the citizen-viewer

Live video: Counting the votes collected by Philly’s Ballot Box last Tuesday. Usually active between 9am and 11pm.

The, um, citizen’s election commissioner is usually working at the table at the right. Except for Saturday, which is mostly a day off.

(Press the green arrow to play. If the video isn’t working, then we must have finished counting.)

(photo by Darren Whiteside from Asiaweek)

Ten years later, the intellectual authors of the March 30 grenade attack are still not only at large, but in charge.

The girl sitting up in the photo is still dead.

This is nifty. You can make your last 20 geotagged flickr photos show up on a Google map.

Just copy the feed link at the bottom of the flickr page, add “&georss=true” to the end, paste it into the search box and bob’s your uncle.

Here’s an example of the results. Unless you’re using Explorer, as far as I can tell.

More details at the geobloggers.

To be clear about this, the citizen-viewer here wants a Cub Commuter. It’s been over two weeks and I’m still waiting.

Any reader could step up to the plate. Just drop what you’re doing and hit the bricks looking for a Cub Commuter for me, and when you find it, buy it and give it to me. It couldn’t be simpler. You won’t get it done if you don’t start now!

In the unlikely event that you choose not to give me a Cub Commuter, please go here and donate. The rule of law is the foundation of democracy.

This is the 1982 Cub Commuter on display at the Microcar Museum near Atlanta.

Apparently it “filled the need for a useful commuter vehicle low in cost, inexpensive to drive, maintain and insure.” A need which is now met by the Hummer H2.

Who wouldn’t want to see the streets of America’s cities buzzing with these little babies? Somewhere, we took a wrong turn.

If anyone would like to get me one I would appreciate it.

Last night Eric and I moved from our lodgings in the Movenpick Hotel (and Resort) to a regular apartment, rented for the week through our translator.

The Movenpick is a large hotel built into the face of the rocky bluffs that rise from the Mediterranean and bound the city of Beirut on the west. From the road that runs along the top of these bluffs, you see a low-lying modern building that looks like a shopping center with a reception hall. The lobby is there, in the top floor of the hotel, and the other floors drop down below it.

On the flats between the hotel and the sea, dotted with palm trees, is a multilevel plaza with two enormous swimming pools, one Olympic-sized and the other, about as large, shaped like a long-necked gourd. There is also a kiddie pool. Oh, and there’s another Olympic-sized pool indoors, or so I heard.

These pools, the outdoor ones, are surrounded each day by hundreds of bronzed Lebanese ladies and gentlemen and a few dozen pastier foreigners, lazing about in lounge chairs, ordering drinks from the Leisure Team and occasionally taking a dip.

To the south of the pool area is a marina for hotel guests and owners of the luxury apartments in the south wing. To the north is a private beach. These are the only two parts of the hotel where you can see the effects of the recent war: Oil spilled from the power plant at Jieh has drifted north with the current, painting a black, tarry stripe across the beach and along the hulls of the jet skis and motoboats in the marina.

The Movenpick is the kind of place where the staff remembers what kind of omelette you ordered yesterday at the buffet breakfast, glides in front of you to open doors and forces you to say good morning, and thank you, and nod appreciatively dozens of times a day. “That place will kill you,” said one of my contacts in horror when I told him where I was staying.

Despite the torpor induced by easy access to air conditioning and 300-thread-count sheets, I managed over the course of the week to see something of the outside world.

Directly from the airport, Eric and his driver took me to Dahiyah, or more precisely Haret Hreik, the part of southern Beirut which serves as the urban base for Hezbollah. Haret Hreik is often called a suburb in news reports, but it is actually a densely populated, entirely urban area full of five- to ten-story apartment buildings.

Or I should say was, because an impressively large part of it has been made much less dense by the Israeli airstrikes. (You’ve seen others’ photos, now you can see mine.) Where Hezbollah guards used to stop any outsider from entering their zone, they now check passports and press passes to allow journalists the chance to see for themselves.

They are not so much showing the scope of the destruction to illustrate the extremity of the Israeli assault as they are featuring the destruction as a measure of their own resilience.

Everywhere among the ruins stand determined-looking young men (one or two of whom seem to follow you around to make sure you don’t photograph any mullahs or fall into a hole). Cranes, bulldozers and dumptrucks are grinding along in huge clouds of dust, clearing rubble, while on the crushed tops of shortened buildings teams of men work in silhouette, sorting debris.

But the clearest sign of the meaning we are supposed to take from this comes from the red banners hanging on the ruins, some in Arabic and some in English, with taunting slogans such as “Made In America (Trade Mark),” “The New Middle BEast” and my favorite, “Extremely accurate targets.” All of them, and even the yellow plastic tape that cordons off the most dangerous areas, carry the slogan “The Divine Victory.”

