Lodge Athena

Mixed Masonry has been a part of the American scene for many decades now. Many of my readers are familiar with my own jurisdiction, the George Washington Union, as well as of the American Federation of Le Droit Humain.

One jurisdiction that others may not be as familiar with, is the International Masonic Order Delphi, which was originally a part of Le Droit Humain and became an independent jurisdiction in 1996.

While the Delphi Order is headquartered in Greece, the Obedience does have lodges in Romania, Bulgaria, and the United States. The Right Worshipful Lodge Athena, No.2009 works in Salt Lake City, Utah, and has been a beacon of Masonic light in that region for a number of years now.

Lodge Athena, like the other lodges in the Delphi Order, is a member of the international association known as CLIPSAS which consists of the Grand Orient of Belgium,Le Droit Humain, the Grand Lodge of Italy, the George Washington Union, The Women's Grand Lodge of Belgium, and many other adogmatic, progressive Grand Lodges and Grand Orients around the world.

I applaud the dedication, work, and example of Lodge Athena, and send my heartfelt greetings to the Brothers and Sisters of Lodge Athena in Salt Lake City. Lodge Athena of the Delphi Order, the lodges of the George Washington Union, and the lodges of the American Federation of Le Droit Humain in the United States work the European forms of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

For those men and women in the Salt Lake area that would like to learn more about legitimate Freemasonry, Lodge Athena can be contacted through their website at:

http://lodgeathena.us/US/

The Mother Obedience of Lodge Athena, The International Masonic Order Delphi can be reached at:

http://www.delphiorder.org/eng/index.htm

Emeth Lodge & Rose of Venus

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Brothers at Emeth Lodge in Phoenix, Arizona. Several years ago Emeth Lodge was formed as a constituent lodge of the Grand Orient of the United States of America. Today Emeth Lodge is a member of an association of independent lodges and has recently sponsored the formation of a Co-Masonic lodge, Rose of Venus, also in Phoenix.

I am familiar with the WM of Emeth, as is my own WM at Lodge New Isis of the George Washington Union in Los Angeles, and we both greatly respect him as a fine Freemason and a man of integrity.

I wish both lodges well and I am happy to see a new Co-Masonic lodge so close to San Diego. Congratulations to the Sisters at Rose of Venus!

The Inventor

My good friend and fellow Freemason Willy Gutman recently has published another book, "The Inventor". I hope to write a review in the near future but until then I would like to post this review of Willy's work from one of the Central American papers to which Willy is a frequent contributor:

Review by Marco Cáceres

I remember the first time I picked up a Harry Potter novel. I read about thirty or forty pages, and then I put it down. There were so many characters, and the plot did not emerge fast enough to hold my attention. Ultimately, I rented the first Harry Potter movie and immediately became so enamored with the characters and the story that I ended up reading each of the seven books in the series twice. My initial experience with W. E. Gutman's The Inventor was similar... although I'm not sure a movie is in the offing.

The Inventor is elegantly written. Through his protagonist and a colorful melding of artists and other notable personalities plucked from the past, Mr. Gutman weaves an intriguing journey within the dark history of the Catholic Church, which has as much a surreal and fantastic texture to it as Harry Potter. This is a book with which you must dine. It does not allow you to consume it in a hurry. It is as if Mr. Gutman dares you to read on and simply accept that the aim of his work is not primarily to entertain you, but rather to provoke you to think and struggle and savor.

There is a cynical undertone to The Inventor, but it is reasonable and even courageous, given the target of that cynicism -- the Papacy and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. And now with the Church wallowing in the early stages of yet another crisis involving the sexual abuse of children by priests and the cover up of these crimes by their superiors, it almost makes Mr. Gutman appear visionary. The book is timely and certainly relevant to the conversation about the increasingly uncomfortable relationship between the Church and secular society.

At a minimum, The Inventor serves to remind us that the Church has traditionally been the predator, not the victim, as its apologists disingenuously claim. It is a kind of blunt testament which challenges those who are ignorant of the Church's history or prefer to downplay the more unsavory aspects of it.

Be it the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and the persecution of Galileo or the silence of Pope Pius XII during the Jewish Holocaust, Pope John Paul II's efforts to squash Liberation Theology in Latin America, and Honduran Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez's attempts to tie accusations of priestly pedophilia to a "worldwide Jewish conspiracy", there is ample justification for the kind of eclectic mix of history, fiction, and social commentary that is so well crafted by Mr. Gutman.

Note: The author of The Inventor is a regular contributor to Honduras Weekly. His book is published by CCB Publishing of British Columbia, Canada. The book is available through Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com.

Busy Weekend

I have not posted recently but I do have posts on the way that I am working on. I returned from a meeting of Lodge New Isis in Los Angeles less than an hour ago and enjoyed participating in the initiation of a new brother.

Quite a lot of work was accomplished and I had the honor of reading an architecture that I wrote recently. Several guests were on hand from the Women's Grand Lodge of Belgium, OITOR (L'Ordre Initiatique et Traditionnel de L'Art Royal), and Le Droit Humain.

