Slashdot Mirror
Sen. Feinstein Says Anarchist Cookbook Should Be "Removed From the Internet"
schwit1 writes with this snippet from Ars Technica: In the wake of the Thursday arrest of two women accused of attempting to build a bomb, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) wrote on her website that the 1971 book on bomb making, which may have aided the terror suspects in some small way, should be "banned from the Internet."
The senator seems to fail to realize that not only has The Anarchist Cookbook been in print for decades (it's sold on Amazon!), but also has openly circulated online for nearly the same period of time. In short, removing it from the Internet would be impossible.
The senator seems to fail to realize that not only has The Anarchist Cookbook been in print for decades (it's sold on Amazon!), but also has openly circulated online for nearly the same period of time. In short, removing it from the Internet would be impossible.
Should be removed from congress.
yet holding a position of responsibility for it
so fucking stupid
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
Says that Sen. Feinstein should be removed from the senate.
So what time is the book burning? I've got a whole library to go through. We'll have to hunt down that cloud so we can stab it with pitchforks, though.
She's also mentions Inspire Magazine.
Inspire used to be edited and mainly authored by Samir Khan Samir Khan was an American citizen, convicted of no crime; he was never even indicted. He was assassinated on orders of Barack Obama along with Anwar al-Awlaki in 2011.
So when these criminals like Feinstein talk about banning books, note they may also mean assassinating the authors.
Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.
Can I suggest we hostfile her computer so just about anything goes to a Barney The Dinosaur archive page or something. She will be happy and so will we.
Setting aside how stupid this idea is, how stupid Feinstein is, and our first amendment rights: Most of the things in "The Anarchist Cookbook" simply do not work or have absolutely terrible methods. This is a book that tells you to dry gunpowder in a pot over an open flame. It also states that you can get high by smoking banana peels. It's utterly useless and there are plenty of resources out there if you want to learn how to make explosives. This is nothing but a publicity stunt, and a terrible one at that. I wonder if she realizes that most of us have the chemicals to make legitimate high explosives in our garages and bathrooms?
The Anarchists Cookbook is simply a very bad book. Not bad because of the motives of those reading (generally), but bad because much of the instructions given in there are bad, sometimes dangerously so...
Back when I was a kid, lets say "thinking" about playing around with this stuff, I quickly realized that things it were saying to do were really bad ideas. At the time I remember actually thinking it must have been put out by the CIA in an effort to thwart potential bombers, either by making devices that were as harmless as a bucket of water ranging up to self-selecting out of the gene pool very rapidly.
So out of concern for others, I have to say there are way better sources of info if you look around.
"unclear on the concept!"
I wonder how many copies of The Anarchist's Cookbook sold this week!
It is not hard to make dangerous things that go boom. Heck, some of the things that I blew up behind my garage when I was 13 would probably send me to Gitmo now. Believe it or not, that doesn't make me a terrorist.
Maybe it would be smarter to examine why people might want to make bombs and kill people, and work to make a world where people don't want to make bombs and kill people, even if the The Anarchist's Cookbook was on every coffee table in the world.
The War in Terror, just like the War on Drugs, will not be won simply by "just saying No". Until human motivations are examined, it will all be a horrendous waste of life, effort, and resources for no gain.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
I would expect nothing less of a true politician. Whether it's the small town politician slapping down even more stop signs after an accident occurred, a school board politician enacting rule after rule that parents and students must jump through in order to protect the school board from litigation, or a senator talking about "removing" a 40+ year old book from the internet, they all have one thing in common: doing things for the sake of being seen doing things, as if they have solutions or actual control over things they do not. It's all about the image. Smoke and mirrors.
Better known as 318230.
"You can't take something *off* the Internet; That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool!"
The local Tower Records had a copy on sale there too. Back when they were around, that is...
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
If learning to make makeshift firearms, explosives, traps, poisons, and other such things interests you, The Poor Man's James Bond is a better series of books. While I don't agree with taking the Anarchist's Cookbook away categorically, it is a pretty dangerous publication in that the instructions (particularly those dealing with explosives) are not very well written, leave out critical steps and safety information. They could potentially cause serious harm or death to the person trying to make them if they do the process like the author outlines.
