pianogonzology

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Rights . . .

(from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/07/14/the-magnitsky-act-explained/?utm_term=.54640b771c9c)

". . . Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who attended the June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr., has for years been working to overturn the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 U.S. law that barred Russian officials suspected of human rights abuses. . . is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer and auditor who in 2008 untangled a dense web of tax fraud and graft involving 23 companies and a total of $230 million linked to the Kremlin and individuals close to the government. Magnitsky was the target of investigations, arrested by authorities and kept in jail without charges. He was beaten and later died under mysterious circumstances in jail just days before his possible release. . . The Magnitsky Act was signed by President Barack Obama in December 2012 as a retaliation against the human rights abuses suffered by Magnitsky. The law at first blocked 18 Russian government officials and businessmen from entering the United States, froze any assets held by U.S. banks and banned their future use of U.S. banking systems. The act was expanded in 2016, and now sanctions apply to 44 suspected human rights abusers worldwide. . ."

(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Browder)

". . . William Felix Browder (author of Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice)is an American-English financier, the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of the investment fund Hermitage Capital Management, an investment firm that at one time was the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia. . . After the death in prison in 2009 of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer and auditor who had represented his company and conducted an investigation into massive tax fraud related to it, Browder lobbied for Congress to pass the "Magnitsky Act", a law to punish Russian human rights violators. . ."

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Monday, December 18, 2017

Pitch . . .

(from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-wrongly-says-he-won-t-benefit-gop-tax-plan-n825066)
". . . Trump made another sales pitch for his tax plan . . . repeating his erroneous claim that the Republican bill, if passed, would cost him and other rich Americans “a fortune.”. . . He added that his “very wealthy friends” were “not so happy with me” when it came to the bill . . . In fact, Trump and his family could save more than $1 billion under the House tax plan . . . according to an NBC News analysis. . . "

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Sunday, December 17, 2017

Ringing . . .

(from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/mar/06/ten-best-bells-in-literature)
The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L Sayers

In sleepy Fenland St Paul, the death of a villager is marked by nine rings of the great bell, Tailor Paul, in the tower of the church. The visiting sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, finds himself challenged by a mystery involving jewel theft and murder that centres on the bell tower. Only Wimsey's knowledge of campanology allows him to decipher the coded message that unravels the tale.

Notre Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo

Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bellringer, lives in the belfry of Notre Dame and has been made deaf by the bells. He loves ringing them, "long morning serenades, which lasted from prime to compline; peals from the belfry for a high mass, rich scales drawn over the smaller bells for a wedding". But when he encounters the beautiful Esmerelda, he abandons the bells for a greater love.

"Monody on the Death of Aldersgate Street Station" by John Betjeman

Betjeman's characteristic celebration of the City of London's "steepled forest of churches" evokes the sounds of bells breaking the "Sunday silence". It begins with the "tingle tang" of "the bell of St Mildred's Bread Street", and ends by drowning in "the roaring flood of a twelve-voiced peal from Paul's".

"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray

One of the best-known opening lines in English poetry is the sound of a bell ringing: "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day." Gray's tolling curfew was the traditional sound of the country parish. Since the days of William the Conqueror, the curfew bell had been rung to signal that it was time for bed.

The Bell by Iris Murdoch

A wonderfully batty cast of characters converges on Imber Abbey in Gloucestershire. According to legend, the abbey bell flew into the lake centuries earlier when a bishop cursed the place because of the sexual misdemeanours of one of the nuns. A new bell is to be installed, but Toby and Dora find the old bell in the lake and decide to effect a bell-swap. Chaos ensues.

Peter Pan by JM Barrie

Tinkerbell the fairy communicates with the sound of a tinkling bell, which can only be understood by initiates. "It is the fairy language. You ordinary children can never hear it, but if you were to hear it you would know that you had heard it once before."

The Magician's Nephew by CS Lewis

In the distant, dying world of Charn, Digory comes upon a small golden bell with a hammer next to it and this needling rhyme: "Make your choice, adventurous Stranger; / Strike the bell and bide the danger, / Or wonder, till it drive you mad, / What would have happened if you had." He cannot resist striking the bell, whose reverberations bring the witch Queen Jadis to life.

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Macbeth waits for his wife to signal that the sleeping Duncan's guards have been drugged. She rings a bell, and Macbeth exits to do the terrible deed. "I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. / Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell / That summons thee to heaven or to hell."

"The Bells" by Edgar Allan Poe

Poe's lyric starts cheerily with sleigh bells, proceeding to wedding bells and then alarum bells, before the poem's final section evokes the "iron bells" that make us shudder with terror. "For every sound that floats / From the rust within their throats / Is a groan".

In Memoriam AHH by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"Ring out the old, ring in the new." In section CVI of Tennyson's elegy, church bells ring out across the Lincolnshire snow at Christmas, lifting the poet from the gloom and pain that have engulfed him. "Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, / The flying cloud, the frosty light: / The year is dying in the night; / Ring out, wild bells, and let him die."

OHO live at Millstone Cellars, Novermber 2017

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Saturday, December 16, 2017

Words. . .

(from http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-cdc-forbidden-words-20171215-story.html)
". . . Trump administration officials are forbidding officials at the nation's top public health agency from using a list of seven words or phrases - including "fetus" and "transgender" - in any official documents being prepared for next year's budget. . . Policy analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta were told of the list of forbidden words at a meeting Thursday with senior CDC officials who oversee the budget, according to an analyst who took part in the 90-minute briefing. The forbidden words are: "vulnerable," "entitlement," "diversity," "transgender," "fetus," "evidence-based" and "science-based." . . . The longtime CDC analyst, whose job includes writing descriptions of the CDC's work for the administration's annual spending blueprint, could not recall a previous time when words were banned from budget documents because they were considered controversial. . . The reaction of people in the meeting was "incredulous," the analyst said. "It was very much, 'Are you serious? Are you kidding?' " . . . "In my experience, we've never had any pushback from an ideological standpoint," the analyst said. . . News of the ban on certain words hasn't yet spread to the broader group of scientists at the CDC, but it's likely to provoke a backlash, the analyst said. "Our subject matter experts will not lay down quietly - this hasn't trickled down to them yet.". . . "

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Friday, December 15, 2017

Ohh!!! . . .

. . . zone . . .

(from http://www.factcheck.org/2011/10/clearing-the-air-on-perrys-record/)

". . . (former Texas Governer and current U.S. Energy secretary-Rick) Perry has cultivated an adversarial relationship with the Environmental Protection Agency going all the way back to his days as Texas’ agriculture commissioner. Perry contends the “mandates and overreaching regulation” of the EPA cost Texas jobs and that Texas is better equipped to tackle air quality issues than “a centralized, all-knowing, one-size-fits-all federal government.” And, he says, Texas has done just fine cleaning up its air without the EPA’s interference (a claim many environmental groups in Texas contest). . . One of Perry’s most heated battles with the EPA is over global warming and the Obama administration’s use of the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from the state’s many oil refineries and power plants. Perry is skeptical of scientists who say global warming is a man-made problem. Tensions reached a boil when, earlier this year, the EPA announced it was taking over control of the greenhouse gas permitting in Texas because the state refused to implement its rules. Texas has led several other states in a legal challenge to the global warming regulations. The issue is still pending in federal court. . ."

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Thursday, December 14, 2017

Moore . . .

. . . or less?

(from https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/roy-moore-lost-his-election-alabama-gop-losing-it-s-ncna829316)
". . . The GOP, and the nation, narrowly dodged a bullet l. . . after accused pedophile Roy Moore lost to senator-elect Doug Jones in Alabama. Thankfully, Moore will not have a national platform from which to heave his unconstitutional, bigoted refuse. . . But a Republican loss in Alabama, of all places, following the party’s miserable performance in Virginia last month, should send a clear warning to party leadership: continue to appease President Donald Trump’s populist, nationalist movement at your peril. . . Moore’s candidacy. . . and loss say much about the state of the party. . .
Moore was defeated by “a coalition of the decent,” . . . comprised of principled Republicans, independents and Democrats; with two significant wins under the coalition's belt already, GOP leaders should understand that an urgent course correction is needed. . . "