"What!" I said. "That has no blade! I just came through Berlin security with it." In fact, I had come through Istanbul, Kuala Lumpur, London, Manila, New York, and Madrid security with it, to name just a few towns that suffered Islamist terror in the last few years.

"Monsieur," he condescended. It was the only word he uttered. Carabiners are, of course, more or less D-shaped trapezoids.  With epic nonchalance, he grabbed one of the long sides, balling his fist around it.   The other long side made a killer set of non-brass brass knuckles across the top of his hand.

Then he slammed his metal-draped fist into his opposite palm.  A martial arts demonstration on an airport security line!  Crazy town!  And, I might add, a personal, post-9/11 first for me.  After his little ninja episode, he shrugged, stared balefully at me and tossed my carabiner back in the confiscated-weapons bin.

Technically, he had a point. A paranoid one, but still: It's possible that a cell of insane carabiner-bearing Wahabists could take over a jumbo.  They would have to be damn fit--think: The Terminator, minus the social skills--and they'd have to be damn lucky to encounter no resistance from passengers or deadly force from air marshals, for instance. Like military strategy, however, the architecture of counterterror hews closely to the last war fought. Seeing a weapon in a quotidian bit of sports equipment is extremely last-war-fought.  The long and short of it is that, regarded with enough malevolence, everything's a weapon.  What about my belt? I've got a bitchin' silver buckle that'll take your eyes out, dude, and you just handed that back to me.

I replaced the beloved clip the next day and now generally seek to avoid Charles de Gaulle.  When it's unavoidable, I check my carabiner.