The 10th Planet
Columns
Benson C Saili
THIS EARTH, MY BROTHER…
The region of space in which we dwell is known as the Solar System. It is a family comprising of the Sun and nine planets. The planets are in two categories. Those closest to the Sun are known as the inner planets. The furtherest are known as the outer planets.
The inner planets are, in order of their orbital positions, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. The outer planets are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Of course Pluto was in 2006 stripped of its status as a planet but that was sacrilegious: the ancients, who had a better grasp of cosmology than we do today, trust me, called it a planet. That’s what we too ought to.
The Sun and its 9 planets – the familiar version – are called the Solar System (or Sun System) after the Sun itself. “Sol” is the Sun’s astronomical name. Sun Systems are frequently forming in the universe. Our Sun System was formed about 5 billion years ago. That makes it a young, middle-age system. In 2010, a group of NASA astronomers discovered a newly formed star, as suns are also known, in the Perseus region of the universe, about 800 light years away from the
Milky Way Galaxy. They called it L1448 IRS 2E.
However, the 9 planets are what we can call native planets in that they are direct offspring of the Sun. For the fact of the matter is that there is actually a 10th planet in our Solar System. This planet is an immigrant from some other region of our cosmic neighborhood. It joined the Solar System fold 4 billion years ago. Among the UFO community, it is best known as Planet X. The Sumerians, however, called it Nibiru. They also referred to it as “The Imperishable Star”. The Babylonians referred to it as Marduk. The Egyptians called it “The Planet of a Million Years”. In the Bible, it goes by several names – Olam, The Star of Jacob, and most notably “The Lord”. Christians do not know how often the term “Lord” in the Old Testament actually refers to Nibiru. Even our own African cousins, the Zulus, knew about Nibiru. The legendary Zulu Shaman, Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa, says they called it “Mushoshonono”.
The Old Testament for one is replete with overt and covert references to Nibiru. The great Jewish Rabbi Gamaliel, a contemporary of Jesus who also trained the apostle Paul, made tell-tale hints about it. Even the iconic scientist Isaac Newton was familiar with its existence and this was four centuries before the Hubble Telescope was invented. And at least three to five Earth-born humans have been to it, some even settling there permanently!
What is ironic is that although NASA knows about Nibiru, they have never directly come to acknowledge its existence. Hints have been given all right but they have not been matter-of-fact. Some of the hints have in fact been withdrawn the day after being made. Why have official astronomers chosen to keep the existence of the planet under wraps?
THE SITCHIN ILLUMINATION
The planet Nibiru has existed since days immemorial and is older than the Sun. In our day, the foremost illuminator on the planet’s existence no doubt has been my departed friend Zechariah Sitchin. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for the pioneering works of the Azerbaijan-born Israeli Sitchin, yours and my knowledge of Nibiru would be greatly diminished. In fact, it would border on zero. Sitchin, who was only one of a handful of experts in the ancient language of Sumer, devoted practically all his adult life to the study of myriads of Sumerian tablets. In these millennia-old clay tablets is etched the saga of the Anunnaki – the Nibiruian spacefarers who created us.
In 1976, Sitchin published a book titled The 12th Planet, the first in a slew of more than a dozen that were to follow. In it, he made the case that contrary to popular belief, the Solar System was not a family of only nine planets. There was a tenth planet called Nibiru. Nibiru, Sitchin declared, was not a lifeless planet. It was an inhabited planet, and its inhabitants were a race of technologically advanced human-like beings the Sumerians, the world’s first-known civilisation that thrived in modern-day Iraq 6000 years ago, called the Anunnaki and who fashioned mankind here on Earth about 300,000 years ago. It is these same Anunnaki who the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) for the most part addresses as “God” – Jehovah or Yahweh.
