Adventures of Isabel

REDIRECT

2008-12-28T23:39:00.000-08:00

You should automatically redirect to http://www.isabelesterman.net/blog.

Just a warning.

2008-12-23T16:45:00.000-08:00

I've just started migrating from here to my new-and-improved blog at http://www.isabelesterman.net/blog/, which is part of my master plan to build a personal site where I can house a photography and multimedia portfolio, and host this crazy flash package I'm going to build in Egypt (more on this later. at the new site).

I've been able to import all the posts and comments from the new site, but I haven't yet gotten the tags to transfer right, added all the plug-ins I want, or customized the theme.

New project for the week: learn CSS.

When I'm a little happier with the look of things, any attempts to visit this site will automatically redirect. (how big a disaster can one little line of PHP cause? We'll see!)

Until then, update your bookmarks & hang on to your hats.

What kind of sociopath steals somebody's glasses?

2008-12-08T00:15:00.000-08:00

I went to a truly beautiful party at the Capoeira Angola Foundation last night -- capoeira, live bossanova and samba, Veracruzan dance. By the time midnight rolled around, the party had kicked off, and people were busting out the kind of crazy cumbia and samba moves where you find yourself being flipped over and swung around the room.

So I stripped myself of wallet, keys, phone, glasses and anything else that could conceivably fly off my person while this was going on. Gathered all my stuff up, put it in my bag, and...I think you can see where this story is going.

I was in a place that felt safe, where nearly everyone knew each other. So I wasn't worried about my things, except to make sure my bag was up on a shelf where nobody would accidently step on it.

But when I was ready to go home, my bag wasn't where I'd left it, and neither was another woman's. It was 2:00 am in West Oakland, and my credit cards, id, bus pass, cellphone, ipod, glasses and keys were gone.

I couldn't even get home, because my bicycle was outside, locked-up with a key I no longer had.

The only wordly posessions I had access to were the clothes on my back and the contents of my jacket pockets -- three crumpled dollar bills, and half a pack of somebody else's menthol lights.

Everybody was suitably upset and concerned, but at that point, there was nothing anybody could do. A friend who lives in a (lightly) converted warehouse nearby let me crash in his room, and left me with a laptop and a cellphone so I could start canceling all my accounts. I got some fitful sleep in a very cold room, then started trying and trying to get in touch with my roommates so I could get back in the house, copy some keys, and commence with damage control.

Finally, around noon I got through. And then, all alone in this maze of a warehouse, I had to figure out how to get back outside.

Two doors, and guess which one I chose? That's right -- the one that would lock behind me before I realized I was in an enclosed parking lot, which couldn't be exited without a key. (Fire hazard? Perhaps.)

At that point, it didn't even matter anymore. I just climbed the fence, dropped down to the street on the other side. But wait, you have to really picture this: high noon, West Oakland, crazy-haired white girl wearing knee-high boots, a 3/4-length black coat, and the same clothes I went dancing in and then slept in. A blazer driving by slowed waaay down to watch. The security guard in the next lot over started to stir.

I just looked him in the eye, said, "I assure you, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation," and carried on.

There are points when life gets so absurd it's almost beautiful. I walked through blocks of vacant lots and falling down houses on my way to the #15 bus, coat and scarf flying in the breeze, feeling absolutely damage proof.

Fuck the world. I got bus fare and smokes.

***

Coming home, it was almost jarring to be back in my room with its clean sheets and fancy laptop. Right away, I had to run out and copy my roommates keys,tear apart my room to find the spare key for my bike lock, and see about replacing my phone all without the benefit of cash, credit cards or a driver's license.

I mostly got it done. The phone company owed me an upgrade, so I wasn't out much for a new phone, but I was nearly thwarted by company policy that prohibits personal checks without a driver's license (I had my passport, but this, evidently, was not good enough). The biggest thank you of the day goes to the kind, kind T-Mobile employee who decided to charge my new phone to his own account, and let me reimburse him with a check.

By 5:00, I was ready to head back to West Oakland and collect my bicycle before it too could be stolen. And then, I got an email from the Oakland Police. My bag had been found, on the 900 block of West Grand. My phone, wallet and ipod, of course, were gone. But my ids, credit cards and keys were all there, and I could pick it up downtown.

As frustrating as the whole incident was, this meant there was probably little chance of identity theft, and that I no longer had to worry about the consequences of an unsavory character coming into possession of both my house keys and my address. The past 20 hours have been pretty unpleasant, but I didn't lose anything irreplaceable, and it seems like the theft won't continue to haunt me.

So hopped on the BART, and went to the property room in the police building. Sure enough, it was my bag. The whole thing was bizarre. My shabby cloth wallet was gone, as were the few dollars that had been in it, but someone had taken the time to remove all the cards I had in the wallet (even the business cards wedged in the inside pocket that are really hard to get out) and put them back in my bag. My headlamp and knit headband were gone, but only one of my gloves.

What baffles me, though, is that my glasses were missing. I mean, it's a nasty thing to do, but I understand when someone would steal a cellphone (though the joke's on whoever tries to sell my busted-up, malfunctioning handset). But who the fuck steals somebody's prescription glasses? It's not like they were gucci frames, and I have a pretty unusual combination of vision problems. I can't imagine they could have any value to anyone other than me.

It's funny too, because of all the things I lost, the glasses are both the biggest hassle, and potentially the biggest expense. (The ipod was an older model). I have vision coverage, but I'm not sure I can wait the two weeks the University Health Center takes to make me a new pair. I have an appointment tomorrow to go in, get my eyes checked, and throw myself on their mercy. In the meantime, I'm alternating between sunglasses and a broken pair I just unearthed, that's missing the left lens (which, fortunately, is my good eye).

And that's where the story ends. I left the police station, took the bus back to West Oakland to pick up my bike, and rode home.

In my sunglasses.

UN Human Rights Committee finds the Arroyo government guilty of human rights violations

2008-11-24T00:42:00.000-08:00

More than two years after the families of two murdered human rights activists filed a complaint against the Philippine government, the UN Human Rights Committee ruled the Arroyo government is guilty of violating the activists' right to life, and was negligent in providing remedy after they were slain.

Eden Marcellana, photo courtesy Karapatan

On April 21, 2003, human rights workers Eden Marcellana and Eddie Gumanoy were salvaged* under the watch of Arroyo's pet General Jovito Palparan, well known in the Philippines as "The Butcher of Mindoro" because of the appalling number of activists murdered in areas under his command.

Despite eyewitnesses testimony that the two activists were kidnapped by former rebels now working with the military, the Department of Justice dismissed a complaint filed by the activists' families. More than 5 years later, the case in the Philippines has not progressed.

Unfortunately, this new UN decision won't result in any disciplinary action against the Arroyo government -- it simply requires that the Philippine state provides "effective remedy." (In other words, initiate a criminal investigation, which it so spectacularly failed to do in the first place.)

Given that not a single perpetrator of a single extrajudicial killing has been held accountable for murder since the Marcos era, I can't say I feel terribly hopeful. And the last major UN tongue-lashing to Arroyo -- delivered by special rapporteur Phillip Alston -- didn't really solve anything.

But still, anything that exposes and embarrasses Arroyo on the international stage is a positive step, and activists hope this ruling may strengthen the case for Arroyo's impeachment.

Now if the US would just stop propping up her government...

*Salvage: Filipino slang for the rather common practice of murdering activists and leaving their shattered bodies to be found by the side of the road. A close relative of 'disappeared,' but with its own unique horrors.

I can't find a copy of the UNHCR decision online, so I've uploaded them as jpgs. Click on the thumbnails to view full size images. The decision is well worth reading for a detailed summary of the murders, and an overview of the ineffectiveness of the judicial system in the Philippines. It's worth noting, also, that while the government challenges whether this case was legitimatly brought in front of the UN, there's no refutation of the actual accounting of events.
I created a pdf of the document as well, which I'm happy to forward to anyone who's interested.

Autumn in Northern California

2008-11-09T14:29:00.001-08:00

Censorship in the Mission

2008-10-20T00:34:00.000-07:00

This mural, on 24th St in San Francisco's Mission district, is one I've often noticed and liked. Painted by the group Homey (Homies Organizing the Mission to Empower Youth) it unfolds across 117 feet of concrete, showing people challenging the barriers --cultural, societal and physical -- that oppress and divide them. But I never really knew anything about its history.
Today, I learned the panel above originally depicted these figures bursting a Palestine-shaped hole through the wall, and that the woman on the bottom was first painted with her kuffiyeh covering her face.

When the San Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council and the local office of the Anti-Defamation League caught wind of it, they pressed the San Francisco Arts Commission to have the mural changed, and managed to suspend the community beautification grant that funded the project until Homey agreed to compromise on their design.

What does it say when nice, liberal San Francisco is comfortable with public art and public discourse that challenges the legitimacy of the wall on the US-Mexican border, but censors any similar challenges to the wall between Israel and Palestine?

[In other news, right after I started typing this, a car window got smashed right below my bedroom window. My neighbors ran the guy off, but this is at least the second time this week. The neighborhood has been crazy lately]

Pumpkin Festival

2008-10-18T18:15:00.000-07:00

I went to the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival this afternoon. It was a nice escape from the daily routine, but the whole affair had an "end of the Roman Empire" vibe I found a little hard to shake.

Scenes from the Pumpkin Pie eating contest.

Human bone found in Bataan Camp

2008-10-15T01:24:00.000-07:00

From the Philippine Daily Inquirer:

Human bone in Bataan camp
by Nikko Dizon
LIMAY, BATAAN—Braving rains, a fact-finding team Tuesday dug up a yellow rubber slipper, a laced shirt and burned fragments of what they suspected was a human bone in an area where a former detainee said he saw people being tortured by soldiers. [more]

and more

and more

I don't even know what to say. So I'll quote UP Professor Roland Simbulan, from an interview I did in Summer 2007:

“There were human rights abuses before. Illegal arrests, torture, detention. But what is different now under Arroyo is the extent of killings of political activists. In fact, there’s an ugly joke going around that they don’t anymore have to feed them. Because during the Marcos time, and Ramos and other administrations, they would arrest an activist, or torture him at the most. But at least they were alive, they kept them in detention later to be released. But now, they’re not arresting them anymore. They just kill them. There’s not even a formal charge against them. They just abduct them, and perhaps they would try to extract as much information from them, and then they kill them. Some of their bodies or corpses are not even found. So that’s the difference, the gravity or the volume of people who are being killed. It’s very alarming."

