A Response to "Fooj" at Echo (http://js-kit.com/)

Over at a new blog area called Echo, I saw a comment linking to the Truth About Kos in this thread, and I wrote a long comment that exceeded the limit of 5,000 characters (because I included copious links).  Unable to post the following response there, I am posting it here and leaving a link in the comments at Echo.  I thank Fooj for posting the link to Truth About Kos, and for this comment:

[This user is an administrator] fooj
http://truth-about-kos.blogspot.com/2007/08/indictment-of-markos-ca-moulitsas-ziga.html

Born in Chicago...CIA training...

Very Interesting.

As the founder, chief researcher and editor of the Truth About Kos blog cited above, I defy and challenge anyone and everyone to show us a single instance in which Markos C. Alberto Moultisas Zúñiga (MAMZ) has publicly mentioned the name of a single member of his birth family.

In fact, everything we know that is actually true about MAMZ was first researched and published by Stu Piddy at MyLeftWing (with a link to MAMZ's audiotaped CIA related confession at the Commonwealth Club) and then intensively and extensively researched and published at the Truth About Kos blog.

In order to write "The Indictment of Markos C. Alberto Moulitsas ZÚÑIGA by Justice and History (Updated with Additional Information and Counts) " referenced above, I read every single biography and autobiograpy of MAMZ on the Internet, and then I Googled his name and read every biographical reference. I could only find mainstream newspaper and online articles that were either written by MAMZ (in which he acknowledged his connections to the far right of the Republican Party), and other articles that were based entirely on MAMZ's self-serving statements about himself.

I realized that literally none of what he told major online magazines and media reporters was independently researched and confirmed. (One need only look at the articles MAMZ wrote for his college newspaper to see that they were explosive and yet were never reported upon, because the media was too lazy to attempt to confirm what they were told. If they had bothered to read the college newspaper articles he had written, they would certainly have found the one in which he vehemently opposed ALL gay participation in the US military. http://truth-about-kos.blogspot.com/2007/09/why-is-mamzs-homophobic-1993-essays.html

Aside from the two years that MAMZ admittedly spent at the CIA (2001-2003) while starting DailyKos (2002), all of the information about his obscenely wealthy Salvadoran oligarchy family and their right-wing political connections was discovered through an off-handed comment that MAMZ made in his online honeymoon album, (which was taken down from the Internet as soon as I used it as a source for most of the counts in "The Indictment . . . ").

Fortunately, I suspected that MAMZ might take the wedding album down and even get the copy of it scrubbed from Google cache, so I took screen shots of his honeymoon album and posted them at MyLeftWing as well as at The Truth About Kos.

In an unprecedented instance of MAMZ providing any information about his birth family that could be independently confirmed, MAMZ mentioned in his online honeymoon photo album that his honeymoon was spent at his "family business" hotel in El Salvador, called the Jaltepeque Suites Hotel. This reference is how I was able to discover who some of the members of his family are. (None of the people whose photographs appeared in the album were mentioned by name.)

However, by researching the Salvadoran incorporation documents of the Jaltepeque Suites Hotel and then Googling the name of the "family business"'s "manager" who coincidentally shares the last name "Zúñiga" with MAMZ, and then Googling the telephone number of that hotel, I was able to reveal not merely their website stating that they are the owners of the single longest beach property in El Salvador. I was also able to discover that the family had other businesses, one of which received a one million dollar loan gaurantee from the US Government's Overseas Private Investment Council (OPIC).

I believe the loan guarantee must be true, since it was mentioned in a press release by OPIC and stated that the beneficiary was Baja Salt, whose online website states that the owner is the same person who is the "manager" of MAMZ's family hotel, and who is a national tourism representative at the Salvadoran National Association for Private Enterprise (ANEP), which the CIA calls a right-wing "pressure group." It's all documented with copious links at the Truth About Kos.

