Free Republic

Does Sean Penn party down with the new socialist owners of Globovision? The upside is that, while discussing Thomas Piketty's tome on income inequality, they can relax in the luxury of one of their South Florida mansions. While the citizens of oil rich Venezuela reap the benefits of Chavista socialism by standing on long lines for hours to buy toilet paper and other basic commodities, if the bare store shelves do not empty out first, Penn and the Globovision owners can sip on fine wine purchased at exclusive Miami boutiques they have picked up while driving around town in one...

Mr Zuloaga owns Globovision, the only television channel to remain openly critical of the government. He went into hiding in Venezuela last month after the authorities ordered his arrest for alleged profiteering. He has now appeared in Washington at the inter-American commission for human rights. "We have come to find the justice we cannot find in Venezuela,"

SNIPPET: "CARACAS, Venezuela — The owner of Venezuela's only remaining TV channel that takes a critical line against President Hugo Chavez was arrested Thursday, raising concerns the government is carrying out a widening crackdown aimed at silencing opponents. Guillermo Zuloaga, owner of Globovision, was arrested on a warrant for remarks that were deemed "offensive" to the president, Attorney General Luisa Ortega said. Zuloaga said military intelligence agents detained him at an airport..." i

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...

CARACAS, Venezuela, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- When the Organization of American States asked its press freedom expert, Santiago Canton, to report on the state of the independent press in Venezuela, they must have known it was a sensitive mission. President Hugo Chavez's radical populist government does not take kindly to criticism nor does it appreciate outside scrutiny of its internal affairs. It's doubtful, though, that anyone at the OAS expected Canton to fall victim himself to the kind of tactics the Venezuelan press faces every day. Just moments after beginning the final press conference of his four-day visit to ...