Performers angry their music used in Guantanamo interrogations
Interrogators at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay liked to blast rock ‘n’ roll music at inmates to try to induce them to talk.
Now some of the folks that made that rock ‘n’ roll music are blasting back.
Trent Reznor, Tom Morello, Jackson Browne, T-Bone Burnett, Rosanne Cash, Bonnie Raitt, R.E.M., Pearl Jam and other musicians have joined the National Campaign to Close Guantanamo. The newly formed campaign, led by retired Lieutenant General Robert Gard and retired Brigadier General John Johns among others, is increasing pressure on the Obama administration to move ahead with the president’s pledge to close the prison.
“Guantanamo is known around the world as one of the places where human beings have been tortured,” Morello said in a statement released by the campaign, charging that some inmates had been subjected to loud music for 72 hours in a row.
“Guantanamo may be Dick Cheney’s idea of America, but it’s not mine,” he added. “The fact that music I helped create was used in crimes against humanity sickens me — we need to end torture and close Guantanamo now.”
Thomas Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archive, said his group has obtained at least 20 declassified documents that refer to blasting Guantanamo detainees in an effort to “create futility” and encourage them to talk.
Gard, a senior military fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, said “the torture that went on there is disgraceful and puts our troops at risk every day.”
Pearl Jam to Obama: Don’t change your tune on Web issues
WASHINGTON – Rock bands Pearl Jam and R.E.M., the founder of Craigslist, consumer activists and others who backed Barack Obama’s technology-fueled presidential win told the Illinois Democrat on Thursday that they expect him to return the favor.
They were among more than 100 organizations that sent a letter to Obama, who takes office Jan. 20, urging him to lift “the stranglehold industry lobbyists have had on communications policy, and put the public’s priorities first.”
Citing Obama’s words back to him in bullet points, the letter reminded the president-elect of his campaign support for net neutrality, universal broadband and other web-friendly positions. It referred to an Obama speech at Google headquarters where he vowed to “take a back seat to no one in my commitment to net neutrality.”
The fight over so-called net neutrality pits Google and Microsoft against AT&T and some Internet service providers, which want more flexibility to control web traffic by setting higher prices for certain content.
Obama has yet to choose nominees to lead the Federal Communications Commission, which sets telecom policy, or the Federal Trade Commission, which is charged with consumer protection.
Obama’s promise to create a new chief technology officer for the U.S. government is also eagerly awaited by groups that signed the letter. “We look forward to working with the leaders you will appoint,” it said.
The letter was organized by the media advocacy group Free Press and signers included Craigslist founder Craig Newmark; labor group Service Employees International Union; think tank New America Foundation; Consumers Union; American Library Association; National Organization for Women and activist group Moveon.org.
What? No Ozzy?