Wall Street Firms Spy on Protesters In Tax-Funded Center
Pam Martens, Counterpunch

Wall Street's audacity to corrupt knows no bounds and the cooptation of government by the 1 per cent knows no limits. How else to explain $150 million of taxpayer money going to equip a government facility in lower Manhattan where Wall Street firms, serially charged with corruption, get to sit alongside the New York Police Department and spy on law abiding citizens.

According to newly unearthed documents, the planning for this high tech facility on lower Broadway dates back six years. In correspondence from 2005 that rests quietly in the Securities and Exchange Commission's archives, NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly promised Edward Forst, a Goldman Sachs' Executive Vice President at the time, that the NYPD "is committed to the development and implementation of a comprehensive security plan for Lower Manhattan...One component of the plan will be a centralized coordination center that will provide space for full-time, on site representation from Goldman Sachs and other stakeholders."

'Occupy' Goes Global: Is Another World Possible?
Francesca Rheannon

The Occupy movement is birthing a new global paradigm of democratic
governance. Can capitalism adapt?

On October 15, 2011, a tide of protests swept across 1,500 cities in 82
countries as the Occupy movement went global. The largest were in Spain,
where more than a million people filled squares in Madrid, Barcelona,
Valencia and other cities all over the country. That’s not surprising,
given that Occupy Wall Street, which sparked the global day of protests,
itself took inspiration from (among others) the massive demonstrations
of the Spanish “indignados” in May of this year.

In Santiago, Chile, 100,000 marched; Lisbon: 20,000; New York: 20,000;
Berlin: 10,000—to name only a few. Building on the protests occurring
earlier this year, from the Arab Spring to Spain, Greece, Chile, Tel
Aviv and now the USA, the Occupy movement is spreading a new culture of
participatory democracy around the globe.

Paul Goodman: Recounting Forgotten Man on the Attack
Richard B. Woodward

Even by the obstreperous standards of other New York intellectuals, Paul
Goodman (1911-72) was a special kind of troublemaker.

Anarchist, utopian, World War II pacifist, pied piper of the '60s youth
revolt, urban planner, Gestalt therapist, uncloseted bisexual and
crusader for gay rights, advocate of sustainable farming, gifted poet
and novelist, he exhibited a wayward independence that made him a party
of one in the American political arena but that also earned him the wary
respect of his peers. Susan Sontag called him one of her heroes. Alfred
Kazin and Lionel Trilling, neither one a fan of Goodman's theoretical
writings, confessed to a secret envy over his "scandalous reputation."

The Indignados of Football and the Arab Spring
Play the Game Conference Day 1
Martin Hardie

When Organizer Jens Sejer Andersen addressed the opening session of the 2012 Play The Game Conference, which is being hosted by the German Sports University in Cologne, he spoke of the fact that today is a holiday in Germany which celebrates the fall of the Berlin Wall. Play The Game he said gave asylum to those who speak the unheard of stories of global sport – the stories that the institutions and the corrupt of the sporting world would rather not hear, the stories they would rather suppress. The image he intentionally created was that the Conference was a place for the indignados of the sporting world to come together, to hear each other, to reflect, and hopefully to inspire action.