Lot�s Wife Turns to Vapour!
Columns
Benson C Saili
THIS EARTH, MY BROTHER
She was one of more than a million Earthlings who perished in the seven-bomb nuclear onslaught
When Colonel Paul Tibbets, the US Air force pilot dropped the atom bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in August 1945, his immediate remark, which became a folklore phrase, was “My God, what we have done?”. Tibbets so remarked because he thought Japan had vanished from the face of Earth and everything and everybody there had been vapourised.
Nergal and Ninurta were not half as horrified by their gory act as Colonel Tibetts was. For Ninurta, the deed had been accomplished. “It is done”, was his excited, fiendish cry. As for Nergal, he had dealt a telling lesson to Marduk, to Nabu: his obsessive itch for vengeance was fully satiated. The two exulted at the ruinage and bloodbath they had brought about. The Sumerian records say they were actually “puzzled” at their evil handiwork, the scale of destruction they had wrought. It was all too good to be true.
The two had obliterated the spaceport; upheavalled Sodom and Gomorrah (that is, uprooted the two cities so that they were buried so deep under the ground it was like they never existed at all); and not only “killed” what we now call the Dead Sea in the sense that it no longer supported life but also geophysically reformatted it!
“The Earth shook and crumbled, the heavens (the sky) after the brilliance were darkened,” the Sumerian records relate. The “brilliance” was what we would today call a mushroom cloud, which arose in a brilliant flash. “On that day,” say the lamentation texts, “heaven was crushed and the earth was smitten, its face obliterated by the maelstrom. The skies were darkened and covered as with a shadow, a dense cloud that brings gloom.” The year was 2024 BC.
NINURTA’S SIGNATURE STILL VISIBLE IN SINAI PENINSULA
Ninurta’s two-bomb blitz focused on the spaceport, “the place from which Great Ones (the Anunnaki) ascends”, and its mountainous vicinity, along with the adjoining plain that served for landing and take-off. The latter would be dubbed “Place of No Pity” after the nuclear holocaust. Writes Zechariah Sitchin: “The lamentation texts identified the site of the awesome blasts as ‘in the west’, near ‘the breast of the sea’ – a graphic description of the curving Mediterranean coast at the Sinai peninsula – from a plain ‘in the midst of the mountains’, a plain that became a ‘Place of No Pity’. It was a place that served before as the Place of Launching, the place from which the gods ascended toward Anu.”
In one of the lamentation texts, the spaceport, which was a subterranean facility burrowed under Mount Mashu, is referred to as the “Mount of Howling Tunnels”, that is, a mountain containing tunnels that made a howling noise. This is in very apt reference to the spaceport as it had underground chambers and the landing and departing “celestial boats” (spaceships) made penetrating sounds that reached near and far.
When Ninurta, “he who scorches with fire” (Ishum the Scorcher) as he came to be known, was done with his two-bomb strike abomination, “of all the forests that the plain had surrounded, not a tree stem was left standing”. There was absolutely no vegetation in the surrounding plain. “In the mountains he caused starvation, their animals he made perish … As with fire he scorched the animals, burned its (Mount Mashu) grains (that grew on the slopes) to become as dust.”
The fission bombs Ninurta let loose on the Sinai Peninsula exactly 4042 thousand year ago left a permanent mark there. This is a scar so vast it can even be seen from space as satellite photographs have showcased. And not only that: the scar is strewn, to this day, with crushed, burnt, and blackened rocks which contain a highly unusual ratio of isotope uranium-235 – evidence that once upon a time, it was exposed to sudden immense heat of nuclear origin as Uranium 235 is a necessary input into the making of nuclear bombs. The black colour of the stones is also a curious phenomenon given that black is not a natural colour in that setting. Scientists are hard-pressed to venture a reason as to the scar and the atypical colour of the stones.
Let us once again listen to Zechariah Sitchin: “As one stands in this great plain in the Sinai Peninsula, one can see in the distance the mountains that surround the plain and give it its oval shape. The limestone mountains loom white on the horizon; but where the great central plain adjoins the immense scar in the Sinai, the hue of the plain — black— stands out in sharp contrast to the surrounding whiteness. Black is not a natural hue in the Sinai Peninsula. Yet here, in the central plain northeast of the enigmatic giant scar, the soil's colour has a black hue. It is caused by millions upon millions of bits and pieces of blackened rock, strewn as by a giant hand over the whole area.
