Falconview Hostel NEWS SERVICE

NEWS ITEMS OF WESTERN BELIZE RECREATIONAL AREA

• THE EPA, OR ECONOMIC PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT WITH THE EU
• JUNGLE SOUNDS OF HILLVIEW,
• UK CITIZENS INVITED TO IMMIGRATE TO THE CARIBBEAN
• BACKLOG IN BELIZE IMMIGRATION APPLICATIONS STILL THERE, AFTER 8 MONTHS OF UDP MANAGEMENT.
• WESTERN BELIZE RECREATIONAL AREA, GETS JAVIER FLYING SERVICE. FROM OFFSHORE BARRIER REEF TOURIST PLACES, TO LOCAL MUNICIPAL CENTRAL FARM AIRSTRIP!

Nothing much in the weekend news. PM Barrow disappeared on personal leave. The Cable Company dropped CARIBBEAN NEWS last Tuesday night after Channel 5 news. I waited for an hour or more to get the CARIBBEAN NEWS and hear about the EPA signing with the EU. But all we got was a substituted USA news TV program of no interest to us here in Belize, on their political convention up in North America. Something to do with Republicans. Will have to pay for some internet time today, to see what happened with the EPA and the position of Belize and CARICOM? None of our local media seem at all interested in the subject and are doing no reporting on the matter.

One item, was the Opposition party the PUP party newspaper rag, the BELIZE TIMES newspaper said something about victimization by the UDP who are in power and control the government. Claimed that Rene Montero our local UDP area representative fired about 15 employees from the BAHA agriculture unit. I wonder what that was about? They didn’t perform to my satisfaction either last year, when I dealt with them. Though I never thought they had that many employees.

Far as my experience has been, BELTRAIDE, BELIZE TOURIST BOARD and now BAHA an agriculture unit headquartered at Central Farm in the Western Belize Area are poor performing entities. At least the Tourist Board provides a useful government function in collecting accommodation taxes. I formed the opinion decades ago that Beltraide and the Belize Tourist Board were simply government institutions created to park PARTY HACKS and political relatives in government salaried jobs at tax payer expense. Surprised that BAHA fits the same mold according to this latest news item. Make work jobs, and no shows, I think the term is?

Neighbor here, supposedly a naturalized Guatemalan Belizean, still cannot get his papers for citizenship and also papers for the government house lot on which he built his house. Time elapsed is measured in years. Apparently a lot of people are complaining about it in Western Belize Cayo District. Obviously the new UDP government has failed to deal with the backlog found in Immigration applications. Down in the CREOLE port town, they are complaining about the shift in demographics from CREOLE to MESTIZO majority. Fact is; that the port town pays a lot of taxes, but it is a re-circulating type circle of government salaries and activity, that is non productive and basically they keep circulating the same tax revenue money. Each tax bite reduces the amount available until the rural districts foreign exchange earnings, trickle in more freshly earned money. The only NEW MONEY coming in; is from the Tourist Industry, oil taxes and the Agriculture Sector mostly. These foreign exchange sources are not in Belize City the port. In order to provide those monies being re-circulated in the port, you have to have the PRODUCTIVE SECTOR earning foreign exchange in the rural DISTRICTS. The new amateur UDP government hasn’t awoken to that nugget of truth yet, it seems? In favoring and pleasing their port town CREOLE dominance of the political process, they are spiting and hurting the economy, because the energy and foreign exchange is coming from out here mostly in the DISTRICTS. The port town media CREOLES argue they want the immigrants stopped from Central America, but heck the port Creoles won’t go out into the districts and start farming, ranching and light manufacturing? It is cheap land that is attracting immigrants and all the associated opportunities to grow with Belize. Thank God for immigrants, without them Belize would have nothing.

It is 1:30 a.m. in the early nighttime morning hours and I guess my noisy tapping away on the computer keyboard is aggravating the birds in their nests outside my windows. Lot of disturbance and jungle noises. Sounds like one of those meditation jungle sounds CD’s you buy to lower stress. All kinds of birds waking up complaining and talking. Sorry birds!

