That article really overestimates the desire of suicide bombers to survive their attempt. It also really overestimates how hard it is to do massive economic damage just by implying you know how to make TATP.
What Bin Laden et al wanted to do was inflict long term economic pain, and they absolutely accomplished that goal. This just shows they’re still succeeding, really.
I don't think long term economic pain was the goal. I think influencing the American people into opposing interference in the Middle East as "not worth it" was the goal. And that would be achieved by the visceral carnage and the implication of "we'll stop if you stop". Not through fuzzy and indirect economic effects.
I don't think they ever cared about damaging the US in general, they just want the US and the west in general out of their backyard.
You don’t chose the Twin Towers as the target for the second time in a decade because what you’re trying to do is talk to average Americans about geopolitics… you’re literally trying to hit them in their stock market. Twice.
You also don’t hit that economic target with two planes full of people because you’re trying to imply you’ll stop if they do.
Asymmetric warfare is almost always about bleeding the big, fat, slow moving one of his resources, and anyone that punched America in the face from Afghanistan understood that history, while also knowing how much (expensive, for decades) hell was going to come to rest on his doorstep.
He was trying to inflict economic pain and also goad an idiot president into invading the graveyard of empires of his own accord. He didn’t want them out of his backyard, he wanted them stuck in his backyard.
And he succeeded. On all counts. Dude got exactly what he wanted.
> He didn’t want them out of his backyard, he wanted them stuck in his backyard.
I know that's basically the official story (they just hate America in a supervillain kind of way), but it doesn't really make any sense.
If America were to leave them alone, why would they care about America?
Their entire problem with America is that America doesn't leave them alone, whether for oil or to give their transplanted local enemy starting with an 'I' a massive artificial resources advantage over them.
You are telling me that if America became isolationist towards the ME with respect to foreign policy actions and only engaged with the ME via consensual trade, that Bin Laden or whoever would still want to take America down? If so, why?
> I know that's basically the official story (they just hate America in a supervillain kind of way), but it doesn't really make any sense.
The official story from say Little Bush might have been “they hate us”, but the actual story is more accurately “they hate anything that substantially contradicts the message of and/or tempts (in their mind) Muslim youth away from their Salafist literalist interpretation of the Qu’ran and the Hadith.” An extremist like Bin Laden coming out of the Salafi tradition is basically the Islamic version of a Fred Phelps; the only truth is in the Qu’ran and the Hadith, that truth is literal and immutable, and the only way to behave correctly is to behave exactly as the righteous few who were there with Muhammad behaved. Anyone else is either an unbeliever (and to be enslaved by the caliphate) or, worse, an apostate (and to be put to death). This relatively small band of utter nutters really do represent a tiny fraction of Muslims, but they’re a tiny fraction who exist within a death cultist worldview that truly does want to see the world either ruled according to their interpretation of God’s message or, as an alternative, for the world to end according to God’s message (as they’re interpreted it).
> If America were to leave them alone, why would they care about America?
In the modern iteration of particularly jihadist-leaning Salafism (via Ibn Wahhab) America essentially is the resurgent inheritor of Rome and a modern Crusader state. Bin Laden and Al Quaeda essentially saw modern American liberal capitalism as the most decedent form of culture imaginable, and saw it corrupting and ensnaring souls away from good and into evil via music, movies, Coca Cola and cultural hegemony. Move on to Da’esh / ISIS / ISIL and they’ve injected the idea that Americans are literally the direct continuation of Rome in their mad reading it’s a battle with Rome that leads to the arrival of the Mahdi and Jesus and the judgement, which by the way is supposed to happen any day now.
> Their entire problem with America is that America doesn't leave them alone, whether for oil or to give their transplanted local enemy starting with an 'I' a massive artificial resources advantage over them.
The bulk of their problem with America has more to do with Saudi politics and who has control over the mosques at Mecca and Medina than you might imagine. America’s closeness to the Saudi regime (and that regime’s willingness to defile their holiest sites by allowing Crusader armies to set up camp there) put a real bee in their bonnet, after they’d successfully chucked the Soviet infidels out of Afghanistan having American infidels invited into spitting distance of the holiest sites in Sunni Islam was a step too far.