Now, if such a planet indeed did exist, why hadn’t 20th century cosmology detected it? Anticipating such a question, Sitchin pointed out the reason why, which had to do with its elongated, comet-like orbit that sent it much deeper into outer space for the greater part of its around-the-Sun journey. Nibiru, wrote Sitchin, took 3,600 years to make one complete revolution around the Sun. In other words, one year on Nibiru – which the Sumerians termed a shar – was equivalent to 3,600 years on earth. Taking the average lifespan on earth as 100 years, it meant Nibiru could be seen only once in 360 generations.
Nibiru, Sitchin continued, had further peculiarities beyond an elongated orbit (as opposed to a generally circular one that typified all the other planets in the Solar System). It revolved around the Sun clockwise – like a comet – when the other planets save for Pluto did so anticlockwise. Further, Nibiru generated its own heat through brisk volcanic activity to compensate for its bleak weather conditions: it, for the greater part of its circuit, languished in the cold and pitch darkness such was its distance from the Sun. .
Sitchin went on to assert that although he was arguably the first to outrightly point the modern world to Nibiru’s existence, he wasn’t its discoverer: the planet was well-known by the Sumerians of 6,000 years ago. They wrote about it, depicted it, sang and recited venerational poetry in its honour, generally revered and extolled it. Modern cosmology was way behind that of the Sumerians of yore. The likes of NASA, with their superfluously educated cadre of rocket scientists and their outsized IQs, had precious much to learn from the Sumerians. The 12th Planet was a bold statement indeed.
Although Sitchin’s book overnight shot to the acmes of the international best seller list, the scientific community received it dismissively and even contemptuously. Charges flew thick and fast that his was a shot in the dark, that as a mere researcher and not a trained astronomer or cosmologist Sitchin had no business poking his lay nose in a territory way beyond his ken. Even his acknowledged mastery of the Sumerian language now became the butt of unbridled vitriol. But was Sitchin as black as he was being painted? Was he nothing more than a cheap sensationalist whose only agenda was to make a quick buck, to reap where he did not at all sow?
PLANET X
It turned out that unbeknown to most of the world, America’s scientific establishment had been searching for the tenth planet from as early as 1968. In that year, the National Security Agency (NSA) in a study of UFO phenomena pondered the possibility and aftermath of “a confrontation between a technologically advanced extraterrestrial society and an inferior one on Earth”, that is, us, to put it more bluntly. Would we stand a chance? Maybe it was time Earthlings launched a quest for just such a society lest we be taken unawares and dealt a preemptive, crushing blow. The starting point was south of the furthermost planets, Neptune and Pluto.
The sought-after planet was dubbed “Planet X”, which epithet at once denoted its mysterious nature and its status, potentially, as the Solar System’s tenth planet. But why did Zechariah Sitchin call it the 12th planet? Well, Sitchin termed it as such in deference to the Sumerians. In the Sumerian cosmogony, there were ten literal planets and two putative planets. The ten planets were the nine we know today plus Nibiru. The putative planets were the Sun and the moon. The Sumerians knew the Sun was the Solar System’s parent star and the moon was simply a satellite of planet Earth. But they banded the two with the ten planets because of the cosmic eminence of the number 12 (which eminence we will explore in future). Hence, Sitchin’s preference for the term “12th Planet”.
Now, are you getting the photo folks? The Sumerians knew, 6,000 years ago – before astronomy’s greatest luminaries like Galileo, Copernicus, and Kepler were born – that our Solar System comprised of ten planets. Modern man actually only came to know about the nine planets gradually. Whereas Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn have been known since no-one-knows-when (they can be seen with the naked eye as guises of big bright stars), Uranus was discovered in 1781, Neptune in 1846, and Pluto in 1930. Yet the Sumerians had knowledge of all the nine planets plus an extra one – Nibiru. Where did they get the knowledge from, the knowledge that even today we are yet to master in its fullness?
