Easter Monday Post

Pope Francis' Urbi et Orbi address.


When I think of Easter, I think of Jesus' glorious resurrection. And "The Ten Commandments". Not Cesar Chavez.

Another exodus:

Christians in their millions are leaving Muslim lands, a heartbreak for the region’s 12 million remaining Copts, Catholics, Chaldeans and other Christian communities, many of which predate Muslim communities. But their exodus also represents a great tragedy for the region’s Muslims: The Middle East’s Christians, with their free-wheeling, free-market orientation, have for centuries created prosperity in an otherwise stagnant Middle East; once the Christians are gone, an economic desolation is likely to revisit their historic homelands. ...

The Arab Spring with its resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism is striking out one of the hopes for prosperity that the UN Arab report cited — the liberation of women and their enlistment into the workforce. The resurgence of fossil fuel production in the Western world is striking out the likelihood that high energy prices in future will sustain the Middle East’s economies. The loss of the Middle East’s Christians — the region’s indispensable entrepreneurial class — would be the third strike.

Obama is a race-baiting piece of crap:

At the Easter service attended Sunday by President Barack Obama and his family, the pastor railed against "captains of the religious right," according to the White House pool report cited by the Washington Post. The service, led by Rev. Luis Leon, was held at Saint John’s Church at Lafayette Square, which is where the First Family worships most often, though they have not formally joined any particular church in Washington, D.C.

The Post article notes that the Easter sermon targeted conservatives as racists, sexists and xenophobes:

According to a press pool report of Leon’s sermon, the minister criticized what he called ”the captains of the religious right.”
People often want things to go back to the way things used to be, before “work got difficult and faith got confused, and life got more confusing,” Leon said, according to the pool report. 
“You cannot go back,” Leon said, citing the words of Jesus. “It drives me crazy when the captains of the religious right are always calling us back ... for blacks to be back in the back of the bus ... for women to be back in the kitchen ... for immigrants to be back on their side of the border.”

And he sat through this? Of course he did. This man couldn't win through action and convincing arguments. He needs division or, politically, he is screwed. The irony, however, is lost on him. The Great White Apologists will defend and vote for him no matter what. His white grandparents gave him an education; his black deadbeat dad gave him the skin colour that allowed him to coast through life.


South Korean President Park promises not to back down:

South Korea's new president on Monday promised a strong military response to any North Korean provocation after Pyongyang announced that the two countries were now in a state of war.

President Park Geun-Hye's warning came as North Korea's rubber-stamp parliament was set to hold its annual session and a day after ruling party leaders vowed to enshrine Pyongyang's right to nuclear weapons in law.

In a meeting with senior military officials and Defence Minister Kim Kwan-Jin, Park said she took the near-daily stream of bellicose threats emanating from the North over the past month "very seriously."

"I believe that we should make a strong and immediate retaliation without any other political considerations if (the North) stages any provocation against our people," she said

Then retaliate.


And now, an Easter Parade... of cakes.

(With thanks)