Word: tehran
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...Karroubi said he handed out "around a thousand" CDs containing hip-hop and rap tracks with pro-democracy messages. A graffiti artist sprayed "Death to [Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali] Khamenei" - a phrase no one would have dared utter two months ago - on a city bus. And a prominent underground Tehran rock band, Hypernova, now living in exile, created a Web portal, the Freedom Glory Project, to gather support from other Iranian performers for the "green movement." (See a video featuring Hypernova...
Meanwhile, even though the government forces had the upper hand in the morning, the protests continued on Wednesday evening. Hours after the inaugural rites in parliament, more protests broke out at Vanak and Valiasr squares, although the crowds were quickly dispersed by security forces already stationed throughout central Tehran for much of the day. There are apparently plans for further demonstrations on Thursday evening, when the Basij force - which is established on conservative Shi'ite tenets - may be preoccupied with celebrating the birthday of the 12th "hidden" imam, a messianic figure of the Islamic sect. Says one would-be protester...
...order, he made his contempt for the Ayatullah's edict plain by immediately reappointing Mashaei as his chief of staff. The President also sacked members of his Cabinet who had insisted that Khamenei's demand be heeded, including the powerful conservative Intelligence Minister. Following that clash of wills, a Tehran newspaper known to express Khamenei's views called the President a man of "little knowledge." And it's not clear whether Ahmadinejad had the backing of the Revolutionary Guards in his defiance of Khamenei, because the corps' main newspaper criticized the President and backed the Supreme Leader on the issue...
Mousavi's supporters are trying to get the bazaar on his side. One of the marches in the weeks after Iran's June election went from Imam Khomeini Square past Tehran's main bazaar. According to a witness, thousands of bazaaris closed their shops so they could stand outside and watch hundreds of thousands of green-clad protesters silently walk by. In fact, the route had been designed to draw Iran's merchants and workers into the growing opposition coalition to make it seem as if it had the support of Iran's commercial sector...
...years, certain bazaar members made out well as long as they could maintain special relationships with the government, which handed out licenses to import and export goods and gave more favorable exchange rates to certain traders. But ironically, as postrevolutionary Iran's economy diversified, with malls sprouting up in Tehran neighborhoods that catered to the tastes of an expanded middle class, the bazaar may be slowly losing its central place in Iranian social life. Still, as the Iranian factions struggle for power, whoever wins over the bazaar will have a major advantage...