NO FOOLING AROUND

The following information is adapted from a newsletter I received from Brigitte Gabriel's anti-jihadist organization—The American Congress For Truth. Ms. Gabriel is a Lebanese-American Christian who grew up in war torn Lebanon, and now speaks out against what she believes is an all out proto-Islamic assault on the West and its core values.

Tradecraft. Persona. Deception. Disinformation. Cover: Western operational terms and techniques. These words and their general meaning and purpose are familiar to anyone familiar with American TV and film spy thrillers. But we should know that Islamic terrorists have their own terms: taqiyya (pronounced tark-e-ya) precautionary dissimulation or deception and keeping one's convictions secret and a synonymous term. And another is kitman, which is mental reservation and dissimulation or concealment of malevolent intentions...

Taqiyya and kitman or "holy hypocrisy" has been diffused throughout Arabic culture for over fourteen hundred years since it was developed by Shiites as a means of defence and concealment of beliefs against Sunni unbelievers. As the Prophet said: "he who keeps secrets shall soon attain his objectives."

The skillful use of taqiyya and kitman was often a matter of life and death against enemies; it is also a matter of life and death to many contemporary Islamic terrorists. As so often in the history of Islam, a theological doctrine became operational.

During the Spanish inquisition, Sunni Moriscos attended mass and returned home to wash their hands of the "holy water". In operational terms, taqiyya and kitman allowed the "mujahadeen" to assume whatever identity was necessary to fulfill their mission; they had doctrinal and theological and later jurisprudential sanction to pretend to be Jews or Christians to gain access to Christian and Jewish targets: "the mujahadeen can take the shape of the enemy".

Taqiyya is common to both Shiite and Sunni Muslim discourse and has significant implications for understanding Islamic fundamentalism and terrorist operations. The theory and practice of counterterrorism would be counterproductive, indeed pointless, and even harmful, without reference to taqiyya and kitman and the crucial role of deception ranging from Islamic jurisprudence to Al Qaeda training manuals, which carry detailed instructions on the use of deception by terrorists in Western target countries.

According to Christian ethics lying is a sin; In Islamic jurisprudence and theology, the use of taqiyya against the unbelievers is regarded as a virtue and a religious duty. "Verily the most honourable of you in the sight of God is the most pious among you; verily, God is knowing, aware!"

Shi'a interpret the phrase above as "he among you who exercises Taqiyya most".

Like many Islamic concepts taqiyya and kitman were formed within the context of the Arab-Islamic matrix of tribalism, expansionary warfare and conflict. Taqiyya has been used by Muslims since the 7th century to confuse and split "the enemy" wherever conflicts arise. A favored tactic was "deceptive triangulation" aimed to persuade the enemy that jihad was not aimed at them but at another enemy. Another tactic was to deny that there was jihad at all. The fate for such faulty assessments by the target was death.

Al Taqiyya is with tongue only; not the heart. A believer can make any statement as long as the "heart is comfortable". The 9/11 terrorists lived and visited in the United States for two years before the 9/11 attacks. How did they acculturate? By the use of taqiyya. Meaning: I hate you but I smile at you - in public.

Outwitting
In contemporary political discourse and debates Islamic spokesmen commonly use taqiyya as a form of "outwitting". The matter under discussion is not to be debated or discussed; rather the opponent is to "outwitted" through taqiyya, by diversion of the subject and obfuscation aided at times with a mystical reference to God or Allah.

The claim that difficulties in translating from Arabic to English make communication with non-Arab speakers difficult or impossible, is another form of outwitting. The tactical use of a translator offers considerable advantage.

Roleplaying As Victim
Claiming to be "the victim" of religious discrimination and intolerance during debate or discussion is another form of distraction and "outwitting".

Manipulating Ambiguity
Sheik Hilaly of Sydney, Australia is on public record as (a) "condemning" the 9/11 attacks in ambiguous terms and (b) praising suicide and martyr operations. However, Islamic spokesmen will rarely condemn a specific act of terrorism and direct questions will be skillfully evaded.

Diversion
For example, questions relating to the 9/11 terrorists attacks will be diverted by a causally irrelevant counter-reference to the plight of the Palestinians, the nefarious role of Israel and US foreign policy and support for Israel as "causes" of terrorism. Anti-Semitism, a core belief of Islamic fundamentalism is also skillfully diverted by misleading and exaggerated historical references to the alleged status enjoyed by Jews and non-believers under Islamic rule, thereby deflecting critical examination of the virulent contemporary Islamic anti-Semitism.

