Music as torture/Music as weapon

[Penguin]

Abfahrt Hinwil - 1
So good.

[Truth4Youth]

Not entirely related, but a little bit:

Sonic Weapons
An acoustic weapon disorients rioters and afflicts an invading army with nausea. It can create ‘ghosts’ and arouse animal passions. Fantastic? Jack Sargeant, delving into the possible uses and abuses of infrasound, isn’t so sure. Additional material by David Sutton.
By Jack Sargeant December 2001


The human ear can only hear a limited part of the sound spectrum. Above that range is ultrasound and below it is infrasound; although largely unheard, vibrations in these ranges can still affect the human body in ways that are quite different from the informational aspect of simply listening. These higher and lower registers of sound frequencies are, today, the stuff of imaginative speculation. While the conspiracy watchers believe they are the basis of secret weapons research for covert operations, mind control and other conspiratorial uses, another, more idealistic, school associates them with meditative states and magical technology. The wilder fortean literature attributes to the builders of ancient monuments everywhere the secret of levitating blocks of stone by their mastery of sound; such powers were supposedly also used by the Vedic gods to power their vimana flying ships.

The use of disconcerting noise to unsettle the enemy is hardwired into most higher animals, from the warnings and battle roars of confrontational beasts to the trumpets, drums, bugles, bagpipes, devilish war cries, taunts and piercing shrieks used by humans in their conflicts. An example that springs to mind is that of Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now!, blasting Wagner from his Cavalry helicopters. And, moving from film to recent history, consider how General Noriega was bombarded with endless cycles of high-volume pop music when he sought refuge in the Vatican Embassy in Panama, as were the Branch Davidians during the fateful siege at their compound in Waco.1

Similarly, during the Gulf War, in the prelude to the final massacre of the fleeing Iraqi forces on the road to Basra, Americansoldiers were reported to have blasted grunge and death rock from speakers mounted on their vehicles. Yet in these cases, for all the psychological terror the noise was intended to create, it was a crude application of volume and culturally jarring music rather than the directed application of a sound frequency as a weapon.

Possibly the earliest account in Western literature of sound itself being used as a weapon can be found in the Bible. As detailed in Joshua 6:5, Joshua leads an attack on the city of Jericho (c1400 BC) during which he commands his people, outside the walled city, to remain in total silence for seven days. On the seventh day, seven trumpets made from ram’s horns give a “long blast”, the people shout… and the walls of Jericho come crashing down.2 (It is significant that silence is used as well as noise and perhaps even ultrasound.)

Sound is a waveform, with low infrasonic frequencies having a long wave length (measured in tens of metres), and with high ultrasonic frequencies having a short wave length (measured in millimetres). The frequencies associated with ultrasound are most familiar from their utilisation by the medical profession, chiefly for diagnostic imaging.

While the ears are designed to detect a limited range of frequencies – the human auditory range is between 20Hz and 20,000Hz (1Hz = 1 cycle per second) – different frequencies can affect the whole body and, at volume, can be felt in almost any part of the body. Even with industrial ear protectors, sound waves are able to enter the head via the nose and mouth which are, in turn, linked to the ears by the structure of the skull. Sounds that are higher in frequency than 20,000Hz – ultrasound – are inaudible to humans, while sounds lower than 20Hz – infrasound – are inaudible but can, on occasion, be felt resonating within the body itself. Exposure of unprotected ears to infrasound can also cause an increase in pressure within the middle ear, disturbing the sense of balance.

The natural world is awash with infrasound created by thunder, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, shifting tectonic plates and even winds. The ability of animals, such as bats and dogs, to hear ultrasound is well documented, but numerous animal species can also hear – and utilise – infrasound. Elephants, have a hearing range that is believed to start from 0.1Hz, enabling them to hear the distant rumble of thunderstorms far earlier than humans can and to communicate over long distances. Other animals may even employ infrasound as a weapon: recent research suggests that tigers are able to deliver a physically-stunning 18Hz roar immediately before attacking. Similarly, sperm whales seem to use pulses of infrasound to stun the large squid that form the basis of their diet.

Scientists have developed ways of measuring infrasound associated with these phenomena to aid their research. The military use of infrasound dates back to the First World War, when the detection of such frequencies helped pinpoint the enemy’s heavy artillery. The idea that infrasound could actually be used as a weapon tends to be attributed to Axis scientists 3, but of course much of the weapons research by the Axis powers was also of interest to Allied military scientists (see ‘Sounds suspicious’ panel). The potential of infrasound to affect the human body has long been apparent; as anybody who has leant against the PA at a rave will tell you, even audible sub-bass frequencies at the correct volume can churn your stomach. The theory behind infrasound weapons tends to focus on the idea that certain frequencies can be used as both a weapon and as a method of crowd control.

According to the Working Paper on Infrasound Weapons produced by Hungary for the United Nations in 1978 4, the frequency that is thought to be most dangerous to humans is between 7 and 8Hz. This is the resonant frequency of flesh and, theoretically, it can rupture internal organs if loud enough. Seven hertz is also the average frequency of the brain’s alpha rhythms; thus this frequency has been described as dangerous but also relaxing. Whether exposure to such infrasound can trigger epileptic seizures, as some fear, remains unclear; experimental data on exposure to such frequencies gives a variety of results. It should be noted, however, that the strobe light effect associated with triggering epileptic seizures flashes at an equivalent rhythm. Frequencies below 50Hz commonly lose their coherence and are perceived to pulse or fluctuate, which is analogous to the strobing beat of a modulated light.

It was NASA scientists in the early 1960s who produced most of the documentation of the effects of infrasound on the human body; they were particularly keen to discover how proximity to the low frequencies produced by rocket engines would affect their astronauts, especially during launching. Their extensive tests confirmed that, at certain volumes, infrasound did indeed have various physiological consequences. According to results published by NASA researcher GH Mohr, frequencies between 0Hz and 100Hz, at up to 150-155dB, produced vibrations of the chest wall, changes in respiratory rhythm, gagging sensations, headaches, coughing, visual distortion, and post-exposure fatigue. 5 Subsequent research has determined that the frequency that causes vibration of the eyeballs – and therefore distortion of vision – is around 19Hz.

The effects of this specific frequency were confirmed, independently, by the work of engineer Vic Tandy while attempting to demystify a ‘haunting’ in his Coventry laboratory. This ‘spook’ was characterised by a feeling of unease and vague glimpses of a grey apparition. A spot of detective work implicated a newly installed extractor fan that, Tandy found, was generating infrasound of 18.9Hz.

Tandy believes that ‘ghost hunters’ could benefit from investigating the
infrasound frequencies at other ‘haunted’ locales. Not only does the 19Hz frequency create visual disturbances by vibrating the eyeball – hence the shimmering appearance of apparitions – but the frequency could also stimulate a psychological sense of disquiet (hairs on the back of the neck rising and so forth). Even the ‘drop in temperature’ associated with spectral manifestations could be an effect of infrasound: “It does not cause a measurable drop in temperature of the air,” says Tandy, but “the effect is caused by a reaction in the body.”

Effects like these could also, theoretically, be contributing to sick-building syndrome as standing waves of infrasound can be created by architectural anomalies or frequencies set up by electronic devices. sIn 1978, the artist-industrial musician Monte Cazazza and the group Throbbing Gristle (above) experimented in their East London studio with the creation of both ultrasound and infrasound frequencies. Cazazza remembers during infrasound tests using an industrial tone generator that the air began to shimmer and his clothes visibly “rippled under the waves.” The group’s ultrasound experiments were equally notorious; using an array of piezo-electric speakers (“because they were cheap” remembers Monte), they used frequencies in excess of 20,000Hz in a ‘sonic loop’, creating a continual, culminating wave. Their target was some troublesome neighbours; according to the group, the neighbours’ dogs began to bark and both people and animals exhibited aggressive irritability. Unsurprisingly, the unwanted neighbours moved shortly after the sonic attacks.