It's not completely impossible this is some sort of elaborate hoax. Not completely.
And I'd very much like to think so, and that Karen Empeño and Manuel Merino are still safe and alive somewhere in the mountains.
But it doesn't seem likely. By the most ridiculously conservative numbers, there have been at least 200 extrajudicial executions since Arroyo came to power. By the greatest estimate, over 1000. And I personally know multiple people who have been kidnapped by paramilitaries, taken to camps in isolated areas and subjected to brutal torture.
So there's no real doubt in my mind that Manalo is telling the truth. I just hope that this time, this one time, some of the blood sticks on somebody's hands.

Crew slideshow

2008-10-11T16:37:00.000-07:00

My multimedia slideshow on the Jack London Aquatic Center's crew team for Oakland youth is not up at OaklandNorth.net.

More to come...

VP Debate collage

2008-10-08T11:52:00.000-07:00

Multi-media collage I built (using other people's photos and reporting -- it was a mostly successful collaborative excercise). It doesn't fit too well in this column, so click on the box at the lower right (with the arrows) to view full screen.

Vuvox is my new favorite toy.

Rice crisis revisited

2008-10-08T10:40:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: You can view a slideshow of the pictures below. But you'll still have to actually visit the set to read the text.

Back in June, when I first started taking pictures of the rice crisis in Mindanao, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with them. Since, for the moment, the answer seems to have been "nothing" I thought I'd at least put them all up publicly (Some of the pictures, and most of the text haven't been up before).
The full set is now up here
There's quite a bit of explanatory text along with the photos. One of these days, I do still intend to put this all together, but for now time seems hard to come by.

Lazy Sunday

2008-10-05T15:45:00.000-07:00

After days spent immersed in the arcane minutiae of municipal bond markets, it was nice to take a short day assignment that basically involved hanging out with kids in a neighborhood park.

(Of course, I do still have to write the bond piece.)

Obama-McCain debate

2008-09-26T21:51:00.000-07:00

I went down to the corner store to watch the presidential candidates debate. It definitely gives some interesting perspective to watch McCain and Obama talk about Wall Street bailouts, corporate taxes and ethanol subsidies while a middle-aged woman tries (and succeeds) to cajole the clerk into extending her line of credit so she can buy some cheese and crackers for dinner.

2008-09-09T11:04:00.000-07:00

File this under "apologizing for not posting more."

I've recovered from being ill, but I'm still scrambling to get caught up on work. (I'm running around so much I've started referring to my apartment as my "alleged home.")

Still from an audio slideshow about Jack London Aquatic Center's crew team for Oakland girls.

I'm working on a JSchool project to launch a community news site for North Oakland, which is sucking up a lot of my energy right now. When we get the site launched, I'll start linking to articles, and some of my multimedia pieces about Oakland will start seeing the light of day.

In the meantime, I'll post when I can, and even if I'm not blogging, I do upload photos to flickr pretty frequently.

2008-08-25T23:26:00.000-07:00

I've been horrendously sick the past several days. I was more or less bedridden beginning Friday, and though I'm definitely on the mend -- and today have been able to go about most of my business -- I'm still feeling a bit shaky.
I got a whole battery of blood-tests done to see if I carried something exciting back from the tropics. I'm still awaiting the final word as to whether this was a generic- or name-brand- illness, but in the meantime, I'm just grateful I got over it so quickly, and I have a new (and inevitably fleeting) appreciation for every moment absent of excruciating pain.

Adventure Tsinelas

2008-08-20T17:54:00.000-07:00

After 6 months, 6 countries, 2 conflict zones, 1 hand restitching, and who knows how many miles walked and rivers forded, I decided it was time for a new pair of sandals.

I'm finding myself a bit sentimental though. The old pair and I have been through a lot together -- from the floods of Manila to dirt-track crossings between Shan State and China -- and despite their girlish exterior, they've always served so well that I dubbed them the "adventure sandals."

I thought they deserved some kind of memorial. Goodbye Tsinelas. Goodbye Asia. Hello grad school, starting again tomorrow...

Portrait from Agdao Market

2008-08-19T23:35:00.001-07:00

This is a woman named Lita Midrano, who I spoke to this June, on the day rice prices broke 50 pesos per kilo in Mindanao. Midrano complained the subsidized rice provided by the National Food Authority for p18.50 a kilo was very poor quality, but she still waited in line for hours, because she couldn't afford not to.

She was angry, and along with other mothers and grandmothers in line -- women old enough to have lived through decades of war in Mindanao -- she started talking, half joking and half serious about rioting and revolution. How high, I asked, would the price have to get?

“With rice a reaching 50 pesos per kilo, we’re already getting very angry,” she told me. "But before getting angry and starting a war, we have to eat. And so we wait in line.”

Travel

2008-08-15T23:57:00.000-07:00

Back to California, after a long, parched, uncomfortable but uneventful flight. I'm worn out, but happy to be back in my room, watching desperate flight of the last (I hope) of the ants that had taken up residence in my computer.

Notes from Manila:

It's been a brilliant exit from the Philippines.
Absolutely torrential rains, and a completely flooded out street. (On the plus side, you know who your real friends are when you kinda really need someone to go out into the flood and find a taxi for you so you don't have to take your bags to the corner in the rain).
I'm flying Philippine Airlines, which has its very own international terminal. Meaning, no mitigating factors for the PAL experience. Over an hour wait to check in. Nowhere to get a magazine apart from the Christian Bookazine Corp. , and you can't even buy a bottle of water past security to take on the flight.
And then the power goes off. They've got some kind of generator, but it's still incredibly dim, and apparantly bathrooms are not a priority area. Best of all, the fancy, "hi-tech" sensor-controlled toilets and faucets do not function, and have no manual back-up (except for the charming attendent who ran out to get dippers full of water).
The power's come back, hence the wifi. But, ach, it's like packing into three hours all the things I hate, but will invariably feel slightly nostalgic for, about the Philippines.
Next stop, San Francisco.
[editors note: true to form, the touted free wifi does not actually work. So this won't actually go up until California]

2008-08-09T01:22:00.000-07:00

It's been a fairly grim week. So hot I miss the rain. 2 journalists have been shot, one fatally. The Dengue fever season is in force, and it's seems to have even reached into my home -- the friend who lives in the next room over has been prostrate this week, with all the symptoms of dengue, having to go to the hospital for repeated blood tests. The only consolation is knowing that if he had contracted one of the really dangerous strains, he'd already be dead. Instead, the worst seems to have passed, but it's frightening, and not least because I live in the same conditions, getting bitten by the same mosquitos.

This is not to say I'm living in a state of misery. I get out, even have the occasional productive day, but I've been feeling a little, shall we say, distracted...

Monsoon Blues

2008-08-01T03:03:00.000-07:00

View from my roof yesterday

It can be very, very difficult to get anything done when leaving the house involves wading.

2008-07-29T00:08:00.000-07:00

So, as promised I put up more photos from the SONA counter-rally. But I'm feeling thin on thoughts, or at least coherent ones.

A full-text of Arroyo's speech can be found here. There's some debate about whether or not she actually believes the rosy statistics she quotes. I'll leave that to the psychoanalysts.

I'd love to see an in-depth analysis of which subjects she chooses to speak about in Tagalog, and which in English. She seems to confine the folksiest parts, about her great concern for various types of poor people to Tagalog, while using English to talk about policy.

As far as the protests, it's hard to know what to say. Clearly, people are angry. But not angry enough to stand together. The rally was actually composed of two parts: an RA section and an RJ section, with a fence and a police line between them.

(For those unfamiliar with the byzantine twists and turns of the history of the Philippine left, I'd reccomend Alecks Pabico's article "The Great Left Divide" . But to make a long story short, RA 's are those who ReAffirm Marxist-Leninist(Stalinist)-Maoist principles as defined by the Communist Party of the Philippines -- including protracted people's war --and RJs are those who ReJected them in favor of a wide variety of political stances ranging from orthodox Leninism, Trotskyism, Social Democracy, etc. This debate split the left in 1992, and to put it mildly, the two factions don't get along with each other.)

So far as I could tell, there was no conflict between the two groups yesterday, and it was possible to move from one section to another, but there were two competing speakers on two competing stages, talking about the same issues but each with their own constellation of supporters and party flags and banners around them.
It can be very hard to see any way forward.

SONA

2008-07-28T04:37:00.000-07:00

While President Arroyo gave her annual State of the Nation Address, and estimated 13,000 protesters held a march and counter-rally, denouncing low wages, the risingcost of living, and denouncing Arroyo's record on human rights and civil liberties.

Additional images here, and more photos and thoughts tomorrow.

Economic crisis keeping kids out of school

2008-07-21T05:22:00.000-07:00

The Philippine government just released its report on school attendance for 2006-2007, revealing that 17% of primary-school-aged children -- which is to say 2.2 million of them -- are not in school.

In 1999-2000, before current President Arroyo, the corresponding number was 3%.

Numbers have plummeted under Arroyo, as has real per-capita spending on education, making the Philippines one of the lowest spenders in the world.

Unfortunately, the numbers are likely to be even worse for the current year, as the economic situation worsens. Public education is not free here -- families are responsible for school fees, uniforms and school supplies -- and registration season corresponded with the height of the rice crisis, forcing many families to choose between feeding their children or putting them in school.

Here,* school teachers in Carupay, Zamboanga del Norte, explain the situation in their own school, and the difficulties facing even children whose families manage to pay the fees.

President Arroyo, putting her Phd in economics to good use, recently conceded that the rising costs of food and energy may be keeping kids out of school.

Her solution? Asking schools not to require uniforms.

Read this great (as usual) PCIJ piece for links to the report and more information...

*some technical issues in the middle due to software problems. I'll correct them if I can solve the original issue...

Little Friends & Foes

2008-07-19T01:18:00.000-07:00

This is my bathroom lizard in Mandaluyong. They seem to come standard issue in houses here, but I feel this is a particularly outstanding example of the species. Now that we've gotten accustomed to each other, we respectfully greet one another every morning when I go for my tabo-tabo.
On the other hand, I seem to expend an inordinate amount of time and energy trying to keep ants out of my sugar.

2008-07-17T03:06:00.000-07:00

This cloud of smoke is not a trick of the camera or a momentary phenomenon. This is what Jakarta is like, all the time, indoors and out. I never thought I would enjoy breathing the sweet air of Manila, but here I am. I seem to have returned from Indonesia with a mild respiratory infection, though it's clearing up now that I'm back in the Philippines. I hate to think about what happens to people who live their permanently!

Now if I can figure out how to keep my feet dry here, I'll be set.

The Lapindo Disaster

2008-07-13T23:30:00.000-07:00

Ibu Kurniati

On May 28, 2006, Ibu Kurniati's world exploded.
"For us, it was like a small apocolypse. We saw huge fires, and the hot mud, and the strong smell of gas was everywhere,"

The previous day, natural gas prospectors Lapindo Brantas hit something soft while drilling nearly 3 km below the surface in East Java. When hot mud and toxic gasses began gushing out of the hole, Lapindo and local authorities were unable to stem the flow, or to organize an orderly evacuation. "It was total chaos," recalls Korniati.

