Mankinds Hell on Earth
Columns
Benson C Saili
THIS EARTH, MY BROTHER
We were the “Living Dead” in the Gehenna of Anunnaki gold mines!
In time, the Lulus proliferated. Now that they abounded and had attained a reasonable level of rationality, Enki decided it was time to deploy them to the purpose for which they were primarily brought into existence – mining activity. Although gold mining was the central activity, it was not the sole activity. Other prominent metals that were mined included copper, silver, uranium, and the platinum group.
As a scientist first and foremost, Enki did not assign to himself direct charge of the mines. The hub of mining activity in the Abzu, or Africa, was the region south of the equator. The Mining Operations Director for this region was Nergal, his second-born son. Now, of Enki’s six sons, Nergal was the black sheep of the family.
Whereas his brothers fundamentally had the softer virtues of their father, Nergal, who was also known as Erra, was infamously harsh. Even Enki just could not succeed in getting him to mend his wicked ways. Says one chronicle of him: “He was considered stubborn, never kind, and could not be persuaded by any means.”
Since he was so unlike an Enkite, Nergal saw common cause more with the Enlilites than with members of his clan. The Enlilites were austere and severe by nature: that was their defining trait. As such, Enlil preferred Nergal, who was callous and a slave driver, to superintend over the mines. Gold in particular was urgently and desperately needed on Nibiru and if one person was to be counted upon to serve up the specified output at specified times, it was Nergal.
Now, in antiquity, there were two precincts that were known as the underworld. The first was Africa as a continent. It was referred to as the underworld because it was the largest landmass south of the Edin, the Anunnaki headquarters in modern-day Iraq.
The other setting that went by the name underworld were the underground mines of Africa, particularly those below the equator. These were the Abzu proper, what we today call the Abyss, meaning the “dark depths”. The underground mines were also known as Hades. Since it was Nergal who presided over mining, he too became known as Hades.
In Greek “mythology”, Hades as an individual has been described as the God of the Dead, the King of the Underworld, and the God of Hidden Wealth. “Hidden wealth” refers to the treasures of the Earth’s crust in the form of mineral ores, notably silver and gold. This is a most apt characterisation of Nergal. But why is he also characterised as the God of the Dead?
NERGAL’S MINES BECOME A SYNONYM FOR HELL
In some Bantu languages including Setswana, the English term Hades as a place (Haatshe/pa[ha]nshi) translates to “on the ground” or “the ground beneath”. Hades, therefore, ideally means “Earth” or “the sub-surface”.
But in modern-day parlance, Hades carries the same meaning as Hell – an inferno of eternal damnation for the wicked dead. Although in religious circles this linguistic turn of meaning has been blown out of proportion, it is not exactly far-fetched: it has a basis in near-truth. It derives from the circumstances of Lulus who toiled in the underground mines of Africa in Anunnaki times.
To the Lulus, working in the underground mines amounted to dying in a literal sense. In fact, the conditions were so dreadful even Nergal himself shuddered at the possibility of Enki getting to know about them. Initially, the Lulus lived in a camp in the vicinities of the mine surface and were taken underground for work on a daily basis by way of a lift.
But in view of the all too exacting work and the harsh treatment by Nergal’s men (who regarded the Lulus as slaves, in contradistinction to Enki’s notion of their being “helpers”), most of them ran away and vanished into the surrounding lush jungles, never to return.
In order to stem this exodus of vital manpower once and for all, Nergal decreed that the Lulus not only had to work underground but they were to live there permanently and die there. To a Lulu, therefore, a mine was a booby-trap – a land mine!
In time, the Anunnaki underground mines gained notoriety as Hades the abode of the dead. It was said this Hades had several levels (just as an underground mine has layers of tunnel systems) with varying degrees of punishment and different categories of the condemned: the deeper the level, the more severe the punishment (underground mine work becomes more onerous with endeavours to reach deeper ores).
The lowest level was known as Tartarus. This was a prison not for humans but for the Titans (TI-TA-AN in Sumerian, meaning “Heavenly Beings”), which was simply another name for the Anunnaki (In his second epistle [2 PETER 2:4] Simon Peter too makes allusion to Tartarus).
