A Teachable Moment in Fiji?

There's been a lot of discussion on this blog and elsewhere recently about the value of teaching foreign languages and otherwise exposing students to cultures other than their own. On the latter point especially I'm inclined to agree that we must do more. For example, did you know that the government of Fiji has been overthrown via military coup four times since 1987? The latest coup happened just a few weeks ago, led by someone named--seriously--"Commodore Bananarama Bainimarama." I totally missed that. This could be used as the launching point for a lot of important school discussions, such as:

• What does it say about human nature that people living in an island paradise can have such problems that their government gets overthrown by coup more often than some governments turn over via actual election?
• Given that the head of a military dictatorship can call himelf pretty much anything he wants, has any anti-democratic strongman ever adopted a less imposing title than "Commodore"?
• Can you imagine the restraint exercised by the reporters and headline writers who didn't work the phrase "Cruel, Cruel Summer in Fiji" into their coverage?