Ohio Musician Returns to Florida and Teams With The Red Cross to Offer Relief With Funds From New Live CDWritten by Paul Rader
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 16, 2004Monday, September 13--Put-in-Bay, Ohio - A veteran solo acoustic entertainer from northern Ohio is returning to Florida for his second winter season this October, bringing relief from recent hurricane disasters there by contributing music to generate funds for hurricane disaster relief. Paul Rader, who performs at Bear Bottom Beach Club in Key West every year, is donating five hundred ($500) dollars cash and fifty percent (50%) of profits of his latest CD, Land of Cover Band Live - Vol. I, to American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund. For remainder of 2004 Rader will make weekly contributions to fund that a Red Cross source says is already "strapped for cash." The Red Cross estimates damages in excess of $63 million dollars but that does not include potential costs of Hurricane Ivan making landfall. So far, they have only been able to raise $35 million dollars to help families effected by storms. When you look at staggering numbers, it would take to return everybody's life back to normal, it seems completely overwhelming. “What I'm offering seems insignificant by comparison but I'm hoping that it will inspire other independent performers to do same," says Rader. For those who want to donate, he has set up links to Red Cross's website, as well as links to make contributions through his artist website www.paulrader.com.
| | ABU GHRAIB: Our Surprise is the only SurpriseWritten by Virginia Bola, PsyD
As pictures and videos surface showing young American soldiers humiliating and dehumanizing Iraqi prisoners, we, as a society, recoil in disgust and disbelief. Friends and family of those charged with such crimes, shake their heads in bewilderment and assure world that perpetrators are normal, caring, loving individuals without any prior sadistic or bullying traits.As picture of prisoner degradation develops, and spreads, only surprise is that we are surprised. Where have American people, Military, Security Agencies, Administration, and Media been hiding for past 30 years? Research in Social Psychology is rampant with experiments clearly demonstrating impact of situational influence on behavior. From Zimbardo’s famous prison experiments at Stanford University (1971) and Milgram’s extensive body of work on obedience based on administration of electrical shock torture by non-pathological students (1974 and following), dangers of placing untrained, well-meaning but naïve individuals into a system where cues of social acceptability have been perverted, has been shown to lead to exactly that behavior which world has been watching over past few weeks. The killer children of Golding’s Lord of Flies, torturers of Inquisition, Jew killers of Reserve Battalion 101 (Browning, 1993), are not inherently evil people, somehow different from you and I. They ARE us – placed into an intolerable, stress-laden pressure cooker where daily norms no longer apply. Systematically, they are praised and rewarded for aberrant behaviors, started on road to doom with a small step, victims are dehumanized, responsibility is diffused, anonymity guaranteed, and absolute need for obedience to gain goal (information, safety of other soldiers, National Security) is demanded.
|
