Newspaper You Can Trust Would Not Say Boo To A Goose (03/09)

THOUSANDS OF IDIOTS DETECTED
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Knock! Knock!  Anybody there?
They don’t get it do they. The total combined intellect of the Bangkok Post has not yet cottoned on to the fact that the GT-200 is a total hoax, as are the Sniffex, ADE651, and Alpha 6 bomb/drugs/ insurgent detectors which Thailand has bought by the cart-load.


I mean who would buy a machine, powered by a human and nothing else which can detect anything from drugs to explosives, or even a choc-ice if you programme the nonexistent chip!   The only things these machines can detect are idiots.


And who would pay US$18,000 for each machine?  Well, China, Thailand, Iraq, and Mexico for starters.   Did I hear someone say ‘kickback mountain!’  Well,you could be forgiven. The recently arrested Jimbo, manufacturer of the ADE651, complained:  ‘But I only got 11 million dollars!’ – of a US$80 million deal with Iraq – the rest, he said, went on commissions and training.  Some commissions!   Some training!  But lets not apportion blame yet, says Prime Minister Abhisit.

So anyway out comes the Bangkok Post today and with a report by writers Anucha Charoenpo and King-oua Laohong. Yes it takes two of them to come out with this grey drivel. This after endless days of the paper quoting different experts as to how the machines really work.

 ‘The cabinet is concerned about the detector’s reliability and consistency and invited soldiers, security experts and drugs officers to provide information on its use at its meeting yesterday.
The invited guests expressed satisfaction with the detectors, but the cabinet wanted more academic research to support their claims’.

It’s going to take them a week to find out what BBC Newsnight established with both the GT200 and ADE651 in about 3 minutes. While we are not going to take the matter forward with this sort of reporting, full marks to the Bangkok Post for its opinion poll, possibly one of the most nonsensical polls I have ever seen.

It posed the question: ‘Do you think the devices should be tested?’
A staggering 33% said No. (the figure representing this group has lost only half his legs)
14 per cent said ‘Don’t know’ (the figure representing this group looks like he has been ripped in half by a claymore)
And only 53% said yes. (And this guy is fine)

So I guess we need diagrams to spell it out :-).
But look how mellow people are taking this while fellow citizens, soldiers and police, are being killed in south Thailand. It’s almost as if they do not care.  But isn’t it sweet that according to the Bangkok Post 47 per cent of people questioned did not want an ‘end to their doubts’.

That’s easily solved.  Just take out a subscription to the Bangkok Post!

Update Feb 15: Well since I wrote this. The Bangkok Post has been trundling along still not totally convinced. Well one writer in the Post Database section called it an outright fraud, and a scientist rambled on about nothing, but clearly the editor does not read his own paper.

In Sunday’s Bangkok Post – well the splash actually – Pansak Siriruchatapong, the man who is supposed to take these machines apart and test them for the government is quoted as saying he cannot take them apart because the purchasers signed a confidentiality agreement!

The government therefore cannot disclose anything about how these machines (don’t) work.

You can’t make this up. However I suspect on this occasion the ‘foreign’ editor of the Sunday Bangkok Post is having a private joke.

And there’s more: ‘Jehrming  Tohtayong a member of the ‘National Security Panel’ said members had discussed the prospects of holding laboratory tests, but said they were concerned this would violate the seller’s intellectual rights’

Some National Security Panel!

(Reminds me of the Danish prospective PM who was asked what he would do if his country was invaded. ‘Pick up the phone and surrender! No on second thoughts the Danish politician is a lot smarter)

Some intellectual rights!

Oh and here’s the link to the original BBC Newsnight report. The second report where the GT200 is taken apart has already been shown on Thai TV Channel 3. And a Thai military man has already admitted on Thai TV that there is nothing on the GT200.

So what’s happening in Britain, where Health and Safety issues mean that you cannot get an aspirin in some hotels, to Gary Bolton the boss of  Global Technical which produces the GT200?  Nothing at all it seems. So far he is laughing all the way to the bank…of the West Indies.

FOOTNOTE: In fairness to the Bangkok Post on March 7th 2010 Spectrum publish a much fuller report concluding I guess that the GT200 does not work. Though of course in its ‘even handed way’ quoted several military who thought it did.  Buried in its report however was a quote from  general Genera Pathompong who had taken a GT 200 apart and basically found nothing.