Adventures of Isabel

I’m not entirely certain what winding mental path led me to the rectory of St. Catherine’s Church in Carcar, Cebu. Some of it has to do with reading for a course on literature of social movements in the Philippines — it was to Carcar that the Visayan revolutionary Leon Kilat went seeking reinforcements for [...]

In the latest in a long string of outrageous human rights and civil liberties violations perpetrated by the Thai government, political scientist Giles Ji Ungpakorn is facing prison for lese majeste — insulting the king — in a recent article about the 2006 Thai coup.
You can read the offending paragraphs here and judge for [...]

I’ve been a bit out of the Philippines loop this past month, so I just now heard about Juana Change’s Youtube channel, which is making a huge splash in the Philippines right now (thanks Noah) — the Youtube view counts may not be all that high, but the videos have been replayed on major news [...]

On my last day in Egypt, I finally made it to the pyramids at Giza. (I had seen them on the way to an interview, but only through the window of a moving car, which doesn’t quite do them justice.)

The whole scene is a rather unpleasant mix of corrupt police, touts, and tour busses, but [...]

I haven’t been posting lately, largely because I’ve been holed up working on the tax collectors project.
Here’s one clip from the project, which shows tax strike leader Abdel Qader Nada explaining some of the conditions that pushed real estate tax collectors to launch a (successful!) strike last year.
This video, along with about a dozen others, [...]

Views from Al-Azhar Park

Real Estate Tax Collectors office, Embaba, Giza.

I arrived in Cairo last night, exhausted but well. More later.