“There has been no explanation for the colossal scar in the face of the Sinai peninsula since it was observed from the skies and photographed by NASA satellites. There has been no explanation for the blackened bits and pieces of rock strewn over the area in the central plain. No explanation – unless one reads the verses of the ancient texts and accepts our conclusion that in the days of Abraham, Nergal and Ninurta wiped out the spaceport that was there with nuclear weapons: ‘That which was raised towards Anu to launch they caused to wither, its face they made fade away, its place they made desolate’."
NERGAL EXTERMINATES A MILLION-ODD LIVES
Of the two Anunnaki bombers, it was Nergal who was the worser devil. First, he dropped not two bombs like Ninurta but five, corresponding to the total number of the Canaanite cities that had “rebelled” against central authority in Sumer. Second, he targeted the human population. In the aftermath of the Ninurta bombings, only animals are said to have perished as all the Igigis and the few pro-Enlilite humans who worked in the Sinai Peninsula had long evacuated before Ninurta did the deed. In the case of Nergal, an unconscionable number of human beings were turned to ash.
Exactly how many people perished in the Nergal blitz? Neither the Bible nor the Sumerian records give us figures in this regard, not even an estimate of the population of Sodom and Gomorrah. But the one thing we can be sure of is that not everybody died. Even the Atomb bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not vapourise or pulverise the entire population. It is not easy to put a figure on how many people died and survived in the Japanese case since you cannot count ash or vapour. Also, the bombings triggered a great exodus of survivors from the two cities, so that by the time of a post-war census in December 1945, not very many people were left.
After years of excavating the Sodom and Gomorrah vicinities, archaeologists have turn up a large, ancient cemetery area containing over 1 million graves, along with up to 2 feet of ash. From this, two things can be deduced. First, the “Five Cities of the Plain”, as Sodom, Gomorrah and three other cities of the Jordan plain were called, had a sizeable population. Second, people survived and patiently took time to bury the dead as these were not mass graves but solitary graves. It were these survivors who gave eye-witness accounts of what we read in the Sumerian chronicles.
According to the Bible, Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by “the Elohim” (the ruling pantheon of the Anunnaki) who rained down “fire and brimstone” on the two cities. Brimstone is another name for sulfur. The original Sumerian records, however, do not mention sulfur at all: they attribute the whole disaster to something that sounds like an Atom bomb as we have already related. So where did the biblical scribes get the idea of sulfur bombs?
Well, to begin with, the area around Sodom and Gomorrah was rich with sulfur. Round balls of almost pure sulfur, mostly golf-ball-sized, have been found embedded in ash near the Dead Sea. The experience of Japanese survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki incidents serves up the unmitigated fact that an Atom blast smells like sulfur. One such survivor was Taeko Teramae. When in recent times Teramae was interviewed about his experiences of the nuking of Hiroshima, he said, “I smelt something like sulfur.
It smelt like the volcano, Mt. Aso, and I threw up.” Mount Aso is a still active volcano in Kyushu, Japan, which has erupted intermittently since 1974. The sulfur-rich volcanic eruptions smell like sulfur and so Teramae knew what he was talking about. It is the sulfurous smell and the presence of sulfur balls around the Dead Sea that made the biblical scribes take it for granted that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed with a sulfurous conflagration.
The fact of the matter though is that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by the Anunnaki by way of nuclear bombs. Indeed, archaeologists have found melted pottery shards around the Dead Sea whose state compare very well to a substance left on the desert floor near Alamogordo, New Mexico, after the explosion of a test nuclear bomb on July 16 1945. According to the same archaeologists, the pottery shards pointed to evidence of “exposure to very high temperature levels, much higher than what would be expected from heating from a kiln or oven”.
It was the “enraged” Enlil who “conceived the wrath” courtesy of the Sumerian annals. But the actual annihilator was Nergal. It was he who “burnt up the adversary (the people of the five cities personified by Marduk and Nabu), who obliterated the disobedient land (the five cities), who withered the lives of the Evil Word’s (Nabu, who was a famed demagogue) followers”. Thanks to the lingering effects of the atomic assault, for the next 700 years Sodom and Gomorrah became a practical wasteland as it simply was too dangerous for human habitation. As the highly percipient Enki had predicted, “to desolation” were the cities “overturned”.
