Double-Tapped Lights-House

"Do for this life as if you live forever, do for the afterlife as if you die tomorrow."

-- Ali ibn Abi Talib

Final Benghazi report: No 'smoking gun' pointing to Clinton

28 JUNE 2016       ASSOCIATED PRESS       MATTHEW DALY

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) — House Republicans on Tuesday concluded their $7 million, two-year investigation into the deadly attacks in Benghazi, Libya, with fresh accusations of lethal mistakes by the Obama administration but no "smoking gun" pointing to wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state and now the Democrats' presumptive presidential nominee.

While the panel's GOP members took shots at Clinton on Tuesday, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the chairman, summed up the document by asking "the American people to read this report for themselves, look at the evidence we have collected and reach their own conclusions." 

In Denver, Clinton dismissed the report as an echo of previous probes with no new discoveries. "I think it's pretty clear it's time to move on," she said during a campaign stop. Read More

'Little guy' contractors still angry at Trump Taj bankruptcy

28 JUNE 2016       ASSOCIATED PRESS      BERNARD CONDON

ATLANTIC CITY, NEW JERSEY (AP) -- ... A quarter of a century had passed since Donald Trump refused to pay $1.2 million for the paving stones her late husband installed at Atlantic City's Taj Mahal casino. But for Paone and others like her - the dozens of contractors and their families who never got all they were owed - it could have happened yesterday.

... Of all the real estate and casino deals in Trump's long career, the Taj arguably sheds the most light on how the would-be U.S. president handles crises. It was his biggest gamble, the "eighth wonder of the world," as he dubbed it. And when it went south, his moves to avoid a financial hit to his empire hobbled many small businesses with little cushion to absorb the blow. 

... After the Taj opened in April 1990, the self-anointed "King of Debt" owed $70 million to 253 contractors employing thousands who built the domes and minarets, put up the glass and drywall, laid the pipes and installed everything from chandeliers to bathroom fixtures. A year later, when the casino collapsed into bankruptcy, those owed the most got only 33 cents in cash for each dollar owed, with promises of another 50 cents later. It took years to get the rest, assuming the companies survived long enough to collect. 

"We got next to nothing," says Michael MacLeod, whose 40-person studio made the giant elephant statues at the entrance to Taj. "I took a big hit." 

Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks and Trump attorney Alan Garten did not respond to a list of questions about the candidate's Taj dealings. Read More

Volkswagen settles emissions cheating for $15.3 billion

28 JUNE 2016       ASSOCIATED PRESS       MICHAEL BIESECKER, TOM KRISHNER, DEE-ANN DURBIN

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) -- Volkswagen is taking a major step toward compensating owners and government regulators for its emissions cheating scandal. But it will take much longer to repair the damage to its reputation.

The German automaker has agreed to spend up to $15.3 billion to settle consumer lawsuits and government allegations that its diesel cars cheated on U.S. emissions tests. The settlement announced Tuesday is believed to be the largest auto-related class-action settlement in U.S. history. 

Up to $10 billion will go to 475,000 VW or Audi diesel owners. VW agreed to either buy back or repair their vehicles, although it hasn't yet developed a fix for the problem. Owners will also receive payments of $5,100 to $10,000. 

The settlement still must be approved by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, who has set a July 26 hearing for preliminary approval. Final approval is expected in October. 

Owners expressed relief that a plan is finally coming together nine months after the scandal was uncovered. But they're still angry. Diesel owners thought they were buying high-performance, environmentally friendly cars; they felt betrayed when they learned the vehicles' emissions vastly exceeded U.S. pollution laws. Read More

Facebook CEO's Hawaii neighbors grumble about new wall

28 JUNE 2016       ASSOCIATED PRESS       AUDREY MCAVOY

HONOLULU, HAWAI`I (AP) -- Some of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's neighbors are grumbling about a rock wall he's having built on his property on the north shore of the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

Retiree Moku Crain said Tuesday the wall looks daunting and forbidding. Crain hopes and expects Zuckerberg will soften the wall's look by planting foliage around it. 

The wall began going up about four to six weeks ago. It runs along the property next to a road in the semi-rural community of Kilauea. 

"Whereas before when we drove along the road we could see the ocean and see through the property, it's closing off that view," Crain said. "So I think that's part of it. Nobody likes change." 

Crain estimated the wall was about 6 feet tall and that another existing wall on the property was only about 4 feet. Few would complain if the new wall was built at the same height, Crain predicted. 

Lindsay Andrews, a spokeswoman for the billionaire's Kauai property operations, says the rock wall is designed to reduce highway and road noise. Similar walls are routinely used for this purpose, she said. The wall follows all rules and regulations, she said. 

"Our entire team remains committed to ensuring that any development respects the local landscape and environment and is considerate of neighbors," she said in a statement. 

... Forbes reported Zuckerberg paid over $100 million for the property, which spans more than 700 acres on the coast, in 2014. 

Catlin said it was a good thing Zuckerberg bought the property because a previous landowner had plans to build a housing development on part of it, which would have increased cars and traffic. The Garden Island newspaper reported in 2014 that a 357-acre section of the property called the Kahuaina plantation had been subdivided for 80 luxury homes of up to seven acres a piece. Read More

Admiring the tarnished silver screen

28 JUNE 2016       JAPAN TIMES       JOHN L TRAN

CHUO-KU, TOKYO (Japan Times) -- Old chewing gum, cheap carpet sticky from spilled drinks, sagging seats pitted with cigarette burns: Satoshi Chuma’s photographs of old cinemas on show at the National Film Center are fantastically evocative of the decline and fall of celluloid.

Having spent several years working in the projection booth, Chuma has photographed the dark interiors and grimy exteriors of movie houses around Japan for several years. As an exhibition, “Movie Theaters” is not perfect: Some of the prints are perhaps a little too dark, the presentation is fairly rudimentary and monochrome photos of rundown architecture are nothing new. Chuma also, rather profanely, mixes genres. Close-ups of the editing and projection machinery are strongly reminiscent of the “new objectivity” movement of the 1920s and ’30s. At other times, when shadowy figures make an occasional appearance in the frame, or Chuma’s composition strays from the straight and level, there is the more human and conversational tone of New York School street photography. 

The exhibition has ample opportunity to fail, but it doesn’t. With less commitment and heart, it could easily have been a retro-hipster project, with less perspicacity it would have been a sentimental nostalgia trip. It succeeds because deriding and distancing oneself from narrative has become something of a mannerism in contemporary art photography, but in Chuma’s dream-like images, there seems to be a measured and conciliatory ambivalence toward the desire to feed the unconscious with stories of sex, violence and adventure. 

In comparison to Hiroshi Sugimoto’s more widely known cinema photography series, which treats the blank whiteness of the overexposed screen as a kind of transcendence, Chuma pokes about in the gloom, photographing the vaguely smutty abjection of out-of-date movie posters, ruched curtains and cheap chandeliers. Sugimoto presents movie theaters as grand and vainglorious. Chuma lurks around like a jaded film-noir gumshoe at the scene of the crime — disillusioned, but nevertheless driven to pursue the mystery of human folly to the bitter end. 

Whether by accident or design, Chuma’s “Movie Theaters” series also provides a neat visual exploration of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”: The forlorn auditoriums, juxtaposed with the mechanisms of projection, hint at the Greek philosopher’s proposition that we can escape the world of shadows by properly understanding how we are deceived by representations. Nathan Anderson suggests in his book “Shadow Philosophy: Plato’s Cave and Cinema” that we differ from Plato’s prisoners, who are born in the cave and are chained to their beliefs, in one crucial respect: We enter the cinema in the full knowledge that we are going to be deceived. 

This understanding seems to be present and correct in Chuma’s gaze. He does not romanticize cinema, but it’s quite possible he loves it all the same. Read More
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April 12 - July 10, 2016 

Movie TheatersThe Works of Satoshi Chuma, Projectionist-PhotographerDate: April 12 (Tue) – July 10 (Sun)Location: Exhibition Gallery (7th floor)Hours: 11:00am-6:30pm (admission until 6:00pm)Closed: Mondays, Jun. 13-17Admission: Single Ticket 210(Group Admission 100)/ University & College Students, Seniors (age 65 or over) 70(Group Admission 40) *Free for High School Students and under 18; Persons with disability and one person accompanying each of them are admitted free or charge.Free on May.18.
For more detailed information, please see the following page (in Japanese). 

For 120 years since the invention of cinematography, movie theaters have been a special place for people to gather together in the dark, seeing the same “dream” with their eyes open. At present, however, with the shift in screening technique from film to digital projection, historical movie theaters, where our imagination has been fostered, are closing down one by one. Even so, many movie theaters or screening facilities are still tenaciously continuing conventional film projection all over Japan, as well as accepting new technologies. 

This exhibition introduces about 100 works by photographer Satoshi Chuma, who published his first photo book Eigakan (Movie Theaters) last year. Working as a film projectionist in Kansai, since 2007 Chuma has been traveling throughout Japan to shoot not just the buildings but also their projection booths or even explore the nooks and crannies of those places that exude an aura of cinema. Those works, mainly in monochrome, not only have value as documentation, but also show the extreme intimate senses of the space where cinema and ourselves have connected. 

Taking this opportunity, we are also displaying photographs of gorgeous movie theaters in the prewar era from NFC’s collection to show how they led 20th century culture. It will be a great chance to recall the past memories of old films, rediscover what value films have held in society, and examine how cinema culture might look in the future. Read More