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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 Engadget adds:These books were originally made back in the 1960s for US military personnel and include titles like Improvised Munitions Handbook, Boobytraps, and Explosives and Demolitions.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.
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?
I guess you did not get the memo, the US only invades countries that have oil. Oh, wait North Sea ....
Another day closer to redwood heaven
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*
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.
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.
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.
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
I was a Marine, and participated in some of those invasions, and I have read the manuals. Everything in these books is also on the web, and much of what is in them is not very useful to a terrorist because the books often assume that you have access to military supplies like blasting caps and C4. There are far better online resources for terrorists. Terrorists focus on killing people. Military booby traps are more focused on area denial, slowing enemy movement, and causing non-ambulatory casualties that drain resources: some shrapnel in a leg takes out both the wounded man, and the guys who have to carry him.
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.
freedom costs a buck-oh-five
...In the US.
But comparable freedom is unavailable at any price elsewhere.
Thing is, if I wanted to blow something up, I'd be really worried about instructions I found on the web. I'm not an explosives expert myself (or I wouldn't need to websurf to find this), and I wouldn't know if the instructions were designed to create a useful explosive, something inert, or to make me blow myself up. If I had an honest-to-FSM US military field manual, I'd know that the instructions were designed to help me blow up something I wanted to blow up. There would be instructions for stuff I couldn't use because of availability (I do not in fact keep C4 in my basements or blasting caps in my junk drawer) and for stuff I didn't really want to do, but the rest would be golden.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
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
I looked at an online PDF for Improvised Munitions and it's clearly a manual for insurgents, not regular military. It has recipes for a variety of improvised weapons including explosives you can make with stuff you can buy at places like pharmacies, paint stores, garden centers and so on. Some of the information is dated - carbon tetrachloride isn't a commonplace chemical anymore because it's largely been replaced by tetrachlorethane; mercury has been phased out of a lot of its most commonplace applications. But most of the recipes are still quite doable.
It has quite a long list of ingenious timer devices, improvised grenades and mines (including shaped charges), smoke grenades, switches (tripwire, altitude, weight), and detonation power sources. It shows you how to make everything you need; it even has a very nice recipe for an improvised blasting cap, including a wooden jig for packing your homebrew explosive mixture into the case.
It's really well done. I've got tons of how-to books on car maintenance, furniture making, watch repair etc. but I don't think I've ever seen a how-to book that is as comprehensive and carefully thought-out. Presuming the recipes in thisi cookbook actually work, anyone with basic maker skills and maybe two hundred bucks for supplies could use it to do some really horrific stuff.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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Who ordered that?
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.
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.
much of what is in them is not very useful to a terrorist because the books often assume that you have access to military supplies like blasting caps and C4.
Because western arms dealers avoid dealing with corrupt and unstable governments, so such items could never fall into the hands of terrorists...
Since you guys just voted in Trump I thought you loved the idea of having a King telling you what to do again.
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.
And some people want to sow fear and talk as if the presence of "how to" manuals on sites that sells books is some kind of new and insidious thing. The books have been for sale for decades. Such books have been in public libraries for decades.
Frankly, if you have a high school level understanding of chemistry (not just taken the course) you have all you need to make explosives.
NRRPT/RCT
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).