FBI Releases File On the Anarchist Cookbook 375
An anonymous reader noted that the FBI has released its file on The Anarchist Cookbook, the 1971 manual of mayhem. It's a pretty long PDF that isn't actually OCRd but there's some crazy stuff in there. But my personal favorite is the scanned in images of 3.5" floppy disks.
Eh, it's tame... (Score:5, Funny)
There was a chemistry teacher at my high school who had a copy printed off and bound on his front counter desk.
Of course, he also like to set up those little green plastic army men on that counter during tests, pour flammable liquid over the scene, then light it and play with them, making sound of death and agony as they melted.
Re:Eh, it's tame... (Score:5, Funny)
Some might make their own perks.... (Score:2)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903747/ [imdb.com]
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You're talking about the brighter students in the class here, right?
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Re:Eh, it's tame... (Score:4, Funny)
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>For the acetylene he would fill a balloon with the gas
I assume it was a mix of acetylene and oxygen. Shop teacher would pop 3 balloons with a lighter, one pure oxygen, one pure acetylene, one much smaller balloon, mostly O2 with 1/3 acetylene. About the only difference in the first 2, was the pure acetylene left a bunch of soot behind. the third one, well it was much more exciting.
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When my dad was first working, back in the 60s, there was a prank they'd do on new guys, where they'd fill a big plastic bottle with acetyline, put a spark plug in and tape it under a car wired to the ignition. When someone would turn the car on, there would be a massive explosive sound, flames would engulf the car for about 1 nano-second and then it'd all stop, being largely a low heat-high flash flame unable of sustaining itself because the flames had nowhere to go.
Insane and reckless stunt, but this was
Re:chemistry teacher (Score:2)
My Gram taught at the Jr. High chem depart, but it turned out she was a Mole for the FBI. /Joke
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Of course, he also like to set up those little green plastic army men on that counter during tests, pour flammable liquid over the scene, then light it and play with them, making sound of death and agony as they melted.
We had a crazy old guy on the verge of retirement, he had a long history of flammable experiments. The one that really showed his humanity was with a hand-cranked centrefuge that he had dug out of the old lab equipment.
Long story short, he managed to over spin and shatter both of his vials and sprayed chemicals and glass across half the room. He then stood up from behind the bench he had hidden behind, looked out at the mayhem he had wrought looked shocked and apologized. "I guess that was a bad idea."
I do the same thing. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I do the same thing. (Score:4, Funny)
I kept the important ones on the fridge with a magnet, so I knew where I could find them.
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I kept the important ones on the fridge with a magnet, so I knew where I could find them.
I kept the [________________] ones [___________________________________________]
PS FUCK YOU ASCII ART FILTER
PPS YOU TOO CAPS FILTER
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I'm Magnet Mayhem. Your cut rate insurance may not cover you. Are you in good hands?
Great Page Turner for Miscreants ! (Score:3)
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Ah the book with the recipe for napalm that will according to legend blow you the fuck up. Great stuff. Its all fun and games until someone explodes into a ball of fire.
You mean the OJ concentrate + gasoline formula (even styrofoam + gasoline)? Friends and I used that plenty of times as kids. It's actually very unimpressive, certainly no explosions.
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I'm fairly sure that it isn't supposed to explode, per se; but if it doesn't stick to kids [numachi.com] it just ain't the real thing...
It will stick if you throw it one someone (or some creature). But the gasoline won't explode, just burn slowly. On a cold enough day, it won't even light on fire.
Re:Great Page Turner for Miscreants ! (Score:5, Interesting)
Then you should have tried the saltpeter and sugar smoke bomb. We smuggled quite a lot of saltpeter out from school. We also decided to throw in some match heads, and naphthalene (why not?). Cooked it on the oven, luckily in a small test quantity. All of a sudden, BAM, the room was full of smoke, from what was about a 50cent piece [wikipedia.org] worth of material.
The smoke was initially red, making me think the match heads got too hot. Scared the shit out of us. A red/white cloud, that races at your face, and quickly fills the entire kitchen. Mum was shocked, and impressed.
