Politicians like Sen. Joe Lieberman are maddening (but common). He is bright enough to see the danger arising from hostile Somalis residing in America, yet his lifetime immigration voting grade is D- and his recent record rates an F-.

On Wednesday, Sen. Lieberman chaired a hearing titled “Violent Islamist Extremism: al-Shabaab Recruitment in America.” The Senator’s cognitive dissonance about unfriendly immigrants was further indicated by the characterization in his opening statement of the Somalis here as “victims” of “small group of extremists who are essentially terrorizing their own community.”

There is an increasing threat of homegrown terror stemming from segments of a deeply isolated and alienated Somali-American community, a U.S. Senate committee hearing concluded Wednesday.

The hearing, conducted by the Senate Homeland and Governmental Affairs Committee, focused on the attempted recruitment of young Somali-American men by al-Shabaab, “a violent and brutal extremist (Somali) group” with significant ties to al Qaeda, according to the U.S. State Department.

“Over the last two years, individuals from the Somali community in the United States, including American citizens, have left for Somalia to support and in some cases fight on behalf of al-Shabaab,” noted the committee’s chairman, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Connecticut.
[Domestic terror threat growing, Senate committee warns, CNN, March 11, 2009]

The hearing [Senate page here has a video and witness testimony] included some common-sense cultural observations…

“The (tough) adjustment to American society has reinforced their greater insularity compared to other more integrated recent immigrant communities and has aggravated the challenges of assimilation for their children,” [Andrew Liepman] said. [...]

Many refugees, he said, “lack structure and definition in their lives” and are “torn between their parents’ traditional tribal and clan identities and the new cultures and traditions offered by American society.”

That’s right, and furthermore it’s cruel to plunk primitive tribal people (who have never ridden in a car or switched on an electric light) into 21st century American cities. Better to resettle them in more similar African cultures, where they won’t experience extreme social alienation from the mainstream society.

Of course, Islamist terror doctrine being readily available in mosques and on the internet makes their presence in our country dangerous for us Americans.

Another aspect to the Senate hearing was the Rorschach nature of reporting about it. CNN (above) reasonably emphasized the threat. But the Los Angeles Times headlined with a pro-Islam viewpoint: American Somali youths aren’t seen posing major risk.

Reporting from Washington — There is no evidence that radicalized Somali American youths who have disappeared over the last two years are being trained abroad to attack the United States, intelligence and law enforcement officials told members of a Senate panel Wednesday.

You can watch the whole hearing and make your own decision whether Somali immigrants pose a threat. However, the disturbing political correctness from government officials about “small segments” of immigrant communities can’t disguise the danger of the Islamic fifth column. Small numbers of committed jihadists can kill thousands, as 19 hijackers did on 9/11.

It’s fun to discuss which groups of people are and aren’t creative, but it’s worth noting that this often changes over time. For example, here are a couple of graphs I created from the database Charles Murray compiled for his 2003 book Human Accomplishment.
 

Here, I’ve plotted the “eminence” of scientists and artists working in the Netherlands between 1400 and 1950. Eminence is defined by attention paid to individuals in a wide selection of standard reference works by leading scholars in each field, on a 0 to 100 scale, with the top figure in each field being set at 100. For example, the highest point on this chart is Rembrandt, who “flourished” (i.e., was 40 years old) in 1646. Across about a dozen art history reference and textbook volumes, Rembrandt has 56.3% as much attention devoted to him as the top ranking figure in “Western Art,” who is, unsurprisingly, Michelangelo.

(more…)

Paul McDougall writes in Information Week:

The climate is warm, there’s no shortage of exotic food, and the cost of living is rock bottom. That’s IBM’s pitch to the laid-off American workers it’s offering to place in India. The catch: Wages in the country are pennies-on-the-dollar compared to U.S. salaries.

Under a program called Project Match, IBM will help workers laid off from domestic sites obtain travel and visa assistance for countries in which Big Blue has openings. Mostly that’s developing markets like India, China, and Brazil.

