In "The Divine Comedy", Dante abjures "Leave all sorrow, you who enter", which is what the world would like to recommend to Israel, so immense is the pain of the exactions committed against its people. How can we prevent a relentless law of Talion from dragging the entire Middle East into an irreversible conflagration that the extremists are seeking? 

One of the options now on the table is undeniably to strike again at Iran's nuclear sites, which are the only real threat to Israel's survival, the Syrian installations having already been destroyed in the past. 

However, these events raise questions about the effectiveness of Western sanctions. Ever since Thomas Jefferson imposed an embargo on the British in 1807, we have known that sanctions have the opposite effect to that intended. Closer to home, Iran has been under sanctions since 1979, yet its influence has not diminished. Today, the weight of Russia, which has also been under sanctions for nearly two years, is dragging the world into a multilateralist spiral that is calling into question the balances that have prevailed until now. The proliferation of sanctions triggered by the invasion of Ukraine has not yet had any effect on the course of the war, but it is causing the Western economy to suffer. A number of countries are turning to Russia for protection, while the West is being forced to turn in on itself. 

In practice, sanctions only serve to unify the nations and peoples that are subject to them. 

In the new balance that is taking shape, there is little chance of using sanctions to make countries with huge reserves bend, and an ageing UN with rules that are no longer appropriate will not succeed either. 

Contradictory injunctions and comminatory chin wagging no longer frighten anyone. Emmanuel Macron has had bitter experience of this in West Africa. 

On the commodities front, confusion continues to reign. Inflation, falling growth and skyrocketing interest rates have taken their toll on an economy recovering from a devastating pandemic. Cotton is no exception to the rule; demand is insufficient, squeezed between the fear of a financial crisis, the ever-increasing share of food and housing in household budgets and the war that is on everyone's mind. 

The ICE has fallen substantially over the past week as speculators have liquidated their 'long' positions and decided to sell the market. However, the fall could have been much greater had it not been for the spinning mills, which massively fixed the prices of their contracts to take advantage of the fall in prices. 

Chartist analysis suggests further declines in the weeks ahead, even if demand picks up in some markets, notably China, where major purchases are likely to be announced soon. India is in a wait-and-see mode, with a reduced crop expected and a desire on the part of the authorities in this election year to satisfy growers with high prices supported by the government. 

For Africa, the big shadow is the worrying situation of the industry in Bangladesh, which far from operating at full capacity continues to send out worrying signals. When more than 50% of African crops are imported into Bangladesh, it's time to sound the alarm and for cotton companies to draw up an action plan for the coming seasons. 

There is now an urgent need to question the way in which commodity markets operate, which drive prices while denying access to those who need it most...