Day: December 29, 2024

The Russian government board secretly visited New York and Washington — Avia.pro  Eurasia Daily

The Russian government board secretly visited New York and Washington — Avia.pro  Eurasia Daily

Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States, died on Sunday at the age of 100 — the first president ever to live to be a centenarian. 

Carter had turned 100 on Oct. 1, more than four decades after leaving office in 1981, having served one term in the White House — a period defined by economic woes at home, a valiant effort to bring about Middle East peace, and the hostage crisis in Iran. 

Carter’s son, Chip, said that the former president and Georgia governor had died in his Plains, GA home on Sunday afternoon, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Jimmy Carter had spent the last several years in hospice care, and was preceded in death by former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, who died last year; they had been married 77 years.

A Washington outsider, Jimmy Carter was elected president in 1976, narrowly beating President Gerald Ford just two years shy of the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of Richard Nixon.

But as president from 1977 to 1981, Carter struggled to deal with Congress, a sign of his political inexperience. His presidency was marked by stagflation: a toxic mix of high inflation, stagnant growth and persistent unemployment.

Tensions in the Middle East further eroded his support. The 1979 Iranian Revolution led to sharp increases in energy costs and the infamous hostage crisis. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan contributed to the atmosphere of chaos in Carter’s final year in office.

Carter’s defeat in a landslide loss to Ronald Reagan in 1980 was humiliating. A post-political life in obscurity might have been expected.

And yet, the opposite occurred.

A legacy that outweighed his presidency

James Earl Carter’s long post-presidency arguably achieved more than his presidency, which became bogged down in economic malaise and foreign policy reversals.

As president, Carter’s greatest achievements came in his efforts to implement a human rights-based foreign policy. He continually put his own political well-being on the line to pressure US allies to improve their human rights records, as well as return the Panama Canal from US control.

Arguably his greatest achievement was the Camp David peace accords, which established “normal and friendly relations” between Israel and Egypt after 31 years of warfare and hostility. Historian Richard Perlstein described Carter’s efforts: he knew just when to risk a scathing remark and when to say nothing at all; when to horse-trade and when to hold fast, ever reassessing the balance between the visionary and the pragmatic.

Once free from the pressures of being president, Carter’s skills in foreign affairs flourished, working assiduously for human rights and peace, especially in the Middle East.

In 2002, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his “decades of untiring efforts” to find peaceful solutions to international conflict. Carter is one of only four US presidents to win the prize and the only one to win it after leaving office.

Recently, the Carter Center in Atlanta, another of his legacies, called for a ceasefire in Gaza and noted that Carter would be on the plane to try and secure one if his health permitted it.

Today, Carter’s Middle Eastern efforts – while certainly not perfect, given the intractability of the challenges – stand the test of time and remain especially relevant.

Building on important environmental work as president, Carter installed the first solar panels at the White House and saved millions of acres in Alaska from development. This was long before climate change was widely recognized.

For more than 40 years, Carter was also a stalwart of Habitat for Humanity, a charity that builds free houses for needy working families. In the early 1980s, he gave the group “national visibility”, an outcome that helped it expand internationally. This was well before housing affordability became a major political issue.

Carter also strove to remove the stigma associated with mental illness, again long before such efforts were common.

A former peanut farmer from Georgia, Carter’s post-presidency is distinctive in other ways.

Most former presidents retire to live in luxury in Washington DC, New York or on private estates in the country. Carter, however, went back to Plains, GA, the small town (population 776) where he and Rosalynn had grown up.

Carter has decreed that upon his death, the “modest” ranch house that he built there in 1961 will be gifted to the US National Park Service. The planned museum will showcase the house’s ordinariness; it is a typical example of the brick homes built by millions of Americans after World War II.

Strong Christians, the Carters lived for decades among the citizens of Plains, going to church and mingling with the community. When Rosalynn died in 2023, the funeral was held at the local Baptist church, not in Washington DC. The entire town turned out to watch the procession. Presidents, first ladies, governors and senators were in the congregation, but only pastors, family and friends spoke.

Carter’s survival is also notable. He has been in “end-of-life” hospice care at home for almost two years. In the US, the average stay in such care is 70 days.

Carter’s family publicized his condition partly to break taboos about death and provide support for the millions around the world whose loved ones are in hospice care. Although frail, the former president had no underlying conditions; ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election, his family reported that he was looking forward to voting for Democrat Kamala Harris, who lost the election to Republican Donald Trump.

A man who lived the first 40 years of his life in a racially segregated southern state, with most adult black people unable even to vote, has witnessed tremendous social change.

Carter may not have been the best politician, but his fundamental decency is an important legacy. Even his opponents could agree on that.

According to James Fallow, a former aide who wrote an important account of the Carter administration, the 39th president had admirable personal qualities. Fallow described Carter as “disciplined, funny, enormously intelligent and deeply spiritual.” 