There is good reason to believe, then, that exposure to certain infrasound frequencies could stimulate aggression and exacerbate psychological disturbances. This might explain accounts of ‘temporary psychosis’ associated with some natural phenomena, such as the Mistral (in the Rhone Valley) and the Sirocco (off the Sahara), the famous winds that are said to create periods of momentary insanity. That certain gusts of wind have infrasound frequencies has been documented. 6

The link between periods of insanity and exposure to specific infrasound frequencies forms the basis for the ‘Feraliminal Lycanthropizer’, a device claimed to stimulate atavistic animality, sexual excitement, and a loss of inhibitions in its target. As described in an essay published in Dainty Viscera magazine, the Feraliminal Lycanthropizer creates two infrasound frequencies – 3Hz and 9Hz – which, combined, generate a lower, third
frequency of 0.56Hz. The machine also uses a combination of four subliminal, looped, audio tape recordings – playing both forwards and backwards – outside the normal audible pitch.

The legends about the machine challenge belief; besides being credited with sparking unrestrained orgies, it has – at least according to Dainty Viscera – been blamed for the sex-and-strangulation deaths of six youths. Some, who claim to have used the machine, have felt themselves become mentally stronger and their will more focused. The enigmatic author of the essay claims that “[a] Catalonian national using the machine daily over a period of five or six weeks eventually managed to ingratiate himself to Adolf Hitler, [and] persuade his quarry to adopt the swastika as high totem and emblem of the burgeoning National Socialist Conference”.7 Such stories are, clearly, beyond belief. There is no evidence that the Feraliminal Lycanthropizer exists or could have such effects; information on it is limited and shrouded in secrecy. Any technology or documented process, no matter how rudimentary, that can affect people, both physiologically and psychologically, at a distance is bound to attract military scientists. A search of the available literature and the Internet reveals that many conspiracy theorists, paranoiacs, and some political activists, sincerely believe that the military has developed infrasound weapons… but precisely what these weapons are, how they function, and how they would be deployed remains vague. Unlike bacteriological, chemical, atomic, laser, and even microwave warfare, little information exists on the use of infrasound as a weapon.

Unsubstantiated reports suggested that infrasound weapons, built and tested in the 1970s, went badly wrong, resulted in wide-scale devastation within a four mile (6.4km) radius including uncontrolled killing sprees. I have seen no evidence yet to back up this rumour. Vic Tandy suggests that a broadcast infrasound weapon would, indeed, “cause more trouble than it is worth.” He explains: “In open air, the energy required to drive it is enormous and the effects unpredictable, ranging from serious harm to very little depending on the individual targeted. Directing infrasound is difficult because of the long wavelength, so if the weapon is to be activated by a person holding it, it would be hard to protect them from the sound. Direct contact with the weapon might also pose vibration problems for the operator.”

There is, however, evidence to suggest that ultrasound has been considered by military and law enforcement authorities as a likely technology for so-called ‘non-lethal weapons’ for use in crowd control and ‘coercive interrogation’. ‘White noise’ is believed to have been a key element in sensory deprivation techniques since the early 1970s and ultrasonic riot control devices are also believed to have been deployed in quelling civil unrest. One such device – the ‘squawk box’ – blasts two slightly different, intolerably high-pitched ultrasound frequencies (16,000Hz and 16,002Hz) at rioters; the two, when combined in the ear, effectively produce the frequencies 32,002Hz and 2Hz. The result, as one commentator put it, is to create in the rioters “a compelling wish to be somewhere else”. 8 Whilst the military or law enforcement officials have never admitted to its use, or even its existence, instructions on how to build a ‘Phasor Pain Field Generator’ (“intended for Law Enforcement Personal Or For Qualified Acoustical Research”) is available from Information Unlimited, as are schematics for handheld ultrasound self-defence devices. 9

Predictably, the media image of the use of infrasound is as a weapon that disables the body and discomforts the mind; however, it has also been discussed in association with enlightened meditative states. 10 The mantras and chants of monks, priests and followers of a variety of religions are commonly believed to have a profoundly calming effect on practitioners just as some musical instruments – like Tibetan thigh bone trumpets – are thought to resonate at the same frequency as the human body, whilst Tibetan singing bowls are believed to trigger specific frequencies in the brain. A significant part of this old ‘mystical’ technology is the ritual buildings (tombs, chambers, cathedrals and temples) designed to amplify or modulate the resonances created by rhythmic chants, singing or music. 11

The activity in our brains functions at several specific frequencies 12 so it seems logical that certain frequencies of sound which are harmonics of that neural activity may influence brain-specific activities. Audiotapes are available which are designed to stimulate the relaxing frequencies associated with meditative states via a process of binaural beats. These recordings work by sending different frequencies to each ear which, when combined in the brain, produce a therapeutic ‘pink noise’. Thus, an 800Hz tone in one ear, and 810Hz in the other, would create a 10Hz frequency intended to soothe the Alpha waves. Whether these binaural tapes work depends, undoubtedly, on the listener’s susceptibility to sound and to the philosophy associated with the tapes; however, many who use them report successful results.

We might not notice it, but infrasound permeates our daily environment; the machines around us, the buildings, and the weather all generate infrasound frequencies. The effects may be as unsettling as a ghostly vision, as tiring as the pressure created before a storm, or as invigorating as a good night’s sleep. Disabling forms of infrasound may be used in future wars or to quell civil riots and demonstrations. With important consequences like these, it is unsettling to realise that we actually know far too little about the audio frequencies that surround us.

Muzak to my ears

During the Second World War, workers in munitions factories would listen to the radio as they worked, and it was observed that they seemed to keep pace with the rhythm of the broadcast music. The faster the beat, the faster the production line would move.

Much has been made of ‘muzak’ and the way in which it has been used to both sooth and motivate people in factories, office buildings and shopping malls. Muzak’s pop-derived tones are intended to create – broadly speaking – a relaxed environment. However, muzak can be used as carrier for subliminal (hidden) messages which, for example, dissuade thieves in shops. Cynics have suggested that muzak could also be exploited to convey messages urging greater consumption in shops and increased work in factories. It is almost impossible to tell how successful these anti-crime and pro-shopping messages are, but their continued existence suggests that at least some of those investing in the shopping-as-leisure industry believe they are thereby turning muzak into a global industry.

In his essay “The Electronic Revolution”, cynical libertarian William S Burroughs suggested that riots could be triggered by playing tapes of gunshots, screams, and violent altercations at strategic locations. The idea influenced German filmmaker Klaus Maeck, who based his 1984 film Decoder on the idea of anti-muzak that creates riots. Shooting some of the film in Berlin during the annual May Day riots, Maeck found that many of Burroughs’ ideas were already employed by the crowd, who were broadcasting tapes of conflict and riot-noise.

In May 2001, in a novel crowd control experiment, bars and clubs in Leicester, Britain, began to play, at closing time, music from popular children’s TV programmes – including Magic Roundabout, Mr Benn and Looney Tunes cartoons. The idea was to lull patrons by the associated nostalgia into avoiding violent drunken brawls. 13

Sounds Suspicious...

Any discussion of sonic weapons has to contend with a huge volume of internet-circulated misinformation. As one scientist put it: “One cannot avoid the impression that much of what is written on acoustic weapons is based on hearsay and misunderstandings.” Discussions of the subject invariably throw up the usual suspects of conspiracy theory – Tesla, the Nazis, the US military’s ‘black’ research projects – while remaining vague, or downright contradictory, on names and dates.