IT WAS NERGAL WHO “KILLED”, EXTENDED THE DEAD SEA
Why does the Dead Sea not support any form of life – the reason it is called the Dead Sea? The tread-of-the-mill reason is that as one of the saltiest lakes in the world, it naturally cannot harbour life forms such as fish, crocodiles, hippos, and other such aquatic animals. But we now can inform you folks that once, the Dead Sea was not a salty lake: it was a fresh water lake which supported animal life. That aspect we learn from the Sumerian records. It became a salty lake in 2024 BC when the Anunnaki blitzed it with chemical weapons.
It seemed the Anunnaki used both chemical and nuclear weapons on the cities of the Jordan plain. It is also common knowledge that the Dead Sea, which is surrounded by Israel, Jordan, and Palestine was shorter (it has an elongated, north-south shape) than it appears today. The southern extremity is a relatively recent extension. What caused the extension? Once again, it is Nergal’s nuclear onslaught.
Traces of radiation have been found around the Dead Sea. Writes Sitchin: “Leading archaeologists, such as W. F. Albright and P. Harland, discovered that settlements in the mountains around the region were abruptly abandoned in the 21st century BC and were not reoccupied for several centuries thereafter. And to this very day, the water of springs surrounding the Dead Sea has been found to be contaminated with radioactivity, enough to induce sterility and allied afflictions in any animals and humans that absorbed it over a number of years.”
As for a further elongation of the Dead Sea, this is what Sitchin informs us: “The upheaval of the cities in the plain of the Dead Sea caused the southern shore of the sea to collapse, leading to a flooding of the once fertile area and its appearance, to this day, as an appendage separated from the sea by a barrier called El-Lissan (‘The Tongue’).”
But there is more. Scientists have observed that the Dead Sea fell abruptly by 100 metres in the 21st century BC. Sadly, they are unable to explain why. Furthermore, there are very curious ruins at the bottom of the Dead Sea which the powers-that-be prevent aquatic archeologist from investigating. Zechariah Sitchin: “Attempts by Israeli archaeologists to explore the seabed there have revealed the existence of enigmatic underwater ruins, but the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, in whose half of the Dead Sea the ruins are, put a stop to further exploration.”
If the scientists do not have an idea of exactly what happened to the Dead Sea in the 21st century BC and only have a vague notion of why it does not support life, we advise that they consult the Sumerian chronicles. One such text, the Erra Epos, has this to say about Nergal’s atomic assault: “He dug through the (Dead) sea, its wholeness he divided. That which lives in it, even the crocodiles, he made wither.”
It was Nergal’s atomic and chemical blitz that occasioned a cessation of plant and animal life in the Dead Sea, that caused it to extend southwards, and that accounts for those traces of radiation. Yet the number one reason the Dead Sea was so ruined by Nergal was that it was extremely rich with Ormus – the monoatomic white powder of gold which when ingested either directly or through food grown in Ormus-rich soil perfects bodily health, boosts longevity, and enables a penetrating understanding of spiritual and metaphysical subjects.
Marduk had made the knowledge and use of Ormus available to all the Canaanites, the reason they became so prosperous and flourished in personal health. Poisoning the Dead Sea with chemical and nuclear bombs was intended to keep away humans from accessing the Ormus.
MATERIALISTIC LOT’S WIFE DISCARNATED IN NUCLEAR MAYHEM
Of the five “sinning cities” targeted by Nergal, only one was spared. This was Zoar way south of Gomorrah. Zoar was not bombed because it was in that city Lot had sought refuge, in the surrounding wilderness. In Zoar, Lot was with his two virgin daughters but minus his wife. His wife had returned to Sodom at some stage along the way to Zoar. She did so because she was hopeful she would survive whatever calamity would befall Sodom.
A multimillionaire by the standards of the day, Lot had departed Sodom on the spur of the moment and had left all his riches there practically intact. His wife still longed for those riches and decided against the spirited dissuasion of her husband and her two daughters to return and take charge of the wealth damn the consequences. It was a costly mistake: when Nergal’s bombs rained down, she too was vapourised.