I'd highly recommend this recipe to anyone. Given the quantities are small enough (and given we weren't extremely lucky), we had it literally blow up right in our faces, and all we got was a little smoky, and the shock of our lives.
Having a look at ones like this...
saltpeter smoke bombs inside [youtube.com]
Smoke bomb (KNO3 + Sugar) [youtube.com]
I don't know what we did differently. Perhaps they're using a low grade KNO3, we were using lab grade stuff, and we prepared the mixtures specifically, made sure it was consistent. Also, we did a very thin, but wide mixture. Additionally, maybe the match heads (and naphthalene?) made it react quicker. Also, it reaching some temperature on the oven, might have triggered it to all ignite at once.
Ours was more like this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IZX80i4cpU [youtube.com]
But in a confined space, with a fraction of the material, and it all went off at once.
BIG BADA BOOM! (Minus boom, just menacing hissing, and fuckloads of smoke)
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I've had a 10lb container of KNO3 for the last five years for expressly this purpose and haven't gotten around to doing it. Maybe I will this week...
I Don't Understand This Legacy (Score:5, Interesting)
Ah the book with the recipe for napalm ...
I simply don't understand the legacy this "book" has gathered over the years. I, in my infinite youth, once read the manual and you know what jumped out at me wasn't all these alleged homemade napalm and pipe bombs ... in fact, that stuff seemed so low quality and stupid to me that I don't even remember much of it. And I've often been told the napalm in the book really isn't the best stuff you can make with homemade items. Apparently there are much better mediums to use with fuel like Vaseline (petroleum jelly) if you can get enough of it.
... oftentimes this trouble is easily traced back to you no matter how well the book tries to convince the reader you're being super careful and are virtually untraceable.
But what really stuck out to my late teenage mind was how the author of it seemed to be obsessed with disruption. I remember it reading like a case study for "common" scenarios whereby you could operate within questionable circumstances to undermine regular corporate and government actions -- specifically in Western nations.
For example, in one of the scenarios the book presupposes that you have a large contractor building some huge building right next door to your home that you refused to sell (like the beginning of the film Up). So it goes about how to put nails through strips of webbing, then lay them across the dig site at night and cover them with a bit of gravel to puncture holes in the tires of machinery. Or get used oil from your car and go spill it next to their machinery and then tip off the EPA. The list went on and on for many pages about how to sabotage several scenarios.
And I wasn't too impressed with it. It was as if everyone thought that until this point in time no one had ever engaged in determined guerrilla warfare or an unfriendly neighborly spat. This book exhibits somewhat of an active imagination in causing trouble
It simply blew my mind that someone could be arrested for possession of this book because after all the notoriety it's really not that useful. Sure, if your given scenario matches any in the books, you've got some cheap tricks at your disposal but anyone with an imagination would be far better equipped than anyone with that book. I found nothing permanently useful in that book and would recommend any of the US Army Field Manuals [wikipedia.org] for reading before that since the information is more generalized and interesting like the one on Counterinsurgency. FM 21-76 served me well in Boy Scouts -- probably better than the boy scout's manual. Why do we flip out that The Anarchist's Cookbook is available to terrorists when the Army is releasing far more useful books to anybody and everybody?
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The anarchists cookbook also has many things in it that are too dangerous to do, or wouldn't work at all. Some of them have a significant probability of hurting you.
Well, that was the allure of having the book in junior high, wasn't it? And if you did that stuff and survived, you were really the shit. Bonus points for scarring.
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So that really WAS the book after all. I downloaded a copy of that as a kid and it seemed so stupid I figured I'd gotten a fake one.
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I downloaded a copy of that as a kid
I feel old now.
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Where I find your observation is ... time frame reference.
In the 70's and 80's, the lack of access to information ( even in public libraries ) was rather large. Therefor, people found this book useful ( even if they never used it ). The legacy is that people above the age of 40 speak to youth about how good it was to have something to fight the establishment.
