i'm assuming this is true

i didn't research ANY of it though so i can't be sure. i don't know if the people of fiji have trouble getting themselves clean water. i don't know if the government keeps a tight lid on everything that is said. i don't know a THING about the owners of fiji water. i don't know if in fact fiji water is a good thing or a bad thing. I DO KNOW buying water in plastic bottles CANNOT be better than tap water. if those bottles are made in china it's EVEN WORSE.

i don't drink bottled water unless it's the only thing around. if i'm in the car going somewhere and i am SUDDENTLY HORRIBLY PARCHED, i'll get a water (mostly an iced tea though, i TRY to get it in glass). again, it's rare. at work i have mugs and glasses. after i'm done with my coffees, i'll drink WATER OUT OF A TAP. at home, i drink WATER OUT OF A TAP.

why do we even HAVE bottled water? it's hip, it's cool it's with it?????????????? you could have fooled me. IT'S WATER

if you don't want what is in tap water, BUY A FILTER AND USE IT.

this is a frightening and ugly story. and yes, it's about WATER

so if you drink bottled water (and i think at least 80% of people i personally know DO, please read this story. yes even YOU hipsters and scenesters. READ IT


The Fiji Phenomenon: It's a Human Rights and Environmental Nightmare, So Why Is It the #1 Imported Bottled Water in the US?
By Anna Lenzer, Mother Jones

The Internet café 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.

Moments later, a pair of police officers walked in. They headed for a woman at another terminal; I turned to my screen to compose a note about how cops were even showing up in the Internet cafés. Then I saw them coming toward me. "We're going to take you in for questioning about the emails you've been writing," they said.

What followed, in a windowless room at the main police station, felt like a bad cop movie. "Who are you really?" the bespectacled inspector wearing a khaki uniform and a smug grin asked me over and over, as if my passport, press credentials, and stacks of notes about Fiji Water weren't sufficient clues to my identity. (My iPod, he surmised tensely, was "good for transmitting information.") I asked him to call my editors, even a UN official who could vouch for me. "Shut up!" he snapped. He rifled through my bags, read my notebooks and emails. "I'd hate to see a young lady like you go into a jail full of men," he averred, smiling grimly. "You know what happened to women during the 2000 coup, don't you?"......