Cursed Be Canaan
Columns
Benson C Saili
THIS EARTH, MY BROTHER
… but why when it was Ham who reportedly saw his father Noah’s nakedness?
Arguing before the Council of the Gods, the Enkite tribunal headed by Enki, Isis, the widow of Osiris and the mother of the triumphant Horus, petitioned that Seth, the blinded and manhood-less loser, should be left to his own devices, without territory to call his own.
Seth, she contended, was a cancer on the Enkites: not only was he possessed of a seamless craving for power but he was so unscrupulous he would murder his own kith and kin to get anything he wanted. What he had suffered at the hands of Horus was poetic justice. In fact, if it weren’t for her herself, Horus would have long put him to the sword.
Enki and Marduk, however, had pity on Seth. He may have been a murderer and even megalomaniacal but he still was family. Worse still, he was damaged goods: he would no longer be able to see and he would no longer be capable of producing offspring having been genitally maimed in battle. In fact, from the look of things, he didn’t have long to live. Surely, he had got more than his just desserts. Enki accordingly proposed that Egypt be re-divided into two, with Seth ruling the southern part as was the case in the day of Osiris.
It was Geb, Seth’s own father, who rose to parry Enki’s line. “What’s the point of giving Seth territory when he never will have heirs?” Geb wondered aloud. “Territory must not vest in a single generation: there has to be a son to bequeath it to.” Geb’s own suggestion was that Seth be given a dwelling place outside Enkite territory as no Enkite would entertain his toxic presence anymore.
After weighing all the pros and cons, Geb’s recommendation carried the day. Horus, Enki pronounced, was to be the new and sole ruler of the whole of Egypt and the decree was formally entered in the Chamber of Records. Meanwhile, it fell to Marduk, his grandfather, to find Seth a place of refuge. In the process, Marduk approached Ishkur-Adad, Enlil’s third-born son who had jurisdiction over modern-day Lebanon.
The Igigi, the formerly Mars-based Anunnaki astronauts who had come down to Earth, teemed around the Cedar Mountain and still held Marduk in high esteem having facilitated their relocation to our planet. They were therefore certain to embrace his deathly sickly grandson.
Noting that Seth was now a perpetual invalid who would never raise trouble despite being a rival as an Enkite, Adad consented and granted citadel to Seth. He was given a retirement mansion in Lebanon and all the perks due to a god. There, he was to “end his days as a mortal, among the Igigi,” as per the ruling of Enki’s Council of the Gods. But Marduk had an ace up his sleeve. He didn’t simply organise a settling place for his grandson: he had other, shrewder ideas, which ideas eventually gave rise to what became known as the Second Pyramid War.
THE CANAANITE CURSE
One of the most enigmatic statements in the Bible, which, sadly, Christendom has dumbly embraced at face value without objectively interrogating it, is GENESIS 9:25-27. It reads as follows: “Cursed be Canaan. The lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers. Praise be to the Lord, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem. May God extend Japheth’s territory; may Japheth live in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be the slave of Japheth.”
These words were uttered by Noah, who whilst spread-eagled stark naked and in a drunken stupor was happened upon by his son Ham, who proceeded to denounce him to his brothers as a most despicable dad. According to Caucasian bigots of our day, this is the curse that universally extends to the black race (as if blacks have been the only enslaved race in history, when in truth every race was at one time or the other another’s slave: blacks easily come to mind only because their enslavement is relatively recent).
But this view as well as the quoted passage all are bollocks and largely spurious: the biblical passage was concocted after the fact and the curse was mis-contextualised by the pro-Enlil authors of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible.
The curse story is a litany of absurdities. First, why was it that it was Canaan who was cursed when he had nothing whatsoever to do with the Ham incident? Canaan wasn’t even the heir to Ham: he was the youngest of Ham’s four children. The heir was Cush. So why did Canaan have to incur the curse even if that be on behalf of his father when he was so far removed from the right of primogeniture?
Secondly, why did Yahweh (Enlil), Shem’s god, factor into the matter? Why was he exalted at the expense of his rival gods such as Enki or Marduk? One clearly can see politics written all over the story. It’s not real or objective at all: it’s tainted with partisan partiality.
It’s only when one carefully reads between the lines of the Sumerian records and the apocryphal Book of Jubilees that they will come to fully comprehend what really transpired. What happened, folks, was that when Seth moved into Shem’s territory courtesy of the Enlilites themselves, after losing the war with Horus, he had a secret pact with Marduk.
