Music as torture/Music as weapon

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Re: Music as torture/Music as weapon

Postby 82_28 » Sun Nov 14, 2010 4:32 am

I always thought it was their security system or something, as I kinda thought about it later in life. Like an "old" tube TV when it turns on, whether you have the volume up or not, you can still hear that a TV was on somewhere. And because Sears was like the only joint in any old mall back in the day that sold TV's, video cameras (remember the first time you walked past one of those fuckers and saw yourself on the TV?) I just thought the sound was from the distant AV equipment or the security. I firmly believe now, that Sears has been pumping SOME of their stores with sonic shit for forever. Another Sears in town didn't do it to me, for instance. But the one in Southglenn mall? Better believe it. Again, this is as far back as 1985 at least I'm talking about.
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
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Re: Music as torture/Music as weapon

Postby dbcooper41 » Sun Nov 14, 2010 7:12 pm

i have just the vaguest memory of some movie in the early/mid 1960s where they played "she had a teenie weenie tiny teensy yellow polka dot bikini" over and over and over and over again as a form of torture. i seem to recall there was also a mention of "chineese water torture" in the same flick.
it may have been one of the beach blanket movies.
apparently the tool has been in the arsenal for a long time.
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Re: summary: Music as torture/Music as weapon

Postby Allegro » Tue Nov 16, 2010 12:41 am

AhabsOtherLeg wrote: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 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.
Refer.
Thanks, Ahab. Apparently, soundless music hadn’t been mentioned at RI as I did a quick search.

Good article. At the least, it gives a good many of us a heads up about manipulations of feelings and scientific results from an experiment in a professional setting. With all the composers, musicians, musicologists, physicists, and psychologists in on the production of the recital, there must have been a good many more results than were noted in the journalist’s 900 words or so.

Ah, then there’s your introduction of ALostPeople. How totally inspired, are they; how totally good of you to have brought them to our attention. Words cannot describe.
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Re: Music as torture/Music as weapon

Postby American Dream » Sun Dec 11, 2011 12:07 am

Trailer for a 52' documentary about the use of music as an instrument of torture in US prison camps like Guantanamo, to fuel aggression in war, as means of attack, etc.


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Re: Music as torture/Music as weapon

Postby Allegro » Tue Dec 13, 2011 3:36 am

.
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only.

Musicians don’t want tunes used for torture
— Nine Inch Nails, even ‘Sesame Street’ theme used for interrogations
— updated 12/9/2008 5:48:04 PM ET | Associated Press

    GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — 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.

    ‘Plenty lost their minds’

    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.”

    According to an FBI memo, one interrogator at Guantanamo Bay bragged he needed only four days to “break” someone by alternating 16 hours of music and lights with four hours of silence and darkness.

    Ruhal Ahmed, a Briton who was captured in Afghanistan, describes excruciating sessions at Guantanamo Bay. He said his hands were shackled to his feet, which were shackled to the floor, forcing him into a painful squat for periods of up to two days.

    “You’re in agony,” Ahmed, who was released without charge in 2004, told Reprieve. He said the agony was compounded when music was introduced, because “before you could actually concentrate on something else, try to make yourself focus on some other things in your life that you did before and take that pain away.

    “It makes you feel like you are going mad,” he said.

    ‘Sesame Street’ tunes used for interrogation

    Not all of the music is hard rock. Christopher Cerf, who wrote music for “Sesame Street,” said he was horrified to learn songs from the children’s TV show were used in interrogations.

    “I wouldn’t want my music to be a party to that,” he told AP.

    Bob Singleton, whose song “I Love You” is beloved by legions of preschool Barney fans, wrote in a newspaper opinion column that any music can become unbearable if played loudly for long stretches.

    “It’s absolutely ludicrous,” he wrote in the Los Angeles Times. “A song that was designed to make little children feel safe and loved was somehow going to threaten the mental state of adults and drive them to the emotional breaking point?”

    Morello, of Rage Against the Machine, has been especially forceful in denouncing the practice. During a recent concert in San Francisco, he proposed taking revenge on President George W. Bush.

    “I suggest that they level Guantanamo Bay, but they keep one small cell and they put Bush in there ... and they blast some Rage Against the Machine,” he said to whoops and cheers.

    Some musicians, however, say they’re proud that their music is used in interrogations. Those include bassist Stevie Benton, whose group Drowning Pool has performed in Iraq and recorded one of the interrogators’ favorites, “Bodies.”

