Choosing Between Christ and the Church: A Little Matter of Genocide

Rev. Kevin Annett's documentary (below) reveals Canada's darkest secret: under the guise of religion, the deliberate extermination of native peoples and the theft of their land.

The Indian Residential School System in Canada was an extension in evolution of an older system of genocide that began as early as 1540 in Eastern Canada and during the 1840s on the Pacific coast. It's foundational purpose was the deliberate and systematic eradication of all indigenous populations that would not leave their lands and resources, abolish their own cultures and languages. That purpose has never wavered but has assumed different forms and strategies over the last century and adapted to the times and regions of which it played out as European conquest moved westward across the continent. By the time that residential schools were established across Canada, around 1900, "the plague" itself had exterminated most Aboriginal people in a genocide whose details are largely unrecorded and perhaps, forgotten.

The parents of the children who attended these schools were forced into signing away guardianship to the principal who ran the residential school in accordance with "The Indian Act", race based legislation that legally separates indigenous into a separate and inferior class of citizenship under the control of one man, the federal administrator of Indian Affairs. The Indian Act allows aboriginal people to be expelled from their homes on reserves lands, arbitrarily jailed, subjected to involuntary medical treatment and denied the right to elect their own leaders. Under the Indian Act, native people are legal wards of the Canadian state in perpetuity, having the same status as children or mentally incompetent. This racist legislation has remained relatively unchanged since it was enacted in 1876.

So approximately two decades ago, Annett blew the whistle on his own church, regarding the more than "50,000 children [at Indian Reservation Schools in British Columbia Canada] who died from beatings, starvation, rape and torture, or being deliberately exposed to tuberculosis and left to cough their lives away in squalor and terror: all at the hands of Christian men and women who have never been prosecuted for their crimes." The annual death rate at the Indian Reservation Schools was 50%!

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Market Based Health Care Does Not Work!

45.7 million Americans lack health insurance and 25 million more Americans are underinsured, up from 16 million two years ago. In 2008 alone, the 25 million under insured will have paid $30 billion in out of pocket expenses.

While these numbers show slight improvement, this does not mean our health care system has improved, as the decreased number of uninsured comes solely from government funded programs.

We are the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not have a universal health care system yet we spend more on health care as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) and on a per-capita basis, than any other nation in the world. In 2007 we spent approximately $2.26 trillion on health care.

So, why is it that we spend so much money on health care in comparison to other countries, yet so many people in our country are underinsured or are without insurance altogether?

Could it be the administrative and profit costs of private insurance? According to a study by the New England Journal of Medicine, the US spends 300% more in administrative costs than Canada and we're not any healthier for it.

The Employer Health Benefits 2008 Annual Survey will come out at the end of September. In the meantime, here is a look at 2007 list of exhibits...every kind of exhibit imaginable. Here is one example:

Since 2001, premiums for family coverage have increased 78%, while wages have gone up 19% and inflation has gone up 17%.

Premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance rose an average of 6.1 percent in 2007, less than the 7.7 percent increase reported last year but still higher than the increase in workers’ wages (3.7 percent) or the overall inflation rate (2.6 percent).

Overall, it's clear our healthcare system needs a major overhaul. It can't be said enough that McCain's plan will only make things worse.

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