House Resolution 33, honoring FREEMASONS

[Wombaticus Rex]

^^That's some of the most embarrasing stuff I've seen in awhile, congrats on lowering the bar!

[Etidorhpa]

Are you just on the forum to be a dickhead and troll threads or do you have something to contribute to our community?

Gee? and I thought you would be more interested in the data pertaining to your thread?, but instead you would rather try to insinuate that I am somehow not contributing.

[Etidorhpa]

LOLZ at people on the internet!

[MASONIC PLOT]

I am not sure what "data" youre speaking of.

Aside from that I would love to have a conversation with you but you seem to be having a hard time communicating what it is you wish to discuss. So far all you have done is antagonize. We can start over if you would like.

[Etidorhpa]

Have you ever come across the connection btw the blue garter and the masons?

[MASONIC PLOT]

You mean the Order of the Garter?

Sure that is a pretty common connection, yes.


Various theories account for the color blue in Masonry; it came from the blue vault of heaven; blue was the color of the steel points of the compasses, contrasting with the yellow brass of the hinged part of the instrument; blue was the official color of the Order of the Garter and was adopted for lodges in an attempt to add the dignity of that decoration to the Fraternity.

[Etidorhpa]

Do you inderstand the profound connection btw the masons having a "day" and the idea of a "feast"? the idea of a ceremony?that is enacted , en masse, unbeknownst to those performing it, it will still have the same effect.

[Etidorhpa]

The Blue lodge is ONLY practiced by masons in Pa. in the US.

[MASONIC PLOT]

I never said I didnt understand it, I merely said I disagree with it.

[Etidorhpa]

Maybe that is what is meant by the 'keystone'state, it holds things in place.

[MASONIC PLOT]

Thats true, most lodges are Scottish Rite, they followed Pike.

[MASONIC PLOT]

There is no doubt that is exactly what it means.

[antiaristo]

At first they ignore you, then they ridicule you....

From today's Sunday Telegraph, home of MI5 and the SIS.

The last editor, Dominic Lawson, was ejected when his links to SIS became public.

Total world domination starts here, doesn't it?

By Adam Lusher, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:30am GMT 14/01/2007

Adam Lusher wants power. He wants plots. He wants secret handshakes. He's even prepared to roll up his trousers. Is he right for the masons?

This was all wrong. The chap in the Grand Lodge blazer wasn't even trying to be obstructive. "Straight up the staircase, sir, drinks are by the Grand Temple. You don't need your ticket." Could this really be the way into the freemasons? Could centuries of the finest obsessive secrecy end like this?

My preliminary research, some of it internet-based, suggested that this was an organisation linked to the "Illuminati", the vaults of Parliament, and "CORRUPTION" writ large, in green ink, and The Da Vinci Code. But now, I was being allowed to enter the art deco splendour of London's Freemasons' Hall, home of the United Grand Lodge of England, the national governing body, without a ticket, without a rolled-up trouser leg and without anyone checking whether I really was a civil servant called Ian.

Admittedly, this was a new departure for the freemasons: a drinks reception for the under-35s to "discover more about freemasonry", and perhaps resolve one worshipful brother's complaint that "some lodges look like God's waiting room". So at £15 a head, who was I to resist an entree to an organisation with 270,000 members in 8,322 English and Welsh lodges?

And isn't it rumoured that the masons offer "fraternal support"? No women, lots of men, especially policemen. Get the "fraternal" handshake right and who knows what benefits might ensue.

This lot had history: organised freemasonry dated from the formation of the world's first Grand Lodge in London 1717, but the idea supposedly started among the men building King Solomon's temple. That handshake was apparently a secret sign for medieval stone masons to show each other they had been properly trained. And if you believe all the conspiracy theories, masons were also secretly responsible for every war, assassination and political plot since the temple job.

They also have funny costumes: the rolled-up trouser leg for a start, which was part of the ancient initiation ceremony to prove that you were not carrying a weapon. As you progressed through the ranks you got to wear funny aprons, and become involved in ancient, secret ceremonies … before going to nice dinners. You got to wear regalia. It seemed perfect.

