Free Republic

A new mass grave has been discovered at al-Shifa Hospital where a two-week siege by the Israeli army has turned the facility into a graveyard and put what was once Gaza’s largest medical complex out of service. Video with subtitles

Halloween scares have come early to South America, and one knocking on the front door right now is Telesur, a new satellite TV network funded largely by Venezuela’s authoritarian president Hugo Chávez. According to its director, Aram Aharonian, the purpose is to disseminate “a truthful view of the social and cultural diversity of Latin America and the Caribbean to the world.” But rattling Venezuela’s democratic neighbors and legitimizing the region’s leftist terror movements seems to be its real mission. Promotional broadcasts in early July featured flattering video of Colombian guerrilla commander Manuel “Sureshot” Marulanda, who is trying to overthrow his...

The Colombian National Television Commission (CNTV) blocked satellite access to Telecapital, a government channel that rebroadcasts Telesur signal. The hemispheric news system boosted by Venezuela started operations last July 24th, with programming including documentary films, news coverage and a number of journalist works that highlight the Latin American people, as explained in the Monday edition of Semana magazine.

Media: As Telesur, Hugo Chavez's new South American TV network, goes on the air, it's billed as a pan-American alternative to CNN. Knowing Chavez, sensible minds fear a propaganda machine. It's much worse. Ahead of its first broadcast Sunday, Telesur released a ghastly news trailer featuring one of the hemisphere's grimmest narco terrorists, Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda. This professional killer leads the 13,000-strong FARC Marxist guerrillas who have terrorized Colombia for 40 years. As Sureshot preened before Telesur cameras, Telesur officials justified their free publicity for him as newsworthiness. "Do they think Sureshot doesn't exist?" said Director-General Aram Aharonian, a Uruguayan...