There are sadly those among Tamils, who flirt with the names of Stalin, Mussolini, Mao etc and in the same breath, they will worship Mahatma Gandhi (It depends which way the pendulum is swinging!). Worse still among them, there are even a few, who apparently “profess” and pontificate the liberation cause ─ And to them, the value of lives, particularly the lives of landless peasants amounts to Zero. It is the GOAL that matters, they argue, in utter impoverishment of spiritual ethos and depravity of moral values. In other words, these helpless peasants could be used as human shields – as long as such “profess-ors” kith and kin are safe. All Tamils must be passionate about Tamil [2] and ought to be deeply concerned about their fellow being’s suffering and suppression. When a Tamil is raped and brutally murdered our stomachs are churned with natal pain while our faces are covered with tears. Such ought to be the case when innocent fellow humans are murdered or maimed by terror any where in the world. One would suggest that, the Tamils must seek to cut through the main plank of the US foreign policy towards Sri Lanka and get the ‘ears’ of the West. The message of the Tamil struggle must convince the West and the US in particular of the validity of the struggle on moral grounds among other things. Releasing Press statements and condemnations of the US Government may be of some value. But behind-the -scenes work and building links are of immense long-term value. I quote below a question put to Chomsky at Colombia University in 1995. The response he gave against ‘quick fixes’ and the importance of ‘bringing awareness’ is still relevant today:    more »