Now, though, no one had the decency to stop me taking a little detour, into a room full of portraits of men in ermine. There I found, well, not quite proof of "the quest for world domination", but a revealing Freemasons' Hall shop catalogue. Those "master mason teddy bears, £7" look harmless, but imagine a vulnerable chief constable getting one for Christmas, what tricks it might play with his fragile mind.

I hurried to the Grand Temple's antechamber, and was shocked: there were women present; there were no funny aprons; my fellow guests were mainly students. They didn't seem to be the world-dominating type.

"Have you seen Spooks [the television spy series]?" asked Chris, excitedly. "They did a walk-through of this building in the first episode." I really should have been less furtive about which branch of the "Civil Service" I "worked" for.

Russell Race, the deputy metropolitan grand master, promised that freemasonry offered "friendship, intellectual development, an oasis of calm, making good men better". Nothing about world domination.

Then we entered the Grand Temple itself, a cavernous chamber adorned with masonic symbols: the all-seeing eye, the square and compasses. We saw the gilt throne used by the Duke of Kent, the grand master of the United Grand Lodge. The United Grand Lodge's (disappointingly accessible) website revealed that monarchs from King George IV (1762-1830) to George VI (1895-1952) were masons.

So were Churchill and Jim Davidson. Who could fail to be inspired? Especially by Richard Knox-Johnston, the metropolitan deputy grand director of ceremonies, brother of the yachtsman Sir Robin. The deputy grand director calmed our fears: "Women have other orders affiliated with the United Grand Lodge, but our meetings are a boys' night out. It's a male preserve."

David, 57, a master of three lodges in 27 years as a mason, joined me. Who would have thought it? David was a former commander in the Metropolitan Police. "I quit masonry for five years, because the bloody Home Office was asking: 'Are you a mason?' I told them to eff off."

He wasn't alone. When the Government tried a voluntary register of masonic police officers in 1999, only 36.6 per cent responded. Of those, only 1.1 per cent said they were freemasons. The Home Office estimated the true figure was 10 times higher. It had instigated the register after a Home Affairs Select Committee report, which cleared freemasonry of being a "primary cause" of 1970s miscarriages of justice by the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad but noted: "We cannot entirely exclude the possibility that it may have been a contributory factor."

The Government had to abandon the notion of compulsory registration plans after fears of a Human Rights Act challenge were raised. Judges and magistrates were more co-operative, with about five per cent admitting they were masons.

David reassured me about the initiation ceremony, with its rumoured threats of a slashed throat for divulging masonic secrets. "We have modified that." Now they just put a noose around your neck.

"Only loosely," smiled David.

He was similarly disappointing about "world domination", giving me a conventional handshake. "Forget myths about climbing the greasy pole. If that's what you want, we don't want you."

His son Greg insisted, though: "That doesn't mean networking doesn't happen. I have met all sorts of people …"

"Dad" offered more hope, invoking freemasonry's links with the ancient past, the Bible, Da Vinci Code stuff. "Once you are a master mason, you can join the Knights Templar. It's a subdivision of the masons, based on the original 12th-century knights."

Then he ruined it. "My wife loves my masonic charity work. Ladies come to some socials. The wine-tasting trip to Rheims was wonderful."

This was not right. Freemasonry couldn't be just about men who liked showing other men their finely turned ankles and going to Rheims. Or could it?

David seemed to read my thoughts. The former policeman smiled, offered a parting handshake. "We need people like you." His hand grasped mine, and twisted slightly. "If you want to join …"

http://tinyurl.com/ybx2t9

[orz]

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=freemasons+hall+london...

[The Omega Man]

And in other news...
The old Masonic children's home and school campus in southeast Fort Worth Texas has formerly opened its doors to all non-white, future indoctrinates of Lucifer. Here's the link:
http://jkn.com/View?j=765519.730687330277

The irony of this story is that the Freemasons are currently an all-white boys club, with the exception of sub-sect adjuncts like the Prince Hall Masons that aren't directly connected nor respected by either the Scottish or York Rites.

