00:26 - SPOT THE CONNECTION: 

Mankind has passed some significant milestones recently, which symbolise a changing world:

- During the second half of last year, China´s merchandise exports exceeded America´s.

- In the first three months this year, Toyota became the world´s biggest carmaker, pushing General Motors down to second place, after 76 years in first place.

- Last year, the emerging economies´ share of world GDP was bigger than the developed countries´ share.

- The World Bank recently estimated that the number of people in extreme poverty dropped below one billion.

- For the first time ever, the urban population worldwide is bigger than the rural.

And now, in Foreign Policy, I just learned about another one:

- For the first time, more people worldwide work in the service sector than in agriculture (the biggest employer the last 10,000 years).

20:52 - ADVICE FOR THE NEW PRESIDENT: 

We now know that Nicolas Sarkozy will be France´s next president. He has promised a break with the past. I am not so sure. But if he wants to show that he is serious, he could start by not helping Jacques Chirac to escape investigations and prosecutions for corruption cases when his presidential immunity is lifted.

By the way, how is Mr Chirac now going to pay for all the fruit? As The Economist wrote four years ago:

"Jacques Chirac, France´s president, is clearly not a man who worries too much about the price of vegetables. This month an investigating magistrate in Paris announced an inquiry into how Mr Chirac and his wife managed to spend over euro2.1m on groceries from 1987-95, during his long spell as mayor of Paris before he became head of state. Newspapers calculate that he and his wife Bernadette munched up fruit and vegetables worth up to euro150 ($177) a day, despite having an entirely separate budget for entertainment. Auditors think something smells a bit off. They say that in several instances receipts have plainly been falsified. In one case, a bill of FFr5,000 (then worth $1,000) for foie gras is said to have been doctored by someone to FFr15,000, by adding the figure one at a later date.

Given his own rather cavalier attitude to the cost of food, it is perhaps unsurprising that Mr Chirac is unmoved by pleas to reform the European Union´s notorious common agricultural policy (CAP). Why should the fact that the CAP adds euro600 a year to the food bills of the average European family weigh heavily with a man who can eat his way through that amount, in fruit and veg alone, in just four days?"

11:07 - SHOULD I CELEBRATE OR BE LOW?: 

Here is my definition of "mixed feelings":

No matter who wins the election tomorrow, France will get an interventionist president who talks about "protecting" the French against globalisation.

On the other hand, it will no longer be Jacques Chirac.

Speaking of Chirac, the man who gave European protectionism an arrogant face, and famously said that liberalism is as horrible as communism, he´s really been doing this for a while, explains Stephan Richter:

"Jacques Chirac first served in a ministerial office as far back as 1967. As a matter of fact, Mr. Chirac´s 39 years in office actually equals the median age of France´s entire population."

And speaking of Chirac again, here are my two favourite slogans for him, from the last presidential election:

"Vote for me, or I will go to jail"

- An anonomous jester brought attention to the president´s immunity against corruption charges that he would have faced.

"Vote for the idiot, not for the fascist!"

- In the second round, against Le Pen, when even I would have voted for Chirac.

10:02 - PLUS ÇA CHANGE: 

DN bekräftar att regeringen utser Bildts gamle medarbetare Jonas Hafström till USA-ambassadör (ej online). Därmed uppfyller alliansen vallöftet att ställa den svenska utnämningspolitiken på huvudet: Tillsättningarna sker visserligen fortfarande slutet, utan att posterna utannonseras, utan att meriter granskas öppet - men numera utses borgerliga och inte socialdemokrater.

(Apropå att världen är liten är detta inlägg från Politikerbloggen helt obetalbart.)

00:28 - 74,000 EVERY DAY, EVERY WEEK, EVERY MONTH: 

In case you missed this milestone in human development (I was abroad at the time):

For the first time since the World Bank started measuring poverty, the number of people in extreme poverty around the world is now fewer than 1 billion. This is after five years (1999-2004) when poverty was reduced by 135 million people - 74,000 a day.

