Trent Reznor has updated the official Nine Inch Nails website with a new message to fans concerning a report that asserts that music by his band Nine Inch Nails (among other bands and types of music, including Sesame Street) has been used in torture scenarios on the inmates at the US prison facility at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. As you might expect, TR is not pleased to learn of this torture tactic and wants the world to know about it. Here is the full text of Reznor’s message and a portion of the initial report:
It’s difficult for me to imagine anything more profoundly insulting, demeaning and enraging than discovering music you’ve put your heart and soul into creating has been used for purposes of torture. If there are any legal options that can be realistically taken they will be aggressively pursued, with any potential monetary gains donated to human rights charities. Thank GOD this country has appeared to side with reason and we can put the Bush administration’s reign of power, greed, lawlessness and madness behind us.
Trent Reznor
From MSNBC: Blaring from a speaker behind a metal grate in his tiny cell in Iraq, the blistering rock from Nine Inch Nails hit Prisoner No. 200343 like a sonic bludgeon. “Stains like the blood on your teeth,” Trent Reznor snarled over distorted guitars. “Bite. Chew.” The auditory assault went on for days, then weeks, then months at the U.S. military detention center in Iraq. Twenty hours a day. AC/DC. Queen. Pantera. The prisoner, military contractor Donald Vance of Chicago, told The Associated Press he was soon suicidal. The tactic has been common in the U.S. war on terror, with forces systematically using loud music on hundreds of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, then the U.S. military commander in Iraq, authorized it on Sept. 14, 2003, “to create fear, disorient … and prolong capture shock.” Now the detainees aren’t the only ones complaining. Musicians are banding together to demand the U.S. military stop using their songs as weapons. A campaign being launched Wednesday has brought together groups including Massive Attack and musicians such as Tom Morello, who played with Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave and is now on a solo tour. It will feature minutes of silence during concerts and festivals, said Chloe Davies of the British law group Reprieve, which represents dozens of Guantanamo Bay detainees and is organizing the campaign. At least Vance, who says he was jailed for reporting illegal arms sales, was used to rock music. For many detainees who grew up in Afghanistan — where music was prohibited under Taliban rule — interrogations by U.S. forces marked their first exposure to the pounding rhythms, played at top volume. The experience was overwhelming for many. Binyam Mohammed, now a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, said men held with him at the CIA’s “Dark Prison” in Afghanistan wound up screaming and smashing their heads against walls, unable to endure more. “There was loud music, (Eminem’s) ‘Slim Shady’ and Dr. Dre for 20 days. I heard this nonstop over and over,” he told his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith. “The CIA worked on people, including me, day and night for the months before I left. Plenty lost their minds.” … The spokeswoman for Guantanamo’s detention center, Navy Cmdr. Pauline Storum, wouldn’t give details of when and how music has been used at the prison, but said it isn’t used today. She didn’t respond when asked whether music might be used in the future. FBI agents stationed at Guantanamo Bay reported numerous instances in which music was blasted at detainees, saying they were “told such tactics were common there.”
This is absolutely abhorrent. I cannot, for the life of me, understand what it must feel like to learn that your country has decided to use something that you create (be it art or something else) and use it to torture another human being. It is just unreal. I sincerely hope that any legal remedy that can be won by these musicians who are bringing suit against the government is swift and substantial. I, too, echo Reznor’s happiness that the Bush administration’s control and manipulation of our country’s integrity is about to be over. I am so tired of being ashamed and embarrassed by things done in the name of the United States of America. That is NOT to say that I am ashamed and embarrassed by my country that is to say that the good name of the USA has been abused and misused for far too long. I really look forward to things like this really becoming a thing of the past.
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