‘A-one, an-a-two,’ the ‘wunnerful, wunnerful’ world of Lawrence Welk and his Champagne Music.

August 27, 2011 | Author: Jeffrey Lant | Posted in Dr. Jeffrey Lant’s Article Archive

Lawrence Welk

By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. It’s a Saturday night in 1955, and you’re looking for entertainment. You want it bright, cheerful, positive, and free; the kind of program that taxes you intellectually not at all… but makes you smile with feel-good music delivered by feel-good people. You spin the dial and find a guy called “Lawrence Welk” and his Champagne Music. You give a listen… you like what you hear and thence forward every Saturday night is dedicated to the ultimate feel-good- guy Lawrence Welk, so expert at creating just the soothing ambiance you need.
This is the man and his music we’re celebrating today. Go now to any search engine and find his signature tune “Bubbles in the Wine”. Lay back, enjoy, and leave the cares of the real world far, far away… Born March 11, 1903 in Strasburg, North Dakota…
Lawrence Welk is arguably the most celebrated individual ever from the rolling hills and punishing climates of North Dakota. And he hated every single aspect of the state that remembers him so fondly now.
He hated Strasburg, a German-speaking community in the middle of nowhere.
He hated his father Ludwig… he hated his mother Christina… emigrants who started life in Odessa, Ukraine, then a part of imperial Russia… arriving in America in 1892…
He hated the sod house in which he grew up.
He hated farming, its backbreaking, never-ending chores and obligations.
He hated the bleakness of it all… and so he bided his time, daydreaming about a place over the rainbow that was anywhere other than where he was. A place where there were happy people, people with a song in their heart and some insistent, cheerful melody on the brain. He knew such a place existed… and he was sure he would find it.
His ticket out was a mail-order accordion. It sold for $400, a fortune in those days. He borrowed it from his unrelentingly pragmatic father, who essentially indentured him to the farm he hated until his 21st birthday or until this headstrong son paid off this astronomical sum. Part of the deal was that Lawrence take on extra paying work on other farms, too, every penny to go to his father. He did, with vengeance in his heart…
Punctilious in his obligation, young Welk on the occasion of his 21st birthday left everything he knew and hated, turning his back resolutely on his detested past. He and his accordion never looked back; they couldn’t. They had burned every bridge and outraged every familial tie. Failure was not an option…
There was hardship ahead…. lots of scheming and hopeful connivances… even days of despair as he strove to find his way…. But every moment that was less than perfect became the fuel to create this always happy, always perfect place of his imagining.
Welk in those early days of the 1920s was a blur of activity. He performed with bands lead by Luke Witkowski, Lincoln Boulds, George T. Kelly… and led the big bands of the dancing Dakotas, the Hotsy Totsy Boys… and the Honolulu Fruit Gum Orchestra. Then he did what he’d always been destined to do… he created his own band and started to craft the lighter-than-air sound that made him rich and famous worldwide. It was a style scoffed at by learned folks, discriminating folks, folks of hubris, condescension and arrogance… but a style embraced by the millions who knew a good thing when they heard it.
A ball of energy, always immaculately turned out, his dancing pumps oiled and shined, baton at the ready… and the celebrated smile about to be delivered with mega- watt brilliance, this was the Lawrence Welk of WNAX Radio, Yankton, South Dakota… and beyond… Always an optimist in hot pursuit of perfection and the better life he took time to study at the MacPhail School of Music in Minneapolis, Minnesota, from which he graduated in 1927.
This was the height of America’s gift to the world, the Jazz Age when a gyrating generation showed their disapproving parents how a body in motion could move in hepped up ways, contorted, nimble, thrilling to watch, soaring to dance. You probably never knew, or even imagined, that the Lawrence Welk of your memory in November, 1928 cut a popular ragtime record with his Novelty Orchestra, for Indiana-based Gennett Records. It was called “Spiked Beer” and it moooooooooved!
But jazz was not his metier; dance tunes and “sweet” music was… and he became a recognized master of an undemanding, smoothie sound that attracted real people, too often burdened by their difficult realities, especially during the Great Depression Welk and his trademark sound helped an often desperate, despairing nation get through… whistling and dancing, forced to move on, move out, move up… optimists all, down perhaps for a minute, but wisecracking as we got back on feet set in motion by the facile tunes of young Mr. Welk.
He kept Amerca dancing in the dark days America needed to dance more than ever… let’s hope that his parents (now a distant memory for Lawrence) came to recognize the swan they had brought forth amongst the chickens… maybe even on one-never-to- be-forgotten night dancing at the Farmstead to his lolly-pop confections, and smiling… If so, it was the only time champagne in any form entered what is now called the Ludwig and Christina Welk Farmplace, an attraction you can visit when next in Strasburg.
The Lawrence Welk Show.
In 1951, after cutting several records (including Spade Cooley’s popular “Shame on You” in 1945) and appearing in many motion pictures, where his increasingly inimitable sound became the perfect background for what were then called “Soundies”, Welk moved to Los Angeles, the most superficial metropolis on earth, where they welcomed him with open arms and where he launched The Lawrence Welk Show on KTLA radio, where it was broadcast live from the Aragon Ballroom at Venice Beach. What a piquant image that is… the smoothly oiled muscular bodies on the beach…. the even smoother sound of Lawrence Welk emanating from on high like so much star dust.
The show was a great hit… and was the proximate cause the ABC network picked up Welk for national distribution in June, 1955. It was here the family of Walt and Victoria Lauing, my maternal grandparents, enter the scene. It is because of them and their obsession with Lawrence Welk and his sound that I wrote this article at all, for they and millions like them were the reason he succeeded.
Walt and Vic, young and attractive, were South Dakota people, who probably heard Welk in his early days. By the time I was 10 or so (1957) they had imbibed a lifetime of champagne music. Minutes before the program began, every child present was hushed and bribed to stay that way… and all was ready for the imperial entrance of Walt and his lady, recliners at the ready. No sound but the bubbles in the wine was even allowed or tolerated for the next 60 minutes. The congregation was ready… the Maestro could commence.
I laughed, of course, and derided, as youngsters of smart-aleck tendencies will do but amongst the cascading effervescence there was love, veneration and gratitude. He was their sound…
That was why my grandmother wrote away for tickets to the program when she and Walt flew to California to see my mother, their daughter, and family . You see she meant to dance with Welk on air. Every week she saw a myriad of other blue-haired ladies stand in line for the chance of whirling in her favorite’s arms on nationwide television. My grandmother wanted that, too…
And so one Saturday night we witnessed her televised struggle to get to the head of the queue, only to discover that the other ladies were as determined as she was… and despite our cheers, she failed.
She didn’t blame her idol, of course; it wasn’t his fault he was so popular and desired. But we all felt it keenly. It was probably the only time he ever let a fan down, until in 1982, when as the nation’s oldest television host, he at last retired, age 79. His legacy and bouncing music live on in the Lawrence Welk Museum, Escondido, California. I’m sure the spirits of Walt and Vic visit… for he made them so very happy for so very long.
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About The Author
Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell <a http://HomeProfitCoach.com  Check out 7 Figure Success Formula ->  http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=ij6goAXm

The stamp of approval. U.S. Postal Service recognizes the USS Constitution, the world’s oldest floating commissioned naval vessel.

