By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: April 28, 2010
DOR, Sudan
On the Ground
"Since ancient times, one of the world’s most terrifying ailments has been caused by what the Bible calls “the fiery serpent,” now known as Guinea worm.

Guinea worms grow up to a yard long inside the body and finally poke out through the skin. They cause excruciating pain and must be pulled out slowly, an inch or two a day. In endemic areas like this district in Lakes State of southern Sudan, people can have a dozen Guinea worms dangling from their bodies.

This district is, in fact, one of the last places on earth with Guinea worms. If all goes well, Guinea worms will be eradicated worldwide in the next couple of years — only the second disease ever to be eliminated, after smallpox.

For the last 24 years, former President Jimmy Carter has led the global struggle against the disease. When he started, there were 3.5 million cases annually in 20 countries. Last year, there were fewer than 3,200 cases in four countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali and Sudan. The great majority of the remaining cases are here in southern Sudan.

Mr. Carter, 85, told me a few years ago that he was determined to outlive Guinea worm. I called him by satellite phone from here and asked if he still thought he would win the race. He laughed and said he was increasingly optimistic that he would outlast the worm. “If I can survive two more years, I’ll meet my goal,” he said.

Among the sufferers of Guinea worm in its last chapter is Anyak Gol Marial, a boy living near the collection of huts known as Dor. Anyak said he thought he was about 8 years old. He had a painful blister on his thigh — a sign that a worm was underneath and might soon poke through.

Guinea worms spread because sufferers try to escape the burning pain by entering water. The worm then dumps its larvae into the water — which other people drink. Without humans to sustain their life cycle, guinea worms disappear forever.

Carter Center health workers are the only outside presence here. There is no school, no clinic, no store, not even a government road — just a path that villagers themselves carved through the bush. On my drive in, I came across several barefoot, barely clad hunters who had just killed a wart hog with nothing but spears. I have rarely felt so inadequate.

To detect cases of the disease, the Carter Center has set up a network of Guinea worm volunteers. Serving as a volunteer is prestigious and brings a reward of a T-shirt — the only real article of clothing some people own. One volunteer had reported Anyak’s blister, and a Carter Center field officer persuaded the boy to move into a compound here for treatment. This ensures that a victim doesn’t enter a pond.

Anyak leapt at the opportunity to move into the compound, partly because of the promise of a bed mat, a mosquito net and three good meals a day (at home he eats only once or twice a day). A moment later, he was riding in our vehicle to the compound — the first time he had ever been inside a car.

The campaign against Guinea worm is succeeding because — unlike many foreign aid projects — it puts villagers themselves in charge. Now that they understand that it is contaminated water rather than witchcraft that causes the disease, village elders have barred anyone with a dangling worm from entering a water source. Violators are fined, typically one goat.

Elders also encourage families to use a well drilled by Unicef, or if it is too far away to use filters handed out by the Carter Center. But it’s an uphill struggle. The well broke down while I was visiting, and I came across a family drinking filthy, unfiltered water collected from a mudhole.

When Anyak was in the compound, a nurse dripped water on his blister to fool the worm into emerging. In the morning, it did, looking like spaghetti. Anyak grimaced as the nurse carefully pulled the worm out a bit, spooled it around gauze, and bandaged it to prevent infection.

In recent decades, the world has learned that fighting poverty is harder than it looks. But the Guinea worm campaign underscores that a determined effort, with local people playing a central role, can overcome a scourge that has plagued humanity for thousands of years.

My favorite moment came when we were bouncing along with Anyak toward the Carter Center compound. I asked him what he wants to be when he grows up, and he answered with the most prestigious and altruistic position he could imagine: “I’d like to be a Guinea worm volunteer."

COME AND JOIN US at the State Capitol and let us get started this session in reducing poverty by fifty percent throughout Colorado. Let us set standards that conserve the resources and make it possible for the poor to have a fair chance to survive.