Remember, this book was written by a pissed off kid during the Vietnam War. He wasn't an expert with practical hands-on experience. It was something he wrote by researching topics at the public library, and then kept submitting it to publishers until one accepted him.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
The Anarchist Cookbook is not a threat. It is complete crap. Its author eventually admitted he was clueless and didn't know what he was doing. Just an idiot mashing up incomplete and sometimes erroneous info. In other words a typical 60s radical.
Leave the Anarchist Cookbook alone, it is a far greater hazard to anyone trying to use its instructions than to the public. Let Darwin have his way.
"Are the USian voters so damn stupid?"
Yes, they are, almost all of them, no matter who they vote for.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
The accepted noun for a citizen of the United States is "American." It is used in sources ranging from Wikipedia to Websters to CIA's World Factbook.
The answer to your question is complicated and would require an explanation of the American electoral process that is likely to be lost on you. Suffice it to say, we're not the only democracy where idiots regularly win elections. It happens in all of them.
They don't have to be liars either, they can just be incredibly dumb and still get re-elected.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
For democrats, it mainly comes down to the belief that their guy will give them free stuff (money for nothing, chicks for free.)
For republicans, it mainly comes down to "is he conservative enough" without any clear definition of what "conservative" actually is. The British equivalent (if you're from there) would be that they want to make sure he's a True Scottsman.
Here https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me
For democrats, it mainly comes down to the belief that their guy will give them free stuff (money for nothing, chicks for free.)
No, for Democrats it comes down to hoping that they'll make the hard/unpopular choices of keeping the environment clean, protecting citizens' rights in the face of "for the children" and "or the terrorists win" crap, etc.. Unfortunately, they (like the Republicans) are typically more interested in getting corporate sponsorships to get re-elected, and will generally sell out everything they pretend to believe in to get it.
For republicans, it mainly comes down to "is he conservative enough" without any clear definition of what "conservative" actually is.
That sounds pretty accurate.
She's an incumbent, which gives her a big advantage. Add to that the number of rabid "I'll never vote republican EVAR" folks in California, she's got enough that she'll never get voted out.
Only bright spot is she's currently the oldest serving senator. At some point probably reasonably soon, she'll have to leave because of age.
You have to be a "natural-born citizen", but no-one really knows what that means.
Not true, "natural-born citizen" is well understood. It means that you were a citizen of the United States of America at the time of your birth. There are various ways of being so born. Being born in the US is one. Being born to a US parent is another. So whether you are born in Canada, Mexico, Panama or Kenya does not matter so long as you have one or more US parents. Its really not that complicated at all.
It works like this:
American politicians have worked for decades to decode the U.S. voter and their habits. They spend millions of dollars annually on "focus groups" and "mock votes" in order to successfully determine the most advantageous avenues to manipulate the electorate into supporting them in their efforts to remove rights from the electorate, disenfranchise the electorate, and more firmly establish the elected as a modern day aristocracy in spite of US law and constitutional impetus. Look up "wedge issue" to see how the party leadership will use specific issues to fracture a voting block and turn them against each other. Watch how each party incites their proscribed demographic to feel threatened by others. Note how politicians play at fighting the other party, but vote as a whole when presented with an opportunity to curtail, circumvent, or remove rights guaranteed to the people by the constitution and/or bill of rights. And pay special attention to the media mouthpieces when they call out their leaders on their faults. It provides a voice for people's recognition of total incongruity on the part of their leaders, but by voicing it the supporters' ire is assuaged and they go merrily and sheepishly back to fighting the opposition and completely forget to hold their leaders accountable.
In America there are two political parties. They are not liberal and conservative. They are not Republican and Democrat. They are simply the elected and the electorate. Anyone who forgets this or fails to see it, at any time, is a pawn, a sheep...and therefore untrustworthy, compromised. They are exactly equal to those religious people that atheists and sceptics so vociferously condemn. They have lost control of their intellect and sacrificed their freedom and judgement in pursuit of an empty purse. They cannot be trusted even with their own self interest, much less the advancement of society as a whole.
So, welcome to America, where Rome is burning and all anyone does is comment on how good it looks in HD. Stay away if you value your sanity, your freedom, and your connection to humanity.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
I appreciate what you're trying to say here, but it's a bit misplaced.
Feinstein is one of the few people in the country with access to all of the information on the online intelligence gathering done by the federal government. It's part of her job to perform oversight on those programs (not her staff's job, this is one of those things only very specific members of congress can do). If she doesn't understand the internet, that's a serious problem. People have a right to be upset that she hasn't done her job.