Leaving aside the wilder claims about the German secret weapons programmes of World War II, it is certainly true that scientists under Hitler’s regime were involved in projects covering just about every conceivable area of weaponry. The best known were the ‘V’ weapons and the rocket and jet-propelled fighters like the Me163 and the Me262 – but Allied intelligence, by the end of the war, had uncovered a vast array of far more bizarre projects, the development of which had been encouraged by Germany’s non-centralised and chaotic approach to R&D. In the words of one contemporary American intelligence report: “There were more crackpot notions getting political support than we would have imagined.” Some of the most eccentric projects seem to have originated with an Austrian researcher called Dr Zippermeyer, whose response to the ferocious Allied air bombardment of the Reich was to experiment with both wind and sound as potential anti-aircraft weapons.

One such device was the Windkanone or ‘Whirlwind Cannon’ (above) , which was meant to produce artificial ‘whirlwinds’ by generating explosions in a combustion chamber and directing them through specially designed nozzles at the target. Experiments with a small cannon supposedly shattered planks at 200-yard (183m) range, and a full-size one was built. Fortunately for British and American aircraft, the effect was impossible to reproduce at high altitudes and the project was scrapped. The huge hulk of the ‘Whirlwind Cannon’ itself, though, was discovered rusting and abandoned by bemused Allied forces on the Artillery Proving ground at Hillersleben in April 1945.

Experimenting with the destructive properties of sound was a logical course for Zippermeyer, whose labs also worked on the Luftkanone or ‘Sound Cannon’ which burned methane and air to produce a rapid series of explosions that were beamed by ‘sound-mirrors’ into the sky; the resulting noise built up into a high-pitched tone which, apparantly, had been shown as lethal to animals at close range and uncomfortable for human beings at 300 yards (274m). Ultimately, though, the ‘Sound Cannon’ was doomed by the same limitations that had beset the ‘Whirlwind Cannon’ – the impossibility of getting the destructive effects high enough to actually attack a flying target.

To demonstrate the confusion surrounding the whole subject, other accounts speak of a ‘Sound Cannon’ designed by a Dr Richard Wallauschek, a ‘Vortex Gun’ attributed to a ‘Dr Zimmermayer’ and a ‘Wind Cannon’ built at Stuttgart that was supposedly employed defensively at a bridge on the Elbe. Most of these accounts are unreferenced, and all seem to be more or less imaginative variants on the Zippermeyer devices.

The name most often mentioned in connection with the deadly potential of infrasound is that of French robotics researcher Dr Gavreau (sometimes given as ‘Gavraud’), variously credited with having made some significant discoveries “around 1957”, “in 1965” and “in the early ‘70s”. To boil the story down to its essentials, Gavreau and his team experienced inexplicable bouts of nausea in their lab. These were eventually traced to a faulty motor-driven ventilator which, with the aid of a large concrete duct, was producing an infrasonic resonance.

Blithely abandoning his official research, Gavreau devoted himself to studying the effects of infrasound on humans and designing sonic weapons. The first was a sort of giant infrasound ‘organ’ with pipes some six feet (1.8m) in diameter and 75ft (23m) in length. On starting the device, the entire test building was shaken and nearly destroyed, while the hapless researchers were gripped in an “envelope of death”. Luckily, a brave technician managed to shut down the power supply. Gavreau and his team were dangerously ill for days, their internal organs wracked with painful spasms as a result of their body cavities having resonated at the deadly frequency. They had only just escaped being “torn apart” by their own experiment. In Lyall Watson’s version of the story, one of Gavreau’s team was said to have been instantly killed by a six-foot-long ‘whistle’, “his internal organs… mashed into an amorphous jelly by the vibrations”.

Another Gavreau test, involving a device less than a cubic metre in volume, caused a large, fan-shaped portion of Marseilles to shake. Later, a mounted and remotely-controlled version was said to have “burst heavy battlements and tank interiors open with a hideous effortlessness”.

While Andy Cobley, in a letter to FT (FT83:54) claims that he could find no trace of the Gavreau patents that supposedly reside in the Paris Patent Office, an angry Dr David Fisher claimed that he had himself seen them – but had no intention of sharing such dangerous knowledge with “the sort of people who read Fortean Times” (FT85:52).


Do they work?

Well, perhaps Dr Fisher need not worry. At the 1999 conference of the Acoustical Society of America in Berlin, Jurgen Altmann presented a paper questioning the feasibility of sonic weapons. He conceded that the US military was researching ultrasound and infrasound and envisaged their use against both civilian and military targets, but given the lack of evidence, Altmann wanted to ask a few fundamental questions: What kind of sound sources could be used? What would the effects on humans be? Could permanent damage result?

It is possible to produce extremely strong infrasound and ultrasound at volumes high enough to cause damage, but, Altmann argued, producing the sounds alone is not enough to create an actual sonic weapon. The main difficulty lies in propagating the sound waves over distance to their intended target, a possibility hampered by the tendency of low-frequency waves to expand in all directions, thus losing focused power, and of high-frequency waves to enter a “shocked state” where energy is lost to the air. So sonic weapons, even those employing ultrasound and infrasound, would only work over very short distances and, rather than resulting in the kinds of psychological or physical effects claimed by conspiracy-heads or military nuts, would probably just cause serious and permanent hearing damage. Altmann had found no evidence that human targets would be rendered incapable of action by being severely spooked or losing physical control: “I have found no hard evidence for vomiting or uncontrolled defecation, even at levels of 170 dB or more.”

So sonic weapons, despite the oft-repeated claims, would most likely be large, cumbersome, close-range devices resulting in ruptured eardrums.

http://www.forteantimes.com/features/ar ... apons.html

[American Dream]

http://www.counterpunch.org/yearsley03132009.html

Music Torture
By DAVID YEARSLEY


The human ear is defenseless. Unable to keep sound out, it must take in all it hears. Selective hearing is common phrase, but meaningless.

History’s most infamous musical assault exploited the defenslessness of the ear: the massively distorted music blasted at the Branch Davidians in Waco in 1933 by the FBI wore down the compound dwellers over the seven week siege like a battleship pounding shoreline battlements. The final firestorm was prepared not only by sleep-preventing decibel levels but because of its horrifying aesthetic crimes, the most heinous being Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.” Early proponents of world music, the G-men varied their play-list with sing-along Christmas carols in saccharine 1950s style arrangements, Tibetan chants and cavalry bugle blasts. Just how seriously perpetrators of sonic violence take their music can be judged by the care with which they assemble their repertoires of destruction and despair.

Cult leader David Koresh, himself a failed pop singer, had begun the high-decibel musical exchange in Waco by first bombarding them with recordings of his own happy-clappy pop. This siege-busting tactic ceased when the federal forces cut the compound’s power supply.

Waco was by no means the first instance of musical warfare. A few years before, the U. S. had tried to ferret out opera-lover Manuel Noriega from Panama City redoubt with a non-stop heavy metal bombardment: Madame Butterfly and La Traviata were no match for Black Sabbath and Judas Priest. The sonic assault was finally halted under pressure from the Vatican.

In Gauntanamo Bay and other prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq the British rights group Reprieve has claimed that interrogation techniques have involved the uses of extremely loud music by AC/DC, and Metallica as well as theme songs from children’s televison shows like Barney & Friends. These horrors were detailed by Andy Worthington in Counterpunch back in December of last year.