“We learnt all we know from the Anunnaki,” the Sumerians repeatedly and emphatically stated in the treasure trove of their clay tablets and cylinder seals. The popular meaning of the term “Anunnaki” is, “Those Who From Heaven to Earth Came”. We will stick to this version for now. So what the Sumerians were saying was that they learnt all they knew from people who came from “Heaven”, people they called their gods. By “Heaven”, they did not mean the spiritual dwelling place of God, the First Source: that is a modern interpretation. To the ancients, Heaven was any place in outer space that housed their “gods” or “Goddess”, that is, the Anunnaki or the Orion Queen. In the main, Heaven was the Orion star system, the Sirius star system, and the planet Nibiru. Nibiru means “The Planet of the Crossing”. Why they called it so we will explain in due course.
THE SEARCH FOR PLANET X
Planetary bodies exert a force on each other called perturbation. Perturbation largely arises from the gravitational effect of one planetary body (such as Jupiter) on the other (such as Saturn). When the perturbation is much pronounced, it results in making the path of the neighbouring planets more erratic than steady. In other words, the planets will from time to time veer from their regular orbit.
Astronomers have used the phenomenon of perturbation to detect the existence of another planet hitherto unknown. For instance, Neptune was discovered because of perturbations in the orbit of Uranus, and Pluto’s existence had long been suspected because of the perturbations in the orbits both of Neptune and Uranus. But when Pluto was discovered in 1930, it turned out to be too small to cause marked disturbances in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. The orbits of Uranus and Neptune are the most irregular in the Solar System. The two planets from time to time actually cross each other’s paths. So astronomers wondered thus: if Pluto was not responsible for perturbations in the orbits of Neptune and Uranus, what alternative force was?
It was not until 1972 that astronomers came up with a definitive hypothesis. In that year, Joseph L Brady of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California discovered as he worked on the anticipated trajectory of Halley’s Comet that the comet, which is seen only once in 75 years (it last appeared in 1986) had a perturbed orbit. This and the perturbations in the orbits of Neptune and Uranus led him to suggest, by mathematical computations, the existence of one more planet beyond Pluto. The planet was designated “Planet X” to denote both its unknown status and its tenth position in the Solar System. The search for Nibiru had in earnest begun.
In 1979, the US Naval Observatory’s two scientists Robert Harrington and Thomas Van Flandern joined in the search for Planet X, and in June 1982 NASA came on board too. NASA’s statement on June 17 1982 said: “Persistent irregularities in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune strongly suggest that some kind of mystery object is really there – far beyond the outermost planets”. NASA said it would use the infrastructure of the Pioneer spacecraft, which had been in orbit since 1958, to look for Planet X. In September of the same year, the US Naval Observatory announced that they were seriously pursuing the search for Planet X, with Dr. Harrington saying according to their observations, Planet X was “moving much more slowly than any of the planets that we know”. In other words, the planet had already been located. Meanwhile, Russia had silently joined the search: its cosmonauts aboard the Salyut space station were busy scanning the skies for the mysterious planet. NASA’s Pioneer-based search for Planet X was to be augmented by the all-sky searching Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS). IRAS was to trace Planet X by sensing the heat it had lost to space in the form of infrared radiation.
A joint US-British-Dutch venture, IRAS was launched into orbit 896 km above the Earth at the end of January 1983. It was equipped to sense a planet the size of Jupiter at a distance 277 times that of the Earth from the Sun, or 277 Astronomical Units (AU).
On January 30, 1983, The New York Times, quoting Ray Reynolds of the Ames Research Centre, reported that “astronomers are so sure of the 10th planet that they think there’s nothing left but to name it”. The bold astronomers (the official response from NASA was still that no tenth planet had been found) characterised Planet X thus: it was the size of the planet Neptune; it had an elongated, not a circular orbit; and that it moved in a retrograde orbit, that is, clockwise, not anticlockwise as the other planets did. Now, that is exactly the way the Sumerian clay tablets described Nibiru 6,000 years ago!
Meanwhile, US papers were in January 1983 agog with the discovery of Planet X. Here is a sample of the front page headlines: Mystery Body Found in Space; Heavenly Body Poses a Cosmic Riddle to Astronomers; At Solar System’s Edge, Giant Object is Mystery; Giant Object Mystifies Astronomers. The opening paragraphs of The Washington Post read thus: “A heavenly body possibly as large as the giant planet Jupiter and possibly so close to Earth that it would be part of this Solar System has been found in the direction of the constellation Orion by an orbiting telescope called IRAS … When IRAS scientists first saw the mystery body and calculated that it could be as close as 50 billion miles (80 billion kilometres) there was some speculation that it might be moving toward Earth.”
Zechariah Sitchin, who in The 12th Planet had persuasively put forward the case for the existence of the 10th planet was waltzing on cloud nine. His phone rang non-stop as friends, fans and admirers tripped over each other to congratulate him. On January 30, 1983, Sitchin wrote the following letter to the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California:
“In view of very recent reports in the press concerning the intensified search for the 10th planet, I am forwarding you copies of my exchanges on the subject with Dr. D. Anderson. According to The New York Times of this Sunday (see enclosure), ‘astronomers are so sure of the 10th planet they think there’s nothing left but to name it’. Well, the ancients had already named it: Nibiru in Sumerian, Marduk in Babylonian; and I believe I have the right to insist that it so be called.”
Sitchin never received a reply. The rocket scientists, with their surfeit of grey matter, would never come to admit that lay, ordinary men 6,000 years removed knew something that they, the best brains of the modern world, were just beginning to grapple with now. This Earth, My brother …
NEXT WEEK: WHEN “GOD” LIVED AMONG HIS PEOPLE
Columns
GONE FISHING
In recent years, using personal devices in working environments has become so commonplace it now has its own acronym, BOYD (Bring Your Own Device). But as employees skip between corporate tools and personal applications on their own devices, their actions introduce a number of possible risks that should be managed and mitigated with careful consideration. Consider these examples:
Si-lwli, a small family-run business in Wales, is arguably as niche a company as you could find, producing talking toys used to promote the Welsh language. Their potential market is small, with only some 300,000 Welsh language speakers in the world and in reality the business is really more of a hobby for the husband-and-wife team, who both still have day jobs. Yet, despite still managing to be successful in terms of sales, the business is now fighting for survival after recently falling prey to cybercriminals. Emails between Si-Iwli and their Chinese suppliers were intercepted by hackers who altered the banking details in the correspondence, causing Si-Iwli to hand over £18,000 (around P ¼ m) to the thieves. That might not sound much to a large enterprise, but to a small or medium business it can be devastating.
Another recent SMB hacking story which appeared in the Wall Street Journal concerned Innovative Higher Ed Consulting (IHED) Inc, a small New York start-up with a handful of employees. IHED didn’t even have a website, but fraudsters were able to run stolen credit card numbers through the company’s payment system and reverse the charges to the tune of $27,000, around the same loss faced by Si-Iwli. As the WSJ put it, the hackers completely destroyed the company, forcing its owners to fold.
And in May 2019, the city of Baltimore’s computer system was hit by a ransomware attack, with hackers using a variant called RobinHood. The hack, which has lasted more than a month, paralysed the computer system for city employees, with the hackers demanding a payment in Bitcoin to give access back to the city.
Of course, hackers target governments or business giants but small and medium businesses are certainly not immune. In fact, 67% of SMBs reported that they had experienced a cyber attack across a period of 12 months, according to a 2018 survey carried out by security research firm Ponemon Institute. Additionally, Verizon issued a report in May 2019 that small businesses accounted for 43% of its reported data breaches. Once seen as less vulnerable than PCs, smartphone attacks are on the rise, with movements like the Dark Caracal spyware campaign underlining the allure of mobile devices to hackers. Last year, the US Federal Trade Commission released a statement calling for greater education on mobile security, coming at a time when around 42% of all Android devices are believed to not carry the latest security updates.
This is an era when employees increasingly use their smartphones for work-related purposes so is your business doing enough to protect against data breaches on their employees’ phones? The SME Cyber Crime Survey 2018 carried out for risk management specialists AON showed that more than 80% of small businesses did not view this as a threat yet if as shown, 67% of SMBs were said to have been victims of hacking, either the stats are wrong or business owners are underestimating their vulnerability. A 2019 report by PricewaterhouseCoopers suggests the latter, stating that the majority of global businesses are unprepared for cyber attacks.
Consider that a workstation no longer means a desk in an office: It can be a phone in the back of a taxi or Uber; a laptop in a coffee shop, or a tablet in an airport lounge. Wherever the device is used, employees can potentially install applications that could be harmful to your business, even from something as seemingly insignificant as clicking on an accidental download or opening a link on a phishing email. Out of the physical workplace, your employees’ activities might not have the same protections as they would on a company-monitored PC.
Yet many businesses not only encourage their employees to work remotely, but assume working from coffee shops, bookstores, and airports can boost employees’ productivity. Unfortunately, many remote hot spots do not provide secure Wi-Fi so if your employee is accessing their work account on unsecured public Wi-Fi, sensitive business data could be at risk. Furthermore, even if your employee uses a company smartphone or has access to company data through a personal mobile device, there is always a chance data could be in jeopardy with a lost or stolen device, even information as basic as clients’ addresses and phone numbers.
BOYDs are also at risk from malware designed to harm and infect the host system, transmittable to smartphones when downloading malicious third-party apps. Then there is ransomware, a type of malware used by hackers to specifically take control of a system’s data, blocking access or threatening to release sensitive information unless a ransom is paid such as the one which affected Baltimore. Ransomware attacks are on the increase, predicted to occur every 14 seconds, potentially costing billions of dollars per year.
Lastly there is phishing – the cyber equivalent of the metaphorical fishing exercise – whereby cybercriminals attempt to obtain sensitive data –usernames, passwords, credit card details –usually through a phoney email designed to look legitimate which directs the user to a fraudulent website or requests the data be emailed back directly. Most of us like to think we could recognize a phishing email when we see it, but these emails have become more sophisticated and can come through other forms of communication such as messaging apps.
Bottom line is to be aware of the potential problems with BOYDs and if in doubt, consult your IT security consultants. You can’t put the own-device genie back in the bottle but you can make data protection one of your three wishes!
Columns
“I Propose to Diana Tonight”
About five days before Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed landed in Paris, General Atiku, a certain Edward Williams was taking a walk in a woods in the Welsh town of Mountain Ash. Williams, then 73, was a psychic of some renown. He had in the past foretold assassination attempts on US President Ronald Reagan, which occurred on March 30, 1981, and Pope John Paul II, which came to pass on May 13, 1981.
As he trudged the woods, Williams had a sudden premonition that pointed to Diana’s imminent fate as per Christopher Andersen’s book The Day Diana Died. “When the vision struck me, it was as if everything around me was obscured and replaced by shadowy figures,” Williams was later to reminisce. “In the middle was the face of Princess Diana. Her expression was sad and full of pathos. She was wearing what looked like a floral dress with a short dark cardigan. But it was vague. I went cold with fear and knew it was a sign that she was in danger.”
Williams hastily beat a retreat to his home, which he shared with his wife Mary, and related to her his presentiment, trembling like an aspen leaf as he did so. “I have never seen him so upset,” Mary recounted. “He felt he was given a sign and when he came back from his walk he was deeply shaken.”
The following day, Williams frantically sauntered into a police station to inform the police of his premonition. The officer who attended to him would have dismissed him as no more than a crackpot but he treated him seriously in view of the accuracy of his past predictions. He took a statement and immediately passed it on to the Special Branch Investigative Unit.
