AGR needs your help. Here's why:

The staff of Asheville Global Report takes serious pride in our dedication to providing a newspaper that we believe takes a just-the-facts approach to reporting. In keeping with that tradition, we report the following. Here are the facts: Asheville Global Report has a budget roughly around $5,000 a month. Asheville Global Report now has between $2-3,000 in the bank. Most newspapers rely on advertising for their main source of income. Asheville Global Report is a grassroots, non-profit organization run by volunteers that relies on subscriptions, benefit dinners and shows, advertising, and largely by contributions from donors for our source of income. There are no marketing research and development technicians at Asheville Global Report. There are no funds for purchasing a sorely needed new computer printer, or for important equipment and software upgrades. There is no money to pay any meager stipend for a writer or our editors. This is what is commonly referred to as "running on fumes." In truth, it has often been this way. But the staff of Asheville Global Report is a determined bunch of folks who believe that there are more important things in the world than money. One of those things is for people in the United States to have as full an understanding as possible of the fast-changing events in which we are implicated. We feel that it's not just preferable, but nothing less than an urgent necessity. We live in a time of great crisis in which a majority of world opinion finds our nation's policies to be at the nexus of these troubles. Concurrently at home, there has been a concerted effort on behalf of our government to not only contain but to manipulate our public's exposure to select information and images involving these often deadly policies. There are other policies and programs firmly in place–and expanding–to see to it that this is so... not to mention presidential "signing statements" which have bestowed our commander-in-chief with the dictatorial prowess necessary to disregard Congressional law. Our president has codified as official US policy, and never ceases to demonstrate, a penchant for aggressive, first-strike wars "without end" on "terror," on "insurgency," and now "extremism." Fundamental Constitutional rights, such as habeas corpus and the Fourth Amendment, have been all but dispensed with. "Guilty until proven innocent," is the "new normal," as are the torture techniques employed to enforce this normalcy. Those are the facts. The only thing perhaps more frightening about these developments has been their often benign and uncritical portrayal with comic book concision and character in much of the news media. This has made everything far worse than many of you may know…yet. There are more important things than money, but unfortunately we exist in a world which would convince us otherwise. And sadly, we desperately need to ask you for the spare change to help us see it through immediately. It's our Fall Fund Drive season, and it couldn't arrive at a more appropriate time. But even in the face of financial adversity, the risk of collapse, and strange men with cameras following us around, the staff of Asheville Global Report not only perserveres but expands into other mediums as if our lives depended on it. Because, as a matter of fact, we have enough reason to think that they do. Please help us. Thank you.