As the world churns before us on television screens, most of us sit in numbed silence. The silence of the lambs? Why is it, that in the age of global communication, we hear so few voices?

GlobalSpin is dedicated to bringing more of those voices to you. It is a door to the thoughts and opinions of vast segments of the world outside the American media empire.

What you will see on this website, are the voices of press and of people from all over the world. These will include the voices of:

• the other empires
• religiously based societies
• politically unaligned countries
• all those other countries in Europe
• the too poor to matter
• the too tiny to be noticed
• the deeply disenfranchised

There will be facts, of course - facts that are simply omitted from the mainstream media's coverage of events. Facts that may surprise you.

But there will be more than just the facts because information is more than facts, and knowledge is more than either, and wisdom is better yet. Still I'm jumping ahead.

You will hear the voices of those with differing experiences, cultures, ideologies, and perspectives than ours in this country. They may not fit neatly into our intellectual categories or political pigeonholes. They will not be edited or formatted because to do so would take away their authenticity. There will be no innocuous sounding remarks taken out of context and sandwiched into a broadcaster's copy. All information will be presented in its entirety.

They will include the voices of foreign government officials, religious leaders, newspapers editors, writers and hopefully, those not in any official category. Just plain folks as we call them here. The language may be stilted, angry, passionate, sad, sarcastic but it isn't likely to sound like that of NBC or CBS.

To Americans long accustomed to the art of the spin used by Public Relations practitioners and major media in presenting stories or interpretations of stories to the public, the media of foreign nations may seem heavy handed or less artful, perhaps even naive. At the same time you may be surprised by both the linguistic facility in English and the political sophistication of many foreign writers.

Generally speaking GlobalSpin follows the top foreign stories in our press and then looks for the reaction overseas. At times background pieces will be included so as to give the reader an overview of the situation. Related stories will be included to give a fuller picture as will the perspective of other players. Celebrity stories and natural disasters get plenty of coverage elsewhere, so you won't see them here. The focus is on political stories and views of foreign cultures. GlobalSpin doesn't pretend to be a wire service but you can access a number of them here.

It's a big world out there. I hope you enjoy your travels of the mind.

Links to foreign sources can be difficult at times because they're not as "wired". If you have problems, try again during low-traffic hours. Also links have different lifespans. Some last a day, other months. This aging process will be even more apparent in the archived versions of Global.