    “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 told Spin magazine. “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.”

    The band’s record label told AP that Benton did not want to comment further. Instead, the band issued a statement reading: “Drowning Pool is committed to supporting the lives and rights of our troops stationed around the world.”

    Tactics to make men go mad

    Vance, in a telephone interview from Chicago, said the tactic can make innocent men go mad. According to a lawsuit he has filed, his jailers said he was being held because his employer was suspected of selling weapons to terrorists and insurgents. The U.S. military confirms Vance was jailed but won’t elaborate because of the lawsuit.

    He said he was locked in an overcooled 9-foot-by-9-foot cell that had a speaker with a metal grate over it. Two large speakers stood in the hallway outside. The music was almost constant, mostly hard rock, he said.

    “There was a lot of Nine Inch Nails, including ‘March of the Pigs,”’ he said. “I couldn’t tell you how many times I heard Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You.”’

    He wore only a jumpsuit and flip-flops and had no protection from the cold.

    “I had no blanket or sheet. If I had, I would probably have tried suicide,” he said. “I got to a few points toward the end where I thought, ‘How can I do this?’ Actively plotting, ‘How can I get away with it so they don’t stop it?”’

    Asked to describe the experience, Vance said: “It sort of removes you from you. You can no longer formulate your own thoughts when you’re in an environment like that.”

    He was released after 97 days. Two years later, he says, “I keep my home very quiet.”
Art will be the last bastion when all else fades away.
~ Timothy White (b 1952), American rock music journalist
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Re: Music as torture/Music as weapon

Postby utopiate » Tue Dec 13, 2011 4:27 am

As far as I’m concerned, all of this leads to “Classic Rock Radio”. It’s the same across America and has been for at least 25-30 years. It never changes. Ever. I’ve actually wanted to start a thread on this subject but didn’t really know where to go with this, so here it is.
If I hear Sweet Home Alabama one more time I’m certain that I’ll confess to anything. Boston fills my inner being with an unexplained dread of Lovcraftian proportions whenever I hear it, it’s been such a long time, but not nearly long enough.
I pray to the gods that someday these artists or their estates will have to be paid one dollar every time there songs are played at each and every radio station it emendates from, and since I know these lazy curators of music will be playing LA Woman at least once everyday times the number of stations spread across the nation, it will soon become apparent that they will have to use wheel barrows to pay the artists for the use of their music in order to sell advertising space on there station. Meanwhile these psycho-accustic brain washers sue anyone who happens to have their radio on in the background while the do something stupid for the camera and post it to youtube.
I don’t know where I’m going with this other than if you stand back and take the long view, there has been some form of slow roasting torture perpetrated over the airwaves for quite some time now with no end in sight and it would be nice to know what they are doing to everyone on a subliminal level and why they chose these and other songs to hypnotize us with.
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Re: Music as torture/Music as weapon

Postby Allegro » Tue Dec 13, 2011 5:12 am

.
Here’s my stuff On Edit: utopiate, your suggestion wrt the word subliminal was taken seriously by me at the first moment I read it, and the original post below was written being too tired and with not enough time to do the little research I might’ve done that would’ve made a post worth reading.

Now that I’ve gotten familiar again with the pieces by David Yearsly, Tobias Rapp and Brendan O’Neill, et al, page 2 of this thread, I’ve been reminded that what’s become good for the military or police to use as another torture tool against those imprisoned is good too for use in daily lives of us commoners, or the wage slaves, or the little people. Noting I don’t routinely listen to classic rock radio, still, utopiate’s queries require difficult answers to consider during researching psychological features of the imprisoned, minding the always defenseless ears, and perhaps for too many people, an abused brain and body.

So, now that I’ve searched for and seen the kinds of music played on classic rock radio, I don’t see punk playing on those channels. Am I right about that? The funny thing about that poster below with the guy wearing the leather jacket with the words “loud fast rules” is that I didn’t think twice about the word stimulators not being a hair product! All I wanted to see was “loud fast rules.” That’s just how myopic I can be at moments, and how rookie I am to pop and rock music, still. The Stimulators’s “loud fast rules” is up and to the right.