Of course this is pure embellishment as the Anunnaki did not imprison their own people: when an Anunnaki committed a crime, he was either executed if it was particularly egregious (e.g. Kumarbi the “Evil Zu” who was beheaded by Ninurta for treason) or simply exiled (e.g. Enlil when he raped Sud and Cain after he killed his brother Abel).
A myth also emerged that once in Hades, you could not escape as it was policed by Cerberus, Nergal’s vicious chimera dog. Indeed in Greek mythology portrayals, Nergal is usually depicted with this chimera squatting at his feet.
Cerberus was a three-headed dog with a serpent's tail, a mane of snakes, and the claws of a lion. Dog-Serpent-Lion: this was an allegory of Anunnaki demographics. The Anunnaki comprised of a strain that originally came from the Sirius and Orion star systems, that is, Sirians and Arians. The Sirians (Enlilites) evolved from a Wolfen-Leonine (lion) creature, whereas the Arians (Enkites) evolved from a serpentine creature.
Having intermarried, the Enlilites and Enkites were now more or less a conjoined race as encapsulated in Cerberus. The element of “three” also most likely derived from the fact that the Anunnaki were represented in three star systems – Sirius, Orion, and our Solar System.
There’s a chance, nonetheless, that Cerberus was not simply a mythical creature: he was real. He could have been part of Enki’s gene-blending experiments at his organic R&D Facility at Bit Shiimti and to whom Nergal took a liking. Indeed, it is not far-fetched to suppose that Nergal must have been in the habit of showing off Cerberus as he toured the mines and setting him on the Lulus who were reported to him as shirking duty.
“NERGAL HAS ‘KILLED’ ALL THE MEN OF MY LAND”
As the Lulus became aware that being conscripted for mining work amounted to dying as one was never seen again on the face of the Earth, they avoided the draft like the plague. The primary reason early man scattered all over the world from his birthplace in Africa was to avoid being rounded up for mining work.
No one volunteered: all were forcefully recruited in the manner of slave labour. The Lulus were actually hunted all over the world by Nergal from the Enkites and Ninurta from the Enlilites. They were first put in a makeshift concentration camp and when their numbers were sufficient loaded onto cargo planes and taken to the Abzu. This continued to happen even during the time of Moses in the second millennium BC!
In 1887, about 350 tablets were discovered in Egypt at El Amarna, the ancient capital city of Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, known as Aaron (the brother of Moses) in the Bible. The tablets were written during the rule of his father Amenhotep III. One of these tablets bore correspondence between the King of Cyprus and the Egyptian Pharaoh.
It partly read as follows: My brother, behold, my messenger I have sent with your messenger to you to Egypt. Now I have sent 500 talents (12.5 tons) of copper to you; I have sent it to you as a gift, my brother. Do not, my brother, let yourself be concerned that the amount of copper is too little, for in my land the hand of Nergal my lord has killed all the men, and so there is not a single copper-worker.
What the Cypriot king was saying was that the dreaded Nergal had made a clean sweep of all grown men in his territory: they had been led away for good, the metaphor for which was “killed”. Everybody who was taken away to work in the underground gold mines of the Abzu was deemed dead as they were never seen again.
In his book Planet of God, Andreas Paris also writes thus of the Anunnaki god Nergal: “Nergal, being a member of the alien Brotherhood of Gold, was a very-results-oriented executive. He could travel around in Africa, Asia, and Europe, selecting men to use as labour in the mines. Being selected by Nergal was equivalent to being considered as dead.
The mineworkers were transported to the underground mines, where they worked for as long as they lived. They were provided with food and water to keep them alive, although they probably had been manipulated to believe they were dead. Those people lived the rest of their lives in the mines. They were ‘living dead’. When they no longer were able to work, they were jus buried under the excavated soil.
They never came up again. The ‘underworld’ was a place of no return. Surely, it was a terrible fate for those ancestors of ours. It was literally a place of Hell, not for the souls but for living people.”
THE OTHER “HELL” IN NINURTA’S DOMAIN
Although gold mines were scattered all over Africa, the hub was Zimbabwe. One of the aptest translations of “Zimbabwe” is “Their Metal”. This was a dismissive reference to the Anunnaki as indeed gold was their metal: it was they who had use of it. Earthlings of the day didn’t care a hoot what the gold fuss was about. Their role in its mining was wholly and callously imposed on them.
