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Church Where Shooting Occurred Fosters Paranoia, Professor Says
A man who went on a rampage last Saturday, killing seven members of a suburban Milwaukee congregation meeting in a hotel before committing suicide, belonged to an unusual, cult-like denomination that fosters a sense of “apocalyptic paranoia” with a heightened sense that the end of the world is near, says a Baptist professor of theology.

Police said 44-year-old computer programmer Terry Ratzmann fired 22 bullets into the gathering of the Living Church of God before turning the gun on himself.

Investigators aren’t sure what prompted the attack, but some media reports quoted people who knew Ratzmann as saying he had been upset after recently hearing a taped speech by founding evangelist Roderick C. Meredith that told people to prepare for the end times and major economic upheavals.

Meredith started the church in the mid-1990s. It is one of more than 200 splinter offshoots of the Worldwide Church of God, started by the late famed radio evangelist Herbert W. Armstrong, whose empire included Plain Truth magazine and “The World Tomorrow!” radio broadcasts....

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Seminary Adopts ‘Biblical’ Counseling
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is changing the way it will train ministers to deal with the needs of hurting parishioners.

After decades of integrating secular psychology and biblical training in a course of study known as “pastoral care,” the seminary in Louisville, Ky., announced a “wholesale change” of emphasis built on the idea that the Bible alone is sufficient to answer “the deepest needs of the human heart.”

The “biblical counseling movement” is a popular evangelical approach to counseling that promotes resolving personal problems through a strict Bible-based foundation, while rejecting psychology, and especially psychotherapy, as a “pseudoscience” that is incompatible with biblical truth.

“Our churches need pastors and leaders who understand depravity and the Fall to the degree that they are able to see the ways in which fallen human self-interest often masquerades as objective ‘science’—especially when this ‘science’ seeks to explain and prescribe a cure for the fallen condition of humanity,” Russell Moore, dean of Southern’s School of Theology, said in a seminary news story.

Seminary President Albert Mohler said the new program would focus on teaching pastors and other church leaders to apply the truths of Scripture comprehensively to the concerns and crises of everyday life....

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How Come It's Still 1984?
..."But let's be honest about this: It was a Republican administration that sent in Major Smedley Butler and the U.S. Marines to overthrow the democratically elected government of Nicaragua, forcing the legislature in Managua to sign a peace treaty in English as American warships loomed offshore, a treaty giving us the right to run the Nicaraguan railroads under the laws of the state of Maine.

"It was a Republican administration that overthrew the popular government of Mohammed Mossadegh, the 'weeping mullah,' in Iran in 1953, re-installing the Pahlavi shahs, whose secret police surely ranked them among the most repressive despots in recent history.

"Let's not even get started on the regime-change assassinations we backed in places like Chile and Vietnam, as little as 30 and 40 years ago. And if we're so in favor of democracy and self-determination, why is President Bush making nice with KGB assassin Boris Putin, when just last week the Russian special forces murdered Aslan Maskhadov, the last elected president of independent Chechnya?

"If we're really going to change our stripes now, a good start might be to acknowledge to our own people the things we did that caused our government to be so widely feared, hated and distrusted, out there in the world at large."...

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Blackwell, Running to the Hard Right
...I have spent the last couple of days in Ohio where I spoke to over 2,800 people at Fairfield Christian Church outside Columbus. Today I joined Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell and former Ohio Congressman Bob McEwen as we spoke to about 70 key members of the clergy. We reflected back upon America's godly heritage and the key role that pastors played in this nation. The meeting, which was hosted by Pastor Rod Parsley at World Harvest Church, was organized by Pastor Russell Johnson of Lancaster.

Many of these pastors were instrumental in working with the president of Ohio's Citizens for Community Values, Phil Burress, in passing Ohio's marriage amendment over tremendous obstacles foes of marriage placed in their way. This was the first of a series of meetings designed to enlist hundreds of members of the clergy as "Patriot Pastors" to further organize the Church in Ohio for social engagement. What I see happening across the country with pastors is unprecedented - pastors and their flocks are not going back to life as usual after the election. Christians are committed to the battle not only for the heart and souls of people but for the heart and soul of this nation....

