The US constitution is violated daily, and the main perpetrators are the president and top federal government officials. That is the view of Richard Mack, a former Arizona Sheriff who is now advocating state sovereignty as the only way to keep constitution-abiding America intact.

While Madagascar celebrates 50 years of independence from France this year, the country remains mired in economic crisis and political uncertainty over who is legitimately leading the nation of 20 million.

In March 2009, clashes between the regime of Marc Ravalomanana, the then president, and the opposition movement, led by the capital's former mayor, Andry Rajoelina, left more than 100 people dead and the nation in turmoil.

For the past year or so, Somalia has been in the headlines largely because of piracy.  Probably the most well known incident (in America, at least) was the April 2009 seizure of the Maersk Alabama when U.S. Navy SEALs (SEa, Air and Land) killed three pirates who were holding Captain Richard Phillips hostage (a fourth pirate was captured).  Now Somalia is in the news because fourteen people (at least half of whom are U.S. citizens) have been charged as part of a "deadly terror pipeline" to Somalia "providing money, personnel, and services to the foreign terrorist organization al-Shabaab."

One concern raised by the four indictments in federal courts in Minnesota, Alabama, and California is the phenomena of homegrown radicalization.  In the aftermath of 9/11, we were largely concerned with foreign terrorists trying to get into the United States.  But the July 2005 London tube bombings raised the specter of terrorism originating from inside our borders.  According to Sean Joyce, the FBI’s executive assistant director for the national security branch, terrorist organizations such as al-Shabaab radicalize and recruit U.S. citizens and others to train and fight with them.  One of the Minnesota indictments alleges that two Somali women made direct appeals for "financial contributions to support violent jihad in Somalia."

France's raid into Mali on Thursday, July 22, in an attempt to liberate a French hostage who had been seized in northern Niger in April and held hostage by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) emir Abdelhamid abou Zaïd in the Tigharghar mountains of north-east Mali, close to the village of Tessalit and less than 200kms south of the Algeria border, was an unmitigated disaster.

Not only did it fail to find Michel Germaneau, but AQIM leader, Musab Abdul Wadoud (Abdul Malek Droukdel) announced two days later that Germaneau had been executed in retaliation for the six AQIM members killed in the raid.

Ten months ago the land around Kadabade, was barren and stony. The deep red soil gave life to very little.

But a local group, supported by the Swiss charity Heks and its larger, better known partner, Christian Aid thought this was the ideal place to launch a project to help locals help themselves.

In the dry lands in the north of Niger, it is not hard to find the first signs of the struggle the people here have faced over the past two years.

The landscape is dotted with dead animals; goats, cows, even camels. I started counting but gave up after 30. There were just too many.