Read a bit more about her, and you'll see there are many very good reasons people are upset with her.
protecting citizens' rights in the face of "for the children"
Democrats are just as willing to use that canard, they just use it to support violation of different rights than Republicans do. For example, this, or just as a general magic phrase to demand access to your wallet.
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
~10 years old. Wanted to make a large "Silvesterknaller" (small explosive for New Years).
Went to a public library and looked at a few old books, describing how to make black powder and other things that go boom.
Bought a few chemicals, build an electronic igniter and it went boom. It was too easy to achieve so I lost interest in blowing things up.
It's like the brouhaha about 3D printing guns. Every hardware store has better stock to make something that accelerates a projectile /FacePalm
Everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform.
As with many words, it has more than one meaning, depending on the subject you're discussing. When you're talking about nationality -- which was clearly the case -- "Americans" means people who live in the United States. If you're talking about geography, it means people who live in either North or South America. Since there are far more topics of discussion that apply to everybody in the US than apply to everybody living on both continents (time zones, maybe? plate tectonics?), the former is used.
Not in American English, nor to most native speakers of British English. Only the areas which have a false cognate with a single-continent definition of North and South America have any confusion.
It's unambiguous. North America and South America are *never* called "America" in American English, and only incorrectly in British English. The correct term for the two referred to as one is "The Americas".
Learn to love Alaska
To understand her position you need to understand where she's coming from. She's probably one of the few politicians to have seen gun violence first hand. She was there when the SF Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated. She grabbed Harvey Milk's wrist to check for a pulse and her finger entered one of Milk's bullet wounds and was badly shaken by the event.
Basing laws on the irrational emotional reactions of a PTSD sufferer is probably not the best way to go. And it certainly is no excuse for betrayal of the constitution and the deception and manipulation of voters.
Another example was Eugene V. Debs, who ran for president from jail. He was convicted of encouraging people not to join the military in WWII.
We don't really have freedom of speech in the U.S. It comes and it goes.
can you remember any other instance where the name of a whole continent is appropriated by a single country as "nationality"? thought so. you should be able to understand how nonsensical this looks from anywhere outside united states. i know that this is customary in the states, but you guys should also note that this is the internets where you are being read.
Afrikaners appear to have 'appropriated' an entire continent.
Please to remember that the United States of America began as a federation of largely independent countries, rather like the Holy Roman Empire or the nations of the Italian Peninsula prior to the Resurgence. Not unlike the European Union. There are an awful lot of countries whose formal name includes something like "Federal Republic of" or "People's Republic of," but no one's going around insisting to call residents of Berlin "bundesrepublicers," even though there is a lot of Germanic territory outside the borders of Germany. In 100 years, there will be a lot of people calling themselves "Europeans," because they're part of the EU, even though EU boundaries will not coincide with continental boundaries.
Please remember you're reading this part of "the internets" in English and that English idioms, such as "American" for residents of the United States of America, may not translate literally into your native tongue any more sensibly than the converse. Unless you think "Voy a hacer changuitos" actually means "I'll make little monkeys." The rest of us will go on calling residents of the USA "Americans," residents of the ESM "Mexicans," and residents of the RF "French," when writing in English.
Most people think of their location in terms of political entities rather than geography.
there are examples of the opposite. people in canary islands, for example, refer to themselves as "canarios", not "spanish". that makes sense, however, because the term isn't inaccurate.
Point taken, but in that case, their term is more specific and helps distinguish them from a larger group -- the exact opposite of the way you want to use "Americans." And you'll note that they do not call themselves "Africans" despite their islands being geographically part of that continent.
That's not just an American thing.
can you remember any other instance where the name of a whole continent is appropriated by a single country as "nationality"? thought so.
The Republic of India, generally called "India" and whose citizens are generally called "Indians", despite sharing the subcontinent of India with Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. Do you call the citizens of the Republic of India "RoIans"?
Besides which, the idea that it's an "appropriation" is silly. Next to no one uses it that way in everyday conversation or refers to themselves primarily that way, because it doesn't tell you anything useful about them. If I tell you someone is an American in the nationality sense, that lets you make some generalizations about them -- you know he probably speaks English, you know to a degree what kind of food he eats, what TV shows he watches, who the leader of his country is, etc. (Feel free to snark if you wish here). If I use it in the geographic sense, it tells me... what, exactly, besides the tautology that they live on either the North American or South American continent? That they set their clocks between UTC-3 and UTC-11? Heck, just telling me if a person lives north or south of the equator tells me more about where they live than saying that they live in the Americas.