Two years later, the situation has hardly improved. The mud continues to flow, and has repeatedly breached embankments put in place to contain it. Sludge has oozed over fields, factories and villages, and into canals and groundwater, displacing more than 11,000 people.

Hundreds are still in a nearby evacuation center, which Korniati likens to a prison, living without private quarters, lining up three times a day for food that is often rotten.

Before the disaster, Korniati ran her own small business as a food vendor, but now she's forced to depend on her children for support. Many, she says, have it even worse, turning to begging, prostitution or suicide. "The mud ruined everything."

Lapindo denies responsibility for the eruption, ignoring independent geological surveys and blaming an earthquake that struck Java on May 26. However, it has offered limited compensation to villagers who agree to release the company from further liability.

Unsatisfied with this deal -- which offers compensation only for loss of material property -- Kurniati and other villagers continue to agitate for a more just settlement. They've occupied the local parliament, blocked the highway and staged a hunger strike -- succeeding in getting promises, but so far nothing more. "They give lots of promises, but what they promise never comes. They just give us words. Until my hair turns white, they'll never be realized."
----

The whole situation is more disgusting, and more complicated, than I can fully explain. Go here and here for more information. Despite all the setbacks, though, the people seem determined to keep fighting.

Borobudur

2008-07-12T02:33:00.000-07:00

One of the quite nice things about this visit to Indonesia is that I'm on a pretty loose schedule, and have time to do normal touristy things like visit temples.

We even got up at 4:00 in the morning the catch the sunrise at Borobudur (and thus miss the heat and the crowds). It was quite lovely, and I didn't even spend too much time geeking out about localization, religious syncretism and the diffusion of Indic culture in Southeast Asia.

2008-07-12T00:31:00.000-07:00

Irham, Jakarta

Bush has never been a popular figure in Indonesia -- a Muslim country with a strong history of anti-imperial struggle (notwithstanding of course, its own colonial adventures in East Timor and Papua) -- and his re-election ensured that dislike of Bush would extend to the American people.

Recently, though, it's once again become cool to be American. "From Amerika? Barack Obama, Ya!"

What can I do but smile and shrug my shoulders?

Flying.

2008-06-30T02:36:00.000-07:00

Kicking it old-school with Dr. Cullinane in the VIP lounge at Cebu-Mactan airport.

Sadly, here in Manila, where I'm waiting for my flight to Jakarta, the accommodations are a bit more basic. But I can't win every time.

It's been a short & sweet visit to Manila. Catching up with friends, visiting archives and libraries here, and making arrangements for my longer stay next month. Not overly much to report. (The greatest excitement for me was the scandalously cheap prices at the National Historical Institute. Their press once published bound collections of materials from the Spanish period, but hardly anyone here reads Spanish anymore, so they practically give them away. I returned to my friend's in Mandaluyong laden with rare books from the 1930s and '40s, laughing about how their patrimony was being sold to foreigners for a few hundred pesos.)

I'm still working with my images and recordings from Zamboanga, and I'll try posting a few little slideshows in the next days, pending broadband availability..

2008-06-23T02:18:00.000-07:00

I've been a bit out of touch - internet access has been either difficult or unappealing lately, and my phone got stolen on the boat from Cagayan to Cebu, so twitter's out for now too.
But I just figured I'd drop a line. I'll be arriving in Manila Wednesday night, and should have better access.

CDO

2008-06-18T06:37:00.000-07:00

The "road" to Carupay. More on this later...

I'm back in Cagayan de Oro, leaving for Cebu tomorrow evening. It was another eventful trip, but I'm too burnt out to write much more. So consider this the not-dismembered-in-motorbike-crash-or-kidnapped post, and I'll fill in the details tomorrow.

2008-06-15T06:30:00.000-07:00

Breakdancers, rocking it for the camera on Dipolog beach.

I'm leaving again for the mountains early tomorrow morning. This time, I'll be well and truly off the grid -- 12 km hike in, no cellphone signal -- so I'll be out of touch for at least the next 2 days.

Geeky digression: the only Tagalog word, to my knowledge, that has become completely integrated into English is bundok, aka Boondock, which means mountain. During the Philippine-American War (and ever since) the mountainous hinterlands were tactical centers for resistance. When asked where the rebels were, locals would respond "sa bundok," which entered military slang, and from there vernacular english.

A Bridge Unbuilt

2008-06-14T03:57:00.000-07:00

*[Slightly under-edited sneak preview of a much larger project]*

Barangay Miatan is located deep in the hills outside of Katipunan, Zamboanga del Norte. The entrance to the barangay can be reached only by foot or the most rugged of motor vehicles, a long trip along jaw-rattling dirt and gravel roads lined with paddies where farmers transplant rice by hand and plow with the help of caribous.
Reaching the center of the community is even more difficult. A dilapidated pedestrian bridge is suspended over the Dicayo river. The only other option is straight through the river.
We came up in a decommissioned military jeep, and only just made it across. About a third of the way through, water started flooding in through the door, nearly reaching my seat and sending me scrambling to keep my camera and computer dry. Halfway across, the jeep stalled, and I thought for a minute we were going to have to swim, until the motor coughed back to life.
Remote barangays like Miatan have suffered the brunt of human rights abuses from the government and military. During the Marcos regime, this small Subanon community of 240 households was home to a military detachment, whose abuses drove many to the hills or the city. Women were harassed, locals recall, and farmers treated like slaves.
The situation improved somewhat after the fall of Marcos, when President Aquino made moves to demilitarize the countryside -- but the hills of Katipunan remained hotspots of insurgency and retaliatory military strikes.
In 2003, local peace consultations began, with the support of the Revolutionary Workers Party - Mindanao (RPMM), a Marxist rebel group. The RPMM promised to lay down their weapons if the government would take steps to meet the needs of impoverished barangays in Mindanao. A ceasefire was negotiated, and by all accounts the RPMM has held up their end of the deal.
In exchange, the government was supposed to fund development projects identified by communities themselves. After local consultations held in 2005, the central government promised 5 million pesos for infrastructure projects in each barangay involved in the peace process. The people of Miatan decided their first priority was to build a submarine bridge across the Dicayo. The bridge is a key element in their other plans as well, providing a farm-to-market road to expand economic opportunities, and making it possible to develop Morias falls as an eco-tourism destination.
Three years later, the money still hasn't come. "The budget was suddenly gone," says Haydee Lodovece, head of a local people's organization. "Five million is five million. It's not easily forgotten."
People here have a way of laughing when telling these kinds of stories. But it's clear they're frustrated, especially as they find themselves squeezed tighter and tighter by the rising cost of food and fuel. By neglecting to meet their commitments in the peace process, the government is playing a dangerous game. Unrest in Mindanao has always been, fundamentally, about the central government's failure to deal fairly with the people. Every time this happens, peace workers say, it gets harder and harder to bring people together to talk about peace.
With less food on the table every day, says Ike de los Reyes, an RPMM leader, the poor are more inclined to return to armed struggle. Peace talks have not brought them enough to survive. "The people," he says. "Cannot lose anything but their sufferings and their hunger."

Hero

2008-06-13T21:07:00.000-07:00

Barangay Captain Bonifacio Cabasag, elected local official for Bgy. Miatan, Zamboanga del Norte.

With gold prices skyrocketing, mining companies are eager to expand their operations into previously untapped reserves. One such area is Barangay Miatan. Canadian firm Toronto Ventures Incorporated sent engineers and company officials to survey the area and negotiate an agreement with the locals. The people of Miatan, Subanon tribal people, are eager for economic opportunities, but aware of the human rights abuses and environmental destruction TVI has been responsible elsewhere, the community knew this was not the kind of development they wanted.
Company officials then went to Cabasag, offering him a bribe worth five times his annual salary to push the paperwork. Cabasag refused. "It affects more than just me," he said.

Morias Falls

2008-06-13T08:11:00.000-07:00

Barangay Miatan, Katipunan Municipality, Zamboanga del Norte.

(The picture I wish I had was me, wading through waist-deep water, holding my camera bag above my head. But, for obvious reasons, no such picture exists. I am playing with my lens cap in this one, though)

UPDATE: ha! how's this for a diptych:

(14 years ago, Yellowstone National Park)

Coming down the mountain

2008-06-13T07:50:00.000-07:00

I'm back in the city again (Dipolog) after visiting communities up in the mountains. I'm a bit worn out, especially after the trip down.
I tagged along with people from 2 local NGOs working on implementing livelihood programs as part of the GRP-RPMM peace process. On the way back, we caught a ride down to the city with most of the barangay, since they were going to a wedding in town.

(This is after 4 of us got off. And all the people standing around will get back on)

We were fortunate not to have to walk, but it was a pretty grueling trip. I counted 34 people in the truck, (from grandmothers to babies to one foreigner wishing her legs were about 6 inches shorter) plus two terrified pigs and a chicken.

2008-06-10T09:37:00.000-07:00

I'm leaving tomorrow for Zamboanga del Norte, and I'll be in very remote areas for much of the next 6 days. I'll do the best I can with blogging and email, but may not have much internet access until the 18th.

A series in five parts.

2008-06-10T09:27:00.000-07:00

Del Monte

2008-06-10T08:46:00.000-07:00

Del Monte is one of the biggest landowners in the area around Cagayan de Oro. This particular field was once used to grow corn. Like much of the land on Mindanao that was once planted with staple foods, it is now used to grow fruit for export.

Once the rice basket of the Philippines, Mindanao now depends on imported rice to feed its population, shackling the island's food supply to global commodity markets. With grain prices rising, poor laborers like these -- who do backbreaking labor harvesting food they cannot use to nourish their families -- are among the hardest hit.
On another note, regarding "Filipino style," these workers, who have almost nothing, insisted on making a gift of some pineapples. I must confess: they were sweet and delicious. (Even sprinkled with salt per local custom).

Videoke

2008-06-10T08:31:00.000-07:00

Barangay Kalawitan, Misamis Oriental

This is classic Filipino style, in a way that's almost impossible to explain. As in: "Yeah, I'm hanging out drinking in a shack, but it has the damn finest videoke machine money can buy."

Or maybe: "I'm thinking of opening a bar, but I only have limited capital. What should I invest it in?"

p.s.

2008-06-08T05:32:00.000-07:00

In the past, I've had to threaten to withhold future postings until I start getting some email/comments. Let's hope we don't get to that point again....

