Saturday, February 18, 2006

Fraternal Greetings From Robert Lomas

Date: Wed, 01 Feb 2006
From: "Dr Robert Lomas" r.a.lomas@bradford.ac.uk
To: mason_stoppers@yahoo.com
Subject: Copyright Theft

*It has been drawn to my attention that you are using copyright
images stolen from the plates section of The Hiram Key without
permission

*Please remove these images at once

Failure to comply WILL result in a complaint to your Internet
Service Provider, which has 'Terms of Service' which copyright
theft violates. Don't risk losing your internet connection and your
reputation by being downright stupid!

You are quite free to critize Freemasonry and I defend your right
to do so. I do not defend your right to steal my images and use
them in a cause I do not support.

In case you have stolen so many images that you have trouble finding
these particular ones, they are at
http://freemasonrywatch.org/tracingboard.html

I look forward to the swift removal of the stolen images, as even on
the net few people will take the word of someone who can be shown
to be prepared to steal and misrepresent.

Robert Lomas

====================================

Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2006
From: "FW" mason_stoppers@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: Copyright Theft
To: "Dr Robert Lomas" r.a.lomas@bradford.ac.uk

Dear Dr. Lomas,


Thank-you for bringing to my attention this matter, I
have added the attribution, authorship, and
availablity to each of the images.

Your research and these images in particular as you
noted in your book revealed for the first time actual
photographs of a Masonic Ritual inside a Masonic
Temple, never before seen.

We feel here at the leading Masonic Research Facility
in the World - Freemasonry Watch, that we simply must
include this discovery as part of our educational and
academics efforts towards the general public on the
importance of Freemasonry, under the accepted 'Fair
Use' provisions.

We in no way intended or intend to breach your
copyright, in fact we have long promoted 'Hiram Key'
on this website via book reviews and prominent direct
Amazon.com links to it and other of your works.

We appreciate your affirmation of the right and
necessity of Freemasonry Watch to continue it's
'work', and wish you the very best of success with
your new book 'Turning the Hiram Key'.


S & F

Freemasonry Watch


====================================





The Official Website of Robert Lomas

=====================================

Copyright and Fair Use in the Classroom, on the Internet, and the World Wide Web

http://www.umuc.edu/library/copy.html
http://www.eff.org/br/

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

E-M@sonry 'Stuff'



Just a short blurb on a few bits and pieces I thought I could post before I forgot them.

First a couple of new Pro-Masonic blogs and one Masonic-Critical one.

http://free-mason-alert.blogspot.com 'Free-Mason-Alert - Is there no Help for the Widows sons in Alabama?' A Mason in Alabama documents Klan activity in his Grand Lodge and his attempt, unsuccessfuly, to fight it. Reminds me of the series of alt.freemasonry post by a 'Brother' in the Grand Lodge of Oklahoma way back in 1999. In that case the Mason went so far as to get into letter flame war with the Supreme Council 33 in Washington DC. He got nowhere of course and ended up publically resigning. http://freemasonrywatch.org/racism.html (Hope that's the right page I filed it on, think you have to scroll down a bit.)

What else now.

http://masonictraveler.blogspot.com 'Masonic Traveler' is a Masonic Blogger that seems to be attempting to document the Masonic 'Blogosphere'. Not too many of the Geezers have bothered to pick up the Blog banner. Of course many of the Grand Lodges have recently called on the carpet their members for freelancing on the internet and have succeeded in shutting down a number of Masonic discussion boards. Not too surprised about that given the number of 'attacks' FW has been on the receiving end of over the years. Not too many in the last year though, maybe the 'Lightbringers' are finally getting used to the FW 'luminosity'. Let it all hang out Bro's...

Say if anyone is interested there is a link I posted yesterday on the 'FW Middle Chamber' to a new film about Freemasonry I found trolling around the net - 'The Lightbringers: The Emisarries of Jahbulon'. Lots of footage of inside some well known Masonic Temples including Great Queen Street in London and the Royal Arch Monstrosity in the 'City of Brotherlove' in Philly. Dug the three headed spider representation of 'that non-word' as one masonic net type phrased the infamous Royal Arch secret word for 'deity'.

Freemasonry in Christianity --- Is there room on the pew? is a blog post by a Christian Teacher who says he is teaching a course on cults and did a lecture or two on 'The Craft'. Could be an up and comer...