The Bible says she was turned to a pillar of salt (simply by looking back, which is absolute rubbish). But that is not the appropriate translation. The word translated salt is Nimur. Nimur denoted both salt and vapour and the biblical scribes chose salt because at their knowledge level, they just could not conceive of a nuclear bomb and how it could turn a human being to vapour. The term vapour occurs countless times in the Sumerian records in relation to the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. “All that lived there to vapour were turned,” says one such text.
Zechariah Sitchin explains the mistaken salt connotation thus: “In a paper presented to the American Oriental Society in 1918 and in a follow-up article in Beitrage zur Assyriologie, Paul Haupt had shown conclusively that because the early sources of salt in Sumer were swamps near the Persian Gulf, the Sumerian term Nimur branched off to mean both salt and vapor. Because the Dead Sea has been called, in Hebrew, the Salt Sea, the biblical Hebrew narrator probably misinterpreted the Sumerian term and wrote ‘pillar of salt’ when in fact Lot's wife became a ‘pillar of vapor’.”
The ancients in fact characterised a translated (that is, dead) person as having turned to vapour. “It is noteworthy,” writes Sitchin, “that in Ugaritic texts, such as the Canaanite tale of Aqhat (with its many similarities to the tales of Abraham) the death of a mortal by the hand of a god was described as the ‘escape of his soul as vapour, like smoke from his nostrils’. Indeed, in the Erra Epos, which was the Sumerian record of the nuclear upheaval, the death of the people was described by the god thus: ‘The people I will make vanish, their souls shall turn to vapour’.” It was the misfortune of Lot's wife to be among those who were "turned to vapour". She apparently valued material possessions much more than her own life. This Earth, My Brother …
NEXT WEEK: THE NUCLEAR WOES OF SUMER
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”.
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Heartache for Kelly Fisher
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o date, Princess Diana, General Atiku, had destroyed one marriage, come close to ruining another one in the offing, and now was poised to wreck yet another marriage that was already in the making. This was between Dodi Fayed and the American model Kelly Fisher.
If there was one common denominator about Diana and Dodi besides their having been born with a silver spoon in their mouths, General, it was that both were divorcees. Dodi’s matrimonial saga, however, was less problematic and acrimonious and lasted an infinitesimal 8 months. This was with yet another American model and film actress going by the name Susanne Gregard.
Dodi met Susanne in 1986, when she was only 26 years old. Like most glamourous women, she proved not to be that easy a catch and to readily incline her towards positively and expeditiously responding to his rather gallant advances, Dodi booked her as a model for the Fayed’s London mega store Harrods, where he had her travel every weekend by Concorde. They married at a rather private ceremony at Dodi’s Colorado residence in 1987 on New Year’s Day, without the blessings, bizarrely, of his all-powerful father. By September the same year, the marriage was, for reasons that were not publicised but likely due to the fact that his father had not sanctioned it, kaput.
It would take ten more years for Dodi to propose marriage to another woman, who happened to be Kelly Fisher this time around.
DODI HITCHES KELLY FISHER
Kelly and Dodi, General, met in Paris in July 1996, when Kelly was only 29 years old. In a sort of whirlwind romance, the duo fell in love, becoming a concretised item in December and formally getting engaged in February 1997.
Of course the relationship was not only about mutual love: the material element was a significant, if not vital, factor. Kelly was to give up her modelling job just so she could spend a lot more time with the new man in her life and for that she was to be handed out a compensatory reward amounting to $500,000. The engagement ring for one, which was a diamond and sapphire affair, set back Dodi in the order of $230,000. Once they had wedded, on August 9 that very year as per plan, they were to live in a $7 million 5-acre Malibu Beach mansion in California, which Dodi’s father had bought him for that and an entrepreneurial purpose. They were already even talking about embarking on making a family from the get-go: according to Kelly, Dodi wanted two boys at the very least.
Kelly naturally had the unambiguous blessings of her father-in-law as there was utterly nothing Dodi could do without the green light from the old man. When Mohamed Al Fayed was contemplating buying the Jonikal, the luxurious yacht, he invited Dodi and Kelly to inspect it too and hear their take on it.
