21st Century Crime Fighting: CRIME APP

The Jamaica Constabulary Force, I believe needs to employ modern strategy in the campaign against crime. I would like to propose as part of any future initiative addressing crime, that the JCF considers implementing Crime Applications(APPs) for Smart Phones as to best start empowering and engaging citizens. As any Smartphone user will tell you, the Smartphone’s application store is the go to place for tools to make your Smartphone even smarter. Do you want the song playing in the department store on your playlist? Download Shazam. Want to find a telephone number? Get the YellowPages or RedBook app. Want to have the Cashpot Chart at fingertips? Get the Supreme Ventures app. But can an application provide women and students with the tools to empower themselves and help strengthen law enforcement? The creation of a Jamaican Crime application manage by MOCA and INDECOM, regulated by the relevant government agencies and monitored by JFJ would go along way to enable citizens, activists and local actors to take action to improve their communities. By employing the latest in mobile technology to provide urban populations with fast, discrete, and intelligent safety assistance to conveniently help them report and prevent crimes for the 21st century.

Users of a Jamaican Crime App could potentially report an ongoing crime with the push of a button. A package of information including the location of the crime, photo, video, audio, and text description of the crime are sent to authorities immediately. The application also allows for users to report crime ANONYMOUSLY so that they may continue with their busy lives knowing that with a push of a button, police will know and have everything to pursue the criminal. Ordinary users become the eyes and ears of authorities. Submitted issues could be displayed on the city's map, so citizens are aware of crime hot-spots.

There are often tense situations when calling the police is not an option. There are other times when inconvenience or fear of reprisal prevents one from reporting an incident, featuring the ability to take a photo, record video and audio, and provide a description of the incident, citizens could be assured that their phone has the capability to alert family, friends, and the authorities at the push of a button, should a threat arise.

The application would be especially useful to high school and college students, who often find themselves walking back from class late at night, or the victim of sexual assault. What is key, is that the App would empower the average citizen and ordinary bystanders, to report crime instead of ignoring it.

Local law enforcement organizations are expected to tailor their services to suit the citizenry it intends to serve and protect. In today’s world, everything is going mobile… why not crime prevention? Jamaica's local authorities need a 21st century make-over when it comes to reporting and preventing crimes.

Now... while mobile apps are the most obvious example of how organizations are responding to the public's demands. With reduced budgets, there is no denying that making sure public services and information can be delivered via a mobile phone in an accessible way, whilst keeping up with changes in technology is a hard task... there are a variety of projects of this nature in action today all across the world in a variety of nationalities and municipalities, many of them using OPEN SOURCE options.

Once again... it is therefore incumbent on our relevant ministries and national constabulary to explore these options earnestly and zealously. For a truly user-centered digital application, adapted to the needs of local communities can quickly and affordably achieved, as well as possibly effecting much change and altering our social climate. We must now think local and act global!

Mario Dean to Trayvon to Michael Brown... The Black Existential Condition Worsens!

The verdict in Ferguson is this week has been deeply disenchanting and saddening. There are just too many white-on-black police-on-civilian brutalities and violence to dismiss as being accidental. There is evidently an endemic problem of 'Shoot first, ask questions later,' and it cannot continue. There was a travesty of justice Monday night. It’s hurtful to think that someone can be murdered and their killer will walk away free. The recent murder of a 12-year-old black boy confirms there’s an epidemic of police violence in the black communities in the United States and worldwide where the police seem to function as judge, jury and executioner. Brian Becker, director of the Answer Coalition in the U.S. was quoted as saying "Every 28 hours the police kill a black person, usually a black male in the United States."

The Security Forces and Police must be held accountable as well. They are our public servants, civil servant and when they uphold the law and act nobly we will and should respect and just due. However, when they think they are above the law, or are the embodiment of it and act with impunity, they do not deserve our sympathy nor should they be allowed to continue with this mentality.

This latest verdict does not bode well for the civil safety of people anywhere in America. It is an even darker omen and trend worldwide for black folk and the African Diaspora!