Given, you can find just about everything now on the internet, including the armed forces manuals, but back in the day, this was as near as the general
Re:I Don't Understand This Legacy (Score:4, Insightful)
The book was memorable because it was prohibited. As a teenager, having a copy was one of the greatest taboos a middle-class suburban kid might violate. What better symbol of rebellion? It was common for the same reason kids in online games today scream "nigger" even though there is no indication that there are black people playing, and the kids themselves probably aren't particularly racist--it's a just violation of society's most severe taboos.
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I always figured the Anarchist's Cookbook was just an idiot trap in two ways. One, you part suckers from money. Two, you give a bunch of these idiots a chance to blow themselves up should they actually try any of this crap. And three, in the modern age, you can tie their purchase to their identity cheaply in many cases. Biometrics are getting more popular and powerful and security cameras are as well. How long is it before you can pay with cash and be tied to a purchase in real time?
Re:I Don't Understand This Legacy (Score:5, Interesting)
It was a bit like the Hacker's Manifesto in that it was written by a very passionate young person (William Powell, 22 at the time) that ran like wildfire amongst other passionate, like-minded (or at least very curious) young people. It also had the same reaction as H.M. when it's author went back, re-read it and was startled by how angry, foolish and idealistic they were in their youth and that almost all of that rage was caused by other sources.
From what I've read Powell has felt very guilty about that book and he doesn't advise anyone to ever bother reading it.
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You're right, the Anarchist Cookbook was rather pedestrian and some of the things there were not good ideas. The Poor Man's James Bond was a much better book and even that wasn't so great... but nobody flipped out over that one.
I think it was the mystique of the AC that made people freak out, the name and having any sort of "dangerous" information in the hands of a subversive let their imaginations run wild with paranoid ideas. Think of the children! [TM]
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I think it's the pipe bomb instructions that can backfire on people. There's many important little details to keep in mind. You know like, be sure to drill the hole THEN put the cap on. Ooops.
It's also easy to get some powder in the treads and make it pop while screwing it together.
I've seen plenty of guys with missing fingers just from setting off firecrackers, so how many idiots messed up trying to make their own pipe bombs for fun?
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Instant Darwin Award.
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analog scanner (Score:3)
Well meaning.. but evil (Score:5, Insightful)
Disturbing to look at letter after letter to the FBI. All these well meaning people thinking that they're doing the right thing by reporting this work to the FBI, suggesting that the FBI stop it's publication. These people are a greater threat to freedom than anyone who has bought this book.
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I actually had the same thought.
Honestly it was a bit reassuring that they just seemed to be sending reply letter after reply letter along the lines of "the FBI doesn't control what books get published, here's some stuff to read"
Myself I don't see the big deal with the book.
You'd be a bit insane to try the "recipies" in it, for anything real what you want is a big fat chemistry book with the most boring title you can find.
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Disturbing to look at letter after letter to the FBI. All these well meaning people thinking that they're doing the right thing by reporting this work to the FBI, suggesting that the FBI stop it's publication. These people are a greater threat to freedom than anyone who has bought this book.
However, the FBI's response of "we don't stop publication of books" was pretty refreshing; especially given the period they were written.
*THE* R L Shackelford? (Score:2)
Or should I say...
DALE GRIBBLE?
No, I shouldn't.
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Boy, I tell you what, man, you got that there dang ol' FBI hangin' around yer house, them black helicopters goin' chopchopchopchopchop all over the place, man.
Dangerous book w/ incomplete instructions (Score:5, Interesting)
When my father found me reading a copy he took it and destroyed it, providing me w/ a copy of the TM 31-210 Improvised Munition Handbook instead:
http://www.libertylib.com/improvised-munitions-handbook/improvised-munitions-handbook.shtml [libertylib.com]
Which if nothing else should be mandatory reading for people who mistakenly believe gun control can be made to work --- I used to make black powder by collecting nitrates from underneath piles of cow manure in local fields, collecting charcoal when emptying the ashes from the fireplace and sulfur by purchasing sulfur candles from the local store (unfortunately there weren't any naturally occurring sulfur deposits w/in bicycling distance).
