Ah, Scandinavia!

Here are a few updates from Scandinavia to round out your picture of beautiful fjords, tall, blond and handsome people and a lot of reindeer:

-- Sweden's sole anti-immigration party won enough seats to be represented in parliament, and may end up joining the government, albeit only over the dead bodies of most mainline Swedish politicians. If you're wondering why people voted for this new party, here's one possible explanation:

"In Malmö, Sweden's third-largest city, almost 40% of the population is foreign; and some immigrant neighborhoods in the city have unemployment rates exceeding 60%. In Malmö's mostly Muslim Rosengard neighborhood, fire and emergency workers refuse to enter without police protection. An immigrant-fuelled crime wave affects one of every three Malmö families each year, while the number of rapes has tripled in 20 years."

-- And in Norway, the government is doing a great job of adhering to high moral standards. It recently banned any sea trials of submarines built in Germany but destined for the Israeli navy. Why? Because it considers the Israeli navy's blockade of Gaza to be illegal. If you really want to inform yourself about Norway (at the risk of making yourself ill), trying reading a short little book, The Anti-Jewish Riots in Oslo, by Eirik Eiglad.

Next time someone tells you it would be great if the United States could just be more like Scandinavia, see if he or she knows anything about this stuff. (Thanks to Daily Alert.)