myiW Current Conditions and Forecasts Community Forums Buy and Sell Services
 
Hi guest · myAccount · Log in
 SearchSearch   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   RegisterRegister 
who is Jimmy Carter
Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3  Next
 
Post new topic   Reply to topic    iWindsurf Community Forum Index -> Politics, Off-Topic, Opinions
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
real-human



Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14838
Location: on earth

PostPosted: Tue Mar 10, 2020 10:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

this is Jimmy
_________________
when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
isobars



Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935

PostPosted: Wed Mar 11, 2020 8:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't give a damn whether Carter is or was a gentleman; he was a dangerous blithering idiot. He trusted the USSR so much that he gave them submarine technology that allowed them to leapfrog years to decades ahead in warfighting capability. Just one example is the screw (propellor) technology that made our subs undetectable while leaving theirs as obvious as hell. Maybe you guys don't comprehend the global extent of the tracking war waged every day for generations between nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed submarine forces.

And how is a past president criticizing a sitting president, a violation of their unspoken obligation to STFU, "gentlemanly"? Tell that to W, who has kept his yap shut, and to Obama, who can't shut his yap for a moment.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
real-human



Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14838
Location: on earth

PostPosted: Wed Mar 11, 2020 8:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

isobars wrote:
I don't give a damn whether Carter is or was a gentleman; he was a dangerous blithering idiot. He trusted the USSR so much that he gave them submarine technology that allowed them to leapfrog years to decades ahead in warfighting capability. Just one example is the screw (propellor) technology that made our subs undetectable while leaving theirs as obvious as hell. Maybe you guys don't comprehend the global extent of the tracking war waged every day for generations between nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed submarine forces.

And how is a past president criticizing a sitting president, a violation of their unspoken obligation to STFU, "gentlemanly"? Tell that to W, who has kept his yap shut, and to Obama, who can't shut his yap for a moment.


did you just disclose classified information illegally?

_________________
when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
real-human



Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14838
Location: on earth

PostPosted: Sun Jun 27, 2021 5:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

and to think the right wing demanded a investigation of Carter because his peanut farm he built was making to much money because he was president. His peanut farm was in a blind trust too.

a special counsel/independent council was appointed and did a major investigation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/15/books/review/kai-bird-the-outlier-jimmy-carter.html


The Many Successes of Jimmy Carter and His Ultimate Failure


Quote:
THE OUTLIER
The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter
By Kai Bird

Kai Birds landmark presidential biography of our 39th president, The Outlier, begins, almost lyrically, by recreating the world in which Jimmy Carter grew up. Born in 1924 to Earl and Lillian Carter, virtually the only landowning family in Archery, Ga. (Plains, more famous as Carters hometown, is 2.5 miles away), Jimmy Carter certainly enjoyed status despite living in what many Americans would consider poverty. The Carters were the only white family in town. Most of the population of 200 consisted of Earls Black tenants. Although considered well off in the rural South of the first decades of the 20th century, the family didnt have running water until Carter was 11 and didnt get electricity until three years later. The greatest day in my life was not being inaugurated president, [and] it wasnt even marrying Rosalynn it was when they turned the electricity on, Carter later recalled.

BOOKS: Be the first to read books news and see reviews, news and features in The New York Times Book Review.
Sign Up
The defining mystery of the future presidents childhood was how he nevertheless was molded into something quite alien from his South Georgian racist culture, Bird notes. Indeed, Carters father was a racist. He believed in the Black mans inferiority, Carters mother told a journalist in 1976, but he was no different from all those people around here and all over the country who are now trying to pretend they were never prejudiced. If structure and local traditions determine attitudes, the person Carter became should never have been. A major part of the answer, Bird suggests, is Lillian Carter, a woman known as Miss Lillian, whom Carter later lovingly described as a Southern eccentric. She took meals with Black people, defended Abraham Lincoln and in the 1960s, when John Kennedy started the Peace Corps, a program designed for young Americans, Miss Lillian answered the call, going to India for two years at the age of 67.