This update means that extreme poverty in developing countries has been reduced from 40.3% to 18.4% between 1981 and 2004, and in absolute numbers it has been reduced from 1,479 million to 985 million. Almost half a billion fewer are poor, even though world population increased by almost 2 billion during the same time!

Most impressive is East Asia, where extreme poverty was reduced from 58% to 9% during these 23 years.

One implication is that the world will surpass the Millennium Development Goal to halve the global rate of extreme poverty 1990-2015. 1990 the figure was 29%. According to present trends it will be 12% in 2012.

21:55 - FREE MONEM AS WELL: 

Interestingly, one prominent member of the Muslim Brotherhood has spoken out in favour of the imprisoned blogger Kareem. Abdel-Monem Mahmoud has said that he dislikes Kareem´s criticism of Islam and religion, but that he should have the right to have and express his own opinions, which has led to angry reactions from the Brotherhood.

Monem is a young and more liberal member of the group, and the kind of person who could modernise political Islam. But he can´t do that from where he is now. He has been arrested by Egyptian authorities when he tried to leave Egypt to report on the state of freedom in Arab countries for the TV channel El Hiwar.

That´s also worth some attention on Press Freedom Day.

21:43 - FRÅGA ÄVEN TILL ANDERS BORG OCH PER SCHLINGMANN: 

Och den blir faktiskt exakt densamma som frågan till Mona Sahlin nedan, med anledning av Borgs och Schlingmann formulering i denna Aftonbladetartikel:

"Den politik som nu förs har siktet inställt mot att alla som vill och kan ska få arbeta."

(Tack Richard)

16:29 - FRÅGA TILL MONA SAHLIN: 

I socialdemokraternas vårbudgetmotion står det: "Alla som vill och kan ska få ett arbete".

Man undrar varför det staplas verb. Varför räcker det inte med "kan"?

Betyder tillägget "vill" att den som är fullt kapabel att arbeta ska ha rätt att leva på andras bekostnad om hon inte "vill" arbeta?

16:15 - DAGENS E-POST: 

David mailar:

"Tror du verkligen att Royal bara hittade på det? Tror du inte att hon antagligen tänker på exempelvis Toyota i Mölndal och Direktchark i Göteborg som båda gått ner tilll 35 timmar - inte 32 - med bibehållen lön. Min lite välvilligare gissning är att hon antingen blivit felunderrättad eller blev osäker på detaljerna och skarvade en aning.

Rent principiellt tycker jag att folk har en tröttsam tendens att välja välvilliga tolkningar i bedömningen av meningsfränder, men konsekvent mindre välvilliga när det gäller meningsmotståndare, vilket bidrar till den onödiga demonisering som finns i den politiska debatten, och den här demoniseringen är, menar jag, det största hindret för en vettig debatt."

Jag håller med till hundra procent om denna problembeskrivning, skäms en gnutta samt övergår till att hävda att Royal helt enkelt hade fel, och att det mycket väl kan bero på att hon fått felaktig information eller mindes fel.

13:12 - THE MEDIUM IS NOT THE MESSAGE: 

Press Freedom Day should really be Freedom of Speech Day. You have a right to express your views even though you don´t own a printing press. It´s important to say this now that governments, from China to Cuba try to take control of the new electronic media.

I never linked to it, because I took off to Amsterdam straight after the worldwide Free Kareem rallies on April 27th, but here is information, pictures and videos from our demonstrations, where MPs and students supported the Egyptian blogger´s right to express his views.

23:20 - THE GOLDEN AGE IS NOW: 

Martin Wolf defines our era in Financial Times today:

"Posterity will regard the economic performance we are now witnessing as a golden age. It will also know, although we do not, how long this era lasts. That will depend on decisions now taken. Such a period offers opportunities. Posterity will blame those who fail to seize them."