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The Little Church of Horrors
Apocalypse now in Wisconsin: Carnivorous plants and the "end times"

...IF THE CURRENT news reports are true, it looks like the suspected gunman in the church massacre in suburban Milwaukee grew carnivorous plants as a hobby. He's described as an avid gardener, press reports say he raised such meat-eating vegetables as Venus flytraps, and I found on the Web what may be Ratzmann's photo (see above) of a carnivorous plant.

But the Living Church of God, the small sect he belonged to, was also one of Terry Ratzmann's passions. Perhaps he was driven past the edge by the right-wing sect's nonstop apocalyptic warnings—a set of scare-tactic teachings similar to those used to great effect by the Bush regime's religious zealots.

Incessant fear-mongering is a proven strategy of evangelists and other politicians. It worked in the last presidential election. ...

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What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
...Values? Fear? To understand the current state of the electorate we need to recall Max Weber’s critique of the notion that economic interests are the sole engine of societal power. According to Weber, power is not just about money; status and prestige play an equally important role in politics. In his classic work Symbolic Crusade, Joseph Gusfield uses Weber’s idea to explain an earlier expression of conservative populism, the temperance movement. Gusfield sees that movement as an example of “status politics”: its goal was not to put an end to drinking, but to assert the preeminence of the Protestant way of life in the face of the rapid transformation of society by waves of ( wine-swilling ) immigrants from Catholic Europe. In much the same way, Bush supporters in 2004 voted to protect their way of life from the threats of the 21st-century terrorists, yes, but also gays, evolutionists, and those who believe abortion should be legal. Today’s conservatives are voting primarily to protect not their means of making a living but the meaning of their lives.

Given the president’s public commitment to the hope of the gospel, it is odd to hear him so often preaching fear and using that fear to pit people against each other. Those who seek a society in which justice and love prevail need to understand how public outrage is stirred up, manipulated and used to serve the ends of power. Frank’s highly readable ( and highly partisan ) exploration of that process provides a starting point for that understanding.

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Italy 'to pull troops from Iraq'
Italy is to begin withdrawing its troops from Iraq in September 2005, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has said.

He told Rai state television the pullout would take place "in agreement with our allies".

Italy has 3,000 troops in Iraq - the fourth largest foreign contingent.

Domestic opposition to Italy's involvement in Iraq intensified after the killing of an Italian agent by US troops in Baghdad earlier this month.

The surprise announcement came as Italy's lower house of parliament backed a recent Senate vote to extend the country's military presence in Iraq beyond June.

Mr Berlusconi has been one of US President George W Bush's staunchest allies in the US-led war in Iraq.

But, he said, after speaking to UK Prime Minister Tony Blair he concluded that public opinion in both countries favoured a troop withdrawal.

"In September we will begin a progressive reduction of the number of our soldiers in Iraq.

"I spoke to Tony Blair about it, and public opinion in our countries is expecting this decision," he told Rai. ...

...Also on Tuesday, two other members of the US-led coalition in Iraq - the Netherlands and Ukraine - began a phased withdrawal from the country.

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U.S., Pakistan admit bin Laden trail is cold
Pakistan's leader says forces once were close to al-Qaida chief

LONDON - Pakistani and American officials said Tuesday the hunt for top al-Qaida and Taliban leaders would continue, but acknowledged the trail was cold.

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf said his forces believed they had nearly hunted down Osama bin Laden about 10 months ago, but had since lost track of him.

“Through interrogation of those who have been captured, the al-Qaida members who were apprehended here, and through technical means there was a time when the dragnet had closed,” Musharraf told the British Broadcasting Corp. in an interview.

“We thought we knew roughly the area where he possibly could be. That was I think ... not very long (ago), maybe about 10 months back,” said Musharraf, a close ally of the United States.

The BBC quoted Musharraf as saying his forces had since lost track of bin Laden’s possible whereabouts....

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Extreme Cinema Verite
GIs shoot Iraq battle footage and edit it into music videos filled with death and destruction. And they display their work as entertainment.

BAQUBAH, Iraq — When Pfc. Chase McCollough went home on leave in November, he brought a movie made by fellow soldiers in Iraq. On his first night back at his parents' house in Texas, he showed the video to his fiancee, family and friends.

This is what they saw: a handful of American soldiers filmed through the green haze of night-vision goggles. Radio communication between two soldiers crackles in the background before it's drowned out by a heavy-metal soundtrack.