The report read as follows:
“On 27 August, at 14:12 hrs, a man by the name of Edward Williams came to Mountain Ash police station. He said he was a psychic and predicted that Princess Diana was going to die. In previous years, he has predicted that the Pope and Ronald Reagan were going to be the victims of assassination attempts. On both occasions he was proved to be correct. Mr Williams appeared to be quite normal.”
Williams, General, was spot-on as usual: four days later, the princess was no more.
Meanwhile, General, even as Dodi and Diana were making their way to the Fayed-owned Ritz Hotel in central Paris, British newspapers were awash with headlines that suggested Diana was kind of deranged. Writes Andrew Morton in Diana in Pursuit of Love: “In The Independent Diana was described as ‘a woman with fundamentally nothing to say about anything’. She was ‘suffering from a form of arrested development’. ‘Isn’t it time she started using her head?’ asked The Mail on Sunday. The Sunday Mirror printed a special supplement entitled ‘A Story of Love’; The News of the World claimed that William had demanded that Diana should split from Dodi: ‘William can’t help it, he just doesn’t like the man.’ William was reportedly ‘horrified’ and ‘doesn’t think Mr Fayed is good for his mother’ – or was that just the press projecting their own prejudices? The upmarket Sunday Times newspaper, which had first serialised my biography of the princess, now put her in the psychiatrist’s chair for daring to be wooed by a Muslim. The pop-psychologist Oliver James put Diana ‘On the Couch’, asking why she was so ‘depressed’ and desperate for love. Other tabloids piled in with dire prognostications – about Prince Philip’s hostility to the relationship, Diana’s prospect of exile, and the social ostracism she would face if she married Dodi.”
DIANA AND DODI AT THE RITZ
Before Diana and Dodi departed the Villa Windsor sometime after 16 hrs, General, one of Dodi’s bodyguards Trevor Rees-Jones furtively asked Diana as to what the programme for the evening was. This Trevor did out of sheer desperation as Dodi had ceased and desisted from telling members of his security detail, let alone anyone else for that matter, what his onward destination was for fear that that piece of information would be passed on to the paparazzi. Diana kindly obliged Trevor though her response was terse and scarcely revealing. “Well, eventually we will be going out to a restaurant”, that was all Diana said. Without advance knowledge of exactly what restaurant that was, Trevor and his colleagues’ hands were tied: they could not do a recce on it as was standard practice for the security team of a VIP principal. Dodi certainly, General, was being recklessly by throwing such caution to the winds.
At about 16:30, Diana and Dodi drew up at the Ritz Hotel, where they were received by acting hotel manager Claude Roulet. The front entrance of the hotel was already crawling with paparazzi, as a result of which the couple took the precaution of using the rear entrance, where hopefully they would make their entry unperturbed and unmolested. The first thing they did when they were ensconced in the now $10,000 a night Imperial Suite was to spend some time on their mobiles and set about touching base with friends, relations, and associates. Diana called at least two people, her clairvoyant friend Rita Rogers and her favourite journalist Richard Kay of The Daily Mail.
Rita, General, was alarmed that Diana had proceeded to venture to Paris notwithstanding the warning she had given Dodi and herself in relation to what she had seen of him in the crystal ball when the couple had consulted her. When quizzed as to what the hell she indeed was doing in Paris at that juncture, Diana replied that she and Dodi had simply come to do some shopping, which though partially true was not the material reason they were there. “But Diana, remember what I told Dodi,” Rita said somewhat reprovingly. Diana a bit apprehensively replied, “Yes I remember. I will be careful. I promise.” Well, she did not live up to her promise as we shall soon unpack General.
As for Richard Kay, Diana made known to him that, “I have decided I am going to radically change my life. I am going to complete my obligations to charities and to the anti-personnel land mines cause, but in November I want to completely withdraw from formal public life.”
Once she was done with her round of calls, Diana went down to the hair saloon by the hotel swimming pool to have her hair washed and blow-dried ahead of the scheduled evening dinner.
