WHERE? – AT 7:08 P.M. ET:   We've been reporting this week on the apparently serious terror threat to Europe.  Now, the most unlikely nation is signaling that it, too, takes this seriously.  From The New York Times:

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Sweden has raised its terror threat alert from low to elevated because of "a shift in activities" among Swedish-based groups that could be plotting attacks against the Scandinavian country, security officials said Friday.

The Swedish Security Service, SAPO, declined to say whether the threat involved Islamic terrorists or if it was linked to a terror plot announced this week by Western intelligence officials to wage Mumbai-style shooting sprees or other attacks in Britain, France and Germany.

COMMENT:  Sweden? SWEDEN?  I didn't even know they were awake.  I spent months on a research project trying to find a use for Sweden...and failed. 

Actually, Sweden is moving right – something we'll discuss in another post – and is starting to take life more seriously.  The country's third largest city, Malmo, has a serious problem with non-integrated Muslim immigrants.  Translated:  If they try to do anything about conditions there, they may be hit with a terror threat, or an actual attack.

Sweden was neutral in World War II, although it traded with the Nazis, and refused to join NATO during the Cold War, although it benefited from NATO's defense.  And yet its diplomats have regularly strutted around the world lecturing everyone on human rights.  Samantha Power, one of Obama's leftist henchwomen in the White House, held the Anna Lindh professorship at Harvard, named for a Swedish foreign minister who was one of the worst of the pompous lecturers.  Lindh was murdered by a knife-wielding assassin in a department store, and it was noted at the time that, despite the number of people in the store, no one stopped the murderer from escaping. 

Maybe, with this new approach to terror, Sweden is showing a maturity and sense of realism not demonstrated earlier.

October 1, 2010