Whilst the Anunnaki referred to Africa as the Abzu, meaning “underworld” in one context but also “Place of the Dark People” in another, in Old Testament times the continent was known as Ophir. Ophir owed its fame to its abundant god deposits.
King Solomon used to come to Africa to acquire gold at least once in three years. Since Zimbabwe was the gold capital of the continent, it too was known as Ophir. Ophir was a corruption of Afura or Afaro, the root word for Afuraka, rendered Africa in Greek.
Note that Afura had nothing to do with gold or racial profiling. It was based purely on the solar mythos. Primal Africans revered (not worshipped, take note) the Sun being the sustainer of life on Earth. The Sun was known as Ra. It was also known as the Faro, meaning King of Light. This nomenclature rubbed off on key Anunnaki figures, some of whom called themselves “Sun God”.
Examples were Marduk the son of Enki (who Egyptians called Ra), Horus, a great great grandson of Enki, and Utu Shamash the grandson of Enlil. I have no doubt that “Pharaoh”, the title of ancient Egyptian kings, derived from Faro.
Badtibira, Ninurta’s cult city in the Edin, was the equivalent of the African “Hades”. Its smelters and refineries were located underground. Lulus who worked at Badtibira were also never seen again. In his day, the biblical patriarch Enoch had occasion to tour the subterranean smelters and refineries of Badtibira.
This is how he documented his reminiscences. “And the men (his entourage) then led me to the Northern Region (The Edin) and showed me a very terrible place. And there was all manner of torture (of the worker Lulus) in that place. Savage darkness and impenetrable gloom: and there’s not light there but a gloomy fire is always burning and a fiery river (molten metal) goes forth.
And all that place has fire on all sides, and on all sides cold and ice (for cooling purposes), thus it burns and freezes. And the prisoners (the working Lulus) are very savage and the angels (the Anunnaki) terrible and without pity: carrying savage weapons and their torture was unmerciful. And I said: ‘Woe! Woe! How terrible is this place!’ And the men said to me: ‘This place, Enoch, is prepared for those who do not honour god; who committed evil deeds on earth.’”
Enoch toured Badtibira on a fact-finding mission based on the unsavoury things he had heard about the treatment of Earthlings who laboured there. Whilst there, wool was pulled over his eyes by Ninurta’s men. He was made to believe that the Lulus who toiled there had committed heinous crimes and were incarcerated here for life and with hard labour as punishment.
That way, they would never have the chance to cause trouble on the surface of the Earth and give “Lord Enlil” sleepless nights. Enoch described some of the Lulus as “savages”. Of course they were not inborn savages but had simply cracked from the torture, the overly exacting work, and the agony of the knowledge that they would never see the light of day again, not to mention their families. Enoch also noted that the Anunnaki supervisors themselves were barbaric.
If Enoch had cared to talk to the poor Lulus to hear their side of the story, they would have told him that they were not criminals or such law breakers but had been hunted and captured for slave labour in the bowels of the Earth. All the same, it is doubtful whether Enoch would have sympathised with them as he was not an ordinary Earthling like the Lulus but one of the elites groomed by the diabolical Enlilites. This Earth, My Brother…
NIBIRU OZONE HOLE DWINDLES
The gold ores, once extracted from the mines of the Abzu, were shipped to Badtibira at the Edin over a period of only ten days. Enki’s third-born son Gibil, a metallurgist by training and a skilled navigator, was in charge of the submersible maritime vessels that carried the gold cargo. At Badtibira (The “Metal City”), the gold was smelted and refined into portable ingots.
These were then haulaged to Sippar, the spaceport before the flood, and then transhipped to Mars, which had the advantage of a lower gravity for easier airlifting of bulk quantities of the ingot cargo to the planet Nibiru.
Meticulous astrophysical calculations were made to ensure that the Mars-bound spaceship launched ahead of Nibiru has it returned toward the ecliptic (our region of the Solar System) in its 3600-year-long circuit. The spaceship left Nibiru 13 to 18 Earth years before Nibiru got closest to Earth.
