Germany to ban full body scanner outright

by Jeffrey White on

Yesterday I posted on the European Parliament’s rejection of full body scanners at European airports.

Lawmakers couched their rejection in calls for more studies to be conducted on the health and privacy implications of using these scanners. Yet even though these scanners are opposed throughout much of Europe, the feeling overhear is that the European Union will eventually go along with the technology — I’m guessing once these scanners become the norm in the US.

But Germany is going one step further: Yesterday the country’s interior ministry said that no matter what the EU may eventually decided vis a vis the scanners, they will never appear in German airports.

Interior Minister Gabriele Hermani told the Associated Press, “We won’t join in with this nonsense.”

Can Germany go its own way, even if it is against an EU directive? Hard to say. The way the EU is set up gives an awful lot of power for individual countries to make and carry out their own laws and regulations (one reason why a lot of people think the concept of the EU is a sham). But Brussels does have some power in enforcing bloc-wide regulations in industries such as air travel.

One thing is for sure: Look for German lawmakers to be a key opposition force whenever these scanners whenever there is another vote on these scanner.

Europe’s most flown major airline? For now, it’s Lufthansa

by Jeffrey White on

The Association of European Airlines, which represents 35 (mostly major) carriers, came out this week with its report on airline performance, and not surprisingly it said that for most of the industry, passenger numbers were down significantly.

Not so at Germany’s flagship carrier Lufthansa, however. It’s seen passenger numbers increase a modest 4 percent from this time last year, according to the Associated Press, which is reporting on the AEA’s survey.

That means that right now among Europe’s major carriers, Lufthansa is ahead of the pack. British Airways saw passengers drop a hair more than 5 percent from a year ago, while Air France saw numbers hold more or less even.

Which major airlines are doing the worse? Alitalia, Spanair and Icelandair.

Italy’s national carriers, which declared bankruptcy in August, saw 25 percent fewer passengers on board this year than last. Spanair’s passenger numbers dropped 21 percent, and Icelandair’s dropped 12 percent.

European Parliament rejects, for now, full body scanners at airports

by Jeffrey White on

Here’s a quick follow-up from a post I did yesterday.

The European Parliament yesterday overwhelmingly voted against authorizing — for now, anyway — the use of full body scanners at European airports.

As I wrote yesterday, these are the scanners that see through people’s clothing, ostensibly for the purpose of better protection against concealed weapons and contraband that might make it through more traditional airport security.

The EP, which is based part of the year in the French city of Strasbourg, voted 361 to 16 against the scanners. Instead, lawmakers want considerably more study done on the privacy and health aspects of these machines.

There is currently one European airport that is testing the machine — Amsterdam’s Schiphol.

The full body scanners are popping up at several US airports, amid complaints from the American Civil Liberties Union that they constitute an extreme invasion of privacy and should only be used as a method of last resort in the screening process, when there is justifiable cause.

In Europe, some lawmakers have called the machines “virtual strip searches.”

Putting the voodoo in French presidential politics

by Anna Brones on

With the American Presidential election less than two weeks away it’s practically impossible to get away from campaign news, so I figured we could all use a bit of international presidential gossip. And what president is better suited for gossip than Monsieur Nicolas Sarkozy?

Earlier in the year he was the talk of the French nation for dating, and later marrying, ex-supermodel Carla Bruni. Now he’s back on the international radar for threatening to sue a publishing company if it does not get rid of the voodoo doll created in his honor, according to the BBC.

President Sarkozy is not a fan of the doll, which comes with pins and an instruction manual that includes how to put the evil eye on the president himself. The doll is also covered in quotes — which you can poke the pins into — including “get lost you jerk” which Sarkozy said to a bystander who once refused to shake his hand.

You might think that this was a partisan thing, but the publishing company apparently likes to “poke” fun at both sides of the political spectrum; they’ve also produced a similar doll in the for of Segolene Royal, Sarkozy’s Socialist party rival in the last election. She may not hold the same political ideals as Sarkozy, but she does agree with his stance on companies making fun of politicians: she is also threatening legal action.

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TV, staycations, and “selling out”: A short list of Rolf’s missed mass-media opportunities

by Rolf Potts on

Hours after completing the Kansas leg of my book tour I flew across the Atlantic for a whirlwind two-day visit to London, England. This had nothing to do with Marco Polo Didn’t Go There; I was there to dub voice-over for a Travel Channel special I’m hosting this fall.

I’ll talk more about this Travel Channel show in my next post, but for now I wanted to note that this TV hosting opportunity is the result of a long process of near-misses that goes back a couple of years.