For Bird, who won a Pulitzer Prize with Martin J. Sherwin for a biography of Robert Oppenheimer, this background is the basis for considering Carter a nonconformist, the odd man out the outlier. Standing athwart the poisonous traditions of the Deep South could have led to a sense of insecurity. But Carter, as Bird repeatedly observes, has always burned with a sense of being right.

And more often than not, Bird argues, Carter was right: No modern president worked harder at the job and few achieved more than Carter. Bird blames Carters basic honesty for the fact that most Americans missed this about his presidency. He became an especially appealing target for criticism in an era of seemingly insuperable challenges an oil crisis, high inflation, low growth, apparent Soviet geostrategic gains, the Iran hostage crisis. For most Americans, Bird writes, it was easier to label the messenger a failure than to grapple with the hard problems.

Yet four decades after leaving office, Jimmy Carter has lived to see a more positive reappraisal of his presidency. A decade ago, Julian E. Zelizer provided a thought-provoking primer on Carter for the American Presidents series; while accepting that Carters White House years were a symbol of failed leadership, Zelizer anchored some of that failure in the tumult of the 1970s and noted Carters achievements. More recently, Stuart E. Eizenstat, Carters White House domestic affairs adviser, added a detailed, if wonky, memoir-study that makes a case for a consequential presidency. Last year Jonathan Alter produced a nimble and insightful account, the first cradle-to-old-age biography (surprisingly) ever written of the man. Meanwhile, Bird, with his focus primarily on the presidency, has benefited from some fresh sources, like the records of Carters longtime adviser Charles Kirbo. With Bird noting that about 80 percent of Carters White House diary is still closed and all of the diary of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser, currently unavailable, there is likely even more to be learned about this pivotal presidency.

Still, Bird is able to build a persuasive case that the Carter presidency deserves this new look. In the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, Carter tried to lead a transitional and corrective presidency. His business experience gave him an intuitive feel for the importance of the marketplace. It was Carter, and not Ronald Reagan, who began the process of opening up the Great Society economy. Carter oversaw the deregulation of oil and gas prices, the airline industry and the trucking industry. Instead of instituting wage and price controls to dampen inflation, as Richard Nixon had done, Carter brought in Paul Volcker to head the Federal Reserve, knowing he might push for higher interest rates to drain rising prices out of the system. Carter also went after waste, fraud and abuse in government. Concerned that most federal water projects were not only pork barrel but a threat to the environment, Carter zeroed 19 of them out (worth $5 billion) in his first budget. And he made clear to congressional liberals like Ted Kennedy that the country didnt support and couldnt afford single-payer health care.

But Carter was no proto-Reaganite. This fiscal conservative believed that government could also be part of the solution to social problems. He supported the idea of a comprehensive health care bill and backed, as a first step, a federal program to ensure catastrophic health care for all. With the Social Security system facing imminent collapse because of Nixon and Congresss election year decision in 1972 to index benefits Carter backed the higher taxes that saved it. He imaginatively deployed the dusty 1906 Antiquities Act to keep 56 million acres of Alaska wild. Finally, inspired by the revelations of Ralph Naders first generation of consumer advocates, Carter strengthened safety and environmental regulations. It was his administration that required both seatbelts and airbags in cars, measures that saved countless lives but angered many libertarian motorists.

Curiously, Birds story of these farsighted domestic decisions does not create an overwhelming sense of Carter as a tragic, misunderstood president. Instead, his narrative engenders as much impatience with Carter as respect. Carter stubbornly, almost reflexively, gored a lot of oxen in the pursuit of what he assumed were the right policies. When you do that as a leader, enduring success depends on either building your own governing coalition or inspiring a hard-core base outside Washington. Carters idiosyncratic leadership style achieved neither. Bird shows how Carters efforts to deal with the energy crisis and high inflation, for example, undermined his support from traditional Democratic constituencies. Deregulating trucking brought down the cost of delivering goods, but also led to the growth of independent trucking, which weakened unions and depressed truckers wages. At the same time, Carter seemed oblivious to ambitious rivals, namely Ted Kennedy, who were ready to pounce.

