Hail King Cain!
Columns
Benson C Saili
THIS EARTH, MY BROTHER
He had a by far greater legacy and stature than the Bible gives him credit for
The woman Enki chose for him was Luluwa, also known as Awan. Luluwa was a full-blooded Anunnaki, being the daughter of Enki himself and his fellow Anunnaki mistress Lilitu. Since Lilitu was in turn related to Enlil as she was his granddaughter on her mother’s side, Luluwa had both Enlilite and Enkite blood coursing through her veins although the Enkite genes predominated considering that Lilitu’s father was Nergal, Enki’s second-born son. The Anunnaki were so shamelessly incestuous one has to do a lot of mental gymnastics to come up with a flawless family tree.
Now, during his penal peregrinations, Cain was not permitted to settle in one particular place for long and establish a permanent settlement. He was also forbidden to cultivate land or erect brick-and-mortar structures as partially hinted in GENESIS 4:12. This was in keeping with his sentence, which was to lead a nomadic life through six generations at the very least. There was likely another reason for such proscriptions. Enlil didn’t want him to establish a flourishing domain of his own that could rival the Edin for supremacy. The notion of two centres of power on one planet was anathema both to Anu and Enlil.
Thus it was that as he led a peripatetic life, Cain, who began as a tiller of land in the Middle East, was at various stages a Bedouin-like nomadic tent dweller who tended flocks, a musical entertainer, and a metallurgist. The musical prowess was of course inherited from Enki, who, Sumerian records tell us, was the Anunnaki’s most proficient musician (Enki excelled at everything, the only such being of his era). Metallurgy, of which alchemy (turning of the ORME elements into the versatile monoatomic white powder of gold) was a component, was a specialty of the Enkites. Enki was the “master of the craft”, described in the Sumerian chronicles as “the manifestation of knowledge and the craftsman par excellence”. By “craft” is meant all sorts of occupational arts.
According to Enki’s reminiscences, titled The Lost Book of Enki by Zechariah Sitchin, it took approximately 50,000 years for Cain’s banishment to lapse. This was in the time of Lamech, Noah’s father. By that time, there had been seven generations counting from Adapa and so it was all consistent with the duration of the curse as pronounced by Enlil. The cessation of the curse came at a time when Cain was dwelling in the Americas and had had a second-born dynastic son who was probably 30-40,000 years old. His name was Enoch, meaning “foundation”. What evidence is there that Cain did indeed venture as far as the Americas?
CAIN ESTABLISHES MEXICO CITY, FOUNDS A NEW RACE
Besides Cain and Abel, Adapa and Titi-Eve had other children. Altogether, they had 60 children, comprising of 30 sons and 30 daughters. The most prominent of these after Cain and Abel was Seth, their third son.
When Adapa was advancing in years, his health began to fail. Soon he lost his sight. Knowing that he was staring death in the face, he asked to see all the members of his progeny, insisting that Cain too be fetched from wherever he was. Enki then detailed Ninurta, under whose tutelage Cain had been when he was a denizen of the Edin, to go look for him in his flying saucer.
With all his male offspring gathered, Adapa asked that Cain and Seth sit by him as the seniormost of the multigenerational brood. Note that although Cain was biologically Enki’s son, legally he was Adapa’s son. Enlil, who was also present, then officially announced that Cain was no longer under a curse as it had run its course. With that declaration, Adapa proceeded to officially anoint Cain as his heir, the next King of Earthlings. A few years later, Adapa passed on.
Meanwhile, Cain had already established a city in today’s North America, which he began to develop in the very year his curse ceased to be operable. In the British Museum is a Babylonian tablet catalogued BM 74329. It says, “A group of exiled people who were ‘plowmen’ … wandered and reached a land called Dunnu … There, their leader, named Ka'in, built a city whose landmark was a twin tower.” Indeed, Cain was a tiller of land (“ploughman”) and Genesis says he headed for the “Land of Nod”, which scholars interpret as simply meaning a state of endless wandering but which in truth may have been a corruption of the term Dunnu.
