The woman from National Geographic's famous 'Afghan Girl' photo is evacuated to Italy

This is her, in 1984:



Not today, Mr. Taliban. You don't get this one.

My thanks to the Italian people.

Indeed - I was intrigued when they tracked her down some 20 years on ...the bloom and fire of youth gone and a tired Afghan left but those eyes.


Glad she is safe ... I was always haunted by the original

Damn two km slog to rescue a big sturgeon



https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british- ... -1.6264477

Too cute ..different times

Our song was Christmas No 1 and we wanted to watch it on TV. So we knocked on a stranger’s door
The Scaffold singing Lily the Pink on Top of the Pops, New Year’s Day, 1968. From left, John Gorman, Mike McGear and Roger McGough, sporting white suits.

Photograph: Ivan Keeman/Redferns

It was Christmas Eve 1968 and Lily the Pink by the Scaffold was top of the charts. We were a long way from home - and desperate to see our performance

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl ... ngers-door

11 yo saves two people in one day;

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/26/us/davyon-johnson-student-saves-classmate-fire.html

Fortune favours the prepared mind ...in this case a $10k scholarship results.



https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/202 ... etter.html

https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/ge ... nts-sunday

34 killed in 307 road accidents Sunday

...

Fifty-three provinces were road-death free.

There's always a silver lining - you just need to look hard enough.

as I was saying ..it's not capitalism that is the problem ....it's predatory capitalism ....this guy is the antithesis



https://jalopnik.com/a-dealer-surprised ... ource=digg

Predatory capitalism is bad for more reasons, but plain old capitalism is manifestly awful for the environment.

You are right. Not all capitalism is bad, but the story you provide is not proof of it.

The dealer’s marketing director...

So it can't be a win win in your books?
Doing a good deed benefits society and the doer as well as the recipient. ......sad world you live in to be so cynical.
Of course a marketing person will look for an opportunity to benefit for the company with publicity and good will
....this is bad how?

•••••

plain old capitalism is manifestly awful for the environment

not sure what your point could possibly be
....that companies and indviduals make choices that impact the environment negatively has nothing to do with capitalism. You are effectively stating that because something "is" .....that it has to be due to some aspect of capitalism???
What a crock. It is because they choose that course of action despite the evidence of harm.

Exxon et al CHOSE to ignore their own scientists about the impact of C02 emmitted into the atmosphere......they were advised in the 70s of the consequences and decided to ignore it.

DOW, Monsanto, etc on an on make choices detrimental to the environment even in full knowledge of the harm ....just as Big Tobacco did in regard to smokers health....and even non-smokers health due to secondary smoke.

Choices....nothing to do with capitalism.
Everything to do with behaving badly in full knowledge of detrimental consequences to the environment.

Macdoc wrote:

plain old capitalism is manifestly awful for the environment

not sure what your point could possibly be

It's written right there: capitalism is about individual (stakeholder) profit typically and historically accrued through exploiting natural resources, and the extraction of those resources has dramatically damaged the environment.

Macdoc wrote:....that companies and indviduals make choices that impact the environment negatively has nothing to do with capitalism. You are effectively stating that because something "is" .....that it has to be due to some aspect of capitalism???
What a crock. It is because they choose that course of action despite the evidence of harm.

I'm surprised at you, Macdoc - I thought you were clued up about this, but apparently not!

Macdoc wrote:Exxon et al CHOSE to ignore their own scientists about the impact of C02 emmitted into the atmosphere......they were advised in the 70s of the consequences and decided to ignore it.

DOW, Monsanto, etc on an on make choices detrimental to the environment even in full knowledge of the harm ....just as Big Tobacco did in regard to smokers health....and even non-smokers health due to secondary smoke.

Choices....nothing to do with capitalism.
Everything to do with behaving badly in full knowledge of detrimental consequences to the environment.

Bizarre: you just offered a series of refutations of your own dismissal and clearly in support of my position which you dismissed out of hand. These are all examples of the environmental problem of capitalism - the profits of stakeholders outweighing the harm done to the environment. In each case, the 'choice' was wholly capitalistic: to make private profit.

Oh so profit is a bad thing - now we get to the heart of it. Time to move on ....

the 'choice' was wholly capitalistic: to make private profit.

wow.....lala land or what. My bolding.

A baker runs a sustainable bakery ...pays staff a living wage, and is not allowed to profit from both his own efforts and the capital he has employed????

He is capitalist as I am a capitalist and we both make choices whether to act harmfully or not.

You are completely trying to conflate humans acting badly ( predatory anything )
with capitalism as an economic model. Start a new thread.

