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Nasreen Huq was full of life –– with seemingly infinite energy, crazy hair, a warm mischievous smile, dreams, hopes and a lot of work left to do. Her death is a tragedy. Thinking of her today on the Safe Motherhood Day is a poignant reminder of an issue close to her heart: her effort to prevent the deaths of thousands of young women and girls, whose lives are senselessly ended every year from pregnancy-related causes.
   As a member of Naripokkho’s health team since 1992, I worked with Nasreen on various women’s health issues, including women’s health and reproductive rights. Even though we were a small group, over the years I saw how one person really can make a difference. Her enthusiasm, vision, energy and her belief that we could actually change things, inspired us. She had a dogged determination and faith, and when I look back on those years I see how I learnt from her that every drop in the ocean matters. She had a clear vision and understanding of what she was striving for. She put all her energy and intellect towards this, with compassion, humility and warmth. She worked alongside and with women from all over Bangladesh to change our lives as women in this country.
   One concept we discussed was a woman’s right to informed choice where matters of our bodies and health were concerned. Spearheaded by Nasreen, a lot of work was done on the safety issues with regards to women’s reproductive health. Talking to women all over Bangladesh it emerged that there was a lack of information regarding their own health and a lack of available services. Also, little importance was given to women’s decisions in anything to do with their health and bodies. Due to Nasreen’s activism in this area she was included in the Government Delegation to the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo in 1994. She played a role in the drafting of the final document that emerged from the conference. This was the first time the issue of women’s rights came through so strongly in an International Population and Development forum; the first time when the right of women to make decisions regarding their own bodies and their right to information was clearly recognised. This rights-based woman-centred approach was a total change in direction from previous thinking: the acknowledgement that women were people with needs and desires who had the right to control their own lives and bodies. After the ICPD conference, Nasreen, as a member of Naripokkho, worked to follow up the government’s action on commitments it had made in Cairo, ensuring that health services reached the women for whom they were meant. Naripokkho worked with groups of women around Bangladesh to monitor the quality of government health services at each level and to ensure that services were reaching them.
   One of the main issues which emerged at that time was that of pregnancy-related deaths and other related chronic health conditions. Maternal mortality in Bangladesh was then one of the highest in the world, with 28,000 women dying every year and many more left with debilitating conditions which remained with them under a veil of shame. Nasreen felt strongly that something should be done about this.
   At the same time, around 1995-2000, the government, supported by Unicef and in collaboration with the Obstetrical and Gynaecological Society of Bangladesh, made a plan to reduce maternal mortality by upgrading Emergency Obstetric Care (EOC) services, decentralise EOC and mobilise community actions in response to pregnancy-related problems.
   Nasreen’s input in the Safe Motherhood initiative from the beginning was that of bringing a woman-centred perspective and focus to the issue of maternal mortality as a women’s rights issue, encompassing a woman’s total health and well-being. Historically, feminists had not given importance to the right to safe motherhood, the value of women as mothers in society and the services they deserve. However, Naripokkho brought it to the centre of the women’s agenda in Bangladesh. Western feminists had often not tackled such issues; the idea remained that motherhood was somehow something that feminists did not fight for. Nasreen helped shift the emphasis from solely a medical matter to one with social dimensions. She helped change the perception of women as statistics to that of human beings who deserved respect and dignity from their family, community and the government. Society as a whole had a stake and a responsibility to ensure a mother could make decisions and be supported by those around her in the decisions she made. Safe motherhood was a concept which allowed a woman to take more control of her life, but at same time recognised her right to assistance and support from those around her. For example, it meant a woman’s right to choose whether to become pregnant or not and the right to proper care and support from her family, society, the medical profession and the government, whatever her choice. Safe Motherhood meant a woman’s right to live and her right to choice.
   On 28 May 1997, International Women’s Health Day was declared as Safe Motherhood Day in Bangladesh by the government. Naripokkho was given the opportunity to develop a presentation. The idea we had was to demystify the statistics and language. Many of our own families had lost women in this way. Both my husband and I lost our paternal grandmothers in childbirth. Nasreen’s grandmother also died in childbirth. However, it was outrageous that there were still thousands of women dying every year because society did not care enough about them or value their lives enough to help prevent their deaths. We decided that Safe Motherhood Day should be launched with a memorial programme. The idea was to portray the faces and lives behind the statistics. We gathered together relatives, husbands and friends of women who had died to tell their stories –– not just of their deaths, but their lives, hopes and dreams. In the national museum, on colourful cloth hangings, we put the names of hundreds of women from all over Bangladesh who had died prematurely. This rainbow of colours represented their youth and vibrancy, commemorating lost dreams and potential. It was a reminder of our shame for letting those women, most of them very young, leave us in this way.
