It is year ago today that 4 Americans were murdered in a raid on the Benghazi embassy, and as you will see in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ongdSk4SkkM&feature=youtu.be illustrates, a powerful car bomb was detonated outside the Foreign Ministry building in Benghazi. So much for liberation. 

But what impacts me more is how we are treating each other. This graphic photograph was shared on Twitter by Susan Lindauer, author of “Extreme Prejudice”, telling her story of abuse at the hands of the Bush administration under the auspices of the Patriot Act.  Susan was a back channel asset for the CIA to Libya and Iraq prior to 9/11, and claims that the source of this image is ultra-reliable and I am inclined to accept her word on this. She believes it to be a photograph of Ambassador Stevens being castrated and sodomized by Al Qaeda forces (you know, those ones created and funded by the CIA and now being supported in Syria against Assad) prior to his death. If not Stevens, then certainly one of the other three killed that day. 

I share this photograph to shock you. 

This is what humanity has been doing to each other for thousands of years. The Saracens and the Crusaders did it to each other 1,000 years ago. It has been part of every war. So often the treasures of a culture are destroyed by invaders as a sign of their dominance, as the Chinese did in Tibet not so long ago, the Americans and others did in Iraq during the two Iraqi wars. 

Not only that, so much of it has been done in the name of religion. We all know this. In addition, the Roman Catholic church via the Inquisition tortured countless thousands to death for being so-called heretics, in many cases because they followed the truth teachings of the one they call Jesus – because they couldn’t hold power over them (e.g. the Cathars).  

Additionally we have the history of the so-called missionary activities in the non-European parts of the world, where cultures have been intentionally destroyed and the best way to suppress the people was to kill them. We have all read of how the American Indians died because of their lack of immunity to the diseases of the white man, but what most don’t acknowledge or understand is that these native people in the United States and Canada were intentionally given blankets infected with smallpox and other diseases to kill them off. I suspect it was widely practised across the globe. 

Indeed, Kevin Annett was drummed out of his ministry with the Uniting Church (now there’s an oxymoron) of Canada for trying to have that church, along with the Roman Catholic church, be accountable for their acts of genocide of the Canadian native peoples. This is well documented in this video.  

So what does this tell us about the true agenda of religion? 

Samuel von Pufendorf in 1673 wrote, “More inhumanity has been done by man himself than any other of nature’s causes.” And nothing has progressed since, except the scale and speed with which we do it has increased. 

For me, the only way we can do this to each other is because we either deny or are ignorant of our true nature. As Pierre Teilhard de Chardin reminded us, “we are spiritual beings on a human journey”. If everybody understood this, we simply could not do this to each other. We would witness the beauty in every one of our spiritual brothers and sisters, and those who would have us behave like this would soon be powerless. And religion, whilst claiming to be the path to our spiritual origins, is actually quite the opposite.
They would acknowledge all other paths as being equal. Their truth is exposed right there. 

As Albert Einstein said, a problem cannot be solved on the level of thinking/consciousness on which it was created. I see nothing changing, short of a shift in consciousness. May the evidence that shift is emerging be real. 

Kind Regards,

Richard