One of the interesting items in world news, is that the UK economy has hit a 60 year low. That is going back to the late 1948 period. That is post war, when the UK was demobilizing their army and pulling out of occupied Europe AFTER World War 2. The USA developed the MARSHAL plan to rebuild Germany and other European countries, funneling billions of dollars into those mainland Europeans, but the UK was saddled with the HUGE lend lease debt for war materials to pay off. England was worse off in that period than Germany and France. No MARSHAL plan for the UK. That has got to be some ECONOMIC LOW indeed for the UK? Think if I lived there, I’d sell everything and move to Belize, or the Caribbean countries. At least the weather is nice all year round, you can sleep in a tent and grow your own food. Lots of business opportunities too. Belize needs machinists that can make things, using applied engineering from off the shelf stuff, for export to Central America, plus food processing skills and modern packaging skills, Belize has a strong but small English expatriate numbers scattered around Belize, of immigrants over the decades. Bare bones living costs for retirees who rent, are about $650 usa per month. Some expatriats are in the offshore barrier reef cayes and some are out here in Cayo Western District living in the foothills. Lot of inter-marriage with Belizeans. The Americans outnumber the British as immigrants to Belize though.

Javier Flying Service offers charter flight now from the barrier reef islands of San Pedro and Caye Caulker tourist towns, to the Central Farm airstrip, five miles from the twin towns, agriculture and tourist shopping centers by local taxi.

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• Falconview Adventure Hostel telephone: 663 5580 Santa Elena Town, on the slope of Green Parrot Valley. Upscale and budget accomodations.
• Charter plane flight, to and from Cayes tel: 223 5360, or 610 0446 to Central Farm airstrip. ($375 or $415 usa plus 10% GST tax. (Cessna 172 ) 3 passengers.
• Local taxis are cars with green license plates in Western Belize, local fares are $8 bz, $4 usa, or 2 EU.

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WHAT WILL PM BARROW DO FOR BELIZE?

WHAT WILL PRIME MINISTER BARROW OF BELIZE DO?

by Ray Auxillou, September 2^nd., 2008

Today is the day, that PM BARROW is supposed to either sign, or not sign the EPA, which is the CONTRACT offered by the European Union, written by the European Union and offered to the CARICOM countries. Some will sign and some will not. CARICOM is a medly of independent sovereign states, that join forces sometimes, voting on international affairs and have somewhat similar training for lawyers and judicial systems, Caricom also has a mutual tariff arrangement, which is supposed to give duty free access for things made, or repackaged within CARICOM from imported raw materials. Once we shared common educational goals based under UK rules, but in the recent eleven years have diverged from much of the other CARICOM countries, to one of self sustainable sovereignty, which now includes two Universities in Belize and a college system geared to local industrial development.

The European Union wishes to blast open our markets in CARICOM, but cannot get a unity of Sovereign States to agree to sign any kind of common CONTRACT with them. We have no central government in CARICOM with any such authority. Those smaller CARICOM island countries accustomed to exporting their citizens to the industrialized worlds and have no ambitions to go to an independent self sufficiency wish to sign the EPA. The EPA offered is what the Europeans call the ECONOMIC PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT. Which means for accepting and aiding us to market our sugar and bananas in Belize, they get to sell us DUTY FREE all the hundreds of thousands of products they add value with, from imported raw materials from around the world. Belize of course, up to now, had the ambition to start exporting value added products ourselves and did not want to remain a raw commodity bulk exporter. What is happening with this EPA from the European Union being shoved down CARICOM member throats, in order to open our markets to their myriad products at preferential tariffs over the rest of the world, has to be signed individually by each member state of CARICOM. For CARICOM has no central government, there is no supranational organ to implement such decisions and make them binding on each sovereign state within CARICOM. Our Prime Minister BARROW has not discussed this signing with anyone, the media can find out about? It will be his unilateral decision. Not for the UDP party, not for the CABINET and not apparently with any advice from his bureaucrats? What will BARROW do? This is our ONE MAN government at work. The Economic Partnership Agreement ( slavery by another name, using euphemisms ) is going to be his decision ALONE, as far as anybody can see in Belize ? The slavery contract is for a minimum of ten years and perhaps longer. The whip of the EU to be used on us in Belize are threats of trouble with our sugar and banana exports to the EU.

This signing, or not signing, to occur today in the Eastern Caribbean by our Prime Minister, is but ONE battle in the war for independence of Belize , if our Prime Minister refuses to sign. If he has decided to sign the EPA contract, then the war is over and this battle is lost and we are effectively subjects now as colonials once again of a new master, the European Union, who have taken over the UK role in Belize. ‘ Within twelve hours we shall know the fate of Belize for the foreseeable future?

This effects mostly the future of the HEARTLAND of BELIZE and that of the Cayo District, the Western Belize Industrial Area that is developing export capacity, as population expands. The economic effects for the future are wide and far reaching.