Here is but a taste of what I discovered and published in the Indictment cited above and in subsequent posts at The Truth About Kos:

9). In fact, Mr. Moulitsas ZÚÑIGA’s family owns a sumptuous and “exclusive” resort hotel and tourism conglomerate in El Salvador called the "Club Joya del Pacífico" (Club Jewel of the Pacific) a unit of which is the (Jaltepeque Suites Hotel).


10). Demonstrating his connection to these, what MAMZ has called "family business" interests, Markos C.A. Moulitsas ZÚÑIGA invited his wife, friends and family to celebrate his honeymoon with him at the this Jaltepeque Suites Hotel after he was married in the year 2000. (For some reason, the original link no longer works. Fortunately, we have two screenshots from his wedding album, including their web addresses, to prove that the album was public before its significance was pointed out. And now it's gone.)
11). Markos C.A. Moulitsas ZÚÑIGA ZÚÑIGA's "family business" actually received five million dollars in foreign investments between 1997 and 2000, immediately before the period in which MAMZ states that he sought work at the CIA because he was "underemployed, unemployed." Audiotape of 2006 Speech to the Commonwealth Club.


12). Carlos Alberto Delgado Zúñiga, the “family” member listed in government records as “manager” of the Moulitsas ZÚÑIGA’s hotel is also president of the “Junta Directiva” of the CÁMARA SALVADOREÑA DE TURISMO (CASATUR), the national tourism board of El Salvador, according to El Salvador's "La Prensa" newspaper. He has aggregated power in El Salvador through participation in a series of interlocking tourism-related directorates and has used this power to facilitate the destruction of the Jaltepeque Estuary by his hotel conglomerate, Club Jewel of the Pacific, even though the Jaltepeque Estuary is universally recognized by international groups as an endangered habitat for imperiled marine life. VII. MACROPOLITICAS, CONVENIOS INTERNACIONALES Y LEGISLACIÓN QUE INCIDE EN LAS ÁREAS DE CONSERVACION (VII. Macropolitics, International Conventions and Legislation Regarding Conservation)

When you consider just the facts above, it is obvious that MAMZ has been bold-facedly lying about the nature of his family's polticis and political influence in El Salvador. He told one Salvadoran newspaper, "I didn't come from a wealthy or influential family", but anyone in El Salvador who operates a hotel that charges 140 dollars per night for a room is someone who is extremely wealthy, because the cost of renting a room for ONE NIGHT is equal to about a tenth of the YEARLY per capita income in El Salvador.

MAMZ is a liar and there is no way of getting around that fact. You can excuse it, rationalize it or minimize it, but you can't deny that MAMZ said he came as an immigrant from a humble family when, in fact, he was born in Chicago and his family is one of the most influential famileis in El Salvador, with one member even participating in drafting tourism laws that the "family business," that is really a unit of the family's mega-real estate complex called Club Joya del Pacífico. 

You don't have to believe me.  Just look at the website and compare the telephone numbers and personnel.

As far as President Obama, I agree that we haven't seen people who know state senator or US Senator or President Obama coming forth with information that hurts his image. I think that's because the people whom Obama has met have been impressed with him, and he has gone out of his way to make important and well-placed friends while not making enemies.


Even though the media reported on Obama's unpaid parking tickets from his time at Harvard Law School and, of course, the comments of Pastor Wright, I think there just wasn't enough dirt about him to fill a flower pot. Otherwise, the Clintons would certainly have used it against Obama at some point in the Democratic Presidential Primaries.

I think the media hasn't told us any dirt about Obama because there is none to tell, except the normal sausage-making commitments that a politician has to make in order to win the support of Wall Street, Blacks, gays and labor unions all at the same time.

Obama's mother was, indeed, an international foundation staffer, but the media has looked into her background, met her parents, published photographs of her, and yet no one has come forward with any information that contradicts what Obama said in his autobiography.

That's doesn't mean that Obama's mother wasn't involved with the CIA, but anyone who wants to research what she did is welcomed to report back to all of us, I'm sure. I'd certainly like to know if she had more contacts than we've been told about.

