WHO IS LYING: LAURIE OR KINGSTON?

All you have proven is that Mr. Laurie has definite deficiencies in
reading comprehension and factual reporting. -- Taylor Kingston

First, we ask Taylor Kingston once again whether he adopted false
names such as Paulie Graf and Xylothist and posted
messages IN PRASIE OF HIMSELF, for Pete's sake?

Does this standard accord with what our NMnot meant when claiming he
has "standards"? He ain't gonna answer.
Nevvah has. Nevvah will.

But in any reckoning of who is lying, NMnot or Richard Laurie,
testimony about respective character,
would be relevant in both a courtroom and in the court of public
opinion.

Readers may recollect that we published a letter written by
Richard Laurie to NMnot Kingston in 2002. In that letter, among other
points made, playwright
Laurie stated that our NMnot denied knowledge of a dispute between GM
Larry Evans and Eddie Winter.

Before discussing how those versed in evidence -- both lawyers
and historians -- would deem this letter, we have to deal with a few
handfuls of intellectual sand being tossed by Greg Kennedy and, in his
latest message, by the increasingly unspeakable NMnot, who unlike his
unread confrere knows better. The two are
trying mightily to change the subject. Yet the issue is not whether
the Laurie letter, in itself, "proves" anything. It does not. It is
a just one piece of evidence (see further discussion below).

The relevance of Richard Laurie's capacity for expression is not
that a man
with a refined capacity for expression necessarily tells the truth
(the imbecilic strawman attributed to me by Greg and, now, by NMnot).
The issue is that when
examining written evidence those who approach it objectively must
determine the likelihood that its author expressed his intended
meaning accurately.

For example, we saw an example on this forum last year when Bill
Brock, an accountant from Chicago who suffers syntactical limitations,
unwittingly accused himself of being a child molester during a spat
with Sam Sloan. Indeed, Mr. Brock offered an implied confession that
would carry weight in a court of law, if a victim were also to be
found. This writer jumped on the lapse, though noting repeatedly
that we were sure that Mr. Brock had not intended to convey the
meaning that emanated from his fevered brow and bruised keyboard.

Those versed in weighing evidence -- both lawyers and historians
-- would deem the Laurie letter as probative, though not determinative
evidence. They would want to know whether Mr. Laurie, as discussed
above, could convey his thoughts with precision. They would examine
the circumstances of the letter -- the fact that it was written by
someone uninvolved in chess political spats, the fact that it was
written by someone with little knowledge of the personalities
involved, the fact that it was written as a private communication
without any definite expectation that it would ever see the light of
day in a partisan dispute, the fact that it was a friendly
letter in overall tone, the fact that concerns were expressed with
civility rather than any partisan rancor, and the like.

NMnot Kingston's response to the letter has been that Mr. Laurie
was lying, befuddled, muddled and evil. He denied the Laurie claim.

Contrary to the nonsense written by our NMnot, the discussion is
not about what the Laurie letter proves. In itself, it proves
nothing. It is a form of evidence that carries weight. One adds to
this evidence, the practice of our NMnot in PRAISING HIMSELF under
false names. We still have no proof that NMnot lied to Mr. Laurie
(that may be forthcoming). We only have evidence on paper and
indications of NMnot's character.

That's all we have. Judgment, for we will all make a judgment,
even if not to judge at all, comes down to probability. What weighs
more heavily on an
evidentiary scale? NMnot's denial, or Mr. Laurie's letter that popped
up in a dispute many years later, which its author could never
possibly have envisaged?

My judgment tells me that Mr. Laurie, a man versed in the
niceties of language, was not likely to have misunderstood NMnot's
meaning and that he had no motive at that time to misrepresent NMnot's
meaning. Further, the letter per se is a form of evidence which is
probative. It has appreciable value. Against this concatenation of
meanings, we have the denial of NMnot, whom we know to
possess an ego so vast and fragile as to require him to post under
false names on this forum IN PRAISE OF HIMSELF, for Pete's sake.

Who is the more likely liar? Laurie or NMnot? I entertain not
the scantest doubt that the liar is our NMnot, the man who also
inflated his rating by 500
points during a hot dispute with Sam Sloan.