Demanding Evidence
Islamic spokesmen practice a form of taqiyya defined in psychology as "cognitive denial" by repetitive and extreme requests for "evidence" and "proof" of alleged terrorist acts, which they know cannot be disclosed.

Tactical Denial
Rather than admitting that a proposition concerning a state of affairs can be partly true, an Islamic spokesman will deny a claim or proposition in absolute terms. For example, "It is impossible to be a Muslim and a terrorist", which is false and "Islam forbids suicide", which is true, but irrelevant as suicide or martyrdom attacks are not forbidden in the Koran.

Exploiting Cognitive Dissonance
Islamic spokesman tend to be baffle television interviewers and puzzle viewers as they resort to double talk "cliches and platitudes" concerning Islam. A state of cognitive dissonance—holding two contradictory beliefs and attempting to resolve them—is induced in viewers as they attempt to process the claim that Islam is a peaceful religion with the dissonant facts of Islamic terrorist acts and operations.

The Islamic "defense" script
Islamic spokesmen repeat the same predictable platitudes concerning Islam in London as do Islamic spokesmen in Seattle and often appear to follow a prepared script from "Islam is tolerant and peace loving" to the claim by Islamic spokeswomen invariably claiming that wearing the veil offers them more freedom (women in Muslim countries are therefore "freer" than women in western countries), thereby precluding further examination into the real status of women under Islamic rule.

Islamic platitudes are also echoed uncritically by Western politicians. For example "A small group of fundamentalists have hijacked a great religion". The timely, skilful, misleading and diversionary theme of the "hijacking" of Islam was introduced into public, political and media discourse by an Islamic 'spokesmen" in the United States shortly after the 9/11
terrorist attacks.

The "Islam has been hijacked" diversionary theme is now a conventional media and political reference deflecting attention from empirical and historical examination of the doctrinal, political and religious continuity of Islamic terrorism. A related theme that a small minority of Muslims are engaged in terrorism is utterly irrelevant as Islamic terrorism is always perpetrated by 'small minorities" or more accurately" small groups".

Australia television viewers noted that interviews with terrorist suspects raided by security authorities invariably featured veiled women holding small children or a baby as they protested their husband's innocence and attested to his innate goodness. Trembling fingers pointed to "damage" to the family residence. In some interviews the suspect/father holds the child, whilst denying involvement or knowledge of terrorism in any sense of the word: an example of taqiyya in the age of impressions and perception management.

The contemporary political meaning of jihad is clear: it is Jihad of the sword. Egyptian-based Islamic fundamentalists, from whom Bin Laden recruited his key operatives, believe jihad is the fourth pillar of Islam and is a binding belief and integral to the faith. Claiming that Jihad is a subjective and psychological state of personal struggle is taqiyya. In contemporary terms, Jihad means—holy war—against unbelievers and it in this context that Al Qaeda training manuals refer to Jihad as "Holy War" against infidels.

The study of taqiyya and kitman is crucial to an understanding of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism ranging from the issuing of false terrorist threats, operational and strategic disinformation issued by Al Qaeda in the form of "intelligence chatter" to the use of taqiyya and kitman by terrorists during interrogation and the use of systematically misleading expressions concerning Islam and terrorism by Muslim 'spokesmen".

All in all, this sounds eerily similar to typical American political speech patterns. But look again. This is our enemy's speech. It is being used against us. To infiltrate us, and take us down from within. The trojan horse approach, get it? And as noted above, our own greedy leadership parrots most of it right back to us, and tells us to swallow it, or else be condemned as a race baiter or worse. And the politically correct are too mushy mushy to notice what all this means to them down the road when all the blinders are off.

Something is radically wrong here.

FJORDMAN: The Eurabia Code, Part 3

In March 2006, the two-day plenary session of the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly, held in Brussels approved a resolution which "condemned the offence" caused by the Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad as well "as the violence which their publication provoked." These MEPs and national MPs from the EU and Arab countries also urged governments to "ensure respect for religious beliefs and to encourage the values of tolerance, freedom and multiculturalism."

During the parliamentary assembly, Egyptian parliament speaker Ahmed Sorour insisted that the cartoons published in Denmark and other recent events showed the existence of a "cultural deficit." Jordanian MP Hashem al-Qaisi also condemned the cartoons, claiming that it is not sufficient to deplore the cartoons as these things might occur again in another country.