THE “TELL ME YES” RING IS DELIVERED
Since the main object of their Paris trip was to pick up the “Tell Me Yes” engagement ring Dodi had ordered in Monte Carlo a week earlier, Dodi decided to check on Repossi Jewellery, which was right within the Ritz prencincts, known as the Place Vendome. It could have taken less than a minute for Dodi to get to the store on foot but he decided to use a car to outsmart the paparazzi invasion. He was driven there by Trevor Rees-Jones, with Alexander Kez Wingfield and Claude Roulet following on foot, though he entered the shop alone.
The Repossi store had closed for the holiday season but Alberto Repossi, accompanied by his wife and brother-in-law, had decided to travel all the way from his home in Monaco and momentarily open it for the sake of the potentially highly lucrative Dodi transaction. Alberto, however, disappointed Dodi as the ring he had chosen was not the one he produced. The one he showed Dodi was pricier and perhaps more exquisite but Dodi was adamant that he wanted the exact one he had ordered as that was what Diana herself had picked. It was a ploy on the part of Repossi to make a real killing on the sale, his excuse to that effect being that Diana deserved a ring tha was well worthy of her social pedigree. With Dodi having expressed disaffection, Repossi rendered his apologies and assured Dodi he would make the right ring available shortly, whereupon Dodi repaired back to the hotel to await its delivery. But Dodi did insist nonetheless that the pricier ring be delivered too in case it appealed to Diana anyway.
Repossi delivered the two rings an hour later. They were collected by Roulet. On inspecting them, Dodi chose the very one he had seen in Monte Carlo, apparently at the insistence of Diana. There is a possibility that Diana, who was very much aware of her public image and was not comfortable with ostentatious displays of wealth, may have deliberately shown an interest in a less expensive engagement ring. It may have been a purely romantic as opposed to a prestigious choice for her.
The value of the ring, which was found on a wardrobe shelf in Dodi’s apartment after the crash, has been estimated to be between $20,000 and $250,000 as Repossi has always refused to be drawn into revealing how much Dodi paid for it. The sum, which enjoyed a 25 percent discount, was in truth paid for not by Dodi himself but by his father as was the usual practice.
Dodi was also shown Repossi’s sketches for a bracelet, a watch, and earrings which he proposed to create if Diana approved of them.
DIANA AND DODI GUSH OVER IMMINENT NUPTIALS
At about 7 pm, Dodi and Diana left the Ritz and headed for Dodi’s apartment at a place known as the Arc de Trompe. They went there to properly tog themselves out for the scheduled evening dinner. They spent two hours at the luxurious apartment. As usual, the ubiquitous paparazzi were patiently waiting for them there.
As they lingered in the apartment, Dodi beckoned over to his butler Rene Delorm and showed him the engagement ring. “Dodi came into my kitchen,” Delorm relates. “He looked into the hallway to check that Diana couldn’t hear and reached into his pocket and pulled out the box … He said, ‘Rene, I’m going to propose to the princess tonight. Make sure that we have champagne on ice when we come back from dinner’.” Rene described the ring as “a spectacular diamond encrusted ring, a massive emerald surrounded by a cluster of diamonds, set on a yellow and white gold band sitting in a small light-grey velvet box”.
Just before 9 pm, Dodi called the brother of his step-father, Hassan Yassen, who also was staying at the Ritz that night, and told him that he hoped to get married to Diana by the end of the year.
Later that same evening, both Dodi and Diana would talk to Mohamed Al Fayed, Dodi’s dad, and make known to him their pre-nuptial intentions. “They called me and said we’re coming back (to London) on Sunday (August 31) and on Monday (September 1) they are
Columns
RAMADAN – The Blessed Month of Fasting
Ramadan is the fasting month for Muslims, where over one billion Muslims throughout the world fast from dawn to sunset, and pray additional prayers at night. It is a time for inner reflection, devotion to Allah, and self-control. It is the ninth month in the Islamic calendar. As you read this Muslims the world over have already begun fasting as the month of Ramadan has commenced (depending on the sighting of the new moon).
