Guest Voice: It Is Going To Be A Rocky Road by Chuck Baldwin

Let’s face it: most Americans live in a world of false security. This is somewhat understandable, given the fact that the majority of the U.S. population was born after 1945. Few remember the dangers and hardships of World War II; fewer still remember the Great Depression. Few Americans know  what it’s like to not have some sort of “supercenter” nearby with shelves stocked with every kind of food imaginable, twenty-four hours a day. Few know what life was like before there were restaurants of all sizes and types on virtually every street corner in America. And only a handful remembers  when most roads were unpaved, or when sports were truly a pastime and not a megabuck obsession.

Modern living within the world’s only “superpower” has created a giant unsuspecting, soft, lackadaisical, and lethargic society. We expect the government to keep our streets safe, our roads paved, our stores stocked, our jobs secure, and our enemies at bay. However, in the desire to make government the panacea for all our problems, we have sold not only our independence, but also our virtue.

Where the federal government was contracted (via the U.S. Constitution) to accept limited power for the overall good of both states and people, it has become a monster of gargantuan proportions, claiming authority over virtually every liberty and right known to man. And in the process, it decided it didn’t need God, either.

It is no hyperbole to say that the U.S. federal government has been on a “Ban God” bandwagon for the past 50 years. Whether it kicks prayer and Bible reading out of school, bars military chaplains from praying in Jesus’ name,  burns Bibles in Iraq, removes state supreme court chief justices from their positions for posting the Ten Commandments, or threatens high school principals with jail for asking the blessing, the federal government has invoked the judgment of Heaven upon our country as surely as did Old Testament Israel.

Although the comfortable, sports-crazed, TV addicts probably aren’t paying attention, this country is on the verge of an implosion like you cannot believe. For anyone who cares to notice, the signs are everywhere.

First of all, Israel and Iran are on the verge of war. And right now, I’m not concentrating on the “why” or “who’s right or wrong” of the equation. I’m simply telling you, war between Israel and Iran could break out at any time. And when it does, the chances that it will not become nuclear and not become global are miniscule. Yes, I am saying it: the prospects for nuclear war have never been greater. The CBS-canceled TV show, JERICHO, could become   a reality in these United States in the very near future. (I strongly urge readers to purchase both seasons of JERICHO and watch them, because this could be our future.)

Secondly, America is on the verge of total financial collapse. By the end of this year, America’s budget deficit will stand at around $2 trillion. The debt gap is many trillions more than that. But the nail in the coffin for America’s fiscal health will be the decision by China to dump the U.S. dollar. Ladies and gentlemen, this will be the death knell for our financial stability (and a painful lesson in sowing and reaping).

It is estimated that China owns around one-third of all U.S. debt. If and when China dumps the U.S. dollar, there would be nothing left to stabilize it, and Weimar Republic/Zimbabwe-style inflation will ensue. America will be thrust into financial chaos. (If one doubts that China is planning to dump the dollar, consider that China is currently purchasing and stockpiling gold at an unprecedented level. This is why gold has suddenly surged to over $1,000 per ounce and why it will continue to rise.)

Third, the paranoia regarding the Swine Flu being demonstrated by both government and media spokesmen begs a giant push for some type of “government solution.” If they keep hyping this “pandemic,” mass hysteria and fear (created by the government and its lackeys in the media) will result. This would, no doubt, necessitate some form of forced vaccination, quarantine (maybe this is what all those internment camps will be used for), and martial law.

Exactly how and when all of the above will actually materialize is yet to be seen. There is no doubt in my mind, however, that within the next few months, the world that we know today is going to vanish. And most Americans are totally unprepared for what’s coming.

If you are able to get out of debt, do it. If you need to scale down your lifestyle in order to be better prepared for difficult days, do it. If you don’t have guns and ammo, buy them. If you have not prepared some sort of preserved food pantry, do it. If you don’t have some kind of survival plan in place for you and your family, get one. If you are not physically fit, get in shape. If you are able to move to a more secure, out-of-harm’s-way location, do it. (During any kind of financial or societal meltdown, urban areas will quickly turn into war zones. Can anyone say, “New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina”?) In other words, get your nose out of the boob tube, get your bottom off the easy chair, and get busy.