Ferguson affects all of us as peoples of African descent. The fires will burn in Ferguson for the pain of injustice for many days to come.

Black Friday Message from The Montegonian!

We here at The Montegonian know many of you will be flying out for or making purchase online during #BlackFriday to get that long desired #tablet, #wireless speakers, #toytrainsets and get the jump on the early #Christmas shopping, but we ask that you be cautious as commerce increases and onlines sales as well, especially via #creditcard, we ask that you be cautious and vigilant. #Identitytheft is rampant these days #fraud and #cybercrime is up. Just as you once had to be on the look out for pick pockets downtown now is the age we must be wary of bad #hackers and #scammers! Please also remember this is a season of giving ask #WWJD what would Jesus do and not #WWJB what would Jesus buy. Also as a people remember that after #Walmart and #BlackFriday comes #WhiteSaturday! A fool and his money are soon parted, remember, spend wisely! Hotep... Selah!

Open-Sourced Blueprints for Civilization

Open-Sourced Blueprints for Civilization

Farmer Scientist Group wants to Hack Society through OpenSource Technology!

Montego Bay - City of Tomorrow: Building a Sustainable City

Sun. Soil. Soul. Society.

The Schematics for a Sustainable City: The Montego Bay Ecopolis

We are losing connection with the soil. We need to understand the connection between soil, soul and society and drop ego in favour of eco!~Satish Kumar

"A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars, it's where the rich ride public transportation."~ Gustavo Petro (Mayor of Bogotá, Colombia)

The social big bang that was the start of the 21 century saw the acceleration of the pace of human life beyond anything people of previous centuries could have imagined. Today there is a crisis of haste and of a lack of hospitality in the world and its cities.

The tourist capital Montego Bay, is a typical 2nd city: vast, pulsating, noisy and full of smoke and exhaust fumes. But it is atypical in many many ways. A beautiful city couched and cocooned in a bay... city by the sea, tourist hub, cultural hub, growing, strategically located in the Caribbean, resting on an energy lay line, cultural axis, business crux of the west... in many ways too, Montego Bay is the apotheosis of urban and rural life: rustic yet metropolitan and cosmopolitan, "country-fy and farrin-ish!" "If yuh naah mean'

This is the setting in which new building concepts, IT solutions, the Freezone's continued expansion, the Indigenous Rastafari Village, Academia in the form of Utech West and UWI western Campus, lifestyle solutions, energy concepts, a new Caribbean ecological, local, indigenous way of life can emerge: a new and re-newed peoples, with new objectives, new domiciles and modus operandi. A mode of operation that can save energy as well as avert looming oil and energy crises (research Peak Oil), cut pollution, solve food security issues and make living in the city, this city, our city a more pleasant experience, culturally, aesthetically, intellectually, socially and otherwise.

After seeing several conferences and conventions on alternative energy being held in Montego Bay, we can realize sustainability and sustainable development are becoming a little more than just buzzwords, maybe they are actually manifesting... actualizing as it were, possibly as a response to poverty, inflation, awakening consciousnesses to the social crises ahead. But what is sustainability and sustainable development?

Wikipedia defines: Sustainable development as "an organizing principle for human life on a finite planet. It posits a desirable future state for human societies in which living conditions and resource-use meet human needs without undermining the sustainability of natural systems and the environment, so that future generations may also meet their needs."

Achieving sustainability is not that far-fetched as our neighbours, Cuba according to data presented to the United Nations, was the only nation in the world in 2006 that met the World Wide Fund for Nature's definition of sustainable development, with an ecological footprint of less than 1.8 hectares per capita, 1.5 hectares, and a Human Development Index of over 0.8, 0.855.