In short, when a word has multiple meanings, people naturally gravitate towards the meaning that's most useful. Referring to someone as an American in the sense you want to use it is only slightly more useful than telling me they're a Terran.
you should be able to understand how nonsensical this looks from anywhere outside united states.
i know that this is customary in the states, but you guys should also note that this is the internets where you are being read.
It's used that way in plenty of other countries, including Canadians, who would have as much right to be annoyed by the supposed "appropriation" as anyone else. My impression is that they're proud of their demonym and have no great yearning to lump themselves in with a couple dozen other countries by calling themselves "Americans."
Furthermore, at a guess I'd expect that "American" in the nationality sense came into common man-on-the-street usage (as opposed to political tracts or whatnot) outside the US before it did so inside it, because for the first 75 years -- prior to the US Civil War -- most people here tended to designate themselves and others by their state rather than national identity. They didn't primarily think and speak of themselves as Americans but as Virginians, Vermonters, Ohioans, Kentuckians, etc.
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
It's not so much that they are stupid as they are caught in a sort of (I suspect purposefully designed) prisoner's dilemma. They get to vote on who will be "their" warden, and only get fed according to the seniority of their warden. Thus, it pays to keep a sadistic nutjob in office once they have any seniority at all. If they don't, then they starve.
Systems like this can't be changed from the inside. At best you can have a constitutional convention to fix these problems. At worst, you get civil war when one group becomes so oppressed they have to secede or risk real and literal starvation.
She has a long and vibrant history demonstrating her insatiable appetite for taking away ALL of your rights.
She wants the NSA to spy on your email and web browsing. She wants books banned because she doesn't like them. She doesn't want you to be allowed to own a gun, while at the same time she's one of the privileged few who can legally carry a concealed weapon anywhere in California.
Make no mistake: she is after all of your rights. And Californians LOVE her.
The problem is we have a two party system, with two parties that are pretty much the same. We need a viable third, fourth, or even fifth party to shake things up a bit. Both parties know this and will do anything they can to crush a third party. The purpose of a political party is to take over the government. Disaster happens when one succeeds.
> No, for Democrats it comes down to hoping that they'll make the hard/unpopular choices of keeping the environment clean, protecting citizens' rights in the face of "for the children" and "or the terrorists win" crap, etc.. Unfortunately, they (like the Republicans) are typically more interested in getting corporate sponsorships to get re-elected, and will generally sell out everything they pretend to believe in to get it.
I defy you to offer any evidence to support that. Do you realize it was Nixon who created the EPA, and the Marin Mammal Protection act? That along with ending the war in Vietnam, stopping the selective service, SALT I and SALT II, and opening relations with China. Way more the current scum we have has ever done, or ever will do.
BTW: I am not a democrat, or a republican.
"The problem is we have a two party system, with two parties that are pretty much the same. We need a viable third, fourth, or even fifth party to shake things up a bit."
That is not the problem. The problem is that we become INVESTED in a given party and vote for the party over the person. That is more of an issue of polarization skewing people's votes than lack of a third or fourth party candidate. The moment we view "The Republicans" or "The Democrats" as "evil" is the moment we toss our ability to vote rationally out the window.
Actually, most Republicans have a clear definition of "conservative". Those definitions vary, but they are usually pretty clear. For some, "conservative" is about social issues. However, for an ever growing number the definition of conservative is limiting the federal government to the powers defined in the Constitution as understood by the men who wrote it.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
"That's just like your opinion, man." -T.D.
Language is full of 'stupid' things, and in each case, it is due to historical reasons of how the usage evolved. "America" was the new world in its entirety, and as the first major nation formed there that came to dominate the linguistic usage of the term for citizenry was the United States of America, the term "American" came to be used for its citizens. That makes perfect sense following the normal structural patterns of English on the root word in the name of the country.
A *confusing* nationality term is that citizens of the Netherlands (or Holland) are called Dutch. Now *that* is confusing!