Am I worried or discouraged? Absolutely not! (But I am preparing.) The potential good that may result from all of the above is that perhaps God will protect and raise up a remnant of people who would be willing to rebuild a place where Natural Law is respected, constitutional government is revered, and where a ubiquitous, loathsome, overbearing federal government is far, far away. You know, like America’s Founding Fathers did 233 years ago.

In the meantime, get ready. It’s going to be a rocky road.

(Source)

Video: THE RULES OF THE GAME: Just War Doctrine

Synopsis:

Thou Shalt Not Kill—perhaps the most famous moral commandment in the western world. And yet Judeo-Christian religious leaders have also created a doctrine that can justify killing—commonly known as Just War Doctrine. What sort of military action does Just War Doctrine permit and what sort does it proscribe? Is America’s campaign against terrorism a just war?

The Hoover Institute’s Website.

Taliban Leader in Pakistan Is Dead

Score one for our Boys! wOOt!

Baitullah Mehsud, the main leader of Pakistan’s fearsome Taliban movement, was killed Wednesday in a C.I.A. drone missile strike, two Taliban fighters said Friday, though American and Pakistani officials could not confirm the reports.

Mr. Mehsud has been considered Pakistan’s public enemy No. 1 and was blamed for the assassination of the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and scores of suicide bombings, including the truck bomb that exploded at the entrance to the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, leaving more than 50 people dead last September.

If confirmed, Mr. Mehsud’s death could be a significant blow to the militant networks inside Pakistan that in recent years have posed a direct challenge to the authority of the state, increasingly destabilizing the country.

But analysts and current and former Pakistani officials here warned that Mr. Mehsud’s death did not necessarily mean less violence for Pakistan, or that the Taliban movement in Pakistan would disappear, though for the time being its reach and unity could be diminished as Mr. Mehsud’s followers choose another leader.

“This is a major setback for the Taliban in Pakistan,” said Mahmood Shah, a former security chief in the tribal region. “He was the leader. The successors are all non-entities.”

via Taliban Leader in Pakistan Is Reportedly Killed – NYTimes.com.

Long War Journal Confirms it:

Baitullah Mehsud, the feared leader of the Pakistan Taliban, is believed to have been killed during the Aug. 5 airstrike in South Waziristan.

Faqir Mohammed, the deputy leader of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan and the commander of the Bajaur Taliban, told Sky News that Baitullah was killed in a strike that also killed Baitullah’s second wife.

An aide to Baitullah identified as Kafayatullah, as well as another unidentified Taliban leader in South Waziristan, also said that Baitullah had been killed in the attack.

“I confirm that Baitullah Mehsud and his wife died in the American missile attack in South Waziristan,” Kafayatullah told the Associated Press late last night.

Baitullah was said to have been buried near the village of Nardusai. “Some who had reportedly seen his body said that it had been half-destroyed by the blast,” the BBC stated.

Pakistan’s Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, said intelligence believes that Baitullah was killed in Wednesday’s strike but the government wants to confirm the reports. US intelligence officials also believe that Baitullah was killed.

Reports indicate Baitullah was visiting a compound owned by Ikramuddin Mehsud, Baitullah’s father-in-law, in the village of Zanghra in the mountains near Baitullah’s home town of Makeen. The airstrike also reportedly killed one Baitullah’s two brothers and seven of Baitullah’s bodyguards.

US intelligence sources contacted by The Long War Journal last evening had initially believed Baitullah survived the attack.

Countdown to limp wrist liberals and “Old Right” Conservatives saying, “We got him, can we leave now?” In 5…..4….3…2….  I mean, these are the ones who say that Our troops are battlefield terrorists. So, this would not be a big surprise.

Anyhow, this is a good hit and it will only help in our continuing battle against the terrorists in Afghanistan.

Others: The Jawa Report, Newsweek, The Long War Journal,, PrairiePundit,  and Power Line

Ezra Levant being sued by serial litigator Khurrum Awan

Once again, Canadian Conservative Blogger Ezra Levant is being targeted by Lawsuit happy Khurrum Awan.

The Story which comes from Ezra Levant via 5 feet of Fury: (H/T to Pamela Geller)

Khurrum Awan, the youth president of the Jew-hating Canadian Islamic Congress, has threatened me with a lawsuit. You can see the rambling, typo-ridden libel notice here. (Seriously, Khurrum: spell check. It’s free.)

