It Was Pitch Black . . . They Hung Me up for Two Days. My Legs Had Swollen

INSIDE: WHY THEY WANT TO KILL THE MOTOR INDUSTRY l TALES FROM THE PLANET BIZARRE l A LESSON IN DRUG ENFORCEMENT l & MORE ColdType TheWRITING WORTHREADE READING l ISSUE 33 l JanuarRY 2009 “It was pitch black . They hung me up for two days. My legs had swollen. My wrists and hands had gone numb . There was loud music, Slim Shady and Dr. Dre for 20 days . The CIA worked on people, including me, day and night. Plenty lost their minds . I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and the doors, screaming their heads off” ( PAGE 3 ) ColdType TheREADER Issue 33 | January 2009 3. HIT ME BABY, ONE MORE TIME Andy Worthington 8. DETERMINING TORTURE THROUGH THE LAW Coleen Rowley & Ray McGovern 11. THROUGH Cheyney’s looKING GLASS John S. Hatch 14. TASERs ARE AN outrage WE MUST RESIST Johann Hari Editor: Tony Sutton 16. licenSE to steal Danny Schechter ([email protected]) 19. tales fROM THE planet BIZARRE David Michael Green Opinions expressed in The 23 hurwitt’s eye Mark Hurwitt ColdType Reader are not John Pilger necessarily those of the 24 Beware Of obama’s groundhog day editor or publisher 26. the pARANOIA sQuad George Monbiot 29. WHY they want to kILL THE motor INDUStry Michael I. Niman 32. why I’M A socialiST Chris Hedges 35. THE PU-LITZER pRIZEs fOR 2008 Jeff Cohen & Norman Solomon 38. America’s OTHER glorious war William Blum 43. Obama GOING eaSY ON BUSH? Lee Camp 45. a LESSON IN drug ENFORCEMENT Paul Armentano SUBSCRIBE To COLDTYPE If you enjoy The ColdType Reader subscribe to future issues – it’s free! E-mail: [email protected] 2 TheREADER | January 2009 On Torture / 1 Hit me baby, one more time From Britney to Barney, any music can drive you mad if it’s played enough. And unlike with physical torture, you can’t mentally prepare yourself, writes Andy Worthington here’s an ambiguous undercur- it’s very scary to think that you might go “Once you accept rent to the catchy pop smash that crazy because of all the music, because of that you’re going introduced a pig-tailed Britney the loud noise, and because after a while to go into the Spears to the world in 1999 – so you don’t hear the lyrics at all, all you hear interrogation room muchT so that Jive Records changed the is heavy banging.” and be beaten up, song’s title to “… Baby One More Time” Despite this, the soldiers, who were it’s fine. You can after executives feared that it would be largely left to their own devices when choos- prepare yourself perceived as condoning domestic violence. ing what to play, frequently selected songs mentally. But It’s a safe bet, however, that neither with blunt messages – “Fuck Your God” when you’re being Britney nor songwriter Max Martin ever by Deicide, for example, which is actually psychologically anticipated that this undercurrent would an anti-Christian rant, but one whose title tortured, you be picked up on by US military personnel, would presumably cause consternation to can’t” when they were ordered to keep prison- believers in any religion – even though, for ers awake by blasting earsplitting music at prisoners not used to Western rock and rap them – for days, weeks or even months on music, the music itself was enough to cause end – at prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and them serious distress. When CIA operatives Guantánamo Bay. spoke to ABC News in November 2005, as The message, as released Guantánamo part of a groundbreaking report into the prisoner Ruhal Ahmed explained, was less use of waterboarding and other torture significant than the relentless, inescapable techniques on “high-value detainees” held noise. Describing how he experienced mu- in secret prisons, they reported that, when sic torture on many occasions, Ahmed said, prisoners were forced to listen to Eminem’s “I can bear being beaten up, it’s not a prob- Slim Shady album, “The music was so for- lem. Once you accept that you’re going eign to them it made them frantic.” And in to go into the interrogation room and be May 2003, when the story broke that music beaten up, it’s fine. You can prepare your- was being used by US psyops teams in Iraq, self mentally. But when you’re being psy- Sgt. Mark Hadsell, whose favored songs chologically tortured, you can’t.” He added, were said to be “Bodies” by Drowning however, that “from the end of 2003 they Pool and “Enter the Sandman” by Metal- introduced the music, and it became even lica, told Newsweek, “These people haven’t worse. Before that, you could try and focus heard heavy metal. They can’t take it.” on something else. It makes you feel like Depending on people’s musical tastes, you are going mad. You lose the plot, and