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General Threads
Name: Howard E. Joseph MessageName: Richard James (via rlt) Message1. If you are located within local calling distance from your server you do not pay long distance to connect. If your server is Hondutel you can be anywhere in the country and will not pay long distance to connect. Hondutel server connections are slower and more congested but they usually work and can save you a lot of money. Some kinds of files can't be downloaded over the Hondutel server. New Hondutel server connections are sometimes unavailable; they are expanding their capacity. There may be a waiting list. If you get put on a waiting list keep reapplying; nobody reads the waiting list. 2. Most servers recommend a 52 k modem. It is true that you will never get up to 52k over Hondutel land lines. On a long download over a long distance in country connection you might get up to 2000 bits/second. But servers claim that the 53k modems give fewer drop offs and fewer problems. I have found this to be true. 3. Unlimited service for a fixed fee is available ($20 to $30/month) and is the rule. The expensive part can be your phone connection to your server, as stated above. For example, I live in Puerto Cortes and connect to my server in San Pedro Sula. That line connection time costs me about $0.10 a minute or about $6.00 per hour. Not conducive to lazy surfing or chatting. 4. If you are in a city with a privately operated server available, try that first. If there is no privately operated server within local call distance and expense is a major consideration, try Hondutel. I think the best server is Sigmanet <http://www.sigmanet.hn>www.sigmanet.hn They have excellent equipment, 180 incoming lines at their San Pedro Sula server, about 80 incoming lines at their Tegucigalpa server, will very soon have their own earth station for connecting direct into the internet backbone, and are in the process of setting up nodes at other towns in Honduras. There is never a wait with Sigmanet. If you are a customer bring your computer to them and they will load a browser if you don't have one and will configure your machine, for free. 5. When it rains connections can be poor. Next time you drive through a town or city in Honduras just look up at the phone lines; you will see many many unprotected splices open to the elements. No big deal; just wait till the sun comes out. 5. A UPS is essential. Power outages are sometimes frequent, voltage drops also. ADDENDUM: Stay away from cheap modems. US Robotics and Motorola are excellent. There are others; ask a qualified person. Also, try to get a modem with full duplex capability. If you don't know much about this game take a qualified person with you when you go shopping. Read the technical info that comes in the package before you buy. Beware of imitations, many manufacturers will package in such a manner that you think you are getting a Motorola modem when all you are getting is a Motorola chip. The architecture, other parts, etc are somebody else's. Name: russell salsman MessageMy wife and I are endeavoring to adopt a child from the Caribbean Christian Orphanage in Omoa, Puerto Cortes. Any advice anyone may have, particularly with the local adoptions process, will be most appreciated. Name: russell salsman MessageName: Richard A. James (via RLT) Message1. <http://www.caribe.hn/hre/hre.htm>http://www.caribe.hn/hre/hre.htm Standard Fruit Company. Offers free ocean freight to Honduras for disaster relief materials. Current health risks for travelers and prevention info. 2. <http://help.juno.com/>http://help.juno.com/ Free email service. 3. <http://www.casa-alianza.org/>http://www.casa-alianza.org/ Covenant House. Rescue and care of street children. 4. <http://www.hcjb.org/English/>http://www.hcjb.org/English/ The Voice of the Andes. One of the worlds best English language short wave world wide broadcast nets. The site lists frequencies and program info. 5. <http://www.hitbox.com/wc/world.html?W52700221>http://www.hitbox.com/wc/world.html?W52700221 Listing and ranking of the worlds best 1000 web sites. 6. <http://www.info.usaid.gov/hn>http://www.info.usaid.gov/hn Up to date status of airports, roads, seaports in Honduras. 7. <http://www.netzero.com/>http://www.netzero.com/ Free internet access and email. 8. <http://www.prepare-now.com/index.html>http://www.prepare-now.com/index.html Emergency preparedness equipment. They have a solar & battery powered multiband short wave radio which looks interesting. Also a radio powered by some kind of wind-up mechanism. 9. <http://www.enviroweb.org/publications/rodale/ag-sieve/vol4no2.html#Bt>http://www.enviroweb.org/publications/rodale/ag-sieve/vol4no2.html#Bt Very extensive information on the biological control of disease spreading and crop damaging insects. Solid info on control of malaria and dengue vectors. 