Indeed, Carter brushed off criticisms that he was too insensitive to the political consequences of what he was doing. There is not a person in the administration who is preoccupied exclusively with the political dimensions of the decision, Carters top aide Hamilton Jordan lamented in December 1977. Without that person, Jordan added, the high quality of your foreign policy decisions will be undermined unnecessarily by domestic political considerations. In most administrations it is the president himself who is supposed to balance politics and policy. Not in Carters.

Editors Picks

The Abandoned Houses of Instagram

21 Easy Summer Dinners Youll Cook (or Throw Together) on Repeat

King Richard Finds Fresh Drama in Watergate
Continue reading the main story
Oddly, given Birds mastery of the complexities of international relations in his other works, this book is much less insightful on Carters Cold War positions. It is in foreign policy that Carter acts least like a know-it-all from Georgia and more like an uncertain pragmatist. But instead of explicating the evolution of Carters thinking, Bird plays favorites in the internal struggle between Carters dovish, genteel secretary of state, Cyrus R. Vance, and the hawkish, egotistical Brzezinski. Whenever Carter sides with Vance, Bird praises him. We know now how the Cold War turned out, but Carter couldnt have. In the second half of the 1970s the Soviets, pushed by the Cubans, were making a bid for new allies in the developing world. In a matter of five years, Havana would send troops to Angola, Ethiopia and Grenada, and train revolutionaries in El Salvador and Nicaragua. And, of course, the Soviet military invaded Afghanistan. In approving Brzezinskis call for covert action in Afghanistan and Nicaragua, Carter reacted to a world seemingly spinning out of control. Bird seems to think Carter just shouldnt have listened to his national security adviser.

The narrative is more nuanced when the focus is on the Middle East. The section on the Camp David accord may be too detailed for the general reader, but Bird makes crystal clear that the Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin, deceived a well-meaning American president. Carters diplomacy brought peace to many millions in the region but because of Begins double cross, the Palestinians were left out. Regarding Iran, Carter couldnt really make up his mind on what to do about the shah and his failing regime. After the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, and the United States Embassy was captured, Carter found his focus, which was preserving the lives of the more than 50 American hostages being held by the Iranians. Securing their release proved maddeningly difficult. Moreover, Bird assembles a suggestive, though incomplete, mosaic to argue that fearing a last-minute deal with the Iranians to release the hostages would boost Carter, the Reagan campaign, led by the Nixon alumnus William Casey, further complicated that international diplomacy (as Nixon did, indirectly, in 1968 with the South Vietnamese). Its ours to throw away, Bird quotes a Reagan aide saying just after the Republican National Convention. If [Carter] does something with the hostages, or pulls something else out of the hat, as only an incumbent president can, were in big trouble. This cold case should remain open.

In 1976, when the inflation rate was 4.9 percent, Jimmy Carter won an improbable presidential victory because he appealed to a sour electorate desperate for change. Carter understood why Americans didnt trust Congress he didnt either but he thought Americans would trust him. Indeed, he believed, and this was a character flaw, Americans should trust him. By 1980, when the inflation rate was 12.6 percent and the hostage crisis still unresolved, they didnt by a long shot and the one-term Carter presidency became a cautionary tale for future presidents.

In his rhetoric, his approach to Congress, his coupling of environmentalism with job creation and his rejection of short-term fiscal stinginess, our 46th president and longtime Carter political ally, Joe Biden, may be the successor who has taken those lessons most to heart. Kai Birds important book intentionally, and inadvertently, explains why American presidents continue to learn as much from President Carters mistakes as from his many achievements.

Correction: June 15, 2021
An earlier version of this review misstated the surname of Kai Birds co-author on a biography of Robert Oppenheimer. He is Martin J. Sherwin, not Martin Sherwood.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/09/18/story-jimmy-carters-peanut-farm-is-bit-more-complicated-than-you-may-have-heard/
The story of Jimmy Carters peanut farm is a bit more complicated than you may have heard


https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/17/when-jimmy-carter-left-office-his-peanut-business-was-deep-in-debt.html


When former president Jimmy Carter left office, his peanut business was $1 million in debt


Quote:
When President Jimmy Carter left the White House in 1981, he was 56 years old and deep in debt.