In truth, I never set out to host a TV show, but I started to get attention from production studios in late 2006, when — apparently — the Travel Channel sent out a memo expressing a desire to have “qualified insiders” as show hosts instead of air-headed actors. This was the result, no doubt, of the fact that Anthony Bourdain — himself a qualified insider — had become a big star for the Travel Channel, and the network wanted to recruit more people who knew what they were talking about when it came to travel. Hence, thanks to my decade of experience as a full-time travel writer (and my pouty, cheek-boney author photo — an anomaly I’ll discuss in a future post) I got a lot of attention from TV production companies last year.
The problem was that, despite all this interest, I didn’t have much TV experience, nor did I have a “reel” of on-camera clips to show. One company flew me out to Los Angeles to shoot an audition tape (they didn’t cast me); another company wanted to put me under an exclusive “development contract” to create shows for me (the terms of which would have cut into my other pursuits as a writer, so I declined); another studio flew me to New York to shoot some “talking head” interviews (which can still be seen on Travel Channel shows like “21 Sexiest Beaches”).

Unfortunately, after tons of emails and flying around, nothing ever worked — until this spring, when Pioneer Productions of London (the company that flew me to LA to make the audition tape) decided I would make a good host for a travel-history show called “American Pilgrim.” The rest is, well, history — and I’ll talk more about that in my dispatch from London.

For now, however — having talked a few of my “near misses” from the TV world — I wanted to share some other media opportunities that never quite worked out for me in recent years. These are the kind of interesting opportunities that I never end up talking about because, well, they didn’t work out.

Here goes with a quick top-five:

1) Writing a TV segment of This American Life

Like many public-radio-loving Americans, I’ve been a fan of This American Life for years, and in fact I used to listen to shows on my dial-up internet connection when I was living in Thailand writing Vagabonding. I started pitching show ideas to TAL producers sometime around 2002, and I finally got a spark of interest in 2007, when they expressed a desire to use one of my stories on air. As it turned out, they didn’t want my idea for radio, but for their Emmy-winning TV series on Showtime. Last November I traveled to Ontario with a couple of TAL producers on a “scouting trip” for my story; unfortunately, the Showtime folks didn’t think it was “visual” enough for the show, and my idea got killed.

2) Talking about “staycations” on The Daily Show

Personally, I’m not a big fan of the “staycation” concept.

Earlier this year, one of my bloggers wrote a post about the “staycation” phenomenon, and how this stay-near-home approach to travel might be implemented from a vagabonding perspective. For some reason, this post attracted the attention of Jon Stewart’s Daily Show producers, who queried both me and my blogger about a possible guest appearance on the show. Personally, I’m not a big fan of the “staycation” concept — but, in keeping with the principles of Vagabonding, I am an advocate of using the attitude of travel to explore your home area. The Daily Show folks, who perhaps wanted a more earnest staycation-pundit to poke fun at, never called back.

3) Appearing as a travel commentator on Fox News

Two summers ago, while I was writing a weekly travel column for Yahoo! News, I penned a quick top-10 list of my favorite USA travel destinations for a July 4th column slot. This list was unambiguously and unapologetically subjective, but for some reason it caused a huge stir when Yahoo posted it on their main page. New Jersey residents sent me hate mail (because they thought I’d insulted their state), New York Yankees fans sent me hate mail (because I’d stated, quite flatteringly, how I hated the Yankees for always beating the Royals), and a number of publications in Kansas reported that the “Yahoo search engine” (as opposed to me, a subjective writer) had declared the Flint Hills to be the “fifth best destination in America”. Amidst this madness, Fox News contacted me about appearing as a “USA travel expert” on their “Fox & Friends” morning show. As it happened, I was off teaching my Paris writing classes at the time, so it didn’t work out.

4) Selling film rights to Vagabonding

Earlier this summer a representative from one of the “Big Five” talent agencies in Hollywood contacted me about the possibility of selling film rights to my first book, Vagabonding. Of course, Vagabonding is not a narrative book, but I could see how its themes might be worked into a TV series or motion picture. I told the talent agency to send me more information, but to date nothing has come of it.

5) Becoming a spokesperson for Rockport shoes

Way back in 2004 a marketing representative contacted me out of nowhere and offered me an eye-popping sum of money to serve as a “spokesperson” for a new line of Rockport travel shoes. I’d always thought Rockport shoes were great — and the price was definitely right — but perhaps out of principle or foolishness I told the marketing rep that, while certainly interested, I didn’t want to put myself in a position that would contradict the anti-consumerist slant of Vagabonding. This gave the rep cold feet, and I never heard from Rockport again.

In retrospect, I should have simply accepted the offer and just quietly towed my anti-consumerist line (which I’m sure is possible to do, even as a spokesperson, since it’s certainly possible to sing the praises of a product without insinuating that it’s the only option in the universe). As it turned out, this gave me my punk rock moment — I didn’t sell out! — though under the right circumstances I reserve the right to do some kind of spokesperson gig in the future.