The Eagle Has Landed
Columns
Benson C Saili
THIS EARTH, MY BROTHER
Why did Neil Armstrong utter such words in the groundbreaking Apollo 11 Mission?
Standing at the perimeters of the Cedar Forest, Gilgamesh, not to mention Enkidu who albeit was coming here for the second time, was transfixed by the breathtaking scenery. “Their words were silenced; they themselves stood still,” says The Epic of Gilgamesh. “They stood still and gazed at the forest. They looked at the height of the cedars; they beheld the Cedar Mountain, the dwelling place of the gods, shrine-place of Inanna. The cedars held up their luxuriance all upon the mountain, their shade was pleasant. It filled one with happiness.”
The Lebanon cedar is a lush-leaved, majestic tree that can grow up to 150 feet, or 46 metres, high and can live for more than 2000 years. In the Bible, the Lebanon cedar is the most extolled tree, with more than 75 references altogether. It was the main input in the construction of Solomon’s Temple, the reason Yahweh would say, “Why have you not built Me a house of cedar?” (2 SAMUEL 7:7). Throughout the Near East, the Cedar was to be found only in the Syrian mountain range that encompassed the Lebanon Mountain.
Only gods were capable of cultivating the cedar: mankind, the Bible tells us, had no idea how to grow cedars. For instance, the King of Tyre obtained a shoot of a cedar branch from Lebanon so that it could give rise to a swathe of cedar forest in his own domain. What arose was not a robust cedar but an inferior one – “a spreading vine of low nature”.
Since the cedar tree grew about the Abode of the Gods, the Cedar Mountain was also referred to as the “Orchard of the Gods”. The cedar was “the envy of all the trees that were in Eden,” Eden being the generic name for any place the Anunnaki were concentrated in. Zechariah Sitchin puts this in context thus: “The Hebrew term Gan (orchard, garden), stemming as it does from the root gnn (protect, guard), conveys the sense of a guarded and restricted area – the same sense as is imparted to the reader of the Gilgamesh narrative:
a forest that extends ‘for many leagues’, watched over by a Fiery Warrior (a ‘terror to mortals’).” Because the cedar tree was associated with Paradise, great rulers and mighty nations were compared to cedars. The grandeur of the cedar trees far from making his hair stand on end calmed the nerves of Gilgamesh. They inspirited him even as he poised to breach Huwawa’s lair.
TRIAD OF LEBANON
Let us at this point in time pose to contemplate the politics, religiosity, sentimentality, and overall import of Baalbek before we continue with the saga of Gilgamesh. Baalbek was set up atop the Cedar Mountain, today known as Lebanon Mountain. It encompassed a rocket-launching silo and a landing platform spanning 9 hectares and raised to about 30 feet, or 9 metres, above ground. It was constructed using huge, wide-girth stone blocks that weighed between 1000 to 1200 tonnes.
Underneath the vast horizontal platform which stood at about 4000 feet, or 1220 metres, above sea level, was a network of chambers, tunnels, caverns, and a host of other subterranean structures which curiously no researcher has been permitted to penetrate and explore. Clearly, the Illuminati do not want the world to know exactly what is contained in there, just as they do not want us to know what lies beneath the Temple Mount, the “holy” site in Jerusalem where the Jewish Temple used to be.
Baalbek means “Lord of Beqaa”. Beqaa was/is the valley that lay/lies at the base of the Cedar Mountain. Baal (shortened form of Aba-El) means “(He) Whose Father is El”. This was the Canaanite title of Utu-Shamash, whose father indeed was El – the name by which Nannar-Sin was known in Canaan. The Jewish name for Baalbek was Beth-Shemesh, meaning “House of Shamesh”. The Greeks called it Heliopolis, or Sun City. Again this was in deference to Shamash, who was the Enlilites’ “Sun God”, that is, the god whose celestial counterpart was the Sun. As the Anunnaki’s principal astronaut and aeronaut, Shamash is frequently referred to as the “Rider of the Clouds” (e.g. PSALM 68:5).
The alternative names for Baalbek were the Crest of Zaphon; the Airport of the Gods; the Landing Place; and the Crossroads of Ishtar. Zarerath Zaphon meant, “The Rocky Crest in the North” (the Baalbek platform, which was to the north of Canaan) but that was a secondary meaning: its original meaning was “the hidden away/observation place”. This denoted Baalbek’s remoteness from the vicinities of human settlements as well as its being ringed with observation posts in case it was infiltrated and therefore (by virtue of its being a “holy place”) desecrated by “filthy” mankind. As such, Shamash was also known as the Lord of Zaphon.
Humans who were captive to the cult of Inanna referred to Baalbek as the Crossroads of Ishtar. Now, Inanna, just like Shamash, did have her own holiday precincts in Lebanon, which was located not very far from Baalbek. It was called Beth-Anath, meaning “House of Anath”, Anath (or Athena when reversed) being another of Inanna’s multiple names. Since Inanna too had access to Baalbek, where she could liberally take off and land to and from other places as she plied the skies (her favourite hobby which was only second to copulating), it is easy to understand why Baalbek was designated as the Crossroads of Ishtar.
Yet the real boss of Lebanon/Syria, the superintending god, was neither Shamash nor Inanna. It was Ishkur-Adad, Enlil-Jehovah’s third born son. The prophet Amos talks of “the palaces of Adad” in northern Beth-Shemesh. In general though, the whole area was associated with the Triad of Adad, Shamash, and Inanna. But because Shamash controlled the all-important shems, he enjoyed a disproportionately higher regard than Adad among Earthlings.
GODS WHO WERE CALLED “ROCKET MEN”
If Baalbek was described as the “Airport of the Gods”, that was because it basically functioned as a terrestrial aviation facility. The fact of the matter was that though it was not a spaceport proper, like Tilmun was, it did harbour and launch shuttlecraft – second-tier spaceships which could only go as far as Low Earth Orbit, in modern times a maximum altitude of 2000 km and an orbital period of between 84 to 127 minutes. A shuttlecraft therefore went only as far as the International Space Station and not beyond that to other celestial bodies such as Mars and the Moon.
Both the shuttlecraft and the spacecraft proper, collectively known as rockets, were referred to as shems. When Gilgamesh set course for Baalbek, he was not aware of this difference: he thought he was going to ride in a spaceship all the way to Nibiru when the only shems there were at Baalbek constituted the limited-scope shuttlecraft.
Now, to Earthlings, a shem was a symbol of Anunnaki divinity. In daily parlance, the Anunnaki were referred to as the Ilu, an abbreviation of/singular for Elohim. Like most other words, Ilu spawned several derivative meanings (which we have already itemised in previous articles)) but its underlying deferential meaning was “Exalted Ones”, as gods typically are. In formal language, however, the Anunnaki were known as the Din.Gir. This title had nothing to do with intrinsic Anunnaki traits: it derived, solely, from the shem. The Din.Gir was a shem and this is very evident from Sumerian pictograms and ideograms of a shem.
A shem, a multistage rocket, was made up, basically, of two parts. The lower part was known as Din. This was the rocket booster, meant to loft the shem into the skies. The noisier part, which clearly gives us the English term “din”, meaning “confused noise”, stems from the Sumerian Din. The top part, the powering engine, was the Gir, in all probability the ancestor word for “gear”. Thus the primary meaning of Din.Gir was simply “Noise-Creating Celestial Ship”.
Observes Zechariah Sitchin: “The (Din.Gir) pictographic sign can easily bring to mind a powerful jet engine spewing flames from the end part, and a front part that is puzzlingly open. But the puzzle turns to amazement if we ‘spell’ Din.Gir by combining the two pictographs. The tail of the fin-like Gir fits perfectly into the opening in the front of Din! The astounding result is a picture of a rocket-propelled spaceship, with a landing craft docked into it perfectly – just as the lunar module was docked with the Apollo 11 spaceship! It is indeed a three-stage vehicle, with each part fitting neatly into the other: the thrust portion containing the engines, the midsection containing supplies and equipment, and the cylindrical ‘sky chamber’ housing the people named Din.Gir – the gods of antiquity, the astronauts of millennia ago.”
Given that the Anunnaki were the ones who rode in these noisy space vehicles, they too became a byword for their own machines. In the process, Din.Gir came to mean “Holy/Righteous/Pure/Good Ones of the Blazing/Noisy Rockets”. Put differently, Din.Gir (or just Din itself) evolved into “Great God” or simply “gods” (it is instructive that Endubasar, Enki’s official scribe, addressed him as “Great God”, which did not denote transcendence as such but simply stood for Din.Gir). It follows, crystal-clearly, that the notion of Din.Gir meaning “Holy/Righteous/Divine Beings” was a later development.
OF GIR’s AND MU’s
Now, the Gir itself (which the Egyptians called the Ben-Ben, benya benya in Setswana, meaning “that which pulsates”, referring to the aircraft’s rotating and flashing beacon) had two sub-components. The top-most, the command module, was called a Mu. The Mu could be detached when the shem was packed in a silo and used by the gods as a flying saucer, a UFO, which when stationary on the ground stood on three legs that spread out from underneath it. The Mu that resembled a flying saucer was also referred to as a “Sky Chamber”.
Says Zechariah Sitchin: “The Flying Wheel described by the prophet Ezekiel was akin to the Assyrian depictions of their Flying God (Ishkur-Adad) roaming the skies, at cloud level, within a spherical Sky Chamber. Depictions found at an ancient site across the Jordan from Jericho suggest that for landing these spherical vehicles extended three legs.”
There were also other types of Mu’s that looked like either a jet or a chopper. These were never a part of a shem. They were called Esh, meaning “Throne” or “God’s Chamber”. Their alternative description in the Sumerian records was “Boat of Heaven”. Inanna in particular is often styled as riding in a Boat of Heaven. In the Bible, a chopper-like Mu, in which Ishkur-Adad used to ride when he led the Israelites into the wilderness, and a UFO-like Mu are referred to as “whirlwinds” (EZEKIEL 1:4) or Chariots/Horses of Fire (2 KINGS 2:11) because mankind assumed that all airborne vehicles were powered by fire having seen rockets blast off into space in a blaze of fire.
When the prophet Isaiah says, “In the year King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne (special seat in a cabin), high and lifted up, and his train (billowing smoke) filled the temple (ISAIAH 6:1), what he was saying was that he saw Enlil or Ishkur-Adad in the cabin (throne) of a chopper or flying saucer. The prophet Ezekiel also furnishes a very vivid description of a jet-like Mu (whole of EZEKIEL Chapter 1). “The “whirlwind” in which Elijah was carried to “Heaven” was a Mu: it ferried him to the spaceport in the Sinai Peninsula en route to Nibiru (EZEKIEL 2 KINGS 2:1-11).
Since the Sumerians and the people of Old Testament times were more familiar with the Mu than the shem as they frequently saw it around them or parked in the backyard of a god’s mansion (called temples), it was the Mu they depicted the most in their cave wall paintings. When the shems are depicted, they are shown with tails of billowing fire, missile-like vehicles, and celestial cabins. The ancients knew what they were portraying for posterity folks. It’s a pity that religion has blindfolded us from identifying their depictions and descriptions for exactly what they were. This Earth My Brother …
APOLLO 11 DEDICATED TO SHAMASH
As the lunar module of the Apollo 11 spacecraft touched down on the moon in July 1969, Neil Armstrong reported to NASA’s Mission Control Centre at Houston, Texas, thus: “Houston! Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed!” Tranquillity Base was the exact location on the moon where the lunar module had landed. But what was the Eagle that had landed? It was of course the code name for the lunar module itself. By the same token, eagle was also the codename for the astronauts themselves. The entire three-man team of Neil Armstrong, Ed Aldrin, and Michael Collins wore space suits that bore the emblem of an eagle.
How about the mission itself? Why was it codenamed Apollo? Just like the eagle nomenclature, the Apollo nomenclature derived from Anunnaki times. Apollo is the shortened form of Apollyon, another name for Utu-Shamash. It means “Before (the age of) the Lion”. It was a name given to Shamash retrospectively for having been the most geopolitically influential Enlilite during the astrological age of Virgo, which preceded the age of Leo (that is, Lion). It was in Virgo that the Deluge occurred, right on the cusp of Leo. The Deluge was a major turning point in the affairs of Earth and so was a very significant frame of reference. Anunnaki history on Earth is basically two-phased: prediluvial (before the Flood) and post-diluvial (after the Flood).
Unbeknownst to much of the world today, the Anunnaki ruler/prince of the present age, Pisces, is Utu-Shamash. We know this from REVELATION 9:11, where he is referred to as Abaddon, meaning “(He) whose father is Addon”. Adon (variously Aten, Adonai, Adonis) means “Prolific (in the sense of producing offspring) Lord”. Adon as we already know was another name for Nannar-Sin, Shamash’s father, who was reputed to be so fecund he had more than 70 children.
When Jesus said, “Now shall the Prince of this world be cast out” (JOHN 12:31) and when the apostle Paul talks about “the Prince of the Power of the Air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience” (EPHESIANS 2:2), both are direct references to Shamash in his capacity as the god of the age of Pisces (mathematically from 60 BC to 2220 AD) and as the Anunnaki’s chief aerial navigator. So the Illuminati dedicated the mission to the moon to their Anunnaki god Apollo/Shamash.
LIKE THE EAGLE, LIKE THE PHOENIX
Why was the lunar module called the Eagle? In Anunnaki times, a shem was metaphorically referred to as the Eagle. But this was not the familiar eagle we see daily in our skies: it was the mythical version of the Eagle – the phoenix. The phoenix is a legendary bird that is constantly rejuvenating itself by burning to ash and then reanimating as a fresh and vigorous creature. In other words, the phoenix never died: it was immortal. It kept starting life anew every time it verged on old age.
To Earthlings, the shem had connotations of the phoenix. It was the symbol of eternal life in that if one rode in it to Nibiru, not only did they return the same age as they were years or decades when they left but henceforth lived forever, like the Anunnaki. Since the shem was associated with divinity, it was in itself an object of veneration or worship. Says Zechariah Sitchin: “We are told that witnesses at Sumeria’s supreme court were required to take the oath in an inner courtyard, standing by a gateway through which they could see and face three ‘divine objects’.
These were named the Golden Sphere (the crew's cabin?), the Gir, and the Aalikmahrati – a term that literally meant ‘advancer that makes vessel go’, or what we would call a motor, an engine. What emerges here is a reference to a three-part rocket ship, with the cabin or command module at the top end, the engines at the bottom end, and the Gir in the centre … In the temple of Ninurta, the sacred or most guarded inner area was called the Girsu (‘where the Gir is sprung up’).”
The Igigi, the Anunnaki astronauts, were known as Eagles too. Zechariah Sitchin: “An Assyrian seal engraving from circa 1500 BC shows two ‘Eaglemen’ saluting a shem! Numerous depictions of such ‘Eagles’ – the scholars call them ‘Bird-Men’ – have been found. Most depictions show them flanking the Tree of Life, as if to stress that they, in their shems, provided the link with the Heavenly Abode where the Bread of Life and Water of Life were to be found. Indeed, the usual depiction of the Eagles showed them holding in one hand the Fruit of Life and in the other the Water of Life, in full conformity with the tales of Adapa, Etana, and Gilgamesh.”
Since Shamash was the god in charge of the Eagles (shems) and Eaglemen (Igigis), it is not surprising that the Illuminati-controlled NASA dedicated the Apollo Programme (comprising 12 missions altogether between February 1967 and December 1972) to him. It is also noteworthy that the moon was the celestial counterpart of Nannar-Sin, who was dubbed the “Moon God”. Thus, by dedicating the Apollo Programme to Shamash, what NASA was effectively saying to Sin was that “we come to thee Father in the name of thy Son Shamash”.
In both Sumerian and modern-day pictography, the so-called angels (An-Gal in Sumerian, meaning “Great People of Heaven” – another term for the Anunnaki in general) are shown with wings. What the Sumerians sought to portray in this regard was that these people, the Anunnaki, were like winged beings in that they flew (in sky vehicles) like eagles. Zechariah Sitchin again: “How would an ancient artist have depicted the pilots of the skyships of the gods? Would he have depicted them, by some chance, as eagles?”
NEXT WEEK: THE CONTENDING OF SHAMASH AND HIS BROTHERS
Columns
GONE FISHING
In recent years, using personal devices in working environments has become so commonplace it now has its own acronym, BOYD (Bring Your Own Device). But as employees skip between corporate tools and personal applications on their own devices, their actions introduce a number of possible risks that should be managed and mitigated with careful consideration. Consider these examples:
Si-lwli, a small family-run business in Wales, is arguably as niche a company as you could find, producing talking toys used to promote the Welsh language. Their potential market is small, with only some 300,000 Welsh language speakers in the world and in reality the business is really more of a hobby for the husband-and-wife team, who both still have day jobs. Yet, despite still managing to be successful in terms of sales, the business is now fighting for survival after recently falling prey to cybercriminals. Emails between Si-Iwli and their Chinese suppliers were intercepted by hackers who altered the banking details in the correspondence, causing Si-Iwli to hand over £18,000 (around P ¼ m) to the thieves. That might not sound much to a large enterprise, but to a small or medium business it can be devastating.