> You are telling me that if America became isolationist towards the ME with respect to foreign policy actions and only engaged with the ME via consensual trade, that Bin Laden or whoever would still want to take America down? If so, why?
Sure they would, and for much the same reason that Americans wanted to take the Soviets down. Folks like Bin Laden see Islam as the most powerful political force in the world and they’re trying to establish a new, righteous Caliphate (the previous one only failed, ending the Islamic golden age, because it wasn’t conservative and orthodox enough, you see), and the natural enemy of that caliphate is any infidel state, with the biggest enemy being the biggest and most powerful such state. If China supplants America they’ll switch to taking down China, even though China hasn’t meddled in anything like that same fashion… the meddling and the foreign policy aren’t the issue, it’s the lack of adherence to the faith.
I think that not the US, but the Arab world were the target of the message. Al qaeda simply didn't care one bit what the average USian was thinking. The USA was the stage, not the public.
Their message to the arab world was to unite against a common enemy, hated and proven vulnerable.
We can't say anywise as the guy is dead and we can't for sure believe anything he said but based on the reaction of my fellow Arab colleagues, 9/11 had an important moral effect on them. As one of them explained to me, they felt victims for decades, and now for the first time in history they managed to have the upper hand.
Bin Laden wasn’t all that interested in pan-Arabian unity, or even pan-Islamist unity, unless you were Sunni, more specifically Salafi / Wahhabi. Whatever his message, for the majority of Arabs it included the “oh, and follow my literalist interpretation or die, takfir”.
"We, alongside the mujahideen, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat ... So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy."
> That article really overestimates the desire of suicide bombers to survive their attempt.
The article addressed it pretty well. They have a fairly strong desire to not blow up in the taxi to the airport, so you can't carry premixed TATP around. And it won't work to just dump it into the toilet or sink and let the reaction rip, you won't get enough TATP out of that to matter.
When you’re facing people who are willing to joyfully blow their own genitalia off just to have a hope of downing an aircraft — the actual goal isn’t that, it’s to inflict economic damage to the economy that keeps the planes moving, which doesn’t even require an attempt, just the whispers of a credible attempt — you can’t consider the odds they’ll fail to do their worst, you have to consider the odds they’ll make a return on investment.
Terrorism doesn’t work, as a political program, by seeking repeat success, it works by capitalizing on your very occasional successes by making the targeted people spend way more resources on defense than you do on offense.
That’s my whole point… they don’t need to actually succeed at taking down the aircraft to make a return on investment. If they sacrifice a few pawns on failed attempts they get the worldwide airline industry and governments around the planet to spend more on persistent security theater then several thousand times the operating budget of all the world’s terrorists combined, they’ve achieved their goal.
> In transaction processing, the Telecommunication Application Transaction Processing Benchmark (TATP) is a benchmark designed to measure the performance of in-memory database transaction systems.
It's amazing how much of the world runs off inefficient databases! Certainly rigging a benchmark would do a lot more than a ziploc full of some volatile peroxide.
Is the tıtle purposely ambiguous for clicks? They obviously mean each liquid bottle has to be max 100 ml, not that the total amount of liquids allowed is 100 ml, right?
It exists in non-modern Russian and modern languages - such as Ukrainian - Cyrillic alphabets in various forms, sometimes with top and bottom horizontal strokes, sometimes just like this.
I used to forget lighters in my check in (in the hold) suitcase when flying to hk, th or sg; in the eu not an issue, in there I always got called to the little room; 'lighter!', for every lighter in there.
I think airport people are fixated on it because of the increased revenues from beverage sales (and some security people are happy to help if they can sell wildly overpriced scanners at a massive profit)
I thought it was because the density of water was similar to explosives and x-ray scanning equipment at the time was not sensitive enough to differentiate without many false positives?
Seems even with the new scanners there is some issue why they have to limit items to no more than 100ml temporarily. Maybe waiting for a software update… though if there is a loophole seems weird to wait until September 1st…
> Technical information received by the Commission and validated by ECAC States and laboratories, shows that the existing configurations of standard C3 EDSCB equipment to which the Commission has granted the ‘EU Stamp’ marking or the ‘EU Stamp pending’ marking need to be revised in order to improve their performance
Sounds like this might be a software problem of some sort, although it’s surprising if that’s affecting multiple vendors. Maybe an issue with the certification process?