William
Re:Dangerous book w/ incomplete instructions (Score:5, Insightful)
gun control is not meant to stop criminal masterminds and intelligent determined boy scouts. its meant to stop casual hotheads and insane people. if you stop people from getting guns easily someone like yourself and criminal geniuses will still have guns. nobody thinks making guns harder to get will stop someone like you
so who won't get guns? the kind of guy who shoots up a disco because a chick looked at him funny or the guy who shot the congresswoman in arizona. these people aren't fine thinking specimens: they get guns simply because they are easy to get. so make guns less easy to get, and insane people and casual hotheads won't get guns. that's it
you have to understand, they aren't trying that hard, at much of anything in life, and it is these sort of people that cause all of the tragedy with guns
i would be able to understand gun lovers a little better if they didn't freak out at the most sane obvious and prudent restrictions on guns
Re:Dangerous book w/ incomplete instructions (Score:5, Insightful)
With someone who is insane, once they are diagnosed you have a paper trail. But what about before that? Exactly when are they insane? How can you tell before they act without also limiting the rights of everyone?
The NICS guidelines (http://crime.about.com/od/guns/a/handgun_check.htm) can help, but what about people that up to a point have been good citizens, but for whatever reason, go off?
And if you look at what has been going on in CA (http://www.redding.com/news/2009/oct/12/gov-signs-ammunition-sales-bill/) check this part out:
De Leon spokesman Dan Reeves has said the local laws have helped police track down 200 criminals who bought handgun ammunition. Some were drug dealers and many had large caches of illegal guns or explosives
So even with a BUNCH of laws, both state and federal, covering both guns AND ammo bad guys still get guns/ammo. Now true, they are referring to convicted felons, which is not what you were talking about. But none of those people were convicted felons the first time they committed a felony. Are you sure it is so easy to predict? At some point, if you aren't careful, the gun laws will just put law abiding citizens at a severe disadvantage without actually helping to keep guns out of the wrong hands. Where that point of diminished returns is, I don't know. But my point is that I think you are oversimplifying things a bit.
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In a previous slashdot debate about gun control, one guy described Canada's gun sales system, and it sounded pretty solid. They have more guns than we do, yet way less gun crime. There are probably many factors contributing to their lower gun crimes, but the the process for obtaining a gun must be one of the major ones.
There was some amount of wait time, some sort of background check, and you had to have your wife sign a letter saying it was OK! (I'm assuming there is a list of people close to you that t
Re:Dangerous book w/ incomplete instructions (Score:4, Insightful)
I find it more sad that people think crime will be solved by removing the tools of that crime. After guns are removed and people start using knives they will be the first people to limit the size of knives people can buy. After that?
Crimes of passion may be prevented by minor gun control... but I'd venture to say that the recent publicized acts were all premeditated and legality of purchase would have had little (if no) affect on the outcome. This wasn't some guy that decided one morning to go out and "get him a human head."
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you do realize that countries with more stringent gun control like japan, germany, etc., still have gun crime, but a heck of a lot less gun crime than the pointless carnage and mayhem that defines the usa. kid of counteracts your central premise and supports mine, no?
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Actually no it doesn't.
You might want to look at what the nuts in Japan do use in their crimes before declaring it a success.
You might also look at the demographics of our 'pointless carnage and mayhem'. If you exclude the 'inner cities' (you know what that's code for) we _are_ Canada.
Re:Dangerous book w/ incomplete instructions (Score:5, Insightful)
I also recall at least Germany having a problem with a government that systematically rounded up what they considered undesirables and putting them to death...
The 2nd amendment isn't about hunting, self defense, or casual target shooting - it is about the ability for the citizenship to revolt against the government.
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Doesn't seem like gun control is crime control. For the nutjob who wants to kill people, not having a gun isn't a problem.
Example:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25026870/ [msn.com]
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countries with more stringent gun control like japan, germany, etc., still have gun crime, but a heck of a lot less gun crime than the pointless carnage and mayhem that defines the usa
furthermore, anyone can get a knife. there was a guy in japan who went into a school and stabbed a bunch of kids
but by and large, the usa has tons more senseless homicides per capita, period, than japan. simply because more firepower = more deaths
yes, you can kill someone with a knife. but it take work. set one guy with a knif
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Why do you make a distinction between "crime" and "gun crime"? Someone gets killed, I don't think it's OK so long as they weren't killed with a gun.