Yours, Larry Parr

Chess One wrote:
This is a chess newsgroup Murray - if the dirty vicar here wants to snip
references and admonitions to him to discuss chess, and insist that others
are terrible, he would be just like any other flash newbie, and those who
never got past the very self-satisfied clever level... but then he won't be
like you, and Brennan, will he, since that's all you do - and as you know,
there is safety in numbers. 'Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.'
You'd better protest more, otherwise you'll lose him if he dared actually
talk chess. Do /you/ play, by the way? Do you like it?

I 'snipped' several of your entries earlier because you filled them with
incoherent insults -- as you did above. You don't like being snipped.
One alternative you could pursue is to write more civilly and depend
less on insulting people. The paragraph above is difficult to parse.
It is clear you are upset, and you are attempting to abuse me again. I
will not ask you for an apology this time. It would be a wasted effort.

I see once again you are attempting to control the discourse here by
insisting that it be about 'playing chess.' Nevertheless, I did answer
this question here some time ago. I will not go over it again, but if
you have skill with the archives, you should have no problem retrieving
it. I hope you are aware that chess culture has far more to it than just
playing rated tournament games...

You see, admonishing others to do things you don't do yourself is
hypocritical, whether you wear a dog-collar or a ten-gallon hat.

You will have to be more specific Mr. Innes. What admonishment are you
talking about? Since I do not know what you are referring to I have no
way to address your claim of hypocrisy other than to suggest you learn
to write with more clarity. How does your reference to hats and collars
have anything to do with it?

Phil Innes

I have tried to take something positive out of this. I noted that you
expressed disdain for my signature. I have changed it for your sake.
--


Cheers,
Rev. J.D. Walker, U.C.

" If only Phil [Innes] would apologize to the group, admit he's
substituted bombast for reasoned discourse, promise to conduct
rationally these discussions in the future, eschew exhibitionist use of
foreign phrases, and, last but not least, commit to a spell-checker,
we'd welcome him back into the communion of chess fans." -- Mike Murray

"J.D. Walker" wrote in message
. ..
Chess One wrote:
This is a chess newsgroup Murray - if the dirty vicar here wants to snip
references and admonitions to him to discuss chess, and insist that
others are terrible, he would be just like any other flash newbie, and
those who never got past the very self-satisfied clever level... but
then he won't be like you, and Brennan, will he, since that's all you
do - and as you know, there is safety in numbers. 'Thou shalt not follow
a multitude to do evil.' You'd better protest more, otherwise you'll lose
him if he dared actually talk chess. Do /you/ play, by the way? Do you
like it?

I 'snipped' several of your entries earlier because you filled them with
incoherent insults -- as you did above. You don't like being snipped. One
alternative you could pursue is to write more civilly and depend less on
insulting people. The paragraph above is difficult to parse. It is clear
you are upset, and you are attempting to abuse me again. I will not ask
you for an apology this time. It would be a wasted effort.

I see once again you are attempting to control the discourse here by
insisting that it be about 'playing chess.'

My Dear Vicar!

And you are trying to control it by eliminating what you do not like to
read, but then paraphrasing it! it is difficult to parse, yet clear to you
that... etc. shrug

Mike Murray's idea of control was to eliminate 25 objections to both his own
and rule-of-law activities he conducted here. As in another current case
floundering around these newsgroups, there were not weighted, but rubbished
and entirely dismissed. Without irony he neverthless accuses me of wanting
to control everything.

What I should like to do is to talk from my own experience of chess, if
possible. Should you eliminate my own invitation to you to do the same, then
please do not continue to wrestle the context to your own perspective alone,
if you actually want to have a conversation.

It is BTW a rather silly ploy to snip then demand to know what people mean.
While it is a common thing to do, there are other possibilities, and the
rest of this message does not appreciate my intelligence nor yours.

To have any conversation at all, there needs to be a subject, clearly
identified, to which we can agree, disagree, or keep our council. It needs
to be a chess topic. This thread, so it seems to me, is the result of never
identifiying a clear topic, nor staying the course of addressing that
topic - and the logical result of that is someone must be called a liar.

ON TOPIC?

Some time ago if ceased being a conversation and became a competition - but
unless you are a closer reader than I, no light is shed on Keres/Botvinnik
from the original materials presented here.

Therefore we have a spat on who said what and when, instead of what
substantive material was addressed in these communications.

