Orion and Sirius Unite
Benson C Saili
THIS EARTH, MY BROTHER…
Union is cemented by matrimonial union of Anu and Orion Queen
The name Anu means “One who is of Heaven” or simply “The Heavenly One”. It is important, though, that we bear in mind that in antiquity, the term Heaven was not overloaded with the ethereal connotations it is in our day. It did not fundamentally mean the spiritual place we’re supposed to go to after we die: that was a secondary concept. Heaven in antiquity largely referred to the Sirius and Orion star systems, these being the places where the “gods”, the scientifically and technologically advanced Anunnaki, originated.
Heaven was the place not of spiritual gods but of flesh-and-blood gods. In fact, it was not to Heaven the ancients looked forward to go when they died. Rather, they wished to join their ancestors in a subterranean world right here on Earth. Although they said their gods (the Anunnaki) came from Heaven, they themselves were of the belief they came from the underworld and it was there they were to return upon their demise. It was the advent of religion, a Anunnaki blindfold, that propagandised the focus on the
When they directly ruled Earth, the Anunnaki were passed off as gods by primitive mankind owing to the seemingly supernatural things they did, such as flying aircraft, and their extraordinary longevity, both of which seemed like miracles to our forbearers. The planet Nibiru was also considered to be Heaven in that every time the Sirian King Anu came to visit Earth, he came by way of Nibiru, which is a virtual global spaceship. The Anunnaki actually used to promise mankind that if they were tame and obedient, they would be taken to Nibiru physically or proceed there after they died and not to the underworld, which was now span as an infernal known as Hell. Those who were physically taken to Nibiru at one time or the other included Adam, Enoch, Jacob, and Elijah. Enoch went there twice and never returned after his second foray. Elijah is actually being awaited by the Jews even as we speak.
OUR FATHER WHO ART IN HEAVEN
Anu was the “Our Father Who art in Heaven” in what is called “The Lord’s Prayer”. (It was not Jesus’s prayer though; it was put in his mouth by the gospel writers. The prayer was lifted straight from what ancient Egyptians called “The Maxims of Anu”, precepts which are preserved on a papyrus archived in a Cairo museum.) He was the third ruler of Sirius under male rule and the 22nd overarching ruler of Nibiru. Initially, Anu had one senior wife (Antu) and five concubines, who had their own quarters in a wing of the palace called the House of Concubines. He would over time sire over 80 children.
Anu’s Cabinet is said to have included the following: Chief Chamberlain; three Commanders in charge of the Rocket ships; two Commanders of the Weapons; a Minister of the Purse; two Chief Justices; two Masters of Written Knowledge; two Chief Scribes; and five Assistant Scribes. Defence and “Star Wars” seemed to be of paramount importance: of the 11-man Cabinet (excluding the 7 scribes) five were military men! The palace itself, which was located in what was called the “Pure Place”, was protected by two awesome weapon systems, overseen by two princes going by the titles Commanders of the Weapons.
Besides a Cabinet setup, there was a Council of Counsellors (Advisors) as well as what the Sumerians called an “Assembly of the Gods”. This was a form of Kgotla forum at which it was mandatory for everybody present – hundreds of people from all walks of life – to voice a view. It was held in the Throne Room of the palace and was meant to mobilise opinion from the common herd.
When Anu came to power in Sirius, he appointed his eldest son by Antu as ruler of Nibiru. The name of this son was AN-EN, meaning “Crown Prince”. His titular name, however, was ENE-EL-ILE, which meant “Lord of Abundant Clarity”. This was the title given to the commander of exploratory space flights as well as the international space station. In Sumerian, ENE-EL-ILE was abbreviated to ENLIL. Enlil, who when he later administered planet Earth was also known as Jehovah or Yahweh, had served in the global air force as well as star ship pilot and was highly esteemed as a disciplined and efficient administrator. However, Enlil was not allowed to rule Nibiru as King: he was to do so only as Viceroy, that is, Nibiru’s ruler on behalf of Anu.
Entrusting rule of Nibiru to Enlil was both strategic and precautionary on the part of Anu. It was strategic because Enlil was his own flesh and blood. It was precautionary because being so far afield, it would be difficult for Enlil to plot the ouster of his father as was commonplace those days.
