I have been suspended from posting to uschess.org/forums

Mike Nolan has sent me notification that I have been suspended for one
week from posting to the USCF Forums.

This in itself is not surprising. Susan Polgar and Paul Truong have
been demanding for the longest time that I be banned from posting to
the forums. Also, Joel Channing has been bombastically demanding that
the moderator and the board adopt guidelines under which a poster can
be banned. It has been obvious from the beginning that Joel Channing
has been pressing for this so that I would be banned from posting.

There is, however, a legal question as to whether a certified candidate
for election can be banned or suspended from the forums.

Another issue is the demand by Joel Channing that the USCF take out
Internet Insurance. Channing has implied that the USCF needs Internet
Insurance to protect the USCF in case I file a lawsuit. However, there
is a darker motivation. Channing is in the habit of filing lawsuits for
libel any time anybody says anything bad about Channing. Channing is
the only USCF member who has displayed a tendency to file this sort of
suit. Therefore, it seems apparent that the real purpose to this
Internet insurance is that if anybody says anything bad about Channing
on the USCF Forums, Channing will be able to sue the USCF and collect
on this insurance.

I was the only board member who voted against this paying for this type
of Insurance.

The fact that I have been suspended is not surprising.

What is surprising is the reason: Mike Nolan wrote that he suspended me
because I had posted confidential information on the forums on January
2. In addition, the suspension was for one week because this was my
second violation, the first being back in June, 2006 when I solicited
for funds to addend the FIDE Congress in Turin, Italy. These were
violations of Acceptable Usage Guidelines adopted on January 3, 2007,
according to Mike Nolan. So, the new guidelines were applied
retroactively.

The confidential information I supposedly posted was not information at
all but was actually a question I asked of Sevan Muradian, who was
soliciting funds to send a womans chess team to a new competition in
Ekaterinburg, Russia. It seems to be lost on Mike Nolan that actually
Sevan Muradian was soliciting funds and yet he was not suspended. Also,
Susan Polgar yesterday solicited funds in another matter, and she was
not suspended either.

Sam Sloan