Writes Zechariah Sitchin The 12th Planet: “The Anunnaki adopted for their Earth missions the same approach NASA adopted for the Moon missions: when the principal spaceship neared Earth, it went into orbit around the planet without actually landing. Instead, a smaller craft was released from the mother ship and performed the actual landing.
As difficult as accurate landings were, the departures from Mars must have been even trickier. The landing craft had to rejoin its mother ship, which then had to fire up its engines and accelerate to extremely high speeds, for it had to catch up with Nibiru, which by then was passing its perigee (that is, closet point to the Sun) between Mars and Jupiter at its top orbital speed.” The mothership had between 1.5 to 1.6 years to catch up with a retreating Nibiru.
On Nibiru, scientists processed the gold, courtesy of Sitchin’s The Lost Book of Enki, into “the finest dust, to skyward launch it was hauled away … With rockets was the dust heavenward carried, by crystals’ beams was it dispersed.” The pay-off did not take long, in Nibiru time, to come: the ozone hole was shrinking. “Nibiru's atmosphere was slowly healing; Earth-Mission to the satisfaction of all was proceeding.”
NEXT WEEK: A TOP SECRET OF THE “GODS”
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THE KEY TO HAPPINESS
Speaking at a mental health breakfast seminar last week I emphasised to the HR managerial audience that you cannot yoga your way out of a toxic work culture. What I meant by that was that as HR practitioners we must avoid tending to look at the soft options to address mental health issues, distractions such as yoga and meditation. That’s like looking for your lost bunch of keys, then opening the front door with the spare under the mat. You’ve solved the immediate problem, but all the other keys are still missing. Don’t get me wrong; mindfulness practices, yoga exercise and taking time to smell the roses all have their place in mental wellness but it’s a bit like hacking away at the blight-ridden leaves of the tree instead of getting to the root cause of the problem.
Another point I stressed was that mental health at work shouldn’t be looked at from the individual lens – yet that’s what we do. We have counselling of employees, wellness webinars or talks but if you really want to sort out the mental health crisis that we face in our organisations you HAVE to view this more systemically and that means looking at the system and that starts with the leaders and managers.
Now. shining a light on management may not be welcomed by many. But leaders control the flow of work and set the goals and expectations that others need to live up to. Unrealistic expectations, excessive workloads and tight deadlines increase stress and force people to work longer hours … some of the things which contribute to poor mental health. Actually, we know from research exactly what contributes to a poor working environment – discrimination and inequality, excessive workloads, low job control and job insecurity – all of which pose a risk to mental health. The list goes on and is pretty exhaustive but here are the major ones: under-use of skills or being under-skilled for work; excessive workloads or work pace, understaffing; long, unsocial or inflexible hours; lack of control over job design or workload; organizational culture that enables negative behaviours; limited support from colleagues or authoritarian supervision; discrimination and exclusion; unclear job role; under- or over-promotion; job insecurity.
And to my point no amount of yoga is going to change that.
We can use the word ‘toxic’ to describe dysfunctional work environments and if our workplaces are toxic we have to look at the people who set the tone. Harder et al. (2014) define a toxic work environment as an environment that negatively impacts the viability of an organization. They specify: “It is reasonable to conclude that an organization can be considered toxic if it is ineffective as well as destructive to its employees”.
Micromanagement and/or failure to reward or recognize performance are the most obvious signs of toxic managers. These managers can be controlling, inflexible, rigid, close-minded, and lacking in self-awareness. And let’s face it managers like those I have just described are plentiful. Generally, however there is often a failure by higher management to address toxic leaders when they are considered to be high performing. This kind of situation can be one of the leading causes of unhappiness in teams. I have coached countless employees who talk about managers with bullying ways which everyone knows about, yet action is never taken. It’s problematic when we overlook unhealthy dynamics and behaviours because of high productivity or talent as it sends a clear message that the behaviour is acceptable and that others on the team will not be supported by leadership.
And how is the HR Manager viewed when they raise the unacceptable behaviour with the CEO – they are accused of not being a team player, looking for problems or failing to understand business dynamics and the need to get things done. Toxic management is a systemic problem caused when companies create cultures around high-performance and metrics vs. long-term, sustainable, healthy growth. In such instances the day-to-day dysfunction is often ignored for the sake of speed and output. While short-term gains are rewarded, executives fail to see the long-term impact of protecting a toxic, but high-performing, team or employee. Beyond this, managers promote unhealthy workplace behaviour when they recognize and reward high performers for going above and beyond, even when that means rewarding the road to burnout by praising a lack of professional boundaries (like working during their vacation and after hours).