If there was a tell-tale red flag about Dodi ab initio, General, it had to do with a $200,000 cheque he issued to Kelly as part payment of the pledged $500,000 and which was dishonoured by the bank. Throughout their 13-month-long romance, Dodi made good on only $60,000 of the promised sum. But love, as they say, General, is blind and Kelly did not care a jot about her beau’s financial indiscretions. It was enough that he was potentially a very wealthy man anyway being heir to his father’s humongous fortune.
KELLY CONSIGNED TO “BOAT CAGE”
In that summer of the year 1997, General, Dodi and Kelly were to while away quality time on the French Rivierra as well as the Jonikal after Paris. Then Dodi’s dad weighed in and put a damper on this prospect in a telephone call to Dodi on July 14. “Dodi said he was going to London and he’d be back and then we were going to San Tropez,” Kelly told the interviewer in a later TV programme. “That evening he didn’t call me and I finally got him on his portable phone. I said, ‘Dodi where are you?’ and he said he was in London. I said, ‘Ok, I’ll call you right back at your apartment’. He said, ‘No, no, don’t call me back’. So I said, ‘Dodi where are you?’ and he admitted he was in the south of France. His father had asked him to come down and not bring me, I know now.”
Since Dodi could no longer hide from Kelly and she on her part just could not desist from badgering him, he had no option but to dispatch a private Fayed jet to pick her up so that she join him forthwith in St. Tropez. This was on July 16.
Arriving in St. Tropez, Kelly, General, did not lodge at the Fayed’s seaside villa as was her expectation but was somewhat stashed in the Fayed’s maritime fleet, first in the Sakara, and later in the Cujo, which was moored only yards from the Fayed villa. It was in the Cujo Kelly spent the next two nights with Dodi. “She (Kelly) felt there was something strange going on as Dodi spent large parts of the day at the family’s villa, Castel St. Helene, but asked her to stay on the boat,” writes Martyn Gregory in The Diana Conspiracy Exposed. “Dodi was sleeping with Kelly at night and was courting Diana by day. His deception was assisted by Kelly Fisher’s modelling assignment on 18-20 July in Nice. The Fayed’s were happy to lend her the Cujo and its crew for three days to take her there.”
Dodi’s behaviour clearly was curious, General. “Dodi would say, ‘I’m going to the house and I’ll be back in half an hour’,” Kelly told Gregory. “And he’d come back three or four hours later. I was furious. I’m sitting on the boat, stuck. And he was having lunch with everyone. So he had me in my little boat cage, and I now know he was seducing Diana. So he had me, and then he would go and try and seduce her, and then he’d come back the next day and it would happen again. I was livid by this point, and I just didn’t understand what was going on. When he was with me, he was so wonderful. He said he loved me, and we talked to my mother, and we were talking about moving into the house in California.”
But as is typical of the rather romantically gullible tenderer sex, General, Kelly rationalised her man’s stratagems. “I just thought they maybe didn’t want a commoner around the Princess … Dodi kept leaving me behind with the excuse that the Princess didn’t like to meet new people.” During one of those nights, General, Dodi even had unprotected sexual relations with Kelly whilst cooing in her ear that, “I love you so much and I want you to have my baby.”
KELLY USHERED ONTO THE JONIKAL AT LONG LAST
On July 20, General, Diana returned to England and it was only then that Dodi allowed Kelly to come aboard the Jonikal. According to Debbie Gribble, who was the Jonikal’s chief stewardess, Kelly was kind of grumpy. “I had no idea at the time who she was, but I felt she acted very spoiled,” she says in Trevor Rees-Jones’ The Bodyguard’s Story. “I remember vividly that she snapped, ‘I want to eat right now. I don’t want a drink, I just want to eat now’. It was quite obvious that she was upset, angry or annoyed about something.”
Kelly’s irascible manner of course was understandable, General, given the games Dodi had been playing with her since she pitched up in St. Tropez. Granted, what happened to Kelly was very much antithetical to Dodi’s typically well-mannered nature, but the fact of the matter was that she simply was peripheral to the larger agenda, of which Dodi’s father was the one calling the shots.
