Howler Monkey, Jaguar and Vicious Lizard of Belize photos.

The monkey is a famous HOWLER MONKEY. They are making a comeback in Belize after a disease killed most of them around World War Two. The lizard, I do not know it's name, but it is a vicious thing. A real killer. Goes after birds and their eggs in their nests in our entrance arbor and in the orange tree of the side of the front of our Falconview Backpackers Adventure Hostel. Even my dog is afraid to tackle the darned lizard. The JAGUAR is the national famous something or other. We actually have a Jaguar Reserve in Central Belize along the Belize Alps Eastern side. This jaguar was in the famous BELIZE ZOO, full of native animals orphaned young, or injured and rescued by Sharon Matola ( a traveling backpacker and immigrant to Belize who started the Belize Zoo )

We have lots of photos on the internet at: http://westernbelizehappenings.blogspot.com and articles and stories of life mostly to do effecting people living in the Western Belize foothills area. A 500 square recreational and agriculture area with a climate of ETERNAL SPRING.

Tropical Belize POLINA tomato experiment at Taiwanese Vegetable Mission in Belize

The POLINA tomato experiment at Taiwanese Vegetable Mission at Central Farm in Belize is over. As you can see from the photo the tomatoes are about done. They are also smaller than the POLINA I get. I talked to the Chinese guy Miguel and he said he did not do anything to the vines. Consequently they were bearing 5 to 7 tomatoes per branching, or budding and thus without pruning down to 2 or 3 tomatoes per bunch, you don't get the big size, because the nutrition feeding capacity is reduced, for soil based production.

GUATEMALA DECEIVES BELIZE in new foreign policy gambit!

ONCE AND FOR ALL TIME !
by Ray Auxillou

I think it was Belizean Attorney General introduced that phrase into the discussion of the BRAND NEW GUATEMALAN CLAIM. This phrase continues to resonate negatively in the media and is very damaging to the psyche of the country of Belize, because it is a pure lie. A piece of deceitful fabrication, or disinformation. The media keep using this phrase regarding taking the NEW GUATEMALAN CLAIM to go to the International Court. "ONCE AND FOR ALL TIME" was true enough when the United Nations voted to make us INDEPENDENT, in the UN CHARTER for self determination, but to keep repeating this negative phrase endlessly?
NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH! Despite the fact it is foolish to gamble away any territory at the International Court, when you are in possession. Especially when the gamble is YOU, or us, risking everything, and Guatemala risking NOTHING. That is a damned stupid gamble.
What makes my hair stand up on end, and aggravates my bile, is that phrase the media of the port town in Belize keep trotting out. We can settle this ONCE AND FOR ALL TIME! What a bollocks of a lie! If we go to the ICJ.
As long as Guatemala has a paragraph in their Constitution making it treason for anyone to discuss giving up the BELIZE CLAIM, nothing can be ONCE AND FOR ALL TIME. All it means is; if Guatemala goes to court and wins, she gets something for no risk. We lose! If we win the court case, the paragraph in their GUATEMALAN CONSTITUTION makes going to the International Court a big joke, on us. Guatemala will be back again in some other venue, if she loses this no risk gamble for them, and in another generation of politicians will be back just like now, with the CLAIM. Blaming that paragraph in their constitution as an excuse for their actions.
For the International Court and the Referendum to be FAIR, Guatemala would have to show GOOD FAITH and delete that paragraph claiming Belize from their Constitution. As long as the Guatemalan Constitution stands as it is now, Guatemala is not acting in GOOD FAITH. We cannot even discuss this subject with Guatemala, UNTIL they delete that paragraph from their CONSTITUTION, as a pre-requisite to even holding a REFERENDUM. None of this makes any sense otherwise.

Fortis electricity debate in Belize- FORTIS threatens to sell out!