Investigating MoBay's space development cross the span of quarter century, one realizes the explanation behind this transformation. Walking down Church Street to see the St. James church history. Owing to the lack of to cheap and accessible housing solutions, residents, denizens and citizens "unofficially" settle and squat in and near the center of MoBay. They could live in better places out of town, but instead suffer a significant loss in revenue since the trip to downtown by taxi is very expensive compounded by the lack of a robust and diversified public transport system. In MoBay, both middle-class families residing in settlement or "scheme" houses in the suburbs, as well as those upper-class families whose homes are within gated communities travel to downtown by taxi or private vehicle. We can see that development of the city has been ad-hoc and in sporadic growth spurts, with no great over arching vision that spans decades or centuries, just the whim and will of whichever political directorate. So how do we dream a dream of betterment and better development.


GREEN DREAMS

The dream of a green Eden like future has been long in the minds of Rastafari elders and a part of the Rastafari ethos and cosmology since its inception. The green Eden seems also a part of the basic religious or spiritual memory of mankind. The promise of a green future brings forward the hope of halting and altering the weathered gray concrete of the streets and lanes and the crumbling down brown blocks of downtown into a lush and beautiful garden mixing steel towers and tree-filled parks teeming with life.

The Dream is of a Montegonian Ecopolis calling out to us from the future, where the Montego River will be a blue river filled with sail boats meets and greeting the rainbow of colors of humanity walking in the middle of farm stalls and kiosks,  whilst craft shops of citizens whose work reflect the rich variety of its population. A Montegonian Ecopolis with a vibrant populace, where the citizenry once again takes back the design of their city and model their neighborhoods, schools, businesses,  civic organizations, and communities of potential and creative imagination, of multi-cultural customs and traditions, and of love and tolerance.

Finding the resources to build a city beyond fear and intolerance, beyond mistrust and prejudice  The hope of a Montegonian Ecopolis shines like a beacon of hope to its neighboring cities in the island and cities across the Caribbean, casting a light to the state, the nation, the region and the world symbolizing the dawn of a new day in our relations with ourselves, with others and with our environment. In a space where men and women and children of all colors and ethnic traditions build that new city brick by brick and block by block, the promise of yesteryear's Montego Bay and the realities of the present meet the possibilities of the future.

In this new and grand ecological vision of Montego Bay, a baby can smile and a flower can grow uncompromised, where human potential and the human spirit thrives and blossoms. A habitable place free of molestation and frustration. There are solar generators quietly hum, producing power to run machines and to light homes. Where eco-farmers grow food and sustainable fishermen catch fish to feed its populations and to sell their surplus to a wider market. There will be the new professionals and specialists and workers of the new information and sharing economy who are educated in the requirements of the increasingly decentralized workplace of the new millennium. Where, the plenitude of cultural traditions of racial and ethnic sub-communities mutually enrich one another in a new ecology of diverse popular culture spanning street theater and alternative film and Internet entertainment and ever multiplying digital television stations produced locally and around the world. Where, local citizens meet and petition their representatives in person, on the Web, or in public squares, pressing their demands and dissatisfactions in every forum and thus restoring some the closeness and intimacy of old-style town democracy.

The Montego Bay Ecopolis is both far away and very near. It is a place we can call home, if we make it so, if we vision it so, if we dream it so.

CITIES AROUND THE WORLD

Local governments worldwide are working to protect the environment. The concept that is green cities aims to reduce energy usage and the various forms of pollution in new and creative ways. Such efforts by city governments not only help reverse the effects of climate change. They also help governments save large amounts of money on energy costs. And, cities that are leaders in this green movement set a good example to their citizens about the importance of environmental issues.

  A new approach to the planning of cities and calls for the various professions which play a part in the process of urban renewal – city planners, architects and regeneration consultants – to be bound by new institutions and a collective commitment to the better design of cities. to harness principles of liveability and diversity in the way urban space is designed and managed.