TWO GREAT ROYALS TIE KNOT
When Anu became King of Sirius, his foremost aim was to declare autonomy from the Orion Queen, to whom the Sirius star system was subordinate. Anu was incensed that the Orion Queen had, so he suspected, allowed Alalu to get away scotfree with his cleverly contrived riddance of his grandfather Anan. He therefore reasoned that if the Queen could brook such a crime against his iconic grandfather, she could also condone its repeat against him by elements within the Sirian armed forces who remained loyal to Alalu.
Now, the Queen’s intelligence apparatus pervaded both the military and civil society of Sirius. So it wasn’t long before she got wind of what Anu was contemplating. The Queen had cause to be anxious about Anu’s machinations. For starters, Sirius had made great headway in military might. In fact, the technology of Sirius now surpassed even that of Orion. Second, Reptilians of the Draco star system had set up their own colony in the planetary system of Betelgeuse, a prominent star in Orion. These Reptilians were initially mercenaries King Anan had hired when he rebelled against Queen Uraki II. Their founding of their own world in Betelgeuse was part of the peace settlement between the two warring parties of the Wolfen World at the ascendancy of King Anan.
The Queen was concerned that if Anu went ahead to declare independence from Orion and the Orion army pounced, the Betelgeuse Reptilians would come to the aid of Anu and the war would be long and protracted, with untold numbers of casualties on either side. Moreover, it was possible that Anu could win the war, with the result that Orion would lose control of the prestigious and phenomenally lucrative 9th Passageway.
In order to forestall such a scenario, the Queen came up with a well-thought-through plan. Anu and herself should come together in marriage, so that there would be only one King and one Queen of the conjoined Syrian and Orion Empires. Both Anu and the Orion Queen were relatively young and were of the same generation although the Queen was slightly older: both had succeeded to the throne at roughly the same time. The matrimonial union, therefore, would not be reprehensibly out of kilter.
Soon, royal advisers from both sides met and it was out of their deliberations that the marriage was broached. When the proposition was tabled before Anu, he endorsed it wholeheartedly without realising that it was actually initiated by the Queen. For some time after Anu popped the question, the Queen even was cunning enough to play hard to get before she finally said yes. It was a very easy decision on her part since the Orion Queen never married: she was only sexually serviced by a harem of men known as the KHARIM. Anu, on the other hand, had his great wife Antu to contend with. If he married the Orion Queen, it meant Antu would have to take second place. Moreover, it also meant that Antu’s firstborn son, Enlil, would in all likelihood no longer be heir: he would be supplanted by the firstborn son of the Orion Queen.
But since Anu was King, there was no way the wishes of Antu would stand in his way, nor the feelings of his heir Enlil. To cut a long story short, King Anu and Queen Ma of Orion had two weddings, one on the SSS Word in Orion and another on the Wolfen World in Sirius. It was the most topical wedding in the already advanced and attuned worlds of the Milky Way Galaxy, attended by dignitaries from every major, friendly star system and all the colonised or subsidiary planets. The Sirian King retained his title as Anu, whereas the Orion Queen chose the official title of EKE (also rendered “EGE” or “IGI”, meaning “Creatrix”), abbreviated as KI. In the subsidiary worlds such ours, however, she was primarily addressed as KE-EA, meaning “Divine Creatrix”, also rendred as GA-EA or GA-IA, the famous “mythological” goddess of Earth during a certain era. She was also referred to as Antu since it somewhat rhymed with Anu.
The union of the two mega monarchs explains why Orion and Sirius have been the most famous star systems in the history of Earth in the last 500,000 years, with major landmarks (such as the Egyptian pyramids, for instance), astronomically aligned, primarily, with Mintaka, the throne world of Orion, and Sirius A.
ENKI APPEARS ON THE SCENE
The Orion Queen’s oldest son went by the princely title EA, also rendered AJA, AYA, or EJE. Ea originally meant “Diving Being”. In Sumerian times (about 6000 years ago), however, it would come to mean “He whose house is water”. This latter meaning had two connotations in the main. The first referred to fish (the emblem of the astrological Age of Pisces which was associated with Ea), as indeed fish reside in a body of water. The second had to do with space. The ancients referred to space as the “Ocean of the Khaa”. Khaa was a euphemism for the SSS beings, the people of Orion. It was a fitting name for space as the Orion Queen controlled the 9th Passageway, the principal galactic trade route .