(more…)

Economist Glen Loury writes on Will Wilkinson’s Cato Unbound:

A Nation of Jailers

I wish to discuss a preeminent moral challenge for our time — that imprisonment on a massive scale has become one of the central aspects of our nation’s social policy toward the poor, powerfully impairing the lives of some of the most marginal of our fellow citizens, especially the poorly educated black and Hispanic men who reside in large numbers in our great urban centers. …

Here, as in other areas of social policy, the United States is a stark international outlier, sitting at the most rightward end of the political spectrum: We imprison at a far higher rate than the other industrial democracies …

(more…)

Vivek Kundra is a 34 year old Indian Immigrant named last week by President Obama (who seems to have a thing about Indians) to be “Chief Information Officer” for the Federal Government (e.g. top Computer Techie).

His previous job, which he left on March 4th, was Chief Technology Officer for the District of Columbia.

On Thursday morning the FBI arrested a man who reported directly to Kundra, Yusuf Acar, acting chief security officer of the DC unit, and charged him with corruption. They also arrested Sushil Bansal, President and CEO of Associated Integrated Technology Corp. Bansal is alleged to have bribed his way into a $10Mm contract with the DC Government

D.C. Tech Official Is Accused of Bribery By Del Quentin Wilber The Washington Post Friday March 13 2009

Yusuf Acar is an immigrant(PDF) from Turkey (Hat tip NetWorkWorld.com). According to the Washington Post story

in recorded conversations, he boasted that he could easily flee to his native Turkey.

Advanced Integrated Technologies, according to its website

is an end-to-end Technology and Business Process Outsourcing Services company… based out of USA and India.

Almost all the management is Indian, as is Sushil Bansal himself. (His previous employer was the DC Government Technology Office.) The company’s website gloats:

the Association of Indians in America (Washington DC Chapter) selected Mr. Sushil Bansal for the Entrepreneur of the Year Award…Mr. Bansal was selected for this award for … the growth of AITC. Mr. Bansal is founder and CEO of AITC…The ceremony was attended over 100 people including a very senior representative from the Embassy of India in Washington DC.

These Indian people-renting outfits are a moral hazard.

Most of the interest in this story is focused on the plausibility of Kundra not knowing something was fishy about the AITC relationship. This looks a bit awkward. An earlier version of the Post story said the DC Technology office employs less than 300 people and had a budget of $69Mm. Washington City Paper Mike DeBonis Mar.12 2009 reports

According to publicly downloadable city records—thanks, Vivek!—the city has authorized more than 160 payments to AITC since 2004 totaling over $13 million. That’s quite a bit more city business than the $350,000 reported by WTOP earlier.

(VDARE.com note: WTOP also reported Bansal is an H-1B visa holder.)

AITC’s city earnings have been steadily on the rise. In 2004, the District submitted $612,058 in purchase orders to be paid to the company. In 2005, that figure rose to $1,583,888, and in 2006, rose still further to $2,799,426. In March 2007, Vivek Kundra took the reins at OCTO; AITC billings stayed fairly level that year, at $2,824,191. In 2008, however, AITC’s city business nearly doubled, to $5,062,096.

The VDARE.com approach is different. We ask:

• How come the DC Technology Office was staffed so heavily with immigrants? (Probable answer: because they favor one another.)
• Could Vivek Kundra’s presence explain the increased use by DC of Indian outsourcing? (Probable answer: Yes – before even considering corruption.)
• Could employing immigrants from famously corrupt countries like Turkey and India in decision-making positions increase the likelihood of public corruption in this country? (Probable answer: Of course.)
• Where do White Americans fit into this? (Answer: Flushed down the toilet.)

The Obama administration clearly hired young Kundra because he was a man of color. As Peter Brimelow said at the end of his CPAC article:

In effect, the historic American nation is faced with a minority occupation government.

Welcome to the world of MOG.