"Don't need your forgiveness," the song by the band Dope begins as images unfurl: armed soldiers posing in front of Bradley fighting vehicles, two women covered in black abayas walking along a dusty road, a blue-domed mosque, a poster of radical cleric Muqtada Sadr. Then, to the fast, hard beat of the music — "Die, don't need your resistance. Die, don't need your prayers" — charred, decapitated and bloody corpses fill the screen.

"It's like a trophy, something to keep," McCullough, 20, said back at his cramped living quarters at Camp Warhorse near Baqubah. "I was there. I did this."

Film cameras arrived at the front during World War II, but soldiers didn't really document their own combat experience until the Vietnam War. (The technology didn't lend itself to amateur moviemaking until the arrival of the smaller Super 8 cameras.)

Today, video cameras are lightweight and digital technology has cut out the need for processing. Having captured a firefight on video, a soldier can create a movie and distribute it via e-mail, uncensored by the military. With editing software such as Avid and access to Internet connections on military bases here, U.S. soldiers are creating fast-paced, MTV-style music videos using images from actual firefights and killings.

Troops often carry personal cameras and video equipment in battle. On occasion, official military camera crews, known as "Combat Camera" units, follow the troops on raids and patrol. Although the military uses that footage for training and public affairs, it also finds its way to personal computers and commercial websites.

The result: an abundance of photographs and video footage depicting mutilation, death and destruction that soldiers collect and trade like baseball cards. ...

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U.N. Faces More Accusations of Sexual Misconduct
Officials Acknowledge 'Swamp' of Problems and Pledge Fixes Amid New Allegations in Africa, Haiti

UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations is facing new allegations of sexual misconduct by U.N. personnel in Burundi, Haiti, Liberia and elsewhere, which is complicating the organization's efforts to contain a sexual abuse scandal that has tarnished its Nobel Prize-winning peacekeepers in Congo.

The allegations indicate that a series of measures the United Nations has taken in recent years have failed to eliminate a culture of sexual permissiveness that has plagued its far-flung peacekeeping operations over the last 12 years....

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Europeans Investigate CIA Role in Abductions
Suspects Possibly Taken To Nations That Torture

MILAN -- A radical Egyptian cleric known as Abu Omar was walking to a Milan mosque for noon prayers in February 2003 when he was grabbed on the sidewalk by two men, sprayed in the face with chemicals and stuffed into a van. He hasn't been seen since.

Milan investigators, however, now appear to be close to identifying his kidnappers. Last month, officials showed up at Aviano Air Base in northern Italy and demanded records of any American planes that had flown into or out of the joint U.S.-Italian military installation around the time of the abduction. They also asked for logs of vehicles that had entered the base.

Italian authorities suspect the Egyptian was the target of a CIA-sponsored operation known as rendition, in which terrorism suspects are forcibly taken for interrogation to countries where torture is practiced.

The Italian probe is one of three official investigations that have surfaced in the past year into renditions believed to have taken place in Western Europe. Although the CIA usually carries out the operations with the help or blessing of friendly local intelligence agencies, law enforcement authorities in Italy, Germany and Sweden are examining whether U.S. agents may have broken local laws by detaining terrorist suspects on European soil and subjecting them to abuse or maltreatment. ...

... In Sweden, a parliamentary investigation has found that CIA agents wearing hoods orchestrated the forced removal in December 2001 of two Egyptian nationals on a U.S.-registered airplane to Cairo, where the men claimed they were tortured in prison.

One of the men was later exonerated as a terrorism suspect by Egyptian police, while the other remains in prison there. Details of the secret operation have shocked many in Sweden, a leading proponent of human rights. ...

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Children Said Among Abu Ghraib Prisoners
WASHINGTON - Children held by the U.S. Army at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison included one boy who appeared to be only about 8 years old, the former commander of the prison told investigators, according to a transcript.

"He looked like he was eight years old. He told me he was almost 12," Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski told officials investigating prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. "He told me his brother was there with him, but he really wanted to see his mother, could he please call his mother. He was crying." ...

... The transcript released Thursday is the first government document indicating that a child no older than 11 was held prisoner at Abu Ghraib.