The Russian government board secretly visited New York and Washington — Avia.pro  Eurasia Daily

The Russian government board secretly visited New York and Washington — Avia.pro  Eurasia Daily

The Russian government board secretly visited New York and Washington — Avia.pro  Eurasia Daily

A week after a woman was burned to death at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue subway station, the Guardian Angels were at the Brooklyn transit hub on Dec. 29 to announce the return of their volunteer security patrols — and call attention to the surge of homeless individuals in the system. 

Curtis Sliwa, who founded the Guardian Angels in 1979, said Sunday he would have 150 of his volunteer members on regular duty throughout the subway system, starting out at hubs like Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue and then dispersing out throughout the subways. 

The announcement came in the wake of the Dec. 23 arson attack at the station where a woman, believed to be homeless, was deliberately burned alive on board a stationary F train in what appeared to be a random attack that shocked and horrified New Yorkers. 

But Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue, being the last stop for the F train, has become a winter destination for homeless New Yorkers riding through the system. When amNewYork Metro visited on Dec. 29, we observed numerous homeless men and women riding in the subway cars, some asleep on the benches with bare feet and/or garbage strewn around them.

During their first day of patrols, Guardian Angels at the Coney Island stop came upon a woman vomiting and begging for help. A member dialed 911, and another member provided her with water.

The incident proved too much for one of the Angels who stepped off the train and became emotional, tears streaming down her face. Several individuals stayed with the sick woman as the patrol continued.

Some of the unhoused individuals barely noticed Sliwa and his crew when they jostled them to get their attention. Yet Sliwa said he and his group have their attention; he went on to criticize the city for doing “nothing” to abate the homelessness situation in the subways and provide relief.

“It’s a moving homeless hotel of emotionally disturbed persons, of homeless people who live on the subway. The city does nothing about it, there’s no intervention, there’s no wellness check,” Sliwa said. ”I’ve never seen the subways this bad, not even in 1979 when we began the Guardian Angels. But the problem then was gangs. Now, they call it random attacks.”

Questioning subway security

In the wake of the Dec. 22 deadly arson attack at Coney Island, Sliwa said he and the Guardian Angels were inundated with requests for them to patrol the subways. He declared that his team, decked out in red jackets and hats, will be keeping keen eyes on the system but also distributing water to those in need and looking out for anyone experiencing medical episodes.

As train after train pulled into the station Sunday morning with more homeless individuals on board, Sliwa blasted the local government for failing to act — charging that there were no cops on the platform one week removed from the shocking murder.

“Stop with the nonsense of the analytics crime is down — what a joke,” Sliwa told amNewYork Metro. “We’re going to show the city and the state what they should be doing. And maybe we can shame them into action, shame them into doing something instead of just talking about it.”

Despite Sliwa’s statements Sunday, City Hall has previously acted to reduce the homeless population in the subways and provide support. In February 2022, Mayor Eric Adams launched a “Subway Safety Plan” that aimed to increase the number of police officers into the system along with intervention teams to provide support to homeless individuals.

When crime increased earlier in 2024, the NYPD surged hundreds of officers into the subway system daily to crack down on crimes like fare evasion and instill a sense of security. Gov. Kathy Hochul supplemented that surge with an influx of hundreds of National Guard troops to assist with security checks.

The end result, according to the most recent NYPD figures, has been a 6.1% decrease in transit crime year-to-date, with an average of six crimes in the system per day — 2,095 crimes over the first 350 days of 2024.

Mayor Adams’ Press Secretary Kayla Mamelak pushed back against Sliwa’s comments, stating that hizzoner has steadily placed more NYPD officers into the subway while also implying that Sliwa’s announcement was merely a publicity stunt.

“Mayor Adams is committed to improving the lives of New Yorkers, which is why he frequently rides the subway to speak directly with everyday riders about how we can make it safer. The mayor surged 1,000 police officers per day into the subways, has brought down overall crime, and transit crime, delivering real action — not theatrics — but he knows there’s still more work to be done. Unlike others who only seek attention with meaningless stunts, Mayor Adams remains focused on real solutions,” Mamelak said.

amNewYork Metro reached out to the Governor’s office for comment and is awaiting a response. 

While Sliwa is promoting the renewed safeguarding as an effort to aid both commuters and the unhoused and mentally ill, the Guardian Angels have previously come under fire for acting rashly and violently.

In February, during an interview on Fox News in Times Square, Sliwa’s team could be seen roughing up a man they misidentified as a migrant, who police later said was, in fact, a man from the Bronx.

Still, Sliwa says he and his peers are doing what the mayor and the governor are not — condemning authorities for immediately jumping in and attempting to put the fire out.

“You can see she was right in the door, all lit up, didn’t even bother to intervene,” Sliwa said. “Nobody dropped her to the floor, nobody rolled her over, nobody tried to put out the fire.”

Police arrested 33-year-old Sebastian Zapeta-Calil for setting the woman ablaze as she slept. Cops say Zapeta-Calil, a migrant from Guatemala, attempted to fan the flames with his jacket. 

ТАЙМС-СКВЕР — Таймс-сквер находится всего в нескольких днях от самого большого празднования Нового года на планете. Перекресток мира готов приветствовать миллионы людей, которые соберутся, чтобы встретить […]