The most frightening human being I have ever met in my short time on this planet was an Islamic cleric in neighboring Mali who urged me, in all seriousness, to do everything in my power to kill infidels or kaffirs (non-believers in Arabic). He was a sweet old man in his early sixties, and I had just interviewed him for a radio program to be broadcast in Dakar. I had also shared a meal with him and his advisors. I cannot imagine that he personally ever killed anyone, but it was the froideur, the icy coldness, with which he approached the whole idea of killing another human being because of his or her religious beliefs that sent icy chills down my own spine. To this day, I do not know from what part of the human soul this impulse springs.

God’s Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World, Cullen Murphy’s magisterial study of the Inquisition, now available in e-book format, reminds us that the most frightening and most dangerous people in the world are zealots who believe they are right because they are also righteous. Too, they sometimes even believe that they are divinely guided, as my Islamic zealot did. They lack that helpful self-doubt that assails the rest of us. Certain communist leaders from the 20th century suffered from this delusion I believe, Mao Tse Tung, for example, and Stalin, though their self-certainty appears not to have sprung from personal dialogue with the Almighty. More recently, Ayatollah Khomeini had no compunction about also wishing to see kaffirs dead.

Islam has yet to experience a Protestant Reformation, and to be surrounded by Islam sometimes makes one feel that one is living in the eleventh century and not the twenty-first. The gripping tale told by Cullen Murphy starts in a dark time in human history almost that far back, a millennium ago. Established by the Catholic Church in 1231, the Inquisition continued in one form or another for almost seven hundred years. Though associated with the persecution of heretics and Jews, and with the well-known practice of burning at the stake, its targets were more numerous and its techniques more ambitious.

What was completely new to me was the degree to which we owe to the Inquisition so many modern tools of the authoritarian state — the invention of the apparatus of state surveillance for example, along with state censorship, and what former Vice President Dick Cheney refers to euphemistically as “enhanced interrogation.” With the passage of the centuries, the methods of the Inquisition as well as its mindset spread far beyond the Roman Catholic Church to become tools of secular organization and persecution.

Cullen Murphy takes us from newly opened manuscripts he was privileged to be the first to see in the Vatican Library to the connections he so boldly makes to the detention camps of Guantanamo and the filing cabinets of Germany’s Final Solution. Torquemada may be long dead, but his spirit and that of his cohort Grand Inquisitors not only survive him, but are more actively abroad in the world than ever, and doing as great if not greater mischief.

It seems to me that this is the great value of such a book, and the only reason to immerse onself, especially at night before being subject to possible dreams, into these very real nightmares: for Murphy’s real point is that it is only by understanding the Inquisition’s history that we can hope to explain the iron grip of some of its most totalitarian methods in shaping our present world.

With the combination of vivid immediacy and learned analysis, Murphy puts a human face on a familiar but little-known piece of our past and argues that only by understanding the Inquisition can we hope to explain the making of the present. He traces the 700-year history of successive Catholic Inquisitions to expose their underlying consistencies and contradictions, their mechanics and diabolical devices, to highlight those common threads that start a millennium ago and stretch right into today’s newspaper headlines. The “enhanced interrogation” I mentioned earlier, as it is practiced at Guantanamo, is quite similar to the Roman process of rigoros esamine (Latin: rigorous examination), he explains. Indeed, modern interrogation techniques as outlined in a U.S. Army manual are eerily parallel to the sophisticated inquisition techniques first outlined in a manual from the 1300s.

Another important point that I had to grasp was that inquisitions need not necessarily be religious (though my personal experience with zealots in West Africa is that they are always religious fanatics). But the deeper point is that moral certainty is a very dangerous self-attribute, be it religious, political, corporate, or chauvinistic.

The true believers are the most dangerous men and women who walk the earth because they are prepared to judge you and me by standards we not only do not accept, but may never have even heard of. They believe that they alone know the path that is true, the path that is right, and we must deeply fear their certainty because the “inquisitorial impulse” springs directly from it, whether it is religious or atheistic.

Murphy asks us to consider many the inquisitions over the last century, citing a litany in the United States alone: The Palmer Raids (an early Red Scare led by the young J. Edgar Hoover in the 1920s), the Japanese internment in California, Cointelpro, and more recently the Patriot Act. The McCarthy Era alone was more far-reaching than any church inquisition, he argues.

This is a sobering book, an excursion into history that may prove far more relevant to the present than any of those who pick the book up casually first guess, but the present relevance of God’s Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World is its most important message — and reason alone to read and study this text.

Automated webinars have the potential of giving you the sales bump you’ve only imagined in your dreams. Webinars have become extremely popular over the last five years, due to their overall effectiveness. Prospects viewing the webinar are typically more tuned in to what they’re seeing and hearing on their computer monitor.

Traditional webinar setup is frequently frowned upon by online sellers because of the margin of error that could occur during the process. Doing it right usually means that your viewers enjoyed the presentation and even bought some additional products. However, unless you’re using automated webinars, a traditional webinar will cost you a lot of money if things don’t perform right.

Events that fail to perform due to your setup mishandling are just a part of the bigger picture; outdated webinar technology has a number of other disadvantages. The first major drawback that comes to mind is that the event is hosted on the presenter’s home PC. If you want your webinar to start, you’re going to have to be around to make certain that your computer is online and operational. Unexpected internet outages, creating major losses as you permanently disconnect from your webinar participants, will still happen on occasion even if you make yourself available to start the presentation on time.

The good news is you no longer need to worry about such scenarios. It’s now possible for online marketers to eliminate many of yesterday’s headaches, due to new advancements in the field of automated webinars. You can forget about the stress involved with having a PC crash during a huge webinar event, and still ensure a grand-slam presentation. As a matter of fact, you’ll never have to show up for another webinar again.

Current webinar systems can run webinar events that have been prerecorded, yet appear live due to some very imaginative techniques. Your webinar will start and run without any problems, and without you needing to be there for any reason, since the auto play feature creates a continual play back sequence. These events are being executed on commercial grade servers which have 24 hour tech support with 99.8% up time, completely minimizing any chance of your next webinar getting disconnected.

You’ll get nowhere fast if you insist on using your tired old business models. The first thing to do is to consider the amount of time you find yourself wasting on remedial tasks, and the other is to focus on building your brand. Future customers will make their purchase decisions based on the way your brand is perceived. Applying this new technology toward your marketing efforts will definitely help in all of these areas; just make sure you take the right approach. Solid automated webinars are easily recognizable if they offer the services mentioned earlier.

In this article I am going to give you some tips on how to present your product as the ideal solution to your potential customer. In order to do so you need to know exactly who you are targeting and what their specific needs are. Once you know that you can begin to offer your product as the solution.

Benefit

Often when you read sales letters online people list the features that are included in their products as being a reason to buy their product. This is a mistake because people do not buy based on specific features it might have, they buy because of the benefit of those features. Therefore you need to be very clear on what benefits your product will give to your customers.

The more specific you make the benefit the better.

Targeted offer

I have already mentioned that you need to make sure that you have targeted your offer to the right person and I want to mention it again as this is a very important and critical step. You cannot assume that someone needs your product.

Sometimes it may be necessary for you to ask questions to determine whether or not the person you are communicating with needs what you are offering.

For example, if you are promoting a training program that goes from A to Z but the person only needs the steps in the middle then you are not in fact offering the best product or the best solution for them.

When you understand this you begin to realise the importance of having multiple products so that you can offer the right solution to the right person.

The value

When you present your product as the solution to your potential customers you need to make it clear what the value of your product will be to them. Exactly what they will achieve if they put into practice what your solution is. You need to spell that value out.

It might be in terms of money if you are presenting a business solution or it might be passing a music exam if you are offering musical training. Whatever solution your product offers you need to be very clear what results someone will see and what value that will be to them.

If you can create value or a worth to your product it will also help you to determine how much to charge for it.

Emotional pull

Whenever you present your product or service make sure that the value in the benefit outweighs the cost of your prospects not taking any action at all.

There will be an emotional element involved in not taking action and not seeing the results and this is the emotion you need to trigger in order for someone to really understand the value of what you are offering and for them to take action and purchase.

Getting The Online Results You Deserve

If you’re not seeing the results you want with your online efforts then it might be down to what you’re actually selling. I have discovered that when you create your own information products you are far more successful but you need to keep the momentum going and get products out quickly.

We deal with hazards in our lives daily. Whether we are cooking, travelling, driving a car, crossing the road, or playing sports, there are hazards which can cause accidents and injuries. To prevent ourselves from the risks associated with these hazards, we do a number of things. For example, when we play sports, we wear appropriate clothing and shoes. When we cross the road, we look for traffic first and then cross when it is safe to do so. When we are cooking, we handle hot food wearing kitchen gloves or with kitchen towel. We take the precautions necessary to prevent injuries.

Similarly, when we are at the workplace, it is essential to take precautions to avoid getting involved in accidents or sustaining injuries. But, preventing accidents and injuries at work is only possible when we are able to identify the hazards present.

Although it is the responsibility of the employer to carry out risk assessments and identify the potential hazards, it is important for the workers to be aware of the hazards and take the steps necessary to prevent injuries. Identifying hazards at work is important for a number of reasons. For the worker, it ensures their health and safety. For the employer, it protects them from liabilities. More accidents would mean more work accident claims against the employer and increased insurance premiums. So to prevent these, the employer must identify the different hazards and take steps to minimise them.

Here’s a look at the different types of hazards present in workplaces.

Physical hazards are the most common types of hazards because the harm it causes is immediately apparent. They are also very easy to identify. Some of the examples include missing ground pins, unguarded machinery, frayed cords, spillages on the floor and trip hazards such as computer cables on the floor, obstructions on walkways and raised surfaces.

Biological hazards are common in workplaces where workers have to handle infectious plants and animals. Even places such as hospitals and nursing homes are examples of places where biological hazards are present. Common examples of biological hazards include plants, viruses, bacteria, fungi, blood, bodily fluid and so on.

Chemical hazards are present in workplaces where workers are exposed to chemical preparations of some sort. Examples can include liquids like acids, paints, cleaning products, fumes and vapours, gases and flammable materials