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HOLLYWOOD AND THE CIA — Film historian Ed Rampell details Hollywood’s entangled relationship with the CIA and the Pentagon; HOUSES OF THE DEAD: Nancy Kurshan exposes the cruel human rights offenses taking place inside America’s vast gulag of Control Unit Prisons; BROTHERHOOD OF SUMMER: David Macaray charts the history of the most powerful union in the US: the Baseball Players Association; TAR SANDS COME TO AMERICA: Steve Horn explains how the Keystone Pipeline debates have diverted attention from Big Oil’s other plans to transport Alberta’s oil into the US. PLUS: Jeffrey St. Clair on CONSTITUTIONAL ENTROPY; Mike Whitney on HOW THE BANKS TARGETED BLACKS; Chris Floyd on THE RISE OF BRITAIN’S TEA PARTY; Kristin Kolb on THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE; Kim Nicolini on the FILMS OF WILLIAM FRIEDKIN; and Lee Ballinger on POETS VS. THE ONE PERCENT.

September 18, 2012

Back to Business as Usual

Somalia’s Election Farce

by THOMAS C. MOUNTAIN

While the international media might trumpet “Somalia’s First Free and Fair Elections in 50 Years” reality on the ground in Mogadishu reveals a truly grand farce of an “election” process.

First of all, the so called “Members of Parliament”, most of whom flew in from their foreign homes for the “election” (the newly “elected” President is camped out in a hotel where he escaped assassination just days after his inauguration) were not elected by anyone, rather appointed by a panel chosen by the previously western installed puppet regime.

That’s right, no one in Somalia actually voted for anyone who chose the new President of Somalia, though the position is little more than Mayor of the foreign army occupied former capital of Somalia, Mogadishu.

Secondly, it was the African Union army occupying Mogadishu and its immediate surrounds that had to provide security for the “election” for even the most trusted of the so called Somali Army and Police are apparently incapable of protecting the fly by night “Members of Parliament” who participated in this dog and pony show.

Insecurity was so rife that all of the foreign big wigs present were wearing bullet proof vests even in the supposedly secure environs of the election hall.

The outgoing government, headed by one Sheik Sharif was too corrupt to be tolerated by the gathered assembly with the truth challenged UN Monitoring Group for Somalia leaking the “secret” portion of its report on how he and his cronies has stolen hundreds of million$ of aid supposedly meant to feed the millions of starving Somali’s suffering from the worst drought in 60 years.

The defeated “President” Sharif began his rise to infamy as titular head of the Union of Islamic Courts, the nationalist, Islamic organization that brought peace to Mogadishu in 2006 and was driven from power by the USA instigated Ethiopian invasion that year.

After being forced from power by the Ethiopians Sheik Sharif was listed by the USA as an “Al Queda linked terrorist” and was on a most wanted list of international criminals. Then the world went to sleep one night with Sheik Sharif a terrorist and woke up the next morning to the announcement that he was now the “democratically elected President of Somalia”, elected in Djibouti that is by a hand picked mob of “Members of Parliament” under the watchful eye of the CIA and the US Army in Djibouti’s Camp Lemmoniere.

Apparently the irony that Sheik Sharif was once an “Al Queda linked terrorist” unfit to hold office in Somalia and then overnight transformed into the “democratically elected President of Somalia” was cause for the sort of selective amnesia the international media practices when it comes to the Horn of Africa and Somalia in particular.

Today its back to business as usual as the new Somali “MP’s” begin boarding planes to return to their homes abroad, the 20,000 strong African Union army occupying Mogadishu goes about its business of trying to defend itself from the guerilla attacks of the Al Shabab lead Somali resistance and the world will once again forget about the fact that millions of Somalis live in utter destitution, most of which has been directly caused by the very AU “peacekeepers” supposedly meant to protect them.

Thomas C. Mountain is the most widely distributed independent journalist in Africa, living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006. His interviews on Somalia can be seen on RTTV and PressTV. He can be reached at thomascmountain at yahoo dot com.