We hear that the Special Interim Task Force Committee is set to derail the process right at a time when the standards are being established for the rest of the period of the task force to do its work.

We need a chance to set standards of measurement and care for all citizens whether they are well to do and secure or floundering and living in unsettled conditions. Please come and join then in the work. We need you to call the legislators and remind them that all Colorado Citizens deserve fundamental opportunities to equal employment and security.

We need to raise our voices and establish that our votes count and that all Colorado families need to be cared for and served with every effort of our will to keep them safe and sound.

Come then and call on the representative from House District 52, from Fort Collins and let him know that you intend to stand up and keep marching on until we have a place for every citizen to live and a chance to work and keep a roof over his or her head. Call representative Kefalas and let him know that we will be heard.

Representative John Kefalas:
604 Sycamore St.
Ft. Collins 80521
(o) 303 866 4569
(h) 970 221 1135
(c) 720 254 7598
www.johnkefalas.org

COME AND JOIN US at the State Capitol and let us get started this session in reducing poverty by fifty percent throughout Colorado. Let us set standards that conserve the resources and make it possible for the poor to have a fair chance to survive.

We hear that the Special Interim Task Force Committee is set to derail the process right at a time when the standards are being established for the rest of the period of the task force to do its work.

We need a chance to set standards of measurement and care for all citizens whether they are well to do and secure or floundering and living in unsettled conditions. Please come and join then in the work. We need you to call the legislators and remind them that all Colorado Citizens deserve fundamental opportunities to equal employment and security.

We need to raise our voices and establish that our votes count and that all Colorado families need to be cared for and served with every effort of our will to keep them safe and sound.

Come then and call on the representative from House District 52, from Fort Collins and let him know that you intend to stand up and keep marching on until we have a place for every citizen to live and a chance to work and keep a roof over his or her head. Call representative Kefalas and let him know that we will be heard.

Representative John Kefalas:
604 Sycamore St.
Ft. Collins 80521
(o) 303 866 4569
(h) 970 221 1135
(c) 720 254 7598
www.johnkefalas.org

COME AND JOIN US at the State Capitol and let us get started this session in reducing poverty by fifty percent throughout Colorado. Let us set standards that conserve the resources and make it possible for the poor to have a fair chance to survive.

We hear that the Special Interim Task Force Committee is set to derail the process right at a time when the standards are being established for the rest of the period of the task force to do its work.

We need a chance to set standards of measurement and care for all citizens whether they are well to do and secure or floundering and living in unsettled conditions. Please come and join then in the work. We need you to call the legislators and remind them that all Colorado Citizens deserve fundamental opportunities to equal employment and security.

We need to raise our voices and establish that our votes count and that all Colorado families need to be cared for and served with every effort of our will to keep them safe and sound.

Come then and call on the representative from House District 52, from Fort Collins and let him know that you intend to stand up and keep marching on until we have a place for every citizen to live and a chance to work and keep a roof over his or her head. Call representative Kefalas and let him know that we will be heard.

Representative John Kefalas:
604 Sycamore St.
Ft. Collins 80521
(o) 303 866 4569
(h) 970 221 1135
(c) 720 254 7598
www.johnkefalas.org

The Price of Freedom
The Statue of Liberty has been ignored, toppled down and trampled under since my grandfather came here in 1898. My grandfather was a Jew escaping pogroms in Munich, Germany. There was ample room for a 12 year old boy and when they dragged the citizens of Ireland into being conscripted in the Union army to go and die there was ample room for them.

Are these people of color any different than anyone else? My own family came here gratefully from Puerto Rico and worked in the factoires and fields and they endured terrible hardships and they thrived. America was built on the backs of the immigrant, poor, starving and cheated out of a decent place to make a living. And someone has the audacity to suggest that there is a pecking order? America would not be anything without the Chinese, the Japanese, the Native Americans of distinct clans, the African Americans, the people of minorities of faith and spiritual practice.