Over the course of the week we returned to Haret Hreik a couple of times for pictures and one time to meet with a member of Hezbollah’s media committee (in the Hezbollah Media Relations tent) to discuss those banners.

But before I go back over the week — if I go back over the week — I’ll get up to date with the lodgings. The new place is in the eastern part of central Beirut, more or less in a neighborhood called Achrafiye, off Rue Saint Louis, near the Orthodox Hospital. OK, Street 82, come on by.

In contrast to the southern suburbs, which are dusty and identifiably third-world even when not blown up, this is a neighborhood of small, crooked streets lined with a mixture of decaying French colonial wrecks and smaller apartment buildings of a more recent vintage. A few of them get a little Beverly Hills, but most tend toward the Soviet.

Despite that, you could almost imagine you are in a down-at-the-heels neighborhood in a European city. A few European and American fast-food chains are around, but mostly it’s corner groceries, bakeries and of course Internet shops. These are Christians, one of the minorities who, it’s feared, might leave Lebanon and take its economy with them.

Inside, the apartment takes me right back to Cambodia. High ceilings, white concrete walls, old print tile on the floor, cheap bed frames, a shower that barely trickles, a gas stove run off a propane tank, someone else’s old dishes, fat cockroaches wandering in. There is, however an unfortunate shortage of geckos on the walls.

The apartment was most recently held by an Italian journalist, we’re told, named Filippo, who must have left in a hurry, as various presumably less important possessions are scattered around. Tonight I dined on some pasta he left, along with a half a jar of store-bought pesto. I don’t guess he’s been gone for too long, as the Bulgarian white wine hasn’t really turned. I might stay away from the rosé though.

Filippo also left, thank you very much, a stovetop espresso pot and an apparently tolerant relationship with a small black cat who feels quite at home in here, all the more so since I put down a bowl of Friskies for him, and chases down the cockroaches with enthusiasm, if not efficiency.

The Frankfurt to Amman flight was wall-to-wall Arabs. It was terrifying. Annie Jacobsen would have died of fright. Nearly every seat was occupied by exactly the sort of person we are now well-trained to fear. Who would it be — the youngish guy next to me in the cheap green suit, with a thin, pock-marked face? Flower headscarf girl? Peroxide blonde tight-jeans lady? The little girl asleep in her mother’s arms?

They say that a 9-11 style hijacking can’t happen again because the passengers would fight to the death. But in this case, they would be fighting each other. A pitched battle for the cockpit doors among terrorists of all descriptions.

The flight attendants came by with the drinks, and I noticed that green-suit guy and his friends ordered strictly non-alcoholic beverages. That’s a sign. And the flight attendant had to individually remind them to wear their seat belts because of the turbulence — you see, they have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own.

We never think about this, do we, when we see those scary Arabs on the plane. In some parts of the world, the planes are packed with nothing but Arabs! Who’s screening them?

This is how we’ve been schooled in terror. But I saw the towers fall. I have a right!

I started to talk with the guy in the green suit, asking him the correct pronunciation of some words in my Arabic phrasebook. He was quite helpful. It turned out he was an Iraqi engineer on his way back from two weeks of training in Germany. He was transiting through Amman on his way to Baghdad the next day. He asked me where I was from. I told him, and there was an awkward silence for a moment.

“It’s bad in Iraq,” he said in his very broken English. “The bombs more. More people die.” I pointed to the word “fear.” He nodded.

After an hour or so of training in Iraqi Arabic, we turned off the overhead lights and went to sleep.

At one in the morning, the coastline of Israel came into view, dazzling with lights. A few miles in, the lights spread more thinly and a single very bright line bisected the nightscape, roughly north to south. On the other side of this line, the lights were suddenly dimmer, just bluish fluorescent ones and no street lighting. The plane turned to begin its descent to Amman. I could see the whole sweeping view from there back to the shoreline. There’s a lot going in a very small space.

Inside the airport, in the small entry hall, stood men with signs meeting passengers. One of them held a sign that said Blackwater. Another said DYNCORP. In fact the crowd was more varied than I’d noticed on the plane—there were Scandinavian students here to see the sights, contractors heading to Iraq, missionaries heading to Lebanon. Everybody rushed to be first in line, either at the Royal Jordanian transfer desk, the visa desk, or the money exchange.

After a few minutes in the visa line I realized that you needed Jordanian dinars to get a visa, and had to give up my prime spot to take a rear position in the money exchange line. So much for my travel expertise.

Here’s what I learned (and what will get all the google hits on this page): Change some money into dinars before you get here. Also, you don’t need a visa if you’re going to be here for less than 24 hours; show your onward ticket at the transfer desk and they will give you a free pass instead of a 10-dinar visa. Another bonus for the googlers: The airport bus runs at least until 3am.

