The Misuse of Music Act

Maybe music can’t save your mortal soul, but it shouldn’t be used for damnable purposes either. So says Peter Gabriel in a letter to Barack Obama demanding an end to “torture music” by military interrogators.

The technique involves music being played at mind-bursting volume through speakers clamped onto the ears of detainees. The letter has been co-signed by Dizzee Rascal, Graham Coxon, Doves, Suggs, Massive Attack, The Alabama 3, Ash, James Lavelle, Matthew Herbert, Mr Scruff and many others.
“We are, of course, against all forms of torture, but as musicians we are particularly concerned about the misuse of music and that this practice might slip under the radar unless you explicitly condemn it,” Gabriel tells Obama. “The practice is an abuse of our rights as well as, of course, the rights of the prisoners who are subjected to it. We ask you to send a clear message and explicitly outlaw the use of music to ‘break’ and interrogate prisoners.”
It’s tempting to have fun at the idea of music being used to break detainees. Sure, a couple of days of Daniel O’Donnell would mash the brains of even the hardest suspect, and so forth. But, actually, it isn’t funny.
Clive Stafford Smith, who has represented many inmates of Guantanamo Bay, says: “This technique and others like it can inflict permanent damage on the mind. But because it leaves no visible scars, there is a real chance that President Obama will consider it harmless. It is not. It causes...effects which can last a lifetime.
“It is a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions, and an affront to musicians everywhere.” 
Reprieve has launched an online “silent petition” against music torture. You can sign up at www.zerodb.org. Or email [email protected]. Irish musicians are earnestly urged to give their support.
A change in the layout of the local shop means I can’t leaf through the Sunday Indo and slip it back onto the shelf any more. So imagine my surprise when recently I chanced on a copy and discovered Eoghan Harris giving his opinion on this and that. I had assumed he’d been serving a period of silence. I picked up the ‘paper the Sunday after news that Sarah Palin had resigned as Governor of Alaska. Back in August ’08, it might be remembered, most commentators reckoned John McCain had shot himself in the kneecaps by putting Palin a dicky heartbeat away from the presidency. But not Eoghan.
Obama’s supporters had been plunged into “panic” by Ms. Palin’s appointment, he announced. Anybody who thought different was a dunce. Eoghan looked forward to their certain discomfiture when McCain/Palin triumphed in the poll. “Mrs Palin has put paid to the Obama project...Barack Obama may as well pack his bags.”
Most commentators found Palin’s performance in a TV debate with her Democratic counterpart Joe Biden embarrassingly bad. “Big mistake”, explained Eoghan. Palin had, in fact, been brilliant. She’d “pierce(d) the fog of politics like a powerful beam.” There was nothing more certain than that Middle America would “cling” to Palin and McCain. The final nail had been driven into the coffin of Obama’s campaign.
In light of all that, it seemed strange that Eoghan didn’t have a word of sympathy to say now for the woman he had so confidently hailed as a sure-fire winner. And no explanation at all how he had gotten it so wrong.
But then, Eoghan rarely gets anything right. Over recent years, the subjects about which he has been spectacularly wrong have included Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, the North, the South, Britain, America, religion, art and Munster hurling.
Isn’t he the great man, though, to keep going?

Looking back on that report on how to force the poor to pay the price of the recession, I am struck by the fact that none of the team, apart from captain Colm McCarthy, has figured much in public commentary. So let’s have a look at them.
Pat McLoughlin is ex-deputy CEO of the Health Service Executive. He resigned from the €165,000 a year post in 2005 because of the HSE’s refusal to meet his demand for a 10-year tax-funded pension top-up in addition to his already whopping salary.
Maurice O’Connell is a former governor of the Central Bank, on whose watch information that the commercial banks were setting up thousands of bogus non-resident accounts to avoid DIRT tax was ignored. The scam eventually cost the State more than €100 million.
Mary Walsh is a partner in Price Waterhouse Cooper, the accountancy firm which, inter alia, provides tax advice to major capitalist enterprises in Ireland and elsewhere.
William Slattery is managing director of State Street International, specialists in the administration of hedge funds - gambling operations
which facilitate the super-rich as they speculate in the hope of vast profits and help bring the economy crashing down.
These are the ruffians who want to cut 17,000 public sector jobs, squeeze the health service, increase pupil-teacher ratios, reduce special needs assistants, slash social welfare payments and force medical card holders to pay prescription charges.
What has become of our little country that their heads aren’t being paraded up O’Connell Street on pikes?