And European Parliament president Josep Borrell referred to the Mediterranean as "a concentrate of all the problems facing humanity." He said that after one year presiding over the assembly he "still did not fully understand the complexities of the Mediterranean." Following the cartoons affair, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana had travelled to the Middle East and made joint statements with Islamic leaders that "freedom of the press entails responsibility and discretion and should respect the beliefs and tenets of all religions." Solana said that he had discussed means to ensure that "religious symbols can be protected." He held talks with Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi of Al Azhar University, the highest seat of learning in Sunni Islam, and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa.

Solana also met with the leader of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu. Following their discussion, Solana "expressed our sincere regret that religious feelings have been hurt", and vowed "to reach out… to make sure that people's hearts and minds are not hurt again."

Only a few years earlier, Mr. Solana, then Secretary General of NATO, in a speech stated that "the root cause of conflicts in Europe and beyond can be traced directly to the absence of democracy and openness. The absence of the pressure valve of democratic discourse can lead these societies to explode into violence." The irony that he himself is now trying to curtail the democratic discourse in Europe through the promotion of Islamic censorship apparently did not occur to him.

Meanwhile, the tentacles of the vast, inflated EU bureaucracy insinuate themselves into regulations on every conceivable subject. Some of the examples of the bureaucracy are ridiculous; some are funny. But it is the sinister side to the European bureaucracy:

The promotion of an official, "EU federal ideology" advocating Multiculturalism;

The denunciation as "xenophobes" of all those who want to preserve their democracy at the nation state level; and

Calling those who would limit Third World immigration "racists."

A report from the EU's racism watchdog said that more must be done to combat racism and "Islamophobia." One method of accomplishing this is the promotion of a lexicon which shuns purportedly offensive and culturally insensitive terms. This lexicon would set down guidelines for EU officials and politicians prohibiting what they may say. "Certainly 'Islamic terrorism' is something we will not use ... we talk about 'terrorists who abusively invoke Islam'," an EU official said.

Early in 2006, the EU's human rights commissioner Alvaro Gil-Robles's criticized a plan to revamp Christianity as a school subject in elementary schools in Denmark. Gil-Robles said doing so went against European values. "Religion as a school subject should be a general course that attempts to give students insight into the three monotheistic religions," he said. The "three monotheistic religions" means Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

As I see it, there are several possible ways of dealing with the issue of education about religion.

1. Teach the traditional religions within a particular country, which in Europe means Christianity and Judaism.
2. Teach all the major world religions.
3. Leave religion out of the curriculum.

What the European Union does, however, is to treat Islam as a traditional, European religion on par with Christianity and Judaism. This is a crucial component of Eurabian thinking and practice. Notice how EU authorities in this case directly interfered to force a once-independent nation state to include more teachings of Islam in its school curriculum in order to instill their children with a proper dose of Eurabian indoctrination. Notice also that they didn't ask for more teaching of Buddhism or Hinduism. Only Islam is being pushed.

In another case, the European Commission rebuffed a call by the Polish president for an EU-wide debate on reinstating the death penalty. "The death penalty is not compatible with European values," a Commission spokesman said. Again, the issue here is not your opinion regarding the death penalty. The real issue is that the metasticizing EU has already defined for you what constitutes "European values." Thus, major issues are simply beyond public debate. This innocent-sounding phrase "European values" cloaks a federal, Eurabian ideology enforced across the entire European Union without regard to the popular will.

Perhaps the most shameful and embarrassing aspect of the history of Eurabia is how the supposedly critical and independent European media has allowed itself to be corrupted or deceived by the Eurabians. Most of the documents about the Euro-Arab Dialogue place particular emphasis on working with the media, and the Eurabians have played the European media like a Stradivarius. Aided by a pre-existing anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism, European media have been willing to demonize the United States and Israel while remaining largely silent on the topic Eurabia.

In May 2006, a big conference was held in Vienna involving media figures (journalists) from all over Europe, who met with partners from the Arab world as a part of the Euro-Arab Dialogue.

European officials responded publicly with "regret" to Israel's ambassador to Austria Dan Ashbel's decision to boycott the conference on racism in the media because of concern in Jerusalem that anti-Semitism was getting short shrift at the meeting. Speaking for the conference—entitled "Racism, Xenophobia and the Media: Towards Respect and Understanding of all Religions and Cultures"—an official claimed that anti-Semitism was not taken off the agenda. This official countered that the meeting was "primarily a dialogue between the media representatives of all the Euro-Med partners on the problems that beset their profession. These include xenophobia, racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia [my emphasis]."