Posted on Sat, Jan. 13, 2007

Going From All-White to All Welcome

By Bud Kennedy
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

The neighbors are throwing a big party Monday at the old Masonic children's home and school campus in southeast Fort Worth.

Call it a victory party.

Because for most of the home's 107-year history, it was closed to its African-American neighbors.

On the campus of a formerly all-white children's home and public school, neighbors will gather in the chapel to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday and rededicate nearby U.S. 287 as the King Freeway.

"It shows how far we've come," said retired state District Judge Maryellen Hicks. "But it also shows there's still work to be done."

I would like to tell you that the Masonic Home, Texas' last legally sanctioned segregated school, opened its doors to all children in 1960. But it wasn't 1960.

Or 1970.

Or even 1990.

According to state accountability test records, the Masonic Home did not report admitting an African-American child until 2000.

Sue Regian of Garland remembered. Her late husband, Joe, was the school board president who urged Texas Masons to look outside their mostly white and Hispanic fraternal membership rolls and admit nonmembers' children. That desegregated the school, an effort funded with a combination of taxes and charity, for the first time since it had opened, in 1899.

Regian recently read some of the hate mail her husband received.

"Some Masons didn't want black people there," she said. "A lot of letters were really, really hateful. They said, 'Masonic Home is going to the [n-word].'"

They didn't say neighbors.

On Monday, the community will gather to mark King Day with a 1 p.m. ceremony in the home's old chapel.

Fittingly, that chapel is dedicated to Joe Regian.

The home and school closed in 2005 partly because some Masons withdrew contributions but mostly because the children's home had settled a $6.9 million lawsuit involving abuse in the mid-1990s.

The 200-acre, college-style campus in the Polytechnic Heights neighborhood was sold last year to a local real estate developer, the Mallick Group.

Developer Michael Mallick plans more than 500 homes around the historic 1920s school and dormitories and the beautiful, cut-stone 1958 chapel.

The campus is still fenced, gated and guarded, but he agreed to open the chapel Monday.

"It's a nice statement of liberation to have Martin Luther King Day there," he said. "There will be equal opportunity for every race there from now on."

In the fall, Hicks, her sorority, Delta Sigma Theta, and Fort Worth Mayor Pro Tem Kathleen Hicks, her daughter, started raising $10,000 for larger state highway signs designating U.S. 287 as the Martin Luther King Jr. Freeway.

City Hall renamed the freeway in 1981. But when big signs went up in Arlington marking Interstate 30 as the Tom Landry Highway, Hicks began asking her radio audience on KKDA/730 AM to help pay for freeway signs through predominantly African-American neighborhoods of southeast Fort Worth.

Mayor Mike Moncrief and U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Lewisville, are among the officials expected to attend Monday. One of the new, reflective green full-size highway signs was placed inside the chapel Friday for the ceremony.

Hicks said her group chose the Masonic chapel simply because "we haven't ever been over there." She said that as a family court judge, she always had a "very positive" impression of the children's care at the Masonic Home and School.

Mallick remembered hearing how his Lebanese ancestors were once the target of discrimination.

"You can't look back," he said. "People thought they were doing the right thing. Now, we're moving forward as a more open society."

At home in Garland, Sue Regian hadn't heard about the King ceremony.

"I think my husband would be absolutely thrilled," she said.

Joe Regian was an executive with Restland Funeral Home in Dallas and a Garland City Council member. He always worked alongside African-American employees, she said.

"He fought for a long time to integrate that home and take care of all the children that needed care, no matter what color they were," she said.

"It's a shame the home closed. It was needed so much."

I was about to thank her and say goodbye.

"Wait a minute," she said.

"Let me ask you something about this ceremony Monday. Is it OK if any Masons come?"

Yes.

Finally, the gates are open to everyone.