Another recent SMB hacking story which appeared in the Wall Street Journal concerned Innovative Higher Ed Consulting (IHED) Inc, a small New York start-up with a handful of employees. IHED didn’t even have a website, but fraudsters were able to run stolen credit card numbers through the company’s payment system and reverse the charges to the tune of $27,000, around the same loss faced by Si-Iwli. As the WSJ put it, the hackers completely destroyed the company, forcing its owners to fold.
And in May 2019, the city of Baltimore’s computer system was hit by a ransomware attack, with hackers using a variant called RobinHood. The hack, which has lasted more than a month, paralysed the computer system for city employees, with the hackers demanding a payment in Bitcoin to give access back to the city.
Of course, hackers target governments or business giants but small and medium businesses are certainly not immune. In fact, 67% of SMBs reported that they had experienced a cyber attack across a period of 12 months, according to a 2018 survey carried out by security research firm Ponemon Institute. Additionally, Verizon issued a report in May 2019 that small businesses accounted for 43% of its reported data breaches. Once seen as less vulnerable than PCs, smartphone attacks are on the rise, with movements like the Dark Caracal spyware campaign underlining the allure of mobile devices to hackers. Last year, the US Federal Trade Commission released a statement calling for greater education on mobile security, coming at a time when around 42% of all Android devices are believed to not carry the latest security updates.
This is an era when employees increasingly use their smartphones for work-related purposes so is your business doing enough to protect against data breaches on their employees’ phones? The SME Cyber Crime Survey 2018 carried out for risk management specialists AON showed that more than 80% of small businesses did not view this as a threat yet if as shown, 67% of SMBs were said to have been victims of hacking, either the stats are wrong or business owners are underestimating their vulnerability. A 2019 report by PricewaterhouseCoopers suggests the latter, stating that the majority of global businesses are unprepared for cyber attacks.
Consider that a workstation no longer means a desk in an office: It can be a phone in the back of a taxi or Uber; a laptop in a coffee shop, or a tablet in an airport lounge. Wherever the device is used, employees can potentially install applications that could be harmful to your business, even from something as seemingly insignificant as clicking on an accidental download or opening a link on a phishing email. Out of the physical workplace, your employees’ activities might not have the same protections as they would on a company-monitored PC.
Yet many businesses not only encourage their employees to work remotely, but assume working from coffee shops, bookstores, and airports can boost employees’ productivity. Unfortunately, many remote hot spots do not provide secure Wi-Fi so if your employee is accessing their work account on unsecured public Wi-Fi, sensitive business data could be at risk. Furthermore, even if your employee uses a company smartphone or has access to company data through a personal mobile device, there is always a chance data could be in jeopardy with a lost or stolen device, even information as basic as clients’ addresses and phone numbers.
BOYDs are also at risk from malware designed to harm and infect the host system, transmittable to smartphones when downloading malicious third-party apps. Then there is ransomware, a type of malware used by hackers to specifically take control of a system’s data, blocking access or threatening to release sensitive information unless a ransom is paid such as the one which affected Baltimore. Ransomware attacks are on the increase, predicted to occur every 14 seconds, potentially costing billions of dollars per year.
Lastly there is phishing – the cyber equivalent of the metaphorical fishing exercise – whereby cybercriminals attempt to obtain sensitive data –usernames, passwords, credit card details –usually through a phoney email designed to look legitimate which directs the user to a fraudulent website or requests the data be emailed back directly. Most of us like to think we could recognize a phishing email when we see it, but these emails have become more sophisticated and can come through other forms of communication such as messaging apps.
Bottom line is to be aware of the potential problems with BOYDs and if in doubt, consult your IT security consultants. You can’t put the own-device genie back in the bottle but you can make data protection one of your three wishes!
Columns
“I Propose to Diana Tonight”
About five days before Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed landed in Paris, General Atiku, a certain Edward Williams was taking a walk in a woods in the Welsh town of Mountain Ash. Williams, then 73, was a psychic of some renown. He had in the past foretold assassination attempts on US President Ronald Reagan, which occurred on March 30, 1981, and Pope John Paul II, which came to pass on May 13, 1981.
As he trudged the woods, Williams had a sudden premonition that pointed to Diana’s imminent fate as per Christopher Andersen’s book The Day Diana Died. “When the vision struck me, it was as if everything around me was obscured and replaced by shadowy figures,” Williams was later to reminisce. “In the middle was the face of Princess Diana. Her expression was sad and full of pathos. She was wearing what looked like a floral dress with a short dark cardigan. But it was vague. I went cold with fear and knew it was a sign that she was in danger.”
Williams hastily beat a retreat to his home, which he shared with his wife Mary, and related to her his presentiment, trembling like an aspen leaf as he did so. “I have never seen him so upset,” Mary recounted. “He felt he was given a sign and when he came back from his walk he was deeply shaken.”
The following day, Williams frantically sauntered into a police station to inform the police of his premonition. The officer who attended to him would have dismissed him as no more than a crackpot but he treated him seriously in view of the accuracy of his past predictions. He took a statement and immediately passed it on to the Special Branch Investigative Unit.
The report read as follows:
“On 27 August, at 14:12 hrs, a man by the name of Edward Williams came to Mountain Ash police station. He said he was a psychic and predicted that Princess Diana was going to die. In previous years, he has predicted that the Pope and Ronald Reagan were going to be the victims of assassination attempts. On both occasions he was proved to be correct. Mr Williams appeared to be quite normal.”
Williams, General, was spot-on as usual: four days later, the princess was no more.
Meanwhile, General, even as Dodi and Diana were making their way to the Fayed-owned Ritz Hotel in central Paris, British newspapers were awash with headlines that suggested Diana was kind of deranged. Writes Andrew Morton in Diana in Pursuit of Love: “In The Independent Diana was described as ‘a woman with fundamentally nothing to say about anything’. She was ‘suffering from a form of arrested development’. ‘Isn’t it time she started using her head?’ asked The Mail on Sunday. The Sunday Mirror printed a special supplement entitled ‘A Story of Love’; The News of the World claimed that William had demanded that Diana should split from Dodi: ‘William can’t help it, he just doesn’t like the man.’ William was reportedly ‘horrified’ and ‘doesn’t think Mr Fayed is good for his mother’ – or was that just the press projecting their own prejudices? The upmarket Sunday Times newspaper, which had first serialised my biography of the princess, now put her in the psychiatrist’s chair for daring to be wooed by a Muslim. The pop-psychologist Oliver James put Diana ‘On the Couch’, asking why she was so ‘depressed’ and desperate for love. Other tabloids piled in with dire prognostications – about Prince Philip’s hostility to the relationship, Diana’s prospect of exile, and the social ostracism she would face if she married Dodi.”
DIANA AND DODI AT THE RITZ
Before Diana and Dodi departed the Villa Windsor sometime after 16 hrs, General, one of Dodi’s bodyguards Trevor Rees-Jones furtively asked Diana as to what the programme for the evening was. This Trevor did out of sheer desperation as Dodi had ceased and desisted from telling members of his security detail, let alone anyone else for that matter, what his onward destination was for fear that that piece of information would be passed on to the paparazzi. Diana kindly obliged Trevor though her response was terse and scarcely revealing. “Well, eventually we will be going out to a restaurant”, that was all Diana said. Without advance knowledge of exactly what restaurant that was, Trevor and his colleagues’ hands were tied: they could not do a recce on it as was standard practice for the security team of a VIP principal. Dodi certainly, General, was being recklessly by throwing such caution to the winds.
At about 16:30, Diana and Dodi drew up at the Ritz Hotel, where they were received by acting hotel manager Claude Roulet. The front entrance of the hotel was already crawling with paparazzi, as a result of which the couple took the precaution of using the rear entrance, where hopefully they would make their entry unperturbed and unmolested. The first thing they did when they were ensconced in the now $10,000 a night Imperial Suite was to spend some time on their mobiles and set about touching base with friends, relations, and associates. Diana called at least two people, her clairvoyant friend Rita Rogers and her favourite journalist Richard Kay of The Daily Mail.
Rita, General, was alarmed that Diana had proceeded to venture to Paris notwithstanding the warning she had given Dodi and herself in relation to what she had seen of him in the crystal ball when the couple had consulted her. When quizzed as to what the hell she indeed was doing in Paris at that juncture, Diana replied that she and Dodi had simply come to do some shopping, which though partially true was not the material reason they were there. “But Diana, remember what I told Dodi,” Rita said somewhat reprovingly. Diana a bit apprehensively replied, “Yes I remember. I will be careful. I promise.” Well, she did not live up to her promise as we shall soon unpack General.
As for Richard Kay, Diana made known to him that, “I have decided I am going to radically change my life. I am going to complete my obligations to charities and to the anti-personnel land mines cause, but in November I want to completely withdraw from formal public life.”
Once she was done with her round of calls, Diana went down to the hair saloon by the hotel swimming pool to have her hair washed and blow-dried ahead of the scheduled evening dinner.
THE “TELL ME YES” RING IS DELIVERED
Since the main object of their Paris trip was to pick up the “Tell Me Yes” engagement ring Dodi had ordered in Monte Carlo a week earlier, Dodi decided to check on Repossi Jewellery, which was right within the Ritz prencincts, known as the Place Vendome. It could have taken less than a minute for Dodi to get to the store on foot but he decided to use a car to outsmart the paparazzi invasion. He was driven there by Trevor Rees-Jones, with Alexander Kez Wingfield and Claude Roulet following on foot, though he entered the shop alone.
The Repossi store had closed for the holiday season but Alberto Repossi, accompanied by his wife and brother-in-law, had decided to travel all the way from his home in Monaco and momentarily open it for the sake of the potentially highly lucrative Dodi transaction. Alberto, however, disappointed Dodi as the ring he had chosen was not the one he produced. The one he showed Dodi was pricier and perhaps more exquisite but Dodi was adamant that he wanted the exact one he had ordered as that was what Diana herself had picked. It was a ploy on the part of Repossi to make a real killing on the sale, his excuse to that effect being that Diana deserved a ring tha was well worthy of her social pedigree. With Dodi having expressed disaffection, Repossi rendered his apologies and assured Dodi he would make the right ring available shortly, whereupon Dodi repaired back to the hotel to await its delivery. But Dodi did insist nonetheless that the pricier ring be delivered too in case it appealed to Diana anyway.
Repossi delivered the two rings an hour later. They were collected by Roulet. On inspecting them, Dodi chose the very one he had seen in Monte Carlo, apparently at the insistence of Diana. There is a possibility that Diana, who was very much aware of her public image and was not comfortable with ostentatious displays of wealth, may have deliberately shown an interest in a less expensive engagement ring. It may have been a purely romantic as opposed to a prestigious choice for her.
The value of the ring, which was found on a wardrobe shelf in Dodi’s apartment after the crash, has been estimated to be between $20,000 and $250,000 as Repossi has always refused to be drawn into revealing how much Dodi paid for it. The sum, which enjoyed a 25 percent discount, was in truth paid for not by Dodi himself but by his father as was the usual practice.
Dodi was also shown Repossi’s sketches for a bracelet, a watch, and earrings which he proposed to create if Diana approved of them.
DIANA AND DODI GUSH OVER IMMINENT NUPTIALS
At about 7 pm, Dodi and Diana left the Ritz and headed for Dodi’s apartment at a place known as the Arc de Trompe. They went there to properly tog themselves out for the scheduled evening dinner. They spent two hours at the luxurious apartment. As usual, the ubiquitous paparazzi were patiently waiting for them there.
As they lingered in the apartment, Dodi beckoned over to his butler Rene Delorm and showed him the engagement ring. “Dodi came into my kitchen,” Delorm relates. “He looked into the hallway to check that Diana couldn’t hear and reached into his pocket and pulled out the box … He said, ‘Rene, I’m going to propose to the princess tonight. Make sure that we have champagne on ice when we come back from dinner’.” Rene described the ring as “a spectacular diamond encrusted ring, a massive emerald surrounded by a cluster of diamonds, set on a yellow and white gold band sitting in a small light-grey velvet box”.
Just before 9 pm, Dodi called the brother of his step-father, Hassan Yassen, who also was staying at the Ritz that night, and told him that he hoped to get married to Diana by the end of the year.
Later that same evening, both Dodi and Diana would talk to Mohamed Al Fayed, Dodi’s dad, and make known to him their pre-nuptial intentions. “They called me and said we’re coming back (to London) on Sunday (August 31) and on Monday (September 1) they are
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RAMADAN – The Blessed Month of Fasting
Ramadan is the fasting month for Muslims, where over one billion Muslims throughout the world fast from dawn to sunset, and pray additional prayers at night. It is a time for inner reflection, devotion to Allah, and self-control. It is the ninth month in the Islamic calendar. As you read this Muslims the world over have already begun fasting as the month of Ramadan has commenced (depending on the sighting of the new moon).
‘The month of Ramadan is that in which the Qur’an was revealed as guidance for people, in it are clear signs of guidance and Criterion, therefore whoever of you who witnesses this month, it is obligatory on him to fast it. But whoever is ill or traveling let him fast the same number of other days, God desires ease for you and not hardship, and He desires that you complete the ordained period and glorify God for His guidance to you, that you may be grateful”. Holy Qur’an (2 : 185)
Fasting during Ramadan is one of the five pillars upon which the structure of Islam is built. The other four are: the declaration of one’s belief in Allah’s oneness and in the message of Muhammad (PBUH); regular attendance to prayer; payment of zakaat (obligatory charity); and the pilgrimage to Mecca.
As explained in an earlier article, fasting includes total abstinence from eating, drinking, smoking, refraining from obscenity, avoiding getting into arguments and including abstaining from marital relations, from sunrise to sunset. While fasting may appear to some as difficult Muslims see it as an opportunity to get closer to their Lord, a chance to develop spiritually and at the same time the act of fasting builds character, discipline and self-restraint.
Just as our cars require servicing at regular intervals, so do Muslims consider Ramadan as a month in which the body and spirit undergoes as it were a ‘full service’. This ‘service’ includes heightened spiritual awareness both the mental and physical aspects and also the body undergoing a process of detoxification and some of the organs get to ‘rest’ through fasting.
Because of the intensive devotional activity fasting, Ramadan has a particularly high importance, derived from its very personal nature as an act of worship but there is nothing to stop anyone from privately violating Allah’s commandment of fasting if one chooses to do so by claiming to be fasting yet eating on the sly. This means that although fasting is obligatory, its observance is purely voluntary. If a person claims to be a Muslim, he is expected to fast in Ramadan.
The reward Allah gives for proper fasting is very generous. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) quotes Allah as saying: “All actions done by a human being are his own except fasting, which belongs to Me and I will reward it accordingly.” We are also told by the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) that the reward for proper fasting is admittance into heaven.
Fasting earns great reward when it is done in a ‘proper’ manner. This is because every Muslim is required to make his worship perfect. For example perfection of fasting can be achieved through restraint of one’s feelings and emotions. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said that when fasting, a person should not allow himself to be drawn into a quarrel or a slanging match. He teaches us: “On a day of fasting, let no one of you indulge in any obscenity, or enter into a slanging match. Should someone abuse or fight him, let him respond by saying: ‘I am fasting!’”
This high standard of self-restraint fits in well with fasting, which is considered as an act of self-discipline. Islam requires us to couple patience with voluntary abstention from indulgence in our physical desires. The purpose of fasting helps man to attain a high degree of sublimity, discipline and self-restraint. In other words, this standard CAN BE achieved by every Muslim who knows the purpose of fasting and strives to fulfill it.
Fasting has another special aspect. It makes all people share in the feelings of hunger and thirst. In normal circumstances, people with decent income may go from one year’s end to another without experiencing the pangs of hunger which a poor person may feel every day of his life. Such an experience helps to draw the rich one’s conscience nearer to needs of the poor. A Muslim is encouraged to be more charitable and learns to give generously for a good cause.
Fasting also has a universal or communal aspect to it. As Muslims throughout the world share in this blessed act of worship, their sense of unity is enhanced by the fact that every Muslim individual joins willingly in the fulfillment of this divine commandment. This is a unity of action and purpose, since they all fast in order to be better human beings. As a person restrains himself from the things he desires most, in the hope that he will earn Allah’s pleasure, self-discipline and sacrifice become part of his nature.
The month of Ramadan can aptly be described as a “season of worship.” Fasting is the main aspect of worship in this month, because people are more attentive to their prayers, read the Qur’an more frequently and also strive to improve on their inner and outer character. Thus, their devotion is more complete and they feel much happier in Ramadan because they feel themselves to be closer to their Creator.