Telling it like it is

2008-06-08T04:14:00.000-07:00

This is a quick-and-dirty little slideshow of Lorena Navarro, at Bankerohan Market in Davao City. She used to grow corn, but the price of fertilizer got too high, and her earnings were to low, so like many farmers, she had to leave the provinces and come to the city to look for work.

“It’s become too difficult to make a living, so many people stopped farming corn and rice,” she told me. “Now they just grow bananas and camote. But do you want to eat just bananas and camote? It that what you want? Look at the poor – fighting here, almost killing each other just to buy some cheap rice.”

When the government subsidized rice ran out at the market, she lost her temper, jumped up on a platform and started shouting against the government, accusing President Arroyo and other officials of failing to take care of the people, of corruption, of having bad policies about fertilizer and other agricultural products. "We're sick of this," she says. Sick of waiting in line, sick of hunger. As you can see, she found a pretty receptive audience.

Sorry for lack of subtitles, maybe in the future.

Working...

2008-06-07T04:02:00.000-07:00

At the NFA warehouse in Davao City, image courtesy of Jim Tan Nuevo

There's something more than a little ironic about sitting down to write about food prices, conflict and poverty when the cup of coffee I just bought would buy 4 kilos of NFA rice.

(Well, 3 now that they've just hiked up the price again)

It's a contradiction I really have no answer to, other than to remind myself of how happy people are when someone cares enough about their lives to show up with a camera and a recorder.

Rice Crisis in Davao

2008-06-06T08:25:00.000-07:00

Women buying government subsidized rice at Bankerohan market in Davao City.

A laborer loads 50 kilo sacks of government subsidized rice at the National Food Authority warehouse in Davao City

Canibad

2008-06-06T07:41:00.000-07:00

-And we interrupt this public service announcement for a bit of shameless hedonism-

I spent last summer in the Philippines, but somehow (workaholism?) never managed to go swimming. Determined to rectify this error, I took a trip with friends to what they consider to be the best beach near Davao City -- Canibad on Samal Island.

We were all geared up to take the jeep to the bus to the ferry to the motorbike to the beach -- but just as we were leaving, a truck pulled out of the lot across the street. On a whim, we flagged them down, thinking we might catch a ride into the city instead of waiting for the bus. It turned out, though, that they were going exactly where we were, and were happy to give us a lift. (Two of the workers chivalrously gave up their seats in the cab to Chay and I, and everyone else rode on top of sacks of cement in the back.

It was a journey of about 3 hours, the last 2 of which were on a fairly astonishing unpaved, windy and steep road along the Samal coast. But well worth the trip -- we had a pristine beach pretty much to ourselves, rented a picnic hut, made a fire, and slept under the stars.

All in all, it was a memorable experience, but what I think the return trip is what will stick with me for the longest. So far, my luck on this trip has been pretty amazing, but it wasn't good enough to produce a truck ride home, so we had to go the normal route. "Normal" in the Philippines meaning four passengers on one motorbike -- three clinging for dear life behind the driver, and one in the torpedo spot right up by the handlebars, cradled like a baby between the driver's arms.

As we approached one particularly steep, unpaved descent, the driver stopped to make sure we were all still attached. As he let go of the brakes, Chay leaned from behind me and shouted "Third World rollercoaster!" Racing down that hill, through the forest in the bright, bright sunshine, I felt newfound sense of the fragility of my own body, and so, so happy to be alive.

Daily News

2008-06-06T07:10:00.000-07:00

-- I wrote this on the 2nd, but couldn't post until now --

A round-up of news from today's local papers, just to give some context on what this place is like:

Rice prices up 10 pesos per kilo in the last week, hitting record highs of 50 pesos in some municipalities. Panic ensuing.
Writ of habeus corpus filed on behalf of broadcaster Lex Adonis, after a Davao prison warden refused to release him despite a court order. (Adonis is accused of making unflattering remarks about a local power broker)
Update on 255 farmers and their families who have taken refuge in a local gymnasium after fleeing from military operations in Compostela Valley
Local government officials in say they don't know anything about the MILF peace process beyond what they "read in the papers and hear from our constituents."
Update on Zamboanga businessman kidnapped my suspected Abu Sayyaf militants.
The military claiming MILF factions are behind a deadly bombing at an airbase in Zamboanga.
Still no word on who's behind sabotage of power lines.
Various murders, and helpful advice from vice-Mayor Sara Duterte that pubs and restuarants should "hire more security" promises to look into laws to require frisking all patrons.
Proposed fare hikes for public transportation, to make up for increased fuel prices.

Oh...and a local girl won Miss Teen Philippines!

I <3 the Philippines.

Rice in Davao

2008-06-01T04:38:00.000-07:00

The first topic of conversation on everyone here's lips in the price of rice.

The last time I was here, you could buy a kilo of good quality rice for 20 pesos, (about 50 cents). In the year since then, it's more than doubled, and the price is rising every day. Rice is the staple food of the Philippines, eaten at every meal and making up the bulk of people's caloric intake -- and the poorer people are, the more they rely on it, so price increases are hitting people right in the stomach.

The lead story in the local paper today was about a man who hung himself in despair over the price of rice. The government provides some subsidies, but not enough. People wait in line for hours to be able to buy 1-2 kilos of rice at the old prices -- not nearly enough to feed a family.

The ripple effects are terrible. Some of my friends here run a program that provides free meals to street children and the elderly. They rely heavily on donations from vendors and discounted rice. Now, nobody has anything to spare, so they've had to suspend operations indefinitely. And the state doesn't step in to fill the gap. Everyone is suspicious of those with farmers and money. "Farmers only make 12 pesos a kilo," one woman told me. "And the merchants sell for 40. So where does the money go?"

People are suspicious of government officials using loan money from the World Bank and Asian Development Bank to buy imported rice, and pocketing 40 percent. It's always hard to tell here, but I've generally found the rumor mill to be one of the most accurate sources of information available in the Philippines.

"We think the leaders of this country knew in advance the kind of problems we're going to have," said a friend, only half joking. "They're trying to make all the money they can, then move somewhere else before the Philippines gets sold to China."

*maybe tomorrow with pictures, but for now this internet connection is way to ridiculous

Goodbye California!

2008-05-29T18:35:00.000-07:00

Seems appropriate somehow.

Twitter

2008-05-26T23:56:00.000-07:00

I tend to be a lot better about updating this thing while I'm traveling and actually have anything of interest to report, but in just a few days I'll be heading to a part of the world where internet access can often be tricky. Internet cafes (and sometimes even cafes with WiFi) are easy to find in big cities like Manila or Jakarta, but while I'm in transit or out in villages, it can be nearly impossible.

Since there seems to be a direct correlation between times when I don't have internet access and times when I'm doing something that is likely to cause people to worry if I disappear for days on end, I've gone ahead and signed up for a twitter account. This will allow me to send brief updates by text message from just about anywhere -- Southeast Asia's cellular phone infrastructure is much more developed than the US's, and I've been able to get reception in some surprisingly remote places. If you have a twitter account, or sign up for a free one, you can add me as a contact and get updates sent to your phone; if you don't, you can still check in via the "twitter updates" box in the sidebar, or by going to http://twitter.com/isafrancesca

For now, there's nothing there, as my updates would be along the lines of "trying to shove possessions in boxes. they do not fit" or "suspending magazine subscriptions" and I really hope I haven't yet descended to that level. But as soon as I get a Philippine sim card for my phone, and have a chance to link the new number to my account, I'll start using it to let people know that my plane hasn't crashed, my head is still attached, and I haven't yet starved to death.

Philippines uli

2008-05-13T17:46:00.000-07:00

Mountain Province, Luzon, Summer 2006

I finally have a confirmed ticket to and from the Philippines this summer. Philippine Airlines certainly made me sweat a bit (I didn't know until this morning whether I had to be ready to leave on Sunday) but in the end, I got exactly the itinerary I wanted -- not bad for an (almost) free ticket.

I should be in Mindanao for June -- Davao, Cagayan de Oro, and maybe a brief visit to Zamboanga. Early July in Jakarta, Bandung and maybe Jogjya, back to Manila for the International Conference on Philippine Studies, and then two weeks to do whatever seems most useful/interesting (probably archival research. sigh. I remember when I had other definitions for 'interesting'). And then...back to grad school.

Get in touch if you're going to be in or near any of these places! (Except grad school, which I don't want to hear about.)

In tangentially related news, Philippine human rights monitor Karapatan has just released their human rights report for the first quarter of this year, documenting 96 reported cases of severe human rights violations between January and March, including 13 extrajudicial executions. The report, unfortunately, does not seem to be available online, though I have a pdf I'm happy to pass on. The Inquirer has a summary here, but note they count violations by number of 'incidents' rather than number of victims.

Redadas de la Migra en Berkeley

2008-05-06T13:10:00.001-07:00

Demonstrator, May Day parade for immigrants' rights

Less than an hour ago, I got a text message from a friend saying
there were immigration raids happening in Berkeley -- one on a residential street, and one near one of the busiest intersections in town (University and San Pablo).
By the time I grabbed my camera, got shoes on and biked over, there wasn't a trace. Business as usual.

That fast. It happens that fast.

[I'm still trying to figure out exactly what happened. I trust the chain of communication by which I received this message, but I can't yet get to the bottom of it]

UPDATE: So, there was definitely at least one raid in Berkeley in which 4 family members were arrested in their home, and another in Oakland. The migra has not yet been able to get away with arresting parents when they take their children to school, but they've been making their presence felt around local highschools.

Welcome to election year. This is particularly sad after seeing so many proud, beautiful people marching for immigrants' rights last Thursday.

May Day

2008-05-01T23:32:00.000-07:00

Some photos from the May Day march in San Francisco

More, and more to come, on my flickr account

More Rizal

2008-04-29T14:06:00.000-07:00

I'm back to Jose Rizal again. For someone whose professed interest is human rights and modern political science, I seem to spend a lot of time studying 19th century intellectual history. (It is all related, I swear!). For all that I find many of Rizal's political stances objectionable, I can't help but feel great affection for the man when I actually read his work.

This letter, written to Filipino revolutionary Mariano Ponce in 1889, made me laugh:

Dear Friend,

I have sent you the proofs long ago. If you did not receive them, they must have been lost. Send me immediately other proofs; I have the manuscript.
We have many enemies and they are furious. Let us face the fight so that we shall not be disunited.
I am going to the library.

2008-04-26T00:31:00.001-07:00

I thought I should post...something.
I spend too much time behind this machine these days.
2 more weeks of class...it's hard to believe.

I'm trying to find some kind of balance between getting too caught up in plans for the summer and neglecting work, and getting too caught up in work and neglecting plans for the summer.

