Floods wreak havoc across central Europe

4,000 Troops Deployed To Help As Waters Continue To Rise

BERLIN — Germany dispatched thousands of soldiers Tuesday to help cities and towns cope with flooding from the rain-soaked Danube and other southern rivers – reinforcements that came a day after the Bavarian city of Passau saw its worst flooding since 1501.

The death toll rose to at least 10, including seven in the neighboring Czech Republic, where a man was found dead in the water in eastern Bohemia. Another nine people have been reported missing in the floods that have also swept through Austria and Switzerland.

Chancellor Angela Merkel toured flooded German regions, pledging at least 50 million euros ($65 million) in immediate federal help and holding out the possibility for more. She told reporters in Passau, a city of 50,000 on the Austrian border, that the damage looked even worse than during the massive flooding that hit central Europe in 2002.

Some 4,000 German soldiers were called in as well as more than 2,000 federal disaster workers and 600 federal police to sandbag areas in danger of flooding and provide other assistance. Water levels were still rising in major rivers such as the Danube and Elbe as well as tributaries.

In the Czech Republic, authorities evacuated animals from the Prague zoo and closed a major bridge in the capital on Tuesday.

The rain in Prague has halted but the Vltava river that runs through the city and flows into the Elbe was still raging, with currents and water levels far exceeding the norm. The famous Charles Bridge was closed as a precaution.

On the outskirts of Prague, a major Staropramen beer brewery on the river bank was closed as a protective measure – as were several major chemical factories. One of them – Spolana – released dangerous toxic chemicals into the Elbe during the devastating floods of 2002.

Authorities said the level of the Vltava in Prague has now begun to drop but excess water was expected to soon hit the Elba river, into which it flows downstream.

This year's spike in water levels has been far less than in 2002 so far, but still forced the Prague Zoo to evacuate animals after the lower side of the park was submerged and will once again need major reconstruction.

Passau, a city built around the intersection of the Danube, the Inn and the Ilz rivers, has been one of the worst hit by the flooding in central Europe.

After hitting the highest level in more than 500 years in Passau on Monday, the floodwaters there had dropped by an estimated 2.5 meters (nearly 8 feet) Tuesday but cities downstream like Regensburg were bracing for the water's arrival.

Peak floodwaters coursing out of the Czech Republic were expected to hit Dresden, capital of the German province of Saxony, along the Elbe in three to four days. Already, the German cities of Pirna and Meissen were reporting flooding in their historic centers.

Cities and towns in the German states of Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia and Brandenburg were also hit with flooding.

source : huffington post

Immortal Technique Speaks On Monsanto

The revolution we need is a revolution against the corporation

As we see our present-day society being utterly destroyed by corporations -- banking, agriculture, pharmaceutical, etc. -- we must get serious about what needs to happen to change the structure of corporations so that they serve humanity rather than destroying humanity.

Here are some suggestions worth considering:

#1) Strip away corporate personhood protections.

#2) Deny all patents on seeds, genes and medicines. Such things should belong to everyone, not to a monopolistic few. This would also take the profit out of medicine, meaning drug companies would no longer have a financial incentive to fabricate and promote fictitious diseases.

#3) Ban all corporate lobbying and campaign contributions. No corporation should have access to lawmakers, period. Lawmakers should serve the people who elected them and no one else.

#4) Disband all corporations that currently function as a danger to humanity. This would include, of course, Monsanto, Merck and many others. Who decides this? Whoever wins the revolution, of course. (Isn't that always the case?)

#5) Nationalize the Federal Reserve and make it "America's bank" so that Fed money is owned by the People and benefits the People instead of globalist banks.

#6) Halt the "revolving door" where government regulators take high-paying jobs at the very corporations they've been regulating. Once a person works in an influential position for a government regulator, they should be forever restricted from working for the industry they once regulated.

#7) End "Free Speech rights" for corporations. Corporations are not people. They have no God-given rights. By ending this fabricated "right," we could institute strict advertising limits that would prevent corporations from advertising harmful products to children and adults.

Stop supporting evil

The ultimate solution, of course, is a consumer solution: Stop purchasing products from evil corporations! This means you need to stop buying non-organic corn products such as breakfast cereals, corn tortillas, and corn snack chips.

Stop buying lawn pesticide chemicals. Stop buying medications. Stop buying toxic perfumes, cosmetics and personal care products. Stop buying soda pop and aspartame!

YOU help shift the world in a more positive direction by shifting your own personal purchasing habits. And that's something you can control right now, today, starting with the very next dollar you spend at the store.

BUY ORGANIC, non-GMO products wherever possible. You'll be changing the world one purchase at a time. That's a genuine, practical way to diminish the power of evil corporations starting right now.

Source : Natural News

World’s 100 Richest earned enough in 2012 to End Global Poverty 4 Times over

The world's 100 richest people earned a stunning total of $240 billion in 2012 – enough money to end extreme poverty worldwide four times over, Oxfam has revealed, adding that the global economic crisis is further enriching the super-rich.

“The richest 1 percent has increased its income by 60 percent in the last 20 years with the financial crisis accelerating rather than slowing the process,” while the income of the top 0.01 percent has seen even greater growth, a new Oxfam report said.

For example, the luxury goods market has seen double-digit growth every year since the crisis hit, the report stated. And while the world's 100 richest people earned $240 billion last year, people in “extreme poverty” lived on less than $1.25 a day.

Oxfam is a leading international philanthropy organization. Its new report, ‘The Cost of Inequality: How Wealth and Income Extremes Hurt us All,’ argues that the extreme concentration of wealth actually hinders the world’s ability to reduce poverty.

The report was published before the World Economic Forum in Davos next week, and calls on world leaders to “end extreme wealth by 2025, and reverse the rapid increase in inequality seen in the majority of countries in the last 20 years.”

Oxfam's report argues that extreme wealth is unethical, economically inefficient, politically corrosive, socially divisive and environmentally destructive.

The report proposes a new global deal to world leaders to curb extreme poverty to 1990s levels by:

- closing tax havens, yielding $189bn in additional tax revenues

- reversing regressive forms of taxation

- introducing a global minimum corporation tax rate

- boosting wages proportional to capital returns

- increasing investment in free public services

The problem is a global one, Oxfam said: “In the UK inequality is rapidly returning to levels not seen since the time of Charles Dickens. In China the top 10 percent now take home nearly 60 percent of the income. Chinese inequality levels are now similar to those in South Africa, which is now the most unequal country on Earth and significantly more [inequality] than at the end of apartheid.”

In the US, the richest 1 percent's share of income has doubled since 1980 from 10 to 20 percent, according to the report. For the top 0.01 percent, their share of national income quadrupled, reaching levels never seen before.

“We can no longer pretend that the creation of wealth for a few will inevitably benefit the many – too often the reverse is true,” Executive Director of Oxfam International Jeremy Hobbs said.

Hobbs explained that concentration of wealth in the hands of the top few minimizes economic activity, making it harder for others to participate: “From tax havens to weak employment laws, the richest benefit from a global economic system which is rigged in their favor.”

The report highlights that even politics has become controlled by the super-wealthy, which leads to policies “benefitting the richest few and not the poor majority, even in democracies.”

“It is time our leaders reformed the system so that it works in the interests of the whole of humanity rather than a global elite,” the report said.

The four-day World Economic Forum will be held in Davos starting next Wednesday. World financial leaders will gather for an annual meeting that will focus on reviving the global economy, the eurozone crisis and the conflicts in Syria and Mali.
Source: RT