A truly wonderful afternoon of masonic fellowship. I will have new posts up in the next few days.

Roger Williams

In the M.A. program in History I am currently taking, we are studying early America, specifically the Puritans. As part of my research I have discovered not just how intolerant the Puritans were (they hanged three men and and a woman for being Quakers), but also about a man that I feel represents much that we as masons can identify with.

Roger Williams was a Puritan who arrived in Boston, Massachusetts Colony,in 1631. His sermons, particularly those that advocated fair treatment of the Native Americans, won him the animosity of the ruling establishment. Williams was also opposed to the government punishing people on religious grounds, advocating instead freedom of conscience.

Williams was exiled from the colony in 1635 and founded what eventually became Rhode Island. In 1652 Rhode Island became the first colony to outlaw slavery, more than 200 years before it was outlawed in the U.S. Jews, Baptists, Quakers, all were welcome to practice their faiths according to their own consciences.

Roger Williams was a pioneer in advocating the separation of Church and State, something that did not exist in Europe at the time, or in the other colonies. Roger Williams, not the Puritans, was a forerunner of what our founding fathers established in the United States. While not a mason, we can admire the man for his tolerance of others, and his respect for individual liberty. In Rhode Island today there is even a lodge named Roger Williams Lodge, No.32, in his memory.

Haiti: As the dust settles, questions, suspicions mount

My good friend Willy Gutman forwarded another one of his perceptive articles that I thought I would share.





Haiti: As the dust settles, questions, suspicions mount


W. E. Gutman

US troops made their habitually flamboyant entrance in the earthquake-ravaged Haitian capital to distribute aid and provide security in one of America’s most spirited military deployments since the 2003 Battlestar Galactica-style invasion of Iraq.

Hundreds of soldiers belonging to the US Army’s 82nd Airborne rappelled from helicopters in Port-au-Prince as US Marines waded ashore.

There are now some 11,000 US troops in Haiti. US Ambassador to the UN, Alejandro Wolff, said “We are there for the long term.” Total US military presence in Haiti is expected to reach 20,000 troops.

Washington insists that their role is strictly humanitarian.

But in a recent commentary titled, “The US Military in Haiti: A Compassionate Invasion,” TIME magazine says that “Haiti … became the 51st state… if not a state, then at least a ward of the United States.”

There is growing concern that this de facto federalization may go beyond “good-neighbor” philanthropy, that the earthquake could be used to exploit, yet again, a chronically impoverished country teetering back from the brink.

The presence of US military, which has taken over command of the distribution of humanitarian aid, has raised questions. The US and the France-based aid group Doctors Without Borders have exchanged very public words. The group says one of its planes carrying medical equipment was yet again turned away from the Port-au-Prince airport – the fifth such instance in the past two weeks. Medics from other nations have accused US air traffic controllers of turning away essential medical supplies that could have saved lives, with priority going to US military flights.

Although the US military is now overstretched, it clearly has the capacity to carry out an effective occupation of Haiti should it so desire. The way in which the US has responded to this latest disaster is reminiscent of its historical legacy of interference in Haiti. The country was occupied by the US between 1915 and 1934. Former President Bill Clinton dispatched troops to Haiti in 1994. In 2004, Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was deposed, abducted and deported at gunpoint by US-backed military.

These forays were rationalized as “legitimate actions to protect US assets.” Some called theme an extension of the Manifest Destiny doctrine.

Critics have also accused Washington of destabilizing Haiti’s economy by imposing neo-liberal policies that forced it to lift its rice tariffs in the 1990s and led to the creation of sweatshops, both of which undermined its economic autonomy and are seen as causes of an ailing infrastructure and poverty.

It’s no secret that deep in the seismically fickle bowels of Hispaniola, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, there are significant and heretofore untapped deposits of oil. Scientists have also detected the presence of Uranium 238 and 235, and zirconium. Have these sites been designated by the US as strategic reserves?

Shortly before his downfall in 1986, “president-for-life” Jean-Claude “Bébé Doc” Duvalier acknowledged the existence of a major oil field in the Bay of Port-au-Prince.

Earlier still, in the 1950s, the Knappen-Tippen-Abbet company drilled in Haiti. The drillings proved promising and the results beyond expectations. However, multinational oil companies saw no need to exploit these riches. Haiti was neither Saudi Arabia nor Kuwait. At a time when a barrel of crude sold for about a dollar, and the Persian Gulf gushed with crude, there was not reason to invest in oil fields deemed less profitable.

The prevailing attitude at the time was, “We’ll keep the Haiti deposits in reserve until the Middle East bonanza runs dry.” The Knappen-Tippen-Abbet wells were carefully numbered, sealed with cement and “forgotten.”

The results of the drilling, it turns out, were not for public consumption. It was feared that they would encourage Haitians to work toward their own economic emancipation. When they learned of the riches buried under their feet, they asked a simple question:

“If the big oil companies are not interested in our oil, maybe we should ask our Cuban neighbors to come help us exploit it.”

Ooooops.

