The 2010 ''Are You Serious?'' Awards

[DeSwiss]

The 2010 ''Are You Serious?'' Awards

Truth-Out | Tuesday 28 December 2010 | by: Conn Hallinan | Foreign Policy in Focus | News Analysis


A screen grab from a Youtube video
depicts ADE651 Advanced Detection
Training in Thailand.
(Photo: atscllc / Youtube)

The Harry Potter Award to the British technology company ATSC Ltd for its invention of a “wand” that, according to the company, detects explosives, drugs, and human remains for up to six miles by air and three fifths of a mile by land. The ADE 651 sells for $16,000 a unit. The only problem is that it doesn’t work, which users might have figured out by reading the manual: the device has no batteries or internal parts. It is powered by “static electricity” generated by the holder walking in place. A wand-like antenna then points to the drugs, bodies, or explosives.

This past January ATSC Ltd was charged with fraud and banned by the British government. One ATSC source told the New York Times, “Everyone at ATSC knew that there was nothing inside the ADE 651,” and that the units cost only $250 to make. But the wand was widely used in Iraq. Ammar Tuma, a member of the Iraqi parliament’s Security and Defense Committee, bitterly attacked the company for causing “grave and massive losses of the lives of innocent Iraqi civilians, by the hundreds and the thousands, from attacks we thought we were immune to because we have this device.” The Iraqi Ministry of the Interior purchased 800 ADE 651s at a cost of $85 million.

The managing director of ATSC, Jim McCormack, staunchly defended the wand, which he claims the company has sold to 20 countries. He did admit, “one of the problems is that the machine looks primitive,” and said the company was turning out an upgraded model “that has flashing lights.”

Runner-up for this award was the British firm, Global Technology Ltd, which sold $10 million worth of very similar wand—the GT 200—to Mexico. The unit retails for $20,000 apiece. In one demonstration the GT 200 detected drugs in a Volkswagen sedan. After thoroughly searching the car, authorities turned up a bottle of Tylenol (suggesting that one should switch to Advil). Human Rights Watch says it is “troubled” by the use of the wand, which is widely used in Thailand and Mexico.

“If people are actually being arrested and charged solely on the basis of its readings, that would be outrageous,” the group said in a press release. A Mexican interior official defended the GT-200, however, claiming that it “works with molecules.” Hard to argue with science.

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DeSwiss

[NV Whino]

1. OMG!

You can't make up stupid.

[DeSwiss]

3. It gets worse when you remember.....

...that the $85,000,000 the Iraqis spent was our tax dollars at-work.

[SpiralHawk]

11. "Smirk." - xCommander AWOL & RepubliCronies (R)

[RandomThoughts]

2. Function not data, a phrase in there jumped out at me.

"it will not work" I am going to prove that work will not set you free, no matter what it takes.

Although I do look forward to doing work again, and admire the billions of hard working people everywhere. And hope to some day return to working, but not a form of working that is thinking that is how to find freedom.

And many people do find freedom while working, but not through working.

[DeSwiss]

4. When it comes to spending money.....

...for armaments, "it will not work" is no impediment to our military.

- Some might say its a prerequisite......

[RandomThoughts]

6. Ok then, misscalibrate the armaments. whoops.

[demodonkey]

5. Paperless electronic voting machines should be in there somewhere...... nt

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. (shakes head in numbed amazement)

At some point, shouldn't people just fall over dead when they reached a certain level of cretinism?

[flying rabbit]

8. You would

think that they would forget to breathe or something. :shrug:

[DeSwiss]

9. Or they may just haunt us forever.....

[Monk06]

10. They should switch to these time tested Xray glasses

[hootinholler]

12. Someone is actually selling dowsing rods

Good grief, and it cost them $250 to make em?

Wheere can I get some of that action?

-Hoot