   Later, the remembrance was briefly hung in the Sangsad Bhaban but was abruptly removed by the government (was it too shameful a reminder?). The following year these banners were taken to WHO headquarters in Geneva at their request, where they adorned the main WHO foyer.
   At the memorial on 28 May 1997, we explained how these deaths were preventable. Despite taking precautions, one in six pregnant women are at risk of developing life threatening complications. They need to seek emergency obstetric care if danger signs such as bleeding, severe headache or vomiting, high fever, convulsions or labour for more than 12 hours occur. However in Bangladesh only one in twenty women receive such care. This is primarily due to three delays: firstly, in deciding to seek emergency care; secondly, in reaching an emergency care facility and finally, in receiving treatment at a facility. Many women were unnecessarily dying or suffering lifelong conditions such as prolapsed uterus and fistula. The fundamental reason for these delays was the lack of value placed on women. Materials were developed on how to bring about changes in all areas to prevent these delays from happening. An effort was also made to bring awareness about the impact of violence against women and pregnancy-related deaths and injury.
   Over the next few years the memorial programme was conducted in 31 districts. Nasreen, with Naripokkho and later with Social Initiatives Ltd, supported by Unicef, worked with local women’s organisations to reach communities around the country. Future Search Conferences were held in each of these districts with stakeholders from each sector –– doctors, nurses, health workers, community leaders, men and women. Nasreen worked hard to ensure community involvement and a space for loved ones to tell the stories of women who had lost their lives. Recounting stories and conveying the pain and loss of each family helped bring the message to thousands across Bangladesh. It was an issue that affected us all, whatever our backgrounds and ages. The experiences shared also highlighted the long lasting devastating effects of maternal deaths on families, especially children. This strategy to bring about awareness, ownership and responsibility was powerful in conjunction with the efforts made by the government to improve EOC services in Bangladesh.
   Nearly a decade after Safe Motherhood Day was declared on 28 May 1997, the number of women dying in childbirth has decreased from 28,000 to 18,000 every year. However, thousands are still dying. This is the time to renew our efforts, and ensure that women with everything to live for, continue to live, laugh, cry and be a part of the future of Bangladesh.

The man who paid many of the biggest bills for George Bush's political ascent, Enron founder Kenneth Lay, has been found guilty of conspiracy and fraud almost five years after his dirty dealings created the greatest corporate scandal in what will be remembered as an era of corporate crime.
   On the sixth day of deliberations following the conclusion of a long-delayed federal trial, a Houston jury found Lay guilty on six counts of fraud and conspiracy. In a separate decision, US District Judge Sim Lake ruled that Lay was guilty of four counts of fraud and making false statements.
   The same jury that convicted Lay found Enron's former chief executive, Jeffrey Skilling, guilty on 19 counts of fraud, conspiracy, making false statements and engaging in insider trading.
   Lay, who President Bush affectionately referred to as "Kenny-boy" when the two forged an alliance in the 1990s to advance Bush's political ambitions and Lay's business prospects, contributed $122,500 to Bush's gubernatorial campaigns in Texas. Lay would later explain to a PBS ‘Frontline’ interviewer that, though he had worked closely with former Texas Governor Ann Richards, the Democrat incumbent who Bush challenged in 1994, he backed the Republican because ‘I was very close to George W.’
   Needless to say, once Bush became governor, Lay got his phone calls returned. A report issued by Public Citizen in February, 2001, months before the Enron scandal broke, identified Lay as ‘a long-time Bush family friend and an architect of Bush's policies on electricity deregulation, taxes and tort reform while Bush was Texas governor.’
   No wonder Lay had Enron give $50,000 to pay for Bush's second inaugural party in Austin in 1999 –– a showcase event that was organised by Karl Rove and others to help the Texas governor step onto the national political stage.