2012 recently posted a picture of OWS occupiers blowing brass instruments like a cornet, a trumpet, and I think a couple of trombones. That photo took me by surprise; there was a metaphoric moment: I thought of the walls of Jericho tumbling down several thousand years ago from sounds of rams’ horns and shouting voices. I think the story is in Joshua. Music as torture isn’t new.
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utopiate wrote:…there has been some form of slow roasting torture perpetrated over the airwaves for quite some time now with no end in sight and it would be nice to know what they are doing to everyone on a subliminal level and why they chose these and other songs to hypnotize us with. [REFER.]
Very Nice, utopiate. I'm going to come back to this thread when I'm not so weary, and add my 2¢.

This image says in a few words the thoughts
with which I might consider “Classic Rock Radio”,
although I'm unsure what that really means.

Image

~ A.
Last edited by Allegro on Wed Dec 14, 2011 5:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Music as torture/Music as weapon

Postby Hammer of Los » Tue Dec 13, 2011 8:38 am

...

Don't ever diss Planet Rock digital radio station please.

Thank you.

Planet Rock illuminates me more than anything.

Although to be honest, I'm not Lynyrd Skynyrd's biggest fan either.

I prefer Neil Young, which they also play a lot of.

And plenty of spiritually uplifting prog classics.

Just 'cos you don't like 'em doesnt make them evil, you know.

Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so.

...
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Re: Music as torture/Music as weapon

Postby hanshan » Tue Dec 13, 2011 8:40 am

...


utopiate wrote:As far as I’m concerned, all of this leads to “Classic Rock Radio”. It’s the same across America and has been for at least 25-30 years. It never changes. Ever. I’ve actually wanted to start a thread on this subject but didn’t really know where to go with this, so here it is.
If I hear Sweet Home Alabama one more time I’m certain that I’ll confess to anything. Boston fills my inner being with an unexplained dread of Lovcraftian proportions whenever I hear it, it’s been such a long time, but not nearly long enough.
I pray to the gods that someday these artists or their estates will have to be paid one dollar every time there songs are played at each and every radio station it emendates from, and since I know these lazy curators of music will be playing LA Woman at least once everyday times the number of stations spread across the nation, it will soon become apparent that they will have to use wheel barrows to pay the artists for the use of their music in order to sell advertising space on there station. Meanwhile these psycho-accustic brain washers sue anyone who happens to have their radio on in the background while the do something stupid for the camera and post it to youtube.
I don’t know where I’m going with this other than if you stand back and take the long view, there has been some form of slow roasting torture perpetrated over the airwaves for quite some time now with no end in sight and it would be nice to know what they are doing to everyone on a subliminal level and why they chose these and other songs to hypnotize us with.


yeah, fully agreed (good rant)

revisit in time


...
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Guantanamo's alright if you like saxophones.

Postby IanEye » Tue Dec 13, 2011 9:12 am

*



"This song is for everyone of you that voted. This is for Republicans and Democrats alike..."

*
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Re: Music as torture/Music as weapon

Postby Cedars of Overburden » Tue Dec 13, 2011 9:15 am

Here 's a Skynyrd lyric for RI and this whole cursed torture "debate."

Have you ever lived down in the ghetto?
Have you ever felt that cold wind blow?
Well, if you don't know what I mean,
Won't you stand up and scream,
'Cause there's things goin' on that you don't know.

Things Goin On is not the song that gets played over and over and over again anywhere except my house and then only when I'm good and drunk .... even though the honky tonk blare on it does get old fairly quickly.
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Re: Music as torture/Music as weapon

Postby Fred Astaire » Wed Dec 14, 2011 10:06 pm

As a means of payback, the hippies were treated to disco music throughout the 70's. If that isn't musical torture, then I don't know what is.
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music is mighty mighty fine...

Postby IanEye » Wed Dec 14, 2011 10:46 pm

hey Hot Stuff, don't be harshing on Shakedown Street...
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Re: Music as torture/Music as weapon

Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Wed Dec 14, 2011 11:13 pm

The 'Sesame Street songs used as military tool'-meme in the above article is a decoy.

CIA designed Sesame Street as counter-insurgency to contain urban dissent in 1969 with decoy asssociations with some of their most infamous anti-democratic work against Iran and Cuba by Kermit Roosevelt and at the Bay of Pigs.

So this is being confusified some more.
CIA runs mainstream media since WWII:
news rooms, movies/TV, publishing
...
Disney is CIA for kidz!
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Re: Music as torture/Music as weapon

Postby Allegro » Thu Dec 15, 2011 3:30 am

.
A poignant image for this thread.

Image

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