‘The month of Ramadan is that in which the Qur’an was revealed as guidance for people, in it are clear signs of guidance and Criterion, therefore whoever of you who witnesses this month, it is obligatory on him to fast it. But whoever is ill or traveling let him fast the same number of other days, God desires ease for you and not hardship, and He desires that you complete the ordained period and glorify God for His guidance to you, that you may be grateful”. Holy Qur’an (2 : 185)
Fasting during Ramadan is one of the five pillars upon which the structure of Islam is built. The other four are: the declaration of one’s belief in Allah’s oneness and in the message of Muhammad (PBUH); regular attendance to prayer; payment of zakaat (obligatory charity); and the pilgrimage to Mecca.
As explained in an earlier article, fasting includes total abstinence from eating, drinking, smoking, refraining from obscenity, avoiding getting into arguments and including abstaining from marital relations, from sunrise to sunset. While fasting may appear to some as difficult Muslims see it as an opportunity to get closer to their Lord, a chance to develop spiritually and at the same time the act of fasting builds character, discipline and self-restraint.
Just as our cars require servicing at regular intervals, so do Muslims consider Ramadan as a month in which the body and spirit undergoes as it were a ‘full service’. This ‘service’ includes heightened spiritual awareness both the mental and physical aspects and also the body undergoing a process of detoxification and some of the organs get to ‘rest’ through fasting.
Because of the intensive devotional activity fasting, Ramadan has a particularly high importance, derived from its very personal nature as an act of worship but there is nothing to stop anyone from privately violating Allah’s commandment of fasting if one chooses to do so by claiming to be fasting yet eating on the sly. This means that although fasting is obligatory, its observance is purely voluntary. If a person claims to be a Muslim, he is expected to fast in Ramadan.
The reward Allah gives for proper fasting is very generous. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) quotes Allah as saying: “All actions done by a human being are his own except fasting, which belongs to Me and I will reward it accordingly.” We are also told by the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) that the reward for proper fasting is admittance into heaven.
Fasting earns great reward when it is done in a ‘proper’ manner. This is because every Muslim is required to make his worship perfect. For example perfection of fasting can be achieved through restraint of one’s feelings and emotions. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said that when fasting, a person should not allow himself to be drawn into a quarrel or a slanging match. He teaches us: “On a day of fasting, let no one of you indulge in any obscenity, or enter into a slanging match. Should someone abuse or fight him, let him respond by saying: ‘I am fasting!’”
This high standard of self-restraint fits in well with fasting, which is considered as an act of self-discipline. Islam requires us to couple patience with voluntary abstention from indulgence in our physical desires. The purpose of fasting helps man to attain a high degree of sublimity, discipline and self-restraint. In other words, this standard CAN BE achieved by every Muslim who knows the purpose of fasting and strives to fulfill it.
Fasting has another special aspect. It makes all people share in the feelings of hunger and thirst. In normal circumstances, people with decent income may go from one year’s end to another without experiencing the pangs of hunger which a poor person may feel every day of his life. Such an experience helps to draw the rich one’s conscience nearer to needs of the poor. A Muslim is encouraged to be more charitable and learns to give generously for a good cause.
Fasting also has a universal or communal aspect to it. As Muslims throughout the world share in this blessed act of worship, their sense of unity is enhanced by the fact that every Muslim individual joins willingly in the fulfillment of this divine commandment. This is a unity of action and purpose, since they all fast in order to be better human beings. As a person restrains himself from the things he desires most, in the hope that he will earn Allah’s pleasure, self-discipline and sacrifice become part of his nature.
The month of Ramadan can aptly be described as a “season of worship.” Fasting is the main aspect of worship in this month, because people are more attentive to their prayers, read the Qur’an more frequently and also strive to improve on their inner and outer character. Thus, their devotion is more complete and they feel much happier in Ramadan because they feel themselves to be closer to their Creator.