Though no cable companies in Colombia will be broadcasting Telesur directly, two stations, Bogotá’s independent Canal Capital and the coastal Telepacífico will show certain programs. But after Telesur began to transmit its test signals, the leading national daily El Tiempo, citing unnamed “intelligence” sources, expressed several concerns about some promotional spots:

“… it is no mystery that the channel has a clear left-wing content, especially if one takes into account that Cuban leader Fidel Castro was its inspiration: ‘Let’s make something like our own CNN’ he said some time ago.

“Nonetheless, the test broadcasts for the new channel – which now counts with nine correspondents throughout the continent – have left members of Colombian intelligence agencies anxious.

“These [intelligence sources] told El Tiempo that the channel includes elements related to national and international terrorism and that it shows a negative image of Colombia.

“The president of Canal Capital, Héctor Pinilla, explained that the channel will decide which of Telesur’s offerings will be broadcast and which will not. However, he added that he believes that, on occasion, the governments suffers too much from delusions of persecution.”

Now that’s an understantement if I’ve ever heard one. The outrage over a second-long shot of a young Manuel Marulanda, one of the most important figures in the last century of Colombian history, during an ad for a history program, is not event the most outrageous of these complaints. Another ad

“… shows a young woman in the shower, singing a catchy song whose chorus goes, ‘eta, eta, eta.’

“Her image is shown after a block of Amazonian landscapes and another on the Tunjuelito river in southern Bogotá and its pollution.

The [intelligence] investigators believe that the song is a clear allusion to the Basque terrorist group that, coincidentally, set off several explosions yesterday while the Colombian and Spanish governments attended a join press conference about new bi-national agreements.”

Any Brazilians reading this must be doubled over with laughter, as the woman is singing the well-known song “A luz de Tieta” by Caetano Veloso. Veloso is one of the giants of modern Brazilian music, and the song was the theme to the Oscar-winning 1999 film Orfeu. “Eta,” of course, is not the Basque nationalist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, but a man named Eta, actually a famous literary character, who in the song is “the light” for a girl named Tieta. Pretty terrifying stuff, no?

Spokespeople from Telesur responded quickly, calling out these accusations as the bizarre, paranoid ravings they really are. And people all over Brazil thanked Colombia’s rulers and media simulators for the funniest thing they had read all week.