Macdoc wrote:Oh so profit is a bad thing - now we get to the heart of it. Time to move on ....

Who's 'we', and where did I say 'profit is a bad thing'?

Macdoc wrote:

the 'choice' was wholly capitalistic: to make private profit.

wow.....lala land or what. My bolding.

Incisive argument there Macdoc, as is becoming your habit.

How about you try a little harder here? Your well-poisoning isn't reflecting on me.

In a privately owned business with stakeholders, what's the number 1 most vital function a company must succeed in doing?

And you didn't need to bold it - I'd already done so by putting it in its own phrase, a product of the main sentence with a colon showing that it was the emphasized point.

Macdoc wrote:A baker runs a sustainable bakery ...pays staff a living wage, and is not allowed to profit from both his own efforts and the capital he has employed????

Oh sorry, you're trying to make up my position and pretending that you're answering for me.

Either discuss this straight-forwardly Macdoc, or don't discuss it at all if you're not capable of doing so.

Macdoc wrote:He is capitalist as I am a capitalist and we both make choices whether to act harmfully or not.

Irrelevant. The 'choice' thing is a red herring that has no impact whatsoever on whether capitalism is harmful for the environment or not.

People are more than capable of engaging in cognitive dissonance believing that it's other people who are the problem, and that their own actions are justified.

Macdoc wrote:You are completely trying to conflate humans acting badly ( predatory anything )
with capitalism as an economic model. Start a new thread.

Ok, hold on a second, let me just go about repeatedly inferring you're mental as fuck as I reply to you - because that's how a substantive exchange happens, right?

If you're unable to defend your position, Macdoc - no one is obliging you pretend you can.

Made me laugh



https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-08/ ... /100737710

Macdoc wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:plain old capitalism is manifestly awful for the environment

not sure what your point could possibly be
....that companies and indviduals make choices that impact the environment negatively has nothing to do with capitalism.

The choice being made, to maximise profits, has everything to do with capitalism. If that is at the expense of the environment, the welfare of the workforce, the safety of the public or whatever else, so be it.

Sure, theoretically there is a choice between maximising profits regardless of any harmful consequences and making do with a smaller margin in order to avoid causing harm, but in practice the default is to "choose" the former, at least as far as medium and large businesses are concerned. The pressure by shareholders, partners and the stakeholders to maximise return on investments is irresistible. If the returns are deemed not enough - and too often not even too much is enough - the chairman, board of directors, CEO, CFO and/or COO get sacked. Unsurprisingly, all of them want to avoid losing their six to eight-digit annual salaries and bonuses, so they cave in to the shareholders' demands. The shareholders typically don't give a flying fuck about environmental and other repercussions. Those are things that happen somewhere far away in place and time. Why would they care if the Amazon or Tasmania get denuded? They don't live there. It doesn't affect them. This is why disasters great and small keep happening. Focusing on the bottom line alone allowed the tobacco industry to falsely claim that smoking is harmless even though they knew bloody well that it is not. This is why the fossil fuel industry lies its arse off, denying anthropomorphic climate change even though their own scientists knew it was real more than four decades ago. This is why thousands of workers die or are permanently damaged every year in the course of doing their job. All of it is just collateral damage caused by maximising profit. Yes, all of it.

The pressure does not only affect top management. Top management regularly arranges meetings with middle managers to review their performance, which is measured the same way everywhere: How much profit did they generate? And on it goes to lower management, supervisors, office managers and so on, who in turn pull up lowly workers for not producing enough widgets, picking enough orders et cetera. The pressure to cut corners, ignore safety procedures and generally take no heed of what adverse consequences might result is pervasive and almost impossible to resist.

The central principle of capitalism is profit. There is no way of denying it. Laissez faire or free enterprise capitalism of the sort Milton Friedman and the entire Chicago School of Economics (among others) advocate means no regulations. No regulations to counteract the pernicious effects of the economic free-for-all. Laissez faire capitalism is evil.

Correct ...this is the wrong thread tho.

All of it is just collateral damage caused by maximising profit. Yes, all of it.

and there are companies that don't put profit ahead of public weal....too few however which means the need for regulation is ever present.
Now can we get the thread on topic ...not that there is a surplus of feel good stories out there....there are some.

A new ‘smart’ form of packaging could eradicate food poisoning, according to a new study.

Scientists say it kills harmful bugs—such as E.coli, Salmonella, and listeria—keeping meat, fish, fruit, and veg fresh for longer.
The waterproof wrapping may also help save the planet by reducing waste, according to the research team. It looks just like plastic—but is biodegradable.

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/new-sma ... -friendly/