And if you don´t believe him, look at his graph:

21:45 - SÉGOLÈNE ROYAL´S MOTHER TALKED, BUT SHE DIDN´T LISTEN: 

In the presidential debate (on CNN right now) Ségolène Royal just defended the 35-hour by saying that she knows about many Swedish companies in the hi-tech sector with a 32-hour week, and normal pay. Really? I´d be very interested in hearing her name a few company names. I think I know a bit about Swedish enterprise, perhaps even more than Royal, and I have yet to learn about a single example. 

My guess is that she just made it up. Royal has said that she was taught about honesty from her parents. I suspect that she is a bad learner.

19:13 - THOUGHTS ON FASCISM: 

The Putin-loyal street thugs who attacked the Estonian Embassy and the Swedish Ambassador in Moscow today claim that the Soviet Union saved Estonia from fascism, and are angry that the Estonians aren´t grateful.

Ignore for one moment that a) it was Stalin who started the second world war in alliance with Hitler (the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact), that b) the Soviet Union supplied the German military machine with the oil and food it needed, that c) it was the Soviet Union that attacked the independent Estonia in 1939, and d) that "liberation" in 1944 meant almost half a century of occupation.

If we ignore all of this, here is the interesting question: If they are so proud of having liberated Estonia from fascism, why are they so eager to introduce it at home?

00:31 - INTERNATIONAL POLL: GLOBALISATION IS GOOD: 

A big international poll on attitudes to globalisation has just been published. WorldPublicOpinion.org and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs have interviewed 23 000 people in 18 countries and in Palestine, countries representing more than half of the world´s population. The results confirm earlier results:

- Believe it or not, but globalisation is very popular. In every single country pluralities say that international trade and "globalization, especially increasing connections of our economy with others around the world" is good for their country, and in almost all of them they say it´s good for their own standard of living.

On average, 61 percent think that globalisation is mostly good and 23 percent think it´s mostly bad. As the report concludes: "Support for globalization is remarkably strong throughout the world."

- Anti-globalisation is a rich man´s club. Globalisation and international trade is the least popular in the richest countries, the US and France (where 35 and 42 percent said that globalisation was bad). Globalisation is the most popular in countries like China, South Korea and Israel. And in Iran 63 percent think that globalisation is mostly good.

- At the same time, people everywhere want environmental and labour standards in trade agreements, which would make it more difficult for the poorest countries to compete.

00:16 - BREAKFASTS WITH CROOK: 

Martin Wolf is a good reason to read Financial Times on Wednesdays. Now that their new chief Washington commentator has been presented, I have an equally big reason to read it on Thursdays. Clive Crook, formerly deputy editor of The Economist, is one of the most intelligent and funny journalists around. In his first FT column he writes about Barack Obama:

"If he fails, it will not be because he is black and it will not be because he is vague about policy. Is this too obvious to need saying? Those are his strengths."

10:00 - DAGENS HAIKU: 

Ko

Okunnig

Om att hon kan rymma

Det tycks ge sinnesro

- Haiku Moderne

09:19 - TOMORROW: WORLDWIDE RALLIES: 

In a dozen cities, from Ottawa to Athens, we will demonstrate peacefully for free speech outside Egypt´s embassies. Here is the list of events. I hope that you can take at least five minutes from your busy schedule for every year in prison that the 22-year old blogger Kareem Amer has been sentenced to for having expressed democratic and secular views.

Here is the Stockholm event:

27 April, 12.00

The Egyptian Embassy, Strandvägen 35

Speakers: Henrik Alexandersson, Stefan Geens, Johan Norberg, Mattias Svensson, Henrik von Sydow, Jonas Virdalm.

23:16 - THE END OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION?: 

One of my readers, Pär, makes an interesting prediction. Sverigedemokraterna´s present and future gains might start a new discussion about changing teh Swedish parliament´s proportional representation to a British single-seats system, where each district sends just one MP.

He´s got a point, we have a strange situation where tiny parties get enormous influence over the outcome. Now imagine that a xenophobic party will have that control after 2010, which is not at all unlikely. (And it´s obvious that the social democrats would like to escape the dependence on the greens and the left.) So I think that we will see this debate.