Writer Bruce Bawer thinks that many Europeans recognize that "multiculturalism" is leading their societies to disaster. But they've heard all their lives from officially approved authorities that any concern about multiculturalism and its consequences is tantamount to racism:

"There's a widespread resignation to the fact that multiculturalists control the media, academy, state agencies, and so on. They know very well that if you want to get ahead in European society, you don't take on multicultural orthodoxy. The political establishment seems solidly planted, unmovable, unchangeable. There may be a widespread rage, in short, but it's largely an impotent rage. Europeans today have been bred to be passive, to leave things to their leaders, whose wisdom they've been taught all their lives to take for granted. To shake off a lifetime of this kind of indoctrination is not easy."

According to Bat Ye'or, fear of awakening opposition to EU policy toward the Arab Mediterranean countries led to the repression of all discussion of the economic problems and difficulties of integration caused by massive immigration. Any criticism of Muslim immigration is basically brushed off as being "just like the Jews were talked about in Nazi Germany," a ridiculous but effective statement.

Bat Ye'or agrees with Bawer's analysis "concerning the totalitarian web cohesion of 'teachers, professors, the media, politicians, government agency workers, talking heads on TV, the representatives of state-funded "independent" organizations like SOS Racism' to indoctrinate the politically correct. This perfectly expresses the political directives given by the European Commission to coordinate and control in all EU member-states the political, intellectual, religious, media, teaching and publishing apparatus since the 1970s so as to harmonize with its Mediterranean strategy based on multiculturalism."

Professional harassment, boycott and defamation punish those who dare to openly challenge the Politically Correct discourse. According to Bat Ye'or, this has led to the development of a type of "resistance press" as if Europe were under the "occupation" of its own elected governments. This free press on the Internet and in blogs has brought some changes, including the rejection of the European Constitution in 2005. Despite overwhelming support for the Constitution by the governments in France and the Netherlands and a massive media campaign by political leaders in both countries, voters rejected it. Blogs played a significant part in achieving this.

Only a few months later, EU authorities lined up together with authoritarian regimes such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and the Chinese Communist Party in favor of "more international control with" (read: censorship of) the Internet.

According to Richard North of the EU Referendum blog, "The most dangerous form of propaganda is that which does not appear to be propaganda. And it is that form at which the BBC [the British Broadcasting Corporation] excels. Perhaps the biggest sin of all is that of omission. By simply not informing us of key issues, they go by default, unchallenged until it is too late to do anything about them."

Vladimir Bukovsky is a former Soviet dissident, author and human rights activist who spent a total of twelve years in Soviet prisons. Now living in England, he warns against some of the same anti-democratic impulses in the West, especially in the EU, which he views as an heir to the Soviet Union. In 2002, he joined in on protests against the BBC's compulsory TV licence. "The British people are being forced to pay money to a corporation which suppresses free speech—publicising views they don't necessarily agree with." He has blasted the BBC for their "bias and propaganda," especially in stories related to the EU or the Middle East.

Conservative MP, Michael Gove and political commentator Mark Dooley also complain about lopsided coverage: "Take, for example, the BBC's coverage of the late Yasser Arafat. In one profile broadcast in 2002, he was lauded as an "icon" and a "hero," but no mention was made of his terror squads, corruption, or his brutal suppression of dissident Palestinians. Similarly, when Israel assassinated the spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, in 2004, one BBC reporter described him as "polite, charming and witty, a deeply religious man." This despite the fact that under Yassin's guidance, Hamas murdered hundreds."

Polish writer Nina Witoszek, now living in Norway, warns that people who have lived under Communist regimes are struck by a strange feeling of dejá vu in Western Europe:

"Before formulating a sentence, you put on a censorship autopilot which asks: Who am I insulting now? Am I too pro-Israeli, or maybe anti-Feminist, or - God forbid—anti-Islamic? Am I "progressive" enough? Soon we shall all write in a decaffeinated language: We shall obediently repeat all the benign mantras such as "dialogue," "pluralism," "reconciliation" and "equality." Norway has never been a totalitarian country, but many people now feel the taste of oppression and of being muzzled. I know many wise Norwegians—and even more wise foreigners—who no longer have the energy to waste time on contributing to a castrated, paranoid democracy. We prefer safety above freedom. This is the first step towards a voluntary bondage."

