LOS ANGELES, Nov. 1 – Religious Freedom Watch (RFW), an anti-discrimination website, has issued a statement denouncing anti-religious extremism and intolerance and calling for people of different religious traditions to engage in dialog.
According to Religious Freedom Watch, Norwegian citizen Andreas Heldal-Lund is an atheist, who claims that “free speech carries no responsibility.” His message board contains death threats made against members of a religion, which he claims no responsibility for, he has not even attempted to remove them from his message board. Heldal-Lund is intimately associated with and a supporter of anti-social elements such as Zenon Panoussis, Keith Henson, David Touretzky and Arnaldo Lerma who are preaching bias against religions.
RFW discovered that Zenon Panoussis, an ex-member of the Anti-Olympic Committee, supported the bombings that were staged in an effort to sabotage Sweden’s plans to host the 2004 Olympics in that nation. The Swedish Rave Club Docklands was responsible for the acts of terrorism and one of their members was caught by Swedish law enforcement while attempting to bomb the Olympic Games statue.
Keith Henson is an explosives expert who was convicted of a hate crime for making terrorist threats. A jury in California found Henson guilty of having committed a hate crime under the California Penal Code. Henson fled to Canada where he was arrested by Immigration authorities for having failed to disclose his criminal conviction in the United States. Henson failed to appear at his sentencing hearing in California and the Judge issued a warrant for his arrest. The California Judge sentenced Henson in absentia to one-year in county jail. In Canada Henson filed for “political asylum” but the Justice Department expressed their disapproval to granting Henson application for political asylum. They stated:
“Under this definition [Anti-terrorism Act], Henson’s actions can be seen to be for a religious or ideological purpose. The actions could also be seen to be intentionally committed for the purpose of intimidating a segment of the public – the Church of Scientology. The threat to blow up the Church of Scientology and to kill the organization may be seen as a serious threat to cause death, bodily harm, and a risk to health or safety, property damage and/or a serious interference with an essential service so as to constitute terrorist activity.”
Arnaldo Lerma, from Arlington, Virginia, is a longtime supporter of an anti-Semitic movement led by Willis Carto. Lerma is also closely associated with William White from the Utopian Anarchist Party (UAP), an anti-government militia group, which promotes the overthrowing of the U.S. government, the killing of police officers and their website teaches how to build bombs. In November 1996 and January 1997 White was arrested and convicted for battery and carrying a concealed weapon.
David Touretzky not only makes bomb instructions available from a website which he promotes through Carnegie Mellon University, but he has expressed racist comments against ethnic groups. Touretzky’s anti-religious activities are funded with U.S. government grants and his extreme ethnic bias is condoned by Carnegie Mellon University. One of Touretzky’s associates is Pamela Lichtenwalner, a teacher with an interesting background who has a problem with a program that teaches children to stay off drugs. Touretzky and Lichtenwalner worked together to feed false information and lies to schools boards in order to prevent children from being educated on the dangerousness of drugs.
It is a position of Religious Freedom Watch that, “Freedom of Speech is a fundamental human right for which our fathers fought hard to guarantee a free and democratic society. It is unfortunate that there are elements in the society who abuse this right to harass religions, races, genders, with injurious lies and intimidation.”
Source: Religious Freedom Watch
Contact: Joel Phillips, webmaster@religiousfreedomwatch.org
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