January 2021 – Lefticon

President Biden Re-enters the Paris Agreement.

On January 20, 2021, the first day of his presidency, President Biden signed an executive order indicating acceptance by the United States of the Paris Agreement, also known as the Paris Accord and the Paris Climate Agreement:

ACCEPTANCE ON BEHALF OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

I, Joseph R. Biden Jr., President of the United States of America, having seen and considered the Paris Agreement, done at Paris on December 12, 2015, do hereby accept the said Agreement and every article and clause thereof on behalf of the United States of America.

Done at Washington this 20th day of January, 2021.

JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.

This resumes our participation in this agreement, to which President Obama had agreed and from which President Trump had withdrawn. If the Earth could breathe, it would be breathing a long sigh of relief. It was like getting another stay of execution, or even a pardon, if this action and other policies by President Biden and progressive Democrats finally succeed in bringing an end to climate change.

Note how our President specified his acceptance of every article and clause of the agreement. He obviously could not have read and digested the agreement that day. This gives us a hint as to why he spent so much time in his basement during the presidential campaign while his opponent was doing 2-3 rallies a day. He was researching and composing executive orders!

President Joe Biden is the kind of new-normal leadership we need to guide us into the Great Reset.

From Lefticon:

Paris Climate Agreement – a climate change agreement between 190 nations initiated in 2015.

Also called the Paris Agreement, Paris Accord, and the Accord de Paris, the Paris Climate Agreement was initiated by consensus in 2015, ratified by 190 virtue-signaling national signatories (out of 197), and scheduled to be in full effect by 2020. Called an “executive agreement” rather than a treaty, it derives its authority from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a treaty in effect since 1992. The United States entered under President Obama, left under Trump, and re-entered the agreement under Biden.

The Paris Agreement deals with climate change by restricting greenhouse gases and fossil fuel consumption in industrialized nations. It set a specific limit for global warming of less than 2 °C (preferably 1.5°C) above the pre-industrialization average global temperature levels, using the earliest recorded levels in 1880 as the baseline.

The selection of the 1880 baseline is challenged by the fact that pre-industrialization temperature levels are not only unknown but had wide fluctuations during ice ages and warm periods, and the selection of 1880 as pre-industrial was a convenient but disputable choice. The world in 1880 was hardly pre-industrial. It was a full century after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, a century when anti-pollution measures were unheard-of, so the planet would have had around a hundred years of carbon-fueled prewarming at the time of its arbitrary “pre-industrial” temperature.

Despite these flaws, the signatories agreed that in 2018, each country will set its own carbon reduction goals, to be called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and increase their NDCs every five years thereafter. There are no enforcement mechanisms or penalties other than “reduced standing” of the delinquent nations in the international community.

Annual financing of $100 billion a year until 2025 would be obtained from developed countries and transferred to undeveloped countries, specifically Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Small Island Developing States (SIDS), and African States, to help them adapt to climate change and mitigate the effects thereof. The Green Climate Fund (GCF) was established by the UNFCCC for that specific purpose. It ostensibly advances the Marxian principle of wealth redistribution from each according to their ability to each according to their need—or more specifically in this case, from the taxpayers of rich countries to the poor people of poor countries.

However, most of the transferred funds will be in the form of loans. The GCF engages with the private sector to offer “a wide range of financial products including grants, concessional loans, subordinated debt, equity, and guarantees.” Whether grants or loans, this kind of arrangement assures that the greatest benefit will be in transfer fees and interest to the banks and hedge funds transferring or loaning the funds, and the services of the local oligarchs and politicians facilitating the transfers at the receiving end.

New normal – a catchy phrase used to describe the societal and economic changes that remain after an economic, sociopolitical, or natural crisis.

This term has been used to describe the changes in individual privacy and freedom following the events of September 11, 2001; the lasting economic changes following the financial crisis of 2008 and the global recession which followed; and now the changes following the coronavirus pandemic of 2019-21 and the socially engineered civil unrest featuring Black Lives Matter (BLM) and antifa.

