Jukebox as means of torture!

Demented souls rape a great gift possessed by human beings

Come and sing a simple song of freedom
Sing it like you've never sung before
Let it fill the air
Tell the people everywhere
We, the people here, don't want a war...........

No doubt some folks enjoy doing battle
Like presidents, Prime ministers and kings
So let's all build them shelves
So they can fight among themselves
And leave the people be who love to sing

(Simple Song of Freedom - Bobby Darin)

Let me restrain myself from indulging in a diabolic diatribe. But I'm sure a normal human being would call this outrageous and in bad taste. As if all the torture methods in the world were worn out, high-decibel songs were blasted since 2002 at the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, for hours and even days, on end, as a method of punishment.

Now a coalition of musicians and bands, which include my favorite alternative US rock band R.E.M. has asked the US government to release the names of all the songs that were used to torture the detainees. The coalition, including Pearl Jam, Jackson Browne, protest band Rage Against Machine, has joined the National Campaign to Close Guantanamo.

"At Guantanamo, the U.S. government turned a jukebox into an instrument of torture," said Thomas Blanton of National Security Archive in Washington, which has filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking classified records that detail the use of music for torture.

According to a Washington Post report, in one case, music was played to "stress" Mohamedou Ould Slahi, from Mauritania, who has been at Guantanamo for more than seven years, "because he believed music is forbidden."

Jayne Huckerby, research director at New York University's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, says loud music was played at CIA-run clandestine prisons in the past. Music was not used as a "benign security tool," but as a way "to humiliate, terrify, punish, disorient and deprive detainees of sleep, in violation of international law."

The songs included that of Rage Against The Machine, AC/DC, Britney Spears, The Bee Gees, etc. It is really ironic and a travesty that the songs of Rage Against The Machine, known for its strong, revolutionary political views and opposition to the US policies, were used to torture people!

To use music as a means of torture is an affront not just to the musicians themselves but to their millions of fans across the globe. Their annoyance is perfectly justified, for when they sing songs they are never meant to be used as means to torture human beings; even in their hyperbolic fantasies, they wouldn't figure out that demented souls will use their songs along with electric shocks and sleep deprivation!

When they sing they do it from their hearts; the lyrics, music, the rendition itself is done with a sense of spiritualism, with the blissful and sublime feeling that they will be listened to and enjoyed by people all over the world, cutting across all man-made (or God-made if you may) boundaries.

Love, not war

Through their lyrics, singers raise their voice against injustices and wars. We have the great John Lennon whose ultimate awe-inspiring peace anthem Imagine continues to fuel all those anti-war activities and activists all over the world.

And there are many many more. We had George Harrison whose 1971 charity show along with Indian sitar sensation Pandit Ravi Shankar to raise funds for Bangladesh cyclone victims set a noble precedent of charity shows. Such shows are occasions where their words mesh with real action for noble causes.

Western music isn't just meaningless, drug-induced lyrics being played to the accompaniment of thunderous, deafening instruments. There's always a human face to it. And songs as a means of torture is an emphatic no-no.

Photo: Giacomo Ritucci /Wikimedia Commons

V-sign is in the air!

Thumbs up to Twitter and all those people who thwarted Trafigura's dirty games

It was a V-Day not just for media freedom, but micro-blogging sensation Twitter as well. When British oil trading company Trafigura tried to gag London-based Guardian newspaper from publishing Parliamentary proceedings in relation to its dumping of toxic waste in Ivory Coast capital Abidjan, Twitter helped the flow of the very information it tried to block.

Trafigura obtained an unprecedented secret order that sought to prevent media from reporting anything related to its dumping of hundreds of tonnes of highly toxic oil waste in 11 habitat areas in Abidjan under cover of darkness on August 19, 2006, sickening tens of thousands of people and killing 15.

A classic case of third world countries being used by companies as waste dumping yards, it was one of the worst pollution incidents the world has ever seen after the gas leak in Union Carbide factory in Bhopal in 1984.

In the British Parliament Labour MP Paul Farrelly sought to know the kind of measures taken to protect press freedom following the injunction obtained by Trafigura's law firm Carter Ruck. However, the Guardian was prevented from identifying the "MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found",

But it appeared Trafigura and Ruck underestimated the power of Twitter, or Internet for that matter. Minutes after the Guardian published the story about the gag order, Twitterati made public details about Farrelly's question. Two more blogs and magazine Private Eye published the full text.

In fact, the response in twitter was overwhelming, with the three most popular search items on the site being "outrageous gagging order trafigura dumping scandal", "ruck" and "guardian".

Interestingly, the gag attempt was ludicrous, because, as pointed out by Observer media editor James Robinson, Farrelly's question was freely available on British Parliament's website and was printed on the House of Commons order paper! Then it becomes very much clear that Trafigura was throwing its weight around, flexing its arrogance and intolerance towards papers like the Guardian which attempted to unravel its criminal act of dumping poisonous waste on a poor people in a poor country.

Here, the traditional media has been helped by activists through the new-age means of blogging. In fact we could see the thin line between traditional and modern means of media is getting blurred here, for a common cause. And it indeed is a good sign especially at a time when corporate media eagerly absolves the crimes of corporates all over the world.

As rightly pointed out by Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, this was a "combination of old media – the Guardian – and new – Twitter – turned attempted obscurity into mass notoriety."

It was not just Guardian which was threatened by Trafigura. It threatened anyone who refused to buy its version. BBC Newsnight and journalists in the Netherlands and Norway were threatened with legal consequences because they refused to buy its version.

Lesson for Indian media?

Another positive aspect of the Trafigura episode is the exemplary co-operation and coordination exhibited by various media outlets for a common cause. The Guardian got hold of internal emails between the executives of Trafigura which clearly showed that the oil company was well aware about the consequences of dumping toxi oil waste in Abidjan. The emails showed that the oil firm dumped the toxic waste in the poor African country in utter disregard for the health of the people there.

Guardian journalists gathered the emails from various countries. The emails were shared between a group of journalists from Norway, the Netherlands and Estonia, and Meirion Jones from BBC2's Newsnight.

As pointed out by the Guardian, getting investigative journalists to co-operate "is notoriously as difficult as herding cats." But it was agreed among the Guardian and journalists in BBC and those in the Netherlands and Norway that the right time to publish and make use of the sensational emails was when the UN published a report on the Abidjan toxic disaster. Though Trafigura tried to derail the timetable with a PR exercise - announcement of compensation to the toxic waste victims numbering 31,000 - the Guardian immediately put the story online, followed by Newsnight.

In the world of journalism marked by crass competition and petty (unprofessional) jealousy between journalists and media outlets of various hues, this indeed is worthy of emulation and there appear to be some lessons for the Indian media as well. Indian journalism seriously lack a sense of broadmindedness and professionalism in its real sense.

Indian media has this intrinsic problem of playing down investigative reports/exclusives by their peers, whatever be the gravity of issue or the explosive nature of the story so brought out, purely because of a skewed view about journalism and its cardinal purpose. What dominates its collective conscience is a sense of parochialism. And it is this insular view that prevents it from coming together and do something for the common cause of the humanity.