Pope Leads Global Praise for US-Cuba Rapprochement

[Fred Sanders]

Source: Yahoo News (AFP) (4 hours ago)

Paris (AFP) - Pope Francis led a chorus of global plaudits for Wednesday's breakthrough in US-Cuban relations which was hailed from Berlin to Bogota as "courageous" and "historic."

In a personal coup for the pope, it emerged that the Vatican had played a central role in bringing together the global capitalist superpower and the tiny communist island.

The Argentinian pontiff sent "warm congratulations" to the former arch-foes for their "historic decision... to establish diplomatic relations, with the aim of overcoming, in the interest of the citizens of both countries, the difficulties which have marked their recent history".

The Vatican said in its statement that the pontiff had sent letters to US President Barack Obama and his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro, offering their delegations his offices in October to "facilitate a constructive dialogue on delicate matters, resulting in solutions acceptable to both parties."

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper noted his country -- which never broke off ties with Cuba -- had also played a part in ending the standoff.

"Canada supports a future for Cuba that fully embraces the fundamental values of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law," Harper said.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/pope-leads-global-praise-historic-us-cuba-rapprochement-220851078.html

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So Canada also had a role to play in the rapprochement.

Gotta love Canada and rapprochement.

[amandabeech]

1. I'm sort of Protestant, but I'm beginning to like this Pope,

even if it turned out that he didn't say that pets go to heaven.

And thanks to our sensible friends in Canada. Harper did at least one thing right in helping out.

[delrem]

3. Please don't let Harper fool you.

Harper is a bagger. In Canada the baggers struck early with the formation of the "Reform Party", a movement out of Alberta led by Harper, among others. Reform was a right-wing extremist movement that decided that the establishment right-wing Conservative Party wasn't right-wing enough, and they split the right. After some years Reform/Conservative parties again merged, with the most extreme in control, ergo Harper. A bagger through and through.

If the US told Harper that what the US wanted was Canadian troops sent in to kill Cubans willy-nilly, just for giggles, Harper would comply. It'd be all the same to him. He's a neocon tool who, back in his opposition days, proselytized on the world stage in favor of the Iraq war: because he was told to, and was told exactly what to say. He's the worst thing that's happened to Canada in my lifetime which spans 6 decades. He's a gray suited monster who has mastered the winning techniques of right-wing politics. One of those winning techniques is to win on promises, to totally ignore those promises and just fucking slam the people for several years, then in the last year or so of power to reign it all in and throw out some pennies to the poor and appear in feel-good photo-ops touting "social programs", so in the midst of millions of gov't paid for feel-good advertising coupled with an intense privately funded election campaign everything true is blithely forgotten and people feel content to vote them in again. It's been openly done time after time, election after election, in BC provincial politics -- so I'm intimately aware of the procedure (even people who *know* it's being done to them go along with it and vote accordingly!) Harper has brought that technique to Federal politics.

[MBS]

7. Yes Harper is a menace, especially to the environment.

The fact that he inherited Canada's sensible Cuba policy doesn't make HIM sensible.
He and his government are a key impetus behind Keystone XL, not to mention other environmental horrors

[George II]

4. Yes to the Pope. No to Harper, who is a rightwing conservative looking for....

..."credit" for something for which he had little to do.

Given a choice he probably would have stayed uninvolved.

[uhnope]

2. oh hell yeah

[Judi Lynn]

5. So glad the Argentinian Pope, who knows first hand what a fascist dictatorship can do,

as he watched the US-supported military dictatorship torture and murder and disappear over 30,000 people, is the one who brokered this new level of diplomacy between the tiny island and the most powerful nation on earth.

[Beacool]

12. Hear, hear!!!!

The US supported the military regimes in Latin America and trained them torture techniques at the School of the Americas (SOA), in 2001 it was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).

[NBachers]

6. So the toxic Rectalpublicans squeeze out on the wrong side of history again.

[albino65]

8. One good Pope trumps hundreds of R/W pundits n/t

[Fred Sanders]

9. All mention of the Pope's heavy involvement and the approval of the world is not mentioned on Fox

or any of the right wing politicians and media propganda shows. Barely mentioned by the mass media...I know who thinks they are in charge, and they have been, and they see their authority slipping away.

[albino65]

10. I personally think that along with the immigration move

this may be Obama's way of marginalizing Rubio and Cruz in one swell foop. Just my opinion.

[Fred Sanders]

11. I think maybe the Pope took over the body of Obama? And injected some cojones in the process.