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Here at Asheville Global Report, we feel an urgent necessity to examine the much bandied-about and exploited claims that the United States is a beacon of "freedom" in the world. To be sure, in the past this comparatively young nation has contributed significant, hard-won gains to the global struggle for human rights, free expression chiefly among them. In our popular mythology, however relegated to the mildewy, antiquated pages of a 1950s civics textbook, the role of a "free and independent press" has been given lip service as a supposed cornerstone of democracy. Indeed, the very concept of a democratic government implies the necessity of informed consent–meaning that people must be armed with accurate information to make informed decisions about how their government is run. Of course, this is all well and good in theory. The practice, in reality, is much different. Quite the contrary, the simple fact–the overarching truth–is that there is no such thing as a "free press" widely available with any significance in this country to hold those in power accountable. The bottom line is that everything costs money, and those who have the most money usually have the most means to protect it. And in this casino marketplace, violently pimped around the world as "democracy," information is the single most indispensable and pliant weapon used to prop up the status quo of expanding inequalities. It's important that "necessary illusions" demonstrate the one hand giveth, while behind the scenes, underneath the "shock and awe," the other taketh away. For example, it's absolutely necessary that our president and his cohorts prattle on and on to the point of inducing mass nausea about how our country is "spreading freedom and democracy" abroad at the precise moment that we're unleashing hell on earth. It's essential to "catapult the propaganda," as President Bush revealed in a remarkably frank admission not too long ago. It's fundamentally important that in the same breath our politicians–both Republican and Democrat–condemn other nations to our crosshairs for being "repressive," "totalitarian," and "fascist," they fall over each other in support of the most damning offenses to our Bill of Rights and international law: legalized torture and wiretapping, unwarranted home invasions, kidnapping, secret prisons, the destruction of habeas corpus, and yes, mass murder. And who is there holding the megaphone, telling us: "don't worry, everything's OK, we're doing the right thing, –it's THEM you must fear, and we're merely trying to protect you. Give our leaders the benefit of the doubt. That's not blood on your hands, dear taxpayer. That's merely the price of 'freedom'"…? Is it that "free and independent" press we keep hearing about? With less than five major corporations owning and controlling what most of us read, view and hear in the news media, this suggestion is at best, a sick joke. In the spirit of revolutionary patriot Thomas Paine, the Asheville Global Report was created as a remedy to this systematically poisoned media landscape that threatens to not only take down other sovereign nations, but us with it. At this late hour, does this still sound too fantastic and hysterical to believe? We challenge anyone to take a look at our archives and compare our news coverage to that of the corporate media in the run-up to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. While those monopoly news outlets amplified the reassuring deceptions that glued much of the public in simulated, lockstep unity in the march to war, our cadre of thankless volunteers were working overtime to warn well in advance that we were being primed for collective manipulation at the hands of monstrous lies. So many thousands of dead bodies and destroyed infrastructures later, the most widely viewed news media have been forced to belatedly and reluctantly admit that they were wrong. While those same news sources have yet to fully explain the ramifications of the USA PATRIOT Act, and countless more egregious violations to the spirit and letter of the US Constitution, the Asheville Global Report has been relentlessly exposing them. Don't blame yourselves for perhaps not understanding that in effect, there is no more Fourth Amendment to the Bill of Rights and that the government may now enter your home, seize what they want at will, and never inform you about it. Blame our "free and independent" press which routinely describes these developments in exploitative, benign and fear-inducing terms such as "a new set of terror-fighting tools, passed post-Sept. 11." In this way, far from being "free and independent," these lapdog news professionals do quite a bit more than run interference for the government against any substantive criticism. They have not only facilitated the untold devastations to the right to self-determination for thousands of sovereign peoples. They have acted as handmaidens, ushering in an era which threatens to bring about the death of liberty itself. In stark contrast to these media behemoths, ever busy burying social awareness in a pacifying heap of celebrity infotainment, our impoverished staff toils away in obscurity, operating on the sheer hope that nothing less than radical honesty might help stop this madness. For almost eight years, by the skin of our teeth, our explicitly non-partisan and nonprofit newspaper has managed to provide our community with a truly "free" press, and at a nominal cost to our subscribers. This has only been made possible, in no small part, by begging you twice a year to help fund our operating costs, which are anything but free. Once again, we have nothing in our bank account to suggest that we'll positively see it through to the end of the month. It's embarrassing to admit that, but we must do so because we have an unswerving belief that your liberty and your dignity is worth it. Yes, "freedom" does have a price. As recent history has proven that famous slave-owning president, Thomas Jefferson's dictum to be true, "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." Please help us maintain this essential vigilance in this hour of most need. As always, we'll do the work. But we need you to make the pledges for our preservation of "freedom"…and yours. Thank you.