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• 11 / 14 / 2009

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A campaign is already going on to protest against these misdeeds.

Musicians including REM, Pearl Jam and Jackson Browne have launched a campaign to protest against their music being used in interrogations of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
 
The high-profile group of artists also includes members of Nine Inch Nails and Rage Against the Machine, whose songs are on record as having played to detainees at the Cuban prison, and many others who fear that their work may have similarly misused by the Bush administration.

"At Guantanamo, the U.S. government turned a jukebox into an instrument of torture," said Thomas Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archive, which is helping the musicians - who are demanding the detention facility be closed - pursue a freedom of freedom of information request.
 
"The musicians and the public have the right to know how an expression of popular culture was transformed into an enhanced interrogation technique."

Some 20 declassified documents uncovered by the Archive, an independent research institute, refer the use of "loud" music to "create futility" in uncooperative detainees.

A 2004 Pentagon report stated that the "futility technique included the playing of Metallica, Britney Spears and Rap music". One detainee spent hours being forced to listen to the Drowning Pool's "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor".

Other inmates complained of being subjected to the work of Eminem, Bruce Springsteen and the Bee Gees in order to prevent them sleeping.

Members of the hip hop band The Roots said in a statement: "When we found out that music was being used as part of the torture going on at Guantanamo, shackling and beating people - we were angry.

"Just as we wouldn't be caught dead allowing Dick Cheney to use our music for his campaigns, you can be damn sure, we wouldn't allow him to use it to torture other human beings. Congress needs to shut Guantanamo down."

A 2004 Pentagon report stated that the "futility technique included the playing of Metallica, Britney Spears and Rap music". One detainee spent hours being forced to listen to the Drowning Pool's "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor".

Other inmates complained of being subjected to the work of Eminem, Bruce Springsteen and the Bee Gees in order to prevent them sleeping.

Some 20 declassified documents uncovered by the Archive, an independent research institute, refer the use of "loud" music to "create futility" in uncooperative detainees.

The Guantanamo base is an enclave against the will of the Cuban government


Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk