I have a request.
I’d like to know what international bloggers are saying during this countdown to war. Spain, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Canada, South America, Philippines, Japan, etc….all of you who stop by Bene Diction Blogs On.

…..if you post, would you be kind enough to email me so we can look at how believers around the world are thinking and feeling and what we are doing?
And readers, the comments section is open.

SARS hits another Canadian city

Canada’s newest cases of a mysterious life-threatening pneumonia include a patient sharing a Toronto hospital room with a victim and an Edmonton woman who recently visited Hong Kong.

There are now 11 cases in Canada, nine in Toronto, one in Edmonton and one in Vancouver. As world health groups mobilize 167 cases have been reported.
China had not been forthcoming in it’s reporting of this illness, and this outbreak’s orgin likely began in Guangdong, a province of 80 million people.

In addition to the two deaths in Canada, there has been one death in Hong Kong and one in Vietnam.

The two Toronto patients who died essentially suffocated as their lungs were no longer able to get enough oxygen into their blood, said Donald Low, chief of microbiology at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital. Two of the other patients had such breathing distress they were put on respirators.

As the World Health Organization and medical detectives scramble, conflicting information is to be expected. The US is investigating 14 suspicious cases. Thailand is denying anyone is ill because of the impact on their tourist industry. Hong Kong, Vietnam, Singapore, Australia, Germany and Switzerland have reported cases.

USA
The US is paying a very high price for it’s decisions regarding Iraq. Have you wondered why? Jeffrey Simpson looks at the stunning relational fallout the US has experienced since the turn of this century.

Transatlantic relations, a cornerstone of the foreign policy of the U.S., Canada and Western European countries for more than half a century, have never been more strained. They are strained to the point where Washington wonders if Germany can ever be counted on again, and France becomes a country non grata in the U.S., subject to vicious, even racist, jokes from irate political leaders and conservative “journalists,” today’s equivalent of the jingoistic Hearst “yellow” press a century ago.

If you are interested in a deeper analysis of why the American’s are facing such a dramatic loss of trust and friendship in the world Newsweeks cover story, The Arrogant Empire takes a sober look at the realities of America’s relationship to the rest of the world and offers some solutions.

In one respect, I believe that the Bush administration is right: this war will look better when it is over. The military campaign will probably be less difficult than many of Washington’s opponents think. Most important, it will reveal the nature of Saddam’s barbarous regime. Prisoners and political dissidents will tell stories of atrocities. Horrific documents will come to light. Weapons of mass destruction will be found. If done right, years from now people will remember above all that America helped rid Iraq of a totalitarian dictator.
But the administration is wrong if it believes that a successful war will make the world snap out of a deep and widening mistrust and resentment of American foreign policy. A war with Iraq, even if successful, might solve the Iraq problem. It doesn’t solve the America problem. What worries people around the world above all else is living in a world shaped and dominated by one country—the United States. And they have come to be deeply suspicious and fearful of us.

Computer Viruses
About 1000 computer viruses are released each month. Have you ever wondered about the demographics of a group that can cause world wide havoc?
It boils down to:

In almost all cases, virus writers were computer-obsessed males between the ages of 14 to 34 years.

“They have a chronic lack of girlfriends, are usually socially inadequate and are drawn compulsively to write self-replicating codes. It’s a form of digital graffiti to them.”