His peanut business, which sold certified seed peanuts and other farm supplies, was $1 million in the red by the time he finished his term, The Washington Post reports. Carter had been managing the family-owned peanut farm, warehouse and store in Plains, Georgia, since his dad died in 1953, but when he became president, he put it into a blind trust to avoid conflicts of interest.

When he left office in debt, we thought we were going to lose everything, Carters wife Rosalynn told the Post.

Forced to sell the company, Carter started writing books to generate income. Today, the 94-year-old has published more than 30, from a childrens book to reflections on his presidency.

As a former president, he also receives an annual pension of about $210,000 and an allowance for things like travel, office space and other expenses. In 2017, Carter got more than $230,000 in such allowances, the National Taxpayers Union Foundation reports.

1:41
Former President Jimmy Carter lives in a $167,000 house
Carter is not the only U.S. president to finish his term in the red: Thanks to legal fees, Bill Clinton left the White House $16 million in debt, he told NBCs Craig Melvin in 2018.

As Clintons wife Hillary put it, the couple came out of the White House dead broke. But they were able to climb out of the multi-million dollar hole via paid speeches and lucrative books deals. In his first year out of office, Bill gave 57 speeches and earned $13.7 million from his speaking and writing business, according to their tax return. A single speech generated anywhere from $125,000, the standard fee, to $350,000, NPR reported.

By 2004, just three years after leaving office, the Clintons had fully erased their debt. And by the time Hillary ran for president in 2016, her net worth was approximately $45 million, Forbes estimated.

Today, the couples impressive real estate portfolio includes a $1.7 million home in Chappaqua, New York, and a $2.85 million home in Washington, D.C.

While Carter and his wife live comfortably in Plains, Georgia, they spend modestly, especially compared to other living former presidents: Their home is a two-bedroom valued at $167,000, Carter has been known to buy his clothes at the Dollar General and he often flies commercial.

As Carters former White House communications director Gerald Rafshoon told the Post: He doesnt like big shots, and he doesnt think hes a big shot.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
real-human



Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14838
Location: on earth

PostPosted: Sun Jul 11, 2021 9:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

https://news.yahoo.com/carters-celebrate-75-years-adventure-014542232.html


Carters celebrate 75 years of "adventure" with 300 guests at wedding anniversary party


Quote:

Sat, July 10, 2021, 7:45 PM
In this article:

Rosalynn Carter
Wife of the 39th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter
39th U.S. President



Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary with an event in Plains, Georgia, on Saturday attended by 300 guests including Bill and Hillary Clinton, singer Garth Brooks and civil rights icon Andrew Young.

Of note: Chip Carter said directly in front of the Clintons and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that his parents told their children "we were better than no one and no one was better than us and they did what they thought was right, even when it was bad politics," per the Washington Post.

_________________
when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
real-human



Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14838
Location: on earth

PostPosted: Tue Dec 21, 2021 11:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/12/16/2069578/-Did-Jimmy-Carter-really-get-lowered-into-a-nuclear-reactor-to-help-save-Canada-Hell-yes-he-did?pm_source=story_sidebar&pm_medium=web&pm_campaign=most-shared


Jimmy Carter risked his life to help save Ottawa by lowering himself into a melting nuclear reactor


Quote:

President Jimmy Carter is arguably the most beloved former president in recent memory. His reputation has only grown since he left office because of his relentless humanitarian work and the clear decency of his character. He is the oldest living president in the history of our country, having just celebrated his 97th birthday this past October. He is an icon and a singular example of what public servants could and should be.

