Rock musicians protest the military using their songs as torture

I know, it’s only rock ‘n roll but they hate it. That’s right, a large and growing group of rock musicians have launched a campaign to protest their songs being used to torture detainees at U.S. military prisons:

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. . . .

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.

Just how many minutes of silence will the concerts feature? This changes everything, and brings a whole new question into the mix: how many detainees will the military have to torture to convince Nickelback and Maroon 5 never to play again? Hey, if you want an omelet, you’ve gotta crack some eggs. Imagine, silence during a Rage Against the Machine concert. I might actually pay to see it. If I offered you 20 years of freedom from Savage Garden, would you really, old man, tell me not to torture someone?