What is Mount Kellett Thinking

I really can’t fathom what Mount Kellett is thinking in its effort to infiltrate the board of directors of Baja Mining (which, given their pattern and practice, is just a prelude to a hostile takeover of the company, as Baja Mining’s current management has charged). There are some subjective reasons why this doesn’t pass the smell test with me.

First off, check out my last two posts on the subject:

http://janbtucker.com/blog/2012/03/20/mount-kelletts-war-on-workers/

http://janbtucker.com/blog/2012/03/16/romneyizing-los-angeles/

Here are some of the questions this state of affairs raises in my mind.

Michelle Bachmann, who has called President Obama a socialist and pledged during her own presidential campaign to deport an estimated 10-12 million undocumented immigrants

On October 21, 2008, Mount Kellett Chief Operating Officer Jonathan D. Fiorello made a campaign contribution of Rep. Michelle Bachmann’s re-election campaign, the very day that she publicly accused then Senator (now President) Obama of being a socialist. Maybe it has escaped Mount Kellett, but the company is seeking to get a say in how Baja Mining is run and that Baja California is part of Mexico. There are three major political parties in Mexico, the PAN (Partido Accion Nacional), the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional), and the PRD (Partideo Revolucionario Democratica). Of the three, the latter two, PRI and PRD, are both full member parties of the Socialist International. Defections from PAN, the current ruling presidential party, to the PRI and PRD, reported by Reuters on March 14, make it increasingly likely that the PRI will regain the presidency and that between them, the PRI and PRD will have a leftist voting majority in the Mexican Congress.

I imagine that the PRI and the PRD will be real thrilled that Baja Mining may be taken over by a company whose Chief Operating Officer is so far to the right that he backs candidates who think that President Obama is a socialist. That alone is bad enough, but when it gets around in Mexico that Mount Kellett C.O.O. Jonathan D. Fiorello contributed money to a candidate who wants to deport millions of Mexican citizens back to Mexico, well, that may just raise some historical hackles that rankle Mexicans in the extreme.

Just for starters, Mexicans who learn history in their schools receive a far more objective picture of the history of United States/Mexican relations than do most Americans. They are likely to view the land-grab that the United States pulled off in the “Mexican-American War” as a great historical tragedy and insult. In that war, the United States of America took half of Mexico’s territory in a manner that included “atrocities” as described by then Army Captain Ullyses S. Grant. It was a war that saw the only mass desertion of American soldiers in history, when mostly Irish immigrant soldiers who were appalled at the atrocities being committed by other Americans defected to the Mexican side forming the now famous San Patricio Corps (still celebrated as heroes in Mexico).

Decade of Betrayal documents the horrendous ethnic cleansing of Mexicans and Chicanos by U.S. authorities

In spite of the guarantees of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and Protocols of Quaretaro which ended the Mexican-American War guaranteeing full and equal rights and protections to Mexicans and their descendants living in the United States, American authorities from President Hoover on down to municipal and county officials throughout the country ethnically cleansed approximately 2,000,000 people, forcing them (frequently at gun point) to leave their homes and go to Mexico during the Great Depression. None of the 2 million were here illegally, and 1.2 million of those forced out of the country were citizens of the United States of America.

So, how thrilled do you think that Mexico will be to realize that the Chief Operating Officer of Mount Kellett contributed campaign cash to a member of Congress who wants to throw more millions of people out of the United States and into Mexico? Mexico is not incorrect to feel itself wronged in this matter. Given that 1.2 million American citizens were illegally deported in the 1930s, how can US authorities even figure out whether somebody is actually here illegally: what if their parents or grandparents were American citizens unconstitutionally thrown out of the United States? That makes them citizens of the United States.

I don’t think that people in Mexico are going to be very happy at Mount Kellett having a say in how Mexico’s national resources are developed.