Star musicians will launch a legal bid to discover whether their music was played to detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
The music of Britney Spears, the Bee Gees, Rage Against The Machine and the television show, Sesame Street, was played in the camp, according to government records and the accounts of former detainees.
REM, Pearl Jam and British singer Billy Bragg and others through the National Security Archive will seek to have secret documents about the US Navy base in Cuba made public. The CIA, FBI and Defence Department have been asked to release the information.
Archive director Thomas Blanton believes the government “turned a jukebox into an instrument of torture” at the detention centre. A spokesman for Rage Against The Machine said the band was “sickened” that its music could have been used in “crimes against humanity”.
He added: “Guantanamo is known around the world as one of the places where human beings have been tortured – from waterboarding to stripping, hooding and forcing detainees into humiliating sexual acts – playing music for 72 hours in a row at volumes just below that to shatter the eardrums.”
CIA spokesman George Little said earlier that music is played at Guantanamo but not for “punitive purposes” and at levels “far below a live band”.
The soundtrack for The Twilight Saga: New Moon has shot to the top of the US album charts in further testiment to Twilight fever.
The Twilight soundtrack, which is indie-rock in flavour, is expected to keep selling robustly as Michael Jackson’s This Is It soundtrack eventually gains force.
After debuting on the charts at number two last week, the soundtrack sold more than 155,000 copies in three days.
The bands Death Cab For Cutie, The Killers, Grizzly Bear are featured on the album, which does not include anything by series heart-throb Robert Pattinson.
Taylor Swift has deftly side-stepped the question on everyone’s lips, leaving Ellen Degeneres grasping at air.
The talk show host steered Swift to her relationship with Taylor Lautner but the savvy country singer dodged the bait. She did reveal, however, that there was a problem in her and Lautner making the movie Valentine’s Day.
Cast and crew were falling over themselves to give directions to “Taylor”, getting the rumoured lovebirds hopelessly mixed up.
“Everybody was confused, so halfway through the day [I said], ‘You call him Taylor, and you call me Swifty.’ Problem solved.”
The poised Swift spoke eloquently about her commitment to making the US a better place.
She also laughed off jokes about how much money she has made since her album, Fearless, sold more than four million copies. She said simply: “I actually just wrapped up the first leg of my first headlining tour, which I am so excited [about].”
The singer who is apparently famous in the children’s circles as well seems to have gone a bit too far with her performance last recently. When performing for a bunch of children of five and above, Miley Cyrus took the liberty of having a strip-pole and also trying out some feisty new dance moves. She’d better watch it… they could cancel her shows for something like that! This is not kindergarten anymore… when performing for children, Miley Cyrus should know that there are rules to be enforced. See what happens when you don’t read twitter anymore? You get into all kinds of pickles.
There’s some trouble brewing on the set of The Brian McKnight Show. Quite honestly, I didn’t even know that the singer had a talk show. According to the California Labor Board, over 20 employees have filed non-payment complaints against his show, totalling $86,300. Brian’s people are saying that they do have intentions to pay and that there “was mismanagement in the beginning and since then we have gotten new investors and the show is continuing.” So don’t touch that dial folks, because there’s more from to come from a show that I just found out about. Let’s talk about obscurity, shall we?
Madonna has written an open letter and recorded a video asking for your donations to the Raising Malawi organization, all of which the singer will match dollar for dollar, to help in building the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls. The Queen of Pop said “I’m writing to urge you to join me in saving the lives of some of the world’s most vulnerable children. And I’m asking you to do it right away… By donating to Raising Malawi, you can literally transform the future for an entire generation. To encourage your involvement, I’ve pledged $100,000 to match your contributions dollar-for-dollar… This is my call to you: Give an opportunity to a child who would otherwise have none. Support the work of Raising Malawi.”
