Doubts deepen over Chinese-backed Nicaragua canal as work starts

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

Doubts deepen over Chinese-backed Nicaragua canal as work starts

BY GABRIEL STARGARDTER
MANAGUA Fri Dec 26, 2014 2:25pm EST

(Reuters) - When one of the poorest countries in the Americas and a little-known Chinese businessman said they planned to undertake one of the biggest engineering projects in history, few people took them seriously.

A year and a half after the $50 billion project to build a canal across Nicaragua was launched by President Daniel Ortega, a former Marxist guerrilla, the doubts have only grown.

Work officially began this week. But reporters hoping to see any evidence of how it would be done in a fraction of the time it took to build the much-shorter Panama Canal, or discover who would pay for it, were left with more questions than answers.

At events marking the start of what is meant to be a five- year job, Nicaraguan officials and the Hong Kong-based company behind the canal dodged questions about its financial backers, mounting delays and whether Washington had been consulted.

[font size=1]-snip-[/font]

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/26/us-nicaragua-canal-idUSKBN0K410620141226

[rogerashton]

1. If it is a Chinese project

On the one hand, a second canal, completely outside U. S. auspices, would shift the balance of influence worldwide.

On the other hand, I seem to recall that the existing canal is too narrow for the biggest tankers and warships, so the U.S. could benefit from another canal.

On the gripping hand, we are closer -- and that could mean both that we gain more from the increased shipping capacity and that, in the event of armed conflict, our military would be more likely to "protect it" than the Chinese military would.

My guess is that Wang Jing is gambling on CPR support and financing for it, but it could be a bad gamble.

[Louisiana1976]

3. True. The Panama Canal is getting to be obsolete for the biggest ships and tankers so a

Nicaragua canal would be beneficial.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Why the propaganda crap, Reuters?

Why drone on about Nicaragua's President being a "former Marxist guerrilla"? What on earth does that have to do with the canal?

This really gets so damned old.

Sane people can see right through this obsessive attempt to control public perception.

Why didn't Reuters also remind us that the U.S. CIA illegally mined Nicaragua's harbors? Trained, outfitted, financed the Contras to try to overthrow the government after a sustained pattern of torture, murder, terrorism?

Here's the little reminder of that time. It's a wonder the CIA mines didn't blast a canal through for Nicaragua already!

The Miami Herald
July 27, 2001
Honduran: I mined Nicaragua harbors for CIA

BY ALFONSO CHARDY

A former Honduran military officer recently arrested in the United States for alleged human rights atrocities denies that he killed or tortured people. But he admits he
helped to mine the harbors of Nicaragua during the 1980s Contra war as part of a covert operation with the CIA and then-White House national security aide Oliver North.

In the first interview with a human rights abuse suspect since the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service began detaining alleged persecutors last year, Nelson de Jesús Vallejo says his arrest June 26 amounts to a betrayal on the part of the U.S. government.

``It's a sad turn of events,'' said the former Honduran air force officer from jail in Fort Lauderdale. ``I helped the CIA and Oliver North in a very sensitive operation and this is how this country pays me back. I am being abandoned and betrayed because of a change in policy.''

FOREIGN OPERATIVES

Vallejo's case may prove to be a textbook example of how the United States recruited foreign operatives during Cold War-era covert actions in Central America and how these agents later used U.S.-supplied visas to enter this country and stay illegally.

Vallejo said the Honduran air force's personnel office procured his U.S. tourist visa in the 1980s and placed it on his passport, a document he used in 1991 to flee
Honduras and illegally immigrate to the United States.

His alleged involvement in the harbor mining project has nothing to do with his troubles with the INS. During his initial claim for amnesty in the United States, Vallejo told federal authorities he had been involved in death squads.

More:
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/honduras/contra-mining.htm

[Louisiana1976]

4. Excellent points. Reuters is corporate-run media so it's easy to tell where their bias lies. Or you

can say their lies express their bias.