This time back in Berkeley, between a trip to Thailand and Burma and a trip to the Philippines and Indonesia is feeling like quite the strange interlude. I've had to go directly from the aspects of being in the field I love the most -- new places, new friends, new insight into how things really function in this crazy world, perhaps even some small hope of writing something that will make a few people think seriously about something they never thought to care about before -- to the aspects of grad school I hate the most -- paper's I don't want to write about things I don't think are important, tests, stress and gossip. It just doesn't seem real.

I'm wondering whether I'll be able to make it through two more years.

Mahalla

2008-04-06T17:27:00.000-07:00

More good news from U.S.-backed dictators around the globe...

Troops under Egypt's President-for-Life Hosni Mubarak attack striking workers at the Ghazl al-Mahalla textile factory.

This would be the same Hosni Mubarak to whom Bush recently expressed his appreciation for “the long and proud tradition that you’ve had for a vibrant civil society.”
Before concluding “I appreciate the example that your nation is setting...”

A timely, unpleasant reminder of what this administration means when it talks about promoting democracy in the Middle East.

Jetlag

2008-04-02T22:17:00.000-07:00

Juncture. Disjuncture.
Slipping through the margins between here and there, yesterday and tomorrow, sleep and restlessness.

Home

2008-04-01T22:03:00.000-07:00

Home is something of an abstract concept for me, but this -- watching out the BART window as the streets of Oakland roll by, resuming my ongoing struggle with the cashier at the corner store over whether or not I need a plastic bag to carry my juice 20 feet to my door, digging my house key out of my backpack, and walking up the stairs to my room -- is about as close as it gets these days.

I'm filled with an unseemly amount of happiness to return to my bed, my desk, my nice big towel, and the other inanimate objects that make life pleasant. I'm right back to the grind tomorrow, but I have friends and familiar places to look forward to seeing. It's good to travel. It's good to be home.

Mae Sai

2008-03-27T20:10:00.000-07:00

Mae Sai - Taichilek border crossing, from Mae Sai

I'm back in Thailand, in the lovely, seedy border town of Mae Sai. I'll be heading back to Chiang Mai in a few hours. I have lots of photos and stories to put up, but I'm going to wait for a better internet connection to do so.

Let me just say that Burma is a strange, strange place. When you step across the border, you set your watch back 30 minutes, and move back in time a half a century. It's a dictatorship, but one held together with carbon copies, handwritten account books and library paste. The streets are dirt, the houses bamboo and thatch, the vehicles improvised, held together with hope and wire. More than anywhere else I've ever been, it's a place apart. And yet...the thing I've come to understand, above all, is that Burma's isolation doesn't --as it were-- happen in isolation. The life is being sucked out of the country, and that's very, very good for the rest of the region. Whether their interests are in gas, oil, timber, hydropower, gems, drugs or labor, powerful people in the surrounding countries benefit from Burma staying exactly as it is. The chaos in Burma allows for ruthless extraction of its resources in a way that would never be possible in a country where the government bears any accountability to its people. Thailand benefits, China benefits, India benefits, the Burmese junta benefits -- and the Burmese people are left to pay the price.

This, I think, is the most important story about Burma, and I'm working on how to communicate it through the frame of the issue I'm focusing on.

Taipei

2008-03-20T16:33:00.000-07:00

Smoking Lounge, Taipei Airport

Made it to Taipei, Taiwan. Confirming, once again, that airports (at least the big ones) are pretty much identical the world over -- though this one is a bit chillier than average. Points for free wireless. Demerits for bad, overpriced coffee.
2 more flights to go.

Heading off..

2008-03-19T21:48:00.000-07:00

I'm off to the airport in just a few minutes, to Chiang Mai, Thailand via Taipei and Bangkok. I'll try to post again when I arrive.

Cornell

2008-03-14T22:09:00.000-07:00

Snow? In upstate New York? In March?
This is something that should have occurred to me in advance. But living in California has made me soft.

Marlena's

2008-03-10T20:26:00.000-07:00

The (semi)final cut of my series on the drag show at Marlena's Bar in Hayes Valley:

Check out a few more from the series on my flickr acount

Traveler's Song

2008-03-07T23:35:00.000-08:00

My loving mother, thread in hand,
Mended the coat I have on now,
Stitch by stitch, just before I left home,
Thinking I might be gone a long time.
How can a blade of young grass
Ever repay the warmth of the Spring sun?

- Meng Jia, translated from the Chinese by Mingfong Ho

I looked up, and discovered February had already slipped through my hands.
Desculpame.

Adventures of Isabel

2008-03-05T22:28:00.000-08:00

I’ve been asked a few times lately, so: the title “Adventures of Isabel” refers to a poem by Ogden Nash about a little girl who refuses to be intimidated by anything or anyone. Those of you who were never a little girl named Isabel may find it a bit obscure, but she’s always been an inspiration to me…

The Other Peace Process in Mindanao

2008-03-01T12:41:00.000-08:00

While public attention is focused on peace negotiations between the Philippine Government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Communist Party of the Philippines, a third, much quieter peace process has been underway in Mindanao. Since 2003, the Revolutionary Worker's Party of Mindanao (Rebolusyonaryang Partido ng Manggagawa ng Mindanao - RPM-M) has been in negotiation with the government to end three decades of conflict.

Mediated by Balay Mindanaw, a local NGO, and conducted locally, transparently, and with the involvement of the affected communities, this "other peace process" is focused on identifying and meeting the needs of villagers before an agreement is signed.

By giving all affected parties ownership over the process, focusing on the needs of communities rather than politicians, and avoiding high-profile international involvement, the process has avoided much of the chaos, violence and media posturing that mars negotiations with the MILF and the CPP. Unfortunately, corruption and insincerity on the part of the government and government contractors (and the unwillingness of international agencies to give aid before a final agreement is brokered) threaten to undermine the process. Villagers often do not see the infrastructure projects they are promised -- and every time the government fails to deliver its side of the bargain, it becomes more difficult to reengage communities in the peace talks.

I had the chance to meet with Balay Mindanaw president Kaloy Manlupig earlier this week, and was very impressed by his commitment to the peace process. I'm hoping to visit the affected areas this summer, so more on this later...

(And I'm going to quickly note here that US involvement in the region is, of course, complicating this process as well -- partly by pushing the Philippine government further towards a manichaean division between "good guys" and "bad guys" that discourages negotiation with "enemies" and "terrorists" like the RPM-M and the villagers who support them, and partly by threatening to disrupt the ceasefire in its hunt for "terrorists" in Mindanao.)

Bannerhang

2008-02-29T22:23:00.000-08:00

Demonstrators protest in favor of democratizing the UC Regents, against the Berkeley-BP research deal, in favor of leaving the Memorial Oak Grove uncut, against the UC refusing to turn over Native American remains held for "research." And also against nuclear weapons.
Ah, Berkeley...

Protecting the Boys

2008-02-29T17:06:00.000-08:00

I haven’t felt in the mood for blogging lately but after reading about the release of a US Marine charged with raping a 14-year old Okinawan girl, I’m reminded of this piece on a similar case in the Philippines, which I wrote a for a class a few months ago and never did anything with:

On December 4, 2006, Philippine courts sentenced U.S. marine Daniel Smith to 40 years in prison for raping a Filipina. The verdict was a dramatic victory for people seeking to hold American servicemen accountable for their crimes against civilian populations.

On December 29, 2006, the hopes raised by Smith’s conviction were shattered when the US Embassy removed him from Philippine custody.

Smith remains in the custody of the US Embassy in Manila while he appeals the verdict, causing widespread public outrage in the Philippines. The impulse to prevent Smith from languishing in an overcrowded, under-serviced prison while his case is resolved is understandable. But the “protect our boys” ethic that underlies it, which dictates that U.S. personnel abroad should invariably be shielded from local accountability, needs to be seriously reexamined.

In the Philippines, this case was clearly tied to US-Philippine military relations from the moment it hit the front pages. It was precisely this kind of crime -- and the lack of accountability that accompanied it -- that led to the expulsion of US Military bases from the Philippines in 1992.

After years of lobbying, the US military was allowed to return in 1999 under a new Visiting Forces Agreement. Among the key features of this agreement are provisions guaranteeing the Philippines greater power to try and punish American soldiers for serious crimes.

Smith’s trial was the first major test of the renegotiated agreement, and the guilty verdict gave Filipinos reason to believe that the era of American impunity had ended. Instead, within weeks of Smith’s conviction, the United States pressured the Philippine government to transfer Smith to American custody by threatening to cut aid and cancel joint military exercises.

Using the power of the state to shield Smith transformed his crime from an isolated incident into a statement of U.S. foreign policy. While asking the Philippines to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the war on terror, the United States effectively refused to acknowledge the Philippines’ equal right to protect its citizens, and undermined the very democratic institutions the war on terror is purported to protect.

America’s insistence on protecting a convicted rapist at the expense of Philippine sovereignty underscores an unequal partnership the Philippines, one of America’s staunchest allies in the war on terror, has every right to resent. On the anniversary of Smith’s conviction, protesters stormed the US Embassy in Manila calling for Smith’s return to local authorities and demanding the repeal of the Visiting Forces Agreement. As this call goes unheeded, resentment builds.

Filipinos are understandably upset by an ethos that "protects our boys" above all else. Shouldn't we be too?

Happy VD!

2008-02-14T14:01:00.000-08:00

This is my all-time favorite Valentine, sent to me last year by Britta. It may be old, but I thought about it today, it still makes me laugh, and I figured I should spread the love.

Demonstrations in Berkeley

2008-02-12T21:40:00.000-08:00

Since last night, demonstrators have been gathered outside of Berkeley City Hall, waiting to see whether the City Council will repeal a letter it issued last month informing the US Marines that they were “uninvited and unwelcome” intruders in the city.
After attracting international attention, and prompting republican lawmakers to call for federal funding to be withdrawn from the city, the council is meeting again tonight to reconsider their statement.
I wasn’t able to stay until the meeting was finished, but I stopped by in the afternoon and the evening to check out the scene.
People from Code Pink have been camping out in front of city hall, and a crowd of anti-war demonstrators has gathered around them.
Separated by a police line, a large crowd of counter-demonstrators is blasting patriotic music and waving flags. In the afternoon, the crowd of counter-demonstrators seemed the bigger of the two, but by the time the meeting started it appeared to have evened out.
To make things even more chaotic, a delegation of workers from Pacific Steel is also demonstrating at City Hall, in relation to another item on the agenda – a proposal to declare the Pacific Steel plant a public nuisance.
The proposal stems from noise and pollution complaints, but workers are afraid regulation will endanger their jobs. Unfortunately, because they arrived in the midst of a standoff between demonstrators and counter-demonstrators, their anti-City council stance effectively put them on the side of the pro-war demonstrators. There was a bit of commotion as people tried to find a camp to put them in, especially after one of the leaders of the workers delegation began making patriotic, pro-military statements. A few people from Code Pink tried to talk tie the loss of jobs to war policies, and one very unpleasant guy (who, judging from his orange bandana, was from an anti-war group) yelled at the (mostly Latino) workers for being “illegal Mexicans.”
I was able to talk to a few of the workers later, and it was clear they were there only about the Pacific Steel resolution, and had no intentions of making a statement for or against the Marines.
I have more photos up on flickr, and I'm still waiting to see how it all turns out.