The challenge for HR Managers is getting managers to be honest with themselves and their teams about the current work environment. Honesty is difficult, I’m afraid, especially with leaders who are overly sensitive, emotional, or cannot set healthy boundaries. But here’s the rub – no growth or change can occur if denial and defensiveness are used to protect egos. Being honest about these issues helps garner trust among employees, who already know the truth about what day-to-day dynamics are like at work. They will likely be grateful that cultural issues will finally be addressed. Conversely, if they aren’t addressed, retention failure is the cost of protecting egos of those in management.
Toxic workplace culture comes at a huge price: even before the Great Resignation, turnover related to toxic workplaces cost US employers almost $50 billion yearly! I wonder what it’s costing us here.
QUOTE
We can use the word ‘toxic’ to describe dysfunctional work environments and if our workplaces are toxic we have to look at the people who set the tone. Harder et al. (2014) define a toxic work environment as an environment that negatively impacts the viability of an organization. They specify: “It is reasonable to conclude that an organization can be considered toxic if it is ineffective as well as destructive to its employees”.
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Heartache for Kelly Fisher
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o date, Princess Diana, General Atiku, had destroyed one marriage, come close to ruining another one in the offing, and now was poised to wreck yet another marriage that was already in the making. This was between Dodi Fayed and the American model Kelly Fisher.
If there was one common denominator about Diana and Dodi besides their having been born with a silver spoon in their mouths, General, it was that both were divorcees. Dodi’s matrimonial saga, however, was less problematic and acrimonious and lasted an infinitesimal 8 months. This was with yet another American model and film actress going by the name Susanne Gregard.
Dodi met Susanne in 1986, when she was only 26 years old. Like most glamourous women, she proved not to be that easy a catch and to readily incline her towards positively and expeditiously responding to his rather gallant advances, Dodi booked her as a model for the Fayed’s London mega store Harrods, where he had her travel every weekend by Concorde. They married at a rather private ceremony at Dodi’s Colorado residence in 1987 on New Year’s Day, without the blessings, bizarrely, of his all-powerful father. By September the same year, the marriage was, for reasons that were not publicised but likely due to the fact that his father had not sanctioned it, kaput.
It would take ten more years for Dodi to propose marriage to another woman, who happened to be Kelly Fisher this time around.
DODI HITCHES KELLY FISHER
Kelly and Dodi, General, met in Paris in July 1996, when Kelly was only 29 years old. In a sort of whirlwind romance, the duo fell in love, becoming a concretised item in December and formally getting engaged in February 1997.
Of course the relationship was not only about mutual love: the material element was a significant, if not vital, factor. Kelly was to give up her modelling job just so she could spend a lot more time with the new man in her life and for that she was to be handed out a compensatory reward amounting to $500,000. The engagement ring for one, which was a diamond and sapphire affair, set back Dodi in the order of $230,000. Once they had wedded, on August 9 that very year as per plan, they were to live in a $7 million 5-acre Malibu Beach mansion in California, which Dodi’s father had bought him for that and an entrepreneurial purpose. They were already even talking about embarking on making a family from the get-go: according to Kelly, Dodi wanted two boys at the very least.
Kelly naturally had the unambiguous blessings of her father-in-law as there was utterly nothing Dodi could do without the green light from the old man. When Mohamed Al Fayed was contemplating buying the Jonikal, the luxurious yacht, he invited Dodi and Kelly to inspect it too and hear their take on it.
If there was a tell-tale red flag about Dodi ab initio, General, it had to do with a $200,000 cheque he issued to Kelly as part payment of the pledged $500,000 and which was dishonoured by the bank. Throughout their 13-month-long romance, Dodi made good on only $60,000 of the promised sum. But love, as they say, General, is blind and Kelly did not care a jot about her beau’s financial indiscretions. It was enough that he was potentially a very wealthy man anyway being heir to his father’s humongous fortune.
