IT has been some time since visiting international heads of state offered to mediate on the Kashmir dispute while on official visits to India. The president of Turkey, no doubt took New Delhi by surprise when he politely suggested in an interview the need for India and Pakistan to calm down the volatile situation in Kashmir and offered his good offices to mediate between the two countries. Erdogan fancies himself as the pre eminent leader of the Muslim world. He has been outspoken about the treatment of Muslim minorities in other countries.

THE thorough-going economic and political crisis in which France is now enmeshed (outlined in part one of this article) has speeded up and intensified processes of change within the French Left. Older organisations, including those which once exercised hegemony on the Left, have seen their influence and membership curtailed and their strategies displaced. Their decline has been matched by the emergence of new forces with a diversity of structures, strategies and goals.

FOUR months after Donald Trump took over the presidency, America finds itself more deeply enmeshed in the conflicts that his predecessors in office had left unresolved. Trump on the campaign trail had railed against America's foreign military involvements and military alliances like NATO. He had promised that if elected, he would ensure that America will no longer play the role of a self appointed “global cop”. In his short inaugural speech, his main emphasis was putting “America first” and improving the nation's economy and crumbling infrastructure.

THE election of Emmanuel Macron as president of France has received a rapturous welcome across much of the mainstream media as well as in the boardrooms and financial markets of international capital.

THE international focus is mainly on Syria following the American cruise missile attack on the country. The western media is full of stories about the alleged atrocities being committed by the Syrian government. The world's attention has been successfully deflected from the crimes being committed in Iraq by the United States in neighbouring Iraq as it struggles to subdue the Daesh (Islamic State) in Mosul.  The Iraqi military backed by the full power of the American air force and allied militias, is still struggling to completely liberate Iraq's second biggest city.