We used the same thinking process to turn away the St. Louis off the waters of this country saying there was no room for them. The decision for that cannot be based on discrimination but wide armed embracing of all people as citizens.

The best of America, if that is to come, is in our ability to accept the world as our neigbors and partners in all endeavors. We will not long survive on earth without such a mandate.

"In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant, then they came for me, and there wasn’t anybody left to speak.” Martin Neimoller, Protestant Theologian

How many more must we lose because there is no one to care? "The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind, the answer is blowin' in the wind."

Immigration is a human right and we have to make room for our neighbors. We must stop killing people and making excuses that it is not our fault or our business. Everyone who is suffering is our business because they are US.

Let's RISE!

Neglect
A sad story, and unfortunately a common thread in our lives.

N.Y. / REGION | April 26, 2010
Questions Surround a Delay in Help for a Dying Man
By A. G. SULZBERGER and MICK MEENAN
The behavior of bystanders is examined after passers-by did not help an apparent good Samaritan, who bled to death in the street.

"It will probably never be clear how many people realized that Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax was dying.
Enlarge This Image

Yana Paskova for The New York Times
Police tape remained Sunday at the spot in Queens where Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax, a homeless man, lay dying a week before.
One man bent down to the sidewalk to shake the man, lifting him to reveal a pool of blood before walking away. Two men appeared to have a conversation about the situation, one pausing to take a photo of the body before departing. But the rest merely turned their heads toward the body, revealing some curiosity as they hurried along.

What is clear from a surveillance tape is that Mr. Tale-Yax, a homeless 31-year-old Guatemalan immigrant, lay on a Queens street for more than an hour before anyone called the police. By the time help arrived, he was dead.

Mr. Tale-Yax, who friends said occasionally worked as a day laborer and often slept in public parks, had been stabbed while apparently coming to the assistance of a woman being angrily confronted by another man.

On Sunday, a week after the killing, people in the area seemed mostly unshaken by its circumstances. Many were unaware that someone had died on 144th Street in Jamaica, near 88th Road, in a hardscrabble neighborhood with large populations of Central American immigrants and of homeless men.

But to the question of obligation — whether those who encountered the body should have stopped and helped the man — the answers came quickly.

Perhaps the passers-by thought he was just drunk. Perhaps they were illegal immigrants themselves, too nervous to contact the authorities. Or perhaps they had just learned a lesson that Mr. Tale-Yax so clearly had not: better to keep to oneself than to risk the trouble that comes from extending a helping hand.

“It’s bad,” said Alexis Perez, 29, the superintendent of two buildings on the block where the stabbing occurred. “But I live here, so I know what it’s like. There are a lot of alcoholics who drink and then they fall down and they’re laying on the ground. People say to themselves, ‘I don’t know them so I won’t get involved.’ ”

At the Iglesia Cristo Peniel, a small brick assembly hall bursting with Spanish hymns, Uber Bautista, 37, a heavy-machinery operator who identified himself as a church elder, said that he believed the inaction might have stemmed from illegal immigrants’ trying to escape detection.

“So they’re going to be very afraid to call the authorities if they see something,” he said. “It’s not that people don’t care.”

Juan Cortez, himself the victim of several assaults, offered another theory as he collected cans from the trash nearby. “People mind their own business,” he said.

Regardless of the explanation, the death has become another unfortunate case study in bystander behavior in emergencies, a psychological field that developed after the notorious1964 killing of Kitty Genovese. She was stabbed to death at an apartment building in Kew Gardens, Queens, where a large number of neighbors heard her screams but did not call the police.

The death of Mr. Tale-Yax is all the more dramatic because police say that he was stabbed as a result of his apparently trying to help a stranger.

“I’m afraid what we’ve got here is a situation of people failing to help, and the failure appears to be a moral failure,” said John Darley, a professor of psychology at Princeton University who has written about bystander response to emergencies. “He did what you’re supposed to do, and we let the person, who did what he was supposed to do, die.”

