‘Inflamed’ - An Unjust World Is Making Us Sick

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https://www.texasobserver.org/inflamed-shows-how-an-unjust-world-is-making-us-sick/

When a wave of Anglo homesteaders laid their false claims to the sprawling Texas plains in the 1860s and 1870s, an extremely profitable invention followed close behind: Barbed wire. It was the end of the open range—the Mexican rancheros, old-school cowboys, and Indigenous communities who had tended the land saw how it was suddenly sectioned off and sequestered. Enormous, roaming buffalo herds were nearly driven to extinction, in large part because government policy was to kill them and starve tribes, but also because the wire cut off surviving buffalo from their grazing lands and water. Food that humans once plucked from the earth now sat behind sharp fences, withering in the hot sun. Mexicans throughout the Southwest coined a phrase: Con al alambre vino el hambre. With the barbed wire came hunger.

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@edgarblythe,

Unfenced miles of wheat, corn maize etc. Open fields of green and root vegetables, uncontrolled growing numbers of root and vegetation eating animals. Somehow, I don't think that would work with the growing millions of starving people on the planet, what about you?

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@The Anointed,

That was an introduction to a longer article.

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@edgarblythe,

This article is pushing the somewhat racist Magical Indian myth. The idea that Native Americans weren't just humans, but were somehow endowed with mystical powers and secret knowledge.

You got you covid vaccine that is nothing less than miraculous. We had no defense against the Spanish Flu and hundreds of millions of people died. We now have vaccines and anti-virals and we have cut the total chance of you dying by 20 times. Covid vaccines don't grow on trees.

The fact is that we have doubled the life expectancy of humans in the past 150 years. The life expectancy of Black and Indigenous people are actually higher than ever and the infant morality rates are lower than ever.

And global poverty rates have dramatically fallen in the past 150 years... and the number of people starving has been slashed. 150 years ago, globally, there were many times more people dying of starvation in every part of the globe.

I don't think this article makes very much sense.

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The book synopsis is general and pretty vague, but what I gather is that it indicts the current global food production system as the cause of bad health worldwide, and—the current food production system being of western/colonialist origin—indicts the West's colonialism itself. I don't know if I can bring myself to read the book. If I find it on soulseek, I may.

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@InfraBlue,

Quote:

it indicts the current global food production system as the cause of bad health worldwide

It is hard to do this when the fact is that humans across the globe, from the wealthiest countries to the poorest countries, are healthier and better fed than ever in history.

If you want to continue with the ideological myth, tell me a time in history when humans were healthier. Throughout most of human history childhood mortality was around 20% (now it below 1%) and the life expectancy was around 40 (now it is around 80 years). Anyone who thinks "herbalism" is in the same league as antibiotics and vaccines is crazy.

The troubling "magic native" myth aside, this argument is easily debunked political propaganda.

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@maxdancona,

In regard to obesity, 1975 was a time when humans were healthier, according to the WHO. Since then worldwide obesity rates tripled.

According to the WHO site, "most of the world's population live in countries where overweight and obesity kills more people than underweight."

That people are living longer is more a result of better medicine and medical practices than being better fed.

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@InfraBlue,

Global poverty rates have plumetted since 1975. Yes, people are better fed than any time in history.

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@maxdancona,

M'kay.

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@InfraBlue,

https://i.ibb.co/SKxqPD1/world-poverty-rate-2021-08-17-macrotrends-1.png

Here is the data for the global poverty rate. The "extreme poverty rate" has been falling at an even more impressive rate.

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@maxdancona,

https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/03/Famine-victims-since-1860s_March18-768x538.png

This is global famine deaths per year. Notice that this is not adjusted for population.. We have more than 6 times more humans since the 1880s, and yet we have far fewer deaths from famine.

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The point is that from the data, the human race is doing well in at least these two areas.

1. We have significantly fewer human beings living in poverty.
2. We have significantly fewer human being dying of starvation (in the past decade this number is approaching zero outside of active war zones).

We also have fewer humans dying from war than ever before in history.

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‘Inflamed’ - An Unjust World Is Making Us Sick

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