The pact was for Seth to eventually appropriate the land between the spaceport in the Sinai Peninsula and the Landing Place at Baalbek in Lebanon so that these globally strategic places should come under the control of the Enkites. The annexation would also be a great springboard to Marduk’s ascendancy to global supremacy (as the new Enlil) when the Age of Aries dawned.
Now, whereas Noah had no say over Seth, who was a god, he did have sway over fellow Earthlings. When the Earth was divided amongst his three sons in the immediate aftermath of the Deluge, each of these sons undertook an oath by which they were to abide through thick and thin. This oath said that anyone who encroached upon another’s territory would be accursed of “God”, that is, Enlil. Of Ham’s progeny, it was only the people led by Canaan who rallied to Seth in the war against Horus.
Southern Egypt, which was allocated to Seth in the time of Osiris, was dominated by Canaan’s people, later to be known as Canaanites. It were the Canaanites (secretly prodded by Marduk) who opted to follow after their god Seth in Lebanon ostensibly to provide him a spiritual boost.
Before the Canaanites processed into Lebanon, Noah, Ham himself, Cush, and Mizraim did their utmost to dissuade Canaan for fear of the inevitable repercussions. But Canaan was adamant that he had every right to be with his god. Says the Book of Jubilees: “And Ham his father, and Cush and Mizraim his brothers, said unto him: ‘Thou will hast settled in a land which is not thine, and which did not fall to us by lot; do not do so;
for if thou dost do so, thou and thy sons will be fallen in the land and be accursed through sedition; for by sedition ye have settled, and by sedition will thy children fall, and thou shall be rooted out forever. Dwell not in the dwelling of Shem; for to Shem and his sons did it come by their lot."
When at long last Canaan and his people were established in Lebanon, the full brunt of the curse came to bear. The Book of Jubilees again: “"Cursed art thou and cursed shalt thou be beyond the sons of Noah, by the curse which we bound ourselves by an oath in the presence of the Holy Judge (Enlil) and in the presence of Noah our father.” It turns out the curse did not involve Ham at all or a transgression against Noah as an individual. It was an already enacted clause which was rightly and justly invoked when Canaan unlawfully crossed over into Shem’s territory.
“SATAN” CAPTURES LAND OF ROCKETSHIPS
When the Canaanites moved into Shem’s territory, the Enlilites made very light of the matter. Why? There were likely two main reasons. First, the days of their god, Seth, were numbered. Not only was he gravely ill but he had been condemned by the Council of the Gods to “live like a mortal”. What that meant, fundamentally, was that he was to be deprived, at least officially, of the vital longevity-boosting substance, the monoatomic powder of gold we today call Ormus, which the Anunnaki ingested in one way or the other to stay in excellent physical health.
As such, Seth was certain to die sooner rather than later and since he had no heirs that would spell the end of his cult following. Second, the Enlilites counted on the possibility that with time, future-generation Canaanites might switch allegiances from Enkite to Enlilite and thus swell the ranks of Earthlings who danced to the totem of the Bull – Enlil’s symbol. It turned out the Enlilites were self-deluded.
At first, Seth pulled a prank on the Enlilites. Apparently, he did fully recover from his infirmities. It is probable that unlike his castration, which was permanent, his sight was restored, in all likelihood thanks to the medical genius of Ningishzidda as his blindness is not emphasised in the Sumerian records. Upon his recovery, the Enlilites made a proposition to him for a switching of camps in their favour. Seth duly agreed though this was a ruse on his part. Seth’s role now was to recruit the Canaanites to the Enlilite fold.
He was to test the genuineness of their commitment to the Enlilite cause by administering to them a kind of truth serum or lie detector test. It was on account of this role that his name, Set-En, took on the new meaning of “Truth Lord”. When Jesus was “tempted of Satan” in the Judean Wilderness, it was not by a supernatural king of the fallen angels: it was an agent of Enlil, a Set-En/Satan who was mandated to have a go at co-opting Jesus into the Enlilite faction of the Anunnaki (Jesus was an Enkite). Jesus turned down these overtures as is common knowledge.
While Seth was pretending to dutifully pander to the Enlilite agenda, he was at the same time rallying in force a mighty army to overrun Shem’s lands in cahoots with Marduk (under the pretext that he was preparing for another clash with Horus for the retaking of Egypt). Marduk was resentful of the fact that whilst Tilmun, the spaceport, was supposed to be a neutral area, the Enlilites were the ones running the show there: Ninmah, the official overseer, had been reduced to a figurehead if not an outright Enlilite puppet.
