[Peace-discuss] ] $10, 000 Reward: Show How the Iranian Election Was "Stolen"

[Robert Naiman]

On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 8:01 PM, C. G. Estabrook<galliher at illinois.edu> wrote:
> This seems rather odd, Bob.  Is your notion that the reward will not be
> claimed and that you will therefore show by a sort of indirect proof that
> the election was valid?

No, I had no intention of proving anything by the fact of the reward
not being claimed, although I am sure it won't be. Rather, I saw it as
a rhetorical device to underline for the reader what's missing from
the "stolen election" story: a coherent story. In this way, the stolen
Iranian election conspiracy theory is a lot like the 9/11 conspiracy
theory. There's no coherent story, that adds up to a stolen election,
only anecdotes, questions, and conjectures, and a lot of disconnected
piecemeal claims that don't bear scrutiny.

> And the point of that? To prevent the US government from gaining some sort
> of advantage over the Iranian government by impeaching its title to office?

To help undermine the current ill-conceived campaign to delegitimize
the Iranian government whose purpose is to thwart the diplomatic
engagement with Iran that Obama promised, because the likely
alternative, in the long run, to diplomatic engagement is war.

Blocking Western diplomatic engagement with Iran is the objective of
the Iranian opposition right now, according to a Western spokesman for
Mr. Mousavi:

------

Mr. Makhmalbaf said Mr. Mousavi and others in the opposition fear that
Western leaders will eventually negotiate with the Iranian government
despite its loss of legitimacy since the disputed elections.

"We are afraid Western countries, including the United States, will
sign a deal with an Ahmadinejad government [even though] it is an
illegal government that has not been elected and has come to power by
a coup d'etat," he said.

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/25/opposition-alters-tactics-to-avoid-protest-deaths/?page=2

---

P.S. Someone made a nicely organized Iran election  claim/counterclaim
website here:

http://www.iranaffairs.com/iran_affairs/2009/06/iran-elections-claims-and-counterclaims-analyzed.html

> --CGE
>
>
> Robert Naiman wrote:
>>
>> I will pay $10,000 to the first person or organization that presents a
>> coherent story for how the Iranian election was stolen that is consistent
>> with knowable facts about the Iranian election process as it took place on
>> June 12-13 and the information that has been published since, including
>> the
>> ballot box tallies that have been published on the web by the Iranian
>> government.
>
>> In order to collect the reward, you don't have to prove your case beyond a
>> shadow of a doubt. But your numbers have to add up. To collect your
>> reward,
>> it's not sufficient to cite press reports or anecdotal evidence of
>> election
>> irregularities, or to claim as authority Western commentators or NGOs who
>> have not themselves put together a coherent story. To collect your reward,
>> your story has to tell how on June 12, a majority of Iranian voters voted
>> for
>> other candidates besides Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, yet this was transformed by
>> the
>> Iranian election authorities into a majority for Ahmadinejad.
>
>> Here are the numbers you have to explain. According to the official tally,
>> Ahmadinejad got about 24.5 million votes. Mir Hossein Mousavi got 13.2
>> million votes. That's a difference of more than 11 million votes. So, when
>> I
>> say your numbers have to add up, I mean your story of stolen votes has to
>> add
>> up to more than 11 million stolen votes.
>
>>
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/10000-reward-show-how-the_b_220705.html
>
>> http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/6/25/102230/708
>
>> http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/239
>
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-- 
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org