UK Bookstores Found Selling Banned US Bomb-Making Handbooks (engadget.com) 108
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 Engadget adds:These books were originally made back in the 1960s for US military personnel and include titles like Improvised Munitions Handbook, Boobytraps, and Explosives and Demolitions.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.
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I guess you did not get the memo, the US only invades countries that have oil. Oh, wait North Sea ....
Re:time to invade england (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 cou
Trust (Score:2)
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 chemic
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As I recall, The Anarchist Cookbook was full of such errors. It ranged from simply won't work, to serious dangerous errors. I haven't read it since the 1990s, so I can't be more specific.
Another wonderful sources of questionable information was BBS and FidoNet text files. The best craptastic information worth almost as much as the price (free). I read quite a few almost interesting illegal drug recipes. Those too went from useless, to explosive and/or poisonous.
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I read a bit of it after I'd done around four chemistry subjects and the some of the errors were so stupid that they looked deliberate - "never do this" stuff instead of just plain ignorance.
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There isn't a single Anarchist Cookbook. It's always been a living document - it was passed around underground, being constantly revised as people added new bits and took others off. You could be given it by ten people, and get ten slightly different versions.
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It is a book. The Anarchist Cookbook [amazon.com] by William Powell, first published in 1970.
The author has a nice piece written on Amazon (the link above). Scroll down to "Editorial Reviews - From the Author". He basically says that he rehashed things he found in other books at the NYC public library. It was a good basis to start with, but it shouldn't have been the finished product.
It sounds like you're talking about all those random text files that have been in circulation for decades. Most of those are junk too
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I'm not so keen about trusting books in general for doing dangerous things. I would trust a military Field Manual.
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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 application
Re:time to invade england (Score:4, Funny)
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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...
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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.
Yes, because banning books totally works. (Score:5, Informative)
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!
Re:Yes, because banning books totally works. (Score:4, Funny)
No, no, you are incorrect. I read (on Facebook, I think) that Barbara Streisand was actually able to have all images of her home removed from the Internet. I think Google is required to remove things from the Internet if you ask them.
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I think Google is required to remove things from the Internet if you ask them.
I think you're on the wrong website dude.
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Thank goodness that no one could ever find this information on the interweb!
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In case anyone was wondering, these are also readily available on amazon.com (the US site), and they're cheap and prime eligible. I'm sure there available elsewhere, but amazon was mentioned in TFS, so I was wondering if they had previously been globally banned on amazon or something, and just recently "leaked" in the UK, but no, there is almost no story here at all. Brexit my lawn!
Missing the point (Score:2)
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*-'
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Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
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At first I wanted to agree with you. Then I remembered all the people I've met both in my private and personal life that don't seem to be able to do anything without a paint-by-numbers guide. And how well those ignorant and irrational people corrolate to the ones I think might go nuts and decide to blow something up. Could I find a gun if I was planning an armed robbery? Possibly. Probably. If I just learned my wife was cheating on me or that my boss fired on me? No, if I was raging I'd probably just grab t
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I don't think the point is to make the information inaccessible. It's another way (amongst the many legal avenues created over the last 10-15 years) to enable the authorities to find a charge they can make stick to (in their view) "deal with" people who they "know" are terrorists when they don't have any real - or at least (if you want to be more charitable) any legally admissible - proof of actual terrorist plotting.
One could argue that this is exactly the same purpose banning books/possession of informat
And? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing makes me want to learn more about something than having someone tell me I can't be trusted with knowledge.
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The thing that bothers me about it is I'd really like to be able to make some of the stuff to play with out in the desert or some other safe place, but it's illegal to do that kind of thing. So, even if you could read the books, you couldn't legally have any fun with the knowledge. :(
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Not illegal if you don't get caught.
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Can't go a day without committing a few unintentional felonies.
Might as well commit a few you really enjoy too. Less chance of committing an 'illegal felony' (getting caught) when you are aware.
I'm decades past the 'blow things up real good' stage of life though.
Re:And? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep. Andy Grove famously did just that back when people didn't take it so seriously.