August 26, 2011 | Author: Jeffrey Lant | Posted in Dr. Jeffrey Lant’s Article Archive

By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. For this article no other song would do besides the jaunty, rousing fight song of the United States Naval Academy, “Anchors Aweigh.” Strongly associated, too, with the United States Navy, it was composed in 1906 by Charles A. Zimmerman with lyrics by Alfred Hart Miles. Zimmerman was at the time a Lieutenant, and had been bandmaster of the United States Naval Academy Band since 1887. Miles was Midshipman First Class at the Academy, in the class of 1907. The song was originally written for the class of ’07 to be used as a football march. It takes great fortitude and control not to jump and march when you hear its unmistakable sound. I own up to having neither when the band in full swing goes by playing this. Go now to any search engine and find the rendition you like best. Then play it loud and clear to get yourself into the mood for this tale of “Old Ironsides.”
“Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!”
Perhaps the most perilous battle she faced, literally a matter of life and death occurred in September, 1830 when the pettifogging bureaucrats in the naval department, eager to pinch pennies, ordered the greatest ship of the young Republic, now past her prime, to be broken up, just so much salvage.
A young Boston Brahmin named Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. learned of this intended act of short-sighted barbarism while at breakfast reading the “Boston Daily Advertiser.” At one he decided to take action to save the ship which could no longer fight to save herself. He titled his fast-penned poem “Old Ironsides” and it ran September 16, 1830.
“Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky; Beneath it rung the battle shout, And burst the cannon’s roar; The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the clouds no more.
Her deck, once red with heroes’ blood, Where knelt the vanquished foe, When winds were hurrying o’er the flood, And waves were white below, No more shall feel the victor’s tread, Or know the conquered knee; The harpies of the shore shall pluck The eagle of the sea.
Oh, better that her shattered bulk Should sink beneath the wave; Her thunders shook the mighty deep, And there should be her grave; Nail to her mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms, The lighting and the gale!”
By the evening of the 16th, author Holmes was famous… and his fervent verses, overwrought, overdone, overfraught, were making even the most committed pennypinchers abashed and ashamed. “Old Ironsides” was saved… but it was a very close run thing. One shudders to think what would have happened had young Mr. Holmes not been of a poetical disposition.
The great warship is born, 1797.
Now that the former American colonies had become the new American nation, the powerful British fleet, which had always protected them and cost them nothing, became the new nation’s prime antagonist. Thus, this nation found itself in the unenviable position of having virtually no ships to protect them and their crucial maritime commerce. Constructing a navy became a priority, at least for the mercantile East and New England. It was their ships and cargoes, after all, their British antagonists aimed to capture and disrupt.
And so, the USS Constitution, named by President George Washington, was authorized as one of 6 original frigates by the Naval Act of 1794. These ships were larger and more heavily armed and built than standard frigates of the period, a fact which was very important for all six ships, but particularly Constitution, which used this advantage to earn the most glorious battle record of them all.
Right from the first, she was needed and served in the Quasi-War with France (1798) and in the war against the Barbary pirates, practiced thieves of North Africa who had hitherto preyed with impunity on American vessels and crews. Constitution helped win the First Barbary War (1801). But these useful services were just a preface to her greatest service in the otherwise lackluster and regrettable War of 1812, a conflict both Americans and British wanted, but brought neither laurels, treasure, territory or satisfaction.
In this conflict, only the Constitution and its string of oceanic victories stood out, so much so that the British Admiralty ruled that warships combating Constitution and her sisters should never fight alone, only in packs. It was testament to just how good these vessels were, especially Constitution. She defeated one of His Majesty’s ships after another… each victory thrilled a nation irritated, frustrated, exasperated by what the American army couldn’t seem to do… and by a similar lack of results by other ships of the brand new navy.
But Constitution caused Americans to rush to the harbor and shout “Huzzah” as news arrived about victory… first, over the Guerriere. This was the engagement which gave Constitution its celebrated sobriquet. For cannon balls shot from the doomed British warship seemed to bounce off Constitution without effect. An unknown sailor shouted, “Her sides are made of iron!”… and the nickname stuck, to thrill the proud nation which looked for any hopeful news to cheer at in this entirely unhappy war.
HMS Java was next… then HMS Cyane… and HMS Levant… and HMS Lord Nelson, bearing the most famous name in British naval history… captured as a prize along with everything needed to celebrate Christmas, a meal they so enjoyed… with one toast after another heartily drunk from the defeated captain’s fine liquors. How sweet that was… and sweeter still the cheers, plaudits, and resounding thanks of the nation when on 15 May, 1815 she came home, full of honors and renown.
Now what?
As navy men will tell you, each new ship embodies the best of current technology; as these ships are launched they push previous vessels to obsolescence and the scrap heap, for there is nothing so useless as a vessel, costing money everyday, without the ability to fulfill its bellicose purpose. No ship, not even ones covered with glory like Constitution, can avoid this sad fate. Thus as she aged, the vultures and scrap metal merchants circled… and for all her victories, she also would have been broken up, no more to sail, protect the nation, and make every citizen proud. Sic transit gloria mundi. But providence intervened in the person of Mr. Holmes and his facile pen.
The subsequent history of Constitution and how she continued to serve is mundane compared to her maritime glories. No matter. She survived, though there were always those ready to sacrifice the legendary vessel to save a few pence. Her luck held… not least because of the many who worked mightily to save her and give her the honorable place in the Navy as the world’s oldest floating commissioned warship along with a museum which opened in 1976, the same year H.M. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip trod her decks when they visited Boston as part of the nation’s Bicentennial observations. Her ancestor George III, owner of the ships humbled by Constitution, no doubt spun in his imperial grave.
Now, just in time for the Bicentennial of the War of 1812, the U.S. Postal Service has released the design for an “Old Ironsides” stamp. The beleaguered postal service, in the process of closing 3,700 post offices throughout the United States, hopes to use Constitution to sell commemoratives for needed funds. And because closing post offices means losing such sales… they have launched this new stamp on Facebook, thereby hoping to reach millions of folks of philatelic bent. And so her good uses continue… her future now, we hope, secured. Next time you visit Boston, do visit, for she has always been one of the glories of the nation and so she remains.
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About The Author
Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell <a http://HomeProfitCoach.com  Check out 7 Figure Success Formula ->  http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=ij6goAXm

How a perky housewife from Minnesota gets up to 5,000 responses to her blog each and every day… and how you can do as well, or even better!