Marduk’s scheme eventually did bear fruit although scholars have under-emphasised his triumph. Seth did march on the Sinai Peninsula and capture the spaceport without the Enlilites putting up the merest fight having been thoroughly outwitted. Meanwhile, the triumphant Canaanites fanned all over Shem’s lands, settled them, and appropriately renamed them Canaan, which was to become Palestine in New Testament times. The Enkites now had control of the Landing Place, the spaceport, the Mission Control Centre at Jerusalem, and the Giza Pyramid – the principal symbols with which the Anunnaki asserted their might!
It is obvious from the Sumerian records that Seth did capture the Sinai Peninsula as we read of Enki and Ninmah deliberating together as to which Enkite should rule a particular segment of the region. In one passage, Enki suggests to Ninmah that, “Let Enshag (either Seth or Marduk’s son Nabu: scholars are not sure) rule Tilmun”. It was at this juncture that Ninmah was conferred the title of Mistress of the Great Pyramid by the Egyptians and also began to be addressed as Hathor, in paraphrase meaning “Rocket Goddess”.
To the Enlilites, however, Ninmah had sold out. She was dubbed Tsir, meaning “snake”, since in their eyes she now was a witting tool of the Enkites, who were called Serpents in mocking though the original meaning was a most noble one. Enki was of the Serpent race of Orion, as opposed to Enlil who was of the Wolfen-Leonine race of Sirius.
The seizure of Shem’s lands by Seth is such a glaring embarrassment to the pro-Enlilite Levite authors of the Pentateuch that it has been skirted in the Bible although it is resoundingly chronicled in the Book of Jubilees, perhaps one of the reasons the book was excluded from the Old Testament canon. It was this act of Enlilite betrayal on the part of Seth that turned him from Set-En the Truth Lord to Satan the Devil.
OPERATION “CRUSH THE GREAT SERPENT”
To their credit, the Enlilites did not respond with a knee-jerk reaction to a violation of their territories. Exactly 300 years, equivalent albeit to about a month in Nibiru time, elapsed before they sprang into action. Why did they exercise such uncharacteristic patience when Enlil, their head honcho, was so easily roused to vindictiveness?
It could have been that they wanted to give negotiation ample enough chance, or that King Anu had urged that they bide their time, or that they simply wanted to arm themselves to the teeth and pepper over all the possible cracks before they took on their antagonists – we can only speculate as the Sumerian narratives do not furnish the associated nitty gritties.
In the war, which took place sometime around 8670 BC, the Enlilites were commanded by Ninurta, Enlil’s firstborn son, whereas the Enkites were commanded by Marduk, Enki’s firstborn son. Marduk was no more than a ceremonial General: he had never taken part in any armed conflict in his life. On the other hand, Ninurta was a decorated warrior whose CV included his iconic defeat of “The Evil Zu” many shars ago. Moreover, Ninurta’s key lieutenants – Ishkur-Adad, Utu-Shamash, and Inanna-Ishtar – were all fighter pilots of note.
In the Marduk High Command, which comprised of Ninagal, Gibil, Horus, and Marduk himself, only Horus was a seasoned and accomplished dog of war. Nergal, who was married to Ereshkigal, Enlil’s granddaughter, had recused himself from participation in the war to tread a neutral path. Ningishzidda, who had been instrumental in Horus’s defeat of Seth when he provided Horus with some of the air power, made it clear he wasn’t going to have anything to do with the war, which in his opinion the Enkites had precipitated simply to stroke the oversized ego of Marduk. And Enki of course was not a military man: although Marduk roped him into the war, it was only for his sagacity and for his potentially valuable tips as the elder statesman.
Meanwhile, Ninurta’s aim, he told his lead combatants, was to terminate the “Great Serpent”, that is, Marduk. They responded that they had his full support as their General, that they too would fight to the death to ensure the Enkites were routed once and for all and all the space-related sites were repossessed. Ninurta was in the main counting on the dreaded Imdugud, a most elusive and deadly fighter craft he had personally designed after his earlier one, the Tladi, was destroyed in the showdown with Zu.
It was the Imdugud which inspired his emblem, a lion-headed bird resting on two lions or two bulls. When in 1497 Leonardo Da Vinci did a sketch of his concept of a future man-powered flying machine, it was the Imdugud he seemingly plagiarised as the sketch had an uncanny resemblance to the Sumerian depiction of Ninurta’s war machine.
The war was fought in three phases – the Sinai Peninsula precincts, the Mountainlands of Africa, and the Great Pyramid. Who would triumph in the war now dubbed the Second Pyramid War although a better billing should be Ninurta Vs Marduk?
NEXT WEEK: MARDUK Vs NINURTA
Columns
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”.
Columns
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
Columns
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.