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Support for the centre right Moderate Party of Mr. Reinfeldt declined to 23.2% in Sweden's 2014 parliamentary elections. A trade union leader, Mr. Lofven, led the coalition of centre Left parties including the Green Party to a narrow win over the centre right parties, with 43.7% of the vote. Votes to an antiracism and womens issues party Feminist Initiative was expected to go above the 4% needed to enter parliament and provide support to the centre left parties, yet reached 3.1%. The strain on funding for schools and other public spending, as a result of immigration support spending on Middle East refugees by the Reinfeldt government, led to a siphoning off of significant voter support to a far right anti-immigration Sweden Democrats Party which doubled its vote to 13%.

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Krugman points out that the federal tax rate for the top 1% is 34% in 2013, according to the Congressional Budget Office, because president Obama let the high end Bush tax cuts to expire. It is the number to remember says Krugman- 34. In 2008 the figure was 28.2. Under Hillary Clinton the average tax rate for the top 1% would go up by 3.4 percentage points, according to the Tax Policy Center. Some of this would help pay for the tution plan to provide access to the middle class to public universities. Under populist Trump, Krugman points to the elimination of the inheritance tax and tax rates going down substantially, and no such programs to promote the upward mobility that everyone is talking about, and no way to pay for a big infrastructure building effort for growth and jobs- upward mobility that is the focus of every candidate's election campaign including Sanders, Trump in appealing to older white working class families, Clinton, Ryan, Bush, and others in both parties.   ...

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Only refugees from war zones are eligible for asylum in Germany. People coming from the Balkan countries looking for better job opportunities are being sent back home in September 2015.

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In this WSJ op-ed, Michael Oren, Israel's former ambassador to the U.S. 2009-2013, describes the difficult moments in the Israel- U.S. relationship during the 7 years of the Obama administration. He says prime minister Netayahu made mistakes, but president Obama acted deliberately against Israel's interests. Oren says two core principles of the Israel-U.S. relationship, that of "no daylight" or no open disagreements, and "no surprises," were broken during the two terms of the Obama administration. One such moment says Oren was in May 2011, when Obama endorsed the 1967 lines with land swaps- a former Palestinian position- as basis for peace-making. M. Netanyahu was seen as lecturing the U.S. president about this the next day, according to Oren, because he was assured by the Israeli ambassador that this was not going to happen and it came as a surprise to Netanyahu.

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Pakistan's GDP growth is expected to be 4% in 2012, an increase from 2% in 2011. Foreign exchange reserves are up to $18 billion. Repayments in 2015 to the IMF will be a quarter of the payment in 2012, says Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Shaikh. Tax collections are up 24% for the first 9 months of the fiscal year 2012. Remittances from Pakistanis aborad are up 21% to $9.7 billion and exports up 5.5% over the $25 billion exports for 2011. In an WSJ op-ed, April 16, 2012, Michael Boskin,who helped negotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement for the elder President Bush, says it is time for a free trade agreement between India and Pakistan. Shaikh says he expects to see trade with India up from the insignifcant levels of $2.7 billion in 2012 to $10 billion by 2015. Boskin sees the potential for trade at $50 billion based on trade models. This would help change the landscape in the South Asian region after decades of neglect, strife and conflicts and is long overdue to benefit the billion people on the subcontinent....

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U.S. companies have decided to wait out the conflict in Libya till a clear picture emerges. Mufson gives a good account of the history of Libya's tumultuous relationships with western oil companies over 3 decades. Nason Saleri, former head of reservoir management at Saudi Aramco, now head of Houston based Quantum Reservoir Impact, says oil companies have decided not to get involved until the situation stabilizes. Oil companies such as ConocoPhillips attended a meeting of the U.S.-Libya Business Council where representatives of the Benghazi based coalition presented. Ali Tarhouni, leading economic policymaker for the Benghazi coalition says oil contracts will be honored. Saleri says western oil companies are preparing for the time when a new government takes charge in Libya after the end of the Ghadafi regime. His view is that once things settle down and a new government is in charge he sees the potential of enhancing the percentage of oil from known reservoirs. The reserves are there in Libya to stabilize production to earlier levels and to increase it says Saleri....

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People from Denmark are known for fluency in English, and are some of the best non-native speakers of the English language. About 38 percent of courses at Danish universities are in English. Yet debate is shifting to the inflluence of immigrants in society as "pizza-Dansk" or "pizza-Danish" is spoken by Middle East immigrants at pizzerias. One Danish member of parliament from the DF Party is suggesting the government prevent the spread of "pizza-Dansk" and help preserve the Danish language spoken by 6 million people in the country. It is reflection of the anti-immigrant mood in Sweden, Denmark and other European countries, where parliamentary elections have given parties opposed to immigration a larger number of seats.

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Karen Elliott House, Pulitzer prize winning journalist and expert reporting from Saudi Arabia, in 2007. You can follow her reports in the Elliott House group and link.

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The attack against the ill trained and ill equiped Pakistan poilce forces in the Punjab and across the country. It also resembles the attacks against police forces and suicide bombings by insurgents in Iraq. The police force of 167,000 recruits the same way as it did during the times of the British rule, which is to take poorly educated recruits and train them to protect the ruling elites and maintain order. THe Punjab police officer in charge of logistics says the force has only 80% of the weapons needed for the 167,000 men. Because police officers take bribes routinely they are also not like by the public, whereas the terrorists act like pious Muslims and mix with the people. The terrorists by contrast are very well equiped and trained making the police no match for them. Making things worse the terrorist groups that were supported by the Inter Services Intelligence or ISI of Pakistan and encouraged to operate against India are now coordinating actions in Pakistan with the Taliban. These terrorists have even more training and equipment than the Taliban, operating in places like Kashmir fighting the Indian military....

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The survival of the failed Kim regime has cost millions of lives for the people of North Korea. Yet the international politics of the countries has focussed on other issues: the South Koreans wanted to avoid the burden of taking on the people of North Korea as West Germans did for the East Germans after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, China wanted to avoid a reunified pro-western neighbor to the south and the potential influx of refugees across the border, Japan and the U.S. were focussed on the nuclear threat from N. Korea. The result is a failed state and an uncertain future for the people of North Korea.

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How Petraeus won support in Congress and with public opinion, while at the same time changing the nature of the effort in Iraq. His struggles with General Fallon even though he reported directly to President Bush, who wished to disengage too quickly to make adifference in the failing effort to bring security. The first effort was to bring security with the surge in troops, then to build the Iraqi forces. To keep public opinion informed about tangible achievements of modest goals such as security for ordinary Iraqis, and fewer American casualties, rather than some beacon of democracy goal for the Middle East. A detailed account by the Washington Post of how this played out in the words of key players like Petraeus, Fallon, Ambassador Crocker and others, and what it may tell one about the lessons for another very different effort in a rural mountainous backward country like Afghanistan. One that emerges is to set modest goals like security, try new approaches but with a clear eye on the field, put in younger leaders who can bing flexibility and imagination and intellect, but disengage on favorable terms that achieves these modest objectives....