On the other, I know that many people object to referring to the *country* of the USA as *America* because that is a very inaccurate geographic characterization and basically ignores the existence or importance of the rest of the countries in the two continents of America. So, yeah, don't do that!
But to use the standardly accepted, logical, and convenient to pronounce term of *American* for a physical person, is only offensive to people living in countries outside the Americas who have a bone to pick with USA and like to look for reasons to get their panties in a bunch. People in Argentina don't get mad if you don't call them American. They would get mad if you did!!!
Anyway, if it bothers anyone, feel free to use the fully clear and precise terminology, "US citizen" or similar construction. But don't try to introduce some spurious and cacophonous atrocity of a term like "Usian" or "Usan". You will never succeed in getting that to catch on.
"America" was the word for new world in its entirety, and as the first major nation formed there that came to dominate the linguistic usage of the term for citizenry was the United States of America, the term "American" came to be used for its citizens. That makes perfect sense following the normal structural patterns of English on the root word in the name of the country. This is only "offensive" to people living in countries outside the Americas who have a bone to pick with the USA and like to look for reasons to get their panties in a bunch. People in Argentina don't get mad if you don't call them American. They would get mad if you did!!!
On the other, many people object to referring to the *country* of the USA as *America* because that is a very inaccurate *geographic* characterization and basically ignores the existence or importance of the rest of the countries in the two continents of America. So, yeah, don't do that!
Anyway, if it bothers anyone, feel free to use the fully clear and precise terminology for a person, "US citizen" or similar construction. But don't try to introduce some spurious and cacophonous atrocity of a term like "Usian". How would you even pronounce that? "Ooozian?" "You-ess-iann?" Silly rabbit.
Most European languages???
I only speak four, and here are the words they use:
Spanish: americano
Italian: americano
French: américain
German: Amerikaner
I can go just about anywhere in the world and use one of these languages (or English). So, I'm gonna call B.S. on your statement.
In fact, I find that in Europe, Europeans are more likely than US citizens to use the "offensive" word, because we Americans know we have neighbors to the south and north who don't always like it.
Obviously, if you have a population of 300 million people that was formed from the most geographically diverse mixture of immigrants of any nation on the planet, statistical probability dictates that they probably suffer from a mass intellectual deficiency and are all more stupid than any other population sample. What they need is you to be their president and fix everything.
Or, maybe democracies everywhere suffer from the same systemic defects that result in fallible humans holding elected office.
Nah, you're probably right.
I personally think that the vociferous attacks are counterproductive, but as an atheist, I totally understand the ire. Religion is behind a lot of law that is antagonistic to liberty and science and a source of incredible amounts of bigotry. Christians like to play the martyr, but they are a bullying majority with a really dirty history that has opposed and obstructed progress in the science, arts, and human condition for millennia.
So in answer to your question, think of it this way: most atheists aren't that concerned with Santa Claus because unlike Jesus, Santa isn't used as a basis for such social or scientific censorship.
Having said that, I think an approach along the lines of honey rather than vinegar would be more practical because being confrontational tends to solidify the hatred against atheists. I do understand this can look like appeasement and that in the face of oppressive policies, more is sometimes called for, but in general, I think atheists would be better off letting the curious come to them (demonstrates open mind) rather than beating up on true-believers (who will only go deeper into belief as a response -- there is something inherently irrational in trying to use reason to debunk faith).
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
The people in these assclown's districts are, for the most part, as ignorant as the assclowns they keep electing.. All these elected idiots have to do is be seen getting bills passed to send pork to the home district and regular as clockwork, they get reelected. I live in Nevada and Harry Reid, the "poster-child" for Congressional idiocy is one of the Senators from this state. The last time he was up for re-election, there was quite a wave of voter fraud, a small amount I personally witnessed, as I was a Republican poll-watcher during that election season. Our local (R) people took the matter up with the local Registrar of Voters, who, in turn, passed it up the chain to the State AG, who promptly sat on it.. Of course our AG was a loyal (D), thus HAD to "protect" Dingy Harry from losing the election... Once these turdbags infect your government, its really hard to get rid of them.. I'd hoped we'd be able to get rid of Harry Reid during his reelection campaign using the "Tom Daschle" trick.. For those who don't remember history, Senator Tom Daschle was a Senator from North Dakota, and who, also, had been the Senate Majority Leader, but unlike Reid, his constituents flushed him down the drain in 2004...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)