Posted on August 25, 2011

How a perky housewife from Minnesota gets up to 5,000 responses to her blog each and every day… and how you can do as well, or even better!

Grygla, Minnesota

By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. This is the tale of someone who has achieved the kind of astonishing online results and amazing ongoing traffic that you wish you had. Her name is Diane Dohrn and she’s one of the handful of residents from Grygla, Minnesota (population 228)… a place that looks like a suburb of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon… the town where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.
For this article, therefore, I selected some music by perennial local favorite Lawrence Welk and his Champagne Music Makers. Go to any search engine and find his signature tune “Bubbles in the wine.” Sit back in your recliner and enjoy the effervescence of the lady from Grygla and a success story that’ll make you smile….with all the necessary details so you can match her already great and always growing success.
When I first met Diane…
I first met Diane Dohrn a little over 18 months ago when she came to me seeking my help and advice about how to succeed online. Frankly, she needed all of the assistance I could provide; she was in a bad way just then in her life and fortune. She told me a story so typical on the ‘net as to be endemic… She’d been in this opportunity; she’d been in that. She had paid out thousands and reaped pennies. She had no tools for success… no traffic… she’d never had a moment’s training… and, until my advent, she’d had absolutely no one to assist her. And now she was desperate… with acute family difficulties… and her own disability to contend with. In short, she had nowhere to go but… up.
At bottom, she still had two crucial advantages: 1) me and 2) her own “never say die” determination that I came to know so well — and admire.
She was willing to listen…
People with problems say they want solutions… but in fact what they really want is the opportunity to vent… to bewail their lot in the world, do the “poor little me” thing… then rant and rant some more. In short they don’t really want a solution… they want a willing ear to chew on. But that’s not how money gets made. I told Diane, who came with some of these weepies, that I’d help IF and ONLY if she would focus on a series of online business building steps, including specific traffic building exercises she would need to do daily to grow the all-important traffic.
She agreed… and she kept her bargain, although it was sometimes tough for the lady when I absolutely refused to listen to items from the latest installment of “As Diane’s World Turns…”
She needed traffic… traffic…more traffic… and even more traffic. And that was where I kept our focus, with lessons on the effective use of traffic exchanges, safe lists, forums, and article directories where you develop crucial back links. An avid learner, she did herself the favor of listening to what I said, asking intelligent questions, and doing the tasks. To her surprise (but not mine) she began to generate traffic at once… and more each day. Especially as she began to understand and master one absolutely crucial traffic generating tool, which in due time she was to make her own traffic- generating machine. This marvel was the blog… and right from the start, it proved to be her forte so much so that I quickly saw that Diane Dorhn was not just going to master the blog, develop huge daily traffic from it… but become one of the true blog titans of the ‘net. Now she had my full attention, and we worked together less as teacher and student… but rather as 2 colleagues not just interested in how far the lady could take this…. but obsessed with the desire to raise Diane and her traffic to hitherto unimaginable heights. We were rockin’ and rollin’… Note for the blogless.
If you’re an online entrepreneur of any kind, trying to get huge daily traffic, you MUST have a blog. This is not negotiable. You see, a blog is your personal communications vehicle. It enables you to present and deliver your message. It is 100 percent you, 100 percent of the time. Say what you want, say it just the way you want.
The key to a blog is ensuring that it offers readers the best possible content. “Content is king,” Bill Gates famously said. That’s the kind of content you must have for your blog; content that gets people to read — and respond. Diane was fretful about this point. She worried that she have the time or skills to produce the high level content her blog and readers required daily. What could she do?
That’s where I really entered the picture, as an essential element of her success… for you see, I produce the champagne of blog content, and I produce it in 27 information categories from politics through ecology and just plain good stories; my content is sophisticated, readable, intelligent, timely, well written… and (most significantly) it gets astonishingly high reader response, as Diane came to know at once; right from the start these articles (and I write a new one each day) generated responses… lots and lots of them.
Thus, each day Diane starts by selecting the article of the day, the article that will anchor that blog and be its focus.
Then she follows a daily regime which she has followed, refined and developed over time. It goes like this:
1) Check Kstats first thing. Additionally check it several times each day to see the results on every article she has ever blogged.
2) Prepare today’s article. Select it, copy to Word. Then add all the necessary videos, links, trackbacks, pictures, etc. Diane knows that even great copy is better, more arresting, with such features. (By the way she keeps all this on Wordpad.)
3) She looks up the subject of the designated article in any major search engine. She likes to do this so she can make an intelligent comment on the article.
4) Before she sends her daily blog (first thing each morning), she visits other blogs to get ideas for the improvement of hers. She never assumes she has a monopoly on this subject; she looks for what others can tell her about her blog, the better to improve it. She told me she visits between 35-50 blogs daily, to keep up on developments in the field, get ideas, inspiration, etc. I believe it!
5) She then reads through this daily blog post a couple of times looking for typos and so on. A journalist’s daughter, she is a stickler for mistake-free copy… as a result her blog is clean, without the distracting errors made by other, less careful, blogsters.
6) Her blog always contains a great offer. Diane never forgets that the purpose of a blog is to make money, and so she works hard on her offers… both on the ones she makes in her blog… and the ones she makes when her readers respond. Because of the volume of her responses, she works on this for hours each day… and that really pays off…
One more thing she does…
Diane generously insists on my role in her success. She points to what she calls her “Internet bible” which contains Internet traffic, marketing and business building tips I have given her, live in my online programs and through my huge library of blog articles. She says, “When I need a lift, this is where I go. They are priceless.”
That’s the woman all over…
The truth is, the person who has contributed the most to Diane’s success is… Diane. She’s risen from no traffic at all to getting up to 5,000 responses EACH and EVERY day, without exception. Her own personality and approach to her thousands of blog readers is what makes the critical difference. She’s a small town Iowa girl and has retained the sincerity, empathy and quintessential Midwestern directness and candor of the heartland. Diane is authentic to her fingertips. She likes people; likes to help… and this shines through.
Now thousands of new people will learn about Diane and take heart if, like most online, they have had absolutely no success. That can and should stop now… for the best thing Diane can do is make you understand that the huge results she has already received are fully duplicatable and can be done off the kitchen table. Only one thing is missing from this system… and that is the great heart of the lady herself. That is all her own… and we admire her all the more for what she does with it to help so many for she remembers her roots and the help she got when she needed it most. This is why with her blog, she has not got just readers… but friends.
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About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Jeffrey Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books and considered a home business expert. Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell http://HomeProfitCoach.com.Check out Income Times Ten ->
http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=yn40IcBV

America’s newest national monument debuts, dedicated to The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. What we must never forget about the man and his resounding message.

