Telemaco Talavera, spokesman for Nicaragua’s Grand Canal Commission, announced three days ago the commission’s expectation that work on building the Brito port on the Pacific end of the Canal project will begin in earnest in the beginning of 2016; Canal excavation and lock work is expected to start in the last half of 2016. HKND, the Chinese company which holds the concession for building and operating the canal, was widely reported to have pushed the date back to the end of 2016.

That timeframe is behind the originally-projected start, but does not justify the “Nicaragua Canal put off and may never be built” lie being broadcast widely by the trans-Atlantic media.

The delay is the result of the time it took to prepare, present and discuss the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment, carried out at HKND’s request by the British environmental consultancy ERM. ERM’s report found the project would have a “Net Positive Impact” both on the environment and social conditions in Nicaragua, while recommending specific changes in the canal project (e.g. moving locks on both the Caribbean and Pacific sides more inland) which took some re-engineering on the overall plan.

The government and HKND held nine public consultation meetings on the ESIA report in September and October, in which around 3,000 people — businessmen, university students, representatives of communities along the Canal route, trade unionists, scientists, religious groups, environmentalists, NGOs, foreign diplomats, etc.— participated. The consultations, some raucous, served to build support for the Canal project, even managing to split some of the more rational environmentalists from the hard core, “irrational conservationists” Prince Philip-types. On Nov. 5, the government issued an environmental license for the project to move forward.

Talavera and other Nicaraguan government officials say that now the stalled work on building the Brito port can proceed, a precondition for being able to disembark the huge earth-moving machinery required to begin excavation later in the year.

The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office has named George Soros’s Open Society Foundations and the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation as “undesirable groups,” banning Russian citizens and organizations from participation in any of their projects, according to RT today.

In a statement released Monday, prosecutors said the activities of the two NGOs were “a threat to the foundations of Russia’s Constitutional order and national security.”

The investigation began in July when the Duma approved a patriotic “stop-list” of 12 groups for anti-Russian activities. Other groups on the list included the National Endowment for Democracy and its two affiliates, the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute, as well as the MacArthur Foundation and Freedom House.

The NED was then immediately declared an undesirable group after prosecutors discovered they had spent millions to undermine Russian elections and “tarnish the prestige of national military service,” said RT.

Soros announced earlier this year that he backs sanctions against Russia and called for a $50 billion fund for Ukraine to “counter Moscow’s nationalist expansionism,” writing in the New York Review of Books that this would foil Putin’s “attempts to destabilize Ukraine.” 

A two-pronged public-private “investment fund” for renewable energy was announced Monday, from Paris, with psycho-killer Barack Obama appearing with tech tycoon cum philanthropist Bill Gates for the announcement. Twenty nations have agreed to join the Mission Innovation fund, Obama said, through which (according to their website) they will “seek to double [their respective] governmental and/or state-directed clean energy research and development investment over five years,” for a fund worth $20 billion. From the private side, Gates has pulled together “28 investors from 10 countries” for what he calls the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, which will, separately but in tandem with governments, seek to “drive innovation from the laboratory to the marketplace.” While the sharks won’t say just how much they will invest, Gates, himself has reportedly pledged upwards of a billion dollars.

For the event, Gates wrote a paper titled, “Energy Innovation,” in which he says the goal is to bring the “cost premium” for renewables down to the level of coal. The truth is that this is a fool’s errand, since the energy density of “renewables” (primarily solar and wind) is a mere fraction of the “black demon,” coal (not to mention nuclear fission or fusion-based power). The reality is that this fund will serve — from the government side — to bribe recalcitrant governments, or — from the private side — to siphon off emerging talent into the morals-free “get rich quick” technology/venture capital world of Silicon Valley. It will not raise anyone’s standard of living, except maybe the billionaire funders.

In that light, it is useful to see just exactly who is involved (and from where) in this global, fascist network. From the tech side, we have Bill Gates (co-founder, Microsoft), Reid Hoffman (founder, LinkedIn), Jeff Bezos (founder, Amazon), Marc Benioff (founder, SalesForce), Mark Zuckerberg (co-founder, Facebook) and his wife Dr. Priscilla Chan (a pediatrician), and Meg Whitman (former CEO, Hewlett Packard).

Silicon Valley venture capitalists Vinod Khosla and John Doerr, Tom Steyer (former hedge fund manager, now with Next Generation Climate), Julian Robertson (Tiger hedge fund), Nat Simons and wife Laura Baxter-Simons (Prelude Ventures), Ray Dalio (Bridgewater Associates), “retired” hedge fund manager John Arnold and George Soros (Soros Fund, Open Society Institute).

From Europe: Chris Hohn (TCI “Children’s” hedge fund, U.K.), Richard Branson (Virgin Group, U.K.), Xavier Niel (Iliad Group, France), Hasso Plattner (SAP software, Germany).

From Asia and Africa: Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Tabal, Aliko Dangote (Dangote Group, Nigeria), Patrice Motsepe (Africa Rainbow Minerals, South Africa), Jack Ma (Alibaba, China), Neil Shen (Sequia Capital, China), Ms. Zhang Xin and Mr. Pan Shiyi (co-founders, SOHO China), Masayoshi Son (SoftBank Group, Japan), Mukesh Ambani (Reliance Industries, Ltd., India), Ratan Tata (Tata Sons, India), and the investment office of the University of California.