As some of you might know, I receive a Maxim magazine every month. It’s been this way for years, since somewhere around 1999 I believe. I enjoy reading the jokes, looking at the photos, reading about other people’s lives, and enjoying the masculine humor so elegantly inserted into each issue. It’s not often that I read some of the longer, less entertaining articles that involve something political or are long-winded. However, in this issue, one article in particular really caught my attention.

On page 104 in the April issue, there’s a story called “My Neck On The Line” where photojournalist Paul Taggart lays out a very compelling account of his trip to Baghdad in July of 2004. He was one of a few people abducted and kidnapped, being held hostage against his own will. He feared death more than a few times while being held captive. To just read what his story says, each detail explained with careful detail, is amazing. This is the side of the story you do not get from the news, television, the newspaper, in fact most of the media. This was a rare account of his horrible experience, one that helped me see some other aspects of this war. It seems that when I expected something to happen to him on account of his abductors seeming so evil, he says something else to change that thought.

Earlier today on NPR, there was a story about a Harvard program called Global Voices Online, which was created to put International voices in the spotlight for a global audience. It’s an interesting initiative that these people have taken to bring different voices alive for others to read and hear. To be able to gain a perspective that you otherwise wouldn’t is a great education that I hope more people desire.

What we see in the news is so one sided, the stories which the American press usually grab ahold are usually very light. I realize how little I know about what’s going on in places like Iraq, Germany, Ghana, and most other countries. I won’t claim that I have a desire to know about most of what happens, but I think that I should definitely be more open minded about wanting to know. It’s my world, I’m at the age where I make decisions; I vote to affect our world. Caring about International affairs isn’t the most important thing in my life, but hopefully it will become more desirable for me to hear about.