Posted on August 24, 2011

By Dr. Jeffrey Lant


Author’s program note. Only one song would do for this of all articles, the iconic anthem of the American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968), “We Shall Overcome.”
It was not so much a song as a declaration of purpose and profound resolve, one that did not merely state and celebrate the destination… but constituted a collective pledge, renewed with each singing, that adherents were united in mind, body and purpose; for they would need all that, and more, as they moved towards the inspiring goal of equality, where people who were divided by tradition, at last forged unity from divisiveness.
“We Shall Overcome” is a protest song. The lyrics are derived from the refrain of a gospel song by Charles Albert Tindley. It was first published in 1947 in the People’s Song Bulletin, a publication of People’s Songs, an organization of which Pete Seeger was the director. The song became associated with the Civil Rights Movement from 1959, when Guy Carawan launched it as the most famous, motivating, and ultimately elegiac song of the movement; their soaring battle hymn. It was what the oppressed people, their adherents and their resolute opponents heard when fire hoses were turned on them, dogs ordered to snarl and bite, and truncheons beat down upon the pilgrims sore beset.
There were many heroes in those days, but not yet a Hero who would rise above the others and become the very heartbeat of the movement, its public face and voice to the world.
That man had not yet emerged, but his first important moment was about to take place… in Birmingham, Alabama, where from a prison cell he was about to instruct his followers, his opponents, and a world oppressed by a panoply of civil rights abuses in what a man who believes in justice must do.
Consider this man now, on the threshold of history. He is mortal, frail, fragile, with profound doubts, hesitations and an acute consciousness of his inadequacies. He, like so many Heroes hoped that he would not have to be what he was in process of becoming; he hoped others would shoulder a substantial part of the burden. But History is infallible. It saw, as the individual did not, that this man could rise above his own demons and limitations… to become what the movement must have to succeed: a moral compass, a higher purpose, a complete humanity, and the ability to be beaten down, bitten, spat on, bruised, and beaten again — and yet love his tormenters, direct the anger of his people towards benign purpose, and always get up… showing that violence, any violence, could not stop him… and so would not stop the movement either. This was sublime! This was what the man was on this planet to do… though he did not entirely know this yet.
And so in April, 1963 he went to the most bigoted city in America, likely the most segregated, the least hospitable to its black inhabitants, the city that taught the nation how to insult, condescend, intimidate, and, all too often, to kill people of color for being born and being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was the capital of every finely turned, exquisite form of segregation and haters of every kind looked first to Birmingham as the citadel of their embittered beliefs, the fortress for immemorial hate that every black citizen knew only too well.
And so Martin Luther King, Jr. went to Birmingham as he went to so many fateful destinations… because it was necessary, because it was the right thing to do, because the people needed succor and relief and he had that to give and to spare.
The Birmingham event was a planned non-violent protest conducted by the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights and King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference against racial segregation by Birmingham’s city government and downtown retailers. He was among the first arrested… the first taken harshly, insistently to his “suite” in Birmingham City Jail. It had to be a shock, jolting, demeaning, insulting, humiliating for this man who so loved life and life’s pleasures, more accustomed to the Word of God than the execrations of man.
But he had something to say, something which he had clearly thought about for some time, because he wrote without hesitation its profound message of import to all the world and its downtrodden.
King responds to eight white Alabama clergyman who opposed his visit to Birmingham.
On April 12, 1963 eight local clergymen offered Dr. King the benefit of their erudition and desire to defuse the anxious situation and rescue the imperiled status quo. These leaders of the church did what so many such have done over the ages. Bereft of courage, with cloudy vision, and a desire to safeguard their own positions and pulpits, they wrote Dr. King to leave… to let things take their course… to stop the violence and be patient… it would be, they were quite clear, so much better so. They didn’t have to say it would be better for them…
Dr. King was bruised in body and spirit as he arrived at the city jail. He must have wondered how he came there and whether against so much hatred he could achieve his goal. He must have wondered, too, at how many people already relied upon him… and of the terrible sacrifices he might ask them to make, even unto death itself. At such a time, a man, any man, might so wonder and reflect.
But then he read the sentiments of these local clergymen about his mission to Birmingham, criticizing it as “unwise and untimely”. He read these words, and he knew at once what he must do… and so the words of high portent and unmistakable conviction came swiftly.
He started his response in the way any disagreeing minister might have addressed a colleague, professionally, directly, pointedly. But this was not destined to be such a letter between Christian clergy of differing views. He had a higher purpose, and it was soon apparent. He meant to remind (if they knew), to teach (if they didn’t) his fellow clerics a fundamental precept of their ministries. He aimed to show them, once, for all, clearly, that justice was their business, the very heart of their business and he meant his message to be stern, unequivocal, a bell summoning all to recognition of their profound duties.
First he reminded these clergymen of the South, with their regional blindness, that the issue was not Southern, but American — “Anyone who lives in the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds”. In short, what was happening in Birmingham and what made the demonstration necessary was not merely a Birmingham problem or a Southern problem… it was an American problem (not to mention by quick extension a universal problem of long suffering humanity.)
And so he built his case for action now point by irrefutable point, making the considered advice of the local clergy seem like what it was, a self-serving argument keeping the blacks in their place, patient in the face of intimidation, outrage, and a white wrath ready to explode into legally sanctioned outrages against black citizens at any time.
Thus did King find the voice of moral certainty, the voice which freed so many and which resulted in time in the sacrifice of his very life, taken by those who came to know him as the dreaded prophet of black deliverance, and so necessary to destroy.
“Injustice,” he trumpeted, “anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” The haters, the entrenched segregationists, the racial purists, the purveyors of inequitable laws and legal terrorism and abuse, for all that they wrote volumes in support of their unsustainable opinions never uttered a phrase so powerful as this… a phrase that showed just where right and a better future lay. He signed his soon-to-be-world- famous “Letter from Birmingham City Jail”, “Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood” and had it smuggled out in a toothpaste tube to avoid the jail’s guards.
Now this man has morphed into mythology with a grandiose civic temple for his observances. The architect Chinese artist Lei Yixin has been criticized for his work. No matter. Any architect’s work and vision would have found censure in the eyes of the jealous others who were not selected. But the truth is, this monument will soon be amongst the most popular, for all that the great monuments to Jefferson, Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt are near at hand.
“Now,” borrowing Edward Stanton’s words on Lincoln, King “belongs to the ages.” Here his greatest challenge will be in so inspiring those who follow in his footsteps, that his timeless message remains timely and is not forgotten by all those so beholden to the man who is now enshrined amidst among the worthies of the Great Republic his life’s work so enhanced.
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About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Jeffrey Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books.
 Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell <a http://HomeProfitCoach.com  Check out 7 Figure Success Formula ->  http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=ij6goAXm