Zechariah Sitchin presents persuasive evidence that Dunnu was today’s Mexico City. He says the Aztec capital was known as Tenochtitlan, meaning “City of Tenoch”. This may well have been simply “Enoch” given the Aztecs’ orthographical tendency to prefix many words with the sound “T”. The non-canonical Book of Jasher (deliberately excluded from the Old Testament canon for one reason or another) says, “And at that time (when the curse was lifted), Cain also began to build a city: and he built the city and he called the name of the city Enoch, according to the name of his son; for in those days the Lord (Enlil) had given him rest upon the Earth, and he did not move about and wander as in the beginning.” The Babylonian tablet also says, “He (Kain) built in Dunnu a city with twin towers. Kain dedicated to himself the lordship over the city.” Indeed, when the Spaniards arrived in and annexed the Aztec Empire (which extended from Central Mexico all the way to Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras) in the 16th century, they documented that the City of Enoch was distinguished by its twin-towered Aztec Temple.
Whilst in North America, Cain spawned a new race. We today call them Native Americans or Red Indians. In order to distinguish them from any other race on the planet, he called on his half-brother Ningishzidda, Enki’s genius son and a DNA expert, to embed in them a gene that would prevent them from growing a beard when they came of age. This certainly is what we see of Native Americans: they do not grow a beard at all unless they are of mixed blood. Sadly, this contrived genetic trait has been mistaken by scholars, who include Zechariah Sitchin himself, as the seemingly enigmatic Mark of Cain when it is far from that.
Sitchin writes thus in his book Divine Encounters: “What was this ‘Mark of Cain’? The Bible does not say, and countless guesses are just that—guesses. Our own guess is that the mark might have been a genetic change, such as depriving the line of Cain of facial hair—a mark that would be immediately obvious to whoever shall find them … This is a mark of recognition of Amerindians.” Tragically, this is a rather wild guess for as we demonstrated last time around, the Mark of Cain was a symbol of sovereignty over Earth. It identified Cain as the monarchical heir to Adapa.
CAIN IS KING OF EARTHLINGS
Following the death of Adapa, Cain returned to the Edin to succeed to the throne as the King of Earthlings (not King of Earth, please note, as that style was the preserve of Enlil, the primary Jehovah/Yahweh of the Bible). However, instead of basing himself at Eridu, where Adapa ruled from, Cain chose to rule from a newly established city-state known as Kish. That was about 56,200 years ago, about 43,200 years before the Deluge of Noah’s day.
Because he was Enki’s son, the Enlilites scorned him as the “Serpent King”. Indeed, some Sumerian records refer to him as “Arwium King of Kish, the son of Masda, and successor to King Atabba (Adapa)”. The Sumerian Arwium is the inspiration to the Hebrew Awwim, meaning “snakes”. Masda (Masenda) was another name of Enki. It meant “one who prostrates himself”, as a serpent does.
We have already explained the name Cain, or Kaen, in a Sumerian context (that is, “One begotten of the Lord”) but there is more to it than simply that. By some ancient accounts, the name Cain can also be rendered as Q’ayin, which in fact is the Hebrew spelling of the name. When the name is truncated to simply Ayin, it assumes the meaning “All-Seeing Eye”. This refers to Enki, who was known as “Lord of the Sacred Eye”. This is not a physical eye: it is the pineal gland, which metaphorically is said to be located between the two physical eyes behind the brow. The pineal gland is characterised as the All-Seeing Eye because it can perceive light (that is, illumination in the sense of metaphysical knowledge) out of the blackness of its situation. Enki, Ningishzidda, Adapa, and Cain – all Enkites or Serpentines – had a tremendous gift of intuitive perception, hence the adage “Be as Wise as Serpents”.
Remarks Laurence Gardner on the subject: “Ayin is an ancient word for ’eye’. This spelling (a-y-i-n) is actually quite important because the original spelling of Cain (whether with a ‘C’, a ‘K’ or a ‘Q’) was not ‘C-a-i-n’ as we now know it, but ‘C-a-y-i-n’. The name Cain, in its various forms, actually denoted ‘One of the Inner Eye’ … Indeed, Cain’s father Enki-Samael was himself the Sumerians’ designated Lord of the Sacred Eye.”
The name Q’ayin also came to mean “smith”, a metal smith, owing to another field of Cain’s expertise. Cain, as we hinted before, was a surpassing metallurgist. He was an artificer of metals of the highest order, a skill he passed on to some of his descendents, particularly the highly esteemed Tubal-Cain, Noah’s half-brother, who has been described as “the greatest metallurgist of his age” and “an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron”.
