On Ahmadinejad's working-class support

dariusk wrote, in comment to someone else's entry:

One of my relatives lives in a small village in Iran. After the results came in, things seemed fishy. His town was listed as 85% voting for Ahmadinejad. He called a few friends in the town asking who they voted for, everyone said Mousavi. They finally called a town meeting (this is a very small town, everyone was there). The asked people to volunteer who they voted for. Only one guy voted for Ahmadinejad.

It's a blue-collar area, a village in a rural area. My relative is a construction foreman. I don't think the class breakdown is as easy as "farmers like Ahmadinejad, well-heeled Terhanis like Mousavi."

dariusk also posted this, on the same entry: Iran’s Rural Vote and Election Fraud by Eric Hooglund:

Take Bagh-e Iman, for example. It is a village of 850 households in the Zagros Mountains near the southwestern Iranian city of Shiraz. According to longtime, close friends who live there, the village is seething with moral outrage because at least two-thirds of all people over 18 years of age believe that the recent presidential election was stolen by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

When news spread on Saturday (June 13) morning that Ahmadinejad had won more than 60 percent of the vote cast the day before, the residents were in shock. The week before the vote had witnessed the most intense campaigning in the village’s history, and it became evident that support for Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s candidacy was overwhelming. Supporters of Ahmadinejad were even booed and mocked when they attempted rallies and had to endure scolding lectures from relatives at family gatherings. “No one would dare vote for that hypocrite,” insisted Mrs. Ehsani, an elected member of the village council.

The president was very unpopular in Bagh-e Iman and in most of the other villages around Shiraz, primarily because of his failure to deliver on the reforms he promised in his successful 2005 presidential campaign. He did have some supporters. Village elders confided, “10 to 15 percent of village men, mostly [those who were] Basijis [militia members] and those who worked for government organizations, along with their families.”

Allaho akbar -- God is a crypto-secularist!

*** ETA: Can someone explain to me how this is happening? The video underneath should be a dark video of Iranians yelling "Allaho Akbar" in the night, and come from Youtube. That's the video I see when I look at this entry on its entry page. But when I look at this same entry on my friends' page, what I see if a goddamn Christiane Amanpour video on vimeo!!!! How the hell??! The word Vimeo does not appear in my embed code. Also, earlier this morning, the entire contents of this entry had disappeared, I had to rebuild it from scratch. Is the Russian LJ mob trying to support the Revolutionary Guards?!?

2:18 PM ET -- "Allaho Akbar!" Such haunting video. Midway through, you'll hear a woman's voice, whose words were translated by emailer Lily:

The woman in this video is saying something that really touched me. She is saying that they can take our phones, our internet, all our communication away, but we are showing that by saying "allaho akbar" we can find each other. She ends it my saying that tonight they are crying out to god for help.

The NIAC relays word today from a friend in Iran: "Until it's clear what the fate of the new elections are, we will chant 'Allah Akbar' three times every night - once at 10:00, 11:00, and midnight."

Source: Nico Pitney on HuffPo.