‘Trump plans to speak at Davos, by the way. He’ll probably boast about the stock market, bully and lie, as usual.’ Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images

As the Senate debates Donald Trump’s future, chief executives, financiers and politicians will descend on Davos in the Swiss Alps for their annual self-congratulatory defense of global capitalism.

The events are not unrelated. Trump is charged with abusing his power. Capitalism’s global elite is under assault for abusing its power as well: fueling inequality, fostering corruption and doing squat about climate change.

Chief executives of the largest global corporations are raking in more money and at a larger multiple of their workers’ pay than at any time in history. The world’s leading financiers are pocketing even more. The 26 richest people on Earth now own as much as the 3.8 billion who form the poorer half of the planet’s population.

Concentrated wealth on this scale invites corruption. Across the world, big money is buying off politicians to procure favors that further enlarge the wealth of those at the top, while siphoning off resources from everyone else.

Corruption makes it impossible to fight stagnant wages, climate change or any other problem facing the vast majority of the world’s population that would require some sacrifice by the rich.

Popular anger is boiling over against elites seen as irredeemably greedy, corrupt and indifferent to the plight of most people struggling to get by. The anger has fueled uprisings in Chile, Spain, Ecuador, Lebanon, Egypt and Bolivia; environmental protests in the UK, Germany, Austria, France and New Zealand; and xenophobic politics in the US, the UK, Brazil and Hungary.

Trump’s support comes largely from America’s working class whose wages haven’t risen in decades, whose jobs are less secure than ever and whose political voice has been drowned out by big money.

Although Trump has given corporations and Wall Street everything they’ve wanted and nothing has trickled down to his supporters, he has convinced those supporters he’s on their side by channeling their rage on to foreigners, immigrants, minorities and “deep state” bureaucrats....

....Trump’s impeachment articles have two counts: First, abuse of power by manipulating foreign policy for personal gain, and second, obstruction of Congress by wholesale stonewalling. House Republicans essentially used the second count to negate the first. By seizing on tiny gaps in the evidentiary record — gaps that existed because Trump refused to release any testimony or documents — they denied Trump had withheld a meeting and military aid from Ukraine in order to force investigations.

Since then, evidence, some pried loose by lawsuits, has dismantled those defenses. A batch of emails released in late December showed the Office of Management and Budget ordered a freeze on aid almost immediately after Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president. Then, in January, another tranche of emails found the Defense Department raising concerns about the freeze’s legality. Weeks later, the Government Accountability Office deemed the freeze illegal, making moot the defense that Trump hadn’t technically violated laws. Also this month, former national-security adviser John Bolton, who had refused to testify before the House, announced his willingness to testify in a Senate trial.

The most explosive revelations came from a trove of documents turned over by Lev Parnas, a small-time hustler who was recruited by Rudy Giuliani to help run Trump’s extortion scheme. Parnas’s documents — thousands of pages of texts, WhatsApp messages, notes, and letters — widen the scope of suspected misconduct in Ukraine. They show him explicitly discussing firing the U.S. ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, in return for then Ukrainian prosecutor general Yuriy Lutsenko’s supplying dirt on Biden, whom Lutsenko describes frankly and revealingly as “your opponent.”...

Neoliberalism is an economic ideology that exists within the framework of capitalism. Over four decades ago, neoliberalism become the dominant economic paradigm of global society. In this video series, we'll trace the history of neoliberalism, starting with a survey of neoliberal philosophy and research, a historical reconstruction of the movement pushing for neoliberal policy solutions, witnessing the damage that neoliberalism did to its first victims in the developing world, and then charting neoliberalism's infiltration of the political systems of the United States and the United Kingdom. Learn how neoliberalism is generating crises for humanity at an unprecedented rate.

Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Naomi Klein, author of "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate," discusses climate change and the economics of the energy industry with Pimm Fox on "Taking Stock." (Source: Bloomberg)

.... Israel’s strategy of avoiding any role for the international community aims to prevent an independent state of Palestine on the 1967 border. European recognition of this state is not only a European responsibility but a concrete way to move towards a just and lasting peace.

We are under no false expectations: the recognition of Palestine by itself is not going to end Israel’s occupation, yet it’s a crucial step that honours Palestine’s right to self-determination. It’s a step that advances the prospects of a meaningful peace process based on international law and UN resolutions, and reaffirms the relevance of the fundamental principles of the international community.

....The protests [are] the latest of the weekly demonstrations held every Saturday by the gilet jaunes (yellow vest) movement since November 2018, and which have been boosted by those opposed to the pension reforms.

“We’re suffocating with this government who wants to put us on our knees,” said Annie Moukam, a 58-year-old teacher among the protesters. “It’s out of the question that he (Macron) touches our pensions. We have worked all our lives to be able to leave with a dignified retirement,” she added.

Macron’s reforms aim to forge a single pensions system from the country’s 42 separate regimes. The various systems currently in place offer early retirement and other benefits to some public-sector workers as well as lawyers, physical therapists and even Paris Opera employees.

Critics say the reforms will in effect force millions of people to work longer for a smaller pension.

The transport unions have joined forces with the yellow vests, who accuse Macron of ruling on behalf of an urban elite while ignoring people in the provinces and the countryside, many of whom struggle to make ends meet....