An open letter to every ambitious junior manager in the world from your most dedicated supporter, me.

Posted on August 23, 2011

An open letter to every ambitious junior manager in the world from your most dedicated supporter, me.

August 23, 2011 | Author: Jeffrey Lant | Posted in Dr. Jeffrey Lant’s Article Archive

 
By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. In 1961 New York City went to work with a smile on its face and a can’t-help-but-like-it rhythm on the brain. It was Robert Morse and the ensemble of “How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” by author Shepherd Mead and composer Frank Loesser.
It is a story of corporate ascension, told through the mischievous eyes of J. Pierrepont (Ponty) Finch…. and, if corporate elysium was your goal, you just couldn’t get enough of this “I’m destined for success” production.
One of the most clever tunes in this so-very-clever show was “I believe in you,” in which Ponty stands in front of a mirror and serenades his most enduring supporter — himself. Now, before you begin this article about your success, go to any search engine to find this number. Then get prepared to let the irrepressible Morse, with that killer grin, provide the musical incense to waft you on your way.
Dear Junior Manager….
Every successful person in the world (including Ponty) has had something which you too must get… and which is now available to you and not a moment too soon.
Woodrow Wilson had Colonel House. Franklin D. Roosevelt had Harry Hopkins. Queen Victoria had Prince Albert while Prince Albert had Baron Stockmar… In other words, part of the kit of every successful person everywhere is the disinterested, devoted-to-you, completely honest and fearlessly outspoken confidential advisor. And now you join the ranks of these with your brand new completely candid counselor, coach, and goad… me. Nice to meet you, partner!
Here’s your situation. You are now a junior manager, a member of your company’s management cadre. Your foot on the first rung of business success, just. Congratulations, the thousand mile journey starts with a single step. Now the game becomes moving up the corporate ladder as quickly and nimbly as possible, leaving your less agile and well advised competitors in the dust. Here’s your first installment of insider information.
!) Your attitude determines your altitude.
Did you ever notice how really successful people maintain an upbeat “can do” attitude, even when (maybe especially when) the going gets rough? As Henry Ford II famously said, “You think you can. You think you can’t. Either way you’re right.” Success seekers know that the right attitude is the essential attribute for facing each day of what can often be a most complicated, difficult, and daunting business, your life.
2) Know the players.
In every organization, there are people who matter… and people who don’t. Your job, whilst always being pleasant and amicable to all, is to identify the power players, the players who are where they are with the powers they have for one reason and one reason only — to abet you in your upward mobility. Successful people are discriminating people. They know time is fleeting and that each day is an opportunity to move up… movement that can be either assisted or blocked by those currently higher in the pecking order. It is your job to make a knowledgeable friend with the business, someone older, wiser, better placed than you are… someone like the CEO’s long-time secretary and executive assistant. She knows things which you need to know. Make it a point to introduce yourself…. start the relationship off by being bright, cheerful, friendly, and always respectful and grateful for their willingness to assist — you. Make it a point particularly to greet this important contact daily; insinuate by bringing a dough-nut, a flower from the garden… and always your best manners and winning smile, always necessary.
Important insights: never wait for an introduction to the people you want and need to meet. Presumption is the root of success… presume that these people want to meet someone who’s as dedicated to the success of the enterprise as you are. You can, of course, after you’ve begun to develop that crucial relationship with your important inside source, ask that individual to introduce you. Remember, timing is everything; you cannot ask for introductions too soon… and you should never wait too long to request them. Too, you must never ask for too many. You’ll find out from your confidential source who is essential for you to know for openers… keep your eye on meeting, and impressing, this person, a rung in your ladder.
3) With friendship towards all, with intimacy with few.
Have you ever watched the people of your business as they come to work, who they greet, josh and joke with — and ignore. Now hear this: EVERYONE in your company, from the obvious highest to the often forgotten lowest has a place in your upward mobility. Most people, not as well advised as you of course, close relationships which it is easy and useful to maintain. Sure the custodian may not be the sharpest tool in the shed; it costs you nothing to treat this person with friendliness and good manners; someday you’ll be glad for that relationship, because I can assure you he has information that you will need… and which you’ll be grateful he gives you. In short, never disdain anyone. That is what the unenlightened and feckless do… not you!
4) Listen to the grumblers; never become one.
In every company there exists a group of grumblers, who have long ago forgotten (if indeed they ever knew) that assisting the business grow and thrive must be their goal, not denigrating it at every turn. Such grumblers are often headed by an overweight diva named Trudy whose motor mouth and nasty hygiene offend everyone. You must learn how to handle such people, just so. Always listen respectfully to what they say; there may, after all, be something worth hearing mixed into the bile. Maintain friendly, professional relations. But never, never join or be perceived as a part of this noisome claque. Such people are poison to your certain ascension.
Your task with such people is to establish and maintain what diplomatists call “correct” relations, relations which are totally and completely professional, which keep the door open, but never demand you go through. Remember, information is power. Remember, too, ALL information is useful at a particular point. Thus gather what is useful, to be retained and used later as necessary and useful for — you.
5) Be conscious at all times.
People who succeed are people of discernment, perception, judgement. They do not, as those who fail do, ever stop being aware. Too many people, including many who work at your company (but never including you) have long ago slipped into the rut of merely going through the motions of what is required to do their job. They have lost consciousness of what they are doing, why they are doing it, and how what they are doing can be used for their advancement. Dropping into this state of oblivion is absolutely fatal and can never be allowed.
You must do things very differently.
If you want the kind of organizational advancement with all its perqs as you say you do, then you must stay alert, conscious, always scrutinizing, analyzing, aiming for complete and total awareness of your situation and what you must do every day to advance, advance, advance!
And so our session for today ends, the first I trust of many. For I intend to provide you, over a long duration, the kind of rare and insightful advice at once desirable, hard to find and yet so necessary. By all means, come visit my blog, a site entirely dedicated to your success and always awaiting you. For you see, as Robert Morse sang in his signature number, “I believe in you…”
* * * * *
About The Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Jeffrey Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books.
 Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell <a http://HomeProfitCoach.com  Check out 7 Figure Success Formula ->  http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=ij6goAXm

The Book “Home Business Tax Savings MADE EASY!”