For decades I've wondered how many more top-notch chemists we'd have if you were still allowed to have that kind of fun.
Re:And? (Score:5, Interesting)
It is still done. Just more discreetly.
When I was 14 I thought I was smart. Asked dad (chem prof) for some high molar nitric, made up some nonsense experiment. Got it. Waited about 4 weeks, thinking dad has to have forgotten the nitric. Asked him for some high molar sulphuric (IIRC). Dad says: 'Nitrocellulose is much safer than nitroglycerin, don't be an idiot'. Then he gave me the sulphuric acid.
Granted that was awhile ago. The 4th gives me great confidence. Things that go bang are illegal here, 99% of what you hear is clearly homemade and large.
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They won't even let the kids make a battery out of potato in science class anymore.
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The thing that bothers me about it is I'd really like to be able to make some of the stuff to play with...
I've seen enough "fail" videos on YouTube to know that you're likely better off not playing with fire and explosives. I also learned that jumping off the roof of buildings and shooting bottle rockets out of your rectum does not always have the outcome you may expect.
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The thing that bothers me about it is I'd really like to be able to make some of the stuff to play with out in the desert or some other safe place, but it's illegal to do that kind of thing. So, even if you could read the books, you couldn't legally have any fun with the knowledge. :(
I did play with that stuff when I was in high school.
In 1957, when the free world was locked in a death struggle with international Communism, the Soviet Union humiliated the United States by sending up Sputnick, the first artificial satellite in outer space, orbiting the world and beeping its presence on radio frequencies that any Ham operator in the world could tune in to. That was soon followed by the first dog in space, the first man in space, and the first woman in space.
America had to do something. Th
Available for free online anyway (Score:2)
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.
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Why Would Anybody Buy Them? (Score:1)
When they can be found online for free?
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Because stealing a book you're already not allowed to possess is going to be that one step too far that stops people, sure.
So what? (Score:2)
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"So what?!" Entire web stores were down for several hours to deal with the bans. You can think you have done everything right, have all the "nines" you want, and then something totally silly can still take down your site.
Maybe it's not a big deal to you for a store to be down (me neither, since I don't happen to work there or own a piece of the business), but think about the reason it happened and the lack of limits to government power, which allowed it to happen. You also point out that it can be download
It gets worse! (Score:4, Insightful)
There are all kinds of dangerous radicals out there, irresponsibly popularizing implements of mayhem; whatever shall we do?
They don't want you reading books (Score:3)
because they can't know what you are doing/reading/thinking like they can if you use the intertubes.
Book burning (Score:2)
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Not quite clear on your English. You are speaking of evil laws (super restrictive gun laws) and the evil people that want them?
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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.
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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.
"banned" - oh you mean in UK (Score:3)
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.
Re:"banned" - oh you mean in UK (Score:4, Insightful)
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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.
Thomas Mair (Score:5, Informative)
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...
Soon ... (Score:2)
I'd give $100 for a non-censorship "solution"... (Score:1)
Do you even realize that many of the people who voted for Trump ALSO voted for Bernie? (Yeah, it happened a lot up here.)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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freedom costs a buck-oh-five
...In the US.
But comparable freedom is unavailable at any price elsewhere.
Re:Bookburning socialists (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Give it a few months.... Change was just voted into office.
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Since you guys just voted in Trump I thought you loved the idea of having a King telling you what to do again.
available free all over the frigging internet... (Score:4, Insightful)
Non story, non issue. Anyone with an IQ above 80 can find a copy for free on the internet as a PDF.
Only stupid terrorist buy books (Score:2)
Only the stupid terrorists buy books, the smart ones get the USA to train them directly. [naturalnews.com]. And I assume they get free study guys with the training, no need to buy anything on Amazon.
You want terrorists buying those books (Score:2)
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 bo
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I'm thinking they should advertise them as the 'real' one vs the internet having the 'fake' one, and charge big money for them. That way you'll take some cash out of the terrorist's pocket along the way.
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Go ask a vet if you don't already know how they are made. Scarily simple and they punch through vehicles like butter.
So stupid (Score:2)
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).