Raw HTML doesn't appear to work

[Ken Mankoff]

Your example doesn't have red text, and as simpler example also appears to have no effect. HTML tags within the #+HTML_BEGIN: are also treated as Org text.

#+HTML_BEGIN: <i>
Text can be preformatted 
#+HTML_END: </i>

The above does not render as italic, and a <b>foo</b> tag within does not render as bold.

[Fabrice Niessen]

I don't know what you're talking about red text. Please give references.

Regarding what you're trying to perform, it does not work because you're not using a correct syntax (and that has nothing to do with my themes, see http://orgmode.org/manual/Quoting-HTML-tags.html#Quoting-HTML-tags). Use instead:

#+HTML: <i>
Text can be preformatted
#+HTML: </i>

or

#+BEGIN_HTML
<i>Text can be preformatted</i>
#+END_HTML