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Spy On Your Workers With Google Latitude - Business Center - PC World

It will be interesting to see how Google’s new geo-locator service, called Latitude, plays with small business. Launched yesterday, Latitude transmits the user’s location back to Google for display using the service’s online maps.

The location information comes from a GPS-equipped Smart phones or by triangulation using cell towers. An opt-in service, Latitude also works with laptop computers.

The downside of Latitude is the amount of extremely personal information, such as the details of all a person’s travels that is sent to Google. I know people who simply don’t trust Google to not become evil, if the company hasn’t already. They wonder why the company offers so many free applications unless it has some way to monetize them that isn’t obvious to the user.

OpEdNews » Economic Crisis Worsens
The American economy continues its slide to new depths of brokenness and dysfunction. January 2009 was the worst January ever for the benchmark S&P 500 Index. In the last week of that same month, major corporations announced the layoffs of more than 100,000 workers. The state of New York is borrowing funds in order to pay benefits to an ever growing number of unemployed. The state of California can’t pay anyone anything, sending IOUs in lieu of tax refund checks. The other 48 states are in similarly dire straits. The federal government is broke, yet the new president is about to turn over the next round of bailout money to the financial services industry without any demand that working Americans benefit from the continued public largesse.

While Americans focus on nonsense, the worldwide economic crisis strengthens its grip. Fortunately, citizens of other countries are not going quietly into the night. The usually peaceful people of Iceland threw out their government after international banksters destroyed their economy. The French, never shy about protesting, took to the streets to show their government that they wouldn’t be silent as unemployment rises and wages fall. The rest of the world may make demands on their political leadership, but Americans are stuck in a morass of apathy and ignorance brought about by corporate media disinformation.

The US Empire… Accepting the End | KnowTheLies.com - The truth is hidden in plain view…
The US can still be an economic superpower and have much influence in the world, but the days of being a globe-girdling military power are over. The US foreign policy elite just hasn’t accepted it yet… ~ Ivan Eland

When you stop to think about it, people measure how well their lives are going not by their absolute state of being but by their situation relative to their expectations.

For example, a poor person in a developing country may be ecstatic about getting a pair of shoes for the first time; in contrast, a billionaire may commit suicide after he loses $100 million in a down market.

The same is true for nations. The American elite has enjoyed the United States’ dominant status in the world since World War II and became thoroughly drunk with US superiority in the last two decades after the demise of the Soviet Union left the country as the only superpower.

This elite is resistant to accepting the reality that a multi-polar world will soon be at hand.

This reality will arrive much sooner if the US does not retract its informal overseas empire, reduce the bloated defense budget, and act with more humility overseas.

Are We Experiencing Depression-Level Unemployment?
The official unemployment reports of the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics provide conventional “U-3? figures and various alternative measures including “U-6?. For example, as of December 2008, U-3 unemployment was 7.2 percent, while U-6 was 13.5 percent. (U-6 is actually more accurate, because it includes those who would like full-time work, but can only find part-time work, or have given up looking for work altogether).

The U-6 unemployment rate is therefore almost double the more commonly-cited U-3 figures.

But those in the know argue that the real rate is actually higher.

For example, leading economist John Williams and Paul Craig Roberts - former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and former editor of the Wall Street Journal - both say that if the unemployment rate was calculated as it was during the Great Depression, today’s figure would actually be 17.5%.

The Great Depression of the 21st Century: Collapse of the Real Economy « American Armageddon Judgement Day
Mass poverty and a Worldwide decline in living standards is the result of low wages and mass unemployment. It is the outcome of a preexisting global cheap labor economy, largely characterized by low wage assembly plants in Third World countries.

The current crisis extends the geographic contours of the cheap labor economy, leading to the impoverishment of large sectors of the population in the so-called developed countries (including the middle classes).

In the US, Canada and Western Europe, the entire industrial sector is potentially in jeopardy.

People robbing banks, murdering and suicides in this Economic Depression
Pushed past their breaking points, people are robbing banks to pay the rent, setting homes on fire — even taking their own lives.

The body count is still rising. For months on end, marked by bankruptcies, foreclosures, evictions, and layoffs, the economic meltdown has taken a heavy toll on Americans. In response, a range of extreme acts including suicide, self-inflicted injury, murder, and arson have hit the local news. By October 2008, an analysis Here of press reports nationwide indicated that an epidemic of tragedies spurred by the financial crisis had already spread from Pasadena, California, to Taunton, Massachusetts, from Roseville, Minnesota, to Ocala, Florida.

In the three months since, the pain has been migrating upwards. A growing number of the world’s rich have garnered headlines for high profile, financially-motivated suicides. Take the New Zealand-born “millionaire financier” who leapt in front of an express train in Great Britain or the “German tycoon” who did much the same in his homeland. These have, with increasing regularity, hit front pages around the world. An example would be New York-based money manager René-Thierry Magnon de la Villehuchet, who slashed his wrists after he “lost more than $1 billion of client money, including much, if not all, of his own family’s fortune.” In the end, he was yet another victim of financial swindler Bernard Madoff’s $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

Frugal Americans Hurt Economic Recovery - Presidential Politics | Political News - FOXNews.com
On Friday, the government reported Americans’ savings rate, as a percentage of after-tax incomes, rose to 2.9 percent in the last three months of 2008. That’s up sharply from 1.2 percent in the third quarter and less than 1 percent a year ago.