A few points on what needs to be engendered in the Eco-Mobay:

Quality architecture and urban design

• Emphasis on beauty, aesthetics, human comfort, and creating a sense of place; 
• Special placement of civic uses and sites within community. 
• Human scale architecture: beautiful surroundings nourish the human spirit

Smart transportation

• A network of high-quality roads connecting cities, towns, and neighborhoods together
• Pedestrian-friendly design that encourages a greater use of bicycles, rollerblades, scooters, and walking as daily transportation

Sustainability

• Minimal environmental impact of development and its operations
• Eco-friendly technologies, respect for ecology and value of natural systems
• Energy efficiency
• Less use of finite fuels
• More local production
• More walking, less driving

It time we emphasize Montego Bay as one community, an eco-community in the heart of future planning rather than short-term commercialism dictated by the quick take-up of leases. It is time to value the input of the community in participatory planning structures; this MUST be another core ideal of the modern-day city. Also we need to examine and to stress the "psychogeographic" significance of our surroundings. This analysis dictates that there is a direct correlation between the quality of the public realm and the actions of the individual, with its attendant ramifications for other aspects of social policy. 

This vision of an eco city, and eco-Mobay is aimed at those who wish to listen to the rhythm of their own lives,and possibly adjust it.”

Check Out this Amazing Video!

The Dream of The Montego Bay Ecopolis has already begun to spring to life: Check out this link! 

Highland House Farms and Founder of the One Love Learning Foundation

Who Protects Brand Montego Bay?

Brand Montego: Part 1

The City has to Develop and Protect it's Brand

A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well. Jeff Bezos

“There is more similarity in the marketing challenge of selling a precious painting by Degas and a frosted mug of root beer than you ever thought possible.”
A. Alfred Taubman

Imagine the words Montego Bay, instantaneously it brings to mind, relaxation, coconut and palm trees, white sand beaches, sun and sometimes even sex - it's one of the most powerful images in the Caribbean. So how is it, dozens of companies use the name to sell products – Payless is notorious for selling a brand of sandals called the Montego Bay Club, there is even a foreign band full of white boys called Montego Bay Band, A Freemason pub of some sort in England with the Name Montego Bay littering the menu- so I put it to both the government and the public now, that we start considering seeking protection for Brand Montego Bay, under intellectual property, through trademark and copyright.

Freemasons Arms Pub... on the Menu Montego Bay Chicken Wrap!

We must consider that in today’s environment cities compete amongst each other for talent, business and human resources. In many ways they have to act like commercial entities by selling themselves to potential customers – business investors, visitors/tourists, the working and creative classes– as successful, vibrant, forward-looking brands. Simply put they have to market themselves as the place to be, project an image of tomorrow and betterment. At the same time that image, that name, that identity must be guarded. Just as commercial entities, have lawyers and make legal cases on issues of copyright and trademark infringement. So too must local government and even central government entities now seek to protect the Brand Montego Bay and Brands of Jamaica.

How do a group of white boys in America or is it England become the Montego Bay Band?

Intellectual property rules offer the potential to provide a valuable source of income for people in developing countries, who tend to get only a small sliver of the profits made on their goods on the international market. Do we profit from made in China T-Shirts that say Montego Bay. NOPE! Montegonians are not getting value. Their image and name is being abused. Consequently I saw a study that detail through study of Mobay and other areas, how Brand Jamaica has mostly benefited entities like Puma, whilst craft vendors and small businesses flailing in the harsh economy.

Montego Bay City must re-examine its role and function, as well as define its appeal to ‘citizens/consumers’, at the same time protecting the name and the Brand of the city for the citizens. Our city must distinguish itself from our competitors (Kingston, Portmore, Ocho Rios) and position our self as a recognizable brand in an increasingly regional and international market place. Port of Spain, San Fernando, Bridgetown, Kingstown are all Caribbean cities vying for status and international cosmopolitan appeal, so what of us in the Bay?

I noted on twitter that a few Kingstonians started noticing that “Mobay look like farrin” and that “any time mi waan go farrin mi go Fairview, Montego Bay.”

Here is an excerpt of Mobay through a foreigners eyes

“Downtown resembled a cross between America and what we would picture as rural Africa. The streets were full of activity. People yelling, laughing, buying and selling items. Playing music. Their skin was black as tar and beautiful. Their hair was the epitome of natural. They wore clothes that we would have worn in the early 2000’s but did their best to match it up.”