In spree killings, having a gun doesn't mean there will be a higher body count. The link I cited previously had 7 dead, 10 injured from knife wounds. In one memorable shooting, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Gale#Shootings_at_the_Alrosa_Villa_club [wikipedia.org] , there were 4 dead, 2 injured.
Doesn't seem like controlling the tools controls the behavior, but instead th
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Nuts can just get a knife* or a brick and still kill lots of people. In most mass shootings the availability of a gun doesn't increase the mortality rate because the killer is either incompetent with the weapon or not thinking clearly enough to kill efficiently. eg the Arizona shooter who didn't even kill his primary target.
The guy pissed off at his ex-girlfriend can still kill her with a knife. But if the woman had a gun she would have a far higher chance of winning the fight. And no the police won't prote
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The problem is a country that sees no problem with a mentally deranged individual just going into a store and buying a glock with an extended magazine. Do you have a problem with that reality? I do.
So who is impinging on whose rights and freedoms? Because I think my right to live is pretty obviously limited by the bullets flying around my cities due to madmen and hotheads, because you and others view guns as religious totem objects of absolute virtue. Your irrational insistence on no limits whatsoever on fi
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I manage a gun store, and while I see two or three people a month denied guns through the formal background check process, I deny firearms to about twenty times as many people because in my "professional opinion" based on 10-60 seconds of observation they are too stupid to own a gun:
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Pease mod parent up. A gun store manager preaching common sense: gun ownership needs common sense limitations
"Five day waiting period?" (Score:3)
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so who won't get guns?
The guy seeking to defend himself from an oppressive government, that's who. The 1st amendment exists to ensure the possibility of peaceful revolutions. The 2nd amendment exists in case the 1st fails.
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if the usa ever falls under the boot of fascism, god forbid, it will start with heavily armed factions. wake up from your quasireligious belief in the holy infallibility of the gun
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross" (Sinclair Lewis). Wake up from your quasi religious belief in the holy infallibility of the government. Either way, Fascism will come, the only question is whether we will have the tools to fight it when it does.
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japan and germany have tight gun control. yet japan and germany still have tragedies with guns
but guess what? A HECK OF A LOT LESS TRAGEDIES than the usa
that's the "makes complete sense" part you are missing. that's the whole point: less senseless deaths
but i can hear the gun lovers now: OMG YOU HATE FREEDOM YOU ARE FASCIST WHARRRRGARBBBBL
gee, maybe i just think the regular litany of pointless carnage in the usa is wrong? so guns should have sane controls on them? could that be my motivation?
pfffffft
it's li
too all the kooks out there: (Score:2)
Can't you at least bother with the effort to build an armoured bulldozer [wikipedia.org] if you feel disgruntled and want to smash shit up?
Although stealing a tank [wikipedia.org] and rampaging down the freeway generates some lulz for a while...
geeze, going by this, and my other posts in this thread, you'd think I have a full set of looney collector cards or something...
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no, not a coincidence. both germany and japan are extremely allergic to war, armies, and weapons in general, due to their horrible humbling experiences as fascist countries. you wonder if it will take a similar experience for the usa to become similarly allergic. because there's one simple truth about fascism and guns: heavily armed paranoid people is not a protection from fascism, heavily armed paranoid people are the soil in which fascist movements grow
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all your base are belong to hotheads?
in all seriousness, i have zero doubt that if you make guns hard to get, that knives, bombs, ice cream trucks mowing down kids in the park, etc.: mayhem will still continue. some people, when they commit to killing, they will kill. i don't in any way doubt that
my point is to simply stop the CASUAL killer. you know, the guy who just isn't thinking that much about it. he's got the gun in his waistband, the chick looked at him funny, obvious conclusion: shoot up the night c
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So, if you take the guns away, there are many other, perhaps more effective and or more creative tools for creating mayhem and destruction. Maybe he brings a knife, and casually walks around stabbing people. [wikipedia.org], or maybe he casually walks out to the parking lot to retrieve his truck, only to casually drive it through the nightclub and the crowd waiting in front. [wikipedia.org]
Blades don't need to be reloaded, and if you think a pocket pistol has anything on a 4,000 pound guided cruise missile, well, I'm sorry for you.
