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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 Engadget adds:These books were originally made back in the 1960s for US military personnel and include titles like Improvised Munitions Handbook, Boobytraps, and Explosives and Demolitions.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.
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*
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.
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.
Just like super restrictive gun laws. If someone wants to be evil, they will be evil laws! Do not stop them.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
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.
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.
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Just like super restrictive gun laws. If someone wants to be evil, they will be evil laws! Do not stop them.
Well, never mind that the laws make it more difficult and raise the barrier to entry to only the truly dedicated to evil. They also stop the impulsive and stupid, which is 99.9% of the problem.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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Who ordered that?
Since you guys just voted in Trump I thought you loved the idea of having a King telling you what to do again.