Like a teeter-totter, when the savings rate rises, spending falls. The latter accounts for about 70 percent of economic activity. When consumers refuse to spend, companies cut back, layoffs rise, people pinch pennies even more and the recession deepens.

The downward spiral has hammered the retail and manufacturing industries. For years, stores enjoyed boom times as shoppers splurged on TVs, fancy kitchen decor and clothes. Suddenly, frugality is in style.

Grace Case, 38, of Syracuse, N.Y., is a self-described recovering creditaholic. For 13 years, she charged it all — cars, clothes, repairs, vacations. She’d make only the minimum card payments to sustain her buying spree for her and her family, which includes her husband and two children.

But after being laid off 2 1/2 years ago from her job as an accountant, she landed another accounting job that cut her salary from $60,000 to $40,000. It was impossible to meet minimum payments on her card balances.

Now, the Cases are on a strict budget. They take “staycations,” grow their own vegetables, buy only used cars and pre-pay cell phones. Case hasn’t used a credit card in two years. And she’s saving more.

“It’s really a liberating feeling,” she said. “If you want something, you have to have the money for it.”

Many economists think the savings rate will keep rising, perhaps as high as 6 percent or more.

So where’s the money going? To savings accounts? To debt reduction?

No one knows for sure. But Robert Frank, Cornell University economist, says it doesn’t much matter.

“For economic purposes, paying off debt and saving are the same,” he said. “Incurring debt is negative savings; paying down debt is savings.”

He sees a long-term behavioral shift. He calls the spending of the past decade or more unsustainable.

“The only way people were able to (spend heavily) was by harvesting cash out of their home equity, which was just an illusion,” Frank said.

A friend just finished his Survival Retreat. Jacob salvaged an old 12 x 17 foot metal shed and located the unit in a south facing ravine. He anchored the building using the ground for the floor and painted it to match the surrounding trees. Power came from a 60 Watt Solar Charger attached to a couple of 12 Volt Deep Cycle Batteries . An old barrel stove sitting at the far end of the room provided plenty of heat. There was a hand pump attached to a 55 gallon drum for water and a shiny Composting Toilet sitting in the corner. It was finished up with a metal bunk bed against the wall and a futon on the opposite side. The place is very well hidden and sits about a half mile from his house.

The Martial Law Apparatus and Reality Of FEMA Camps | KnowTheLies.com - The truth is hidden in plain view…
There is no doubt that the government is preparing a nationwide system of detention facilities under the guise of emergency management that could be used to house large quantities of Americans during a time of civil strife. ~ Lee Rogers ~ VIDEO

Many think that it is a conspiracy theory, but it is not. It is a fact that the federal government has many facilities right now that can be used to house large numbers of political dissidents if the need arises.

During World War II, the U.S. government through an executive order by FDR forced many Japanese-Americans to move into internment camps. In 2006, George W. Bush signed legislation to preserve these camps. Why would he do this unless there was a chance that they would be used in the future? In addition, KBR the engineering and construction arm of Halliburton was recently awarded a $385 million contract to build detention facilities under the guise that they would be used to house illegal immigrants.

This news broke at a time in which outrage against illegal immigration was at an all-time high and covered extensively in the media which in essence made the announcement less controversial. There is also a great deal of anecdotal and video reports of detention facilities in many areas around the nation that have been posted on the Internet by concerned citizens. With all of this in mind, it is additionally disturbing that institutions like the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Northern Command have been incrementally moving this country into a militarized police state through a wide variety of initiatives and programs.

With the economy unraveling on a day to day basis the possibility of civil strife becomes greater and greater and the possibility of the establishment needing these types of facilities continually increases.

PASTORS on FEMA Payroll?!?… Church Organization Refuses To Say How Many! | KnowTheLies.com - The truth is hidden in plain view…
A KSLA news report confirmed that Clergy Response Teams are being trained by the federal government to “quell dissent” and pacify citizens to obey the government in the event of a declaration of martial law.

Concerned about such developments, a member of the California-based Worldwide Church of God, an organization that boasts 64,000 members in 860 congregations in about 90 countries, asked if any of the church’s pastors were involved in the FEMA program.

“The head office quickly replied hastily within an hour by telling me, “Sorry, that is privileged information”, the man states. “The reply was in big bold script like I’ve never seen before in emails. I was also a bit put off by the word “privileged.”

“I responded to the stated email and reworded my request slightly by demanding, “are there ANY of our pastors on the payroll of FEMA , YES or NO.” Their first response came after about an hour. But, it has been almost 24 hours and I am still waiting for my church’s second response to my second request,” he adds.

It seems that church groups are reticent to let slip any information concerning the issue of pastors being trained to help manage a state of martial law following the controversy stirred up by the exposure of the program in 2006.

Indeed, the pastors that took a risk by first divulging the information to us were later threatened by Homeland Security and told to keep their mouths shut.