I am also convinced that Sverigedemokraterna would get tons of sympathy and votes if Swedish politicians changed our electoral system just to keep them out.

16:36 - TILL EFTERVÄRLDEN: SÅ NI FÖRSTÅR VAD VI TÄNKTE PÅ: 

I dag fick vi veta att människan kanske inte är ensam i universum. Så här ser dagens löpsedlar ut:

"Unga kvinnor: Därför har vi sex med tjejkompisar"

- Expressen

"Kungen skriver själv om prostatacancer"

- Aftonbladet

16:06 - ORGANISATIONER HAR RÄTTIGHETER, INTE INDIVIDER: 

I det nya avtalet har Byggnads lyckats förbjuda byggarbetare som inte är med i facket från att sköta sina löneförhandlingar själva. Sådan öppen diskriminering kan bara kommenteras på ett sätt:

"Det är oacceptabelt... Att hindra två parter som är överens om att teckna ett avtal, det är... ja, man saknar nästan ord."

Det var klarspråk från ingen mindre än Wanja Lundby-Wedin. Men naturligtvis bara när det handlade om Svenskt Näringslivs invändningar mot avtalet mellan Handels och Svensk Handel förra månaden.

(Tack Pär)

11:58 - STRAIGHT TALK FROM MCCAIN: 

The only time I´ve been to the American Congress was when the Senate debated the horrible Farm Bill in 2002. And ever since, I´ve been a closet-fan of John McCain. He was the only one who consistently attacked protectionists and special interests in both parties, and he did it with free trade principles, facts and humour.

His embarassing attempt to make friends with the Christian Right that he used to attack is disappointing, but his Financial Times article today shows that he still has the right economic principles, promising free trade, deregulation, low taxes and less spending if he became the president.

For example, he worries about the right things:

"It should alarm Americans that a recent study of economic freedom ranked the US only fourth in the world." (Others would be fairly happy with a fourth position...)

An excellent analysis of terms like generosity and tight budgets:

"When the government´s budget is tighter, family budgets, corporate research budgets and the investment plans of small businesses will not have to be."

And a perfect promise:

"I would veto every single pork-barrel bill." (Bush hasn´t vetoed a single one...)

11:44 - ALL YOU CAN EAT: 

Svenska Dagbladet reports that one tenth of all the food bought in Sweden is not eaten, but thrown away. They present it as a horrible waste in modern society, but I don´t think it sounds like very much, since about half of that are bone, shell, skin, peel and other inedible parts.

Compare that to developing countries, where about half of all the food produced is typically wasted because of a lack of modern transportation, refrigirators and packaging.

16:54 - DAGENS PROGNOS: 

Efter denna retuschering signerad Daniel Björk kommer anti-väskfraktionen inte att hämta sig. (Tack Mattias)

12:01 - ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE: 

MEMRI is an important organisation that gives the rest of the world a chance to follow the media in Arab countries. Programs subtitled in English give us a glimpse of Arab and Persian debates. Often it´s depressing and reveals authoritarian attitudes and a lack of intellectual openness, but sometimes it´s also incredibly encouraging.

The latter is the case with this clip from the eloquent Bahraini intellectual Dhiyaa Al-Musawi on Abu Dhabi TV. You have to see it. (Thanks Fredrik)

11:48 - EMAIL OF THE DAY: 

Thomas writes:

"My view on your Africa post is that if Nigeria has a literacy rate of 57% but the same GDP as a Finland of 10% literacy rate, it seems to imply that most of the literacy in Nigeria is wasted by a lack of economic freedom... Nigeria, though buoyed by oil, still is less economically free than the sub-Saharan African average according to the Index of Economic Freedom 2007."

I agree, and literacy is not the only thing Nigeria´s corrupt policies have wasted. Since the 1970s, the Nigerian government made almost $300 billion from oil exports. And during the same time, Nigeria grew poorer! Having human and capital resources don´t help if you don´t have the freedom to make use of them.

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