Awan is an experienced practitioner in the soft jihad of “lawfare”, the abusive practice where lawsuits are filed against critics of radical Islam just to harass them and silence them, Erin Brockovich-style. He’s done it before: Awan fronted the CIC’s three identical “human rights” complaints against Maclean’s magazine for publishing an excerpt from Mark Steyn’s best-selling book America Alone. Awan wasn’t the actual complainant in those cases – the CIC’s president, Mohamed Elmasry, was. But Awan was the public spokesman for those nuisance suits.

[…]

That’s pretty much par for the course over at the CIC. A couple of years ago, they distributed Nazi-style anti-Semitic cartoons door-to-door as part of their election efforts. Personally, my favourite Elmasry moment is whenever he denounces the Canadian media as being run by “the zhoos” – a line he repeated again and again without a flicker of embarrassment at a convention of the Canadian Association of Journalists.

That’s the Canadian Islamic Congress. They’re a great fit for Saudi Arabia or Egypt. They’re just not really ready for prime time in a liberal democracy. And now their youth president, Khurrum Awan, wants a full public trial – in a real court, not a kangaroo court – about, amongst other things, whether or not they’re anti-Semites.

I’ll take those odds. With Elmasry as his mentor, I’m guessing Awan is just a wee bit tone deaf on the whole bigotry thing.

It’s nuttier than a Snickers bar over at the CIC, but that hasn’t bothered Awan one bit. The CIC championed the cause of terrorist groups including Hamas and Hezbollah, and opposed the listing of them as terrorists under Canadian law. They actually defended the Butcher of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe. And then there’s the hired help: the CIC publishes screeds from anti-Semites like Greg Felton, whose views are as diverse as supporting Iran’s nuclear program to praising Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for questioning the Holocaust.

That’s Awan’s crew: Jew-haters, terrorist-lovers, censors and nuisance litigants. So it’s no surprise, dear friends, that he has decided to come for me.

So, Mr. Levant is going to need some in the legal dept to keep this  Awan from getting anywhere. So, if you would; hop on over there and give the man some help money wise, please. Do it for me and for Liberty and Freedom of Speech. I would send Ezra a nice check myself; but I really do not have it to spare right now. So, I am doing the next best thing. I am blogging about it and passing the word around.

Please note: Last night, when I originally wrote this entry late last night. I went to into a rather nasty rant. While it might have been funny for some; and most of I wrote might be true. After thinking about it and sleeping on it. I woke up today and decided to yank it. Sometimes it’s best to keep your feelings to yourself and keep the damn peace. I wish Mr. Levant all the best and I apologize to any of his friends, if anything I wrote upset them.

Think that Radical Islam is on the decline? Think again.

This is unreal.

Hizb ut-Tahrir is a global Sunni network with reported ties to confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Al Qaeda in Iraq’s onetime leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It has operated discreetly in the U.S. for decades.

Now, it is coming out of the shadows and openly hosting a July 19 conference entitled, “The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam,” at a posh Hilton hotel in a suburb of Chicago.

Hizb ut-Tahrir insists that it does not engage in terrorism, and it is not recognized by the State Department as a known terror group.

But some terrorism experts say it may be even more dangerous than many groups that are on the terror list.

“Hizb ut-Tahrir is one of the oldest, largest indoctrinating organizations for the ideology known as jihadism,” Walid Phares, director of the Future of Terrorism Project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told FOXNews.com.

Phares said that Hizb ut-Tahrir, rather than training members to carry out terrorist acts like Al Qaeda, focuses instead on indoctrinating youths between ages of 9 and 18 to absorb the ideology that calls for the formation of an empire — or “khilafah” — that will rule according to Islamic law and condones any means to achieve it, including militant jihad.

via Islamic Supremacist Group Holds First U.S. Conference  – FOXNews.com.

The Video:

Liberals want us to believe that Muslims are our friends. Which is utter B.S.; Islam teaches their people to hate us Americans and our way of life.  We as freedom loving Americans need to take a stand against this nonsense and expose it for what it truly is and that is a training ground for Terrorism.

