Adventures of Isabel

More details about the Bloke Metges eviction:
(via old friends from Euskadi and Catalunya who I ran into on the street in Berkeley, proving that this is, indeed, a small world.)
Cooking up free pizza in the wood-burning oven at Metges, 2002

I was pleased to hear that it took hours for the police to get into [...]

The UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions (now there’s a job title) has just released his report on the Philippines. I realize that some of you may have actual lives, but I’m pretty excited it’s out, and I know human rights activists in the Philippines are too. The report doesn’t say anything [...]

I went to a presentation today about the military crackdown of the recent uprising in Burma. Terrible, and disturbing in and of itself. But I managed, somehow, to sit and look pictures of beatings and corpses. Until one image flashed on the screen and I nearly had a breakdown.It showed the inside of a [...]

Prisoners in an overcrowded cell, La Trinindad Prison, Benguet
I’m usually pretty well insulated from the latest internet sensations, but given my interest in prisons and prisoners in the Philippines, friends have seen fit to alert me to the youtube phenomenon of the dancing inmates of Cebu jail.[For those even more clueless than I am: a [...]

“If I look at the provisions of the antiterror law, I would not trust even the most upright government with them, much less a government which has actually a very questionable track record with respecting human rights and the civil liberties of its citizens.”Interview with Atty. Ibarra “Barry” Gutierrez, Director of the University of the [...]

Sorry for the communication gap. It’s not as easy to stay in touch in Mindanao as it is in Manila.I’m in Zamboanga now, after 5 days in Davao. Everything’s been going well so far. I had to wake up kind of distressingly early for my flight, but I’m still mostly functional, was [...]

Finally catching up on email after being away for the weekend and finishing up a chapter of my paper, I found myself reading through news briefs … Indymedia reporter shot dead in Oaxaca … thinking “shit, that’s awful” and then “wait, Brad Will…is that…” yeah. it was. Brad from New York, the lunatic who [...]