Pearl Jam and REM Say ‘No!’ to Guantanamo

US bands blast use of music in Guantanamo interrogations – Yahoo! News.

A group of top US acts including REM and Pearl Jam recently expressed outrage that loud music was being blasted at Guantanamo detainees as part of “terror” interrogations.

They said they were filing a lawsuit in a bid to declassify documents on the use of the music, and joining the “National Campaign to Close Guantanamo” which was launched by former US military generals and lawmakers hoping to shut the prison at the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The musicians launched “a formal protest of the use of music used in conjunction with torture that took place at the prison and other facilities and announced they were supporting an effort seeking the declassification of all secret government records pertaining to how music was utilized as an interrogation device,” the group said.

As the legendary music super-group REM would say: “It’s the end of the world as we know it…”

(Note: See more Pearl Jam, REM, Audioslave and others on ‘AI’s iPod 100′)

In addition to the mighty Pearl Jam (led by legendary front-man Eddie Vedder) and the uber-hipster timeless classics known as REM (led by equally-legendary Michael Stipe), several prominent musicians from around are rallying together to ensure that their music is not being used to torture at Gitmo’s Camp X-Ray and that our American government lives up to its promise of closing the infamous lawless prison known around the world simply as ‘Guantanamo Bay’.

Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam

Additionally, Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails) and Tom Morello (Grammy-winning musiciain formerly of Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave) whose music with the bands Nine Inch Nails and Rage Against The Machine have “already been linked to interrogations at the prison”, according to previously released government records.

“Guantanamo is known around the world as one of the places where human beings have been tortured — from waterboarding to stripping, hooding and forcing detainees into humiliating sexual acts — playing music for 72 hours in a row at volumes just below that to shatter the eardrums,” said Tom Morello, formerly of Audioslave and Rage Against The Machine.

“Guantanamo may be Dick Cheney’s idea of America, but it’s not mine. The fact that music I helped create was used in crimes against humanity sickens me,” he added.

Tom Morello (Right) with former bandmate Chris Cornell (Left) of Audioslave

Retired U.S. lieutenant general Robert Gard says he sympathises with the musicians “whose music was used without their knowledge as part of the Bush administration’s misguided policies…“

A 2004 Defense Department report cited by the musicians detailed an interrogation method known as the “futility” technique, which included playing the music of Metallica and Britney Spears to detainees.

Based on other public documents and interviews with former detainees, Guantánamo prisoners were played loud music, including songs by AC/DC, Britney Spears and Marilyn Manson, as well as advertising jingles and “Sesame Street” tunes, in their cells and in preparation for interrogations, according to the National Security Archive.

According to The New York Times, National Security Archive director Thomas Blanton accurately summed up the sentiments of Pearl Jam, REM, Nine Inch Nails, Rage Against The Machine and all other Americans who want an end to torture and the closure of the prison at Guantanamo Bay when he said:

“At Guantánamo, the U.S. government turned a jukebox into an instrument of torture…”