Unfettered by earplugs, anti-noise headphones or other defensive technologies the ear is helpless to protect itself. The eyes have lids, the ears don’t. In A Clockwork Orange when the anti-hero the violent sociopath and Beethovenian fanatic Alex is re-programmed to harmless passivity, his eyes must be propped open so he can be forced to witness acts of violence on the screen while being infused with a nausea-inducing drug. By contrast, the glorious sounds of Alex’s beloved 9th symphony of Ludwig Van accompany the images but enter unimpeded into his soul.

In the increasingly loud and intrusive modern world maybe the human earlobes will begin to evolve to become like eyelids that can be closed when things get unbearable out in the aural universe. But even this evolutionary advance wouldn’t have neutralized the sub-woofers of Waco.

One of the great advantages of using music as an implement of torture is that it leaves no physical mark. As Plato and many other writers have known, music works directly on the soul. There is nothing more uplifting nor potentially devastating.

Over the past few years New York University professor of music Suzanne Cusick has been lecturing far and wide on the United States’ use of music in interrogation and as a battlfield weapon. The soft-spoken, incisive Cusick came to Cornell in the spring of 2006 to deliver the year’s principle music lectured, named after Donald J. Grout. Grout was one of the great music historians of the 20th century, and a deeply conservative man who would have hated every word Cusick uttered that afternoon in a corner seminar tucked in an upper floor of Cornell’s music building looking out over the campus’s Arts Quad and to Cayuga Lake below. Her talk concerned itself neither with the kinds of music nor the art’s exalted purposes one usually discusses in the Ivory Tower.

The original title for Cusick’s lecture had promised a tedious internal investigation of the discipline of musicology: “Buying (Back) the Farm, or Thoughts the Cultural Work of American Musicologies.” But she changed her topic unannounced and delivered instead sixty minutes on “Music as Weapon / Music as Torture.” (For a version of the paper go to http://www.sibetrans.com/trans/trans10/cusick_eng.htm)

Much of Cusick’s talk let the chilling facts speak for themselves: “On November 18, 1998, now-defunct Synetics Corporation [was contracted] to produce a tightly focused beam of infrasound–that is, vibration waves slower than 100 vps–meant to produce effects that range from ‘disabling or lethal.’ In 1999, Maxwell Technologies patented a HyperSonic Sound System, another “highly directional device ... designed to control hostile crowds or disable hostage takers”. The same year Primex Physics International patented both the “Acoustic Blaster”, which produced “repetitive impulse waveforms” of 165dB, directable at a distance of 50 feet, for “antipersonnel applications”, and the Sequential Arc Discharge Acoustic Generator, which produces ‘high intensity impulsive sound waves by purely electrical means.’”

She went on to describe the American Technology Corporation’s development beginning some ten years ago of the Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, a weapon “capable of projecting a ‘strip of sound’ (15 to 30 inches wide) at an average of 120 dB (maxing at 151 dB) that will be intelligible for 500 to 1,000 meters (depending on which model you buy), the LRAD is designed to hail ships, issue battlefield or crowd-control commands, or direct an “attention-getting and highly irritating deterrent tone for behavior modification.” (http://www.atcsd.com)

Wielded by the 361st PsyOps company, the LRAD was deployed to “prepare the battlefield” in the siege of Falluja in November of 2004. The device was armed with Metallica’s “Hells’ Bells” and “Shoot to Thrill.”

As Cusick repeatedly pointed out, one of the great advantages of sonic weapons and torture is that they leave no mark on the victim. Gauntanamo captive Binyam Mohamed, who was returned to England in February after his long years of imprisonment and torture, claimed in an interview London’s Mail on Sunday how his sonic torture began already in a Kabul prison in 2002 where he was held for eighteen months in complete darkness before his transfer to Gauntanamo in 2004. His body can convey no direct physical of this horrendous abuse, probably in contrast to the other forms of torture he suffered as in the scalpel he claims was used to sliced his genitals.

In the Mail on Sunday interview Mohammed relates how “There were loudspeakers in the cell, pumping out a deafening volume, non-stop, 24 hours a day. They played the same CD for a month, The Eminem Show. When it was finished it went back to the beginning and started again. I couldn't sleep. I had no idea whether it was day or night.'

As the Daily Mail is reporting today pressure from members of parliamentary and rights groups is mounting on British Foreign secretary David Milliband to hold a judicial inquiry into Mohamed’s claims that MI5 knew about the illegal torture. Indeed, U. S. crimes against international law threaten now to engulf their coalition partner on the other side of the Atlantic. In early February details of Mohamed’s torture were excised from the dossier submitted to England’s High Court after Miliband asserted that not doing so might be detrimental to shared U. S. and UK intelligence efforts and could “cause real and significant damage to the national security and international relations of the [UK].”

On February 22nd Prime Minister Gordon Brown insisted that there was no “cover-up” and two weeks ago Miliband and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith refused to answer questions on torture in front of the House of Commons’ Joint Committee on Human Rights.” Yesterday, Miliband issued a blanket denial, one which bodes ill the political future of the stonewalling foreign secretary: “We abhor torture and never order it or condone it.”

In the 1980s Miliband was a student at Corpus Christi College in Oxford. While there he was elected Junior Common Room President and as a result got a prime rooms which happened to be located next to those of my wife, Annette Richards, similarly given housing preference because she was the college’s organ scholar, discharging those duties though reading for a degree in English literature. In her rooms was a piano. Many were the nights when the studious Miliband would graciously request that she or her music-making guests stop playing because of the lateness of the hour. These were Anglican anthems or Buxtehude organ preludes not super-loud Eminem. It is now time for Miliband to face a different music.

[American Dream]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor ... #ref=nlint

01/15/2010 04:51 PM

The Pain of Listening
Using Music as a Weapon at Guantanamo

By Tobias Rapp


For years, US interrogators at Guantanamo used painfully loud music on prisoners at Camp Delta. Rock musicians like Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and civil rights organization are demanding an investigation into the practice.

In May 2003, a military policeman came to Ruhal Ahmed's cell in Camp Delta at the military prison in Guantanamo and took him to an interrogation room. There, he was forced to squat while the M.P. tied his leg irons to a ring set in the floor. Then his hands were placed behind his back so that his handcuffs could also be attached to the floor ring. In this "stress position," the prisoner is unable to sit, stand or kneel, and can only crouch in an intermediate position that quickly causes cramping. Ahmed was familiar with this treatment, which was part of the "standard operating procedure" used to prepare prisoners for interrogation.

Ahmed had been in Guantanamo for more than a year. For weeks, the interrogators had been asking him the same question, again and again: What were he and two of his friends, who were captured with him, doing in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001? All three men are British Muslims. Ahmed's family originally immigrated to Great Britain from what is now Bangladesh. The men were referred to as the "Tipton Three," a reference to the small city in the British Midlands where they were from. On this particular day, there was also a boom box in the small, eight-square-meter (86-square-foot) interrogation cell. The soldier inserted a CD by rapper Eminem, turned up the volume and left.

"I thought: What's going on now? Did he forget his boom box?" says Ahmed. "When he returned, I asked him: 'What's this about? Why are you playing Eminem?' He looked at me and said nothing."

The next time Ahmed was taken to the interrogation cell, the music was heavy metal instead of Eminem. The volume was earsplitting and the music was played for hours, even entire days. Sometimes they also stuck a stroboscope in front of his face. The cell was dark and he could see nothing but the flashing lights in his eyes. The interrogators also turned down the temperature on the air-conditioning, forcing Ahmed to endure hours of the music and flashing lights in an ice-cold room. He wasn't permitted to use the bathroom and was left to urinate or defecate in his pants. The shackles caused his legs to swell up while the deafening music continued incessantly.