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so why does japan and germany, with stringent gun control, have so much less senseless deaths than the usa? germany and japan have knife wielding maniacs, and also gun shooting maniacs. but a heck of a lot LESS. that's the point
the simple availability of a tool in general cuts down on the whether that tool is used or not. you talk about the deviant mind? i'm not talking about the deviant mind: i'm talking about the dimwitted thug, who, if he can't get a gun, just doesn't have a gun. i have no illusions that
Re:Dangerous book w/ incomplete instructions (Score:4, Insightful)
There just might be reasons other then the simple availability of tools.
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The idea that a well armed populace is safer is clearly a boy scout fantasy. No one shot back when Reagan was shot, the gunman was tackled, even with Secret Service all around. In gun happy Tucson, no one shot back at Jared Loughner. The gunman was tackled, again. This idea that some heroic virtuous gun owner will intervene in these events is Hollywood, not reality.
The point of stricter gun control is to simply keep them out of the hands of the insane and the casual hotheaded. Gun proponents counter that wh
Re:Dangerous book w/ incomplete instructions (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that a well armed populace is safer is clearly a boy scout fantasy.
It's not at all clear to me, nor to many scholars who've studied the issue. I assume you've read John Lott's seminal work that kicked off an ongoing debate about the effect of widespread concealed carry, right? And the many other research papers that support his finding that the more law-abiding citizens are carrying firearms the less violent crime there is? And noted the fact that the (relatively few) studies that find to the contrary, with only a single exception, find that rather than more guns increasing crime, they have no significant effect? And I'm sure you've also read the FBI reports that analyze the question from the criminal's perspective, and conclude that citizen concealed carry is the largest single deterrent in the minds of most violent criminals. I can provide links, but all of this information is readily accessible via Google.
I think this is a case where what appears to be common sense is actually just ignorance. Real study of the issue shows that privately-owned, concealed firearms are a real deterrent to crime, and the numbers show that the otherwise law-abiding "hothead" who "flips out" and starts shooting people doesn't exist. In the case of Jared Loughner, I think the crowd is lucky he had a gun. Without that, he'd have had to fall back on simpler and far more deadly weapons -- like his truck. What would be even better, of course, is to identify mentally ill people like him beforehand and get them into treatment. People wouldn't die, and they'd have happier lives. But the presence or absence of guns doesn't significantly affect that dynamic.
It is time for the USA to join every other sober industrialized nation in the world and severely restrict guns. Reason will prevail, it always does. Even though we will pay a horrible price in senseless deaths until the stink finally gets too high. Eventually, too high even for those with an irrational religious conviction about the virtuousness of guns. The rest of us are waiting for you to finally come to their senses. We're not too patient though, we're sick of the carnage. Hurry up and figure it out.
What carnage?
Yes, approximately 30,000 people die in the US annually from gunshot wounds. That's terrible. But when you break down the numbers, you learn some interesting things.
First, approximately half of those deaths are suicides. Without access to a firearm, would those people still be alive? Perhaps some of them, only because guns tend to be a quite effective way to do yourself in. But they're hardly the only way.
Second, the vast majority of the deaths that remain are gang- and drug-related. If you want to eliminate most of those deaths, the solution is quite apparent: Legalize drugs. Regulate them tightly, but make them most readily available through legal channels and you'll cut the legs from under the gangs. Without drugs, they have no funding. Without funding, they die. We experienced all of this nearly a century ago, yet we continue paying a horrible price in senseless deaths and loss of civil liberties, and will continue paying it until we wise up and deal with drug abuse as a social and medical problem, not a criminal one.
