“Last night another soldier, last night another child
No one seems to worry, no one sees his mother cry”

When I was a child I used to hammer nails into pieces of wood and tell people I was making a rifle, a nuclear bomb, whatever. What I should have told them was that I was making a bomb detector. If I had, I’d have been a very rich man by now.

The GT200 bomb detector was described by Professor Hood of Bristol University as being “a piece of plastic with a car aerial sticking out of it”. It’s been known since 2002 that the devices are useless, when they were marketed under the name “MOLE”; a double blind trial at the Sandia National Laboratories showed they were totally incapable of detecting explosives. Yet Thailand has spent more than $20 million on these devices.

Soldiers in the South have long complained that the devices didn’t work and have repeatedly failed to detect bombs, leading to widespread injury and loss of life.

The device has also caused misery for hundreds who have been imprisoned for being “insurgents” based upon the device’s readings (source: Working Group on Justice for Peace).

Following a warning from the UK government earlier this year some tests were carried out on the device in Thailand. It was absolutely conclusive that the GT200 is a con, an evil fraud.

Prime Minister Abhisit banned the purchase of further devices.

[Cartoon from The Nation newspaper]

Yet, on 18 February, the Thai Army’s Chief, General Anupong Paojinda, in defiance of all evidence and logic, said that the devices were effective and that they would continue to be used.

The same day there was an explosion in Pattani from a bomb that the GT200 failed to detect. 13 people were injured.

And today two more soldiers were injured in an explosion from another bomb the GT200 didn’t detect.

“Can you hear the mocking laughter from the ones that gain by it
They’re not in line for the bullets, they’re the ones who started it “

[443]