Other Covering: YID With LID, The Jawa Report, The Corner and Media Blog

Whoa: Islamic Society of North America hatespeech fest.

What you are about to listen to is audio taken from the 2009 Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) convention, the man speaking is Imam Warith Deen Umar. Check it:

[podcast]http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/files/isna-hate.mp3[/podcast]

Transcript:

“You need to know that Obama, the first man that Obama picked when we were so happy that he was the President, he picked an Israeli – Rahm Emanuel – his number one man. His number two man – [David] Axelrod – another Israeli person. Why do this small number of people have control of the world? You need to go back into your history and find out about France and Germany and England and America got together and offered the Israelites, who became the Israelites, they offered them Ghana, the plains of Ghana. Why don’t you take Ghana since we beat you down so badly? That’s what the Holocaust was all about. You need to read my chapter on the Holocaust and the anti-Holocaust movement. There’s some people in the world says no Holocaust even happened. Some of their leaders say no Holocaust even happened. Well it did happen. These people were punished. They were punished for a reason because they were serially disobedient to Allah.” (from IPT)

Pamela Geller has the rest.

WOW! Just wow…. 😮

For the record, this idiot is doing some massive distortion of history. Not to mention the facts.

Next time someone tells you that Islam is a Religion of peace; Show them this video

The Synopsis of this video:

This is a video of David Wood and Nabeel Qureshi asking questions at Arabfest, Dearborn. The date is June 21st, 2009. There was a booth at the festival which had a banner titled “Islam: Got Questions? Get Answers.” From their table, we picked up a pamphlet claiming that Islam promotes peace. We noticed that it was full of poor logic and errors, so we decided to make a video refuting it. We went to the booth that gave us the pamphlet to give them the opportunity to defend their claims. Security, however, stepped in and forced us to turn off our camera.

We left the booth, received advice from police, and found out that the actions of the security guards were illegal. We went back to the booth to record a potential answer again. Realizing that the Muslims present had no answer, we left.

When we came outside, we were asked some questions by two young men, who had been sent by security to entrap us. While we responded to them, festival security started assaulting us, as you will see in this video. The conclusion of this video is a mob of festival security attacking our cameras, pushing us back, kicking our legs, and lying to the police.

We ask you, is it a coincidence that the city with the highest percentage of Muslims in the United States is the city where Christianity is not allowed to be represented (let alone preached) on a public sidewalk? Is it coincidence that in this city, people will say “No way!” when we say “This is the United States of America”?

Is this what will happen when Islam takes over the United States?

You see Ladies and Gents, THIS is what celebrating diversity does to you. It gets you attacked by Islamic terrorist THUGS! Rick Warren and his purpose driven life, “Let’s love everyone and not judge”, kind of Christianity is just that; it celebrates diversity. Islam, a religion of peace….. What a lie! 😡 This is why, if I ever was going to film, I would go armed. Any security person who approached me and tried to hurt me, would be killed.

Enjoy this video! (Via Gateway Pundit)

WAKE UP AMERICA to the LIE OF ISLAM!

Acts 17 Apologists website.

Iran's election showdown begins; Neo-Conservatives continue to goad our President

It appears that the Iranian Islamic powers that be are beginning to clamp down on the dissent in that Country. The New York Times Reports:

TEHRAN — In his first public response to days of mass protests, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sternly warned opposition supporters on Friday to stay off the streets and raised the prospect of violence if the defiant, vast demonstrations continued.

Opposition leaders, he said, will be “responsible for bloodshed and chaos” if they do not stop further rallies.

He said he would never give in to “illegal pressures” and denied their accusations that last week’s presidential election was rigged, praising the officially declared landslide for the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as an “epic moment that became a historic moment.”

He spoke somberly for more than an hour and a half at Friday Prayer to tens of thousands of people at Tehran University, with Mr. Ahmadinejad in attendance. His sermon was broadcast over loudspeakers to throngs in the adjoining streets, and the crowds erupted repeatedly in roars of support. Opposition supporters had spread the word among themselves not to attend.

“Street challenge is not acceptable,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, according to a rendering by the BBC. “This questions the principles of election and democracy.”

There was no immediate response from opposition leaders.