In New York, as in most other states, there is no legal obligation for a bystander to help someone in distress, said Harold Takooshian, a psychology professor at Fordham University who has also studied the subject.

The episode began before 6 a.m. when Mr. Tale-Yax intervened in a noisy dispute on 144th Street between an unidentified man and an unidentified woman and was stabbed, said Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne, chief spokesman for the New York Police Department.

The man fled in one direction, the woman fled in the other, and Mr. Tale-Yax ran a few steps before collapsing on the pavement.

A surveillance video from an adjacent building captured the reactions of those who passed by. The video was posted on The New York Post’s Web site.

During that time, the police responded to three 911 calls, said Mr. Browne. The first, shortly before 6 a.m., reported a woman screaming; the second, at 7:09, reported a man lying on the street. But both calls gave incorrect addresses.

The third, at 7:21, also reported a man lying in the street. It led to the discovery of the body.

“We would expect someone to call 911 and, if possible, to stay with the victim until help arrives,” Mr. Browne said.

María Luz de Zyriek, the second-ranking official at the Guatemalan Consulate, said preparations were being made to fly the body of Mr. Tale-Yax back to Guatemala for burial."

Comment: How American commerce and industry preys on vulnerable people, by allowing businesses to unscrupulously harass and profit from unfortunate circumstances of its citizens. www.debtorboards.com provides a tool equalizing the disparities of the wealthy against those with little recourse to economic justice.

"Learning How to Fight the Collector"
By Andrew Martin New York Times Saturday April 23, 2010

Among debt collectors, Steven Katz is known as a “credit terrorist.” For years, he has run what he calls the Steven Katz School of Bill Collector Education, otherwise known as the “credit terrorist training camp.”
Steven Katz, a former bill collector, says debtors can “use the laws as they are on the books as both a shield and a sword” against unscrupulous collection efforts.

Steven Katz with a framed copy of a $1,000 check he said was his first damage award for fighting a bogus collection effort.
Mr. Katz, a 58-year-old accountant in suburban Tucson, spends his free time schooling debtors on the finer points of consumer protection law to help them turn the tables on debt collectors. On occasion, he thumbs his own nose at them too.

“How many times can I sue you? Let me count the ways,” he wrote under his pseudonym, Dr. Tax, in a March posting on Inside ARM, a debt collectors’ Web site.

A former bill collector himself, Mr. Katz rebelled after a debt buyer damaged his credit score with what he says was a bogus bill. Mr. Katz sued, and in 2003 he collected his first damage award, a $1,000 check that he now keeps framed behind his desk.

“The bill collectors, when they call, make you feel like the only option you have is to lay down and play dead. That’s not true,” said Mr. Katz said, who does not charge for his advice. “Nothing validates this more than getting a check.”

Call this movement revenge of the (alleged) deadbeats. Even as collectors try to recoup debts from millions of Americans struggling to pay their bills, a small but growing number of lawyers and consumers are fighting back against what they describe as harassment, unscrupulous practices — and, most important to their litigiousness, violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

In fact, 8,287 federal lawsuits were filed citing violations of the act in 2009, a 60 percent rise over the previous year, according to WebRecon, a site that tracks collection-related litigation and the most litigious consumers and lawyers on behalf of debt collectors.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court made it even easier for consumers to use the courts to fight debt collectors, ruling that collectors cannot be shielded from suits by claiming they made a mistake in interpreting the law.

When a consumer stops paying a bill, creditors often try to collect on their own for a few months. In many instances, the creditor hires another company to collect the debt. In other cases, they may dispose of the debt by selling it to a debt buyer for a steep discount.

Debt collectors and debt buyers are the targets of litigious consumers, since the debt collection law primarily applies to third-party collectors.

