Bomb-Mules
Very good argument from Tom Easton regarding the prohibition to carry liquids in airplanes:
You want to ban containers of liquid? People ARE containers of liquid.
And then, a nice little post from Steinn Sigurðsson, again logically arguing against this asinine reaction to threats. Perhaps it is a re-invention of the Bush brand name, with the slogan "With so much more to fear."
Besides, as Schneider says, these measures are always fighting the last tactic: new and improved ones will be available sooner than we think.
I have a few ideas:
Scenario 1: terrorists realize that bombing a few planes is actually too much work and rather boring - you have to go through security, swallow all these gels of explosive, and get close to a window. Boring indeed. So they decide to blow infrastructure! They can do it various ways, by actually bombing the gigantic transformers that act as bottlenecks for a lot of the electricity in the country; they could collapse a few pipes leasing out of water supplies, and then allowing the ensuing panic create economic and social chaos; they could install a few bombs in incoming ships, thus forcing a massive inspection of all incoming ships and their cargo, thus severely impacting complete industries that depend on timely JIT imports; or finally, they could take over an energy trading company, falsify its accounting, and evaporate billions of dollars out of the economy. Yeah, just like Bush's friends did.
technorati: terror,politics,fiction