So, folks, I must confess something here - I have never traveled outside the United States except for a long-ago Bahamian cruise, so I have no experience with aviation security in any other countries.

Which means I don't know how many other countries other then the US have liquids restrictions similar to ours. I gather from posts here on FT that very few countries have them (other than on flights from other countries bound for the US, which abide by US TSA rules), but I'm not clear on the details.

So, how many other countries have liquids restrictions similar to the US, for either domestic or international (non-US-bound) flights?

If it were viable someone would have done it by now. All the TSA restrictions are theater to make you feel like they're doing something, but could be defeated by an even mildly determined attacker.

The main reason there are so few terrorist attacks is because there just aren't that many terrorists, and even fewer who are competent. Which is a good thing, because TSA does a terrible job of detecting test attacks.

just flew intra Indonesia with two bottles of water in my backpack. nothing was said and I did this twice

You must not be aware that dihydrogen monoxide magically loses it explosive properties at the Equator.

I don't think that's right. I've never encountered them in the Schengen region, South America, or most of the Pacific.

You're ignoring the actual risk. It simply isn't there. There simply aren't thousands of Evil Doer's (tm) out there plotting against the US/UK/France/Etc. If there were then we'd have seen airline workers planting bombs on aircraft all over the US. We'd have seen Western airliners shot down at take off or landing by the dozen from Morocco to Egypt to India by MANPAD AA missiles because those weapons are freely available if you really want one. But we've seen none of that.

Extremist nutters (of any flavour) *are* willing to do these things. But they usually do them for local reasons. Doing things against a 'great power' just annoys the great power. They'll rail against the Great Satan, but they are doing so to appeal to the local audience, and their violent actions tend to be very locally focused in intent.

The "war on water" is futile. The *only* people to benefit from it are the governments imposing it (fear = control) and the bogeyman they're using to impose it.

They do? Interesting. I've never had anyone pull liquids during screening so have always assumed they didn't have that nonsense. Lucky me, I guess.

I have. Very different experience than in the US.

There was no punitive comprehensive bag search out of my sight, accompanied by a full grope. Instead, while the bag was right there on the belt, the screener verified it was my bag, opened it, glanced at the xray and pulled the bottle of water.

Then the screener offered me the bottle of water, asking if I wanted to drink it first, right there, or just give it up.

So civilized. So much faster than a similar encounter in the US generally is.

Politeness is one key factor missing at far too many TSA checkpoints. It almost seems to be a training qualifier.

Not sure what you are asking. "Latin America" is a socio-political construct, whereas North and South America are geo-political constructs. From a geo standpoint, a country is either in North America or South America.

Ref Africa - my understanding is that for the few countries in Africa that have regular commercial domestic air travel, the restrictions on liquids are either similar to or more restrictive than in most other countries.