Posted on August 22, 2011

“Home Business Tax Savings MADE EASY!”
“Home Business Tax Savings MADE EASY!”
This is the ONLY plain English guide to home-based business tax deductions authorized by Congress. This powerful, yet simple to read step-by-step guide
will introduce you to:
Big tax breaks available to home-based business owners,
Exactly how to qualify for each of them, and
How to easily keep bullet-proof tax records.
The average home business owner is overpaying his or her taxes
by at least $20 a day because of what they don’t know. “Information
is power, but lack of information is expensive!
Get Ron Mueller’s Easy Step by Step Guide Now!
“Home Business Tax Savings, Made Easy!”
Click this link to see the book that WILL save you thousands!
http://www.kickstartcart.com/app/?Clk=3377536
This is the ONLY plain English guide to home-based business tax deductions authorized by Congress. This powerful, yet simple to read step-by-step guide
will introduce you to:
Big tax breaks available to home-based business owners,
Exactly how to qualify for each of them, and
How to easily keep bullet-proof tax records.
The average home business owner is overpaying his or her taxes
by at least $20 a day because of what they don’t know. “Information
is power, but lack of information is expensive!
Get Ron Mueller’s Easy Step by Step Guide Now!
“Home Business Tax Savings, Made Easy!”
Click this link to see the book that WILL save you thousands!
http://www.kickstartcart.com/app/?Clk=3377536

‘To the shores of Tripoli’, let freedom ring as one of the world’s nastiest and most enduring tyrants dies by inches. The end of Moammar Khadafy.

