Tuesday, November 25, 2008

MOBY DICKS





MOBY DICKS


If you don't forgive your enemy, you might end up as another Captain Ahab.

Jesus Christ never called the Roman Empire his Moby Dick.

I never call anything and/or anybody my Moby Dick.


SECTION I: Mr. Obama and "Moby Dick"

Let’s check 50 facts we have to know about next U.S. President Mr. Barack Obama:

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Barack Obama: The 50 facts you might not know
By Jon Swaine
Last Updated: 3:40PM GMT 11 Nov 2008

• He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics
• He was known as "O'Bomber" at high school for his skill at basketball
• His name means "one who is blessed" in Swahili
• His favourite meal is wife Michelle's shrimp linguini
• He won a Grammy in 2006 for the audio version of his memoir, Dreams From My Father
• He is left-handed – the sixth post-war president to be left-handed
• He has read every Harry Potter book
• He owns a set of red boxing gloves autographed by Muhammad Ali
• He worked in a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop as a teenager and now can't stand ice cream
• His favourite snacks are chocolate-peanut protein bars
• He ate dog meat, snake meat, and roasted grasshopper while living in Indonesia
• He can speak Spanish
• While on the campaign trail he refused to watch CNN and had sports channels on instead
• His favourite drink is black forest berry iced tea
• He promised Michelle he would quit smoking before running for president – he didn't
• He kept a pet ape called Tata while in Indonesia
• He can bench press an impressive 200lbs
• He was known as Barry until university when he asked to be addressed by his full name
• His favourite book is Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
• He visited Wokingham, Berks, in 1996 for the stag party of his half-sister's fiancĂ©, but left when a stripper arrived
• His desk in his Senate office once belonged to Robert Kennedy
• He and Michelle made $4.2 million (£2.7 million) last year, with much coming from sales of his books
• His favourite films are Casablanca and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• He carries a tiny Madonna and child statue and a bracelet belonging to a soldier in Iraq for good luck
• He applied to appear in a black pin-up calendar while at Harvard but was rejected by the all-female committee.
• His favourite music includes Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Bach and The Fugees
• He took Michelle to see the Spike Lee film Do The Right Thing on their first date
• He enjoys playing Scrabble and poker
• He doesn't drink coffee and rarely drinks alcohol
• He would have liked to have been an architect if he were not a politician
• As a teenager he took drugs including marijuana and cocaine
• His daughters' ambitions are to go to Yale before becoming an actress (Malia, 10) and to sing and dance (Sasha, 7)
• He hates the youth trend for trousers which sag beneath the backside
• He repaid his student loan only four years ago after signing his book deal
• His house in Chicago has four fire places
• Daughter Malia's godmother is Jesse Jackson's daughter Santita
• He says his worst habit is constantly checking his BlackBerry
• He uses an Apple Mac laptop
• He drives a Ford Escape Hybrid, having ditched his gas-guzzling Chrysler 300
• He wears $1,500 (£952) Hart Schaffner Marx suits
• He owns four identical pairs of black size 11 shoes
• He has his hair cut once a week by his Chicago barber, Zariff, who charges $21 (£13)
• His favourite fictional television programmes are Mash and The Wire
• He was given the code name "Renegade" by his Secret Service handlers
• He was nicknamed "Bar" by his late grandmother
• He plans to install a basketball court in the White House grounds
• His favourite artist is Pablo Picasso
• His speciality as a cook is chilli
• He has said many of his friends in Indonesia were "street urchins"
• He keeps on his desk a carving of a wooden hand holding an egg, a Kenyan symbol of the fragility of life
• His late father was a senior economist for the Kenyan government


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/article3401168.ece
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Now we have confirmed that Mr. Obama’s favourite book is “Moby-Dick” by Herman Melville.

It is understandable, since he spent his early years in the Pacific Region where American whaling industry was so thriving in the 19the century.



SECTION II: Mr. Rove and "Moby Dick"

On the last Sunday, they aired the interview with Mr. Karl Rove. When Mr. Soichiro Tahara flew to Washington D.C. to hold the interview with President Mr. Bush, he also met with Mr. Karl Rove. Mr. Tahara introduced the video of his interviewing Mr. Rove in the same TV program as the one where he presented the interview with the President.

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Rove: 'I'm Moby Dick'

'I'm Moby Dick'
In statements, congressional Democrats assailed Rove — "architect of a political strategy that has left the country more divided," in the words of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. — with some implying that his leaving is tied to the bicameral congressional hearings about the controversy involving the fired U.S. attorneys...

"It's not figured in my decision, no," Rove said, adding that he's "realistic enough to understand that the subpoenas are going to keep flying my way. I'm Moby Dick, and we've got three or four members of Congress who are trying to cast themselves in the part of Captain Ahab — so, they're going to keep coming."

…Rove said he had "no idea" as to what he will do next. "I'd like to teach, eventually," he told reporters, "but in the meantime, I need to make some money."

Rove, who never graduated from college, joked that he has "an employment record that I think would be attractive to any employer. I've worked in an industrial kitchen in a hospital; I've waited tables; I've worked in convenience stores and have been robbed at the point of a gun twice; I've pumped gas; I've babysat; I've cut lawns; I've delivered newspapers."

He added seriously that "the president has encouraged me to write a book. I will do a book…"


http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Story?id=3475995&page=1
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Indeed, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq looked like Moby Dick. President George W. Bush was a kind of Captain Ahab, though so successful in technical terms of the war between the Bush Administration and the Saddam Hussein Administration.

But, President-elect Mr. Obama might also start to act like Captain Ahab with Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Summers as his aids.

In that case, who or what is Moby Dick?



SECTION III: THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN

Now look around. Islamic nations around the Persian Gulf have been economically so thriving.

However, in the west, Israel is still militarily suppressing Arabs. In the north, Iraq is still in a state of a civil war. In the east, Iran is playing a role of a mortal enemy of America; Afghanistan is in the middle of a war with NATO soldiers and the Taliban/Al Qaeda fighters directly exchanging fires over poppy fields or barren lands; and Pakistan is still in the aftermath of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. In the south, Saudi Arabia is yet to arrest Mr. Osama bin Laden, and the sea in the south of the Arabian Peninsula is full of pirates.

But, Islamic nations around the Persian Gulf have been economically so thriving, since the Bush Administration launched the war on Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan since 2001.

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January 22, 2002
Moby-Dick and the War on Al-Qaeda
Remember the Pequod!
By Brendan Cooney

…It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:
"Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States.
"WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL."
"BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN."


Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces- though I cannot tell why this was exactly…

Chapter One
Moby-Dick



From a sociobiological perspective, the U.S. response to the Sept. 11 attack suggests is either the predominance of the face-saving urge among humans or, more gravely, that those without good self-monitoring will eventually be selected out of the population. That is, unless the United States snaps out of its sense of indomitability, it may be doomed to follow the Pequod to the bottom of the indifferent sea….

But, as Faulkner points out, Ahab is disregarding his own people in taking his ship down with him. Likewise, as hatred of America surely will intensify around the world in reaction to U.S. terrorist-hunting, Bush is taking all of us down with him.


http://www.counterpunch.org/cooney1.html
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Mr. Barack Obama might become more Ahab than Mr. George W. Bush was.

It is so, since the war in Afghanistan might not yet enter the main stage.

It is so, since financially emerging Islamic nations around the Persian Gulf seem to have no intentions at all to cooperate in putting an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Islamic nations might still want the U.S. to act like Ahab though Moby Dick is not in Afghanistan and Iraq any more.

And, if they are another Moby Dick themselves another Ahab cannot still identify, it is no wonder, since everybody from Israel to the south of the Arabian Peninsula might simply like to see the new Ahab advancing to Afghanistan for more real than the old Ahab.

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If Wall Street is Moby Dick, who is Captain Ahab?




(Yet, there is no Moby Dick for me. I don’t even care administrative vice ministers of the Japanese Government. I have been just watching TV news programs since they look like a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances, Mlles. Or do you like so much the Pequod named after a tribe name of native Americans if not the native French?

http://www.hpmix.com/home/kitano/images/sc4_7_1.mid

Source: http://www.hpmix.com/home/kitano/C4_3.htm#9)




Joh 11:25 Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:

Joh 11:26 And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?