FORTIS ELECTRICITY SUPPLY TV INTERVIEW, WITH STANLEY IN BELIZE

The head of FORTIS made no bones about, he wants to make money in the electricity business. Fair enough. The Belizean tv interviewers and he, went round and round in their questions and answers. FORTIS claim $10 million operating losses last year for BEL the distribution company and Stanley of FORTIS said he will no longer invest in the distribution company BEL under the PUC regime. He wants a return to a sort of guaranteed dividend system and that the Belize Government, present and past have not lived up to their agreement to establish some sort of system that will establish a guaranteed rate of return, or dividend. Belizeans under the new UDP government are trying to understand how big business works and were the money is. We are after all, a bunch of rural country bumpkins.
Stanley I think his name is; head of FORTIS the Canadian Electric Company running the pyramid of electrical companies, said BELIZE only represents 3% of their gross incomes in Canadian Fortis Company electrical supply, worldwide management services. I got the impression that the $3 billion investment in the country was enough now, that he would like to either get his way, or cash in his profits by selling the assets FORTIS now owns in Belize
There was considerable double talk and essentially he is angry that the profit that the companies make, are not being maintained. As Stanley explained it, they cannot keep up with depreciation costs. The cash profit flow is re-invested in expansion assets which are owned by FORTIS.
I listened to the pro and con and I was asking myself, why and what does he want out of Belize and where, if you take his talk at FACE VALUE, is their profit in FORTIS. The only way I could say, is by using an analogy of investing in a 300 apartment complex and how you make money off that. The loss is in the depreciation and the profit is the increase of the value of your property investment over time by appreciation. The cash flow you throw back into maintainance and write offs and you try to take some of the cash flow off, by some dividends and management costs. Long term investment though, you are holding and expanding the value of your assets, to resell some years down the road and that is where the real profit is. The money profit is the re-investment in the apartment complex, which over ten, or twenty years if you have maintained it and covered the depreciation amounts, from your rental cash flow, is your PROFIT, when you re-sell those assets. If done right, the apartment complex loses money over ten years, but since you use the money flow those apartments earn to maintain, while taking off your depreciation, you eventually have an investment that is FREE and CLEAR if you had borrowed loans to start off with, and now worth millions of dollars you can cash out when you sell. The apartment rents put back in the business, make you your profit when you re-sell over a long period of time.
In the case of the pyramid electrical companies in Belize, owned mostly by FORTIS, the value, or assets are now around $3 billion, I understand Stanley of FORTIS said. The thing is BELIZEANS have paid for it ALL. Except the original investment, which by now is covered, or written off, or fully depreciated. FORTIS just manage the overall investment. My understanding is; that he is fighting with the government right now, over the guaranteed rate of return, from which he takes off DIVIDENDS and the management fees? He may already have the management fees in the balance sheets, as an operating cost? I wouldn’t know about that. FORTIS he says are re-investing in the Belize Electricity system most of the BELIZEAN CUSTOMER CASH FLOW they are getting back and maintaining the value of the investment, in dams and distribution lines, or expanding these as re-investment ( which will be years ahead Fortis profit ) from the CASH FLOW supplied by the USERS which are the Belizean consumers, but while Belizean consumers are paying for EVERYTHING, through the Fortis management system, only FORTIS are accumulating ASSET WEALTH, because the electrical system they are expanding and building is the FORTIS profit eventually. If and when FORTIS decide to sell the operation to a world bidder. Stanley indicated he wanted to SELL out now and collect the $3 BILLION for FORTIS, the electrical operation in Belize, is now worth. Belizean consumers don’t own anything. We are just like renters in the apartment complex analogy. The electrical system of Belize, belongs to FORTIS the way it is setup.
Stanley of FORTIS is right in that he wants a properly regulated rate of return system and obviously there should be; a government to FORTIS dialogue. I don’t think either our PUC people, and certainly our CABINET people, understand the way BIG BUSINESS works. The profit for FORTIS, is actually in the building up of the assets value, by using consumers money. Fortis at some time can re-sell those growing valued assets to outside foreign world firms, or take the companies PUBLIC on the stock exchange and make money that way, with the assets they are acquiring by re-investing our consumers money wisely. I liked Stanley’s argument, that he wants to do it right, as to quality and service reliability, or NOT at all. I agree with that.
Belizeans apparently under the UDP and PUC are educating themselves on how this big business works! In the meantime, FORTIS is not covering depreciation cost losses, from Belizean consumers cash flows, which eventually reinvested turn into ASSET VALUE for Fortis. The rate of return and a system, or formula for calculating all this needs to be set in place.

HOW WILL THE NEXT ICE AGE EFFECT BELIZE?