At the time of this writing, many of the excessive measures to control a viral “pandemic” and the financial consequences have become the new normal. On a personal level, they include but are not limited to social distancing, self-isolation, use of hand sanitizers, hand washing, the wearing of face masks, small-business closures, unemployment, restricted travel, working at home, online schooling, and income subsidies. Many of these measures are enforced at the municipal, county, and state levels, with penalties for violations. The only exemptions are those granted to members of Black Lives Matter and antifa for the essential political activity of participating in mass protests against white supremacism, systemic racism, and fascism.

The global elites are planning to incorporate all the changes triggered by Covid-19 and BLM into another new normal, a Fourth Industrial Revolution featuring an ambitious Great Reset of the entire world social-economical-political system, which will fulfill everyone’s wish for sustainability, social justice, and world governance.

Harriet Tubman on the $20 Bill: Biden Administration Says It’s Resuming the Effort

This was reported on January 28, 2021 by Alexa Mikhail in Government Executive:

The White House will resume the Obama-era push to put Harriet Tubman’s image on the $20 bill, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday.

“The Treasury Department is taking steps to resume efforts to put Harriet Tubman on the front of the new $20 notes,” Psaki said in response to a reporter’s question during the daily briefing. “It’s important that our … money reflects the history and diversity of our country and Harriet Tubman’s image gracing the new $20 note would certainly reflect that.”

Harriet Tubman, born into slavery, was a 19th-century abolitionist and “conductor” of the Underground Railroad, risking her life to rescue dozens of enslaved people and bring them to freedom after she escaped herself. Tubman learned the escape houses and secret routes throughout the Underground Railroad, making her an asset to the Union military during the Civil War, according to the National Women’s History Museum. Tubman also joined the fight for women’s suffrage after the Civil War ended.

In 2016, the Obama administration set out to redesign the $20 bill, replacing Andrew Jackson, who enslaved people and both fought Native Americans and forced them to move from their land. The Obama administration was hoping for a release of the new bill in 2020 to mark the centennial anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote, a right that could at that point be exercised mainly by White women.

The project to get Tubman represented on the currency was delayed during the Trump administration.

It is about time we got some new faces on our currency. I’m sure most progressive Americans would agree. How nice it will be to see the faces of some lovely Black women instead of the old white males who deface our currency today.

Harriet Tubman is a good start. Her accomplishments were all positive as compared with the slave owner and white supremacist Jackson whose racism also extended to indigenous people and Hispanics. Jackson enslaved Blacks while Tubman worked to free them.

Besides, Jackson was a populist—for the people and against the bankers—and a favorite of Donald Trump.

Black Lives Matter movement nominated for Nobel peace prize

This was reported yesterday by Martin Belam in the Guardian:

The Black Lives Matter movement has been nominated for the 2021 Nobel peace prize for the way its call for systemic change has spread around the world.

In his nomination papers, the Norwegian MP Petter Eide said the movement had forced countries outside the US to grapple with racism within their own societies.

“I find that one of the key challenges we have seen in America, but also in Europe and Asia, is the kind of increasing conflict based on inequality,” Eide said. “Black Lives Matter has become a very important worldwide movement to fight racial injustice.

“They have had a tremendous achievement in raising global awareness and consciousness about racial injustice.”

Eide, who has previously nominated human rights activists from Russia and China for the prize, said one other thing that impressed him about the Black Lives Matter movement was the way “they have been able to mobilise people from all groups of society, not just African-Americans, not just oppressed people, it has been a broad movement, in a way which has been different from their predecessors.” […]

Eide, however, said he didn’t want his nomination for Black Lives Matter to be seen as a comment on domestic US politics. And he dismissed criticism from rightwing voices that the group had been behind violence in US cities. “Studies have shown that most of the demonstrations organised by Black Lives Matter have been peaceful,” he said. “Of course there have been incidents, but most of them have been caused by the activities of either the police or counter-protestors.”

Data assembled by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project in September 2020 showed that 93% of Black Lives Matter demonstrations involved no serious harm to people or property.

In the tradition of Nobel laureate Barack Obama, this is an undeniably worthy nomination. However, it is unfair to nominate Black Lives Matter for the Nobel Peace Prize without including the heroic fighters of antifa, who were their allies in the mostly peaceful protests that held the attention of Norway and the entire world. Together, they did use arson, looting, and destruction to reveal the reality of white supremacism and systemic racism. It was their justifiable means to send a powerful message that could not be ignored. The outpouring of support by the corporate media, the high-tech industry, and political leaders was truly touching as well as rewarding.

From Lefticon:

Black Lives Matter (BLM) – a movement for Black racial justice founded in 2012 by three young Black lesbian Marxists capitalizing on the violent behavior of young Black men.

Black Lives Matter started as a Twitter hashtag (#BlackLivesMatter) after the shooting of an unarmed Black teen (Trayvon Martin, 2012, in Sanford, Florida) by a white-Hispanic security guard. It gained momentum in 2014 after the police-related deaths of two other Blacks (Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in New York City). Michael Brown was shot while attempting to surrender with his hands up, giving rise to the BLM rallying cry of “Hands up, don’t shoot.” Eric Garner died after being held in a choke-hold by a white police officer. His dying words of “I can’t breathe” became another BLM slogan. In 2020, George Floyd also died saying “I can’t breathe” when a white police officer knelt on his neck for over eight minutes despite being video-recorded by concerned onlookers on their smartphones.

In Ferguson, Missouri, after the shooting of Michael Brown, a direct action by BLM resulted in police confrontations, rioting, vandalism, looting, and arson for two weeks, with intermittent flare-ups over a three-month period. After the failure of a grand jury to indict the presumed-guilty police officer, there was yet another week of looting and arson by the otherwise peace-loving demonstrators.

Since then, BLM has participated in many direct actions, some supporting the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 presidential campaign. It protested the Republican candidate, Donald J. Trump, during his rallies, which resulted in the successful cancellation of one rally because of threatened violence. Its response to the death of George Floyd in 2020 involved pillage, looting, and arson in multiple cities in the United States and mass demonstrations of protest globally.

Although its focus is anti-police and against law and order, BLM has expanded its activism to the entire postmodern progressive agenda of diversity, equality, women’s rights, LGBTQI rights, intersectionality, and globalism. It has joined the antifa movement in the struggle against fascism, white supremacy, oppression, systemic racism, nationalism, neo-Nazism, the Ku Klux Klan, and President Donald J. Trump.

BLM is funded by the Ford Foundation and the philanthropist George Soros through his Open Society Foundations and related NGOs.

Mostly peaceful – a euphemism for violent used by the legacy media when describing direct actions of the left.

For example, following the death of George Floyd and other racial-justice martyrs in 2020, the progressive groups Black Lives Matter and antifa staged protests, demonstrations, and riots in multiple cities that were accompanied by burning, looting, and property destruction. The devastation was enormous. Some of these actions started peacefully earlier in the day but became violent and destructive after dark. Yet, despite the dissonance of the burning and looting being displayed by their cameras in real time, the legacy media consistently described these events as “mostly peaceful.” The repeated use of this term was either the result of cognitive dissonance or a deliberate and coordinated attempt at propagating a false narrative.

Joe Biden signs order overturning Trump’s military transgender ban

This was reported today by Emily Goodin in the Daily Mail:

President Joe Biden reversed Donald Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military Monday when he signed an executive order stating ‘all Americans who are qualified to serve in the Armed Forces of the United States should be able to serve.’

‘This is reinstating a position that previous commanders as well as the secretaries have supported and what I’m doing is letting all qualified Americans to serve the country in uniform,’ he said in the Oval Office Monday before signing the order.

‘Transgender personnel, if qualified in every other way, can serve their government in the United States military,’ he noted.

Biden signed the order as met with new Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in the Oval Office at the White House ahead of Austin’s ceremonial swearing-in. Austin is the first African American to serve as the top Pentagon chief.

Also taking part in the occasion was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, in a sign that the military is united behind the new president. […]

The administration touted Biden’s signing, noting the president ‘fulfilled another crucial pledge.’

‘President Biden believes that gender identity should not be a bar to military service, and that America’s strength is found in its diversity,’ the White House said Monday in a fact sheet about Biden’s decision.

The executive order specifically notes ‘transgender service members will no longer be subject to the possibility of discharge or separation on the basis of gender identity.’