A Journey that Went Terribly Wrong

Ahmed, now 28, is back at home in Tipton, a small city near Birmingham. He has a short, trimmed beard, wears a tracksuit and speaks with a northern English accent. His wife, who is pregnant, opens the door of their apartment in a working-class neighborhood, where their two-year-old daughter is running around. Two of Ahmed's younger brothers also live in the house.

He was released in March 2004, after spending more than two years in the American military prison. Director Michael Winterbottom's award-winning film "Road to Guantanamo" is based on the experiences of the Tipton Three -- and a journey that went terribly wrong.

The three friends had traveled to Pakistan to attend a wedding in September 2001. Ahmed was 20 at the time. With a thirst for adventure, they naively crossed the border into Afghanistan, even though the "War on Terror" was already in the works. As they tried to return to Pakistan with a group of Taliban, fighters with the Northern Alliance arrested the three men, and they were eventually turned over to the Americans. They arrived in Guantanamo in early 2002.

"When I tell people that music can be torture, they look at me and think I must have a screw loose. How can art, which gives people so much pleasure, be torture? But it's true. You can handle normal torture, but not music torture. I told them everything they wanted to hear: that I had met bin Laden and Mullah Omar, and that I knew what their plans were. But I just said it to make them stop."

In Guantanamo, Afghanistan and in Iraq, and in other American secret prisons, military and intelligence personnel tortured terrorism suspects. Their methods included water-boarding and sleep deprivation, as well as loud music. Prisoners were strung up by their wrists for days while being blasted with music by artists like Dr. Dre. They were bound, with headphones placed on their heads, and forced to listen to Meat Loaf for hours. They were locked into wooden boxes and forced to endure "Saturday Night Fever" by the Bee Gees for entire nights at a time. Ironically music, the art form that has often been used to change the world and -- at events like Woodstock, Live Aid and Germany's Rock Against the Far Right -- has sometimes succeeded, was turned into a weapon in the war against terrorism.

Artists Fight Back

Some musicians have now sharply criticized the practice, including the British trip-hoppers Massive Attack, American industrial rock musician Trent Reznor and country star Rosanne Cash. They are demanding that pop not be used as a weapon, and they want to know how their music is being used in American prisons.

British and American organizations are supporting the musicians' efforts. The National Security Archive, an American civil rights organization that fights the US government's document classification policies, has filed Freedom of Information Act petitions requesting the declassification of secret government documents on the use of music for interrogation. The petition requests the release of documents from 11 government institutions in which the following terms appear: "AC/DC, Aerosmith, the 'Barney & Friends' song, The Bee Gees, Britney Spears, Bruce Springsteen, Christina Aguilera, David Gray, Deicide, Don McLean, Dope, Dr. Dre, Drowning Pool, Eminem, Hed P. E., James Taylor, Limp Bizkit, Marilyn Manson, Matchbox Twenty, Meat Loaf, the 'Meow Mix' jingle (an ad for cat food), Metallica, Neil Diamond, Nine Inch Nails, Pink, Prince, Queen, Rage Against the Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Redman, Saliva, the 'Sesame Street' music, Stanley Brothers, the Star Spangled Banner, Tupac Shakur."

Employees at the National Security Archive spent weeks of research to develop the list, and it could take several more weeks before a decision is reached on the petitions. It could take months or even years for the documents to be declassified.

A Shadowy World

Up until now, the secret prisons operated by the CIA and US military have been part of a shadowy world that can only be reconstructed through the painstaking analysis of documents and statements. The effort is also aimed at tracking chains of command and learning more about the system of secret prisons set up by the administration of former US President George W. Bush. The public is the activists' most important ally in this struggle. And the most effective way to win over the public is with the support of artists.

The use of a music as a weapon isn't anything new. For instance, for the past few years authorities at the main railway station in Hamburg have used piped-in classical music to drive away junkies from the plaza in front of the station.

When the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, fleeing from US troops in 1989, took refuge in the Vatican Embassy in Panama City, the soldiers bombarded the building for days with hard rock and other music.

And in 1993, when the FBI was preparing to storm a ranch near Waco, Texas, where members of a sect had barricaded themselves in their compound, the agents blared the Nancy Sinatra hit "These Boots Were Made For Walking" from loudspeakers. The purpose was simple: to wear down the besieged sect members.

Flooding the Senses

US interrogation specialists are pursuing the same goals in the war on terrorism. The method dates back to research conducted by American and Canadian government agencies during the Cold War. A 1963 CIA manual, "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation," describes a method of torture in which prisoners are either inundated with or deprived of sensory input.

It is believed that the US Army stopped using the method after the end of the Vietnam War, but the knowledge is still applied today. In a program known as SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape), soldiers learn how to resist torture if they are taken prisoner.

No-Touch Torture

In the winter of 2001, the CIA commissioned a psychologist in the SERE program to develop interrogation methods for the "War on Terror." In the summer of 2002, George W. Bush authorized the resulting "special interrogation methods." An important component of these methods is to expose prisoners to loud music for long periods of time, often in combination with other ordeals, including restraining them in uncomfortable positions and exposing them to extreme temperatures and glaring lights. The method, which produces no visible traces, is also known as "no-touch torture."

It is still unclear whether a central authority controls the program. A declassified CIA document contains a few sentences that specify the volume levels to which a prisoner can be exposed, and for how long, but the rest of the document is blacked out.

There are anonymous reports by FBI agents who describe how prisoners were tortured, and Tony Lagouranis, a former interrogation specialist, has even written a book about it. According to Lagouranis, an interrogation room called the "Disco" was to be set up in a prison at the US airbase in Mosul, Iraq, in the spring of 2004. Lagouranis writes that the base commander "pointed to a shipping container right outside the wire of the prison and described what he wanted us to do. He obtained a strobe light from aviation and a boom box from a private. He asked the guards for CDs of the most awful death metal music they had. He gave us these tools and told us to clear the container out and get it ready for use as an interrogation chamber saying, with finality: I want to do this."

'It Takes Over Your Brain'

The specialists used these rooms to conduct their prisoner interrogations. Sometimes, says former British prisoner Ruhal Ahmed, they would come into the room and shout questions into his ear. But often no one came into the room, and the constant music only increased the sensation that the agony would never end.

"It's as if you had very bad migraines, and then someone shows up and yells at you -- and take that times a thousand," says Ahmed. "You can't concentrate on anything. Before that, when I was beaten, I could use my imagination to forget the pain. But the music makes you completely disoriented. It takes over your brain. You lose control and start to hallucinate. You're pushed to a threshold, and you realize that insanity is lurking on the other side. And once you cross that line, there's no going back. I saw that threshold several times."

Suzanne Cusick, a professor at New York University, specializes in European music of the 17th century. For the past few years, however, she has studied the use of music in torture, and she has given many talks on the subject. She says she is constantly surprised by how casually the issue is treated and how the notion that music could be a means of torture is so readily dismissed -- and that there are those who seriously discuss which songs and styles are best suited for torture.

But why music and why not just loud noise? "Sometimes it was noise," says Cusick. "And music is available. Noise often is not. Furthermore, for some sects of Islam, listening to music is sinful, except under specific circumstances. And the circumstances are vocal music. Vocal music that is made to lead the listener to an apprehension of the divine. It's never instrumental music. Forcing them to listen to it is a kind of cultural insult. The music itself tells us a lot about the cultural preferences of American soldiers and contracters."

Britney as Torture

The list of songs used to torture prisoners in Guantanamo reads like a book about popular culture of the last 30 years.

There are triumphant songs, songs used to celebrate American victory and constantly rub in the notion that the prisoners were the defeated, songs like Queen's "We Are the Champions" or Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA," which is still misunderstood as a salute to American greatness and self-certainty. The song "Babylon," by British soft-rocker David Gray, probably also fits into this category.

