My e-mail at work has me on this mailing list that sends this news letter to me once a month from this guy named Mike Gasior, who does industry financial seminars. His forte is finance and business trends, but sometimes he also has insight in other related areas that I find particularly interesting.

Anyway, the following includes two parts of what was included in his newsletter for March 2001. I thought that some of you Okay Activists might find it interesting. At the end of the two sections/articles, I have included a brief profile on M. Gasior, that I got from his web site, http://www.afs-seminars.com/ so that you may do your own research on the author of this text.

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BY MIKE GASIOR

UGLY AMERICA

I've been fortunate in my life to travel a lot, and I will always remember how shocked I was as a young man to find that much of the world didn't find America or Americans nearly as cool as we find ourselves.

The last few years we have been particularly obnoxious and a lot of the world really would like to see us go choke somewhere. I think it began for me when the U.S. men's 4X100 meter relay team decided to strip down after
their victory and engage in a little "pose down" while wearing U.S. flags as apes. Had I not watched the entire broadcast I would have thought I just tuned in to some World Wrestling Federation programming. I was sitting in a
room alone and felt embarrassed.

It's not a new thing to have everyone hate the richest guy on the block, but us rubbing it in everyone's noses doesn't help anything and we have been just brutal lately. The rest of the world looks at us and see nothing but
selfish materialism, huge gulfs between rich and poor, cars that suck too much gas.

Well Americans should remember that 1.3 billion people on earth get by on LESS than $1 per day. This new age of technology and business has brought sweeping changes to countries around the world and it often wears an American face. Microsoft. McDonalds. Hollywood. Harvard and Yale. I just read that 85% of ALL the business generated on the Internet is from U.S.
companies.

And how about then Secretary of State Madeline Albright calling us the "indispensable nation" and then adding "We stand taller, and we see further than other countries." Good grief is all I can say. What in the hell was she thinking, and is it any wonder why everyone hates us. Consider the ollowing quotes.

French President Jacques Chirac remarked after an economic summit a couple of years ago: "We're nothing but extras in Clinton's marketing plan. They see us as crap. They take us for retarded."

Former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez who owns a Nobel Peace Prize and whose kids went to Harvard and Boston College: "Quite often you do seem to act quite arrogantly....You want to tell the world what to do. You are like the Romans of the new millennium."

Russia and China are becoming friendly. Russia had agreed not to sell arms to Iran and decided to sell them anyway and has recently become chummy with Fidel Castro and Cuba once more. China now considers the United States its number one threat to its safety. A lot of our friends don't support the
sanctions against Saddam Hussein anymore. Could you imagine a more diverse group of countries who all oppose our missile defense proposal than Canada, Germany, Russia and Singapore? Can't we all just get along??

But why should these countries listen to us? We push them to adopt American style economic reforms without giving a crap what it might do to their social situation. We lecture them how to run elections while ours look like a nightmare. I cringed every time I would see the front page of a foreign
newspaper with someone holding up a dimpled chad to the light. We push this missile defense plan even though it clearly seems to be feeding an arms race around the world.

I can't believe I'm about to quote Bill Clinton without making extreme fun of the quote, but during his farewell speech he said, "Global poverty is a powder keg that could be ignited by our indifference."

For a change, I had to agree with him.

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Nothing to earth shattering there. I typically find it interesting that when a white person (in this case a conservative, republican, right-winged white guy, mind you), acknowledges something that we've known, seen and/or been saying for years.

Now this next writing I thought was wild. I mean this next shit is the quintessential representation of what Mos Def was talkin' about on his track, "New World Water." I wonder if dude is a Mos Def fan

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WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF PRIVATE WATER

Water already costs more than gasoline. The consumption of water is doubling every 20 years, which is twice the rate of the human population. Already, there are a billion people who lack access to fresh drinking water. If the recent trend continues, the demand for fresh water in the year 2025 will be 56% MORE than the amount of water that is available.

In the last couple of years companies like Enron, Monsanto, Bechtel and others have begun seeking control of the world's water supplies, trying to monopolize them as much as possible. This has already caught the attention of the World Bank which begun exploring policies about water privatization. Last year a supertanker actually filled itself with water from Lake Erie and
brought the water to Southeast Asia.

So what are you to make of all this, or do about it? I'm not sure yet but I'm going to be watching this closely and I'll let you know. I can, however, tell you what Monsanto thinks about all this. They think they are going to have revenues of $420 million and earnings of $63 million in just seven years JUST from their water business in Mexico and India. They also believe it will be a multi-billion dollar market for them in the coming decades. Think that over too.

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Water: God's gift to the planet; the planet's gift to man; the world's most abundant resource, is VERY BIG BUSINESS, and is probably only gonna get bigger. "This is Madness." When will the Madness stop.



The following info. was taken from Mike's web site http://www.afs-seminars.com/about_michael.shtml

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Mr. Gasior founded American Financial Services in 1989 after spending time with several Wall Street firms and a major European bank. Using anecdotes and lessons drawn from his experience, he passes this hands-on knowledge to everyone in attendance. His teaching style is dynamic, interactive and heralded throughout the industry. When you register for any of our programs you are assured that you will spend your time with one of the world's finest teachers.

Mr. Gasior has held a host of securities licenses and industry designations. He has authored eight textbooks on investments and the investment markets and these textbooks are used in all of our programs.






























"Truth will make you depart from that which you say you believe." - NaSheed Fakhrid-Deen

"...And we are loved for being ignorant and hated if we are militant..." - Alafia Pudim of the Last Poets.

"The first generation of Negroes were INTIMIDATED BY white supremacy.
The second generation of Negroes WORSHIPPED white supremacy.
The new generation of Negroes IS white supremacy." - "Evolution" by Amiri Baraka