But President Carter has always had the kind of integrity that usually keeps people away from public office these days. Back in 1952, Carter, a young Naval officer, was in the early stages of a most formative moment in his life and career. He had recently been sent to work under Captain Hyman Rickover at the Naval Reactors Branch of the Atomic Energy Commission in Washington, D.C. Carter worked closely on the nuclear propulsion system for the Sea Wolf submarine. As such, he told CNN back in 2011, "I was one of the few people in the world who had clearance to go into a nuclear power plant.”

On Dec. 12, 1952, a 28-year-old Carter was called into action after an accident occurred on a new experimental nuclear reactor at Chalk River, Canada. Nuclear energy and containment was new, and the Atomic Energy of Canada Chalk River Laboratories were dealing with a partial meltdown. Canada needed help and Carter was one of a very few people with active knowledge of the subject.

On Thursday, the story of how then-Lt. Carter led a group of 23 people on a mission to save the capital city of Ottawa went viral.


Some have questioned whether or not this story, which sounded like something out of an old Captain America comic book, was real. It is. As Carter explained in his memoir, "The reactor core was below ground level and surrounded by intense radioactivity. Even with protective clothing, each of us would absorb the maximum permissible dose with just ninety seconds of exposure, so we had to make optimum use of this limited time. The limit on radiation absorption in the early 1950s was approximately one thousand times higher than it is sixty years later."

Carter and his team were a part of the group of people who needed to clean and fully shut down the reactor. The short amount of time Carter and his team could spend at any stretch meant they needed to be precise. They first created an exact replica of the reactor in a parking lot nearby to practice cleaning and repairing it.

”And finally when we went down into the reactor itself, which was extremely radioactive, then we would dash in there as quickly as we could and take off as many bolts as we could, the same bolts we had just been practicing on. Each time our men managed to remove a bolt or fitting from the core, the equivalent piece was removed on the mock-up."

His urine reportedly had traces of radiation in it for six months after the experience. It’s hard to overstate how great Jimmy Carter is. Every new story about him, or old story you had not heard before, only adds to one’s respect and admiration for the man.


_________________
when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.


Last edited by real-human on Tue Feb 28, 2023 6:36 pm; edited 2 times in total
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
real-human



Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14838
Location: on earth

PostPosted: Sun Feb 19, 2023 5:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A bunch of videos about Carter.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/peopleandplaces/i-ve-had-a-wonderful-life-former-president-jimmy-carter-lived-serving-god-and-others/vi-AA17FOyB?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&cvid=849d0983a3c44b65a4d2262597490b27

_________________
when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
real-human



Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14838
Location: on earth

PostPosted: Tue Feb 21, 2023 12:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Jimmy Carter To The Rescue

https://youtu.be/_PXMo2DuGoI

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/the-amazing-story-of-how-a-young-jimmy-carter-helped-avert-a-nuclear-disaster-163718213939

The amazing story of how a young Jimmy Carter helped avert a nuclear disaster

_________________
when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.


Last edited by real-human on Tue Feb 28, 2023 6:37 pm; edited 1 time in total
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
real-human



Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14838
Location: on earth

PostPosted: Mon Feb 27, 2023 9:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/take-a-look-inside-jimmy-carter-s-peanut-farm-where-he-grew-up-with-no-electricity-or-running-water/ss-AA17ZPyz?cvid=9a55d0be7f4f4277af3e896f166a2a3a&ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&ei=9

Take a look inside Jimmy Carter's peanut farm, where he grew up with no electricity or running water

_________________
when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
real-human



Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14838
Location: on earth

PostPosted: Tue Feb 28, 2023 2:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

all these things the media did not want us to know about Carter... still not all over the right wing owned media

what a example of a real-human

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/jimmy-carter-s-final-foe-a-parasitic-worm-that-preyed-on-millions-in-africa-and-asia/ar-AA17ZeD8?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&cvid=021709d966634599f2ba529bd7a3f5e7&ei=8

Jimmy Carter's final foe: A parasitic worm that preyed on millions in Africa and Asia


Quote:
Just a few hours before President Carter underwent his first radiation treatment for brain cancer, he spoke of his hope, in the time he had left, to purge the world of a parasitic worm disease.