What else. Ah yes Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemasonry" 'Freemasonry' and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Freemasonry 'Anti-Freemasonry' are the two main pages but there are probably a dozen or more side pages. The site is kinda a cross between the old alt.freemasonry and the bad old un-GL cabletowed M.A.S.O.N.. Need to be one part lawyer and one part software programmer to survive there. There are a group of dozen or more Masons who may or may not have succeeded in turning the site into another GL boiler room 'Difficult Questions about Freemasonry' site. Maybe someone will straighten it out, but it is purely a numbers game on whose version stays up and whose gets deleted. Calling all "Anti's"...

Sunday, February 05, 2006

Blair Coven 'Channels' Luciferian Defeat...

Code: ZE06020406

Date: 2006-02-04

Religious-Hate Legislation Gets Toned Down

British Government Is Handed an Unusual Defeat

LONDON, FEB. 4, 2006 (Zenit.org).- A proposed hate law affecting religion was substantially watered down in a rare parliamentary defeat for Britain's Labor government on Tuesday. In two votes in the Commons the government lost; the first time by 10 votes, the second time by just one vote, reported the Independent newspaper the following day.

The Commons voted to accept some significant amendments along the lines of changes asked for when the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill was debated last October in the House of Lords. On that occasion the government's proposal was amended by an overwhelming majority of 149 votes.

The bill had proposed to make it an offense to stir up hatred against people on religious grounds; either spoken or written, in public or in private. Originally the law proposed by the government contemplated making insults and abuse an offense, as well as threatening words and behavior. The original proposal also made it an offense even if the person involved had not intended to stir up hatred.

The law as finally passed by Parliament stipulates that for a person to be charged it will have to be shown that "threatening" language or behavior was used, instead of the "threatening, insulting and abusive." It will also be necessary to prove that there was an intention to commit the offenses. The day Parliament voted on the law several hundred demonstrators gathered outside in protest against what they saw as an unjustified restriction on free speech.

The government had attempted to overcome opposition by accepting last-minute changes to the proposed law, the BBC reported Jan. 26. They accepted demands that incitement to religious hatred be covered by separate legislation rather than be joined to race-hate laws. And somebody could only be convicted if they intended or were reckless about inciting hatred. But the changes were not sufficient to placate critics.

Opposition to the law came from a wide variety of persons and groups. Comedians feared that it would no longer be possible for them to tell religious jokes. Civil rights activists were worried about restrictions on free speech. And a number of religious groups considered the law overly restrictive.

An editorial Tuesday in the Guardian newspaper noted this was the third attempt by the government since 2001 to pass a law on this subject. Its previous attempts had failed due to opposition in the House of Lords.

According to the editorial, the government's proposal "conflated threatening behavior and material, from which religious people deserve protection, with insult and abuse of religious belief, which is a necessary part of an open society."

Another problem was that it failed to "distinguish properly between the believer, who should not suffer for what he or she is, and the belief, which others must be entitled to attack, question and ridicule, even to the extent of causing offense to believers."

Defending free speech

The Christian Institute, an evangelical group, welcomed the changes made to the law. In a briefing last August it explained its opposition to the proposed law. The institute said the legislation would harm free speech and place governmental and judicial authorities in the position of judging people's religious beliefs.

As well, the institute noted that protection already exists for all people regardless of religion. Under British law it is already a criminal offense to incite a crime against another person, whether or not religion is the cause. And in 2001 Parliament passed laws establishing religiously-aggravated offenses. Another problem is that some religious groups are litigious, and they could hold the threat of prosecution over the heads of their detractors, the institute warned.

On Tuesday a group of humanists, secularists, Muslims and evangelical Christians wrote a letter published in the Telegraph newspaper, asking parliamentarians to vote against the law.

Among the signatories to the letter were two Muslims, Ghyasuddin Siddiqui, leader of the Muslim Parliament, and Manzoor Moghal, of the Muslim Forum. Their views contrasted with the stance of the Muslim Council of Britain. That council, generally seen as the country's most representative Islamic body, supported the legislation, according to the Telegraph.

Other signatories to the letter included Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, and representatives of the British Humanist Association, the Christian Institute and the Evangelical Alliance.

"As people with strong views on religion, we know how easy it is to offend those with whom you disagree and how easy it is to resent what others say, and see insult in it," the letter stated. "But we also recognize that a free society must have the scope to debate, criticize, proselytize, insult and even to ridicule belief and religious practices in order to ensure that there is full scope -- short of violence or inciting violence or other criminal offenses -- to tackle these issues."

When the bill was debated last October in the House of Lords, numerous press articles pointed out problems with the legislation. On Oct. 12 the Guardian reported that one Protestant evangelical group, Christian Voice, warned that it would consider using the new law to prosecute bookshops selling the Koran for inciting religious hatred.

Australia's experience

On Oct. 23 the Sunday Times reported that witches and Satanists could use it to trigger police investigations of their critics. This was no empty warning, the article reported, citing a case in Australia.