The article continues on and I personally encourage you to read it. This is all shaping up, just as I thought it would. Iran’s supreme leader is calling the shots; as always. This is why I basically removed the green from my twitter account. Because I knew it was pointless to support the protesters in Iran.  The will of the people is just not respected in that country, the will of the Islamic Government is.

Meanwhile, the Wilsonian, Warmongering, and now highly discredited wing of the Republican Party still continues to goad our President in to entering the fray in Iran.  The recently sold Weekly Standard continues it’s pandering to the Zionists abroad:

Fourth, now, today, is another opporunity for President Obama to speak. Mousavi has been threatened, as have the thousands of protesters. The ayatollah offered no conciliatory language for the protesters or the West. There was no talk of redoing the stolen election, or giving Mousavi a seat at the table. Obama has gone out of his way not to “meddle” in this affair, thinking that America’s “meddling” may compromise efforts to negotiate with the Iranian regime going forward.

What has been the reward for America sidelining itself? More condemnations from the regime that Obama wants to negotiate with. That same regime may be on the verge of an even more violent convulsion.

That quote up there is why the American people voted the Neo-Conservatives out of power and put in a outright socialist President. Because of that nonsense quoted up there. As a I said in my Blog entry/column that I sometimes write, America should stay out of the affairs of Iranian Government:

I have noticed that some of my Neo-Conservative counterparts have been goading the President of the United States for not taking a more vocal stance against the Iranian Government and by proxy, the Islamic leaders of that Country.  In case that sounds a bit familiar, these people are the same people played cheerleader to President Bush’s decision to go into Iraq.  Hence my reasoning for disliking the Neo-Conservative wing of the Republican Party; Not because of some idiotic Hatred of the Jews; but because of the Wilsonian, warmongering stance of those types of Conservatives.

As a Paleo-Conservative, my feelings about Iran are this that the United States of America should stay out of the affairs of the Iranian Government.  If the Iranian people want to overthrow that Government, let them do it.  If the Iranian people want to topple that Islamic regime, let them do it.  The less the United States becomes involved in that situation, the better.  The same kind of meddling with the affairs of other Governments has gotten us into other situations in the past.  The list is quite long — Korea, Vietnam, Both Iraq Wars, World War I, and so on.

After I wrote that entry, I realized that I had not stated well enough as to why we should not get involved with the situation in Iran. The answer simply is this; say the Iranian people do overthrow the Islamic Government in that Country, an anti-Islamic Revolution, if you will; then there is a Democratic or Parliamentary Government established there. If at anytime that Government is overthrown and an Islamic Government is placed back into that Country; guess who will get the blame for overthrowing the previous Islamic Government? The United States will; that’s who!  The Neo-Conservatives, in their blind and quite foolish desire to go to war with every country that rejects their foolish Zionist agenda; have forgotten one thing, Arabs hate us already, and they will really hate us, if the United States is seen to be meddling in their internal affairs.  It is too bad that this Country, and more specifically the Republican Party and it’s Wilsonian, Neo-Conservative wing have not learned that lesson. Had they learned it long ago; those trade center towers would still be standing.

Others:  BBC, Telegraph, MoJo Blog Posts, Wall Street Journal, The Lede, The Cable, Democracy in America, Maggie’s Farm, Michelle Malkin, New York Magazine, Jihad Watch, Hot Air, democracyarsenal.org, Washington Post, Wonk Room, Outside The Beltway, Wolf Howling, The BLT, A Blog For All, Salon, On Deadline, The Daily Dish, The Washington Independent, ATTACKERMAN, Gateway Pundit, FP Passport, Danger Room and The Huffington Post and more via Memeorandum

On Iran: I have changed my mind, Let them deal with it

When the situation erupted in Iran, I like many other Americans, who root for true freedom and democracy, began to rally behind the people protesting the election in Iran.  That is until today.  Yes, that is correct; I have changed my mind about the events in Iran.  I figure if I am going to be a Paleo-Conservative; I should try acting and thinking like one.

My feeling on the uprising in Iran is this; the protests are pointless and waste of time, human lives, and a needless destruction of Iran.  Why?  Because of the following, Iran is not, and has not been since 1979, a true free Country.  It is an Islamic Republic; it operates under Islamic rule or Sharia law.  In other words, Religion is the main factor in the creation of that country’s laws.  The Iranian people must abide by those laws, or they can face imprisonment or worse death.