If I understand this correctly there are new scanners that should make it easier to detect explosives, I guess. But while they do have these new scanners, they still will not allow more than 100ml, which was the case already.
It was always 100ml, but some airports don't comply because their national regulator says it's fine if you have a fancy scanner. Now EC says, no it's not, go back in line.
Schiphol for example lets you bring in whatever whater you want in whatever flask you have.
This is not true, airports with upgraded scanners are complying with the law just fine.
This appears to be a temporary technical problem:
> This precautionary measure is not in response to any new threat but addresses a temporary technical issue, undertaken in alignment with the EU’s international partners
And:
> Technical information received by the Commission and validated by ECAC States and laboratories, shows that the existing configurations of standard C3 EDSCB equipment to which the Commission has granted the ‘EU Stamp’ marking or the ‘EU Stamp pending’ marking need to be revised in order to improve their performance
Hasn't this rule been there for many years? I have flown to UK twice and there ere always restrictions on 100ml per bottle. Even lost a deodorant bottle because of that (security made me throw it away).
By the way, anyone else here annoyed by the typical form factor of perfume bottles? Usually these containers have thick glass walls, are large and heavy, totally inadequate for traveling.
Yes, you can transfer a bit into special travel containers but you'll have to hit the spray button dozens of times to transfer even a meaningful quantity. And if you don't wear latex gloves your hands will have a strong smell for the rest of the week.
It's called decanting. And no you don't end up spilling the fragrance all over your hands while transferring it to a small bottle. Yiu can also buy travel sized bottled of many popular fragrances which are specifically meant for travelling. But yes, in general full sized fragrance bottles aren't meant for carrying along while travelling.
> Yes, you can transfer a bit into special travel containers but you'll have to hit the spray button dozens of times to transfer even a meaningful quantity.
Fortunately with a lot of modern expensive perfume it's usually possible to just open bottle and use some easier way to transfer the liquid like with syringe. Transfering it by spraying is very invonvinient.
So at least there is one good and useful consequence of eco / reuse movement.
BTW I not sure if it's would work in EU, but in US you can certainly take as much water as you want with you if you freeze it. Then just drink what's unfrozen liquid before you pass security and you're golden.
That sounds like a lot of hassle. It's also possible to bring empty bottles and fill them up at the airport fountains, which is comparatively simpler IMO...
Back when I still subjected myself to the security theatre at airports I was told to toss the nearly empty tube of tooth paste I had in my backpack. Why was that? Well, the tube stated it contained 125 ml when new and you're only allowed to bring 100 ml containers so toss it or be denied boarding.
I now travel by train instead of plane. Sure, it takes a lot more time but I can bring however much of whatever I want, I get to sit in a comfortable chair, I have my laptops (etc.) with me and get to work on whatever I want. Sometimes I even meet interesting people. I regularly travel from Sweden to the Netherlands this way, sometimes alone, sometimes with my daughter when she comes home from university or goes back there (she studies in Utrecht, we live in Sweden). Train travel is far from perfect and delays are common but seen as a whole it is a far better experience than air travel. It also happens to be quite a bit less expensive on the routes I frequent.
Not at tourist destinations in Mexico and Dominican Republic. It is inhumane that those airports offer absolutely no free drinking water options for passengers. Tap water in these countries is not safe to drink.
I was referring to the bathroom sink. Potential cross-contamination is much higher there than from any other usual tap source, especially in a public bathroom.
I’ve been forced to dispose of empty bottles at security because it said 500ml on the side.
Selective enforcement and shifting requirements is one of the major issues with airport security.
Some places force off belts and shoes, and force you to remove laptops and electronics from bags, some force them to be in your bag… it’s very annoying that it’s not consistent across airports. (in europe).
I've been in Gatwick at times before when one queue has a hard arse taking off people's shoes and the next one along doesn't care if you take your liquids out your bag. Not sure why having a set of rules and sticking to them is so difficult.
The woeful inconsistency between airport security checks within the same country and sometimes within the same airport, really lends itself to the theory that it’s all a farce.
Travel time makes a big difference too, e.g. at peak times please keep your shoes on.
The water is fine, but the sink usually isn‘t. The sinks are just as contaminated with bacteria as the toilets themselves —- sinks in really busy restrooms are constantly damp and allow bacteria to grow more than one would expect.