That was in 2015.

“I’d like the last Guinea worm to die before I do,” the 39th president told reporters at the Carter Center. “We know where all of them are, so obviously that would be my top priority.”

Carter had set up the global Guinea Worm Eradication Program in 1986, when about 3.5 million people across rural Africa and Asia were afflicted by the excruciating parasite that has plagued humans for thousands of years.

The 98-year-old, now in hospice at home in Plains, Ga., is on the cusp of reaching his goal: The number of reported human cases dwindled in 2022 to 13 — an all-time low.

“We've joked many times: Who's going to win — the Guinea worm or Jimmy Carter?” said Dr. Peter Bourne, Carter’s former drug czar who became an assistant secretary-general at the United Nations. “Thirteen is pretty close to zero. For the millions of people who didn't get the Guinea worm infection, he has had an enormous impact.”

One of the outstanding achievements of the Carter presidency was the 1979 peace settlement between Israel and Egypt. Decades later, the prospect of peace in the Middle East is dismal, and Carter’s most enduring global legacy could be making Guinea worm the second infectious human disease to be eradicated, after smallpox in 1980.

“His role was crucial,” Bourne said. “He would call people like the president of Ghana and say, ‘I want to talk to you about Guinea worm.’ It was difficult enough to get the minister of health on the phone, and to get a president to talk about Guinea worm was no easy feat. But they would all respond to him.”

A health worker removes a Guinea worm from a child's foot in Savelugu, Ghana, in 2007. (Olivier Asselin / Associated Press)

The Latin name of Guinea worm disease — Dracunculiasis — means “affliction with little dragons.” The calcified remains of the worm have been found in a 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy of a 13-year-old girl, and some scholars believe they may have been the “fiery serpents” the Old Testament describes as attacking the Israelites in the desert.



Humans contract the parasite after drinking stagnant water infested with tiny crustaceans that have swallowed microscopic Guinea worm larvae. After an incubation period of about a year, the larvae grow into noodle-like worms up to 3 feet long that wrap around tendons, ligaments and connective tissue. They release a burning acid that blisters the skin, allowing them to poke their head out of a leg, foot or arm, and in some cases a breast or scrotum.

The worm's exit is so agonizing that it prevent kids from going to school and adults from farming, cooking and collecting firewood. Ridding the body of the parasite takes weeks. First, the worm is wrapped onto a rolled piece of gauze or stick. Then the stick is twisted to slowly pull out the worm, about an inch a day.

In 1988, Carter encountered the Guinea worm for the first time in the village of Denchira near Accra, the Ghanian capital. About half the village’s 500 inhabitants were infected, some so crippled that they could not leave their huts. Carter spotted a young woman he thought was cradling a baby in the crook of her right arm, but when he approached, he realized she was not holding an infant.

“Her right breast, which was about more than a foot long … had a Guinea worm emerging from the nipple,” Carter said in 2016.

"Well, we can't leave them like this," Carter said after his visit to Denchira.

The Carter Center worked with the Ministry of Health to bring every known intervention to the village, said Dr. Donald R. Hopkins, who led the center's efforts to eradicate the disease from 1987 to 2015. Nearly a year and a half later, Carter went back to Denchira to find the parasite almost gone.

Adam Weiss, the director of the center's Guinea Worm Eradication Program, said Carter would try to console patients and hold their hands as they shrieked when the worm emerged.

Related video: Jimmy Carter's hometown prepares to say goodbye to former president (CBS News)
they find it here. The Carter's connection to this farm, his boyhood

“It's one of those problems that once you see it, you can't unsee it,” Weiss said. “Even some of the most stoic men in South Sudan, this brings them to their knees. They cry. They don't want to admit it, but they do. It’s something you can't walk away from.”

Over the years, Carter's visits to rural Africa inspired thousands of schoolchildren to line highways to see him. In Nigeria, Carter said, a group of children held a big sign that said, "Watch out, Guinea worm, here comes Jimmy Carter!"