I have at least one bias here, perhaps two of them. I have seen both public
and private writers of a principle to the affair, and secondly, if I were
Evans or his editor, I too would have eliminated Taylor Kingston's response,
since it added nothing substantive about Keres/Botvinnik than his first
did - but instead inveigled on the fairness of making further public
presentations in CL.

If that is your idea of the topical material in this thread, then we could
continue to talk in this thread about that topic. Otherwise, not!

Phil Innes

Nevertheless, I did answer this question here some time ago. I will not
go over it again, but if you have skill with the archives, you should have
no problem retrieving it. I hope you are aware that chess culture has far
more to it than just playing rated tournament games...

You see, admonishing others to do things you don't do yourself is
hypocritical, whether you wear a dog-collar or a ten-gallon hat.

You will have to be more specific Mr. Innes. What admonishment are you
talking about? Since I do not know what you are referring to I have no
way to address your claim of hypocrisy other than to suggest you learn to
write with more clarity. How does your reference to hats and collars have
anything to do with it?

Phil Innes

I have tried to take something positive out of this. I noted that you
expressed disdain for my signature. I have changed it for your sake.
--


Cheers,
Rev. J.D. Walker, U.C.

" If only Phil [Innes] would apologize to the group, admit he's
substituted bombast for reasoned discourse, promise to conduct rationally
these discussions in the future, eschew exhibitionist use of foreign
phrases, and, last but not least, commit to a spell-checker, we'd welcome
him back into the communion of chess fans." -- Mike Murray

Chess One wrote:

To have any conversation at all, there needs to be a subject, clearly
identified, to which we can agree, disagree, or keep our council. It needs
to be a chess topic. This thread, so it seems to me, is the result of never
identifiying a clear topic, nor staying the course of addressing that
topic - and the logical result of that is someone must be called a liar.

ON TOPIC?

Some time ago if ceased being a conversation and became a competition - but
unless you are a closer reader than I, no light is shed on Keres/Botvinnik
from the original materials presented here.

Therefore we have a spat on who said what and when, instead of what
substantive material was addressed in these communications.

I have at least one bias here, perhaps two of them. I have seen both public
and private writers of a principle to the affair, and secondly, if I were
Evans or his editor, I too would have eliminated Taylor Kingston's response,
since it added nothing substantive about Keres/Botvinnik than his first
did - but instead inveigled on the fairness of making further public
presentations in CL.

If that is your idea of the topical material in this thread, then we could
continue to talk in this thread about that topic. Otherwise, not!

Phil Innes


I appreciate the change in tone and I am willing to meet you half way.

This thread has been all over the place. I am interested in the
Keres-Botvinnik controversy. I did note the message earlier by
'social_justice' with interest. He claims that KGB people had
information on the controversy, and that he interviewed them. The
message in not documented. I imagine almost every KGB agent of that era
is dead by now. But just the same it suggests an avenue of research
that could be revealing. Is it possible to access old KGB files and
look for related information?

I am not interested in the flame wars between the various authors. I
find it deadly boring. I suspect that Mr. Parr can keep on doing what
he is doing forever if need be. And his critics seem determined as
well. Apparently we agree that that is an unappealing future... :^)

Given the history of the thread, and the ongoing flame war, I do not
hold out a lot of hope for a civil discussion of the topic you prefer.
Just the same I offer this much in support of the idea.
--


Cheers,
Rev. J.D. Walker, U.C.

I LOVE THIS STINKIN' PLACE!

I am not interested in the flame wars between the various authors. I find it deadly
boring. I suspect that Mr. Parr can keep on doing what he is doing
forever if need be. And his critics seem determined as well. -- Rev.
J.D. Walker

Dear Rev. Walker,

You are correct. My critics are determined to
keep going. And thank heaven for that. I love rthis
forum, I love its contributors, and I even love poor old
NMnot Taylor Kingston and his pal Greg Kennedy..

"Love?" We mean an intense appreciation of those
who enoy prolonged and meaningless electronic struggles.

NMnot Kingston may be an enormous mincing stinker
(e.m.s.) but he is OUR enormous mincing stinker. If some
big bad guys from the USCF were ever to come over to our
trough and try to shut up e.m.s. or even that slinking cur,
Louie Blair (the nutty professor) I would mount the
barricades heroically, wave a flag like Chesterton's
Napoleon of Notting Hill, and fight off the invaders.