You're not drinking from the sink though, but the tap. The tap is also constantly wet in every house and we're never cleaning inside it. On the other hand, my kitchen is not getting cleaned with heavy antibacterial chemicals multiple times every day.
Are you sure the taps in commercial restrooms would have more bacteria?
From one Hamburger to another...just where, please?
I could swear I saw a drinking fountain once, somewhere along that long corridor connecting the gates but I never found it again and, to this date, I've never drank from it. (I mostly fly Eurowings to other Schengen destinations.) If it really exists, I'm sure there is only one such station past security, or maybe one per airport wing.
And look, in a pinch I'm ready to drink tap water from the airport toilet faucets. I'm ready to entrust my life to that dice roll. But, as a matter of human dignity being inviolable and all that, I would much rather shell out money for an expensive bottle of water.
How does repeating this make any kind of point? Your anecdotes don't become a general rule across a continent.
For example, most I've been to do not. That doesn't become a rule now, it just disproves the point that hydration stations are the norm.
So why do you insist to dismiss the existence of other airports you've haven't been to that don't have water stations just because it doesn't match your personal experience? Please keep an open mind and arguments in good faith as per HN rules.
How does his statement ("every airport I've been to in Europe had a water station") refute my statement ("many in Europe do not so you're forced to buy the 4€ water bottles")?
I don't have a problem, but clearly you do so I'm gonna stop replying to you right here. Cheers!
Have you heard about having a civil discussion without being snarky for no reason?
Have you seen the dark patterns some airports use like very low taps that don't fit a water bottle under them in the sinks, or hooking up the taps to the warm water lines?
Also, tap water in some countries, while safe to drink, tastes awful, like chlorine, so even if you can get it from the bathroom tap, it's not ideal.
So why did all the airports just buy the new fancy scanners? One of the British airports (can't remember which now) had to redo an entire floor to support the weight of the new scanners lol. What a waste.
Give 100ml total of a whole lot of different room-temperature liquid reagents to a moderately-trained college-level chemist and down cometh that plane.
If you read the commission announcement, you get the actual reason between the lines: “undertaken in alignment with the EU’s international partners”.
The EU is bending backward to US pressure and the rumour is that it’s because Avionix scanners are not as good as the ones from their non US competitors.
Well, no, that’s why it’s a rumour i.e. a currently circulating story of uncertain or doubtful truth.
Maybe it’s just that there is a major issue with all the C3 scanners currently on the market which was somehow missed during all these years of strenuous certification. Who knows? Certainly not me.
This 100ml restriction makes absolutely no sense at all. If someone wanted to carry out a suicide attack, it would stand to reason that their goal would be to maximise the damage they cause. If that assumption is correct, then it would make little to no sense to detonating it on a plane with a max capacity of 200-500, when the alternative would be to detonate it in the security hall. The delays caused by these 100ml checks create a bottle neck in airports which leads to potentially 1000s of people penned up in a small room waiting to have their deodorant taken away from them. Surly an explosion happening at the security gates would lead to far greater tragedy than the one they are trying to guard against. Absolutely absurd.
I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but if it came out the handful of companies that always seem to populate the duty-free area where lobbying to keep security checks in place, I can't say I would be surprised as I'd imagine it being a rather lucrative location to sell deodorant's shampoos, and other basic hygiene essentials.
- Once the EU had 100ml rules.
- Then new scanners were installed.
- Where new scanners then you could take more then 100ml.
- Problems found in new scanners now everybody has to take 100ml (temp. solution).
I'm convinced all airport security is pure theater and wouldn't actually stop a terrorist attack. For example, the Dept. of Homeland Security (US agency) found that the TSA's failure rate is "in the ballpark of 80%"[0]
Another quote from the article:
"secret teams from the DHS found that the TSA failed 95 percent of the time to stop inspectors from smuggling weapons or explosive materials through screening."
So we're wasting peoples time and forcing nonsensical procedures upon them to... not actually stop anything.
Same. Additionally, it would be far more lethal if an explosion where to happen at the security gates rather than on an actual plan. The bottle necks caused by these security checks means there are potentially 1000s of people penned into a tiny room. On paper the checks make sense, but in reality their implementation creates a much greater potentially danger zone for passengers.