Military officials have said that no juvenile prisoners were subject to the abuses captured in photographs from Abu Ghraib. However, some of the men shown being stripped naked and humiliated had been accused of raping a 14-year-old prisoner.

The documents released Thursday offer rare details about the children the U.S. military has held in Iraq. Karpinski said the Army began holding women and children in a high-security cellblock at Abu Ghraib in the summer of 2003 because the facility was better than lockups in Baghdad where they had been held.

The documents also include statements from six witnesses who said three interrogators and a civilian interpreter at Abu Ghraib got drunk one night and took a 17-year-old female prisoner from her cell. The four men forced the girl to expose her breasts and kissed her, the reports said. The witnesses - whose names were blacked out of the documents given to the ACLU - said those responsible were not punished. ...

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Branching out
CHICAGO -- Scott and Michelle Knollenberg, of Plainfield, Ill., can spend their Sundays letting national chains cater to their every need -- physical, material and, now, spiritual.

They can grab an Egg McMuffin at McDonald's, a stylish lamp at Target, towels at Bed Bath & Beyond and a double tall nonfat mocha at Starbucks. But Sunday's highlight is the church service prepared by Naperville, Ill., pastor Dave Ferguson and his national staff, which will be virtually identical in music, sermon, videos and skits at 10 locations throughout the country.

The Knollenbergs are members of Community Christian Church, which has Chicago-area sites in Naperville, Shorewood, Romeoville and Montgomery. Nationally, the network started by Ferguson and his brother Jon also has churches in Denver, Detroit, New York and Bakersfield, Calif.

In the business world, they call this kind of thing franchising. In evangelicalism, it's known as the multisite church, and it is a growing trend with a similar aim: providing consistent quality and service wherever you go....

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Looting at Weapons Plants Was Systematic, Iraqi Says
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 12 - In the weeks after Baghdad fell in April 2003, looters systematically dismantled and removed tons of machinery from Saddam Hussein's most important weapons installations, including some with high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear arms, a senior Iraqi official said this week in the government's first extensive comments on the looting.

The Iraqi official, Sami al-Araji, the deputy minister of industry, said it appeared that a highly organized operation had pinpointed specific plants in search of valuable equipment, some of which could be used for both military and civilian applications, and carted the machinery away.

Dr. Araji said his account was based largely on observations by government employees and officials who either worked at the sites or lived near them.

"They came in with the cranes and the lorries, and they depleted the whole sites," Dr. Araji said. "They knew what they were doing; they knew what they want. This was sophisticated looting."

The threat posed by these types of facilities was cited by the Bush administration as a reason for invading Iraq, but the installations were left largely unguarded by allied forces in the chaotic months after the invasion. ...

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Army Details Scale of Abuse of Prisoners in an Afghan Jail
WASHINGTON, March 11 - Two Afghan prisoners who died in American custody in Afghanistan in December 2002 were chained to the ceiling, kicked and beaten by American soldiers in sustained assaults that caused their deaths, according to Army criminal investigative reports that have not yet been made public.

One soldier, Pfc. Willie V. Brand, was charged with manslaughter in a closed hearing last month in Texas in connection with one of the deaths, another Army document shows. Private Brand, who acknowledged striking a detainee named Dilawar 37 times, was accused of having maimed and killed him over a five-day period by "destroying his leg muscle tissue with repeated unlawful knee strikes."

The attacks on Mr. Dilawar were so severe that "even if he had survived, both legs would have had to be amputated," the Army report said, citing a medical examiner.

The reports, obtained by Human Rights Watch, provide the first official account of events that led to the deaths of the detainees, Mullah Habibullah and Mr. Dilawar, at the Bagram Control Point, about 40 miles north of Kabul. The deaths took place nearly a year before the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Among those implicated in the killings at Bagram were members of Company A of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, from Fort Bragg, N.C. The battalion went on to Iraq, where some members established the interrogation unit at Abu Ghraib and have been implicated in some abuses there....

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Sex Scandal At Guantanamo
As if the situation at Guantanamo isn't messy enough, there is now a sex scandal involving senior military officers who were running the prison, reports CBS National Security Correspondent David Martin.

The colonel in charge of prison operations, a Lt. colonel who commanded the military police guarding the prisoners, and another lieutenant colonel who commanded the soldiers responsible for base security have all been relieved of duty. They are accused of committing adultery with a female Navy Lt. and a number of female civilian contractors.

