press. I guess I should have known better.
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Kate
Khadir is considering suing the Journal de Montréal for the inflammatory headline “Khadir armé, Charest mort” on the article Tuesday morning. The Toronto Sun leaps in, calling Khadir ultra left wing and trying to draw some connection between Khadir and the band whose cover art this is, and not succeeding.
The Gazette summarizes some ritual sparring among politicos and CTV quotes Khadir reasonably saying “There are cartoons in newspapers every day that completely demolish leaders and some of those leaders have those cartoons in their office, where’s the problem?”
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Ian
“Mise en demeure’s latest album cover depicts four men sitting in a room with the heads of three men displayed on the wall – Charest, former Quebec premier Lucien Bouchard and Quebecor president and CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau, owner of Sun Media.” Ah, no wonder the Toronto Sun is so worked up. :D
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This morning it’s clear that the PQ have taken Argenteuil from the Liberals, a riding they’ve never held before. Notable in both Monday byelections is that the CAQ isn’t getting a lot of traction.
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Ian
How wonderful that Marois immediately brings up sovereignty. Ah well, at least another referendum will reduce rents.
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Ephraim
Yes, Ian, it will reduce rents… bank balances, taxes collected, jobs, etc. A self-imposed recession.
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Ian
Plus ça change…
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Jack
P.Q. has promised no referendum in first term and lets be honest despite the usual nationalist language I don’t think they have the stomach for it anymore. I believe what they and their apparatchiks want is a Lib-PQ binary that plays well to the traditional bleu-rouge split and requires zero personal or collective sacrifice. When somebody says they are voting P.Q. to form a nation ,its just fashion, liking buying your underwear at Simons. It feels good but it means nothing.
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C_Erb
Simons does have nice underwear.
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Ian
Better than Aubainerie, but not as good as the Bay. Can we turn this into a language issue? :D
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Wonderful longish essay by Chris DeWolf on Montreal’s underground city, its history and style – and why it works so well for us.
Stefan 03:07 on 2012/06/13 Permalink
is this really the will of the people, building another decarie-style highway instead of conserving the heritage of montreal and the province in order to adapt it for new purposes?
invoking ‘public security’ seems to be today’s killer argument with which the government can justify everything. i’d argue that a 6-lane highway is more deadly than a potentially crumbling building. and it could be secured with much less cost.
Bill Binns 07:59 on 2012/06/13 Permalink
I’m generally in favor of saving historic buildings but a 100 year old sugar refinery in a marginal neighborhood? It didn’t appear to be architecturaly interesting, nothing important ever happned there and even if you turned it into a museum, you will never get tourists to that part of town. The fact that it was done in a sneaky manner bothers me though. Montreal seems to have a long history of buildings being torn down at night or on weekends with little or no notice.
jeather 08:21 on 2012/06/13 Permalink
I don’t think every building needs to be kept, but let’s see: Transport Quebec owns the building, let it fall apart, then tore it down because it “couldn’t save it”. This is such a common, idiotic story. But the provincial government has never been fond of Montreal, not just the transport ministry.
Stefan 11:50 on 2012/06/13 Permalink
It may not be evident to keep and restore an insignificant building somewhere in the outskirts, but here in Vienna it is actually the cool thing to do for companies to re-adapt its interior and it works much better for old brick buildings than the new single-purpose buildings (cinemas, whatever). And because this has been done for decades, instead of razing, basically all old neighborhoods are interesting to walk around in. This is what attracts tourists, and while there are many such cities in europe, in north america montreal is one of the few with old buildings.
Kate 12:28 on 2012/06/13 Permalink
Consider how New City Gas has been preserved and has just been resurrected in Griffintown. The east-end building that’s just been demolished (not completely, but pretty seriously) is an industrial structure of a similar vintage.
Transport Quebec is, I find, particularly arrogant with Montreal. We didn’t want to extend Highway 25 to Laval, and a bridge was built anyway. We don’t want an enlarged Turcot cutting up more of the Sud-Ouest, and that’s just what we’re getting. Etc.
Ian 19:51 on 2012/06/13 Permalink
Well as they said, we’re just a city of students and immigrants, so who cares?
Chris 20:33 on 2012/06/13 Permalink
Transport Québec, its employees, and its management are decades behind in urbanism. Pity.
Frédéric 22:12 on 2012/06/13 Permalink
@Ian “a city of students and immigrants”
I think this quote best sums up all the condescendence this government has for its citizens. I’ve seen it before, but now I can’t trace it back to its source. Someone knows where it comes from, who said it and who reported it?
SMD 09:08 on 2012/06/14 Permalink
@Frédéric It is a quote by the Director of Planning for Montreal of the Ministère des Transports as reported by Plateau Mayor Luc Ferrandez : http://www.lucferrandez.com/turcot-same-old-same-old
qatzelok 09:52 on 2012/06/14 Permalink
@ Kate: “Transport Quebec is, I find, particularly arrogant with Montreal. We didn’t want to extend Highway 25 to Laval, and a bridge was built anyway. We don’t want an enlarged Turcot cutting up more of the Sud-Ouest, and that’s just what we’re getting. Etc.”
Transport Quebec is mafia central – car companies and oil companies lobbying the common good out of Quebec City politicos. The Train de l’Est is pure brown envelope – as twisted as the logic of private-public partnerships.