One of our favorite artists of today, Janelle Monae, is set to perform at the 18th Annual Nobel Peace Prize Concert. And as if that wasn’t good enough soulful songtress Jill Scott will be performing as well with several other international musicians. The concert will take place on December 11th in Oslo, Norway.

This concert is exceptionally special in that this year’s Peace Prize will be awarded to three African women: Liberian President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee of Libya and Tawakkul Karman of Yemen.

The women will be recognized for their non-violent struggle in advocating for women’s rights and safety.

L-R: Tawakkul Karman (Yemen) Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (Liberia), and Leymah Gbowee (Libya)

By Alexis Garrett Stodghill

The Nation magazine author Jeremy Scahill has unearthed what many believe is a secret prison for terrorists in Somalia run by the CIA. In his recent article for the political weekly, Scahill details a relationship between the American and Somalian governments in which this Guantanamo Bay-style facility operates without the attendant political backlash. Apparently, these types of underground “black sites” for the detainment and questioning of terror suspects were common before Obama’s presidency, and widely criticized for generating numerous human rights violations through the use of torture.

President Obama signed an order ending the CIA’s black site program on the second day of his term, so the discovery that these prisons appear to remain in operation is causing international outrage. Despite being pressed for answers by news outlets such as CNN and ABC, the CIA remains evasive in discussing its role in Somalia’s secret terrorist prisons, and similar CIA outposts across Africa. Time.com reports:

Whatever the depth of the involvement of the CIA and other intelligence and military agencies in Somalia, the report raises this specter of longstanding and much-loathed U.S. counter-terrorism practices in the Muslim world — policies that many hoped would fade under the Obama Administration and in the wake of the Arab Spring. Before, brutal regimes like those of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and even Muammar Gaddafi in Libya happily collaborated with U.S. agents in the arrest, secret detention and likely torture of Islamists and terror suspects. Scahill’s piece suggests not much has changed, at least in the Horn of Africa, a part of the world that has vexed American policy makers for nearly two decades.

Nations in Africa such as Yemen have become the new focus of America’s war on terror now that the Middle East has been subdued as a source of new threats. The intensifying presence of al-Quaeda in Yemen and Somalia is seen as the grounds for increasing U.S. collusion with oppressive regimes in the region, which lack the resources to mount effective counter-terrorism campaigns. The unfortunate fall out of these relationships is that the CIA must collaborate with draconian rulers such as Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh — a leader on the verge of being ousted by his own people for unconscionable acts.