Third, we get the portion that are really hard to address: domestic violence. There are about 4,000 deaths per year where an angry spouse/child/parent/whatever grabs a gun and starts shooting. Some of these people would not die if guns were unavailable, and I don't really know what we can do about it. More readily-available family counseling services, perhaps. More shelters and programs to help battered women and children escape a dangerous situation before their abuser grabs a gun and kills them -- or before they grab a gun and kill their abuser (though I have to say I find those outcomes less heartbreaking... not that they're the best outcomes, but they're better than many of the alternatives).
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UK?! You do realize that a lot less senseless death in the UK than in the USA, right?
Look: when our Founding Fathers wrote the Second Amendment, they were talking about Native Americans and Redcoats and the frontier and muskets. Not concealed handguns in the middle of cities. If the Founding Fathers were to witness how the meaning of the Second Amendment has been perverted by the NRA (who work for gun manufacturers: increase profits, be damned the consequences), they would be angry, not supportive.
It is tim
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Which if nothing else should be mandatory reading for people who mistakenly believe gun control can be made to work --- I used to make black powder by collecting nitrates from underneath piles of cow manure in local fields, collecting charcoal when emptying the ashes from the fireplace and sulfur by purchasing sulfur candles from the local store (unfortunately there weren't any naturally occurring sulfur deposits w/in bicycling distance).
I don't think anyone -- out of those who have thought about it, anyway -- think gun control can eliminate guns. The objective is to reduce the availability of guns to the vast majority of people who lack either the knowledge or the motivation to fabricate the components from scratch. In Japan, where private gun ownership is effectively illegal, the few guns in private hands are imported from relatively lawless regions like SE Asia and North America, not by Yakuza lackeys formulating black powder from cow ma
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But the people who are highly motivated to build or acquire guns are exactly those that you don't want possessing them. Those are the people for whom possession of a gun (or other weapon) has a high profit motive or benefit to cost ratio. Criminals, in other words.
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Anarchist Cookbook kind of literature could be used as a way to find out the crazies and have them blow themselves up.
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Yeah, I should've poked around a bit for a better link:
http://cryptome.org/0001/tm-31-210.htm [cryptome.org]
William
Congressional ignorance (Score:5, Insightful)
The letter from congressman George Mahon (D-TX) is disheartening.
He tells Hoover that "several of my constituents" have expressed alarm about the book. He then says he has not read the book but "the reviews have caused quite a bit of controversy." Finally, he asks for something to tell the constituents.
The process is totally hollow. And isn't that the way things continue to work40 years later? If anything, it's worse. Today's congressperson would scream louder and vilify the opposition (all while willingly ignorant about the issue at hand.)
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I always seem to get back the standard form letter describing their opinion on the situation even though I asked for elaboration on a particular point or provided historical evidence to the contrary.
HoneyPot (Score:2)
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Oh crap! Now you tell us.
I guess I'd better get out of this Starbucks before the black helicopters arrive.
Don't like (Score:5, Funny)
I always found Anarchists a bit gamey, no matter how they're cooked.
"Not Always Complete" (Score:5, Insightful)
From the PDF under "enclosure" from someone reviewing the book:
"The formulas and procedures presented concerning the production of high and low explosives cannot be called incorrect but they are not always complete and therefore present a hazard to anyone using the information"
No kidding. Darwin Awards waiting to be handed out.
As a BBSer with my own copy back in the day, we didn't dare try any of that shit because it even looked like it was missing steps.
The Amateur Astronomer's Handbook has recipes for silvering mirrors, and there are warnings to not keep the mixture (sugar recipe) standing around too long because it creates silver fulminate. The complete lack of similar safety warnings in the Anarchists' Cookbook is a red flag not to try this stuff. Consult a real explosives manual instead.
--
BMO
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dangerous threat to freedom? (Score:2)
LOL, CIA
The Real Power behind The Anarchist Cookbook... (Score:5, Interesting)
got to love the FBI (Score:2)
I love how they clearly breached copyright law on page 170 of the PDF and made a duplicate of the floppy disk before giving the original back...
See something, say something BS (Score:2)
The people writing to the head of the FBI to get the whole investigation started really surprised me.
Just imagine what all these 'concerned citizens' are reporting to the head of the FBI these days.