Peter Barry, a Minneapolis trial lawyer, is so bullish on the future of debt collection litigation that he holds several “boot camps” each year to share his secrets with other lawyers who want in on the action. If the debtor wins a court case under the act, the debt collector must pay the lawyer’s fees.

The next boot camp is being held in early May in San Francisco, at a cost of $2,495 a person for two and a half days of instruction.

“I can’t sue every illegal debt collector in America, although I’d like to try,” Mr. Barry said.

Mr. Katz can also claim some credit for the increase in lawsuits. For six years, he has run a free Web site called Debtorboards.com, where people share tips on topics like keeping a paper trail and recording calls from collectors.

He said the site received two million hits in 2009, a 60 percent increase over the previous year.

“Debtorboards is geared to help people use the laws as they are on the books as both a shield and a sword,” said Mr. Katz, who says he has won $36,000 from his own litigation against collection agencies. (Since many of the settlements are confidential, it is difficult to prove the claims of Mr. Katz and others).

Rozanne M. Andersen, chief executive of ACA International, a trade association for the debt collection industry, said she was “extremely concerned” about the increase in lawsuits, which she said cost her industry hundreds of millions of dollars a year. She said much of the increase was the result of ambiguous language in the Fair Debt Collection Act.

Debt collectors are required, for example, to identify themselves on a voice message left for a consumer, she said. But they are also prohibited from telling a third party — including someone who might overhear a phone message — about a consumer’s debt.

“We are between a rock and a hard place,” Ms. Andersen said.

Ms. Andersen said she had little patience for Web sites that encouraged consumers to thwart debt collectors.

“We believe those types of Web sites are encouraging people to not take responsibility for just debt,” she said.

Jack Gordon, who runs the fee-based WebRecon site, said it was no wonder lawsuits were increasing, because consumers were being bombarded with ads from lawyers when they searched online for information on debt collection. He said the proliferation of discussion sites like Mr. Katz’s had, to a lesser extent, also contributed to the trend.

On the boards, he said, “There’s a lot of hot air, a lot of people who overinflate their accomplishments.”

Regardless, Mr. Gordon’s database has become a badge of honor among the devotees of Debtorboards.com. As Brandon Scroggin, a 37-year-old from Little Rock, Ark., puts it, “That’s one list I’m a proud card-carrying member of.”

Mr. Scroggin, who provides price estimates at a body shop, said he was the type of person who refused to be taken advantage of, even for petty offenses. For instance, years ago, he said he joined in the class-action suit against the pop group Milli Vanilli, accused of lip synching, and collected a $1.25 check.

After a messy divorce, Mr. Scroggin was stuck with a $7,000 bill that he said belonged to his ex-wife. Instead of paying it, he began researching the law and stumbled on Debtorboards.com.

Armed with lessons he learned on the site, he demanded proof of the debt from the collection agency, and the calls stopped. But two and a half years later, they started up again so he sued the collection agency, National Loan Recoveries, for failing to provide proof of the debt, among other things.

The case was settled in 2008. The terms were confidential, but he says he never paid National Loan a dime. “Let’s just say I’m a very happy person,” he said. A lawyer for National Loan, Kathryn Bridges, did not return messages seeking comment.

Mr. Katz said his Web site was not intended to help people avoid paying legitimate debts. But if they do so, so be it — he feels no need to apologize.

He said Congress gave consumers certain rights, and he is simply making people aware of them, sometimes colorfully.

As Mr. Katz says at the bottom of each Dr. Tax posting, “A telephone in the hands of a collector is like a crowbar — it can be used to pry a mouth open wide enough to insert a foot.”

Barbara Thompson, 46, of Atlanta, said she challenged $11,000 in credit card debt using online research about collection laws. She does not dispute the debts but reasons that the credit card company wrote off her charges long ago. By her account, she owes the credit card company, not the debt collector.

“The credit card company, they sell it off, they charge it off, it’s just business as usual,” she said, adding, “I’m adamant about not paying a collection agency.”