On July 23, Dodi and Kelly flew to Paris, where they parted as Kelly had some engagements lined up in Los Angeles. Dodi promised to join her there on August 4 to celebrate with her her parents’ marriage anniversary. Dodi, however, General, did not make good on his promise: though he did candidly own up to the fact that he was at that point in time again with Diana, he also fibbed that he was not alone with her but was partying with her along with Elton John and George Michael. But in a August 6 phone call, he did undertake to Kelly that he would be joining her in LA in a few days’ time. In the event, anyway, General, Kelly continued to ready herself for her big day, which was slated for August 9 – until she saw “The Kiss”.
THE KISS THAT NEVER WAS
“The Kiss”, General, first featured in London’s Sunday Mirror on August 10 under that very headline. In truth, General, it was not a definitive, point-blank kiss: it was a fuzzy image of Diana and Dodi embracing on the Jonikal. A friend of Kelly faxed her the newspaper pictures in the middle of the night and Kelly was at once stunned and convulsed with rage.
But although Kelly was shocked, General, she was not exactly surprised as two or three days prior, British tabloids had already begun rhapsodising on a brewing love affair between Dodi and Diana. That day, Kelly had picked up a phone to demand an immediate explanation from her fiancé. “I started calling him in London because at this time I was expecting his arrival in a day. I called his private line, but there was no answer. So then I called the secretary and asked to speak to him she wouldn’t put me on. So Mohamed got on and in so many horrible words told me to never call back again. I said, ‘He’s my fiancé, what are you talking about?’ He hung up on me and I called back and the secretary said don’t ever call here again, your calls are no longer to be put through. It was so horrible.”
Kelly did at long last manage to reach Dodi but he was quick to protest that, “I can’t talk to you on the phone. I will talk to you in LA.” Perhaps Dodi, General, just at that stage was unable to muster sufficient Dutch courage to thrash out the matter with Kelly but a more credible reason he would not talk had to do with his father’s obsessive bugging of every communication device Dodi used and every inch of every property he owned. The following is what David Icke has to say on the subject in his iconic book The Biggest Secret:
“Ironically, Diana used to have Kensington Palace swept for listening devices and now she was in the clutches of a man for whom bugging was an obsession. The Al Fayed villa in San Tropez was bugged, as were all Fayed properties. Everything Diana said could be heard. Bob Loftus, the former Head of Security at Harrods, said that the bugging there was ‘a very extensive operation’ and was also always under the direction of Al Fayed. Henry Porter, the London Editor of the magazine Vanity Fair, had spent two years investigating Al Fayed and he said they came across his almost obsessive use of eavesdropping devices to tape telephone calls, bug rooms, and film people.”
Through mutual friends, General, Porter warned Diana about Al Fayed’s background and activities ‘because we thought this was quite dangerous for her for obvious reasons’ but Diana apparently felt she could handle it and although she knew Al Fayed could ‘sometimes be a rogue’, he was no threat to her, she thought. “He is rather more than a rogue and rather more often than ‘sometimes,” she apparently told friends. “I know he’s naughty, but that’s all.” The TV programme Dispatches said they had written evidence that Al Fayed bugged the Ritz Hotel and given his background and the deals that are hatched at the Ritz, it would be uncharacteristic if he did not. Kelly Fisher said that the whole time she was on Fayed property, she just assumed everything was bugged. It was known, she said, and Dodi had told her the bugging was so pervasive.
KELLY SUES, ALBEIT VAINLY SO
To his credit, General, Dodi was sufficiently concerned about what had transpired in St. Tropez to fly to LA and do his utmost to appease Kelly but Kelly simply was not interested as to her it was obvious enough that Diana was the new woman in his life.
On August 14, Kelly held a press conference in LA, where she announced that she was taking legal action against Dodi for breach of matrimonial contract. Her asking compensation price was £340,000. Of course the suit, General, lapsed automatically with the demise of Dodi in that Paris underpass on August 31, 1997.
Although Kelly did produce evidence of her engagement to Dodi in the form of a pricey and spectacular engagement ring, General, Mohamed Al Fayed was adamant that she never was engaged to his son and that she was no more than a gold digger.
But it is all water under the bridge now, General: Kelly is happily married to a pilot and the couple has a daughter. Her hubby may not be half as rich as Dodi potentially was but she is fully fulfilled anyway. Happiness, General, comes in all shades and does not necessarily stem from a colossal bank balance or other such trappings of affluence.
Pic Cap
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.