From instagram.com (via @RudeboyRJ) - June 3, 4:05 PM

What is the vision of Mobay, what is the vision for Montego Bay, who protects the name Montego Bay? The name Montego Bay has been already been branded and used and bandied about like there is no tomorrow, but Montegonians haven't seen the benefits.

I put it out there that Montego Bay is the biggest cultural brand in the Caribbean. When I travel abroad, Montego Bay always seems to be the more popular Jamaican destination and known location. So those companies using the Montego Bay Brand in ways that really do enhance their business, they use the name to make association with luxury, comfort, sun, breeze and such... so it's reasonable for the Montegonians to ask, Why aren't you coming to talk to us? Why aren't you asking our permission? Why don't you engage with us?

The notion of cities and cultures seeking IP protection is not an entirely new one - the Native American Navajo recently brought a case against the clothes company Urban Outfitters, for use of their name.

Relying on past glory is no longer enough; As the once den like, homely Montego Bay is now becoming a metropolis and showing a citizenry acquiring the cosmopolitan lifestyles to go with it… the friendly city is now a big city, and nowhere near as friendly as it used to be. 

Today, successful companies and young talented people have lost hometown loyalties; note the influx of outsiders and outside businesses in Mobay, not to mention the ‘Spanish Invasion’. They can choose where to cluster. Cities with distinctive characteristics; be they economic, cultural, environmental or life style, and it these things that will attract the best companies and people. So now we have questions of Montego Bay’s identity and its brand identity: What are the distinctive characteristics of Montego Bay, what makes us, US?


To Be Cont’d

On Anti-heterosexuality, Anti-hetero-pathy & Heterophobia: The Unpopular Intellectual Opinion!

As the Rowdy Gays saga continues... I have seen the gay community saying The Jamaica Observer is being vindictive, for publishing the address of where the gay men had been squatting. The media's prime objective in reporting is to answer the 5 W's who, what, WHERE, why and when. I will admit the first published article leaned on some bias as is indicated by tone and choice of words, but the writer never truly crossed any line in journalistic integrity. I don't want to seem insensitive or rude on the issue but... are we now to toby to the whims of unscrupulous gay men and wards who violate the law by squatting, by being rowdy and soliciting or eliciting media attention by attacking the media. 

I say the gay community has let prejudice, colour its judgement in hot pink, red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, indigo/blue and violet. The colors of J-flag has shrink wrapped the brains of many in our national and diaspora's intelligentsia... and to oppose the homosexual lobby is to be unpopular and court the life of a pariah.
I am pro-tolerance and never promote harm to humanity, but I disapprove of homosexuality and feel a sincere attempt to shut up, lock off, label, libel and slander any intelligent opinion that does not agree with homosexuality as antiquated, draconian, non-progressive or not with the progressive liberal agenda... dunce... outdated and overly or unnecessarily militant. Is there a polite way to just say no to homosexuality! Once you show any dissent on homosexuality you are branded ’homophobic.’ While these accusation do not fill me with indignation, I know they are an inaccurate description of what I do, who I am, or how I think.

This sudden groundswell of Anti-heterosexuality, Anti-hetero-pathy, Heterophobia, Anti-hetero-philia... would seem as if they are in the process of being consecrated into an ideology. If your straight shut up. Our have no right to free speech straight people... shut up... u can have no legitimate grouse against homosexuals! The terms “homophobic” and "homophobia" are usually used by the Gay Activists and Lobby Group to discredit and inaccurately define its critics. Once someone is branded homophobic, the chances are that he or she will be judged before they are heard, and the argument will be lost in the welter of bruised gay pride and ego.