She quotes follow writer from Poland Czeslaw Milosz, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980 for books such as The Captive Mind, where he explained the seductiveness of totalitarian ideology.

One essay by Milosz is titled "Ketman." "Ketman" or "kitman" is an Islamic term brought to Milosz's attention by Arthur Gobineau's book Religions and Philosophies of Central Asia. He had noticed that the dissidents in Persia, long accustomed to tyranny, had evolved a style of their own. The need for survival often involved more than just keeping your mouth shut, but of actively lying in every way necessary. This strategy of dissimulation and deceit, which is especially pronounced by Shia Muslims but also used by Sunnis, is primarily used to deceive non-Muslims, but can also be used against other Muslims under duress.

According to Milosz, a very similar strategy was used in Communist countries. Similar to Islam, those practicing dissimulation felt a sense of superiority towards those who were stupid enough to state their real opinions openly. In Communist societies, dissimulation was just as much a technique of adaptation to an authoritarian regime as a conscious, theatrical form of art that became increasingly refined.

It is frightening to hear people who have grown up in former Communist countries say that they see this same totalitarian impulse at work in Western Europe now. According to them, we in the West are at least as brainwashed by Multiculturalism and Political Correctness as they ever were with Communism. It is frightening because I believe they are right. Have we witnessed the fall of the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe only to see an Iron Veil descend on Western Europe? An Iron Veil of EU bureaucracy and Eurabian treachery, of Political Correctness, Multicultural media censorship and the ever-present threat of Muslim violence and terrorism that is gradually extinguishing free speech. The momentum of bureaucratic treachery is accelerating.

Native Europeans and indeed some non-Muslim immigrants are quietly leaving in growing numbers, gradually turning the continent into a net exporter of refugees rather than an importer of them. When large parts of Europe are being overrun by barbarians—actively aided and abetted by our own trusted leaders—and when people are banned from opposing this onslaught, is Western Europe still a meaningful part of the Free World? Have the countries of Eastern Europe gone from one "Evil Empire" to another? Are they—and we—back in the EUSSR?

Vaclav Klaus, the conservative President of the Czech Republic, has complained that: "Every time I try to remove some piece of Soviet-era regulation, I am told that whatever it is I am trying to scrap is a requirement of the European Commission."

In an interview with Paul Belien of the Brussels Journal in February 2006, Vladimir Bukovksy warned that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union. Mr Bukovsky called the EU a "monster" that must be destroyed, the sooner the better, before it develops into a fully-fledged totalitarian state.

"The ultimate purpose of the Soviet Union was to create a new historic entity, the Soviet people, all around the globe. The same is true in the EU today. They are trying to create a new people. They call this people "Europeans", whatever that means. According to Communist doctrine as well as to many forms of Socialist thinking, the state, the national state, is supposed to wither away. In Russia, however, the opposite happened. Instead of withering away the Soviet state became a very powerful state, but the nationalities were obliterated. But when the time of the Soviet collapse came these suppressed feelings of national identity came bouncing back and they nearly destroyed the country. It was so frightening."

Timothy Garton Ash is considered a leading expert on Europe's future. Bruce Bawer views Garton Ash as typical of Europe's political élite. Ash mistrusts national patriotism but adores the EU. He writes about the need for a factitious European patriotism ("flags, symbols, a European anthem we can sing") to encourage "emotional identification with European institutions." And just why does Europe need the EU? Garton Ash's answer: "To prevent our falling back into the bad old ways of war and European barbarism." Among his suggestions is that Europe encourage "the formation of an Arab Union." He makes no mention of Arab democracy. Imagining "Europe in 2025 at its possible best," he pictures it as a "partnership" with Arab countries and Russia that would extend "from Marrakesh, via Cairo, Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Tbilisi, all the way to Vladivostok."

The European Commission proposed the controversial idea of a singing event in all member states to celebrate the European Union's 50th "birthday," the 50th anniversary of the 1957 Treaty of Rome. Commissioner Margot Wallstrom was lobbying for big-style birthday celebrations to "highlight the benefits that European integration has brought to its citizens." Diplomats said the idea had sparked feelings of disgust among new, formerly Communist member states such as Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, which were reminded of "Stalinist times" when people were forced by the state to sing. Brussels also intended to spend around €300,000 on the appointment of 50 citizen "ambassadors," dubbed the "Faces of Europe," who are supposed to "tell their story" throughout the year on what the EU means to them in their daily life. Germany will go ahead with its own idea to let thousands of its bakeries bake 50 sorts of cakes with recipes from all 25 member states.