Carter first considered the possibility of eradicating Guinea worm when he was in the White House. As smallpox was on the verge of being eliminated in 1977, Carter asked Bourne if there was any other disease that could have the same impact.

Bourne told Carter that the Guinea worm would probably be the easiest global infectious disease to eradicate: Unlike smallpox, it could be eliminated without a medicine or vaccine. Prevention could be achieved by showing villagers how to make their water supply safe — filtering drinking water and preventing the infected from walking into stagnant ponds and spreading larvae — coupled with vigilant monitoring of the disease.

But there was a problem: Guinea worm disease did not exist in the United States.

“We decided that the Guinea worm was so obscure that no one in the U.S. would pay attention,” Bourne said. “I thought that he isn't going to want to use up any political credit.”

That calculus changed when Carter left the White House in 1981 and a year later founded the Carter Center. By that point, Bourne was working at the United Nations, heading a 10-year program to provide people around the world with clean drinking water.

After speaking at the Carter Center on the importance of clean drinking water, Bourne said he hosted the Carters on a trout fishing vacation at his farm in Wales and asked the former president to be the figurehead for the campaign to fight the parasitic disease.

“I told him: You could eradicate Guinea worm in your lifetime,” Bourne said. “It’s something that would have global impact, and you don't have to worry about doing it just for a U.S. audience.”

C
© (Mariah Quesada / Associated Press)
With his presidency behind him, Carter had more freedom. He made eliminating Guinea worm one of the Carter Center’s priorities, along with five other preventable diseases: river blindness, trachoma, schistosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis and malaria.

At first, engaging foreign leaders was a challenge because Guinea worm is mostly a rural affliction.

“We found nobody else wanted to deal with this disease because it affects isolated villages in the desert areas and also in the jungle areas,” Carter said to the Commonwealth Club of California.

When Hopkins went from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to the Carter Center to direct the Guinea Worm Eradication Program, Carter would constantly tell him he was not calling him enough to ask for his help.

"I didn't want to bother a former president of the United States every time I ran into a problem in one country or another; I tried to save that big thing for the big problems," Hopkins said. "But he insisted."

As Carter worked closely with ministries of health, local volunteers and organizations such as the CDC and the World Health Organization, the Guinea worm case count plummeted from the 3.5 million in 1986 to 623,579 in 1990 to 75,223 in 2000.

The disease was eradicated in 17 countries, including Pakistan, Kenya, India, Yemen, Senegal and Cameroon.

In some regions, the program was stalled by civil war. But in some cases, the push to eradicate the Guinea worm helped foster peace.

In 1995, Carter negotiated a four-month "Guinea Worm Cease-Fire" in the Sudanese civil war, the longest humanitarian cease-fire in history at the time, allowing health workers to access almost 2,000 endemic villages and distribute water filters. Until then, the center's strategy had been to wait until the end of the civil war before embarking on its public health mission.

For a while, it looked as though Carter would outlive the last Guinea worm. But in 2012, the program experienced a setback: The parasite was spreading among stray dogs in Chad, a nation that had gone a decade without human infections.

Health workers introduced new measures such as chaining infected dogs to keep them out of water, which has significantly reduced transmission among canines. In 2022, six provisional human cases were reported in Chad, five in South Sudan, one in Ethiopia, and one in the Central African Republic.

Weiss said he and his colleagues at the Carter Center— along with more than 30,000 volunteers working in areas under active surveillance — are determined to continue Carter's legacy.

“He said let's get it done before I leave planet Earth, and that has certainly given us a lot of motivation,” Weiss said. “We keep doubling down the attention and rigor as eradication demands. You miss one case, and you can be set back years, so we don't take that lightly, and neither did he.”

_________________
when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    iWindsurf Community Forum Index -> Politics, Off-Topic, Opinions All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3  Next
Page 2 of 3

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You cannot download files in this forum

myiW | Weather | Community | Membership | Support | Log in
like us on facebook
© Copyright 1999-2007 WeatherFlow, Inc Contact Us Ad Marketplace

Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group