   After Bush gave Enron exactly what it wanted in 1999, by signing legislation that deregulated the state's electrical markets, Lay knew he had found his candidate for president.
   When Bush opened his campaign, Lay opened the cash spigots.
   As a ‘Bush Pioneer’ in the run-up to the 2000 presidential election, Lay was a key member of the Bush campaign's fund-raising inner circle. Under Lay's leadership, Enron ultimately gave Bush $550,025, making the corporation the Texan's No. 1 career patron at the time the 2000 election campaign began, according to the Centre for Public Integrity. Lay personally pumped almost $400,000 into Republican hard- and soft-money funds, while Enron slipped another $1.5 million into the GOP's soft-money cesspool.
   But that was just the beginning. Lay sent a letter to Enron executives urging them to contribute to Bush's campaign. More than 100 of them –– including Skilling, a major Bush giver since 1993, when he cut his first $5,000 check to GW's gubernatorial campaign –– did just that. Dozens of spouses wrote, including ‘homemaker’ and frequent $10,000 donor Linda Lay, gave as well, making the Enron ‘family’ a prime source of the money that gave Bush his early advantage over Republican rivals such as Arizona Senator John McCain.
   All told, it is estimated that, over the years prior the company's bankruptcy, Lay, his company and its employees contributed close to $2 million to fund George W. Bush's political rise.
   Lay found other ways to help, as well. He put Enron's corporate jets at the disposal of the Bush campaign in 2000. He kicked in $5,000 to pay for the Florida recount fight, while a top Enron ‘consultant,’ former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, ran the Republican's recount effort. He even paid for his own bookkeeping, chipping in $1,000 to help the Bush-Cheney campaign comply with campaign-finance laws. And Lay and Enron gave $300,000 to underwrite the Bush-Cheney inauguration festivities in 2001.
   Did all that giving pay off? You bet!
   Lay cashed in even before Bush was sworn in as president, entering into the inner circles of the new administration and using the access he had paid for to craft its agenda on the issues that mattered most to Enron.
   Bush took good care of his contributor-in-chief, appointing the Enron founder as one of five members of the elite ‘Energy Department Transition Team,’ which set the stage for the Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force and administration policies designed to benefit corporations such as Enron. A report on ‘Bush Administration Contacts with Enron,’ compiled at the request of Congressman Henry Waxman, D-California, by the minority staff of the Special Investigations Division of the House Committee on Government Reform, U.S. House of Representatives, found evidence of at least 112 contacts between Enron and White House or other Administration officials during the month prior to the corporation's very-public collapse in late 2001. At least 40 of those contacts involved top White House officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, presidential advisor Karl Rove, White House economic advisor Lawrence Lindsey, White House personnel director Clay Johnson III, and White House energy task force director Andrew D. Lundquist.
   As Waxman explained in a 2001 interview, ‘The fact of the matter is that Enron and Ken Lay, who was the Chief Executive Officer of Enron, had an extraordinary amount of influence and access to the Bush Administration. Lay was called a close friend by both the President and the Vice President. When the Vice President chaired an Energy Task Force, Ken Lay had an opportunity to meet privately with the Vice President and to have a great deal of influence in their recommendations.’
   Bush and his aides have worked hard since the Enron scandal broke to suggest that Lay was just another generous Texan. But the attempts to deny linkages to the now-convicted corporate criminal never cut water with Lone Star-state watchdog Craig McDonald, the director of Texans for Public Justice.
   ‘President Bush's explanation of his relationship with Enron is at best a half truth,’ McDonald said after Bush first tried to distance himself from Lay and other Enron executives. ‘He was in bed with Enron before he ever held a political office.’
   As governor and president, Bush maintained that intimate relationship.
   Now that his strange bedmate have been convicted of fraud, isn't it time for the president to end the fraud of claiming that he was ever anything less than a political partner of Lay and the Enron team?
   The Nation/US, may 26, 2006. John Nichols, The Nation's Washington correspondent, has covered progressive politics and activism in the United States and abroad for more than a decade. Formerly a writer and editor for The Toledo Blade and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspapers, he is now editorial page editor for The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin.

George W. Bush has come out with harsh words for the governments of Bolivia and Venzeuela. ‘Let me just put it bluntly–– I’m concerned about the erosion of democracy in the countries you mentioned,’ Bush said in response to a question put to him about Venezuela and Bolivia. ‘I am going to continue to remind our hemisphere that respect for property rights and human rights is essential for all countries,’ he added.