UPDATE: The Berkeley City Council elected to retract the statement, but refused to apologize to the Marines. Republican lawmakers are continuing to push the "Semper Fi" act, which cuts off federal funding for the City of Berkeley.

Meanwhile...

2008-02-08T19:53:00.001-08:00

These past few weeks have been incredibly busy. On top of all the usual nonsense, I have to get ready for my trip to Southeast Asia, I'm going to be presenting a paper at a grad student conference at Cornell in March, and I'm spending a lot of time trying to persuade people to let me take their pictures.

As part of my preparations for going to Thailand and Burma, I decided to be sensible for a change and take adequate health precautions, so I went to the clinic yesterday to get all of my shots. I feel poked full of holes, have a lingering soreness in my left arm (Hep A) and can barely lift my right arm (tetanus and polio). I also have live typhoid (in therapeutic quantities) sitting in my fridge. Irritatingly, it has to be kept refrigerated, and has to be taken two hours after and one hour before eating -- so it will sit there until I can get organized enough to come home to my refrigerator before I'm so hungry I'm about to pass out. Could be a while.

I'm working on two new photo projects as well. One is a multimedia piece about flamenco in the Bay Area, and the other a photo essay on gender and gender politics. I've always been pretty comfortable with asking strangers if I can photograph them, but working on more in-depth projects requires a much higher level of access to people's lives, so it's an interesting challenge. It's good for me, though, to have work to do that requires going out and interacting with people, instead of just holing up in the library or my room.

I'm also revisiting my paper on the Rizal Morga to present at Cornell. There are a few things that should be improved, but mostly I'm just trying to condense it.

This has really turned into a list here, but I wanted to put up something. I think this will be my first "apologizing for not posting more" post in a while.

University of California - Bureaucracy

2008-01-28T21:48:00.000-08:00

A new semester, and as usual I’ve spent most of the past week running from office to office trying to persuade people to bend the rules for me.
I really can’t decide whether there is something wrong with me or something wrong with the system that makes this such a pattern. As far as I understand, normal people do not do this. They sign up for classes online, show up, and that’s that.

Me, well…

Having to juggle multiple departments is a big part of why pulling my schedule together is always such an epic drama. As an undergrad, I completed 3 majors in 3 years, and now I’m working on two Master’s degrees simultaneously. So I have much more bureaucracy to deal with, and much less room to maneuver.

This semester’s big upset came from trying to join a journalism school class on Burma. International reporting, Southeast Asia – what could be more perfect, and (thanks to my past research and reporting in the region, not to mention those 3 majors competed and 2 Master’s in progress) something I’d like to think I’m pretty well qualified for. But of course there was a catch. Because of the way the dual degree program I’m in is set up, I have not yet taken one of the prerequisite J-school classes. But I applied anyway, and early last week a loophole, somehow, was found.

And then the next obstacle. The lecture component of the Burma class conflicts with Indonesian, which I’m absolutely required to take to remain eligible for my funding. So I had to convince my Indonesian teacher to let me take her course as an independent study, showing up twice a week instead of three times and working on my own to keep up with the class. Then I had to convince my advisor in the Group in Asian studies that this was okay. Then I had to double-check with the people who administer graduate fellowships that I could use an independent study course to meet their requirements. Then I had to get the department of South and Southeast Asian studies to sign off on my course plan for Indonesian.

It’s been raining like crazy all week, and I discovered it’s very, very hard for people to say no to me when I show up in their office wet and disheveled, making a sad face, and holding out damp papers for them to sign. It also helps that, unlike in Madison -- where I had an actual nemesis who seemed to take personal affront at my I’m-such-a-special-snowflake attempts to bend the rules, and threw obstacles in my path at every possible opportunity (this woman is, to the infinite benefit of the students who follow me, no longer employed there) – everyone I met with actually wanted to help me. The University of California - Bureaucracy (just in case you were wondering what UC-B stands for) can be an absolute nightmare, but my experiences with the individual tentacles of the beast have been pretty good so far. The paperwork is still grinding through, but it looks like it’s all going to work out.

The upshot of all this is….I’m going to Thailand and Burma in March!

I won’t know for a few more days exactly where I’m going to be sent, and my project will obviously be location-specific, but no matter what, it’s going to be pretty amazing.

Erap and Sin

2008-01-22T13:39:00.000-08:00

Estrada: RP suffering for defying Vatican in 2001 uprising

“Claiming vindication, former president Joseph Estrada said on Monday the country has been suffering because the late Jaime Cardinal Sin did not heed “God’s voice” and, instead, backed the Edsa II People Power revolt, despite a Vatican order to stay away.” more...

I first read this story yesterday, and I still can’t stop laughing about it. Estrada’s chutzpah on this one is almost unbelievable.

It was recently revealed that the highly influential -- and very amusingly named --- Cardinal Sin defied orders from the Vatican when he leant his support to the 2001 “People Power II” movement that swept Estrada from power.

The role of the Church in Philippine politics is ambiguous, and a case can certainly be made for church-elite collaboration against even pseudo-populist politicians like Estrada (Eva-Lotta Hedman’s In the Name of Civil Society is one interesting take). But for Estrada to take this moralistic tone is pretty incredible.

This is the man who managed to reach transparency international’s top-ten list of all-time most corrupt leaders after just 31 months in office! In addition to old standards like graft, kickbacks, complicity in drug smuggling and illegal gambling, Estrada was particularly notorious for spending millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains buying houses for his various mistresses.

But of course, the problems in the Philippines are not caused by corrupt, morally bankrupt leadership. Oh no, says Estrada, it’s because god is punishing the country for Cardinal Sin’s disobedience.

Wala siyang hiya! Ang kapal ng mukha nya!

Irises

2008-01-19T18:02:00.000-08:00

Irises, in January.

Everytime I remember to look around, this city astonishes me.

Melilla, a photoessay by Flo Razowsky

2008-01-19T12:03:00.000-08:00

Flo -- activist, photojournalist, friend and inspiration -- has just posted a beautiful new photoessay from the Spanish-Moroccan border at Melilla.
http://www.lightstalkers.org/galleries/slideshow/9398

"This portfolio is part of a bigger project focused on the look of borders become manifest, the look of the land and the people when the arbitrary line in the sand takes form. These shots were taken from Melilla, Spain, a Spanish enclave cut off from the north of Morocco by a militarized and deadly triple layer, 10ft high structure. Migrants travel for 4,5,6 years to reach this side of the line only to be held in migrant detention centers, some for years, awaiting the legal system to either award them papers or deport them to where they started out from so many years ago and worked so hard (and many died) to get away from."

The Arroyo Imbroglio

2008-01-17T15:58:00.001-08:00

I highly recommend "The Arroyo Imbroglio in the Philippines," political scientist (and former teacher of mine) Paul Hutchcroft's new article in The Journal of Democracy to anyone interested in a lucid summary of a century of Philippine political history. In an impressively concise article (13 pages), Hutchcroft manages to address most of the key issues facing the Philippine political system -- corruption, fraud, violence, human rights abuses, impunity, insurgency and public disenchantment -- in a manner accessible to a non-specialist.

Although the Philippines can boast the oldest democratic structures in Asia, they are currently weak and lacking in legitimacy. Battered by scandal after scandal, these structures need careful and well-considered reform if they are to survive. read more..

Glorietta update from the PCIJ

2008-01-16T12:11:00.000-08:00

A while back, I posted on the Glorietta Mall explosion in the Philippines.
The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism has just released an interesting report on the case:

Glorietta 2 blast: Bomb or gas? by Avigail Olarte
WHILE the Philippine National Police (PNP) considers the case closed, other experts continue to doubt the results of the investigation on the Glorietta 2 blast that left 11 people killed and 108 injured in October last year.

It doesn’t help that the police has flip-flopped on the matter, at first declaring the explosion was caused by a bomb — a terrorist act even — only to later say that it
was triggered by gas build-up. And the report of a Malaysian forensic expert showing that traces of explosives were found in the mall’s basement only bolsters speculations that itwas a bomb. read more...

Watch a Tagalog-language video from GMA TV the day of the explosion, in which the Police claim the explosion was most likely caused by a bomb - don't want to embed it, because it's on auto play, and starts with a creepy real estate ad.

Huckabee strikes again

2008-01-16T11:35:00.000-08:00

Don't get me wrong -- I can't stand any of the presidential candidates. But there's still something about this guy that takes it to another level.

I'm not even all that old, and I can still remember a time when this would not have been considered acceptable political discourse.
And of course, the cheering crowd is probably full of the same kind of people who freak out about Shariah law and theocracy in the Middle East.

UPDATE: Check out a very interesting article by Ira Chernus about Faith-based politics at Tomdispatch

Cabazon's Creationist Dinosaurs

2008-01-12T22:19:00.000-08:00

This friendly looking dinosaur at a truckstop in Cabazon, Southern California:

Holds a creationist museum in its belly.

You climb up its tail, and are greeted by exhibits like this:

Finally, when you reach the top of the stairs, you arrive in the mueum/gift shop, where a variety of dinosaur paraphenalia is sold, and a slack-jawed adolescent stares at a video of a sermon about how Noah took dinosaurs onto the ark with him.

"But of course, he took baby dinosaurs. Why? Because they're small...duh! And light. This will be important later." (Verbatim, to the best of my memory. I only wish I was making this up.)

[it's worth clicking to view the larger picture sizes, and actually read the exhibit labels]

2008-01-08T15:49:00.000-08:00

As promised, a photo of Beautiful Downtown Bakersfield.

On the Edge:The Femicide in Ciudad Juarez

2008-01-08T00:43:00.000-08:00

The first section of Steev Hise's film "On the Edge: The Femicide in Ciudad Juarez" can now be viewed online at http://panleft.net/cms/ote-podcast1

He will be poisting a new segment every Monday for the next 8 weeks -- definitely a film worth checking out.

For more information about the film, visit http://political.detritus.net/juarez

San Joaquin Valley

2008-01-08T00:15:00.000-08:00

Central California is grim, grim, grim.

Looks like Appalachia, only flat, and with grapes.