An Army general who was the deputy commander of the task force which runs Guantanamo is also under investigation for adultery, which is a violation of military law, Martin reports. That case has been turned over to the Army's inspector general at the Pentagon since it involves such a high ranking officer.

The investigation began after a soldier -- who himself had been disciplined for adultery -- blew the whistle on the officers. Once the investigation began, it turned up e-mails in which the officers were exchanging information about the women they were having sex with.

Although the conduct involves private behavior off duty, Martin notes, it involves four of the most senior officers at the camp. And it raises questions about the quality and discipline of the officers running the prison there....

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Army, CIA Agreed on 'Ghost' Prisoners
Top military intelligence officials at the Abu Ghraib prison came to an agreement with the CIA to hide certain detainees at the facility without officially registering them, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. Keeping such "ghost" detainees is a violation of international law.

Army Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, who was second in command of the intelligence gathering effort at Abu Ghraib while the abuse was occurring, told military investigators that "other government agencies" and a secretive elite task force "routinely brought in detainees for a short period of time" and that the detainees were held without an internment number, and their names were kept off the books.

Guards who worked at the prison have said that ghost detainees were regularly locked in isolation cells on Tier 1A and that they were kept from international human rights organizations. ...

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Sex motive behind wife's slaying, prosecutors say
Mistress, daughter testify as ex-Christian school leader ordered to stand trial

Prosecutors alleged Wednesday that a well-known carpenter and former Christian school leader strangled his wife so he could pursue relationships with other women.

"It's very clear that ... divorce was not an option, that it was frowned upon by the Lord, he believed," Assistant Dist. Atty. Brandon Jones said. "This was the easier way out for him, rather than divorce."

At the time of his wife's death, Martin K. "Marty" Miller, 46, was advertising himself on Internet dating sites and having an affair with a woman he'd met in an online adult chat room, according to testimony at Miller's preliminary hearing in District Court...

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Why Are We Worried About Income? Nearly Everything that Matters is Converging
Convergence of national GDP/capita numbers is a common, but narrow, measure of global success or failure in development. This paper takes a broader range of quality of life variables covering health, education, rights and infrastructure and examines if they are converging across countries. It finds that these measures are converging as a rule and (where we have data) that they have been converging for some time. The paper turns to a discussion of what might be driving convergence in quality of life even as incomes diverge, and what this might mean for the donor community....

...Much of the development debate recently has been motivated by the idea that we are failing—developing countries are being left behind and 40 years of state action and foreign aid has done nothing to help that. A broader measure of quality of life should perhaps make us look at the Third World “failures” a little differently. Other quality of life gaps were never as bad for other variables as they were for income—the income measure has always overplayed the difference between India and the United States. Further, and despite the tragedy of AIDS and looming environmental catastrophes, it appears difficult to argue with the statement that quality of life has improved over the past 50 years worldwide and that, for 50 years and sometimes longer, it has improved more rapidly in the developing world than in the developed world. Comparing India to the United Kingdom and United States, for example, convergence began sometime prior to 1950 for literacy and life expectancy and prior to 1913 for primary education. If we are concerned about broader quality of life measures, then, developing countries may have seen their performance excessively maligned (along with inter-war colonies and international donor agencies, perhaps).

The evidence presented above also suggests something about the nature of that success. There has been convergence across a wide range of indicators of the quality of life. Given that there has not been convergence in the standard income indicator, this may suggest that income is only one among a number of factors in determining quality of life outcomes. In turn, this suggests some hope that improvements can be sustained even in the absence of sustained income growth.

The extent of the role that governments have had to play in improving quality of life remains arguable. Literacy appears to be an important factor and government efforts to expand schooling must have played a role here. It seems plausible to argue that even though some government health expenditure is wasted, efforts to (for example) spread vaccines and improve primary care can have a significant payoff.

Whatever the role of government, literacy and vaccine programs surely helped only in combination with technologies that the skill of literacy or the vaccine programs helped to spread. These technologies, which appeared to have done little in increasing Third World income, have at least improved other measures of the quality of life. Given the role that globalization has been argued to play in transferring technology it may be that, along with government, globalization has been too quickly dismissed by some as a driver of development....