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*Participate !* Join our camp at the nuclear arms base in Büchel (Rhineland-Palatine/Germany) between July 13th and August 9th. Four weeks long, everyday, we would like to enlist new groups as well as individuals for our non-violent actions. We want to focus attention on the illegal storage of nuclear weapons on the military base. Forms of protest are going to be diverse : picketing, blockades, "Go-In" actions, climbing activities with banners, surrounding the airbase (with the distribution of flyers, calling on soldiers and pilots to refuse their illegal orders), info tables in the midst of the tourism hot-spot of the town Cochem……There sure are plenty of ideas ! The fantasy has its boundaries though, in this case where an action would no longer be non-violent anymore.

The contemporary preoccupation with “otherness” at once represents a concern for personal identity in a time of social homogenization and global economic integration and fears of “aliens” perceived as threatening familiar life patterns. This is a complex and multi-faceted process that, in the United States, has been revealed in changing perceptions of “oriental others” who include, particularly, “Jews” and “Arabs”. The most striking fact in this regard is that over the past half century anti-Semitism (or, rather, “judeophobia”) has been supplanted by an “anti-Arabism” (“arabophobia”) often expressed as “islamophobia”. The transition between these two phobias can be seen in the evolution of popular culture and in ideological changes generally. The notion of “otherness” is part of these cultural and ideological changes.

BARACK OBAMA is often compared to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but it is from the book of another Roosevelt that he has taken a leaf : President Theodore Roosevelt, who, 108 years ago, advised his successors : “Speak softly and carry a big stick !”

This week, the whole world saw how this is done. Obama sat in the Oval Office side by side with Binyamin Netanyahu and spoke to the journalists. He was earnest, but relaxed. The body language spoke clearly : while Netanyahu leaned forward assiduously, like a traveling salesman peddling his merchandise, Obama leaned back, tranquil and self-assured.

He spoke softly, very softly. But leaning against the wall behind him, hidden by the flag, was a very big stick indeed.