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Does Fiji Water Legitimize a Dictatorship?

Source: Mother Jones

The internet cafe in the Fijian capital, Suva, was usually open all night long. Dimly lit, with rows of sleek, modern terminals, the place was packed at all hours with teenage boys playing boisterous rounds of video games. But one day soon after I arrived, the staff told me they now had to shut down by 5 p.m. Police orders, they shrugged: The country’s military junta had declared martial law a few days before, and things were a bit tense.

I sat down and sent out a few emails-filling friends in on my visit to the Fiji Water bottling plant, forwarding a story about foreign journalists being kicked off the island. Then my connection died. "It will just be a few minutes," one of the clerks said. read more

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A Thousand Little Gitmos: Will Obama Keep Secret Courts?

Photo from Freefahad.com
The last person to see Syed Mehmood Hashmi as a free man was his friend Mohammed Haroon Saleem, who on June 6, 2006, drove Hashmi to London's Heathrow Airport, walked him to the security checkpoint, and watched him hoist his bag and head for the gate. But Hashmi never made his flight. At passport control, constables pulled him from the line and told him they had an extradition warrant on behalf of the US government. He was to be charged with aiding Al Qaeda.

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Honduran Coup: The U.S. Connection

Manuel Zelaya
While the Obama administration was careful to distance itself from the recent coup in Honduras - condemning the expulsion of President Manuel Zelaya to Costa Rica, revoking Honduran officials' visas, and shutting off aid - that doesn't mean influential Americans aren't involved, and that both sides of the aisle don't have some explaining to do.