Saddam's last stand, and Fiji's new coup

My cup runneth over! With all the news about Castro, Chavez and Pinochet, I haven't even had time to ponder Saddam Hussein's last ditch attempt to avoid the gallows. Curiously, Saddam showed poor clock management, using less than the allowable 30 days to file a formal appeal of his death sentence conviction. Could the butcher of Baghdad be looking to get it all over with?

While I was pondering this, the government of Fiji has been overthrown in a military coup d'etat, the second coup d'etat for the island nation in the past 10 years. In a move condemned (by rote) by Western politicians, the Prime Minister is under house arrest, the Fijian parliament has been dissolved, and the capital is bracing for the imposition of martial law.

Could former Fijian dictator Sitiveni Rabuka (pictured above at left) be working behind the scenes? Rabuka, who appeared to have been mulling a return to politics, had earlier expressed dissatisfaction with the present Fijian government. As 2006 proved to be a good comeback year for a number of dictators around the globe, we have no doubt that the timing is certainly right for Rabuka to entertain thoughts of a return to power.