Adventures of Isabel

On February 11, the Philippine Supreme court ruled Daniel Smith, the US Marine convicted in the Subic Bay Rape Case must be handed back over to Philippine Authorities, providing the latest twist in a high-profile case that has dragged on for two and a half years.  The US Embassy, which has maintained custody of Daniel [...]

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 imagine the news about what happened in Basilan over the past few days [attacks by rebel groups on the Philippine marines that left at least 14 dead, including at least 9 beheaded] may be trickling in to the Western media.In case my last post wasn’t clear enough, I’m back in Manila, and fine. I [...]

Would you believe there’s a coffeeshop with wifi here? A good place to kill time during the endless waits to get anything done. I’ve generally found Zamboanga to be frustrating. As everywhere in the Philippines, doing anything requires going through an excrutiating mix of formal and informal procedures. For example, to speak to the US [...]

So, the reason I haven’t been doing this lately, apart from the usual reasons, is that blogger now requires you to sign up for an account with Google to sign in. I finally did it, just now, and it took about ten seconds, but that proved to be enough of a barrier to keep me [...]