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UK Bookstores Found Selling Banned US Bomb-Making Handbooks (engadget.com)
Three major online retailers in the UK have been listing a number of bomb-making manuals on their websites. Engadget adds:These books were originally made back in the 1960s for US military personnel and include titles like Improvised Munitions Handbook, Boobytraps, and Explosives and Demolitions. But since the end of the Vietnam War, these books have become popular resources for terrorists of all stripes. Thomas Mair, the man who assassinated Labour MP Jo Cox, reportedly owned a copy of Improvised Munitions, for example. The surfacing of these books for sale on the WH Smith, Amazon UK and Waterstones websites, has at least one of the companies scrambling to scrub the listings. WH Smith shut down its entire website for more than four hours on Thursday to eliminate the offending material, however it appears they are still available on Amazon and Waterstones.
we won't viking away with your women, you can keep them thanks
i may get a bag of double devons from marks and spencers before i go though
Isn't it nice that banning books makes all the content in them inaccessible? There is no international network to carry such data from outside your borders, there is no way anyone could scan and burn existing copies, and no way anyone could buy a copy outside the country and ship it in or bring it home. Good thinking UK, I'm sure this will turn out really well!
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Nothing makes me want to learn more about something than having someone tell me I can't be trusted with knowledge.
When they can be found online for free?
You can also just download them from literally anywhere by inputting a simple search engine query and clicking some links on the first page that pops up.
Just wait until someone reminds the UK that their own government designed(and widely disseminated both the hardware and the schematics); for a low cost, easy to build submachine gun perfectly suited to the requirements of irregular warfare, guerrilla activity, and abundantly lethal anywhere close range and high rate of fire is an advantage.
There are all kinds of dangerous radicals out there, irresponsibly popularizing implements of mayhem; whatever shall we do?
because they can't know what you are doing/reading/thinking like they can if you use the intertubes.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I picked up a copy of the Improvised Munitions Handbook from Barnes & Noble back in the early 90s. They had stacks of them. Straight from the government printing office, my tax dollars at work. I'm not sure what the big deal is, plenty of people were taught this info while they were in the service.
In this information age and with easy access to the web, this kind of book banning is a futile exercise to the point of stupidity.
Maybe the NCA (UK's FBI) gets an alert to investigate you went you order them.
The order gets canceled.
Legal to own and sell and distribute in most the world. "banned" means nothing. Chemistry and demolition knowledge is taught and in libraries and on web servers the world over, access or lack of it to these old books changes nothing.
Thomas Mair, the man who assassinated Labour MP Jo Cox, reportedly owned a copy of Improvised Munitions, for example
So what? He shot and stabbed her, no improvised munitions were involved. If we're going to start banning books, I'm willing to bet he owned a copy of the Bible as well...
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
Have gnu, will travel.
Lots of aryan blood in them royals, you know.
Lots of inbreeding in them royals, you know.
Profit!
It's important to know what the UK is banning. Obviously this took about 10 seconds to find.
http://gunfreezone.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/improvised-munitions-handbook.pdf
OK, so Trump won. Can someone on "our" side please come up with a way forward that doesn't involve "fact checking" social media, telling white males to shut up even more, ripping books off shelves, cutting off Wikileaks, making "safe spaces" or "trigger words" real, or otherwise invoking even more censorship?
Do you even realize that many of the people who voted for Trump ALSO voted for Bernie? (Yeah, it happened a lot up here.)
Non story, non issue. Anyone with an IQ above 80 can find a copy for free on the internet as a PDF.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Only the stupid terrorists buy books, the smart ones get the USA to train them directly.. And I assume they get free study guys with the training, no need to buy anything on Amazon.
Perhaps start a fundme program to pay the fuel costs for those Trump haters wanting to move to Canada.
Actually pay some fucking attention to the citizens who voted for Bernie and then Trump. Everybody ranting about racism winning needs to watch this video, keeping in mind that the uploader cut off the line "For one day." at the end.
Scaling your rhetoric to the actual severity of the problem might help too. Here's a list of people who are literally Hitler, according to the Left on the internet:
1. Donald Trump
2. Little old ladies who don't understand how two dudes can get married.
etc
When people in Ohio counties where the only growth industry is starring in Facebook overdose pictures heard that Trump is evil, they probably just thought "Yeah, yeah, so's everybody."
The UK should print those books and leave one in every coffeeshop rather than trying to stop them...
The reason is they have really, really bad (and old) advice for how to build munitions.
If you take away the books people will just turn to the internet which has, as with so many other subjects, greatly detailed and practical advice on building high quality explosive devices.
So, please do not turn the people who seek such things to the internet sooner than they might...
Whenever I hear of another improvised bomb failing to go off I think "must have been reading the books".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Just like electronic cash, the government wants all electronic books.
If this was Apple, they would just remove it from your bookshelf and it would be GONE.
Or they could edit it and let you blow yourself up.
If you have a Biography of the loser, the winner can remove it from history.
I prefer paper books.
Thanks for listing all the titles, i have already downloaded them and intend to read over the weekend.
If they want to remove already purchased copies, the easiest way, apparently, is to dump them in a big pile and set it on fire.
freedom costs a buck-oh-five
I pointed out to the FBI and Department of Energy that PETA was hosting the technical schematics for nuclear warheads on their website back in 2003. They said "so what? freedom of information act. nothing we can do about it."
So I said "OK then" an moved on with my life.
