Buddha Bar branded blasphemous

AN  Indonesian court yesterday ordered a local branch of the Paris-based Buddha Bar chain to close after convicting the licence holder of blasphemy.

Taking a leaf from Islam's book, furious Buddhists protest against 'blasphemy'

According to this report, it also ordered licensee PT Nireta Vista Creative, the official Jakarta tourism agency and Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo to pay damages of one billion rupiah (110,000 dollars) to the plaintiffs for distress.

The fools who took offence at the Buddha-themed establishment in Jakarta were a group called the Anti-Buddha Bar Forum. Said their lawyer Sunardjo Sumargono;

The licence holder was found guilty of blasphemy and of using Buddhist symbols and ornaments at an inappropriate place. We’re very pleased with the court’s decision. It’s a blessing for Buddhists. Justice has been served.

Central Jakarta district court spokesman Sugeng Riyono confirmed that judges ordered the bar to close:

As an unlawful act had been committed.

The court also found that the city authorities had failed to consider Buddhists’ religious sensitivities when they approved the licence.

The plush lounge bar and restaurant is the France-based chain’s first franchise in Asia, but it sparked protests almost from the moment it opened in late 2008 in an upmarket area of central Jakarta.

Its trademark Oriental styling – including a large sitting Buddha figure which dominates the bar area — infuriated mainly Muslim Indonesia’s Buddhist minority, who organised protests and a legal challenge.

The owners changed the name to “Buddhabar” but that failed to satisfy the Buddhists.

Muslims make up roughly 90 percent of Indonesia’s 240 million people, but the constitution also recognises the country’s Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and Confucian minorities.

The owners of the bar reportedly vowed to appeal the court’s decision, which could have implications for other hotels, bars and restaurants that feature decorative statues of Buddha.

ITALIANS have reacted angrily after Muammar Gaddafi lectured 200 actresses and models on the superiority of Islam, a day after saying that all Europeans should turn Muslim.

The Libyan leader recruited the women through a modelling agency to join him and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi at a photographic exhibition in Rome that traced historical links between the two countries.

Gaddafi gets the red carpet treatment from Italian PM Berlusconi

Telling them that Islam was the ”ultimate religion”, Colonel Gaddafi insisted that:

If you want to believe in a single faith, then it must be that of Muhammad.

According to this report, an agency paid the women between €70 or €80 to attend the event – and ordered them to dress conservatively.

The two leaders later attended a state dinner following a display of 30 thoroughbred Berber horses imported from Libya.

On Sunday night, during an encounter with 500 young women hired by the same agency, Colonel Gaddafi handed out copies of the Koran and told the women that Europe should convert to Islam.

MPs said Mr Berlusconi’s increasingly close relationship with the Libyan leader was a source of embarrassment.

Said Rocco Buttiglione, the President of a centre-right Catholic party, the UDC:

If I went to Tripoli to demand that Libyans convert to Christianity, what are the odds that I would return in one piece?

Rosy Bindi, an MP from the main opposition party, said the spectacle of hundreds of women being bussed in at Colonel Gaddafi’s ”whim” was a ”humiliating violation” of their dignity.

Ties between Rome and its former colony have deepened since the signing of the friendship accord, with Italy now the third largest European investor in the North African country.

Italy plans to invest $5-billion and build a 1700-kilometre highway to compensate for its decades of colonisation from 1911 to 1943.

The two countries also reached an agreement that allows the Italian navy to intercept migrants at sea and return them to Libya, triggering sharp criticism from the United Nations refugee agency and human rights groups.

Colonel Gaddafi travelled, as usual, with a Bedouin tent for his accommodation, which was pitched in the gardens of the residence of the Libyan embassy in Rome.

In an act of protest, an opposition party planted a ”tent of legality” in front of the embassy.

MANCHESTER City Councillor Pat Karney is calling for Christian Voice protestors to be banned from future gay pride events in the city after a group of the nutters reportedly “disrupted” his year’s parade at the weekend.

Disrupted? Oh please! How on earth can a sad bunch of around 20 delusional loons disrupt an event as huge as Manchester gay pride?

Loopy Christians at this year's Manchester Pride event. Click on pic for a report of the celebrations

According to the Manchester Evening News, council chiefs were outraged by the presence of  the barmy, placard-waving demonstrators who gathered outside the John Rylands Library on Deansgate as more than 100 floats – celebrating Greater Manchester’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and trangender communities – went past.

The group was largely drowned out by the whistle-blowing crowd of thousands – and Lord of the Rings actor Sir Ian McKellen gave them an ironic wave as he led the procession of 100 floats.

But town hall bosses believe the protesters overstepped the mark. They now plan to work with police to see whether anti-hate laws can be used to ban similar scenes at Pride next summer.

Pat Karney, the council’s city centre spokesman, said such protests had no place in Manchester.

I will be meeting organisers and police to make sure that next year people are not subject to these vile, hate-filled rantings.

He added:

This is 2010, not 1950, and young gay men and women should not be subjected to this hatred. We have a proud history in Manchester of freedom of speech but there is no place for this. I am a Christian and I believe that these people are a terrible advert for Christianity. There are things we can do using hate laws to make sure they do not come back.

Members of the protest were filmed shouting “sinful” and “wicked” at people taking part in the parade.

Of course they did. It’s their job to prod their noses into gatherings of this sort – and Pride events would be all the poorer for not having these twats around. Each time these sorry losers emerge from under their rocks they demonstrate how effectively religion poisons everything – and the atheist count goes up several notches.

The suggested ban was described as a “major assault on freedom of speech” by Christian Voice’s Stephen “Birdshit” Green.