There are the torture songs, the Heavy Metal and Industrial music, like Metallica's "Enter Sandman" or "March of the Pigs," by Nine Inch Nails -- music deliberately selected to hurt the prisoners.

And there is the male-oriented, top-of-the-charts music, the country music, the mainstream rock and the hip hop -- music the soldiers listen to while on patrol, partly to drown out their surroundings. And because it's the kind of music they like to listen to, it doesn't bother them as much when they constantly hear it coming from the interrogation cells.

Finally, there is pop music, songs by artists like Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears that were used for the purpose of sexual humiliation -- as a part of wider scenarios in which the prisoners were debased.

"The fact that our music has been co-opted in this barbaric way is really disgusting," Tom Morello, guitarist with the left-leaning band Rage Against the Machine, told the American music magazine Spin. "If you're at all familiar with the ideological leanings of the band and its support for human rights, that's really hard to stand."

'Kids in the US Pay Money for That'

Pop has great emancipating power, but there is also a long tradition of rebellious styles of music that are constantly flirting with torture, music made to grate on the nerves of parents.

As it happens, many a rock song is just as likely to end up in Guantanamo as being performed on a stage at a Live Aid concert -- Bono Vox and all Rock against the Radical Right ventures notwithstanding.

"I can't imagine it's that bad," says Stevie Benton, bassist with the nu metal band Drowning Pool. "Listening to loud music for a few yours -- kids in the US pay money for that."

Metallica Singer: 'I Take It as an Honor'

The American band Metallica, founded in Los Angeles in 1981 and still one of the world's best metal bands, doesn't side with the activists, either. In interviews, lead singer James Hetfield has even said that he was pleased to hear that his music was being used to torture prisoners.

"People assume we should be offended that somebody in the military thinks our song is annoying enough that, played over and over, it can psychologically break someone down," he says. "I take it as an honor to think that perhaps our song could be used to quell another 9/11 attack or something like that."

There is probably a dose of patriotism behind his remarks. Hetfield sees himself as someone who is helping American troops defeat the enemy. But they also reflect a peculiar form of pride in his craft. "We've been punishing our parents, our wives, our loved ones with this music forever. Why should the Iraqis be any different?" he said. "Part of me is proud because they chose Metallica!"

In fact, metal, more than other styles of music, is a direct product of a young man's hell, music that tells of the anguish and pain of being a young man. For many fans, going to metal concerts is also a way of proving to themselves that they can stand the music, no matter how jarring. In interrogations, the tables are turned, and prisoners are forcibly taken beyond the limits of the endurable.

There are also technical developments in the pop music of the last 30 years that have made it suitable for use in interrogation cells in the first place. Take, for example, the obsessive efforts of sound engineers to extract every last bit of the frequencies using sophisticated studio techniques.

And in the fringe zones of pop culture, such as industrial music, bands like Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV were already experimenting, back in the 1980s, with the idea that music can also express the dark side of power and violence.

"When you go to a concert or a club, you're looking for loud music and flashing lights. You want to be transported into ecstasy. We experienced exactly the same thing, except that it was turned on its head," says Ahmed. "You could call it black ecstasy."

Life after Guantanamo

In 2004, after more than two years, Ahmed was released from Guantanamo into a world in which music is everywhere, in every commercial, in every shop and in every taxicab. But Ahmed says that it doesn't bother him.

He says that he saw many people who almost went insane, people in the camp who would bang their heads against the wall and try to kill themselves when they were brought back from the interrogations. When Ahmed returned to the United Kingdom, a psychologist told him that he was probably lucky to be so young.

Ahmed now lives the curious life of a former Guantanamo prisoner. He has started a family with his current wife, a former schoolmate whom he married shortly after his return home. He rarely has work in Tipton, where unemployment is high. Life will become more difficult for the couple when Ahmed's wife gives birth in February and will no longer be able to work. She now has a job with the city administration.

An enormous multimedia system stands in the couple's living room, which Ahmed bought with the money he earned working on "Road to Guantanamo." When he goes on the Internet he uses the large flat-screen TV on the wall as his monitor. He uses Facebook to stay in touch with other ex-prisoners. He says that a former Guantanamo guard recently contacted him through Facebook and wrote that he wanted to apologize. The two men went to a restaurant together.

A shelf in Ahmed's apartment contains a Koran and a few old cassettes with recordings of prayers. He doesn't own a single CD.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan


URL:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor ... 77,00.html

RELATED SPIEGEL ONLINE LINKS:
Photo Gallery: Torture with Metallica and Britney Spears
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotos ... 50803.html

Berlin International Film Festival: The Road to Guantanamo (02/17/2006)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1 ... 86,00.html

[IanEye]

i have no far horizons
i don't wish upon no star
they don't think that i listen
ah, but i know who they are...

[slomo]

"We were working secretly, for the military."- Kate Bush, "Experiment IV"

They told us, all they wanted, was a sound that could kill someone from a distance

[IanEye]

viewtopic.php?p=314788#p314788

Dang. I worked with him a few times in the early 90s.

One of the warmest and coolest guys I remember in my previous career. (emphasis IanEye)

Universe bless John Martyn.

bump.

_ _ _

viewtopic.php?p=312588#p312588

i have no far horizons
i don't wish upon no star
they don't think that i listen
ah, but i know who they are...

if you want to defeat your enemy - sing their song...


bump.

[Allegro]

.
Weaponizing Mozart | How Britain is using classical music as a form of social control
Reason.com | Brendan O'Neill | February 24, 2010

In recent years Britain has become the Willy Wonka of social control, churning out increasingly creepy, bizarre, and fantastic methods for policing the populace. But our weaponization of classical music—where Mozart, Beethoven, and other greats have been turned into tools of state repression—marks a new low.

We’re already the kings of CCTV. An estimated 20 per cent of the world’s CCTV cameras are in the UK, a remarkable achievement for an island that occupies only 0.2 per cent of the world’s inhabitable landmass.

A few years ago some local authorities introduced the Mosquito, a gadget that emits a noise that sounds like a faint buzz to people over the age of 20 but which is so high-pitched, so piercing, and so unbearable to the delicate ear drums of anyone under 20 that they cannot remain in earshot. It’s designed to drive away unruly youth from public spaces, yet is so brutally indiscriminate that it also drives away good kids, terrifies toddlers, and wakes sleeping babes.

Police in the West of England recently started using super-bright halogen lights to temporarily blind misbehaving youngsters. From helicopters, the cops beam the spotlights at youths drinking or loitering in parks, in the hope that they will become so bamboozled that (when they recover their eyesight) they will stagger home.

And recently police in Liverpool boasted about making Britain’s first-ever arrest by unmanned flying drone. Inspired, it seems, by Britain and America’s robot planes in Afghanistan, the Liverpool cops used a remote-control helicopter fitted with CCTV (of course) to catch a car thief.

Britain might not make steel anymore, or cars, or pop music worth listening to, but, boy, are we world-beaters when it comes to tyranny. And now classical music, which was once taught to young people as a way of elevating their minds and tingling their souls, is being mined for its potential as a deterrent against bad behavior.

In January it was revealed that West Park School, in Derby in the midlands of England, was “subjecting” (its words) badly behaved children to Mozart and others. In “special detentions,” the children are forced to endure two hours of classical music both as a relaxant (the headmaster claims it calms them down) and as a deterrent against future bad behavior (apparently the number of disruptive pupils has fallen by 60 per cent since the detentions were introduced.)