Commissioner Wallstrom in 2005 argued that politicians who resisted pooling national sovereignty risked a return to Nazi horrors of the 1930s and 1940s. Her fellow commissioners also issued a joint declaration, stating that EU citizens should pay tribute to the dead of the Second World War by voting Yes to the EU Constitution. The commissioners gave the EU sole credit for ending the Cold War, making no mention of the role of NATO or the United States.

Is the EU an instrument to end wars? In October 2006, Michel Thoomis, the secretary general of the French Action Police trade union, warned of a civil war in France created by Muslim immigrants: "We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists. This is not a question of urban violence any more, it is an intifada, with stones and Molotov cocktails. You no longer see two or three youths confronting police, you see whole tower blocks emptying into the streets to set their 'comrades' free when they are arrested."

These Muslim immigrants were allowed in by the very same European elites who now want European citizens to celebrate their work through cakes and songs. While civil society is disintegrating in Western Europe due to Islamic pressures, EU authorities are working to increase Muslim immigration, while congratulating themselves for bringing peace to the continent. What peace? Where?

The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ended the Thirty Years' War, the last major religious war in Europe, and helped lay the foundations for modern nation states. Before nation states, we thus had a pattern of borderless religious wars and civil wars. This is what we have returned to, full circle, only this time a borderless Jihad is triggering civil wars in Europe. While the EU may help prevent wars between nation states with old grudges, such as Germany and France, it may also actively cause other kinds of wars. It accomplishes this by increasing Multicultural tensions and a dangerous sense of estrangement between citizens and those who are supposed to be their leaders.

Wars have existed for thousands of years before the advent of the modern nation state. It is far more likely that weakening nation states will end our democratic system, a system which is closely tied to the existence of sovereign nation states, than that it will end wars.

When asked whether the member countries of the EU joined the union voluntarily, and whether the resulting integration reflects the democratic will of Europeans, Vladimir Bukovksy replied, "No, they did not. Look at Denmark which voted against the Maastricht Treaty twice. Look at Ireland [which voted against the Nice treaty]. Look at many other countries, they are under enormous pressure. It is almost blackmail. It is a trick for idiots. The people have to vote in referendums until the people vote the way that is wanted. Then they have to stop voting. Why stop? Let us continue voting. The European Union is what Americans would call a shotgun marriage."

In 1992, Bukovksy had unprecedented access to Politburo and other Soviet secret documents, as described in his book, Judgement in Moscow. In January 1989, during a meeting between Soviet leader Gorbachev, former Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone, former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, American banker Rockefeller and former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Giscard d'Estaing supposedly stated: "Europe is going to be a federal state and you have to prepare yourself for that. You have to work out with us, and the European leaders, how you would react to that."

This was in the 1980s, when most of the media still dismissed as scaremongering any talk of a political union that would subdue the nation states. Fifteen years later, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing became the chief drafter of the truly awful EU Constitution, an impenetrable brick of a book, hundreds of pages long, and lacking any of the checks and balances so crucial to the American Constitution. Giscard has argued that the rejection of the Constitution in the French and Dutch referenda in 2005 "was a mistake which will have to be corrected" and insisted that "In the end, the text will be adopted."

Giscard has also said that "it was a mistake to use the referendum process" because "it is not possible for anyone to understand the full text." Does it instill confidence among the citizens of Europe that we are supposed to be under the authority of a "Constitution" that is too complex for most non-bureaucrats to understand? According to Spain's justice minister Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar "you don't need to read the European constitution to know that it is good."

Jean-Luc Dehaene, former Belgian Prime Minister, said that "We know that nine out of ten people will not have read the Constitution and will vote on the basis of what politicians and journalists say. More than that, if the answer is No, the vote will probably have to be done again, because it absolutely has to be Yes."

Journalist Nidra Poller, however, is more skeptical. Commenting on the debate prior to the EU Constitution referendum in France, she noted a submissive attitude among EU leaders towards Muslim demands: "The Euro-Mediterranean 'Dialogue' is a masterpiece of abject surrender." The European Union functions as an intermediate stage of an ominous project that calls for a meltdown of traditional European culture, to be replaced by a new, Eurabian cocktail. And she asks: "When subversive appeasement hides behind the veil of 'Dialogue,' what unspeakable ambitions might be dissembled by the noble word 'Constitution'?"