STONE COLD HAVEN

Every once in a while, folks get to surprise you with their determination to shove a middle finger in the direction of those who can’t deal with it.

If you ever doubted the criminal justice system can be cynical, then meet 48 year old Carolyn Cartwright – who believes it’s her God given right to enjoy the fruits of the loin any which way she chooses to express herself. But clearly her neighbours don’t think so and are equally determined that her extremely loud sex sessions won’t ruin their lives.

They’ve already slapped an anti-social behaviour order on her for the screaming and headboard banging, and as she’s realized, break the law 3 times, and you get straight remand without bail to await your jury trial.

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Clearly avoiding the tag was wishful thinking and I totally blame her of the crazy variety 3TOC.

Apparently this is a honesty scrap award bestowed on Stone Cold Haven for (what was it again 3TOC?), and I’ve got to fess up to 10 things then follow some instructions or something….So here goes.

1. I don’t have a mobile phone. I decommissioned my cell phone last year and I’ve never looked back. It was as liberating as giving up smoking 5 years ago. There’s just something about taking control of your life and deciding when you actually want to talk to people. I got to the stage of accepting that there’s nothing urgent that won’t wait for me to get home. I’ll go as far as saying that it’s made my quality of life much better and reduced my stress levels.

The ability for anyone to call you at will is an unwelcome destruction many people are too weak to face. Some people are so anal about their cell phones they could have sex with them if it was possible to do that – an act I wouldn’t put past some. In fact, I rarely talk to people on the phone unless I’m convinced you’ll add value to my time – so nothing personal if I don’t pick up the phone at home.

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A quick scan through history provides a fascinating insight into the downfall of some of yesteryear’s (well – centuries really) global powers and their gradual and sometimes dramatic fall from grace.

Take for example, the Order of the Knights Templar – arguably the world’s first multi-national corporation who were pretty much responsible for inventing the banking system. They may have had their day between the 12th and 14th centuries – but during their time, they wielded unprecedented power through their economic resources that would rival the combined economic power of the so called G8. Of course they had their very own militia to boot, who operated with the ruthlessness of any fighting force known to man – but we’re not going to suggest that these “soldiers of the temple” were a bunch of thugs sanctioned by the Catholic church now, are we?

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Today marks the first anniversary of the shot gun wedding that the Kenyan political establishment was dragged into, kicking and screaming. The choices following the chaos of the discredited 2007 general election ranked somewhere between impossible and improbable, and if only to stop the killing, violence and lawlessness, the two main protagonists had little choice but to commit to political matrimony.

If it wasn’t tragic enough, you could almost picture it:

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Very few people who don’t understand the history of ethnic tensions in Rwanda and the surrounding regions couldn’t have seen what was to come after the Presidential jet carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira was blown off the sky as it approached the airport in Kigali.

That event exactly 15 years ago was the catalyst to the worst crime on humanity that most of us have witnessed in our generation. In fact, the assassination of the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi is just one aspect of a deep rooted and historic conflict between the Hutu and Tutsi people of Rwanda.

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In an early episode of the fictional hit TV drama The West Wing, the show’s President Jed Bartlett vents his fury at his Director of Intelligence. In the plot of this particular episode, the intelligence folks fail to pick up hundreds of thousands of Indian troops and their war machinery marching aggressively towards the Kashmiri Pakistani border in a clearly provocative move that will not bode well for the two nuclear armed neighbours.

In disbelief, Jed Bartlett angrily berates his intelligence chief by pointing out that his motorcade can’t move from K Street in the middle of DC to Connecticut without being picked up on a weather satellite. Aaron Sorkin and his production team obviously did their research well in coming up with a realistic depiction of the plot that is the challenging project of moving the most powerful man in the world from location A to location B.

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