Still feel weird about it. Still kind of not sure how to feel about it.
There's a big difference between looking up highly exothermic reactions in a textbook and having step-by-step instructions for creating a bomb from readily available materials. For one thing, if you don't know what you're doing there's a good chance you'll blow yourself up.
The materials are only "readily available" if you're in the field on a military operation, most of the bomb recipes in those manuals start with "take a brick of C4 and a blasting cap..."
freedom costs a buck-oh-five
...In the US.
But comparable freedom is unavailable at any price elsewhere.
Making things go 'bang' isn't difficult, it's why agricultural fertilizer now contains an inhibitor to prevent it being used in IEDs. A second-year chemistry manual, or an old formula book from the 1920s have enough details to make basic explosives. There were a number of television shows, such as Star Trek: TOS, that showed the characters making gunpowder. The workplace and even the home, is full of signs indicating that something can explode. It's not difficult to exceed the safe working parameters of such materials. When I went to college 30 years ago, we were even shown what happened when fire was mixed with gases like acetylene, hydrogen or oxygen.
The real issue in making explosives is getting the purified chemicals in bulk and transporting them. Any pure chemical, except water, is classed as dangerous goods and troublesome to transport. The government probably has watch-lists for accelerants like potassium nitrate to detect possible criminal activity.
With the emergence of cheap bio-tech tools, some alarmists have been suggesting that bacteria will be the terrorist's weapon of the future. But I think that's just a new version of poisoning the water supply: Terrorists are looking for shredded bodies and panic, not quiet mass murder by poison or germs.
Give it a few months.... Change was just voted into office.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
"Thomas Mair, the man who assassinated Labour MP Jo Cox, reportedly ... "
As Mair's trial has not been held yet, no one has been convicted of Cox's murder. So at best, Mair is the man who ALLEGEDLY assassinated Cox.
You know all those people who said they'd move to Canada if Obama won? I'm still waiting, guys, and for some of you I could extend a little financial help. I figure they have priority over people who said they'd move if Trump won.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I'd bet that there are places with certain freedoms, like the freedom to not have a SWAT team break into my house at night and shoot my dogs and terrify my family and break my stuff because somebody else wanted to play a prank. How about the freedom to fly without worrying if someone with my name (at least it's not a common one) is on a secret government list somewhere? How about the freedom to not be shot dead if some police officer panics? The US isn't as free as some people think.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The Koran. I don't see the UK, or anyone else for that matter, banning it.
Mwahahahaha.....hilarious.
Americans are a lot closer to North Koreans than they realise, which makes sense when you think about it.
Most of these publications are only a Google search away from a free download. To worry about people buying it (presumably, thus, being easily identifiable) when people can anonymously acquire it for free, strikes me as truly ridiculous.
Government's ban books to find out who is reading them.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
TM 31-210 Improvised Munitions Handbook
FM 5-31 Booby Traps
FM 5-250 Explosives and Demolitions
They aren't that special.
Never mind the explosives, just get in a car and hit some kid on a bicycle. No one is ever charged. Most crimes are committed with the aid of a vehicle. They don't take away the criminals or terrorists cars. That would be hard on the auto manufacturers, oil industry, insurers etc.
Trusting in a book to get it right isn't all that different than trusting a web site to get it right.
Considering the subject matter, getting it right is somewhat important. I used to own many of these books many years ago ( Paladin Press sold them ) and recall one instruction in particular that got it quite wrong which is why I got rid of them all. Couldn't trust them.
Whereby the book indicated that two chemicals that were safe enough on their own, became a crazy explosive once mixed. ( One of the chemicals was Red Phosphorus. You Chem Engineer types can probably guess the other one. )
What it failed to mention was the fact that both chemicals needed to be wet before mixing. Trying to combine them dry would probably be your last act on Earth.
Instant detonation and depending on amounts being mixed, probably a big red mist where the mixer used to be standing.
Whoopsie. . . minor oversight that :/
So what's the moral of the story ?
Just because it's written down in one form or another doesn't make it accurate. :)
Now you know !
. . . and knowing's half the battle !
- cue music -
but that's the point, the step by step instructions are widely available, and moreover principles of demolition are. none of that knowledge is secret it is public. might as well try to restrict books on how to have sex to lower population growth, it's futile and stupid.
Since you guys just voted in Trump I thought you loved the idea of having a King telling you what to do again.
Banned where, in the US? Who cares about US....
Canada and New Zealand both reported a spike in web traffic to their immigration services, so a lot of people are at least considering that option. Only a tiny fraction will actually go through with it.
There is crypto-anarchy - the use of technological means to render the government unable to enforce laws infringing upon fundamental freedoms. If the government bans books, set up decentralised and encrypted networks to disseminate them anyway.
I read this story because it seemed to be about books banned in the USA still being available in the U.K. I'm aware of no banned books in the USA (governmentally), so this was shocking.
Actually, it's about regular books written in the USA (Army, I believe), having been banned in the U.K., but a U.K. news agency was able to order and receive them in the U.K. even when using an alleged terrorist's name. So it's a non-story in the USA, but people in the U.K. may be concerned that their omniscient government, having banned knowledge, is not properly checking the names of people who order books on banned subjects.
I'm glad I don't live there.
All I had to do was google the title of the book, "Improvised Munitions". The #1 result is a PDF of the book (which is also legal BTW since it is a product of the US government).