This entire uprising in Iran is not just about Ahmadinejad against Mousavi or at least it should not be.  These people want to be free, unshackled from the chains of Islamic rule.  However, the cold sobering fact of the reality is that the Iranian people will most likely not succeed in freeing themselves from the Islamic regime.  Their grip is just too strong on that Nation and the truth of reality is that nothing in that Country will change. Even if Mousavi is placed into power the Islamic authorities, which really run that Country will still be in power.

I have noticed that some of my Neo-Conservative counterparts have been goading the President of the United States for not taking a more vocal stance against the Iranian Government and by proxy, the Islamic leaders of that Country.  In case that sounds a bit familiar, these people are the same people played cheerleader to President Bush’s decision to go into Iraq.  Hence my reasoning for disliking the Neo-Conservative wing of the Republican Party; Not because of some idiotic Hatred of the Jews; but because of the Wilsonian, warmongering stance of those types of Conservatives.

As a Paleo-Conservative, my feelings about Iran are this that the United States of America should stay out of the affairs of the Iranian Government.  If the Iranian people want to overthrow that Government, let them do it.  If the Iranian people want to topple that Islamic regime, let them do it.  The less the United States becomes involved in that situation, the better.  The same kind of meddling with the affairs of other Governments has gotten us into other situations in the past.  The list is quite long — Korea, Vietnam, Both Iraq Wars, World War I, and so on.

If I ever had a chance to have an audience with the President of the United States, I would simply tell him what to do with Iran as well as North Korea, and that is stay out of that situation.  If the United Nations wants to send Japan and South Korea, as well as a few other Countries in to topple that leader, let them do so.  However, please, do not involve our Country.  The same should be done with Iran.  The United States should not be pursuing an agenda of interventionalism in that region at all.

It is because of our interventionalist foreign policy of the past; that the September 11, 2001 attacks occurred in New York City.  We just cannot afford to make that same mistake twice.  God Help us if we do.

The Iran Situation Continued

Iranian Twitter users, inside and outside of Iran: (Via I Like Patterns)

Bushehr:

Adel Ganje

Rasht:

Hamed Nemati

Shiraz:

Aboozar

Tehran:

Kamyar
madyar
Amin Abbaspour
Abdul-Azim Mohammed
Farhad
Parham Doustdar
Mohammad Ramezanpour
crash
Sajjad A. Mohammed
Yashar Khazdouzian
Mohamadreza
S T
Iran Election 2009
TehranBureau.com
MirHossein Mousavi
jim sciutto
Raymond Jahan
Parastoo
Thomas Erdbrink
Bahador Nooraei B.
William Yong
Bahram K
Alireza
persiankiwi
Hamed

Unknown:

mary moto
Alavi
duckdaotsu
Farnam B. (not Tehran)
Gita (not Tehran)
Iran
Shahrzad
Pouyan
mehdi assadi
Vahid

Outside Iran:

Muhammad Ghaffari
TwitPersia
Vote for Iran
Naseem Faqihi
RK
Elizabeth Tsurkov
Nasser Weddady
fustat
Neysan Schaefer
Neysan Zolzer

Update #2: Christopher Hitchens on the Election in Iran and he does not mince words!

Update #3: U.K. Times Reports:

Chanting Allahu akbar” — God is greatest — and “Ahmadi, we love you” the army of hardliners poured into central Tehran in a massive show of strength for President Ahmadinejad.

After a weekend of violence by supporters of his relatively moderate challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, this was an exercise designed to reclaim the capital’s streets in the name of the establishment.

“The protesters are lying. There was no cheating,” declared Farang Kamalwand, 39, a woman in a chador who had travelled 450 miles by bus from Lorestan.

“We came to prove to people outside this country that we love and support our President,” said Karamollah Rahimi, a builder who had spent nine hours travelling from Lordegan

[…]

The exuberance of last week, when Mr Mousavi appeared to be heading for a spectacular victory, turned to terror in the space of a few hours on Friday night as the regime unleashed its forces on the opposition.