10. <http://www.pipeline-america.com>www.pipeline-america.com Water purification by distillation. 11. <http://www.truckstop.com/home.html>http://www.truckstop.com/home.html Freight matching service for the USA and Canada. 12. <http://www.xc.org/echo/seeds.htm>http://www.xc.org/echo/seeds.htm Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization (ECHO). ECHO sends free, trial packets of seeds to its overseas network. ECHO&rsqu;0s seedbank contains over 450 varieties of hard-to-find food plants, multi-purpose trees, fruit trees, and other tropical crops. These plants hold special potential for producing under difficult conditions&mdas;0where it is too dry, too wet, or too hilly for most crops. Agricultural workers report on performance and acceptance of the plants. Successes and field experiences are shared with our network via ECHO Development Notes. (Gardeners in North America, Europe, Australia, and other "developed" areas may buy packets of SELECTED SEEDS ONLY to try in their own gardens.) 13. <http://www.environmentalhouse.com>http://www.environmentalhouse.com An environment friendly, low cost house. Made of special bricks. Very high insulation value. Can be built by anyone. 14. <http://www.habitat.org>http://www.habitat.org Habitat for Humanity International. Self perpetuating housing projects for the third world. Active in Honduras. Habitat for Humanity International works to eliminate substandard housing through affiliates around the world. Habitat is an ecumenical Christian housing ministry that welcomes to its work people of all faiths.
Name: Richard A. James MessageI have some people in the USA who are organizing relif efforts. We need info on the road between San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa. Which sections are open? Which sections are closed? Also need updates as things change. Please help. Thanks. Name: Jim Dunn MessageI'm trying to locate a relief donation drop site/organization here in the Dallas area. I tried the consolate in Houston but they didn't know of any specifics. Anyone have a phone number, address, ........... I'd really like to help out. Directions appreciated. Jim Name: Lorenzo Dee Belveal (via rlt) MessageJudy McMillin wrote in part: > Listeroos and Javier, > > Are you defending the "system" of bribery and extortion? > > Extorting money from a person who has merely walked into your office to pay his taxes (matriculation fee) is dishonest and petty, and there is no defense of this behavior! Judy
If you wish to understand and perhaps placate your feelings of frustration and confusion apropos Honduras taxes (of whatever kind), begin with the solid realization that Honduras taxes, even in the aggregate, are much less important to the economics and continuing functions of the political macro-organism, than are the illegal bribes they "trigger". To place the cornerstone for this unlikely-sounding argument, remember that a few months ago, as one of his first tax "revisions", Carlos Flores summarily reduced the export tax on a forty-pound box of bananas from US$0.50, to $0.04. Considering the fact that bananas have long been the most valuable, most reliable, and most remunerative export item Honduras has, it also follows that the banana taxes represented the largest and most dependable source of tax revenue available to the Republic. Taken all together, any reasonably rational individual must ask why, considering the perennial poverty that plagues Honduras, why would Don Carlos gratuitously rescind virtually all of the banana export tax? WHY? The last time banana taxes were diddled around, (1975) the main players were then-Presidente Osvaldo Lopez Arellano, Finance Minister Abraham Bennaton, and Eli Black, head of United Fruit Company. When a (proposed) half-dollar-a-box tax was suddenly reduced to .25-cents (U.S.) and a 2.5-million-dollar payoff was distributed among two or three Swiss bank accounts, "Bananagate" was born. Th escandal cost Lopez Arellano his presidency, cost Bennaton his job as Minister of Finance and (briefly) put him in jail, and prompted (former Rabbi) Eli Black to do a dry dive out of his 44th-floor World Trade Center office window. Question: If reducing the tax bite on a 40-pound box of bananas from fifty cents, to twenty-five cents was worth US$2,500,000.00 to United Fruit, in 1975, we have to wonder what reducing the banana export tax from fifty-cents a box, to four (4) cents a box is worth to the banana companies in 1998. Only time will answer this conundrum. Whatever the answer might be, the "payoff" is certainly of more immediate benefit to the people who are in a position to evaluate benefits, than the government taxes that the "new