Furthermore, most people are not aware that both the terms King and Queen derive from Q’ayin. Kingship was actually Cainship. Let us again turn to the renowned bloodline historian Laurence Gardner: “From Kayin with a ‘K’ derived the word ‘King’, and from Qayin with a ‘Q’ derived the word ‘Queen’… Given that kingship (Malkhut) was perceived as a matrilineal inheritance through Tiamat (Adam’s wife Eve) and Lilith (Adapa’s renegade first wife Lilitu, whose daughter with Enki, Luluwa, became Cain’s wife) the name Q’ayin, identified with King, was also directly associated with Queen.”
Yet in the Bible, Cain is largely minimised and to a degree vilified (deliberately, by the pro-Enlil Levites, who wrote Genesis) when he was actually a colossus and a second-generation progenitor of the all-powerful bluebloods who continue to rule much of the Western world today. “The Merovingians (the across-the-centuries dynasty that emerged from the conjoined Davidic lines of Jesus and his immediate younger brother James) trace their kingly succession to the original Dragon King, which was Cain,” writes Laurence Gardner.
“The first King of the Messianic Dragon succession was the biblical Cain, head of the Sumerian House of Kish … The Dragon King was known as the King of Kings and his symbol, Draco (a serpent clutching its own tail, also known as the Ouroboros, a symbol of wholeness and wisdom) represented his succession through the Sumerian kings, Egyptian pharaohs, the Egyptian Therapeutae, the Qumran Essenes (from among whom Jesus arose) to the Merovingian kings of Europe.”
A VAIN BID TO SIDELINE CAINITE BLOODLINE
Although the Genesis writers tried their utmost to trivialise and sideline Cain (who was genetically superior being three-quarters Anunnaki), they did a very bad job of it ultimately. From the get-go, their aim was to promote the unmerited line of his younger brother Seth (who was genetically inferior being less than half Anunnaki) but in the process they defeated this objective through very obvious, if amateurish bungling. How?
Let’s first of all recap a bit. Adapa’s senior wife was Lilitu, a pure-bred Anunnaki woman. But a prideful Lilitu did not have that much regard for Adapa as he was a Lulu – an Earthling. The man she had always craved was the iconic Enki, Adapa’s father. So after having given Adapa all sorts of spousal headaches, she eventually ditched him and threw herself at the feet of the Anunnaki phenom that was Enki. In the event, Lilitu and Enki had two daughters, Luluwa, also known as Awan, and Kalimath. Cain married Luluwa and Seth married Kalimath.
Cain and Luluwa had two sons. The first was Etana, and the second was Enoch I. Since he was the firstborn, it was Etana who succeeded after Cain as King of Kish and of Earthlings overall. In fact, there are five documented kings of Kish after Cain, all of whom stemmed from the Cainite stock. However, the Genesis writers completely ignored Etana’s kingly line, focussing instead on the junior line of Enoch I, whereas Sumerian genealogical records, which predated Genesis by at least 2500 years, rightly focus on Etana’s line, which eventually led to the pharaohs of Egypt. The Genesis snub of Etana can be easily explained: Etana’s line did not lead to Noah, the hero of the Deluge. As such, the Genesis chroniclers decided to write the line out of history and promote the line that did – that of Enoch I.
The line of Cain through Enoch I is listed in GENESIS 4:17-18. It is Enoch I; Irad (Jared); Mehujael; Methuselah; and Lamech (if we were to include Adapa and Cain, this is a total of seven generations).
The line of Seth is recorded in GENESIS 4:26 and 5:1-25. What is striking about the Sethian line and what your pastor will never talk about is that five names in there are identical with those found in the Cainite line, only they are listed in a slightly different order and with slightly different spellings in some cases. These are Enoch; Jared; Mehujael; Methuselah; and Lamech. The only names particular to the Sethian line are Enosh and a certain Cainan.
How can two different family lines carry practically the same names? This has led Israel’s Hebrew University to posit that “the line from Seth down to Noah as given in the Bible is probably mythical”. But it was not exactly mythical. It was simply grafted onto the Cainite line with a view to lend it legitimacy. Without the Cainite connection, the Sethian line would have been rendered immaterial. It was the Cainite connection that legitimised the Sethian line because it was the Cainite line that carried the gene of royalty.
Exactly how did the Sethian line genetically blend with the Cainite line? That we unpack in a forthcoming piece.
NEXT WEEK: WHY DID ADAPA AND HIS SCIONS LIVE SO EXTRAORDINARILY LONG?
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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.
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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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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
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.