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Musicians Protest Use Of Songs By US Jailers
The guy who wrote the Barney "I love you" song, and other musicians are banding together to protest the US military using their songs as weapons. The campaign has brought together groups including Massive Attack and musicians such as Tom Morello, who played with Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave. 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.
I've been tortured by morons blasting their music in my apartment complex and out of cars with overly shaky bass systems constantly. I hereby protest these so-called "artists" and their crappy music.
Instead of spending effort tormenting the detainees so that they hate us even more, it seems the time could be better spent re-educating them into lovers of America. We've currently got no reason to keep them there, so at least we could find something remotely constructive to do while this is going on. Then again, our entire prison system is based on locking people away for arbitrary (and long!) amounts of time rather than actually doing anything with those people.
I'd go insane if I had to list to the Barney song 15 times an hour 24/7 too!
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
I'm fine with waterboarding inmates as long as no one is actually drowned. I draw the line at Barney's "I Love You" song, though. Subjecting humans to that song is simply too uncivilized.
...I'm sure the contractors supporting Gitmo are making bank.
Blar.
Wow. So you really buy that whole "terrorists under the beds" nonsense. I guess someone has to.
I suppose you think there's an insurgency in Iraq too.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Sleep deprivation can kill. I certainly call that inhumane. Living a life that has no future except being locked in a prison for decades sounds like torture, too. When life is worse than simply being pointless and the mental cost of living another day outweighs the benefits, that's a tortured life. There's plenty of people who live lives like this, imprisoned or not, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing or that America can be proud of imposing this state of life on anyone.
Also keep in mind that these people have been there for years. What new information could they ever give to us?
No, you don't get to extract information from prisoners, or anyone else.
Yes, you do have to give "terrorists" a nice cell and good food, as well as a speedy trial by a jury of their peers.
Anything less justifies retribution, whether you call it "terrorism" or not.
Constant loud music wears people down phycologically. 16 hours mean that just about every waking hour is filled with this music. When they try to sleep, all there is is ringing.
Have you even heard of people who lost their hearing by shooting guns through the years without any kind of ear protection? A subset of this group end up killing themselves because they can't take the severe tinnitus ringing anymore.
Now come on. You may not think it's torture when idly thinking about it. But there must be SOME reason they are doing it.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
people, don't play rock music, some of it is quite good. If you really want people to admit to anything, just pipe in the music from any mall this time of year. That many Christmas Carols will drive even the most hardened of souls to tears.
Monstar L
"I guess we should just not try to extract any information from prisoners. Forget the whole "intelligence" thing. We shouldn't spy, we shouldn't use "torture." If 16 hours of extremely loud rock music (apparently not enough to deafen, though) and 4 hours of complete silence and darkness counts as "torture," people need to visit some other countries more often. "
Do you think it would be acceptable to subject YOU to this treatment?
After all YOU are as guilty as they are. Neither of you have even been charged with a crime, neither of you has been convicted of anything, indeed the only real difference between them and you is that THEY are in gitmo and you aren't.
Are YOU willing to trade places with them?
After all, a lot of them are as innocent as you.
Perhaps we should try and "extract" intelligence from you for a few years, and see if you think its still a good idea.
you need to work on your reading skills. the prisoners aren't being put through just 16 hours of loud music and 4 hours of silence.
prisoners are being locked up without due process and subjected to physical and psychological torture for weeks, months, or even years. sensory deprivation is known to cause psychosis and potentially permanent damage to an individual. and as if the psychological abuse wasn't enough, the prisoners are also being held in stress positions meant to cause pain and/or injury to detainees for up to 2 days at a time.
and even if you have no concern for due process and human rights, torture has been proven to be a very poor way of obtaining accurate information. people will confess to crimes they didn't commit while subjected to torture. so what makes you think that "intelligence" gathered through torture would be of any value?
What "terrorists"? What, exactly, have the "terrorists" done? Who do they rape, kill and murder? Where and when is this happening?
Well, ok, the us army rapes and murders people based on religious and political beliefs. We call it war.
But these people in cuba? Do you know what they have done? What have they been charged with? What crimes did they commit? Do you even know who they are, where they come from, or what is being done to them?
NO, you dont. But its ok, they are "terrorists." Because the tv told you so.
Bush IS a war criminal. By any modern, humane definition of the term, by the UN's own definition. We hung Saddam. We hung the war criminals tried at Nuremberg.
I just love this new term, "terrorist" it is so meaningless and vague. Lets hope someday you are tagged with it and then we'll see where you stand.
You see, murderers and rapists are tried and sentenced, in any country. These poor people are not charged with any crime, are not sentenced to any punishment.
Yet sick stupid motherfuckers like you continue to sit by while it happens. Hopefully someday you will know what its like. Hopefully.
Like all those crappy Barney songs, they just added a few trivial lyrics to a PD song ("This Old Man" in this case).
They also used "Yankee Doodle" and others. One of the reason I used to detest Barney; Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood used real original songs.
An imperfect plan executed violently is far superior to a perfect plan. -- George Patton
[blast of loud Van Halen music]
Silence, Earthling! My name is Darth Vader. I am an extraterrestrial from the planet Vulcan!
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
If 16 hours of extremely loud rock music (apparently not enough to deafen, though) and 4 hours of complete silence and darkness counts as "torture," people need to visit some other countries more often.
You disgust me. The United States of America is supposed to be a shining beacon of light to the entire world. But you're fine with this sort of abuse as long as we're better than Egypt or North Korea? Screw being a beacon unto others, at least we're better than certain squalid dictatorships!
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
"If living a life that has no future except being locked in prison for decades is torture, then what should we do to criminals?"