KELLY CONSIGNED TO “BOAT CAGE”
In that summer of the year 1997, General, Dodi and Kelly were to while away quality time on the French Rivierra as well as the Jonikal after Paris. Then Dodi’s dad weighed in and put a damper on this prospect in a telephone call to Dodi on July 14. “Dodi said he was going to London and he’d be back and then we were going to San Tropez,” Kelly told the interviewer in a later TV programme. “That evening he didn’t call me and I finally got him on his portable phone. I said, ‘Dodi where are you?’ and he said he was in London. I said, ‘Ok, I’ll call you right back at your apartment’. He said, ‘No, no, don’t call me back’. So I said, ‘Dodi where are you?’ and he admitted he was in the south of France. His father had asked him to come down and not bring me, I know now.”
Since Dodi could no longer hide from Kelly and she on her part just could not desist from badgering him, he had no option but to dispatch a private Fayed jet to pick her up so that she join him forthwith in St. Tropez. This was on July 16.
Arriving in St. Tropez, Kelly, General, did not lodge at the Fayed’s seaside villa as was her expectation but was somewhat stashed in the Fayed’s maritime fleet, first in the Sakara, and later in the Cujo, which was moored only yards from the Fayed villa. It was in the Cujo Kelly spent the next two nights with Dodi. “She (Kelly) felt there was something strange going on as Dodi spent large parts of the day at the family’s villa, Castel St. Helene, but asked her to stay on the boat,” writes Martyn Gregory in The Diana Conspiracy Exposed. “Dodi was sleeping with Kelly at night and was courting Diana by day. His deception was assisted by Kelly Fisher’s modelling assignment on 18-20 July in Nice. The Fayed’s were happy to lend her the Cujo and its crew for three days to take her there.”
Dodi’s behaviour clearly was curious, General. “Dodi would say, ‘I’m going to the house and I’ll be back in half an hour’,” Kelly told Gregory. “And he’d come back three or four hours later. I was furious. I’m sitting on the boat, stuck. And he was having lunch with everyone. So he had me in my little boat cage, and I now know he was seducing Diana. So he had me, and then he would go and try and seduce her, and then he’d come back the next day and it would happen again. I was livid by this point, and I just didn’t understand what was going on. When he was with me, he was so wonderful. He said he loved me, and we talked to my mother, and we were talking about moving into the house in California.”
But as is typical of the rather romantically gullible tenderer sex, General, Kelly rationalised her man’s stratagems. “I just thought they maybe didn’t want a commoner around the Princess … Dodi kept leaving me behind with the excuse that the Princess didn’t like to meet new people.” During one of those nights, General, Dodi even had unprotected sexual relations with Kelly whilst cooing in her ear that, “I love you so much and I want you to have my baby.”
KELLY USHERED ONTO THE JONIKAL AT LONG LAST
On July 20, General, Diana returned to England and it was only then that Dodi allowed Kelly to come aboard the Jonikal. According to Debbie Gribble, who was the Jonikal’s chief stewardess, Kelly was kind of grumpy. “I had no idea at the time who she was, but I felt she acted very spoiled,” she says in Trevor Rees-Jones’ The Bodyguard’s Story. “I remember vividly that she snapped, ‘I want to eat right now. I don’t want a drink, I just want to eat now’. It was quite obvious that she was upset, angry or annoyed about something.”
Kelly’s irascible manner of course was understandable, General, given the games Dodi had been playing with her since she pitched up in St. Tropez. Granted, what happened to Kelly was very much antithetical to Dodi’s typically well-mannered nature, but the fact of the matter was that she simply was peripheral to the larger agenda, of which Dodi’s father was the one calling the shots.
On July 23, Dodi and Kelly flew to Paris, where they parted as Kelly had some engagements lined up in Los Angeles. Dodi promised to join her there on August 4 to celebrate with her her parents’ marriage anniversary. Dodi, however, General, did not make good on his promise: though he did candidly own up to the fact that he was at that point in time again with Diana, he also fibbed that he was not alone with her but was partying with her along with Elton John and George Michael. But in a August 6 phone call, he did undertake to Kelly that he would be joining her in LA in a few days’ time. In the event, anyway, General, Kelly continued to ready herself for her big day, which was slated for August 9 – until she saw “The Kiss”.