One news report says some of the children who have endured this Mozart authoritarianism now find classical music unbearable. As one critical commentator said, they will probably “go into adulthood associating great music—the most bewitchingly lovely sounds on Earth—with a punitive slap on the chops.” This is what passes for education in Britain today: teaching kids to think “Danger!” whenever they hear Mozart’s Requiem or some other piece of musical genius.

The classical music detentions at West Park School are only the latest experiment in using and abusing some of humanity’s greatest cultural achievements to reprimand youth.

Across the UK, local councils and other public institutions now play recorded classical music through speakers at bus-stops, in parking lots, outside department stores, and elsewhere. No, not because they think the public will appreciate these sweet sounds (they think we are uncultured grunts), but because they hope it will make naughty youngsters flee.

Tyne and Wear in the north of England was one of the first parts of the UK to weaponize classical music. In the early 2000s, the local railway company decided to do something about the “problem” of “youths hanging around” its train stations. The young people were “not getting up to criminal activities,” admitted Tyne and Wear Metro, but they were “swearing, smoking at stations and harassing passengers.” So the railway company unleashed “blasts of Mozart and Vivaldi.”

Apparently it was a roaring success. The youth fled. “They seem to loathe [the music],” said the proud railway guy. “It’s pretty uncool to be seen hanging around somewhere when Mozart is playing.” He said the most successful deterrent music included the Pastoral Symphony by Beethoven, Symphony No. 2 by Rachmaninov, and Piano Concerto No. 2 by Shostakovich. (That last one I can kind of understand.)

In Yorkshire in the north of England, the local council has started playing classical music through vandal-proof speakers at “troublesome bus-stops” between 7:30 PM and 11:30 PM. Shops in Worcester, Bristol, and North Wales have also taken to “firing out” bursts of classical music to ward of feckless youngsters.

In Holywood (in County Down in Northern Ireland, not to be confused with Hollywood in California), local businesspeople encouraged the council to pipe classical music as a way of getting rid of youngsters who were spitting in the street and doing graffiti. And apparently classical music defeats street art: The graffiti levels fell.

Anthony Burgess’s nightmare vision of an elite using high culture as a “punitive slap on the chops” for low youth has come true. In Burgess’s 1962 dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange, famously filmed by Stanley Kubrick in 1971, the unruly youngster Alex is subjected to “the Ludovico Technique” by the crazed authorities. Forced to take drugs that induce nausea and to watch graphically violent movies for two weeks, while simultaneously listening to Beethoven, Alex is slowly rewired and re-moulded. But he rebels, especially against the use of classical music as punishment.

Pleading with his therapists to turn the music off, he tells them that “Ludwig van” did nothing wrong, he “only made music.” He tells the doctors it’s a sin to turn him against Beethoven and take away his love of music. But they ignore him. At the end of it all, Alex is no longer able to listen to his favorite music without feeling distressed. A bit like that schoolboy in Derby who now sticks his fingers in his ears when he hears Mozart.

The weaponization of classical music speaks volumes about the British elite’s authoritarianism and cultural backwardness. They’re so desperate to control youth—but from a distance, without actually having to engage with them—that they will film their every move, fire high-pitched noises in their ears, shine lights in their eyes, and bombard them with Mozart. And they have so little faith in young people’s intellectual abilities, in their capacity and their willingness to engage with humanity’s highest forms of art, that they imagine Beethoven and Mozart and others will be repugnant to young ears. Of course, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The dangerous message being sent to young people is clear: 1) you are scum; 2) classical music is not a wonder of the human world, it’s a repellent against mildly anti-social behavior.

Refer.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

.
Weaponizing Mozart | How Britain is using classical music as a form of social control
Reason.com | Brendan O'Neill | February 24, 2010

...The weaponization of classical music speaks volumes about the British elite’s authoritarianism and cultural backwardness. They’re so desperate to control youth—but from a distance, without actually having to engage with them—that they will film their every move, fire high-pitched noises in their ears, shine lights in their eyes, and bombard them with Mozart.
Refer.

That's excellently put. Absolutely right.

Saying that, there have been some less sinister uses of music as a form of crowd control...

Police in NI have said it was "inappropriate" for an officer to play "ice-cream van" music in an attempt to calm youths attacking a vehicle.

Young people were throwing bottles at a Land Rover vehicle in Lisburn last Saturday when the officer used the tannoy to play the tunes.

A police spokesperson said an officer had used humour to defuse the situation and the trouble had stopped.

However, senior officers are believed to have spoken to the officer involved.

Police were called to Glasvey Drive in Twinbrook on 22 May where they passed a group of about 15 youths who began throwing bottles at their vehicle.

A spokesperson for the Police Service of Northern Ireland said: "An officer used the vehicle's tannoy system to play music to the youths in an effort to use humour to defuse the situation.

"The youths stopped throwing the bottles. However, police accept that this was not an appropriate action.

"The officer has been spoken to by a senior officer in order to establish the circumstances of the incident."

Sinn Fein councillor Angela Nelson told the Andersonstown News that the officer's actions "beggared belief".

"The PSNI are put on the streets to do a serious job and that is to keep order on the streets and face down anti-social elements. This is like a sick joke.

"It goes against everything we are trying to solve and eradicate in the area."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10170966

That's how you deal with young people! Eradicate them, with some kind of solution! Maybe even a Final one, eh?

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Times Online, from 2003 : http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/u ... 132968.ece

Hope it's not been posted before.

A CONCERT featuring “soundless music” that will be felt rather than heard is to be staged by scientists at the South Bank in London as part of an experiment to examine the effects of inaudible noise on human emotions.

The piano recitals at the Purcell Room will be laced with blasts of infrasound — very low frequency sound at the limit of the human ear’s normal range — to determine whether it can heighten the musical experience of the audience.

Infrasound, which encompasses sound below 20 hertz, the lowest frequency that the ear can comfortably detect, has been linked to phenomena such as haunted houses, motion sickness and the spiritual effects of some sacred organ music, and scientists and musicologists are keen to discover how it manipulates moods and feelings.

Physicists, psychologists, composers and musicians have joined forces to design the Purcell Room concerts, to be held on May 31, which will test the influence of infrasound in the first controlled experiment of its kind.

Although the organisers describe infrasound as “soundless music”, the recitals will not be silent. The Ukrainian pianist GéNIA will perform a selection of contemporary and classical works by composers such as Philip Glass and Arvo Pärt, while researchers from the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington generate infrasound at a frequency of 17Hz from a loudspeaker attached to a 7m (23ft) length of sewer pipe. The audience will be asked to complete a questionnaire on mood and emotion, designed by the psychologists Ciaran O’Keeffe and Richard Wiseman of Hertfordshire University, both before and after listening to each piece of music. The results will be analysed to determine whether and how the vibrations have an effect.

Infrasound is not always inaudible: though on the cusp of what the human ear can detect, some people find it easy to pick up and others cannot hear it at all. Those who can detect it, however, do not listen to it in the conventional sense. It is best described as a kind of “chugging” or “whooshing” hum, that is felt through the whole body.

“It is that shiver-down-the-spine effect,” said Sarah Angliss, a composer and sound engineer who is leading the project and who has written two pieces for the concert. “It’s often seen as quite an annoying effect, and has been used to explain why people living near factories, which often produce infrasound, can report an unpleasant ambience. It can feel a bit like tinnitus, and it’s associated with hauntings. But it’s not all negative. It’s been used in music for 500 years, in the deep organ pipes that give that wow effect to sacred music. You’d use it to add feeling to the last few bars of the Wedding March.”

Animals as diverse as capercaillie, elephants and whales use infrasound to communicate, as it can travel over vast distances.

