The Great War ended on the 11th hour of November 11th, 1918, when the signed armistice came into effect.
Though this peace would signal the end of the war, it would also help lead to a series of further destruction: this time the destruction of wealth and savings.
On Thursday, we brought you an Austrian cartoon flyer that the Swiss department of Health and Social Services intends to distribute to refugees ahead of the Lucerne carnival which starts on February 4.
The flyer features a number of pictograms depicting acceptable versus unacceptable behavior. Shaking hands, for instance, is ok, while flying into a rage and open-hand slapping young children is generally frowned upon:
Last weekend, some 1,700 Germans turned out for a PEGIDA rally in Cologne to protest the wave of sexual assaults that unfolded in the city on New Year’s Eve in the town center.
PEGIDA nearly faded into obscurity early last year when then-leader Lutz Bachmann posted a picture of himself dressed as Hitler on Facebook with the caption “He’s Back”, but thanks to the 1.1 million Mid-East asylum seekers that poured across Germany’s borders in 2015, the anti-immigrant group has seen something of a resurgence over the past six or so months.
On Sunday, we learned that the man who stormed a Paris police station while waving a meat cleaver and donning a fake bomb vest once lived in a center for asylum seekers in Germany and may have ties to the wave of sexual assaults that occurred in Cologne on New Year’s Eve.
The revelations came just a day after some 1,700 people turned out for a PEGIDA rally where demonstrators waved anti-migrant banners and called for the ouster of Angela Merkel.
Angela Merkel just can’t catch a break these days.
The “Iron Chancellor” was already under intense pressure to effectively repeal Germany’s open-door policy on Mid-East refugees after attacks in Paris left 130 dead and a bomb scare in Hannover forced the evacuation of two soccer stadiums. Then, on New Year’s Eve, hundreds of men purportedly of “Arab origin” sexually assaulted women gathered in Cologne’s city center in what has been variously described as a premeditated mass attack.