How it all began

The fact that Raymond doesn't even know how this "war" developed is pathetic, so I offer my version, with actual references.

Here's how it started:

Raymond criticized Mas' draw against Michael Adams in R1 of the Olympiad, which was not taken too well by many. This strained his relations with the internet chess community. Then, a few posts later he somehow got people to dislike him further, and I have no recollection of how he managed to do that.

After(?) the Olympiad, Jimmy Liew made an attempt at a humourous post, parodying the bloggers in the internet chess community. Then Raymond went on to attempt an emulation, but his re-parody was done poorly; he was only attempting to portray the bloggers involved as bad people, with Raymond as the righteous man refuting their flawed claims (which he put into their mouths), a-la 20th century propaganda films. This further strained the issue.

Following which, Raymond confused himself between "throwing a game" and "losing by default" in a post which criticized the Olympiad Team, after which he was smashed, figuratively speaking. Instead of admitting that he made a minor error, he made things worse by saying that everyone else was at fault for not being able to understand him. At this point, his relations went from very strained to hostile.

Then came Malaysia-Singapore, where Raymond heroically shouted at Peter Long for having the nerve to express himself. He proceeded to talk about this on his blog, and further address the previous affairs. Rationality responded with a lengthy post, calling him a hypocrite [rather true; his latest post as of now, UTC+8 9:54pm 10th February 2011, is titled "Freedom of expression" when his dream is to see some people shut up and rot in hell for talking too much] and useless, also citing the ASEAN affair in one paragraph. It was written just like any of the other points in the post, but he went on to single out this paragraph in due time.

Then Raymond gave up the game and made a leap, threatening to make a police report and file a lawsuit against Jimmy Liew, Rationality, and The Chess Ninja for libel, with a 2 day ultimatum for them to reveal themselves and kiss his ass. Raymond cited an allegedly slanderous short-lived post made by Rationality late last year regarding the ASEAN affair, which was deleted hours after it was posted.

Rationality responded by removing parts of his post which may have been considered slanderous. I would say that it was a peace offering by Rationality; he had deleted (albeit tongue-in-cheek-ly) the slanderous sentences on his latest post, and the ASEAN post was deleted only hours after it was posted, i.e. months ago, but anyway that is only how I interpret his actions. Meanwhile, the Chess Ninja chose the less compromising choice of challenging Raymond's allegations and getting public opinion on the situation, and Jimmy stayed relatively silent and inactive throughout the duration of the ultimatum, besides a post questioning the validity of Raymond's case.

Raymond took Rationality's concession as an admission of guilt (I presume he believed that he had "won"), and continued to hammer the bloggers. 2 days and no police report later, he continued to claim that he was "winning", and, to paraphrase, he decided to "let the [accussed] bloggers off".

Then there were the polls, one by the Chess Ninja, and the other by me. These didn't have much impact on the situation; it just made Raymond go through the trouble to consult an IT guy to confirm that it is possible that the polls were just the same guy voting multiple times, something which everyone already knows.

Shortly afterwards, Raymond addressed the ASEAN issue again, prompting many to ask what was the post that was on Rationality's blog, requests which were swiftly deleted by the dear blog admin. This is where I come in; I had saved that post, and I decided to share it to satisfy everyone's curiosity, and add some gasoline to the fire, because why the hell not?

Raymond addressed it further, changing the story as he went along, and now, this is where we are.

Up to this day, Rationality has made no further posts, but yet somehow he's still the second biggest target of Raymond, after Jimmy. Maybe you did win, Raymond. It seems you managed to silence one blogger. Unless, of course, you want to claim that I'm him too. In that case, whatever effort you made to shut him (me?) up was just futile.

Notice how he had so many opportunities to put an end to this just by not talking about it anymore. But his compulsion to tell everyone that he is never wrong did not allow it.

The current issue is the ASEAN affair, and Raymond's continued assault on Jimmy for "promoting slanderous blogs", i.e. blogs that Raymond doesn't like.

I can't end without giving my further opinion on the current discussion, but what I can say is that:

A simpler solution would have been to just have been honest from the start and say that it was an enterprise, which made a loss due to the lack of response. Everyone would have been fine with that. But saying that this and that was sponsored, and yet somehow money having to be paid here and there only muddies the water. Over what? An attempt to make it sound like FGM was also sponsoring is a dishonest attempt to receive credit. Now there's the perspective argument, but unfortunately it has already been rebutted before this argument even started.

Yes, it would have been completely understandable, considering that Raymond is currently unemployed, and as shocking as it sounds, he makes a living off running chess programs.

He also believes that the many people against him are the same few people; he thinks that only one or two person in the whole of Malaysia does not share his ideology. Similar to how the rejected American Idol singers think that Simon Cowell and Randy Jackson are the only guys on Earth who think his/her singing is disastrous. In further analogy, Raymond seems to have met his Paula Abdul, too. Notice how there's only one of them. Furthermore, with him withholding the identity of his only cited supporter, how is that any better than the many equally anonymous people who cannot stand him?

His attempt to say that MCF and AirAsia are also being slandered (too many citations on this; here's just one) as far as this matter is concerned is pathetic; MCF was just the official body (in fact, if my memory serves me well, he was unhappy about them too for not covering the cost for your flag ceremony. Which side is he on?), and AirAsia, mind you, sponsored the tickets (unless you're saying they didn't, but that's besides the point). Unless he's the one saying that they had a hand in this. Then that's Raymond slandering them.

"To" Raymond:

Even if they were affected, it's up to them to file a lawsuit. Since when did you represent MCF and AirAsia? If you want to press charges, file them under FGM. You have no say over MCF or AirAsia's action. You're not as big boss as you think.

You keep talking about the truth, and yet you hide so many things. It used to be "sponsored by AirAsia and FGM", and suddenly it's now, "a win-win situation for FGM and the players". Then, with some of your favourite words; you spin the illusion of transparency by publishing your letter to AirAsia, but not the further correspondence. Furthermore, why did you truncate the part of the letter with the proposal? That's the most important part. Are you hiding something?

It's also nice to see you introducing a word from another language into your writing to describe others. I have one too, to describe your writings: гавно.

Fight your own war. You got yourself into this. Your struggle to diffract the accusations onto others in hope of their support is miserable.

P/S: I still find hilarity in your attempts at analogies from chess.

PP/S: Hypocrisy in action.

PPP/S: My prediction of Raymond's response, if any:

"Lies. Poisonous lies from a person who uses belligerence and ugly language in his postings."

Followed by no concrete evidence to tell his side of the story.