THE KISS THAT NEVER WAS
“The Kiss”, General, first featured in London’s Sunday Mirror on August 10 under that very headline. In truth, General, it was not a definitive, point-blank kiss: it was a fuzzy image of Diana and Dodi embracing on the Jonikal. A friend of Kelly faxed her the newspaper pictures in the middle of the night and Kelly was at once stunned and convulsed with rage.
But although Kelly was shocked, General, she was not exactly surprised as two or three days prior, British tabloids had already begun rhapsodising on a brewing love affair between Dodi and Diana. That day, Kelly had picked up a phone to demand an immediate explanation from her fiancé. “I started calling him in London because at this time I was expecting his arrival in a day. I called his private line, but there was no answer. So then I called the secretary and asked to speak to him she wouldn’t put me on. So Mohamed got on and in so many horrible words told me to never call back again. I said, ‘He’s my fiancé, what are you talking about?’ He hung up on me and I called back and the secretary said don’t ever call here again, your calls are no longer to be put through. It was so horrible.”
Kelly did at long last manage to reach Dodi but he was quick to protest that, “I can’t talk to you on the phone. I will talk to you in LA.” Perhaps Dodi, General, just at that stage was unable to muster sufficient Dutch courage to thrash out the matter with Kelly but a more credible reason he would not talk had to do with his father’s obsessive bugging of every communication device Dodi used and every inch of every property he owned. The following is what David Icke has to say on the subject in his iconic book The Biggest Secret:
“Ironically, Diana used to have Kensington Palace swept for listening devices and now she was in the clutches of a man for whom bugging was an obsession. The Al Fayed villa in San Tropez was bugged, as were all Fayed properties. Everything Diana said could be heard. Bob Loftus, the former Head of Security at Harrods, said that the bugging there was ‘a very extensive operation’ and was also always under the direction of Al Fayed. Henry Porter, the London Editor of the magazine Vanity Fair, had spent two years investigating Al Fayed and he said they came across his almost obsessive use of eavesdropping devices to tape telephone calls, bug rooms, and film people.”
Through mutual friends, General, Porter warned Diana about Al Fayed’s background and activities ‘because we thought this was quite dangerous for her for obvious reasons’ but Diana apparently felt she could handle it and although she knew Al Fayed could ‘sometimes be a rogue’, he was no threat to her, she thought. “He is rather more than a rogue and rather more often than ‘sometimes,” she apparently told friends. “I know he’s naughty, but that’s all.” The TV programme Dispatches said they had written evidence that Al Fayed bugged the Ritz Hotel and given his background and the deals that are hatched at the Ritz, it would be uncharacteristic if he did not. Kelly Fisher said that the whole time she was on Fayed property, she just assumed everything was bugged. It was known, she said, and Dodi had told her the bugging was so pervasive.
KELLY SUES, ALBEIT VAINLY SO
To his credit, General, Dodi was sufficiently concerned about what had transpired in St. Tropez to fly to LA and do his utmost to appease Kelly but Kelly simply was not interested as to her it was obvious enough that Diana was the new woman in his life.
On August 14, Kelly held a press conference in LA, where she announced that she was taking legal action against Dodi for breach of matrimonial contract. Her asking compensation price was £340,000. Of course the suit, General, lapsed automatically with the demise of Dodi in that Paris underpass on August 31, 1997.
Although Kelly did produce evidence of her engagement to Dodi in the form of a pricey and spectacular engagement ring, General, Mohamed Al Fayed was adamant that she never was engaged to his son and that she was no more than a gold digger.
But it is all water under the bridge now, General: Kelly is happily married to a pilot and the couple has a daughter. Her hubby may not be half as rich as Dodi potentially was but she is fully fulfilled anyway. Happiness, General, comes in all shades and does not necessarily stem from a colossal bank balance or other such trappings of affluence.
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THE SHORT-LIVED TRIANGLE: For about a month or so, Dodi Al Fayed juggled Princess Diana and American model Kelly Fisher, who sported Dodi’s engagement ring. Of course one of the two had to give and naturally it could not be Diana, who entered the lists in the eleventh hour but was the more precious by virtue of her royal pedigree and surpassing international stature.
