Getting hustled only knowing half the game......

Yesterday I went to a Kings College of London Africa Group seminar on Somalia, hosted by Professor Jack Spence OBE [Head of the Department on War Studies]. The first seminar of the year was titled:

'The Problems of Somalia, with Special Reference to Maritime Piracy' Speakers: Christopher Ledger FRSA JP, Deputy Chairman of Idarat Maritime Ltd Andrew Palmer, CEO of Idarat Maritime Ltd

The session lasted an hour and a half. I was the only Somali in attendance. There were upwards of 20 people in the room listening to two gentlemen who had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. It was actually quite astounding, it took me at least 30 minutes to reach the conclusion that their is some collusion between academic institutions and the world of business and enterprise when it comes to the domination and exploitation of the world's resources.

At the beginning of the seminar, when the very elderly and clearly infirm Professor gave a summation of the professional experience of the speakers it was obvious that there was something amiss. I had done my research about the shady activities of the Idarat Maritime consultancy and their work in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. So I came prepared; I expected some degree of analysis of the revised maritime boundaries that came of the April 2009 discussions between the defunct Transitional Federal Government of Somali and Kenya. I also expected them to consider the connection between porous territorial borders int he Horn of Africa and the impact this may have regarding maritime traffic along the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. The postgrads and undergrads in the audience would be ideally prepared to engage in some debate about the nature of de-colonisation in the region; the lack of authority and legitimacy that undermines the work of the regimes across the African continent and the Southern hemispheres of the world. Where there are intersections between the horizontal [poverty, war, displacement] and vertical linkages [conflicts in the Horn, dictatorial regimes in the Horn, displacement of people in the Horn] would also be considered as part of the wider debate.

None of the above was addressed in the seminar. Instead Kings College of London, whose alumni include the great and good of the upper classes of the UK, was the forum for two businessmen to [a] garner intel that they clearly required due to their lack of general knowledge [b] give credence to their interpretation of reality that is so far gone it is untrue. Void. Defunct. Two words that could describe the paucity of debate at the seminar last night. A new low has been reached, a nadir if you like, for an academic institution to entertain the ideas of two mad men who masked their racist and at times offensive ideals under the cloak of intellect. Thing is, only one person in the room could really tell them where they were going wrong. Only one person in the room could tell them that their general interpretation of the reality in the region was false. Everyone else, all the suckers in the room, just lapped it up and accepted it as gospel. Writing down furiously word for word what the two retarded speakers were pedalling as their expert opinion on matters related to the ongoing crisis in the Horn of Africa.

We are all, as a collective, getting hustled only knowing half the game. It appears that some have abdicated their sense of responsibility in this regard and effectively allow for the status quo to continue because they gain from this climate of irrationality. But most of us, that is Somalis and others who have been outside of the loop, appear to be going along endorsing the raving lunacy that is being propagated by some against the few. Silence is complicity; while people are busy trying to eat they fail to see the food being taken off the table. While people are busy trying to find jobs, any jobs, they fail to notice that it is those who are doing the hiring and the firing that hold the power.

There is a desperate need to redress the imbalance that is holding back people from a range of different backgrounds, including Somalis. Without the necessary will to change things, you can not hope for a better future.