Posted on August 22, 2011

Dr. Jeffrey Lant Author’s program note.
Like so many of my Scottish countrymen, my family left the Highlands in the mid-eighteenth century to pursue a better life in America. But though they left physically, a portion of their heart remained behind and their love continued strong and enduring. The current events taking place in Libya returned my attention to the cruel end of PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland when 270 innocent passengers were shredded in mid-air to satisfy the blood lust and barbarism of one man, Moammar Khadafy. Today this most bestial, longest-serving dictator in the Arab world, is inches from the retribution he has long deserved and is hopefully as painful as his deeds demand. But first, take a moment to find the evocative, spectral song “Loch Lomond” in any search engine. Let it sooth the spirits of the airborne dead and remind them, we have never forgotten what Khadafy, his henchmen, and their hatred did to you… and to so many innocent others. Today the remnants of Khadafy’s insolent regime are crumbing, block by block, desertion by desertion, as the everyday people of Tripoli, and throughout Libya, do what they have not been allowed to do for the nearly 42 year regime — think for themselves! Live for themselves! Be who they want… not merely whom they have been told to be. Today is one of the rarest days for one of the world’s oldest civilizations… a day of possibilities, not restrictions. A day of high hopes, not of grinding despair. A day when the heart beats faster and when the world’s peoples extend the hand of friendship and fraternity… glad to share the joy of a people who have experienced so little of it. This is 21 August, 2011 and their long dreaded, capricious lord comes closer, closer to his inevitable conclusion, squalid, bloody, wherein the reigning monster of their long terror is shown to be what he always was, a man of small mind, mendacious habits, and contempt for every human but himself. And so the great man is revealed and abased… humbled… and shown to be at the end so very little. So now this man of hatred, contumely, and abuse is reaping what he had sown day by day…. Today is a day which looks resolutely forward, for today the people of Libya, who have and have always had under this regime, so very little, at least have the prospect of a future. But today must also be a day of full remembrance for the full litany of dislocations, murders, maimings, disappearances, and ceaseless terrors perpetrated by a regime with power but no vision, weapons but no soul, destructive prowess but without humanity and compassion. Let us pause to remember them now… and vow that these outrages, every one of these outrages, will never be forgotten and stand as a vital testament to the never-ending saga of what a man is capable of doing when the world stands by and pretends that this diabolic business as usual is acceptable. So now tolls the bell, for each and every one of these outrages, each a manifestation of malice aforethought… As one of his first deeds, Khadafy in 1970 expelled the Italian population of Libya. He detested all Westerners… and ordered the extirpation of all evidence of their culture… and their systematic dislocation and removal. From the first days of his power, and reaching full speed and application by 1973, he became the living symbol of Orwell’s Big Brother. Dictators all have a compelling need to know what their peoples are doing at all times and places. Khadafy’s need to know was the very essence of dictatorial thoroughness. Surveillance took place at every level of the government, on all people in any position of power, no matter that he had put those people there himself. Surveillance was constant, intrusive, paralyzing in factories, in education, in the military, everywhere where two or more people might meet and converse. In short order, human behavior, human contact, human interaction in Libya became just what “Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution” permitted, and absolutely nothing else, upon pain of unimaginable suffering and horror. Libya was not a nation; it was a prison, where everyone was in thrall to a man of unmatched skill in the business of refined and exquisite torments, His capacity for inflicting sufferings developed apace… He hung dissidents to his all-encompassing regime in public, the better to intimidate. He headed a band of zealots perfect in the art of mutilation; so happy in this severe art that he had its execution and best examples played on television, to a nation which never failed to grasp the glaring meaning: so could thy life end, in an instant, with such pain. But this quintessence of evil had more pain and suffering to deliver… He censored the press, of course, by the simple expedient not just of suppressing content but by killing its writers, brutally and publicly, so that the ones not executed today would not even think of thinking, much less writing and publishing the brutal truths they knew to be irrefutable. He executed, too, after the full panoply of torture, all those who sought national redemption through means political. Their moment of dissent was their last. They went to prison where they experienced the full pain humans can inflict. Such outrages against humanity were constant, brutal, the stuff of everyday existence for every Libyan. Of course, he had a special regard for the growing ranks of his critics worldwide… they were a menace, a problem, and as such he increased the ranks of his thorough executioners, the better to diminish, and painfully so, the ranks of the disaffected. There is more, much more, every instance an outrage to every sentiment that makes us human. And at last, Libyans, who saw nothing more for their lives than the constant chaos and confusion of their existence, saw that revolt was their only hope against a regime without any limit to the abuses perpetrated against the long suffering Libyan people. On 17 February, 2011 major political protests began, as Libyans looked carefully at the events that had toppled the Mubarak tyranny in Egypt and called forth the admiration of the world, in their attempt to become the men they were, the men Khadafy had tried so long and with such bitter means to control. Khadafy, with more men at his command, more armaments, more mercenaries, more money yet failed to eradicate the often ramshackle forces against him. The reason could be deduced in a single word: FREEDOM. Khadafy sought to control, to regiment, to hurt and divide. His opponents, whose names are now the names of patriots, wanted only one thing: for the people of Libya to control their own destinies, free from the daily terrors and anxieties each knew so well under the current regime. And so, bit by bit, they advanced… never without hardship, never without the immemorial difficulties of war, experiencing want, sacrifice, their own political difficulties and conflicts… but still, despite every drawback, they advanced… until today the end of the regime is nigh, perhaps just hours away. These are the valiant days in Tripoli… the days proud men of action will impart to their grandchildren. It is a great day not just for Libyans but for all of us who value freedom and know its unending cost. Today all us ride with you through streets of Tripoli, optimistic, hopeful, grateful for your courage and application in a cause we all must hold dear. * * * * * About The Author ant Author’s program note. Like so many of my Scottish countrymen, my family left the Highlands in the mid-eighteenth century to pursue a better life in America. But though they left physically, a portion of their heart remained behind and their love continued strong and enduring. The current events taking place in Libya returned my attention to the cruel end of PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland when 270 innocent passengers were shredded in mid-air to satisfy the blood lust and barbarism of one man, Moammar Khadafy. Today this most bestial, longest-serving dictator in the Arab world, is inches from the retribution he has long deserved and is hopefully as painful as his deeds demand. But first, take a moment to find the evocative, spectral song “Loch Lomond” in any search engine. Let it sooth the spirits of the airborne dead and remind them, we have never forgotten what Khadafy, his henchmen, and their hatred did to you… and to so many innocent others. Today the remnants of Khadafy’s insolent regime are crumbing, block by block, desertion by desertion, as the everyday people of Tripoli, and throughout Libya, do what they have not been allowed to do for the nearly 42 year regime — think for themselves! Live for themselves! Be who they want… not merely whom they have been told to be. Today is one of the rarest days for one of the world’s oldest civilizations… a day of possibilities, not restrictions. A day of high hopes, not of grinding despair. A day when the heart beats faster and when the world’s peoples extend the hand of friendship and fraternity… glad to share the joy of a people who have experienced so little of it. This is 21 August, 2011 and their long dreaded, capricious lord comes closer, closer to his inevitable conclusion, squalid, bloody, wherein the reigning monster of their long terror is shown to be what he always was, a man of small mind, mendacious habits, and contempt for every human but himself. And so the great man is revealed and abased… humbled… and shown to be at the end so very little. So now this man of hatred, contumely, and abuse is reaping what he had sown day by day…. Today is a day which looks resolutely forward, for today the people of Libya, who have and have always had under this regime, so very little, at least have the prospect of a future. But today must also be a day of full remembrance for the full litany of dislocations, murders, maimings, disappearances, and ceaseless terrors perpetrated by a regime with power but no vision, weapons but no soul, destructive prowess but without humanity and compassion. Let us pause to remember them now… and vow that these outrages, every one of these outrages, will never be forgotten and stand as a vital testament to the never-ending saga of what a man is capable of doing when the world stands by and pretends that this diabolic business as usual is acceptable. So now tolls the bell, for each and every one of these outrages, each a manifestation of malice aforethought… As one of his first deeds, Khadafy in 1970 expelled the Italian population of Libya. He detested all Westerners… and ordered the extirpation of all evidence of their culture… and their systematic dislocation and removal. From the first days of his power, and reaching full speed and application by 1973, he became the living symbol of Orwell’s Big Brother. Dictators all have a compelling need to know what their peoples are doing at all times and places. Khadafy’s need to know was the very essence of dictatorial thoroughness. Surveillance took place at every level of the government, on all people in any position of power, no matter that he had put those people there himself. Surveillance was constant, intrusive, paralyzing in factories, in education, in the military, everywhere where two or more people might meet and