In fact, the Australian experiment with religious hate laws has been widely cited by opponents. In December 2003 the first case was heard in the state of Victoria under the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001.

The Islamic Council of Victoria filed a complaint about statements made by evangelical pastors Danny Nalliah and Daniel Scot during a March 2002 seminar. In December 2003, Judge Michael Higgins found the two had made fun of Muslim beliefs.

Last June 22, the judge ordered the pastors to print public apologies in newspapers and on their Web site, the Herald-Sun reported the next day. The judge observed that the two pastors had passionate religious beliefs which he thought caused them to break the law. "That does not excuse their conduct," he said, "but does go some way to explain why they acted as they did."

In a commentary published July 4 in the Sydney Morning Herald, Emily Maguire noted that the group the pastors belong to, Catch the Fire, is undeniably hostile to Islam, and that the declarations made by them were deeply offensive to many Muslims.

Nevertheless, she argued that the freedom to criticize religion is important. Moreover, "silencing such speech creates martyrs, while giving the views a thorough airing allows response," Maguire wrote. The pastors later appealed the decision.

Following the judge's decision, Cardinal George Pell of Sydney also came out against the idea of religious-hate laws, in an article published July 3 in the Sunday Telegraph.

The archbishop welcomed the decision of the New South Wales state government not to support a proposal to introduce a law against religious vilification. "Such a law would undermine the freedom it seeks to protect, would be counterproductive and end up curtailing free speech as well as deepening the rifts between different religious groups," wrote Cardinal Pell.

The following month a senior Victorian judge called for changes to the state's law on religious vilification, the Herald-Sun reported Aug. 2. Judge Stuart Morris' comments came as he dismissed a lawsuit launched by a convicted sex offender and self-proclaimed witch. Robin Fletcher had claimed the Salvation Army's Alpha Christianity course, offered in jails, discriminated against him on the ground of his Wiccan religion. The volatile mix of free speech and religion might be bubbling for quite some time.

Thursday, January 26, 2006

Pope: Church must influence political leaders

Chicago Sun-Times

January 26, 2006

BY NICOLE WINFIELD

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Benedict XVI said in his first encyclical Wednesday that the Roman Catholic Church has a duty through its charitable work to influence political leaders to ease suffering and promote justice.

The document, ''God is Love,'' also warns against sex without unconditional love, which he said risked turning men and women into merchandise.

It had been eagerly anticipated because inaugural encyclicals offer clues about a pontiff's concerns.

The 71-page document can be seen as an effort by Benedict to stress the fundamental tenet of the Christian faith -- love -- and assert the church's duty to exercise love through its works of charity in an unjust world.

In the encyclical, Benedict rejected the criticism of charity found in Marxist thought, which holds that charity is merely an excuse by the rich to keep the poor in their place when the rich should be working for a more just society.

Opposes Marxist theology

That appeared to be an extension of the pope's firm rejection of the Marxist-inspired liberation theology, which he firmly denounced in his early years as the Vatican's chief doctrinal watchdog.

Liberation theology, which originated in Latin America, holds that criticizing the oppression of the poor and marginalized should be central to Christian theology, and that the Christian faith should be reinterpreted specifically to deliver oppressed people from injustice.

Benedict conceded that Marxist models of dealing with injustice by trying to provide for social needs did help the poor. But he said Marxism was a failed experiment because it could not respond to every human need.

''There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help. There will always be loneliness. There will always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love of neighbor is indispensable,'' he said.

Cardinal George comments

Vatican and other church officials said earlier this week that Benedict's theme of ''God is Love'' is very much in line with his thinking, teaching and his pledge from the start of his papacy to be a peacemaker.

''This is the pope as theologian and now as universal pastor,'' Cardinal Francis George, archbishop of Chicago, said. ''So it's a very pastoral theme -- it shows that side of him which was always there but perhaps not able to be expressed as easily in his former work.''


AP

Sunday, December 18, 2005

E-M@sonry For The Uninitiated (Update 1)

It seems within a week of making the 'FW Blog' entry below
the 'Masters of the Craft' shut down TLR (The Lodge Room)
Discussion Board, the largest unofficial Masonic discussion
board on the net. As I indicated in the post below and will
briefly expand on here TLR had become the home of a group of
'e-M@sons' who have "terrorized" internet "anti's" for
the last few years. The group which consisted of U.S., U.K.
& Canadian zealous(hothead) Freemasons were run off a number
of Masonic and Non-Masonic Discussion Boards recently. The
admin at TLR had a brief posting before hotlinking to
another of his online masonic enterprise pages that described
his disgust at the behaviour of a number of Brethren
including the language and attacks against supposed 'brothers'
who disagreed with their tactics: http://www.thelodgeroom.com/forum/ 'The Lodge Room',
several of whom had been already banned from A.T.S. and
other Boards.