Perhaps tomorrow with pictures, but since I seem to have left without the usb cable for my camera, I won't be able to upload anything until I can borrow one, or until I get home.

In the meantime, the highlight of the train ride was when we were briefly stuck in Hanford waiting for another train to pass, and the conductor invited us to take the opportunity to admire the "palatial views" the town had to offer.

"If you look to your right, you'll see...public storage. And to your left, a big, giant, humongous hole. Woo-hooo! Welcome to Hanford."

About sums it up. Maybe I don't even need a photo.

Huckabee

2008-01-04T02:40:00.000-08:00

I just feel the need to publicly express how disturbed I am that one of the front runners for the next president of the United States is a man who does not believe in evolution.

Darwin help us all!

New Year's Eve

2007-12-31T17:31:00.000-08:00

The Sun Sets on 2007

from my back porch.

(Squint and you can see the Golden Gate Bridge)

From my bedroom window.

Happy New Year everyone. More posts in 2008.

Bah Humbug

2007-12-25T22:07:00.000-08:00

Christmas itself being inescapable, I decided to at least flee the city.

I drove down to the Central Valley with a friend from the Documentary Film program. As a shooting day, it was a bit of a disaster. He was hoping for footage of the state mental hospital in Atascadero, but, as it turned out, we couldn't film on site and couldn't get a decent angle from off site.

Not exactly worth eight hours in the car. For me though, it was a nice little escape and a chance to see some parts of California I've never seen before.

I've also gained a new appreciation for the difficulty of working with film. It's a powerful, accessible medium, but having to work with an enormous camera creates a set of difficulties that people working with print never have to deal with. I can work just by looking around and writing things down later. At most, I need a small recorder and a still camera. It's easy to be discreet in a way that's completely impossible for film, and the quality of your work depends completely on your skill as a reporter and storyteller, and not at all on your equipment.

I love watching other people's films. But I think I'm too attached to traveling light, being mobile and fast, to ever make them myself.

Home

2007-12-22T01:19:00.000-08:00

People keep asking me if I’m going home for Christmas, and I never know exactly what to say. The simple answer is that my family isn’t Christian, which is generally enough to stop that particular line of inquiry dead in its tracks. But the more complicated answer is that, really, I don’t even have any idea where “home” would be.

If I close my eyes and think about the concept, the first image that comes to mind is a wooden gate my parents installed at the top of the stairs when I was little to keep my brother, sister and I from tumbling down in the dark.

That house is still there, but the gate is not, the people who live at the top of those stairs are strangers, and the neighborhood outside has changed beyond recognition. I’ve been back there a few times in the past years, and felt nothing but disorientation.

I would love to visit my parents, but it would be just that – a visit, to see them, in an unfamiliar city that holds no other attractions. The rest of the people I love, friends and family both, are scattered throughout the various cities, countries, continents I’ve lived in over the years.

There’s a freedom in rootlessness, I suppose. I have no home-baggage tied around my neck, no particular place I’m bound to more than any other by love or by obligation. I remember years when I would happily call any city home if somewhere in it, I had a bed with sheets on it, a key to get to that bed any time I wanted, and a bicycle of my own. My material needs might have increased a bit (it’s hard to imagine being separated from my books, for example) but nothing fundamental has changed. I’m free to go anywhere I please and make a life for myself, follow my work and my desires anywhere they lead me.

But there’s something about this time of year that makes me a little jealous of those who have the security of a home and a neighborhood they will always belong in.

Head, Body and Feet; or, what I've been doing with my life

2007-12-17T20:45:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty sure only one person will really appreciate this (and you will very quickly know who you are, my friend) but since I've been too busy and burned out to do any extra-curricular writing these last few days, I figured I'd post this:

One of the most common critiques of Rizal’s narrative of nationalism comes from left-leaning academics, who charge Rizal with elitism. Renato Constantino, for example, argues that while Rizal spoke in good faith about human rights and human dignity and used the language of universal ideals, he was essentially “voicing the goals of his class.”[1] He may have condemned the exploitation of peasants at the hands of encomenderos and friars, the argument goes, but did not question the underlying morality of social stratification. A close reading of Rizal’s annotations in the Morga supports this analysis. He seems genuinely outraged by the exploitation of peasants at hands of encomenderos and friars; yet while he decries the “tyranny of the oppressor” against the “poor class,” he does not question the existence of class itself. [2] Most tellingly, when de Morga explains the traditional constellation of Philippine classes as principales, plebians and slaves, Rizal simply concurs. “This is the eternal division one finds, and will find (in the future) everywhere, in all kingdoms and republics: ruling class, productive class, and servant class: head, body and feet.”[3] It is, to say the least, difficult to imagine Rizal aspired to a sense of deep horizontal comradeship with someone he describes as being, eternally, a foot.

[1] Renato Constantino, Dissent and Counter-Consciousness (Quezon City: Malaya Books, Inc., 1970) p.135.

[2] Rizal-Morga, p. 300, referring here to Catholicism’s failure to liberate the poor.

[3] Ibid, 297, n. 2. “Esta es la division eterna que se encuentra y se encontrara en todas partes, en todos los reinos y republicas: clase dominadora, clase productora y clase servil: cabeza, cuerpo y pies.” In other notes, Rizal gives considerable attention to the question of slavery, generally condemning the practice, but noting that slavery in the Philippines was benign compared to European systems, and could more accutately be described as debt-bondage. (see footnotes p. 294.295)

__________________________________

I should note, also, that I got a chance to slag off Ileto, although I had to confine it to a footnote. Let's just say I have convincing evidence that he never read the Morga.

Did we ever have lives?

Death Squads and International Norms

2007-12-13T16:42:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking quite a bit about death squads today -- mostly because of an interesting article by Greg Grandin I read this morning, but also partly because of correspondence with friends from Davao, partly because it's a change from working on papers, and partly because I am clearly a somewhat disturbed person.

In the article I've linked to above, Grandin does a good job of explaining the role that death squads, which he defines as "[c]landestine paramilitary units, nominally independent from established security agencies yet able to draw on the intelligence and logistical capabilities of those agencies," play in state terror campaigns to suppress dissidence.

I think, though, that he misses a key point about death squads: the role that international norms play in creating them. I've only ever come across one book that seriously engages this question, Bruce Campbell and Arthur Brennar's Death Squads in Global Perspective: Murder with Deniability. With apologies for academic-ese, the book's central argument can be summed up as follows:

Bruce Campbell poses one central question regarding the global phenomenon of death squads and vigilantism: following a Weberian conception, statehood is defined by the monopolization of the legitimate use of coercive force within a given territory. Why then, have so many states compromised this monopoly on force, devolving coercive power to private, extra-state forces by offering formal or tacit support to death squads and vigilante groups?

Drawing on literature on state violence, Campbell attempts to situate this devolution of force within the bounds of rational, conventional state behavior, arguing that subcontracting violence may be a state’s best, or only, available means of dealing with an internal threat.

As Ted Robert Gurr suggests, state violence is a response to “the existence of a class, group, or party that the ruling elite sees as a threat to its continued rule.” However, most modern states are constrained by both international and domestic laws and organizations, rendering full-scale, overt state repression a political impossibility. Death squads and vigilante groups, then, fill this gap, allowing states to orchestrate the violent suppression of dissident groups while retaining plausible deniability nationally and globally.
(from a paper I wrote last Spring, which then challenges aspects of this theory, at least as it applies to the Philippines, by introducing the element of personalistic politics, but that's more than I care to get into at the moment)

Essentially, death squads exist where external pressure makes overt state repression politically impracticable. In this sense, they represent one of the greatest failures of the "international community," which has a history of making an enormous fuss about state sponsored violence, while quietly tolerating extra- or quasi- state violence.

A case in point would be the Philippines during the Marcos era. The early period of the Marcos dictatorship was marked by mass arrests of Marcos' political opponents. These arrests were conducted overtly, generated paperwork, and were undeniably tied to the central state's policies. Consequently, foreign governments who cooperated with Marcos were compelled to censure him for his excesses.

In response, Marcos made a tactical shift to quasi-state repression. Instead of having dissidents arrested by the police and put in prison, he had them kidnapped by death squads, and disappeared or salvaged [tortured to death and left for public display]. This was clearly not a move that improved the human rights situation in the country, but it allowed Marcos to deny responsibility for abuses, a contention those who wished to collaborate with him -- including, let's not forget, Jimmy "the Carter Doctrine" Carter -- were happy to accept.

The Arroyo administration is, of course, another example. At the same time Arroyo is (to say the very least) tolerating hundreds of murders by death squads, she is being celebrated, in some quarters, for official policies she claims seek to curtail such violence.

By pressuring states to distance themselves from abuse while failing to combat the underlying political and social conditions that create it, the "international community" creates the conditions in which death squads thrive.

So fine, condemn death squads. Of course they should be condemned. Just... don't get too comfortable about it.

Winter

2007-12-11T22:26:00.000-08:00

Winter 2001: Minnehaha falls, frozen. Me, so acclimated I'm not even wearing gloves.

I'm not going to pretend there aren't things about California that make me want to spit nails. People, for example, who actually think talking about chakras is a reasonable way to chat me up. Or endless discussions about feelings that never actually seem to result in people saying what they're feeling. Or being asked what my spirit animal is (actually, that happened in Washington, but you get the idea).

Numerous other things reconfirm that, at least when it comes to interpersonal communication, I'm East Coast to the core.

But then I read about the crazy ice storms gripping the Midwest, and remember the terrible things Midwestern winters did to my head, and realize how much worse I could have it. Which, come to think of it, is one of the few things the Midwest is consistently good for.

I'm trying to make a point of spending some time everyday barefoot on my backporch, looking at the hills across the bay, and appreciating civilized weather.

Bloke Metges update

2007-12-09T18:31:00.000-08:00

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 building, partly because the door was well barricaded, and partly because a crowd of neighbors gathered in the street and tried to prevent the police from approaching the building.

When the police finally did break their way in, they blocked the windows so people outside couldn't see what was happening, then beat up everyone who was inside. On a slightly better note, nobody was hospitalized, or arrested.

Two days later, the building was temporarily reoccupied to host a farewell party in the pizzeria and cafe located on the ground floor.

Arroyo receives human rights award. Seriously.

2007-12-07T00:20:00.000-08:00

President Arroyo was just awarded the "Medalla de Oro" from Universidad de Alcala in Spain, in recognition of her work to improve the human rights situation in the Philippines.

This makes me, quite literally, feel sick.

Yes, she abolished the death penalty. But to me, that seems a little irrelevant when she has condoned hundreds of extrajudicial executions.