Unlike Markos Moulitsas, who has never, ever named a single member of his birth family, we have met Obama's sister and learned about his father. President Obama's network is easy enough to follow through the friends he made at Harvard, at the University of Chicago, and in his private civil rights practice, as well as in his days as an organizer. And then he also had the network of his wife, who was well-connected in Illinois non-profit and public relations circles. President Obama ran for office four times, and there was ample opportunity to delve into his background, as the crap about his minister and that commie Smile leftist activist show. In fact, we know a lot about Obama, but no among the Republicans (who promised to tear the bark of Michael Dukakis) or the Democrats was able to find any real dirt on President Obama. Surely the Clintons tried and surely the Republicans did their opposition research.

The only thing they would not have used against Obama was if they discovered that his mother was CIA. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans would have spread that news and the media would have refused to report it. (Neither the Republicans not the Democrats have made an issue of Moulitsas' CIA contacts, even though mentioning those publicly acknowledged contacts would have the effect of driving a wedge between Moulitsas and half of his blog's participants as well as his supporters elsewhere. No political party or mainstream media outlet has addressed Markos Moulitsas' two years at the CIA, even though he has personally acknowledged on audiotape that he spent two years training with the CIA. And Democratic Party politicians still GO TO HIS ANNUAL MEETINGS!

Even though I was a long-time Clinton supporter who had always wanted Hillary to run for president, I voted for Senator Obama over Senator Clinton. Even though my skin is brown, like Senator Obama's I was notorious among Black bloggers and in the whitosphere for being a staunt Clinton supporter. However, when Hillary's campaign started telling people in Iowa that Obama was a Muslim, that annoyed me. When Clinton's New Hampshire campaign chairman announced that Obama had used cocaine AND that there were untold facts about him that would come out later (but that never were discovered), Clinton's campaign chairman rightly resigned. But his was the act of a surrogate for the campaign, following the orders of the Clinton campaign.

Then, Bill Clinton told voters that Obama had won South Carolina because Black presidential candidates always win South Carolina, like Jesse Jackson. That infuriated me and I decided that I couldn't support Clinton in 2008, in spite of all of the articles I had written at DailyKos (before I was banned) and elsewhere about the laudable things Bill and Hillary had done before 2008.

And then Clinton surrogate Erica Jong called Obama a "boy" at Huffington Post, while Geraldine Ferraro, another Clinton surrogate, opined that Obama had an advantage because his skin was brown.  After all of the above nonsense, I was ready to change sides and do everything in my power to prevent the Clintons from being rewarded for this attempt to color-arouse the electorate.

Had the Clintons succeeded, all Black candidates in the Democratic Party would have been subject to the same color-arousing tactics that the Clintons used in 2008.  It became more important to penalize Senator Hillary for her campaign tactics than it was to elect her president instead of Senator Obama.

I can even admit that I think wistfully that Hillary Clinton would have ended the war in Iraq somehow without expanding the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  If so, the US foreign policy for the Middle East would have been far more to my liking, with less deaths of US personnel and innocent civilians overseas.  I only wish that Hillary had run a campaign against Senator Obama instead of against the Black candidate for president.  Had she pretended not to notice the difference in color and sought to beat Obama based on her experience and the fact that she would bring peace more effectively than Obama has, I believe Hillary would have won the nomination.

However, as soon as Clinton began treating Obama like "the Black candidate," Blacks turned on Hillary in droves, which made it virtually impossible for her to win in places like South Carolina.  Many whites also turned against her, including Senator Ted Kennedy and most of his family, when Hillary referenced the assassination of John F. Kennedy as a rationale for not dropping her presidential candidacy, which was already all but dead.

When Blacks such as myself left Clinton, it was because she brought it upon herself.  She should have run the same campaign against Obama that she would have run against John Edwards, and then Hillary would have won the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

I would vote for Hillary in 2016 if she acknowledged and apologized for the fact that she treated Senator Obama like a Black man instead of like an American man.  She needs to admit that her surrogates thought they were helping her when everything her surrogates were saying was convincing Blacks to abandon Hillary's candidacy.