What was that you said?

No, really, I would!

I EVEN ENJOY KENNEDY'S RANTS

Do you consider putting Larry Evans' rancid anti-FIDE, anti-
everything opinions in order to be a real accomplishment in chess? --
help bot (aka Greg Kennedy)

From THIS CRAZY WORLD OF CHESS by GM Larry Evans (page 113)

When chess is infested with power brokers, anything
is possible, any rule can be broken. Excellence becomes a
secondary consideration. As Nikolai Krogius told a young
Kasparov, "We already have a world champion. We don't need
another one."

Long after FIDE has vanished, the games of great players
will still be remembered and enjoyed. One Fischer is worth a
thousand Campos. One Kasparov can excite the masses and
make them wonder why a dull game like chess holds so many
of us in its thrall. Ordinary people might discover what a great
game chess really is and why a few fools fight so passionately
to keep it clean.






J.D. Walker wrote:
Chess One wrote:

To have any conversation at all, there needs to be a subject, clearly
identified, to which we can agree, disagree, or keep our council. It needs
to be a chess topic. This thread, so it seems to me, is the result of never
identifiying a clear topic, nor staying the course of addressing that
topic - and the logical result of that is someone must be called a liar.

ON TOPIC?

Some time ago if ceased being a conversation and became a competition - but
unless you are a closer reader than I, no light is shed on Keres/Botvinnik
from the original materials presented here.

Therefore we have a spat on who said what and when, instead of what
substantive material was addressed in these communications.

I have at least one bias here, perhaps two of them. I have seen both public
and private writers of a principle to the affair, and secondly, if I were
Evans or his editor, I too would have eliminated Taylor Kingston's response,
since it added nothing substantive about Keres/Botvinnik than his first
did - but instead inveigled on the fairness of making further public
presentations in CL.

If that is your idea of the topical material in this thread, then we could
continue to talk in this thread about that topic. Otherwise, not!

Phil Innes


I appreciate the change in tone and I am willing to meet you half way.

This thread has been all over the place. I am interested in the
Keres-Botvinnik controversy. I did note the message earlier by
'social_justice' with interest. He claims that KGB people had
information on the controversy, and that he interviewed them. The
message in not documented. I imagine almost every KGB agent of that era
is dead by now. But just the same it suggests an avenue of research
that could be revealing. Is it possible to access old KGB files and
look for related information?

I am not interested in the flame wars between the various authors. I
find it deadly boring. I suspect that Mr. Parr can keep on doing what
he is doing forever if need be. And his critics seem determined as
well. Apparently we agree that that is an unappealing future... :^)

Given the history of the thread, and the ongoing flame war, I do not
hold out a lot of hope for a civil discussion of the topic you prefer.
Just the same I offer this much in support of the idea.
--


Cheers,
Rev. J.D. Walker, U.C.

"J.D. Walker" wrote in message
. ..
Chess One wrote:

This thread has been all over the place. I am interested in the
Keres-Botvinnik controversy. I did note the message earlier by
'social_justice' with interest. He claims that KGB people had information
on the controversy, and that he interviewed them. The message in not
documented. I imagine almost every KGB agent of that era is dead by now.
But just the same it suggests an avenue of research that could be
revealing. Is it possible to access old KGB files and look for related
information?

Yes indeed: two ways at least - one is from Taimanov's record in his 'I was
Fischer's victim' to which he added in a subsequent edition his own KGB
file. Since this is a specific on a chess-player, it is exactly on topic. In
our interview together he also suggested it was 'normal'. The pretext for
intial arrest, btw, was a copy of a Solzenhytzen [see below] which I think
was 'First Circle'.

The second is a memorandum which I have just requested of Boris Gulko
permissions to publish thereof [Boris has been playing in Texas], but this
at least is in English. It is a document concerning his own repression,
naming names! including those of two prominent chess players in the Soviet
hierarchy, and who they worked with.

Given the history of the thread, and the ongoing flame war, I do not hold
out a lot of hope for a civil discussion of the topic you prefer. Just the
same I offer this much in support of the idea.

But you are very good!