converse. In short order, human behavior, human contact, human interaction in Libya became just what “Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution” permitted, and absolutely nothing else, upon pain of unimaginable suffering and horror. Libya was not a nation; it was a prison, where everyone was in thrall to a man of unmatched skill in the business of refined and exquisite torments, His capacity for inflicting sufferings developed apace… He hung dissidents to his all-encompassing regime in public, the better to intimidate. He headed a band of zealots perfect in the art of mutilation; so happy in this severe art that he had its execution and best examples played on television, to a nation which never failed to grasp the glaring meaning: so could thy life end, in an instant, with such pain. But this quintessence of evil had more pain and suffering to deliver… He censored the press, of course, by the simple expedient not just of suppressing content but by killing its writers, brutally and publicly, so that the ones not executed today would not even think of thinking, much less writing and publishing the brutal truths they knew to be irrefutable. He executed, too, after the full panoply of torture, all those who sought national redemption through means political. Their moment of dissent was their last. They went to prison where they experienced the full pain humans can inflict. Such outrages against humanity were constant, brutal, the stuff of everyday existence for every Libyan. Of course, he had a special regard for the growing ranks of his critics worldwide… they were a menace, a problem, and as such he increased the ranks of his thorough executioners, the better to diminish, and painfully so, the ranks of the disaffected. There is more, much more, every instance an outrage to every sentiment that makes us human. And at last, Libyans, who saw nothing more for their lives than the constant chaos and confusion of their existence, saw that revolt was their only hope against a regime without any limit to the abuses perpetrated against the long suffering Libyan people. On 17 February, 2011 major political protests began, as Libyans looked carefully at the events that had toppled the Mubarak tyranny in Egypt and called forth the admiration of the world, in their attempt to become the men they were, the men Khadafy had tried so long and with such bitter means to control. Khadafy, with more men at his command, more armaments, more mercenaries, more money yet failed to eradicate the often ramshackle forces against him. The reason could be deduced in a single word: FREEDOM. Khadafy sought to control, to regiment, to hurt and divide. His opponents, whose names are now the names of patriots, wanted only one thing: for the people of Libya to control their own destinies, free from the daily terrors and anxieties each knew so well under the current regime. And so, bit by bit, they advanced… never without hardship, never without the immemorial difficulties of war, experiencing want, sacrifice, their own political difficulties and conflicts… but still, despite every drawback, they advanced… until today the end of the regime is nigh, perhaps just hours away. These are the valiant days in Tripoli… the days proud men of action will impart to their grandchildren. It is a great day not just for Libyans but for all of us who value freedom and know its unending cost. Today all us ride with you through streets of Tripoli, optimistic, hopeful, grateful for your courage and application in a cause we all must hold dear. * * * * * About The Author Author’s program note. Like so many of my Scottish countrymen, my family left the Highlands in the mid-eighteenth century to pursue a better life in America. But though they left physically, a portion of their heart remained behind and their love continued strong and enduring. The current events taking place in Libya returned my attention to the cruel end of PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland when 270 innocent passengers were shredded in mid-air to satisfy the blood lust and barbarism of one man, Moammar Khadafy. Today this most bestial, longest-serving dictator in the Arab world, is inches from the retribution he has long deserved and is hopefully as painful as his deeds demand. But first, take a moment to find the evocative, spectral song “Loch Lomond” in any search engine. Let it sooth the spirits of the airborne dead and remind them, we have never forgotten what Khadafy, his henchmen, and their hatred did to you… and to so many innocent others. Today the remnants of Khadafy’s insolent regime are crumbing, block by block, desertion by desertion, as the everyday people of Tripoli, and throughout Libya, do what they have not been allowed to do for the nearly 42 year regime — think for themselves! Live for themselves! Be who they want… not merely whom they have been told to be. Today is one of the rarest days for one of the world’s oldest civilizations… a day of possibilities, not restrictions. A day of high hopes, not of grinding despair. A day when the heart beats faster and when the world’s peoples extend the hand of friendship and fraternity… glad to share the joy of a people who have experienced so little of it. This is 21 August, 2011 and their long dreaded, capricious lord comes closer, closer to his inevitable conclusion, squalid, bloody, wherein the reigning monster of their long terror is shown to be what he always was, a man of small mind, mendacious habits, and contempt for every human but himself. And so the great man is revealed and abased… humbled… and shown to be at the end so very little. So now this man of hatred, contumely, and abuse is reaping what he had sown day by day…. Today is a day which looks resolutely forward, for today the people of Libya, who have and have always had under this regime, so very little, at least have the prospect of a future. But today must also be a day of full remembrance for the full litany of dislocations, murders, maimings, disappearances, and ceaseless terrors perpetrated by a regime with power but no vision, weapons but no soul, destructive prowess but without humanity and compassion. Let us pause to remember them now… and vow that these outrages, every one of these outrages, will never be forgotten and stand as a vital testament to the never-ending saga of what a man is capable of doing when the world stands by and pretends that this diabolic business as usual is acceptable. So now tolls the bell, for each and every one of these outrages, each a manifestation of malice aforethought… As one of his first deeds, Khadafy in 1970 expelled the Italian population of Libya. He detested all Westerners… and ordered the extirpation of all evidence of their culture… and their systematic dislocation and removal. From the first days of his power, and reaching full speed and application by 1973, he became the living symbol of Orwell’s Big Brother. Dictators all have a compelling need to know what their peoples are doing at all times and places. Khadafy’s need to know was the very essence of dictatorial thoroughness. Surveillance took place at every level of the government, on all people in any position of power, no matter that he had put those people there himself. Surveillance was constant, intrusive, paralyzing in factories, in education, in the military, everywhere where two or more people might meet and converse. In short order, human behavior, human contact, human interaction in Libya became just what “Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution” permitted, and absolutely nothing else, upon pain of unimaginable suffering and horror. Libya was not a nation; it was a prison, where everyone was in thrall to a man of unmatched skill in the business of refined and exquisite torments, His capacity for inflicting sufferings developed apace… He hung dissidents to his all-encompassing regime in public, the better to intimidate. He headed a band of zealots perfect in the art of mutilation; so happy in this severe art that he had its execution and best examples played on television, to a nation which never failed to grasp the glaring meaning: so could thy life end, in an instant, with such pain. But this quintessence of evil had more pain and suffering to deliver… He censored the press, of course, by the simple expedient not just of suppressing content but by killing its writers, brutally and publicly, so that the ones not executed today would not even think of thinking, much less writing and publishing the brutal truths they knew to be irrefutable. He executed, too, after the full panoply of torture, all those who sought national redemption through means political. Their moment of dissent was their last. They went to prison where they experienced the full pain humans can inflict. Such outrages against humanity were constant, brutal, the stuff of everyday existence for every Libyan. Of course, he had a special regard for the growing ranks of his critics worldwide… they were a menace, a problem, and as such he increased the ranks of his thorough executioners, the better to diminish, and painfully so, the ranks of the disaffected. There is more, much more, every instance an outrage to every sentiment that makes us human. And at last, Libyans, who saw nothing more for their lives than the constant chaos and confusion of their existence, saw that revolt was their only hope against a regime without any limit to the abuses perpetrated against the long suffering Libyan people. On 17 February, 2011 major political protests began, as Libyans looked carefully at the events that had toppled the Mubarak tyranny in Egypt and called forth the admiration of the world, in their attempt to become the men they were, the men Khadafy had tried so long and with such bitter means to control. Khadafy, with more men at his command, more armaments, more mercenaries, more money yet failed to eradicate the often ramshackle forces against him. The reason could be deduced in a single word: FREEDOM. Khadafy sought to control, to regiment, to hurt and divide. His opponents, whose names are now the names of patriots, wanted only one thing: for the people of Libya to control their own destinies, free from the daily terrors and anxieties each knew so well under the current regime. And so, bit by bit, they advanced… never without hardship, never without the immemorial difficulties of war, experiencing want, sacrifice, their own political difficulties and conflicts… but still, despite every drawback, they advanced… until today the end of the regime is nigh, perhaps just hours away. These are the valiant days in Tripoli… the days proud men of action will impart to their grandchildren. It is a great day not just for Libyans but for all of us who value freedom and know its unending cost. Today all us ride with you through streets of Tripoli, optimistic, hopeful, grateful for your courage and application in a cause we all must hold dear.

* * * * * About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Jeffrey Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books.
 Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell <a http://HomeProfitCoach.com  Check out 7 Figure Success Formula ->  http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=ij6goAXm