But what do the terms “homophobic” and "homophobia" mean? Do they mean you are anti-music or Elton John or Luther Vandross? Or that you’re opposed to freedom of choice? That you don’t delight in listening to Diana King (whom I love dearly, I listen to her version of "Say a Little Prayer" ritually) or Freddie Mercury (everyone in Jamaica sings "Another one bites the dust)? That you have a quarrel with Shebada? Does it mean that you don’t admire the positive work of hundreds of thousands of possibly and notably gay persons who have contributed positively to the advance of humanity? Does it mean that you hate gay people? Truth be told it does not. One can disapprove of smoking and not hate the smoker, one can disapprove of homosexuality and not hate a homosexual and not be homophobic.

It is a conflation to try and say that every time someone disapproves of homosexuality or every act or event that went unfavorably for the homosexual community was or is based in homophobia. It is not just a conflation but borders on intellectual dishonesty. It is also most crucially a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those the group mind, the institutionalized Gay Lobby, international establishment has set out. If you’re not homosexual you’re a homophobic. If you don’t love us, you hate us. If you’re
not Good, you’re Evil. If you’re not with us, you’re against us.

There is this fancy attempt by the gay community to sanitize its image by projecting only the successful productive ones amongst them and distancing and disassociating itself from the so called "screbbe screbbe" ones. So that it would appear to most that gay is taste acquired by affluence or education and open mindedness, or it would be, as it is rumored Rex Nettleford once told an ironically rowdy student, whom as the case maybe  had opted to verbally abuse him as "B---Man" to which he replied, "Yes it is an intellectual disease you'll never catch!"

If one faithfully followed common homosexual propaganda you'd think all homosexuals were artsy, cultured, tech savvy, swanky sophisticated people, soft gentile people, limp wristed folk... living high above poverty in aloof safety sipping wine and nibbling cheese smoking long cigarettes at fancy shin digs...

The homosexual PR propoganda machine is well oil, lubed even and working.

If it had been GUNMEN hiding over there... The headline would probably have read "Residents call police on gunmen squatting uptown," or "Squatting Gunmen attack reporter"... If it had been RASTAS squatting there the news would probably read "Fanatical RASTA squatters attack Journalist," So why is it because they are GAY SQUATTERS we must sshhhhhhhhhhhhhh doah seh the squatters dem gay... The only reason is that it makes GAY LOOK BAD!

Sooner or later this madness has to stop.

OBSERVER ARTICLE: Unruly Gays

Are We Independent? Montegonian Exclusive

AFTER 50 years, we have not really released our vestiges of the Crown in England. Granted, Mrs Simpson Miller has made the gesture towards a break with the Crown, but I cannot help but feel it is just political talk, pandering to the public. We still have a representative of the Queen as an influential part of the state, the governor general. We still have British ceremonials in Parliament, we still have appeals to the British courts. We are a part of their Commonwealth, we still have the remnants of their laws. Are we really independent of England?

After our recent return to the International Monetary Fund and our leaders begging on a world tour, are we financially independent? Our money is printed in mints in England and is backed by debt and United States dollars, which is losing its footing as world currency. How can one really say we are independent? What are we celebrating this 50th anniversary?

How are we independent when we are slaves to the foreign media, especially the 'mighty' Uncle Sam? We are dependent on imports from the USA; we depend on their food, their clothes, even their entertainment.

How are we independent when we subscribe to the neoliberalist policies of globalisation that insist on lessening the powers and sovereignty of the state, and the continuous breakdown of international barriers? How are we independent when foreigners own our electrical supplies, our airports, our mining plants? What are we independent of?

Bound by handcuffs

Are we not bound by so many handcuffs of ever-growing poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, crime, men-women inequality, limited technology and, worst of all, which result in other bounding forces too - corruption?

In the word of Kahlil Gibran ... "Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave, eats a bread it does not harvest, and drinks a wine that flows not from its own wine press. Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero, and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful. Pity the nation that raises not its voice save when it walks in a funeral, boasts not except among its ruins, and will rebel not save when its neck is laid between the sword and the block. Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking. Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting, and farewells him with hooting, only to welcome another with trumpeting again. Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation."

Yannick Pessoa
YannickPessoa@yahoo.com

Quote of the day

“The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created--created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating.”