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UNCA Files Bogus Report With Government, "Judge" Barada With DSS, New Lows at UN

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, July 5, updated -- Tuesday afternoon the New York Civil Liberties Union put out a press release questioning US government agency Voice of America's complaint to the UN to review the accreditation of Inner City Press.

Three hours later someone in the UN Correspondents Association filed a copy of the bogus report commissioned by UNCA President Giampaolo Piolo and his Big Media puppet masters / Hamptons house guests with government authorities to try to get them to act against Inner City Press.

The report is marked "confidential," and as announced by Pioli's Secretary Barbara Plett of BBC on Tuesday afternoon, is only for "UNCA members in good standing." So one of them is responsible for the (anonymous) retransmission to government authorities.

Was this the goal of the report all along?

In fact, Inner City Press at 4 pm on Thursday went to UNCA's office and asked how seeing the report worked. The office worker, seemingly paid by Pioli himself (as reported, he is renting out a Hamptons mansion for $90,000 a month) fumbled around and was unable to find the copy of the report she was in charge of. How to listen to the UNCA audio recording of the Executive Committee's Kafka-esque July 3 meeting was also unclear.

Inner City Press' request to see the "information available on request" cited in the report, ignored by the Board of Examination chair William M. Reilly and the two remaining Examiners, was conveyed to Pioli through his Secretary, so far without response.

Simultaneously, one of Pioli's three "Board of Examination" members, Ali Barada of An-Nahar,  filed a complaint against Inner City Press with the "Special Investigations Unit" of the UN Department of Safety and Security.

  The only basis? What Inner City Press said when Barada bragged that he immediately deleted without opening Inner City Press' email requesting to see the "information available on request" listed in the report Barada signed off on - and which was then sent anonymously to the government against Inner City Press.

  In fact, while all Inner City Press responded with was a run of the mill host country insult, Barada cited his involvement with a "terrorist" group, as a reason Inner City Press shouldn't express its opinion.

Update: And on Friday, July 6, Inner City Press had to spend two and a half hours with UN Security responding to Barada's frivolous and pretextual complaint. Then at noon Ban Ki-moon's Deputy Spokesman had no response to the NYCLU's request.

This gang gets more and more anonymous, just as the supposedly "for UNCA members only" June 14 letter got posted as an anonymous "Mundo111" comment on a story about UNCA anti-Press campaign on the Guardian.co.uk.

Barada's complaint is similar to one by Louis Charbonneau of Reuters, copied to Pioli, his Treasurer Margaret Besheer of the aforementioned VOA and AFP's Tim Witcher, claiming that Inner City Press saying "you disgust me" when Charbonneau tried to organize a session to oust Inner City Press without informing it the WORST thing Charbonneau has seen in 20 years of reporting.

  Really?

  Charbonneau's complaint was to the Department of Public Information, but now the NYCLU has written there. So Barada's complaint, also only about speech, is directed to the Department of Safety and Security. Once out on First Avenue and west, the NYPD would laugh at a complaint about such speech.

  But ironically, while the First Amendment stops on First Avenue, pathetic attempts to file complaints about mere speech and get the Press ejected are even entertained here east of First Avenue, in the Alice in Wonderland that Ban Ki-moon's UN has become. Watch this site.

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Click here for Sept 23, '11 BloggingHead.tv about UN General Assembly

Click for Mar 1, '11 BloggingHeads.tv re Libya, Sri Lanka, UN Corruption

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These reports are usually also available through Google News and on Lexis-Nexis.

Click here for a Reuters AlertNet piece by this correspondent about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click here for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali National Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an undefined trust fund.  Video Analysis here

Click here for Sept 26, 2011 New Yorker on Inner City Press at UN

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