Scientists also use it to monitor for earthquakes, and to detect illegal nuclear tests. It is the opposite of ultrasound — sounds at very high frequencies that are beyond human hearing.

The infrasound generator for the concerts is designed by Richard Lord, of the acoustics department at the laboratory. As infrasound is detectable only when played at very high amplitudes, it will be pumped into the auditorium at 86 decibels: the equivalent, for audible sound, of standing next to a busy road.

It will nevertheless be barely perceptible, because of the low frequency. “If the ear were sensitive to that range, it would be pretty loud,” Dr Lord said. “In a library, you’d expect 30 decibels, while a rock concert might go up to 120. This would be somewhere in between.”

The experiment will be a “double blind”. Only Dr Lord and Mr O’Keeffe will know when the infrasound is on. GéNIA, Ms Angliss and Dr Wiseman, who will be communicating to the audience, will be unaware so they cannot give clues as to when to expect it.

A lorry passes a window, but with added emotion

EVERYONE has experienced a piece of music that makes the hairs on the back of the neck stand on end. It would be hard to say, however, that a preview of the Infrasonic concert experiment did exactly that for me.

The dress rehearsal planned for yesterday, in front of National Physical Laboratory staff, had to contend with a major human handicap: the pianist, GéNIA, had hurt her hand and was unable to perform.

The organisers got round the problem by playing a video of one of her performances, still backed with infrasound.

It was fine, but the recording did not come close to capturing the emotion of a live performance.

That said, the infrasound added something, even if I could hardly describe it as “arousing” or “exciting”, as invited to on my psychological questionnaire.

At times I was aware of a sensation that was half sound, half tingling vibration. It is not unlike the feeling you get indoors when a heavy lorry passes the window, or a 747 passes overhead.

Allied to the music, however, it was much more satisfying than you might expect. It does accentuate the emotion, helping you to listen more acutely and bring out the nuances of the performance.

Aural range

* Normal range of human ear: 20 to 20,000 hertz
* Ultrasound: above 20,000Hz
* Infrasound: below 20Hz
* Frequency of NPL generator: 17Hz
* Amplitude: 86 decibels
* Length of infrasound pipe: 7.3m
* Frequencies linked to motion sickness: 2Hz to 5Hz

“Infrasonic” concerts on Saturday, May 31, 3pm and 5pm, Purcell Room. Tickets £7, from 020-7960 4242

Results are in:

n May 2003 Dr. Richard Lord, an acoustic scientist at the National Physical Laboratory in England, and Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire, conducted an experiment.

Dr. Lord and his colleagues staged a concert for 750 people. Four pieces of music were performed. Without telling the audience, Dr. Lord used a seven-meter pipe to produce infrasound during two of the pieces. Afterward, audience members were asked to describe their response to the music. Although unaware of the infrasound, 22% reported feeling chills, revulsion and fear when it was added to the music.

The next time the hair stands up on the back of your neck, it might not be your imagination. It could be something in the air. http://www.suite101.com/content/infraso ... ts-a114832

[Twyla LaSarc]

Times Online, from 2003 : http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/u ... 132968.ece

Hope it's not been posted before.

[b]A CONCERT featuring “soundless music” that will be felt rather than heard

Tones under 20hz are used a lot in meditation/entrainment recordings and devices (including i-doser type stuff). It's the main reason why you need lossless sound source (like FLAC) and $150 headphones to really get anything out of it.

Never heard of it linked to organ music before. Makes me want to go out and find a good recording of Bach's organ fugues...

[Allegro]

Tones under 20hz are used a lot in meditation/entrainment recordings and devices (including i-doser type stuff). It's the main reason why you need lossless sound source (like FLAC) and $150 headphones to really get anything out of it.

Never heard of it linked to organ music before. Makes me want to go out and find a good recording of Bach's organ fugues...

Love. His fugues!

Let’s all go to a live organ concert in a church building, a cathedral or a recital hall. We’d all likely hear and feel with acoustical helps what might not be experience by listening to recordings with a specific intent of feeling the spine-tingled or pulsed or riveted moments in the music. You know?

With that in mind, Bach fugues could be a good starting point for listening to the effect of large organ pipes, for instance, at the ends of pieces, which assumes relative sizes of pipes and organs discussed as well as musical intentions of performers. Rather, with the intent of listening for those wow moments we’re talking about, while noting sacred music and pipe organs are unnecessarily inclusive, I’d try the later organ composers some of whom are favored like the French as Jean-Jacques Beauvarlet Charpentier, Camille Saint-Saëns, Charles-Marie Widor, Marcel Dupré, or Olivier Messiaen. Many organ composers are listed at Wikipedia.

Just thoughts in passing.
~ A.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Rather, with the intent of listening for those wow moments we’re talking about... I’d try the later organ composers some of whom are favored like the French as Jean-Jacques Beauvarlet Charpentier, Camille Saint-Saëns, Charles-Marie Widor, Marcel Dupré, or Olivier Messiaen. Many organ composers are listed at Wikipedia.

Just thoughts in passing.
~ A.

If you want wow moments, you need to hear ALostPeople, and their seminal classic "Big Booty Bitches." I'm only half-joking... This guy appears to have an unparallelled vocal mastery of the so-called Devil's Chord, or tri-tone, which has a history you will already know about.



Hell of a dancer as well.

Sorry for silliness. Listening to a serious pipe organ recital in a church would be something else - even in a normal church, a normal organ can get to me. In the kind of churches that are basically built around their pipe organs, the sound and it's effect must be astonishing, and the effect can't really be recorded or re-played (unless you've got a very good recording and very good speakers). Shame that.

[82_28]

When I was a little kid, I couldn't stand Sears stores. As soon as I walked in I would hear a high pitched, EXTREMELY high pitched sound -- just a buzz like a little mosquito. My parents thought I was crazy or imagining things. Sears back then was my least favorite store of all. It was awful. I would ask my parents, "don't you hear it?!?!?!" It continues to be my dad's favorite store. More in a sec perhaps.

But did this happen to anybody else? Anybody else ever notice this?

[82_28]

WHAT IN THE LIVING FUCK?!?!?!

Here we go!

http://consumerist.com/2009/08/updated- ... store.html

UPDATE: We called the Sears in question and they say there's no high-pitched ringing going on at this store. They didn't install any Mosquito devices and they aren't having any malfunctions right now that would cause such a ringing. The woman who picked up in women's apparel said that in response to what was being said on Twitter, they even sent out some young associates to check out all the entrances and they didn't hear anything.

If you're under 25 and happen to be in Pennsylvania at Granite Run Mall, you're probably going to want to avoid shopping at Sears. Like many stores across the country, the Sears here is using an ultrasonic weapon known as the Mosquito to deter teens from loitering, according to the experience of reader Jonathan K:

“
This past friday I was walking into a Sears and almost fell to my knees. All I heard was an intense ringing sound in my ear. I wanted to make a tinfoil hat to keep the aliens or CIA out of my head, but it turns out it was the Mosquito. It was down right debilitating. I had a painful headache for about 20-30 minutes.
”

Though most adults and young children don't hear the Mosquito's high-pitched sound, teenagers do, and the effects can be quite startling.

Though the device was placed at the store entrance-presumably to deter loitering outside-it could be heard inside the store as well, say Jonathan.

Granted, not everyone has nearly as strong a reaction as Mr. Knippschild, but why would Sears use an approach that indiscriminately alienates a whole lot of people? If teenage loitering was a problem, the managers could have just blasted classical music or show tunes. That often does the trick and, besides, it's a lot funnier.

When it happened to me was in the 1980s. WOW WOW WOW!

I've just never had this confirmed before, until now. Utterly amazing.