This is the woman who has presided over the worst resurgence of torture, illegal detainment and extrajudicial murder the Philippines has seen since the Marcos dictatorship. The woman who is so bad she almost makes you miss Estrada, who was disgusting and corrupt but at least not on a campaign to murder the entire left. The woman who is currently facing censure from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the UN SR on extrajudicial executions for her absolutely appalling human rights record. The woman whose regime is so obviously complicit in human rights abuses that even the US Senate has felt the need to make (a little tiny portion of) aid contingent on her cleaning up her act.

As for Arroyo's claim that there are 100 cases involving extrajudicial killings being prosecuted, that is, to the best of my knowledge which is pretty damned good on this subject, a bald-faced lie.

And I can't believe she had the nerve to take credit for constituting the Melo Comission and "following its recommendations" when she has absolutely failed to take responsibility for the fairly damning conclusions of the Commission's initial report, and continues to block release of the final version.

I have yet to read anything that gives any clue as to what the people who chose to give Arroyo this award were thinking. It is either shockingly ignorant or shockingly sinister. I'm not sure which is worse.

This would make me absolutely livid on any day. The fact that it comes just as I've finished revisions on my paper on impunity in the post-Marcos Philippines -- a process in which I've been consumed with rereading my own work, interviews I conducted over the last 2 years, and countless reports like the ones I've provided links for above -- is pushing me over the edge.

Did I mention that this makes me sick?

It's that time of the semester again...

2007-12-06T01:30:00.000-08:00

Continuing my series of desk portraits, here is the wreckage of my desk as I near the home stretch of a marathon last-minute paper revising session:

It may not be a system of organization that works for anyone else, but I seem to have done alright for myself with it so far.

Now, if I can just stop procrastinating and find 2000 more words I can get rid of without undermining my thesis before my eyes totally give out, I may just be through with writing about impunity in the Philippines forever.

Well, probably not forever, but I feel like a nice long break is in order.

I am so ready for the semester to be over.

UPDATE @ 2:30: Oh, it hurts, it hurts! Every line in this paper represents hours of research and writing. The fat's trimmed off, so is a lot of the meat. I'm starting to hit bone.

Bloke Metges evicted

2007-12-03T00:57:00.000-08:00

Free community bicycle shop in CSO Metges, 2003

CSO (Squatted Social Center) Metges in el Forat de la Vergonya in Barcelona was evicted after 6 years. 4 people (and I don't yet know who) were beaten up in the process.

The eviction happened Tuesday morning, though I've only now gotten the news.

This house was one of my most beloved homes, and an amazing center for resistance and organizing for the whole neighborhood.

My heart is truly broken.

Breakfast at Metges, 2003

More images

Spanish language story on the eviction. Sorry, best I could do. At least it's not Catalan.

Fanciness

2007-12-02T15:34:00.000-08:00

I'm experimenting with some new features here.

A del.icio.us account makes sense for me because I switch so frequently between computers and browsers that it's nice to store bookmarks in a centralized location. It also gives the option of sharing links publicly -- which I've done here, in hopes that even when I don't have time or energy, (or anything of particular interest) to write, I can still have some new content, and offer links (sometimes with comments if you actually go the the page for my account) to things I find useful, interesting or disturbing.

(Plus, it offers a fun, slightly creepy element of voyeurism for you all)

There's also a the new flickr badge, which shows the most recent pictures I've posted. And probably more to come. The point in the semester has arrived where I have more and more work to do, and less and less will to do it, so devoting attention to extracurricular projects has been quite appealing lately.

Another weird coup attempt...

2007-11-30T13:59:00.000-08:00

Yet another bizarre, poorly-planned coup attempt in the Philippines. This has basically become an annual event. In fact, it may have been a bit behind schedule.
I don’t really have the mental energy right now to wrap my head fully around this one, although it’s worth noting that one of the coup leaders was Antonio Trillanes, who was elected to the senate in May, while he was in prison for his role in a 2003 coup attempt.
And people need to ask why I find the Philippines so interesting?
There’s also an interesting quote in this story from the Inquirer, where AFP Chief of Staff General Esperon, (not someone who usually gets much love on this blog) attributes the coup to “messianic people” in the military “who think they can give solutions to the problems of the country while they cannot even solve the problems of their own [military] units.”
It immediately reminded me of a the work Guillermo O’Donnell and Phillippe C. Schmitter, scholars of transitional justice who assert that granting amnesty to the military for past human rights abuses “reinforce[s] the sense of impunity and immunity of the armed forces” and encourages a “messianic self-image” of the military as “the institution ultimately interpreting and ensuring the highest interests of the nation,” ultimately undermining any social stability that amnesty is supposed to buy.
All that aside, though, I have to admit that what is really sticking in my head is the whole hotel thing. Trying to overthrow the government by seizing a luxury hotel in a business district miles from military bases or government offices. What the fuck is that all about? It seems to be a popular tactic for (failed) coups in the Philippines. The Manila Hotel coup of 1986 comes to mind, as does Trillanes’ own 2003 Oakwood Mutiny which -- in a slight variation on the theme -- took over a luxury apartment complex.
(Credit as well to the Toronto star, for the best headline I’ve seen for this story: “Hotel coup fails; people had reservations”)

I’m really trying to figure out if this is a tactic that is used anywhere else.

Cool-guy academics

2007-11-28T20:53:00.000-08:00

During our discussion about Eric Tagliacozzo’s Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States along a Southeast Asian Frontier, one of my classmates coined a new term: “Cool-guy academic.” Which is to say, the type of academic -- preferably as nerdy as possible -- who focuses on “cool guy” topics like smuggling, piracy, drugs, organized crime and prostitution.
And I’m sitting there thinking, “guilty as charged.” With the exception of a few papers on nationalist historiography, every major project I’ve worked on in the last few years has been about sex, drugs or violence (or some combination of the above).
So I confessed.
“Why heroin? Why not rice?” a fellow student asked. At the time, I cracked a joke about actually wanting to find a job after grad school, unlike the PhD students in history I was surrounded by.
But it is a serious question. Take drugs, for example. An incredible amount of ink has been spilled about the role of opium and alcohol monopolies in financing and consolidating the colonial state. No one’s denying this revenue was important, but some recent scholarship suggests it may be exaggerated, or at least overemphasized. Meanwhile, other, less sexy, areas like rubber plantations and tin mining are seriously under-studied.
So I’ve been reflecting on my fascination with the ugly underbelly of society. Granted, I did have the ultimate cool-guy academic as my undergraduate advisor. But it goes back a lot further than that, and I think it’s fair to say that I wanted to work with McCoy because of my fascination with the illicit, rather than developing that fascination as a result of working with him.
I’ve been this way ever since I was a kid. I read every single holocaust book we had on the shelf, and anything else with comparably dark themes, from Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee to Shakespeare’s tragedies. A fascination, shall we say, for the morbid.
I’ve always seemed to want to fill my head with the most horrific information I can find. I’m not sure if that makes me a “cool guy.” But it definitely makes me something.

UN report on extrajudicial murder in the Philippines

2007-11-26T15:29:00.000-08:00

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 that hasn't been said before, and I'm not too optimistic about it having much of an effect internationally or even in the Philippines, but it's some strong words from a credible source, and it certainly can't hurt.

And then the next day, it looked like this:

2007-11-26T03:00:00.000-08:00

My friends, and friends' friends, are generally pretty considerate of other people's homes. They would've gladly helped clean up after the meal. But with the kitchen sink completely broken, there was really nothing anyone could do that night. So, the morning after Thanksgiving, we had to wake up to this:

And this:

Exactly how I wanted to spend my vacation.
(I don’t care to get too far into it, but the scene can’t be completely understood without mentioning that we also awoke to a blocked toilet. Let’s just say the list of that things I was thankful for that day included a sturdy pair of thick-soled boots and the fact that, contrary to my worst fears, fixing the toilet did NOT actually require sticking my hand in it.)

Perhaps this was my penance for celebrating a holiday with such nationalistic, genocidal roots?

In any case, the sink clearly needed to be fixed before anything else could be done. And there was no hope of getting the landlord to do anything about it that day. So we had to do it ourselves. Which, after a massive team mobilization, got done successfully.
Overall score:

Sink - 2 (breaking in the thick of food preparations; thwarting any attempts to clean as the evening progressed)
Us – 2. (managing to cook the meal anyhow; fixing the damned thing in the end)

That seemed like a good point to call it a draw and move on.

***

Over the past few months, I feel like I’ve been reexamining a lot of the negative effects of the years I spent traveling, squatting and generally living in marginal ways. But it’s important for me to remember the benefits too. Living a completely improvised existence for so many years left me with an incredibly eclectic skill set – everything from writing grants to wiring a house with power stolen from streetlights. And I truly am glad that somewhere along the way, I learned my way around Teflon tape and PVC piping.

Getting in touch with my inner plumber

Pie!

2007-11-22T17:03:00.000-08:00

Getting in touch with my domestic side. So, so many more pictures to put up tomorrow.

For now, despite the sink exploding this morning, everything's actually enough under control that I'm taking a break from the crowd and hiding out with my computer.

Next up: dinner for 30.

2007-11-21T16:43:00.001-08:00

Mt. Shasta, from I-5 in Northern California

It’s been a rare sunny day in Olympia. And cold! Four months of living in the Bay Area has made my blood thin.
On the way up here, I was remembering the only other time I’ve ever been on I-5 between Oakland and Oregon -- tail end of what was probably the most miserable trip of my entire life. I was seventeen, on the West Coast for the first time, hitchhiking south after the WTO protests in Seattle.
My companion and I were both broke, and sick from all the teargas and nerve-gas we’d been exposed to. I remember being cold, throat aflame, and with wet feet for days on end, walking and walking in the rain and finding it nearly impossible to get picked up. In the realm of small miseries, I can think of few worse than waking up in the morning and having to put back on the same wet clothes you were wearing the night before. I think it took 5 days to get from Portland to Oakland (including a disastrous detour on the 101), and I can’t recall ever being happier to make it somewhere.
Doing the same trip in reverse took about 13 hours, including a surreal stop at a casino and the requisite tire blow-out 15 miles before our destination (fortunately, the only roadside emergency I actually know how to deal with). Quite a pleasant trip, all things considered. And I’m happy for a change of scenery.
I still have to spend a few hours working every day to justify leaving town for nearly a week, but the rest of the time is mine to explore, think about food, and spend with old friends.

2007-11-18T13:58:00.000-08:00

I've been feeling kind of stressed lately, so I'm trying to remind myself of small things that consistently make me happy no matter how stressed or grumpy I am:

Photobooth pictures
Dancing
Skating
Swimming
Mail (paper, though email's not bad either)
First cup of coffee (and second! The best thing about addictions is that you create problems for yourself that you can then easily solve)