All weekend, late into the night, squads of 30 or 40 riot police tore round the capital on motorbikes, roaring along pavements when the roads were blocked, and waded into crowds of chanting Mousavi supporters with their batons. Others charged up streets on foot, or rode around in black Toyota Land Cruisers. They used teargas, rubber bullets and stun grenades, and by Saturday night they had been joined by marauding bands of basiji — volunteer paramilitaries — waving the national flag and chanting Ahmadinejad slogans.

Nobody was spared. The Times witnessed an old woman in a long black chador being beaten in a doorway after she hurled insults at the police, a teacher clubbed to the ground by a basij as he tried to protect his demonstrating students and countless protesters carried away with blood streaming from their wounds.

One human rights activist called it a “Tehran Tiananmen”, referring to China’s brutal suppression of pro-democracy demonstrators in 1989.

Mousavi aides accused the regime of mounting a “coup détat”. His supporters retaliated by throwing stones, smashing windows, setting fire to buses and rubbish skips, and making barricades of burning tyres. “Mousavi is our President,” they chanted, and “What happened to our vote?” It was the worst unrest in the capital since the student riots of 1999.

There were reports of demonstrations in Tabriz, Siraz and other Iranian cities, but they were impossible to confirm because the regime all but shut down the telephone system. It blocked text messages, Facebook and several opposition websites to prevent Mousavi supporters from mobilising en masse.

The BBC and other news websites were jammed. Foreign journalists were denied extensions to their visas, ensuring that most would have to leave today or tomorrow.

Opposition newspapers were ordered to carry positive headlines dwelling on Friday’s massive turnout, but some refused. One that supports Mousavi ran a story about Mother’s Day on its front page by way of protest. Another, which supported Mehdi Karoubi, another of the four candidates, mocked the election with a headline proclaiming: “Karoubi comes fifth”. IRIB, the monopoly state broadcaster, has scarcely mentioned the riots.

Mousavi supporters are torn between fury, fear and despair. The green ribbons, headbands, shirts and bandanas with which so many were festooned last week have vanished — to wear them now would invite a beating.

Such nice people those Iranian Government thugs, no? 🙄

Update #4: ABC News International Reports:

A spokesman for Iranian presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi says his camp will keep pushing to change the results of Friday’s election that gave incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad a landslide win.

“We are going to stay in the streets and ask the mullahs to give fatwas that Ahmedinejad is not our president. We are going to ask the Leader, through the will of the people, to change his mind,” said Mostafa Makhmalbaf, who is speaking to the foreign press on Mousavi’s behalf from his home in Paris.

“I don’t think we can do a total Revolution in Iran but we can make some change,” he told ABC News, describing what would be an unprecedented reversal for the Islamic Republic.

Mousavi’s campaign claims the announced outcome, which gave Ahmedinejad 63 percent of the vote, was fraudulent.

Ahmedinejad and state election officials, some of them his appointees, have said the election was fair and accurate, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei confirmed Ahmedinejad’s landslide win on Saturday morning. “The most magnificent contemporary election took place on Friday in Iran … to us this [complaint] lacks any legal base, and to our nation as well it is without any legal value,” Ahmedinejad said today at a victory press conference. International observers have pointed to irregularities; the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy, noted a handful of concerns including a lack of data made available to support the overall count.

Makhmalbaf said the campaign urged governments around the world not to accept Ahmedinejad’s election as president.

“He is a coup d’etat man,” said Makhmalbaf, referring to the election results as “a state of fascism.”

Mousavi has called for the results to be dismissed and a new vote taken. His camp has planned a rally for Monday, marching from Tehran’s Engelab to Azadi Squares. Mousavi himself and former President Mohamed Khatami, his political backer, plan to attend the event.

Over the weekend, protests were met with a harsh response from riot police, who attacked demonstrators with batons and tear gas.

“People are like fire nowadays. Whatever Ahmedinejad does it will be worse. Saturday morning the city was in shock. Now in the coming days you’ll see a change,” Makhmalbaf said.

Makhmalbaf clarified rumors that Mousavi was under house arrest, saying there was no official detention but that police were keeping watch on his home, exerting enough pressure to keep him indoors.

Read the rest of that one, it is quite interesting.

Closing this Live Blog and will post more, as it comes in.

Update #5: Part III of this Blog is here