I might add that there are other references, some avowable but hard to
access, and others less avowable [there is a particularly interesting
Russian GM and historian who is not /quite/ on the record.] Should you ever
encounter Ray Keene [who not incidentally played Botvinnik, even won] you
might ask him how he smuggled out Refusenik materials under the very nose of
the KGB - I think he has some specifics on Gulko, but also broader
materials.

At the time those suffering oppression could not understand why we in the
West refused to report it. I think the issue of human rights had not then
grown into a cause celebre, or actually, that anyone knew what could be
done. And midst cold-war, at least in Harold Wilson's England, everyone's
propaganda seemed of about the same weight.

On the whole; I think for //Russians// there is a disinclination for them to
make their history available to us, since, in their view, we are
insufficiently generous about our /own/ secret history. To inquire more on
this subject, ask Larry Parr! Furthermore, at least as much as I understand
their perspective, we [the West] rather use the 'revelations' about Soviet
era manipulations to, at least implicitly, suggest a superiority or
triumphing attitude to their own scene.

Whereas, they did then, and do now [often by importing it for closer
appreciation] consider that we are morally depraved people, reliant on cheap
and self-satisfied rhetoricism, rather than anything more 'robust'.

From a spiritual point of view it is a sardonic fact that the Godless state
should now view the West as the materialists.

Two endpoints: other references to these issues is from Korchnoi, who spoke
of East /and/ West corruption in chess. How interesting that when my fellow
Vermonter Solzenhytsyn came to the West he said rather the same about the
bigger picture - and while it had become intolerable for him to stay in his
own country and still have any voice, he said, at the same time, that we in
the West were destroying ourselves by our lack of standard to anything but
materialismus.

Cordially, Phil Innes





Cheers,
Rev. J.D. Walker, U.C.

On Nov 17, 8:20 am, "J.D. Walker" wrote:

This thread has been all over the place. I am interested in the
Keres-Botvinnik controversy. I did note the message earlier by
'social_justice' with interest. He claims that KGB people had
information on the controversy, and that he interviewed them. The
message in not documented. I imagine almost every KGB agent of that era
is dead by now. But just the same it suggests an avenue of research
that could be revealing. Is it possible to access old KGB files and
look for related information?

This avenue has certainly been tried, but as far as I know, whatever
files the NKVD (as it was known circa 1948) and/or KGB may have had on
Paul Keres have never been released to the public. To my knowledge,
the man most involved the effort to unearth them has been Kere's
friend and fellow Estonian Valter Heuer, author of a very important
article on Keres in New In Chess magazine (#4, 1995). In that article
he wrote:

[[T]he Keres dossiers must be made available. This is the demand
made by his honor and dignity as well as Botvinnik's, the honor and
dignity of the chess world."

So as of that writing he had not been successful in getting
anything. Last I heard from him, circa 2002, he had still not.
I recall GM Hans Ree, in one of his Dutch Treat columns at www.chesscafe.com,
reporting that Viktor Korchnoi had somehow arranged to purchase his
own KGB file some time in the 1990s. Whether it was authentic or not,
I don't know. Supposedly, since the fall of the Communist government,
the forging of such documents has been a popular cottage industry.
If any genuine documents on Keres still exist, their uncovering
still seems unlikely to me, unless the Russian government changes its
habits of many decades (if not centuries). And even with official
cooperation, actually finding them after all these years could be a
Herculean task. But, one may still hope.

I am not interested in the flame wars between the various authors. I
find it deadly boring. I suspect that Mr. Parr can keep on doing what
he is doing forever if need be. And his critics seem determined as
well. Apparently we agree that that is an unappealing future... :^)

Given the history of the thread, and the ongoing flame war, I do not
hold out a lot of hope for a civil discussion of the topic you prefer.
Just the same I offer this much in support of the idea.

Rev. Walker, while I have occasionally defended myself here against
Parr's smears, I hope you have noticed that I have been responding to
most of your historical queries with relevant and substantive
information. I much prefer such exchanges to "flame wars," and am
quite happy to engage in such a dialogue with you.

Taylor Kingston

Chess One wrote:

My Dear Vicar!

And you are trying to control it by eliminating what you do not like to
read,

Sounds like a plan.