arrangement" supplants. This, unless you hold to the unlikely notion that Don Carlos all but entirely removed the export tax on bananas in the hope of thereby attracting more banana plantations to Honduras. Can anybody be this stupid? I doubt it. Say what you will, this program is much more efficient than the previous arrangement. It's known as "cutting out the middle-man". Under the old system, the banana exporters paid their export taxes to the Ministry of Economia & Hacienda. Then the politicians had to figure out methods by which to drain the money out of that government department. (It's a foregone conclusion that, one way or another, the political crooks are going to get it!) By simply cutting the banana export tax to four-cents, that leaves forty-six-cents per box of bananas, to be divvied up any way the conspirators, from time to time, decide. Much more efficient! When the dirty particulars of this latest banana scam comes to light - and they will - I suggest it be called "Bananagate-II". Just to maintain narrative contituity in official government practices. Now back to your problem, Judy. Change the names in the blanks and you may have the approximate procedures governing tax administration throughout Honduras, since time almost immemorial. Taxes paid to government might build roads, schools, hospitals, and water systems, but these benefits are far too generalized to elicit much in the way of personal enthusiasm. By shortcutting and diverting those same tax funds into private pockets, they can buy luxury automobiles, send politicians' kids to stateside schools, built beautiful homes on top of pretty hills, and otherwise accomplish almost unimaginable wonders for those fortunate folks at the front end of the corruption line. Why else would anyone be willing to spend heavy money trying to get elected to a political job that pays an "official" salary that might be considered adequate remuneration for a Chinese rickshaw coolie? You write: "Extorting money from a person who has merely walked into your office to pay his taxes (matriculation fee) is dishonest and petty, and there is no defense of this behavior!" Oh, yes there is, Judy! The defense and justification of this behavior is too obvious to be missed by anyone as smart as you are. Go to my WebSite, Table of Contents, <http://www.goodfelloweb.com/lorenzo> and find the article entitled "The Truth About Political Wages in Honduras". The hard truth is that unless a public servant can "clip some coupons" on the side, he or she is going to live like a peon. Nobody wants to do that! Would you? "God helps those who help themselves", like we say. This goes double when the reality is steal or starve. Something else: If they don't get it from you (who presumably has it), where do you suggest they get it? (From their "paisano" neighbors, who know the sytem and are going to tell them to go to hell with their scams?")....................Lorenzo
Name: Jim Stewart MessageDuring our recent visit to Honduras to visit my wife's family, I was pleased to discover that Cell Phone service was available. As some of the family members do not have phones in their houses, this was quite convenient. The cell phone company I found was called CELTEL, and they are located in Tegucigalpa, on Blvd Morazon, just about a half a block from the turn off to Los Lomas. They reprogrammed my phone with a new number for their service at no charge. I had a choice of paying a monthly fee or buying a prepaid card, which for L350, gives you 35minutes. Since I was their for a little less then a month, I bought the card. When time runs out, you simply purchase another card at most Supermercardos. The card has a secret number you uncover. Then after pressing *77, enter to give you the time on the card. I found this quit convenient, since I only used it for travel, or if I had to make a call from a relatives house where there was no phone. One drawback to the service is that the party you call also gets charged a small fee by Hondutel. The CELTEL rep told me they are fighting to get this eliminated. Coverage was good from Choleteca to Teguc, and from Teguc to Tela. There was no service yet in LaCeiba or Trujillo, although the rep stated that they should have those covered in the next two or three months. They have only been up for three months as of 1 Aug. Hope this info is useful to some of you. Sincerely, Jim Stewart Name: L.F. Murrhee MessageDoes anyone have an interest in forming a working group to do the things that have been discussed on the list? Please use this thread to suggest actions and methods a CoOp could use to begin to improve the area and attract international tourists.
Name: Stanley Marrder MessageWelcome to General Threads. |
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