A few days ago we posted video excerpts from one of the OSCE sessions in Vienna last month. Since then Vlad has been working on a slightly longer version using the same material. The video below includes additional comments made by the panelists, and more detailed annotations.

These excerpts were recorded at the OSCE Security Days at the Hofburg, Vienna, on May 21, 2015. The event was the Night Owl Session: “How can the media help prevent violent radicalization that leads to terrorism?” It was an official OSCE forum, with opening and closing remarks by OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier.

The BPE/ICLA team at OSCE included Henrik Ræder Clausen, Stephen Coughlin, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, and Renya Matti.

The panelists, from left to right, were:

• Victor Khroul, a correspondent for Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency and Associate Professor at Moscow State University. Rossiya Segodnya is wholly owned by the Russian government, as is MSU.
• Leila Ghandi, a Moroccan presenter for 2M TV. She is “an award winning TV host journalist, producer, commentator, book author, speaker, photographer and civil society activist.” 68% of 2M TV is owned by the Moroccan government, with the Moroccan royal family owning 20.7%
• Randa Habib, the director of the bureau of Agence France-Presse (AFP) in Amman, Jordan.
• Dunja Mijatović, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, from Bosnia
• Simon Haselock, Albany Associates

So the panel consisted of a Russian, a Moroccan, a Jordanian, a Bosnian, and a Briton. No Poles. No Danes. No Czechs. No Italians. No one from a sensible European country.

It seems reasonable to assume that the Russian gentleman represents the Russian government. The three women hail from three Muslim countries that do not enforce the wearing of hijab. But are they otherwise representing the interests of the Ummah? Based on the contributions of Ms. Ghandi and Ms. Habib to the discussion about truth vs. “hate speech”, it is at least plausible that they are.

Simon Haselock is a promoter of “global governance”, UN-style. He is described as a “pioneer in media intervention in post-conflict countries” — that is, he helps the United Nations manage the news flow in areas where the “international community” has discovered a compelling interest.

Take, for example this article from 2003 discussing his role in Bosnia:

In Sarajevo, [Simon] Haselock served as media spokesman for the Office of the High Representative, the European agency governing the Bosnians in the aftermath of the Dayton Agreement. In Kosovo, he became media commissioner.

The problem, in a nutshell: He’s British, and holds to a European view of how media should work, in terms of public responsibility, free expression, libel law, and similar issues. Haselock and others like him attempted to impose a European media regime on the Bosnian and Kosovar journalists, and there is every indication the same effort will be made in Iraq.

Put simply, this means that a governmental body will supervise media. It has already been reported that Haselock has written a proposal for control of broadcast and print media, including the establishment of state electronic media and the appointment of a board that will handle “complaints about media excesses” and levy fines for misconduct. These are exactly, down to the boilerplate vocabulary, the policies that were tried in Sarajevo and Prishtina. They failed miserably, and sometimes grotesquely.

IN BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA, the stated mission of foreign media administrators embodied pure political correctness: It was to separate media from nationalist self-expression and political parties. This meant that although Bosnian Muslims felt they had survived a deliberate attempt at genocide, and while Serbs and Croats felt they had legitimate communal demands to put forward, their journalists were forbidden from dealing with these topics. The argument of the “internationals,” as the foreigners in the Balkans love to style themselves, was that any such commentary would constitute hate speech and would incite further violence.

Same shtick, different decade.

In his remarks, Mr. Haselock references non-Islamic terror groups that sprang from European roots. What he does not mention is that we were allowed to call them by the names they called themselves. We called them the “Red Brigades”, the “Bader-Meinhof Group” [Red Army Faction], and the “Irish Republican Army”, and we identified their ideology at the same time — which is what allowed us to counter them.

The rules are different for any group that has “Islam” and “Muslim” in its name. In such cases we are told not to use the name that the group uses for itself. We must instead identify it by a pseudonym invented by Simon Haselock or some other “media administrator”. And we must never, ever talk about Islamic ideology or sharia.

Mr. Haselock refers to “the narrative we are offering”. But whose universal values does such a narrative enforce? And against whom? And who decides?

In essence, the UN establishes narratives that are to be enforced against national identities as a requirement. Everyone on the OSCE panel supports these narratives and their enforcement.

Many thanks to Henrik Ræder Clausen for recording the close-up footage, and to Vlad Tepes for editing, annotating, and subtitling the excerpts used in this video:

(Watch the video of the entire session, 1 hr 52 mins)

Below is the transcript of Maj. Coughlin’s second comment, timed from the point where he begins speaking, as used to make the subtitles:

For links to previous articles about the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, see the OSCE Archives.

For more on the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, see the OIC Archives.