--
Kenneth Sloan
Computer and Information Sciences +1-205-932-2213
University of Alabama at Birmingham FAX +1-205-934-5473
Birmingham, AL 35294-1170 http://KennethRSloan.com/

On Nov 17, 1:29 am, " wrote:

WHO IS LYING: LAURIE OR KINGSTON?


Readers may recollect that we published a letter written by
Richard Laurie to NMnot Kingston in 2002. In that letter, among other
points made, playwright
Laurie stated that our NMnot denied knowledge of a dispute between GM
Larry Evans and Eddie Winter.

Yes, one of several false statements Mr. Laurie made.


NMnot Kingston's response to the letter has been that Mr. Laurie
was lying, befuddled, muddled and evil. He denied the Laurie claim.

And now (surprise!) our Larry adds a falsehood of his own. Please
supply the quote of me calling Laurie "evil." At least this time you
got 3 out of 4 right -- way above your usual average, Larry.

My judgment tells me that Mr. Laurie, a man versed in the
niceties of language,

Sheesh, Larry, I don't mean to brag, but as far as understanding "the
niceties of language," I'll stack my literary credentials up against
Laurie's (or yours) any day. As the editor, co-author and/or
translator of at least 15 books, and the author of hundreds of
articles published in Chess Life, Inside Chess, Kingpin, Chess
Horizons, and ChessCafe.com I won't claim to be any Shakespeare or
Hemingway, but I will own to a reasonable command of English. People
pay me thousands of dollars to turn leaden ineptitude into, if not
gold, at least into grammatically correct, clear, understandable
English prose.
And as anyone who has worked with me will tell you, I like brevity,
directness, and plain speaking. There is no need to seek hidden
meanings. It's all up front.

was not likely to have misunderstood NMnot's
meaning

And yet, as I have demonstrated here repeatedly, he *_did_*
misunderstand, or even deliberately distort.

and that he had no motive at that time to misrepresent NMnot's
meaning.

Except that like our Larry, he is an adoring Evans zealot who will
brook no criticism of his idol.

the discussion is
not about what the Laurie letter proves. In itself, it proves
nothing.

Well now, Larry, I am glad to see you finally admit this! You
finally concede that you have doodley-squat to back your cheap smears.
Like the futile search for non-existent WMDs in Iraq, the much-
ballyhooed Laurie archive has come up empty. This is indeed
refreshing, and a rare, a very rare and precious instance of honesty
on your part.

Thank you for finally admitting the obvious. As your messiah once
wrote, "Case Closed."

Taylor Kingston wrote:
On Nov 17, 8:20 am, "J.D. Walker" wrote:

Given the history of the thread, and the ongoing flame war, I do not
hold out a lot of hope for a civil discussion of the topic you prefer.
Just the same I offer this much in support of the idea.

Rev. Walker, while I have occasionally defended myself here against
Parr's smears, I hope you have noticed that I have been responding to
most of your historical queries with relevant and substantive
information. I much prefer such exchanges to "flame wars," and am
quite happy to engage in such a dialogue with you.

Taylor Kingston

Mr. Kingston,

As I have said before, I believe that all of the published authors in
this discussion know more about the Keres-Botvinnik controversy than I
do. On this topic I am happy to accept my role as a member of the
various author's audiences. So as a 'fan' let me pose a few questions...

1) Do any of you consider the topic played out? Or is there more to be
considered?

2) Are any of you considering or engaged in new work(s) based on or
related to it?

3) How about the counter proposal of Russian GMs about the materialistic
influence of the West on chess? It seems it would require a different
approach. I doubt that the FBI has much on chess players with the
exception of Fischer. How could an author tackle this topic?

warning, tangent with speculation ahead...

I suspect that if an author tried to seriously investigate the impact of
American culture on chess they would walk a precarious path through a
mine field between the Left and the Right. To my mind, from a American
perspective, scholastic chess has made great strides in proving its
worth to the mental development of young minds. I also think that chess
makes an excellent hobby.

Beyond that -- what segments of American chess have proven worth that a
Yankee capitalist would recognize? What is the value of a high quality
grandmaster game on Wall Street? What is the rationale for professional
chess in a capitalist society? What is the value of a USCF bureaucrat?

Well, feel free to tune out the previous two paragraphs if you must, but
I do wonder about these things, and invite comments -- in another thread
if need be.
--

Rev. J.D. Walker, U.C.