THE NEXT “ICE AGE” COMING SOON !

by Ray Auxillou, Jan.13th, 2009

Those of you on the Belize Culture Listserve for the last twenty years, will remember fifteen years or so, ago, when I had a webpage on the coming ICE AGE. Unfortunately, the web page was on a free web hosting service and they wiped it out, along with a hundred other scientific pages I had. Those of you long term members of this listserve, will recollect that my forecast for a very quick ICE AGE was around 450 years from now. I recollect when HOLLYWOOD phoned me about my ICE AGE web pages and asked about the data. Unfortunately, I was unable to respond and if memory serves me, it was to do with the changing orbit of the Earth and tilt of the Earth, along with some other geological data from Ice Cores. The actual forecast was arrived at of several nights of sleeping and dreaming REM sleep with the data then available, when the subconscious arrived at that particular guess of 450 years. Needless to say, most of you will actually be able to remember HOLLYWOOD actually produced a DISASTER MOVIE on the ICE AGE, in which three hurricanes combined to reach into the stratosphere and bring down the cold of outer space into the Northern Hemisphere.

That said, you can watch the Hollywood movie, which in effect is probably as close to what is predicted to happen in a matter of days, even though the process may be somewhat different as a scenario. You can get the movie on CD.

Here though is some updated data on the coming ICE AGE and it seems to be closer than 450 years? Since we are measuring geological changes on the longer term cycles, pinpointing an actual arrival date for the next ICE AGE is inaccurate. Suffice to say; we are OVERDUE for this to happen, roughly 2000 to 3000 years. This event could be triggered and occur at any time! What the trigger is, we do not know. We do know the ICE AGE runs in cycles of around 100,000 years, with minor warming periods on shorter cycles. The warmest interglacial period is that we live in now and we are at the end of this period. Cyclically this period runs around 10,000 years and in this case we are already about 13,000 years into it. We have an idea of what causes the end of the ICE AGE and the start of the 10,000 year warm inter-glacial, but not which event triggers that will start the ICE AGE. The end of the ICE AGE usually comes when the ORBIT changes closer to the SUN and the tilt of the EARTH passes through an asteroid belt, believed to be a long term 26,000 year cycle out of the elliptic. 13,000 years ago, current theory says an asteroid hit the ARCTIC OCEAN ICE CAP and the blast swept across the Northern Hemisphere. This set fires and the geological record confirms this event with a carbon layer all over North America, when fires raged, blast damage was sustained and there are charcoal layers, at that layer of sediments in the geological record. The ICE AGE large predators and animals were wiped out instantly. Of more concern to us today here in Belize, is that the next ICE AGE cycle is overdue and could occur over a few days or a week. How, we do not know? If I was living in North America, Canada or the USA, I surely would recommend moving out of there. My wife and I already did, to BELIZE.

Al GORE, former USA vice president got a Nobel Prize for his presentation on global warming and the rise in CO 2 in our atmosphere. Obviously this was a political structured NOBEL PRIZE, because his science was totally false. His data and presentation was based on rising CO 2 levels in the atmosphere, predicated on human industrial activity in the burning of fossil fuels. Unfortunately in geological terms, his data was based on climate data less than a few hundred years old.

Paleoclimatolgy has served the scientific community with data going back around 420,000 years and this crosses several ICE AGE phenomena. The EARTH is living and breathing in much longer cycles of millions of years. What we have from paleoclimatology and scientific data from astronomy, geology, ice cores from places like Antartica, Greenland and the VOSTOK ICE CORES supplied by the Russian scientific establishment. Including ocean sediment cores and other data, is that; rising CO 2 gases are a normal part of the cycle of change, but that this change is based on leading rising ocean temperatures. If you remember your COCA COLA soft drink, when it is placed in a refrigerator, the carbon dioxide forced into the liquid during manufacture seems to dissolve, or disappear in the soft drink liquid. When it warms up, or is shaken, it fizzes as the CO 2 comes out. This knowledge is also true of the OCEANS. The rising temperatures of the OCEANS preceed the released CO 2 levels found in our atmosphere by around 750 years according to cyclical ice core data. Increased CO atmospheric gas is coming from our oceans, because they are warming. The effect of humans is miniscule on this longer term cyclical process. The obvious conclusion from paleoclimatology is that; rising ocean temperatures are leading rising CO 2 levels by around 750 years, the ICE CORE data show. You can find graphs online for the VOLSTOK ICE CORE data and temperature, and CO 2 levels going back 420,000 years. CO 2 levels will not drop, the cyclical data show, until the OCEANS start to cool. What trigger will cool the oceans? The water will absorb the CO 2.

During the warm interglacial period of 325,000 years ago, the atmospheric CO 2 levels were higher than they are today. True, we are rapidly approaching that cyclical peak of the last couple of ICE AGE cycles this happened in paleoclimatology.