NEXT WEEK: FURTHER BONDING BETWEEN DIANA AND DODI
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EXTRAVAGANCE One of The Scourges in Society.
Extravagance in recent times has moved from being the practice of some rich and wealthy people of society in general and has regrettably, filtered to all levels of the society. Some of those who have the means are reckless and flaunt their wealth, and consequently, those of us who do not, borrow money to squander it in order to meet their families’ wants of luxuries and unnecessary items. Unfortunately this is a characteristic of human nature.
Adding to those feelings of inadequacy we have countless commercials to whet the consumer’s appetite/desire to buy whatever is advertised, and make him believe that if he does not have those products he will be unhappy, ineffective, worthless and out of tune with the fashion and trend of the times. This practice has reached a stage where many a bread winner resorts to taking loans (from cash loans or banks) with high rates of interest, putting himself in unnecessary debt to buy among other things, furniture, means of transport, dress, food and fancy accommodation, – just to win peoples’ admiration.
Islam and most religions discourage their followers towards wanton consumption. They encourage them to live a life of moderation and to dispense with luxury items so they will not be enslaved by them. Many people today blindly and irresponsibly abandon themselves to excesses and the squandering of wealth in order to ‘keep up with the Joneses’.
The Qur’aan makes it clear that allowing free rein to extravagance and exceeding the limits of moderation is an inherent characteristic in man. Allah says, “If Allah were to enlarge the provision for his servants, they would indeed transgress beyond all bounds.” [Holy Qur’aan 42: 27]
Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said, “Observe the middle course whereby you will attain your objective (that is paradise).” – Moderation is the opposite of extravagance.
Every individual is meant to earn in a dignified manner and then spend in a very wise and careful manner. One should never try to impress upon others by living beyond one’s means. Extravagance is forbidden in Islam, Allah says, “Do not be extravagant; surely He does not love those who are extravagant!” [Holy Qur’aan 7: 31]
The Qur’aan regards wasteful buying of food, extravagant eating that sometimes leads to throwing away of leftovers as absolutely forbidden. Allah says, “Eat of the fruits in their season, but render the dues that are proper on the day that the harvest is gathered. And waste not by excess, for Allah loves not the wasters.” [Holy Qur’aan 6: 141]
Demonstrating wastefulness in dress, means of transport, furniture and any other thing is also forbidden. Allah says, “O children of Adam! Wear your apparel of adornment at every time and place of worship, and eat and drink but do not be extravagant; surely He does not love those who are extravagant!” [Holy Qur’aan 7: 31]
Yet extravagance and the squandering of wealth continue to grow in society, while there are many helpless and deprived peoples who have no food or shelter. Just look around you here in Botswana.
Have you noticed how people squander their wealth on ‘must have’ things like designer label clothes, fancy brand whiskey, fancy top of the range cars, fancy society parties or even costly weddings, just to make a statement? How can we prevent the squandering of such wealth?
How can one go on spending in a reckless manner possibly even on things that have been made forbidden while witnessing the suffering of fellow humans whereby thousands of people starve to death each year. Islam has not forbidden a person to acquire wealth, make it grow and make use of it. In fact Islam encourages one to do so. It is resorting to forbidden ways to acquiring and of squandering that wealth that Islam has clearly declared forbidden. On the Day of Judgment every individual will be asked about his wealth, where he obtained it and how he spent it.
In fact, those who do not have any conscience about their wasteful habits may one day be subjected to Allah’s punishment that may deprive them of such wealth overnight and impoverish them. Many a family has been brought to the brink of poverty after leading a life of affluence. Similarly, many nations have lived a life of extravagance and their people indulged in such excesses only to be later inflicted by trials and tribulations to such a point that they wished they would only have a little of what they used to possess!
With the festive season and the new year holidays having passed us, for many of us meant ‘one’ thing – spend, spend, spend. With the festivities and the celebrations over only then will the reality set in for many of us that we have overspent, deep in debt with nothing to show for it and that the following months are going to be challenging ones.
Therefore, we should not exceed the bounds when Almighty bestows His bounties upon us. Rather we should show gratefulness to Him by using His bestowments and favours in ways that prove our total obedience to Him and by observing moderation in spending. For this will be better for us in this life and the hereafter.