The Monkey Wrench Gang (Score:3)
Required reading if you like the Anarchists Cookbook. See also:
http://earth-liberation-front.org/ [earth-libe...-front.org]
http://www.animalliberationfront.com/ [animallibe...nfront.com]
Which have practical field tested techniques.
I'll probably end up on a watch list for this post.
I RTFA (Score:3)
From reading the actual FBI file, I noticed something interesting :
1. The FBI made an effort to investigate the book's author BEFORE they determined a crime had even been committed.
2. The FBI wrongly assumed the author was a pseudonym because they felt the topics "spoke from firsthand experience". They obviously never asked a chemist or someone who had actually tried these techniques if anything in the book would work. Had they done so, they would have realized the book was fake. Also, these government agents tended to take advertising copy at face value...getting information from the media the same way we do.
3. The FBI REALLY IS WATCHING YOU. Send them a letter and a news clipping and complain, and the FBI will INVESTIGATE YOU! Every letter written by some old lady had a note attached where an agent checked the files on that lady and found out what she had sent in the past. (evidently each time when the FBI found that a person had sent them things that seemed supportive of the agency, they would stop investigating)
The Man's own private records reveal many of the things we say about him are true. The Man really is ignorant and responds to popular opinion, not common sense. Criticize The Man, or communicate with him at all, and he will try to find a reason to send you to prison.
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The published "Anarchist Cookbook" and the BBS TXT files are not the same.
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Back in the day, like in 7th grade or something, a guy at my school took it with him to school because we were all very cool back then. Then they had a meeting with his parents, lol.
Almost as cool as using "lol"?
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Re:Lame (Score:5, Informative)
I wanted to learn how to make Napalm from human fat
Napalm is a mix of gasoline with soap. To make soap from human fat, get (by weight) 7 parts fat, 2 parts water, and 1 part sodium hydroxide. Mix thoroughly in a blender until it starts thickening. Pour in a mold and let stand for a few days. To make napalm, grind the soap and mix 2 parts gasoline with 1 part soap.
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And for the sodium hydroxide, drip water through ashes (hardness of wood tends to determine hardness of the lye). Soap is pretty dadgum easy to make.
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Well about 1981 I got a hold of a 336 page printable copy floating around the BBS world. In 1981 I was not much older than your son, and around 1983 (pretty sure we got our printer in 1983 - we also got a non-loaner modem that year) I almost got suspended from school for bringing a couple of pages to school. It didn't help that another kid photocopied them and started selling them in the library... then fingered me as his source, the cops got called, my parents got called, etc - incidentally, I mainly brou
Re:I always enjoyed it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you kidding? The right thing to do is to read it with your kid, and explain each and every way that following the book would get him blown up. Then you take him out and build some model rockets or smoke bombs so he has a non-destructive way to deal with the urge. This kind of material is a perfect teaching opportunity.
No, he became smart (Score:2)
You just became "them".
He didn't say he didn't want his son making explosives. He just doesn't want him doing it wrong.
Leaving the Anarchists Cookbook around is like leaving a cookbook around that uses arsenic as the main ingredient. It's just a bad idea that could easily mislead someone reading it into doing something that would hurt them simply because it was wrong.
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May I be the first to just say - "Wooosh!'
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http://www.amazon.com/Anarch-Cookbook-Friendly-Masquerade-Sourcebook/dp/1565040481 [amazon.com]
The Anarch Cookbook: A Friendly Guide to Vampire Politics (Vampire The Masquerade Sourcebook) [Paperback]
Bill Bridges (Author), Kerry Thornley (Author)
The one review
The Anarch Cookbook is well written. It is indeed a manual for Anarch politics, warfare and their way of unlife. With descriptions on strategies for times of peace as well as melee and ranged combat tactics, weapon infos and bomb making. Notes on water cannons, bul
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The BBS version dates to the early 80s (for certain 1981 - I had a borrowed modem and 48k Apple ][ that summer, though I'm not 100% certain that was the huge 336 page one I printed by 1983 -- and I'm sure it got bigger). It had a lot more techie stuff than the printed copy I saw years later (for instance phone phreaking boxes, hacked modem lines like the pentagon press server, etc).