It is a very sad day for this country when the authorities want to clamp down on the teachings of the Gospel.

Those leaving comments beneath the Evening News report appear overwhelmingly against a ban. One of the best comments came from Elljay:

Why ban the small minded, ignorant bigots? They only show themselves up. I find it highly amusing that such pathetic people can stand on the streets in full view of thousands of others who are enjoying the day and spout their vitriol – are they any nearer to heaven by doing so?

I wonder if any of them ever ask themselves if the nurse/police officer/doctor/teacher/paramedic treating them, providing care, protecting them etc etc is gay? Would they then have the ‘balls’ to spout their beliefs? Or to refuse care from a ‘sinner’?

As the mother of a gay man I know he would just laugh in their faces, and I know he, his partner and all his friends had a fantastic weekend at Pride 2010. Pride 2010? No, I’m proud EVERY year of the wonderful, caring and fantastic man I am fortunate enough to call my son!!!

A poll on the paper’s website shows that 79 percent of people do not believe that demos of this sort should be banned.

ENTOMBED 700 metres beneath the surface of the earth, 33 Chilean miners – some showing signs of depression and “severe dermatological problems” – each got a gift that’s really going to solve all their problems: a miniature Bible.

Carlos Parra shows off the Bibles before dropping them down a shaft to the trapped miners

According to this report, Carlos Parra, an evangelical preacher, arrived at the San Jose mine in Copiapo with 33 miniature Bibles that he had custom-manufactured to fit the dimensions of the small hole connecting to the trapped miners.

The miners were trapped by an August 5 collapse, and rescuers established contact with them by drilling a 6-inch-wide (15-centimeter-wide) hole to the shelter. That hole and two others are now lifelines, delivering supplies, communications and fresh air to the miners while they wait for an escape tunnel to be drilled.

Hat tip: BarrieJohn

RABBI Ovadia Yosef, 89, spiritual leader of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Shas party,  has outraged Middle East peace negotiators by calling on God to make:

All the nasty people who hate Israel … vanish from our world.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef

The old fool’s remarks, aimed specifically at Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, was made in a weekly sermon.

He went on to say:

May God strike them down with the plague along with all the nasty Palestinians who persecute Israel.

The United States condemned the remarks as “deeply offensive”.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu distanced himself from the comments with a statement saying that his government wanted peace with the Palestinians.

The attack on Abbas also prompted chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat to condemn the remarks as

An incitement to genocide.

Erakat urged the Israeli government:

To do more about peace and stop spreading hatred.

In 2000 the rancid rabbi said the Nazi Holocaust was God’s retribution against Jewish sinners. He Later added that he believed all six million Jewish victims were pure and complete saints.

And in 2001 he said of Arabs:

It is forbidden to be merciful to them. You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable.

Later said he was only referring to terrorists.

The US response to Rabbi Yosef, a founder of the Shas party, was swift. In a statement, US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said:

We regret and condemn the inflammatory statements by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. These remarks are not only deeply offensive, but incitement such as this hurts the cause of peace.

Mr Netanyahu’s office issued a statement saying that Rabbi Yosef’s comments:

Do not reflect the views of Benjamin Netanyahu or of his government.

In the past, the former Chief Rabbi of Israel has incurred the wrath of secular Jews, liberals, women and gays with his stupid pronouncements.

Hat tip: BarrieJohn

A CATHOLIC high school chaplain in Reading, Pennsylvania, is being sued by a local couple for impregnating their 18-year-old daughter, who had mental health problems.

Rev Luis A Bonilla Margarito was secretly videotaped having sex with the couple’s daughter in the basement of their home.

A stranger to celibacy: Luis A Bonilla Margarito, who is no longer functioning as a priest. Photo: Richard J Patrick/Reading Eagle

The lawsuit, filed this week in Berks County Court, alleges that the priest carried on a sexual relationship with the teenager while he was chaplain of Reading Central Catholic High School and she was a senior there.

The girl’s parents became suspicious and installed a camera in their basement, where Bonilla and the teenager were spending large amounts of time. The camera recorded the couple having sex in November 2009, after she graduated, according to the suit.

Her parents took the video to the Diocese of Allentown, which removed Bonilla from his dual posts as chaplain and pastor of St Joseph Church in Reading when he acknowledged an “inappropriate relationship” with the teenager. Bonilla was sent to a treatment facility but:

Continued to have intimate contact with [the teenager] during this time period and ultimately impregnated her.

She recently gave birth to a girl.

Diocesan spokesman Matt Kerr said:

[Bonilla] has no assignment, and he has not functioned as a priest since November.

Bonilla was named chaplain of Central Catholic in 2008 and befriended the teenager, then 17, at the beginning of her senior year. He “began to groom [the teenager] for a sexual relationship,” the suit said, knowing that she had mental-health problems, had been abused sexually by an adult man, and was “susceptible to being manipulated.”

Her parents began to suspect a relationship and reported their concerns to administrators at Central Catholic. The suit alleges:

They were told their suspicions were unfounded and that nothing could be done to separate [the teenager] and Father Bonilla because he was her spiritual adviser and/or counsellor.

Bonilla also took steps to alienate the teenager from her parents, telling her that she was 18 and no longer had to obey them, the suit said.

The suit, filed by Wyomissing lawyer Jay Abramowitch, alleges that diocesan officials knew about the relationship but were:

So concerned about their own reputation and/or financial interests that they failed to protect [the teenager] from Father Bonilla.

The parents are seeking punitive damages for breach of fiduciary duty, infliction of emotional distress, and gross negligence. The suit names as defendants Bonilla, the diocese, the high school, Allentown Bishop John Barres, and former Bishop Edward Cullen.