The major gas project is known by the name Yadana. The corporation that is exploring, drilling, laying metal pipe and pumping is a conglomerate of Japanese, Thai and U.S. corporations. They will probably have guest workers from all over Asia.

Perhaps a little context is in order, for those who may not know about how fucked up Burma is these days. Correct me, someone, if I blow any of these details. Aung San Suu Kyi was democratically elected by the people of Burma perhaps a decade ago now, by an overwhelming majority of the vote -- some 80%, as I recall. Aung and her elected government, however, have never been allowed to take power. Burma is ruled by a brutal military junta which runs Burma with an iron fist. When this totalitarian regime ascended to power in Burma (which they renamed Myanmar), most multinational corporations recognized that doing business with these butchers was equivalent to aiding and abetting known felons, and so they got out of Burma. Not so for Unocal 76 and Total, a French petroleum company. The Yadana natural gas pipeline proved too lucrative for them to resist, and with the added bonus of cost-free, forced labor from indigenous people, provided as a courtesy by the military junta, how could these profiteering power magnates say no? Thus, to this day, good 'ol Unocal is still in Burma, using the cheapest kind of labor there is -- the kind you don't pay for at all!

QUICK ASIDE: If you buy gas from Unocal, don't anymore. If you work at Unocal, quit your job.

Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest since she was elected some years ago. She has continued to work clandestinely for democracy in Burma, against staggering odds. She is a brave and bright leader. I'm no cheerleader for Bubba Clinton, but I have to admit that I was impressed to see him award a medal to Aung San Suu Kyi. As I believe it is important for us to not only chastise our leaders when they do wrong by us, but also to praise them when they do something right (they're just children), I encourage everyone to drop 'ol Bill a note (president@whitehouse.gov) and thank him for getting this one right. Give Bill a carrot for this one. Save the stick for another day.

Clinton's administration also supported a lawsuit by USAEngage, a consortium of six-hundred-odd

US based multinationals, challenging the Massachusetts state law disfavoring government

procurements and contracts with companies doing business in Burma. The resulting odious Supreme

Court decision in favor of the multinationals was big business's biggest wet-dream-come-true in decades.

It held that states may not use any humanitarian criteria in such procurement decisions, as this is the

exclusive preserve of the federal government, which is solely responsible for setting "foreign policy." The

legislator who sponsored the Massachusetts law remarked that if such a decision had been handed down

in the 1980s, Nelson Mandela would probably still be in jail and Apartheid still reining supreme in South Africa.

Of course, Clinton's not half as bad as GW Bush, whose running mate Dick Cheney was until recently CEO

of a company (Halliburton) still doing business in Burma as subcontractor to Unocal on the slave labor-built

Yadana gas pipeline.