Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Slams Paul The Octopus For Spreading Western ‘Propaganda’

by Frances Martel | 7:15 pm, July 26th, 2010

» 6 comments

Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad isn’t exactly the most popular man in the Western world– understandable given his usual threatening bravado. It’s tough to go downhill from there, but it seems like Ahmadinejad will be darned if he doesn’t try: he’s now taken to attacking the single most popular personality of the Western world, Paul the Psychic Octopus.

Paul, of course, is the beloved cephalopod of Oberhausen, Germany who won the hearts of the Spanish nation by predicting their World Cup victory and became an international superstar for predicting all seven German World Cup matches accurately. The international superstar has now been called out by the Iranian leader in a speech in Tehran over the weekend for his part is spreading Western propaganda and superstition.

This story has been making the rounds in the international media, but it seems the English-speaking media have dropped the ball on it, leaving us to rely on several foreign sources like Germany’s Bild (which nicknamed the leader “Ahmadine-schad”, or, according to online translators, “Ahmadine-harm”), Italy’s Corriere Della Sera, but, surprisingly, no media so far within Spain, Paul’s adoptive country. From Chile’s state-owned newspaper, La Nación (in the only language we can translate without Google):

Paul was mentioned by Ahmadinejad on various occasions during a speech pronounced today [Saturday] in which he cited the octopus as an example of “methods of propaganda and superstitions” on the West. […]

“Those who believe in this type of thing cannot be the leaders of the global nations that aspire, like Iran, to human perfection, basing themselves in the love of all sacred values,” Ahmadinejad said.

Paul the Octopus could not be reached for comment, but one would imagine he isn’t seeing very good things in Ahmadinejad’s future right now.

Bild, Corriere Della Sera, Germany, Iran, La Nacion, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Paul the Octopus, propaganda, West, world cup

Nomoredespots

Would it be possible to line a up a match for Paul the Octopus, between US and Iran to see which country will win?
Azarkhan

“like Iran, to human perfection, basing themselves in the love of all sacred values,” Ahmadinejad

Except, of course, when we are giving a woman 99 lashes to make her confess to adultery, and then sentencing her to be stoned to death for said confession.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/07/01/iran.stoning/index.html
Munch

Pure Molluscaism!

No justice, no peace.
pclawnjockey

Paul! Keep an eye out for the Iranian death squad! They know where you live…
lazzzlo

Don’t mess with the Octopus.

Cthulhu is depicted as having a worldwide doomsday cult centered in Arabia, with followers in regions as far-flung as Greenland and Louisiana.[11] There are leaders of the cult “in the mountains of China” who are said to be immortal. Cthulhu is described by some of these cultists as the “great priest” of “the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky.”[12]

The cult is noted for chanting the phrase “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn”, which translates as “In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”[13] This is often shortened to “Cthulhu fhtagn”, which might possibly mean “Cthulhu waits”, “Cthulhu dreams”,[14] or “Cthulhu waits dreaming.” [15]

One cultist, known as Old Castro, provides the most elaborate information given in Lovecraft’s fiction about Cthulhu. The Great Old Ones, according to Castro, had come from the stars to rule the world in ages past.

They were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape…but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them.[16]

Castro points to a “much-discussed couplet” from Abdul Alhazred’s Necronomicon:

That is not dead which can eternal lie.

And with strange aeons even death may die.[17]

Castro explains the role of the Cthulhu Cult, stating that when the stars and the earth “might once more be ready” for the Great Old Ones, “some force from outside must serve to liberate their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented them from making an initial move.”[16] At the proper time,

the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from his tomb to revive His subjects and resume his rule of earth….Then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.[18]

The character goes on to report that the Great Old Ones are telepathic and “knew all that was occurring in the universe”. They were able to communicate with the first humans by “moulding their dreams”, thus establishing the Cthulhu Cult, but after R’lyeh had sunk beneath the waves, “the deep waters, full of the one primal mystery through which not even thought can pass, had cut off the spectral intercourse.”[19]

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu
lazzzlo

Don’t mess with the Octapus!