Finally I got my unnecessary visa and checked in at the transfer desk, and made it out through passport control. The Black Water guy had found his liaison, a towering, burly, and confused looking American man. Weaving past the taxi drivers I found the airport express bus. The transfer desk guy had told me I could take the bus to the “sixth circle” in Amman and there would be hotels.

Green suit and his Iraqi friends and I rode the bus into Amman, passing in quick succession these signs; Iraq border - Saudi border - King Hussein bridge (to Israel) - Dead Sea - and one that said simply “Salt”. Each with its own little exit ramp.

Characteristic of the developing world, there were elaborate gas stations rising from the dirt, a complex with a brightly lit sign saying “New York Institute of Technology” and as we entered the city, a lot of what I call rubble development: ambitious buildings constructed and completed, with the leftover rubble simply pushed to the side, piled up forever outside the wall. It seemed quite comfortable and familiar, although in Cambodia I would not have wanted to be walking at the side of the road at the edge of town, carrying my luggage in the middle of the night.

We arrived at a traffic circle and the bus pulled over. “Sitta circle,” the driver called out. I left green-suit, who was passed out solidly, and stepped down onto the curb.

A few large buildings loomed out of the darkness, including the Crown Plaza Hotel and another fancy looking place. The bus pulled away, leaving me with a guy who just seemed to be standing there. He started to walk with me toward one of the hotels, asking where do I go, where am I from. I gradually figured out that he was not from one of the hotels, and wasn’t even a taxi driver. But he agreed that these hotels were very “high,” and suggested we walk further into town to find lower ones. Only maybe three kilometers.

His name was Faiz, and he was from Tefila, a town near Petra, Jordan’s famous ruins. We walked along the shoulder of the near-deserted road, weaving around rubble on and off the narrow sidewalk as cars sped by. As I started to wonder whether this was a clever thing to be doing, I saw a side street on the other side of the highway and made out a couple of smaller hotels in the near distance.

I told Faiz I was going to check those out. With a final “welcome to Jordan,” Faiz headed off toward downtown and presumably his bus to Tefila, and I turned back toward the overpass that led to the street with the hotels I’d seen.

Three-thirty in the morning, on about two hours of sleep since Saturday, and I was walking alone along the deserted streets of Amman, carrying my luggage. I realized, with a certain satisfaction, that no one knew where I was.

Next up: Beirut, with better pictures.

The glorious arrival by sea is not to be. It doesn’t seem as if the Italians are stopping by Cyprus on their way to Beirut, and the Israeli blockade continues, so it didn’t seem like a good idea to be on an island.

Then on to Beirut on Monday. Only a 36-hour trip but it seems longer than that after only 18.

I spent most of the day wandering aimlessly around the pretty Sunday-quiet town of Mainz, west of the Frankfurt airport, until lack of sleep forced me back. I was afraid I might pass out in the park. I have a 9pm flight to Amman, will arrive at 2am. Highly uncivilized. I’m just hoping it won’t be too hard to find a hotel where the desk is still open — without paying $150 that is. I do have a list to work off anyway.

But you know, I can already feel my horizons opening back up. I noticed them doing it while I was sitting on the bank of the Rhine. It’s travel that does that.

Wow. It’s like a dream. Lufthansa has wi-fi onboard, and for a reasonable price. So here I am, uploading a picture of myself in my seat at the computer right now, as it happens. And I picked up a phone message too.

I know I shouldn’t post anything this geeky. But dammit, I’m excited! Plus, now I can research flights from Cyprus to Amman, as well as Italian troop movements to Beirut…until my battery runs out.

Henceforth I will try not to belabor you with such geekery.

I expected to be spending Sunday in Frankfurt, waiting for a night flight onward to Beirut. But it seems that Lufthansa hasn’t been able to start up its flights to Lebanon yet, despite expectations earlier this week when I booked the ticket.

Rather than wait in Frankfurt for a week, I’ve changed my flight to Larnaca, Cyprus, arriving at the more civilized hour of 2:30 in the afternoon. More civilized than arriving in Amman, Jordan at 2:00 in the morning, anyway.

Of course, there are no flights from Larnaca to Beirut either, but there may be boats. A lot of refugees from Beirut went to Cyprus, and presumably they are wanting to go back now that the bombing has stopped. People are always eager to see if their house is still there.

I rather like the idea of showing up in Larnaca without any idea of the layout of the place, and not much idea of how to go on from there. One idea: This is the big weekend for Italian peacekeeping troops to go from Cyprus to Lebanon by boat, so I’m thinking maybe I can hitch a ride with them.

If you have any suggestions, post them up.

Next: Frankfurt, Larnaca, Amman, or bust?