For quite a while I have been uncomfortable with the way LATIN PULSE is conducted and the obvious center right base of the hostess.
At times the choice of participants has uplifted the program above the level the hostess Hena Cuevas operates, with final outcomes that bring the program closer to what purports LinkTV to offer, that is : INDEPENDENT VIEWS.

This week we had a new host, Mr Dante Betteo who appears to share Ms Cuevas small base when time comes to ad or challenge the guests when they offer their views.
This program the issue was the use of foodstuffs to produce ethanol for fuel and its consequences. Unfortunately this time there were only three guests and two of them were substandard:
Daniel Gustafson of United Nation's FAO, Jose Artiga of Share Foundation and Carlos Hidalgo of the CATO institute.

Mr Gustafson who was the real professional of the three offered balanced views regarding the questions he was asked.
Mr Jose Artiga blurted some quiet foolish nonsense when tried to explain why the prices of foodstuffs had risen, explaining that as an example in Salvador where there is not any production of grains to make ethanol, "the farmer went to the market and seeing the price of the product he produces was much higher, he turned around and went back to his field and stop production" ????????
What? If that was true it means this farmer reacts exactly the opposite all individuals react when the price of their product rises. When there is a rise in the price of the product a farmer is offering, this acts as a signal for the farmer to produce MORE not an incentive to STOP production as explained by Mr Artiga.

If the farmer had gone to the market and saw his product was BELOW the cost of production, then he really would stop production since he wouldn't have an incentive to produce at a loss.

None in the panel challenged such a nonsense, much less the Host Mr Betteo.
Then we have Mr Carlos Hidalgo of the ultra right-wing CATO Institute who was allowed to blurt all the same ideologically charged nonsense regarding the "freedom of the markets" to solve absolutely all questions in the economy. The CATO institute was invited without having a counterweight guest to offer a progressive view to what he was proposing.

It is clear Ms Hena Cuevas and Mr Dante Betteo assume many of the tenets that have brought our societies and economies to the point of extinction, unless we change direction. It is assumed for instance that ANYTHING can be solved by "privatizing" it. The US offers many examples of the disastrous consequences of believing that, including the horrendous medical system. Here in Houston Texas we have many electricity providers to choose from after "deregulation" but we pay much higher rates than States where still they have a single provider utility controlled by regulation by the government.

While I am a businessman and firmly believe the free enterprise system is the best tool to spearhead an economy, I am painfully aware of the many cases when the "free market" does a poor job.

Latin Pulse is reliant on funding from a foundation and I don't know if this is the reason for its make up. In any case I feel it has lots of room for improvement and hope it can really become an alternative to MAINSTREAM MEDIA.

Oppenheimer from Miami actually offers a better mix of guests than what LinkTV's Latin Pulse is offering even though they have to contend with sponsors to "follow the line".

I am a watcher and contributor of LinkTV and other Independent Media outlets because I feel the need to create a NEW way to see what's happening, a new way of framing the situations that we see in the Mainstream Media spinned to the benefit of the few.

This is why I feel if we're going to go through the big effort to start new programming, it should respond to that need.
FOREIGN EXCHANGE is a program I enjoy very much with Daljit Dhaliwal where she performs usually interviews with unknowns who know a lot about certain subjects, offering fresh points of view.
In her June 17 08 program she had Titra Parsi giving us an unusual focus on the Iran, Israel, USA relationship that informed us well.

HOWEVER, during the same program she brought in Marcela Sanchez, a correspondent on Latinoamerica for the Washington Post who, as expected, gave us the very same crap she dishes out in the very Mainstream Post.

Ms Sanchez's views regarding Bolivia's situation were pathetically stale. They come from a person whose job depends precisely in being part of the MAINSTREAM media.
Her explanations regarding Evo Morales and the renegade white/skinned Governors of the richest provinces appear to have been pulled out of a hat, since they merely conform to the plenty of cliches promoted by the big networks and the US government, in order to create the climate of character assassination against any one who tries to do his/her job as a representative of the majority of their countries' peoples in defense against US hegemony.

While not mentioning at all in the whole interview the fact US diplomats have been meddling in Bolivia's affairs, Sanchez claims the secessionist referendums in the richest provinces while illegal, they had an "80% approval rate" which is a flat out lie. Only a minority voted since President Evo Morales had requested his followers NOT to take part in the illegal referendums. Therefore truly the numbers are about merely 26% of the possible voters.

Sanchez claims the rich provincial governors had lots of power over Morales (from the oil production) without understanding most of that oil goes to Brazil and Argentina with popular governments friendly to Morales who pay DIRECTLY into the central Bolivian government for the oil. That is, Evo Morales still gets the money from the oil.

Sanchez says she doesn't expect much violence since in Bolivia it hasn't been a problem in the past, overlooking the fact that in September 11, 1973, the US sponsored a coup d'etat against the democratically elected Salvador Allende in Chile, a country with a history of little violence and long democracy, but all that came crashing down to be followed by a trail of blood and torture with the help of the CIA and US military "advisers" that lasted 19 long years.

Marcela Sanchez suggests the rich whites and the Indian poor are both racists since the former apply their power to suppress the later, and the later accuse the former for mistreating them because of their skin color. What????? So if a person complains for being mistreated because of his race, it means he's as much a racist as his tormentor just for complaining?

Sanchez acknowledges the Bolivians don't feel Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is meddling in their country, but she says "internationally" there are concerns he's doing it. Internationally? it is the US who is concerned.
So it's OK for the US to go into Nicaragua and openly give millions of dollars for the political campaigns of the opposition in their elections, or as it has done in the elections of the countries of Georgia and Ukraine, among many others, openly or under the table, using CIA fronts as NGO's to "help" democracy, but "god save us!!!" how is it possible for a nationalist like Chavez to help others (many others) with the fruits of the oil revenues.

Sanchez suggests the Bolivian government has no money and is able to survive without the rich provinces (the opposition) thanks to Venezuela's Chavez money. This is BS!! Evo Morales has renegotiated with all Oil corporations the share from the sales of Bolivian production and now gets four times more revenue than before (before 20% Bolivia to 80% corporations , and now 80% to 20%) and because the payments go to the federal government NOT the provinces, Morales is not strapped for money as she claims.

At the end Ms Daljit Dhaliwal even told Ms Sanchez she "hoped for her to return" to the program. I dearly hope Ms Dhaliwal chooses next time a truly INDEPENDENT journalist to explore Latinoamerica.
If I wanted to see what the WASHINGTON POST says, I will go directly to the Washington Post and I would save my contributions to LinkTV.