responses to reports that music has been January 2009 | TheREADER 3 On Torture / 1 “If you play it for used to torture prisoners often produces ing the Korean War to elicit false confes- 24 hours, your flippant comments along the lines of, “If sions, include stripping detainees of their brain and body I had to listen to David Gray’s ‘Babylon’/ clothing, placing them in stress positions, functions start to the theme tune from Barney (the purple putting hoods over their heads, disrupt- slide, your train dinosaur)/Christina Aguilera, I’d be cry- ing their sleep, treating them like animals, of thought slows ing ‘torture’ too.” But the truth, sadly, is far subjecting them to loud music and flashing down, and your darker, as Hadsell explained after noting lights, and exposing them to extreme tem- will is broken. that prisoners in Iraq had a problem with peratures. It can also include face and body That’s when we heavy metal music. slaps, and until recently, for some who at- come in and talk to “If you play it for 24 hours,” Hadsell tended the Navy’s SERE school, it included them” said, “your brain and body functions start waterboarding. to slide, your train of thought slows down, The Senate Committee’s report, which and your will is broken. That’s when we lays the blame for the implementation of come in and talk to them.” these policies on senior officials, including Hadsell, like senior figures in the admin- President George W. Bush, former Defense istration, was blithely unconcerned that Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President “breaking” prisoners, rather than finding Dick Cheney’s former legal counsel (and ways of encouraging them to cooperate, now chief of staff) David Addington, and was not to best way to secure information former Pentagon General Counsel William that was in any way reliable, but the psyops J. Haynes II, makes it clear not only that teams were not alone. In September 2003, the use of music is part of a package of il- Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the US military legal techniques, but also that at least part commander in Iraq, approved the use of of its rationale, according to the Chinese music as part of a package of measures for authorities who implemented it, was that use on captured prisoners “to create fear, it secured false confessions, rather than the disorient … and prolong capture shock,” “actionable intelligence” that the US ad- and as is spelled out in an explosive new ministration was seeking. report by the Senate Armed Services Com- mittee into the torture and abuse of pris- The experiences of Binyam Mohamed and oners in US custody, the use of music is an Donald Vance essential part of the reverse engineering of In case any doubt remains as to the perni- techniques, known as survival, evasion, re- cious effects of music torture, consider the sistance, escape (SERE), which are taught comments by Binyam Mohamed, a British in US military schools to train personnel to resident still held in Guantánamo, who resist interrogation. The report explains: was tortured in Morocco for 18 months on “During the resistance phase of SERE behalf of the CIA, and was then tortured training, US military personnel are exposed for four months in the CIA’s “Dark Prison” to physical and psychological pressures … in Kabul, and Donald Vance, a US military designed to simulate conditions to which contractor in Iraq, who was subjected to they might be subject if taken prisoner by music torture for 76 days in 2006. enemies that did not abide by the Gene- Speaking to his lawyer, Clive Stafford va Conventions. As one … instructor ex- Smith, the director of the legal action char- plained, SERE training is “based on illegal ity Reprieve, Mohamed, like Ruhal Ahmed, exploitation (under the rules listed in the explained how psychological torture was 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the worse than the physical torture he endured Treatment of Prisoners of War) of prison- in Morocco, where the CIA’s proxy torturers ers over the last 50 years.” The techniques regularly cut his penis with a razor blade. used in SERE school, based, in part, on “Imagine you are given a choice,” he Chinese Communist techniques used dur- said. “Lose your sight or lose your mind.” 4 TheREADER | January 2009 On Torture / 1 In Morocco, music formed only a small cluding what he said was possible illegal “It was pitch part of Mohamed’s torture. Toward the weapons trading,” but that “when Ameri- black, and no end of his 18-month ordeal, he recalled can soldiers raided the company at his urg- lights on in the that his captors “cuffed me and put ear- ing, Mr.

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