I don't know. Give them a fair trial and a sentence of some determinable time?
Hey, guess what? As long as we're being stereotypical, please allow me to assert that you must be from the South, being that you're inbred as far as you are. You just might be a redneck if your family tree has no branches. I'll bet your sister is your favorite aunt, and the lazy-eyed kids you two have together must sure be special. Et cetera, and so on, and so forth. Ad nauseum. Ad infinitum.
But I digress.
We don't really have any evidence that these folks have done anything wrong, because if we did, we'd have a trial for them, and THEN we'd have locked them up forever, or for however long their crimes may warrant. Meanwhile, there's no reason to torture anyone. Whether it be water-boarding, thumbscrews, humiliation, or simple sleep deprivation brought on by 16 hours of loud music followed by a 4 hour respite of quiet, it's torture.
And, as a GTA-playing tinnitus sufferer, torture is just not how I want to see things done. This is not the America that I want to be a part of.
You don't like being called inbred without any supporting evidence, I'd guess. And I don't like jailing terrorists without a public trial.
To each his own, I suppose. I'm all for defending the country, but without limits on how we treat all humans, we're no better than any other offensive, fear-mongering, repressive society of the past.
I want to be remembered as having lived during a time of greatness and good virtue, not insolence.
Kid-proof tablet..
"suspected" terrorists.
Guantanamo has had to let huge percentages of its prisoner population go because they weren't terrorists. There's no proof that any of the rest will ever be convicted of anything either. Your problem is you believe the government and military are only torturing guilty people. By that logic, lets torture everyone in south-east LA, there's a higher percentage of real crime happening there per capita than Guantanamo.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Should they be in jail? Let a judge decide. What should be the punishment? Let a judge decide. Or is "terrorism" such a serious crime that we can't allow judges to decide who is guilty of it? Is terrorism so bad that judges can't decide what the sentence should be? Is terrorism such a threat that only the President, the armed forces, and the Department of Homeland Security should decide who goes to jail and for how long?
If the people in Guantanamo Naval Base have done something wrong, charge them with some crimes, bring them before a proper court (like the US Supreme Court for example), and let a judge decide if they've done something wrong. Why not?
Fuck that. We shouldn't be imprisoning people just to gain intelligence. Prove a crime was committed and punish them, or do not detain them. To do otherwise runs contrary to the entire set of principles on which the USA was founded.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
They're all civilians.
The ones picked within the US can be charged in a civilian court, deported, or both. That's it.
Those picked up on the battlefield have done absolutely nothing wrong. If you invade a country, the civilians there have every right to attack your soldiers. That's war, sweetheart.
If you don't like it, don't wage it. Imprisoning people for defending their homes is not on.
..maybe they should quit bitching and write better music. :)
always mosh clockwise
You're talking about the insurgency in the 70's that put Saddam in power right?
Let's get this straight: In 2003 there was an invasion of Iraq by US forces (oh, and a smattering of allies, woo!) Since then there has been an occupation of Iraq by those same forces. One of the first actions of the occupying force was to disband the Iraqi army. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were told to go home. Their pay severed. For a while they tried to get jobs but, due to the widely publicized incompetence of the occupying forces, there was no jobs to be had. The looting and destruction of both private and public property was tolerated and ignored by the occupying forces. National treasures that had been preserved over millennia were destroyed. Seeing that their country was being systematically reduced to rubble they formed a militia and began fighting to remove the occupying force.
This is not insurgency. If someone invaded your country, fired the government, fired the military and replaced it with nothing you'd rise up and try to eject them too. If you didn't, you'd hardly be a patriot.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Why not?
Perhaps because they were sent to gitmo so that US law would not apply, regardless of court decisions since, this was an enclave deliberately created to allow the US to commit acts thaat would be illegal in the US itslef.
Gitmo has destroyed the image the US once had as a country that beleved in fairness and the rule of law.
You know, I have a friend who was imprisoned in Afghanistan during the 70's/80's. A "terrorist" nation.
He was never tortured or treated improperly EVER. When the soviets invaded and took over the prison, THEY never tortured nor harmed him, in fact treatment got even better. 20 years in a foreign prison and the only bad thing to happen to him was an opium addiction.
Its funny hearing his story, because he was a good american boy, afraid of the bad guys and especially of the soviets. When they marched through the prison he freaked out, only to find they were genuinely interested in his well being. The soviet general who toured the place stopped specifically at his cell and talked to him, because he was american. He received medical treatment, fresh clothing and good food, plus a promise that his sentencing would be looked at and he was released a few years later, from a life sentence (for smuggling hashish.) I've never seen somebody more changed by an experience, going from good ol' american boy to seeing the truth: the USA is the biggest fucking fascist state on earth. All from being locked up in a foreign country. You can tell a lot about a society by how they treat their prisoners. He never once saw anybody raped or tortured. Now, american prisons on the other hand...
Most people would be very very surprised to know the stats on prison violence and rape in the US versus the rest of the world. We have the most inhumane conditions for prisoners of almost anywhere on the planet. Not to mention the fact we have the highest per capita prison population on earth.
The America people believe exists from watching tv, does, in fact, not exist except on tv.
Not to mention nuclear weapons, oh yeah baby. We have used them. On innocent civilians. Twice. Nobody else can claim that prize.
Oh well. Just bomb more brown people. That will fix your life so you can buy more video games in which you kill brown people.
Not quite. The Iraqi army effectively disbanded itself. They simply went home.
No.. they were standing ready.. by executive order they were disbanded.
..and exactly what would you have had the US forces do and to what level of force would have had them use? There wasn't enough forces available to protect all of that property.
Gee, I fucking wonder why?!!
How we know is more important than what we know.