   While Bush’s hostility towards Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is well known, his critical comments about Bolivia came as somewhat of a surprise, given that Evo Morales has served only four months as the country’s first Indian president and has done nothing to thwart the democratic process. As Bolivian foreign minister David Choquehuanca noted: ‘We are creating a participatory democracy and the world knows it. I don’t understand how the United States can say democracy is eroding...’
   Bush’s true agenda is reflected in his call for ‘respect for property rights.’ A change is taking place in South America as Morales and Chavez move to exert greater control of their energy resources and challenge US plans for a hemispheric free trade zone. As the president of the Bolivian Senate, Santos Ramirez, noted: ‘Bolivia and Latin America are no longer the servile democracies that tolerate...poverty and the surrendering of sovereignty.’
   Early in May Morales announced that Bolivia would nationalise its energy resources, particularly its natural gas exports. While no foreign corporations were expropriated outright, Morales made it clear that ‘the looting of our natural resources by foreign enterprises is over.’
   At the same time Morales is moving to reshape the country’s commercial relations, particularly with Venezuela. This week Hugo Chavez flew to Bolivia, declaring ‘we are going to concretise the People’s Trade Treaty,’ an accord that was recently signed between Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba. It is openly pitched as an alternative to the US-backed Free Trade Area of the Americas, a trade zone based on neo-liberal principles that facilitates the expansion of multinational corporations.
   Bolivia and Venezuela have signed eight different accords dealing with 200 different projects concerning energy, mining, education, sports and cultural exchanges. Most importantly Venezuela has agreed to invest over $1 billion to help industrialise Bolivia’s natural gas production, including the construction of a petrochemical complex.
   Venezuela is also providing diesel fuel, which Bolivia does not produce, in exchange for the sale of soybeans. This comes at an opportune moment for Bolivia as most of its soy exports have gone to Colombia which just signed a free trade agreement with the United States. The US-Colombian accord means that cheap, subsidised US grains will flood Colombia, driving out Bolivian soybeans.
   In Bolivia, Morales took Chavez on a visit to Chipare, the semi- tropical region where he rose to prominence as the leader of the coca growers’ confederation. There they announced their intention to build a factory to process coca leafs for herbal teas, medicinal products, and cosmetics. This is certain to arouse the ire of the United States which for years has pursued a policy of forced eradication of coca in Chipare, leading to the virtual militarisation of the region.
   The burgeoning economic alliance between Venezuela and Bolivia also helps offset the difficulties that have arisen with Brazil and Argentina over Morales’ determination to exert greater control over natural gas exports. Both neighbouring countries have significant investments in Bolivia’s gas fields, and both are importing gas for domestic use at prices well below the world market. At a recent international gathering of Latin American and European leaders in Vienna, Austria, Morales and President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil exchanged harsh words over efforts to draft a new accord over natural gas. While the two leaders formally made up before they left Austria, there is little doubt that Chavez’ support provides Bolivia with leverage in its negotiations with its two more powerful neighbours.
   Venezuela is also signing a financial accord aimed at bolstering Bolivia’s banking and monetary system. This is intended to strengthen Morales’ hand vis-à-vis the United States and international financial institutions. The Bolivian government at the end of March announced that it would not solicit any new loans from the International Monetary Fund. The fund has aroused a great deal of antipathy in recent decades as it restricted social spending and forced the privatisation of state enterprises, particularly in the tin mining industry.
   The visit of Chavez to Bolivia coincides with the opening of the Exchange Fair, a project of the People’s Trade Treaty between Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba. Enterprises from all three countries participated with the goal of expanding commerce and sharing technical expertise. At the fair the vice-president of Bolivia, Alvaro Garcia Linera, criticised the US neo-liberal trade regime, asserting: ‘It is not necessary for small producers and entrepreneurs to subordinate themselves to financial capital. There are other forms of interdependence, other forms of globalisation, other ways to generate regional exchanges of products, ideas, and necessities.’ Garcia Linera concluded, ‘Bolivia needs the world, and it will produce for the world.’
   CounterPunch, May 26, 2006. Roger Burbach is director of the Centre for the Study of the Americas (CENSA) and a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley.