Breaking Ground on the Nicaragua Canal, from the January 2, 2015 New Yorker: linked below


New Yorker Article

Long cliff notes from above article, cut and paste of select paragraphs for synopsis:
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A few days before Christmas, in Brito, Nicaragua, on the Pacific coast, a groundbreaking ceremony was held for the world’s latest megaproject. The Nicaragua Canal is expected to take five years to complete and cost fifty billion dollars; when finished (if it is ever finished), the hundred-and-seventy-two-mile canal will bisect Nicaragua from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean.

At the ceremony, the canal’s impresario—a Chinese billionaire named Wang Jing —spoke fulsomely about the canal, describing the project as “the most important in the history of humanity.” His audience mostly consisted of local officials and about two hundred Chinese and Nicaraguan employees in yellow and white hard hats and orange and blue jumpsuits. Later that day, Wang, a pudgy man in his early forties, appeared at an event in the Nicaraguan capital, Managua, with Daniel Ortega, the former Marxist guerrilla turned born-again Christian who has become the country’s eternal President. Ortega pushed through the bill that last year granted a fifty-year, renewable canal concession to Wang……………

Today, some former Sandinistas believe that Ortega has betrayed his revolutionary principles over the canal. Among the most prominent is the writer Sergio Ramírez, Ortega’s former Vice-President. On the occasion of the groundbreaking ceremony, Ramirez tweeted, “Today is a tragic day for Nicaragua. With the Chinese canal, its sovereignty is once again surrendered to a foreign power.”………………..

Wang’s development plans, approved last summer by the Nicaraguan Congress, which is dominated by Sandinista Party loyalists, call not only for the canal but also for new seaports on both coasts, new satellite cities along the canal route, and tourist resorts. They also include a new railroad, highways, an oil pipeline, and steel and cement mills. There has been much speculation about Wang’s relationship with the Chinese government. He insists that he is a “private businessman,” but Nicaraguans and others who have met him and visited his corporate offices in China have come away convinced that he is well-connected in Communist Party circles. The Ortega government, never known for its transparency, has been particularly opaque about its dealings with Wang, increasing concern about corruption in the canal concession. At the groundbreaking ceremony, Wang said that Nicaraguans whose land is expropriated would be compensated based on “market principles,” with “no tricks or lies.” He added, “We will respect all the rights of the Nicaraguans.” The U.S. government, too, has been unusually inscrutable about the canal. Far from warning China to back off its traditional turf, the Obama Administration has limited its public observations to calls for greater openness in Wang’s bidding process………

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This canal building scheme is going to be fun to watch and interesting from being to end, hence this initial post. This is also posted for prosperity and to give unfettered opportunity to all the snivelers and whiners, the ignorant and downtrodden, and the doomsayers, and the fans and cheerleaders to unleash their opinions on something they know very little about or even nothing at all. My only comment is that this big dig is starting out in fine comedic fashion and will certainly supply laughable material for years to come. Most orgies do. Enjoy.

The Nicaragua anagram is gonna be a bitch to come up with.

I worry that Costa Rica and western Panama will float away once they are severed from both continents.

The Great Wall of Texas.

My bold prediction of the day: this will run over-schedule and over-budget.

Oh I mean palindrome.

That makes so much more sense.

Pilau gar, a cinema's same Nicaragua lip.



Best I can manage.

Is this all just BRICS flexing?

I did wonder about this

too many "a"

Iguana car.

Yes. The N in BRIC is invisible.

Is this not being paid for by Chinese and Russian investment? If so, is it actually coming from the new BRICS development bank proper? If it is could the project not be interpreted as their debutante party of sorts?

They've got to be eager to start flipping South American countries. I've heard Argentina is definitely interested with the financial woes they're in.

HKND is building the canal, below is the link to their website, with webpage on their partners so far.

HKND Group Website


Financing is still shadowy, link below is to Wall Street Journal article one month old.

Wall Street Journal

From WSJ article:


.......Many economic analysts believe the canal is unfeasible and will never be built, or worse, could end up half built as funding runs out.

“It’s a gigantic white elephant,” said Jean-Paul Rodrigue, a transportation expert at Hofstra University. Neither the Nicaraguan government nor Mr. Jing’s Hong-Kong based HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co., known as the HKND Group, has said where it expects to get the financing.

Canal spokesman Telémaco Talavera said the financial information will be known in due time. “The information will be made public,” said Mr. Talavera, declining to give any other details. “We have met with potential investors from all over the world.” ........


Mr. Rodrigue, the infrastructure expert, says he didn’t believe the canal would be able to compete with an expanded Panama Canal, whose new set of locks is expected to be operational by 2016 and will be able to handle ships carrying up to 12,000 containers. Neither does he expect Mr. Jing will be able to raise the financing.

Indeed Mr. Rodrigue believes the canal project is really a cover to build extensive real-estate developments along its route.

“You sell the country a big dream, you get an open door and you score big with real-estate development,” he said. “The great majority of the project that has been shown by Chinese developers are real-estate projects. They seem to be using the canal as an excuse to sell real-estate projects, golf courses, and hotels.”

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This is really going to be great.

wp

I LOL'd.
Esp. remembering a few of those 20-megabody capacity cities they're building in China, where several skyscrapers in progress have just simply "fell down".

Lake Nicaragua seems really cool. It's right near the Pacific but drains into the Atlantic. It's got active volcanic islands from which you can see the Pacific and a separate archipelago. It's freshwater but has marine species that swim for days up and down river to commute in and out.

Hope they don't ruin it.