So what was the reaction of 'e-m@sonry' to having TLR shut
down? Did they take a moment to reflect, to change
their attitudes? Nope. The promptly resurrected a
discussion board off the previously banned and
shut-down site M.O.M.: http://www.lodgeroomuk.com/forum/ 'The Lodgeroom U.K. Forum'
and continued on where they had left off before, after dismissing
the creator of TLR, who wrote in his announcement of
trying, and failing, to stop the extremist rhetoric by these same
individuals. The 'operator' of the new board is believed
to be closely associated with the late great 'Freemasonrywatchwatch',
an effort to slander and demean the noble efforts at this end
of the Masonic rainbow. It will be interesting to see what transpires
next, but the forum appears to be the new central hive of
'e-m@sonry'.

On another matter there is now a group of a dozen or more Masons who have take residence at Wikipedia frantically deleting any and all entries related to the History, Teaching, and Rituals of Freemasonry that are not regurgitations of info found on dozens of Official Masonic websites . We've seen this sort of swarm activity by upset Masons before on the net, whether on alt.freemasonry or on many public 'conspiracy' or 'esoteric' discussion boards. It usually goes on for a while until the board operators or the public gets fed up with the Brethrens complete intolerance of viewpoints contrary to their own, and putting a stop to the
'encompassment', thereby digging the 'society with secrets' hole just a little deeper than it was before.

"They came on in the same old way and we stopped them in the same old way" – Duke of Wellington

Saturday, December 03, 2005

E-M@sonry For The Uninitiated

One in a series of periodic installments on some of the the current cyber enforcement doings by the self-appointed net-nannies of Ancient Free and Accepted Masonry.

A brief summary: http://freemasonrywatch.50megs.com was the old FW url they hijacked after bombarding the admins with complaints & http://freemasoninfo.ca was the url of M.A.S.O.N.(Masons Against Slanderous Offensive Nonsense)

The Website 'Freemasonrywatchwatch' has also disappeared. The M.O.M.(Ministry of Masons) discussion board http://www.mason-defender.net/forum/index.php?sid=59c23fc2bce8e06bef0ff99971ea7310 which was associated with Freemasonrywatchwatch now also appears completely inactive and it's aggressive banner and mission statement have been removed.

However the operators of these projects appear to be currently active on Above Top Secret Discussion Board in the 'Secret Societies' section http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/20/pg1/srtpages , and seem to be using 'The Lodge Room' group of boards http://www.thelodgeroom.com/forum/ 'The Lodgeroom Forum' which has an on again off again tyled policy in some of its section'(only open to posting and viewing by made Masons) as a base of operations.

Perhaps the Masters of the Craft determined that these 'ZEALOUS' Brothers were doing more harm than good to the reputation of the Fraternity.

The continual spamming of vulgarity filled posts to FW guestbooks and discussion forums and their twisted complaints to the same provider admins citing the posts they just made anonymously themselves, being one of the more noxious examples of their conduct.

Who knows exactly how many websites or forums which contained material related to freemasonry they disliked they succeeded in getting removed from the internet.

Or perhaps their efforts to 'silence the enemies of the craft' were deemed not sufficiently 'cunningly veiled' and the efforts continue still elsewhere in different forms?

Welcome to the wonderful world of Masonry on the Internet.

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Over Ten Million Served

Anonymous said...
This BLOG sucks. You never update it. Maybe its because hot air can not be typed!
Maybe Bro, maybe...

Saturday, August 13, 2005

Welcome

Welcome to the FW Blog

The Freemasonry Watch website has been on the net for a number of years and has grown to something like a thousand pages, and who knows how many linked articles.

We've had a number of guestbooks and discussion boards on free services over the years, most have been shut down after co ordinated complaint campaigns by Masons, who have also directed similar efforts against the website itself, sometimes to success but most often not.

It seems Masonry has had a hard time adapting to the 'new rules of the game' provided by the internet, which seems to have had a similar effect as the invention of the printing press, the tool 'Brother' William Morgan used to such grand effect, before the Masons of Western New York dumped him in chains on the bottom of the Niagara River.

Today we are in the era of the 'blog' although many net old timers prefer the discussion board format, which we have kept as well.

As far as I understand it a blog is a place where someone writes their thoughts about issues of the day and others post comments or link to it.

Perhaps commentary for this post, the first, could focus on what you think a blog is, how it should be used or run, etc..


Regards,

FW