The warm interglacial period in which we live is called the HALOCENE. The astrological cycle studies are three in number and best expressed by a Russian scientist named the MILANKOVITCH THEORY of causation of ICE AGE changes. When you study astrology, or the movement of EARTH by watching the stars, ORBIT CHANGE is usually done in long time periods. What we know is based on periods of TIME longer than a 20,000 year cycle. While humans have been on EARTH for millions of years, if not more than a hundred million years, our written history is based mostly on the past 6000 years, even though we have town and city ruins on EARTH going back to 11,000 years discovered and excavated by archeologists. There has been extensive study in recent years on mini-climate cycles over the past 2000 years. A very short period indeed. We have had some mini short term cold cycles of just a few years, in which humans died off from starvation in the last 1200 years. Changing temperatures, rain patterns and droughts.

Orbital mechanics of planet EARTH are longer cycles, based on periods over 20,000 years. The change in the cyclical orbit of planet Earth is a much slower component of climate change. The most pronounced public data are the RUSSIAN VORSTOK data of ANTARCTIC ICE CORES going back 420,000 years. When you combine the fossil record, geology, paleobotany, zoology, you get the cyclical picture of recurring ICE AGES in a rhythm of around 100,000 years. We are overdue for the next ICE AGE and while the arguments go on, what will cause it to occur; the

TIMING debate is anywhere from 72 hours, to three years for an ICE AGE to swallow the Northern Hemisphere and kill off billions of humans and other animals. That Europeans and North Americans do not make libraries and technology and machine museum storage in places like Belize, Colombia and central Africa is beyond me. We have caves in Belize that could be used.

It is also apparent from archeological work, that humans survived quite well behind the shelter of the Himalayas, in what today is called PAKISTAN, KASHMIR and northern India. There was also a pocket of humans survived in the PYRANEES mountains of Europe, warmed apparently by the GULF STREAM and a wall of mountains. Studies of the BASQUES and NEANTHERDALS have shown us this.

From the viewpoint of us here in Belize, Central America; a sudden climate change would effect our temperatures and the types of crops we could grow. We would change from a tropical environment to a temperate environment, probably within a single week. Humans did live in Belize during the last ICE AGE, archeological work record, by teeth and tool marks on extinct GIANT SLOTHES, a predator of the ICE AGE show. Perhaps our government could ask our local BNE oil company, to share their oil exploration data and tell us what trees and plants grew here in this locality during the last ICE AGE? We need only go back 15,000 years for data. The coming ICE AGE is going to change human numbers from the billions of people living on EARTH, to only a few million, or less, around the world. ARE YOU PREPARED?

References: Joseph Adheumar 1842

Joseph Croll 1875

Milutin Milankovitch 1920 -30’s

John Imbria, James, Hayes, Nicholas Shackelton, 1976

Journal “NATURE” of 1992 on Russian Volstock ice core data


Estimating the arrival of the next ICE within 400 years.
http://westernbelizehappenings.blogspot.com


Information on visiting and living in Belize
http://folkmusicfl.tripod.com/adventuresinbelize/

Reid and Ayers visit Falconview owner in Western Belize

A rainy day, with a NORTH STORM FRONT stalled overhead. Hear it is freezing cold up in North America. Coldest they say since 1912? Two Belize Culture Listserve members came visiting, as they were in the vicinity. Al Ayers from Philadelphia someplace, a Belizean originally and Mr. Reid, our retired ex-Police Press Officer. We had an enjoyable chat up here in rainy Green Parrot Valley at Falconview Backpackers Adventure Hostel. It rained for two nights and a whole day straight. The Macal river is flooding again, the hydro dam upstream must be overflowing also.

TRAIL BIKES CAN BE RENTED IN TWIN TOWNS FOR 2009 TOURIST SEASON

PACZ TOURS AND RENTAL TRAIL BIKES

Western Belize is full of dirt roads. A trail bike is ideal to get around. A German guy apparently has this tourist season in 2009, put out trail bikes for tourism rental. For saving money on tours, this probably is the way to go. You want to go the long distance inland to CARACOL ruins, definitely. Or tour the Belize Alps back roads. Be sure you have a map though. I was told by BOB the retired army Englishman living here and helping to manage PACZ TOURS that two of the bigger trail bikes charge $70 usa per day and the rest of them charge $50 usa per day.

written by: Falconview Backpackers Adventure Hostel, tel: 663 5580 your HOME away from HOME and lots of adventures and expeditions.