No one denies the superb work done by US non-governmental organizations and individual volunteers in Haiti. But when a nation requires 20,000 armed troops to “oversee” what is being described as a slapdash and hit-and-miss relief operation, it looks, sounds and smells like an occupation.

Vested Geo-strategic interests, not altruism, often drive charity.

One can’t help but wonder whether the US would have acted with the same alacrity and panache had an earthquake of similar magnitude struck Congo, Sudan or Namibia.

And would Pat Robertson have claimed, as he did in the case of Haiti, that natural disasters are brought on by men consorting with the devil?

___

W. E. Gutman is a veteran journalist and author. His column reflects his own views.

Once upon a time in Haiti

The following was written by my good friend and fellow Freemason, Willy Gutman. I hope his observations make as much of an impression on my readers as they did on me.

Once upon a time in Haiti


W. E. Gutman

I first visited Haiti in 1960. I had left New York on a dismal gray January morning and arrived in Port-au-Prince a week later aboard a cruise ship. Mesmerized by the emerald profusion of tropical greenery that stretched before me, rapt by the turquoise sea that shimmered like liquid gemstones, I noticed little as a taxi whisked me away from the wharf up to the opulent hilltop Castel Haiti Hotel.

During lunch, I crossed paths with bejeweled women, most of them painted to camouflage the ravages of time. I mingled among sweet-smelling, self-important men in crème safari suits and white suede shoes. I engaged in small talk and endured the frivolous banter common to carefree, urbane vacationers. Wealth, influence, power, all vied for attention as fragrant wines and succulent meat and seafood dishes traveled on silver trays balanced by white-gloved black lackeys. Such ostentation, I remarked, must be evidence of great virtue, the well-deserved entitlements of the just, the righteous, the uncorrupted.

I was 23.

A second visit a year later put an end to the idyllic portrait my unfocused young eyes had hastily painted. Instead of taking a taxi, I walked to town. At the end of the quay, where the uncorrupted never venture, I was accosted by a mob of half-naked, pint-sized beggars -- children with bloated bellies, herniated navels and runny noses. With one hand stretched for a hand-out, the other fanning away swarms of flies, they tugged at my sleeves, hung by my shoulders like grapes from a trellis and wailed in unison:

“Mister, penny, bread, please?”

In the stifling shade of an abandoned building, young boys in tatters sniffed glue. Further on, resting on a bed of filthy rags near an open sewer, a woman slept with an infant at her breast while an older child, disheveled, wiping an ever-running nose on her sleeve, begged for scraps of food. A few meters away, under a clear sky black with vultures, I found toddlers and young teens feeding on garbage. Knee-deep in steaming mountains of waste and competing with the odious birds of death, another group of youngsters rummaged for a meal, a shoe, a discarded article of clothing.

Up the road, in some narrow, windswept slop-splattered alley that hugs the flanks of a church, a man writhed in drug- or booze-induced agony. Frothing at the mouth, his eyes on fire, he crumbled to the ground and let out a blood-curdling shriek. Wallowing in waste, he clawed at the demons that tormented him. Thrashing about, he rolled into the gutter and narrowly missed being hit by a passing car. Safe in their pews, the faithful were being treated to the grand spectacle of a mid-day mass. Dominus vobiscum, said the priest. Et cum spiritu tuo, the faithful responded, unmindful of the pervading godlessness that surrounded them.

Around the corner, a group of cripples flaunted their grotesque infirmities. Unruffled, passers-by stepped over them like so much debris. Across the street, a young woman breast-fed her newborn as three older daughters plied the beggar’s trade.

Alien to this netherworld, I wondered what monstrous sins its denizens had committed to be cursed with such inexplicable fate. Who are the mad, I reflected, and who are the meek who inherit the wind? As I pondered the question, I suddenly found myself in a world of pastel mansions, neatly manicured lawns and late-model American cars driven by elegantly attired light-skinned Haitians.

The distance between Gehenna and paradise, I would later learn as I began to cover Central America and the Caribbean Basin, is short and littered with galling incongruities, shameful disparities. Here the crinoline and batiste and gabardine of a small elite of ruling families; there the rags and tatters and empty stomachs of an indigent and superfluous majority.

An attractive, fashionably dressed elderly creole woman sporting a Parisian accent with whom I had struck a conversation whispered parenthetically, “You know, many of us believe we were better off under the French.”

I could not have been more outraged had an African American claimed that his people had been better off under Jim Crow.

Fifty years later -- twenty of them spent reporting from the beast’s entrails -- nothing has changed. Don’t look for justice, I kept telling myself all that time. Don’t look for civility. All you will find are nature, cruel and unmoved, and the aggregate interests and tirelessly replenished assets of the dominant power base.

Last I heard, the eight-story Castel Haiti , once the romper room of the rich and famous is now a pile of rubble. And, once again, nature, unpredictable and impartial, made short shrift of the aristocracy and the rabble in one blind, raging merciless and devastating blow from which this, the poorest nation in our hemisphere, is unlikely to recover.

____
W. E. Gutman is a widely published veteran journalist and author. He lives in Southern California