Ea’s other title was ENE-EKE, meaning “Creator Prince”. ENE–EKE would over time be abbreviated as ENKI (or EN-GI). Ea was called Enki because he was at once the son of the Orion Queen and the SSS world’s master geneticist. As a geneticist, he was a virtual creator since he could mix the genes of several species to create a new species or simply tinker with the genome to get rid of certain traits and bring up new ones. It is in fact acknowledged throughout our galaxy that the SSS race, also known as the serpent race, are the best geneticists there are.
Now, in case you have forgotten what we said about the SSS people, we did underline the fact that they reproduced both sexually and asexually (without fertilisation by male gametes). This phenomenon was a carryover from their initial evolutional background as Khebs – a dragonfly-bee. We all know that bees produce either sexually or asexually. In the case of sexual reproduction, the resulting offspring is always a female. In the case of asexual reproduction, the result is always a male. The SSS people continued to reproduce that way even as humanoids, such that in the case of the Queen, all the princess were born through sexual reproduction and all the princes were born by way of asexual reproduction. As such, Enki had no father at all: only a mother. Where have we heard that before? In the Jesus story of course.
On the SSS World, princes did not succeed to the throne, being a predominantly matrilineal society. Only princesses did. Orion didn’t have kings at all. As such, Enki was not destined to rule. He would always be secondary to his sisters.
ENLIL LEAPFROGS ENKI
The marriage of King Anu and the Orion Queen was largely ceremonial. Whilst it would be consummated, it was not meant to produce new offspring. The reasons this was the case are not clear in the cosmic chronicles. The question that thus arose was, who would succeed to the joint throne once both the King and Queen passed on?
Male chauvinism seems to have rode roughshod over female assertion. There were two senior princes at the time. These were Enlil, Anu’s firstborn son, and Enki, the Queen’s firstborn son. Enki was slightly older than Enlil, but it was agreed that Enlil should be the anointed heir since he was of male parentage. But the third in line to the throne would not be Enlil’s son: it would be Enki’s son. That was how rulership of the joint Sirius and Orion kingdom would alternate.
Enlil was excited by the development, whereas Enki was wroth. He just couldn’t understand why his mother had compromised to the extent she did when Orion had been historically the mightier empire. His diminution in rank would continue to bubble in him throughout his life.
It was also decided that in order to further consolidate relations between Sirius and Orion, Enlil should marry one of the Queen’s daughters who was still single at the time. Outwardly, Enlil agreed but he said he would only marry at a much later date since he was presently too busy running the affairs of Nibiru. What he kept to himself was the fact that he believed in racial purity: under no circumstances was he going to mix Sirian blood with a woman from a serpentine race, people he looked down upon. In point of fact, the lady he had set his sights on was his half-sister Ninmah, who he was already courting but who was still too young to wed.
Anu, however, had decided that Ninmah should marry Enki and Enki was agreeable to that. Meanwhile, Enki was given the green light to take an already grown woman before Ninmah. Her name was Damkina. Damkina was the daughter of the fugitive Alalu. The Queen had decided that Alalu should be made to feel still very much part of Anunnaki royalty even if he had been ousted so that he could do his best to still continue working in the best interests of the empire wherever he was.
Operationwise though, Enki too was to be based on planet Nibiru to assist Enlil in its administration in light of his legendary wisdom and brilliance. In every setting, Enki distinguished himself as of exceptional genius. There was nothing that he didn’t know, hence his other nickname as the “Knower of Everything”. He was a brilliant engineer, a brilliant geneticist, a brilliant physician, a brilliant physicist, a brilliant architect, a brilliant teacher-philosopher. But he had one major weakness: he was a serial philanderer. Enlil on the other had was very morally upstanding.
It says a lot about Anu’s political tact that the most senior princes were stationed well away from a place where it would be comparatively easier for any of the two to seize power. Paranoia was an integral trait of the reigning monarch in Sirius those days. Moreover, since Enki and Enlil would naturally not get along, the temptation for Enlil to break away from the Sirian and Orion Empire would be automatically checked by Enki. Thus a disgruntled Enki was more of an asset than a liability to Anu.
NEXT WEEK: THE SAGA OF ALALU
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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!
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“I Propose to Diana Tonightâ€
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.â€
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.â€
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.â€
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.â€
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 restaurantâ€, 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. Â 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. Â 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.â€
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 boxâ€.
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
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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!’â€
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.