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Updated 16.45
PRESIDENT MICHAEL D. Higgins signed the book of condolences for former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro this morning.
Castro’s passing was announced by his brother Raul – his successor as Cuban president – on Saturday.
President Higgins signed the book of condolences at the Cuban Embassy on Pearse Street at 9am this morning.
His message read:
On behalf of the people of Ireland to express their sympathy to the people of Cuba on the passing of former head of state Fidel Castro Ruz.
Con la simpatico de la gente (with the sympathy of the people).
At a short news conference, Cuban ambassdor to Ireland Dr Hermes Herrera said he was not surprised at the reaction to President Higgins’ statement upon Castro’s death. He added that the Irish president’s expression of condolences was “an honour”.
Higgins has been criticised by Senator Rónán Mullen and Fine Gael TD Noel Rock for his effusive tribute to the late Cuban leader, whom he called one of the “longest-serving heads of state in the world”.
Higgins’s tribute to Castro was retweeted by the Cuban ambassador in the US, who said the Irish president was leading international tributes.
Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams will travel to Cuba to attend the funeral of Castro, who won plaudits from revolutionary movements across the world for vocally opposing its huge neighbour the United States.
Speaking on Today with Séan O’Rourke this morning, Adams said: “He spoke out on behalf of the hunger strikers in 1981, more than any Taoiseach ever did.
“I think the President’s remarks were appropriate.”
Throngs are set to pay tribute to Fidel Castro at Havana’s iconic Revolution Square today, kicking off a week-long farewell to Cuba’s divisive Cold War titan.
After a subdued weekend following his death on Friday, hundreds of thousands are expected to flock to the plaza where Castro would often rail against the US “yankees” and “empire” during his marathon speeches.
Flights
“You’ll see how the people of Cuba really are. You’ll see how they are suffering, how they feel about a person they love,” said Jorge Guilarte, a 50-year-old bike-taxi driver.
Castro, whose 1959 revolution toppled a dictatorship with the promise of bringing justice and equality to his Caribbean island, was a major 20th century figure.
While some saw him as a socialist hero who brought education and free health care to this country, others labeled him a “dictator” who caused economic hardship and sparked an exodus of Cubans to Florida seeking a better life.
In a sign of changing times, US President Barack Obama visited the plaza during his historic visit to Havana in March, when he became the first US leader since 1928 to step foot in Cuba. In a statement on Saturday, Obama offered condolences to Castro’s family.
In 2014, Fidel’s brother and successor, Raul Castro, announced a diplomatic detente with Obama, who has lifted some trade barriers. On Monday, the first regular flights from the United States to the Cuban capital will resume.
Raul Castro has enacted modest, slow reforms that have slightly opened up the economy. Government opponents hope that Fidel’s death will prompt him to launch bolder changes.
Fidel handed power to Raul Castro in 2006 after undergoing emergency intestinal surgery. His cause of death on Friday at age 90 has not been disclosed.
‘Dictator’
At the Revolution Square, famous for a government building adorned with the face of Argentine-born guerrilla Ernesto “Che” Guevara, organisers installed a giant photo at the National Library of the Fidel Castro carrying a rifle during the revolution that brought him to power.
Officials have yet to confirm whether an urn carrying his ashes will be placed on a platform so that Cubans can file in front of his remains.
“Fidel is the people. Everybody loves him here. I’m expecting the plaza to overflow with people, like when he would come to meet the people,” said Ernestina Suarez, a 67-year-old housewife.
Saying goodbye to Fidel will be beautiful.
Dissidents who were repressed by his regime for years said they were happy that the “dictator” had died, but they called off regular demonstrations on Sunday out of deference to those in mourning.
“We are not happy about the death of a man, a human being. We are happy about the death of dictators,” Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White, told AFP.
In Miami, where so many flocked in the past decades, Cuban-Americans celebrated the death of the man they called a “tyrant” with street parties throughout the weekend
After two days of commemorations in the capital, Castro’s ashes will go on a four-day island-wide procession starting on Wednesday before being buried in the southeastern city of Santiago de Cuba on 4 December.
Bay of Pigs
Santiago, Cuba’s second city, was the scene of Castro’s ill-fated first attempt at revolution in 1953 – six years before he succeeded in ousting the US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Fidel Castro, who came to power as a bearded, cigar-chomping 32-year-old, adopted the slogan “socialism or death” and kept his faith to the end.
He survived more than 600 assassination attempts, according to aides, as well as the failed 1961 US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion.
His outrage over that botched invasion contributed to the Cuban missile crisis the following year, when the world stood on the brink of nuclear war.
The USSR bankrolled Castro’s regime until 1989, when the Soviet bloc’s collapse sent Cuba’s economy into free-fall.
Daniel Martinez, a 33-year-old cook, is not a fan of the regime but was not thrilled with the celebrations in Miami.
“I have nothing personal against Fidel, but I am not a ‘Castrista.’
I don’t consider myself a dissident. I simply don’t like this system, neither with Fidel nor with Raul.
“Nothing changes here. Nothing moves.”
With reporting from AFP. - © AFP, 2016
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Same jihad, different country. The US has since 1983 resettled many Somali refugees in Minnesota. And they’ve had some screening issues with both the first and second generation.
“Al Qaeda’s Somali affiliate has claimed credit for a Saturday suicide bombing that killed 10 in Mogadishu, and says one of the men who carried out the attack was a 22-year-old man from Minnesota known to his friends back home as “Bullethead.”
Abdisalan Hussein Ali, who was born in Somalia but raised in Minneapolis, disappeared from Minnesota in 2008.
…he would be the fourth Somali-American to launch a suicide attack in Somalia.
“That is a fundamental change in how we have seen terrorism [since] the attacks of 9/11,” said Napolitano. Since 2006 as many as 30 young Somali men have left the United States to fight in Somalia. The probe into the youths going to fight overseas in Somalia’s war received increased attention from the FBI and DHS officials after Shirwa Ahmed, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Somalia, blew himself up in a suicide bombing in northern Somalia Oct. 28, 2008 in an attack that targeted an African Union intelligence post. A second young man from the Seattle area blew himself up in an attack in 2009.”
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/al-shabab-suicide-bomber-somalia-american/story?id=14851524
@Marlowemallow: And some are now joining IS instead. The mainstream media, of course, is ‘puzzled’ about why Somali heritage young people would go to fight in Syria. Because it’s apparently difficult to understand that not everyone views the world as divided into nation-states.
“Refugees began settling in Minnesota after the government of Somalia collapsed in 1991. This isn’t the first time the community has struggled to counter the appeal of violent extremism to the state’s Somalis, but is much more puzzling. Somalis have no national or ethnic ties to Syria and Iraq, a link that helped explain why some went to fight with al-Shabab when Ethiopia invaded Somalia in 2006.
Young men joining that terrorist group felt a nationalistic call to defend their nation against rival state Ethiopia, but many of those drawn to the Islamic State were born in the U.S. and have never been to Somalia, let alone Syria. Still in April, six Twin Cities youth were arrested for attempting to join the Islamic State group. At least one of the men has conspired to travel to Syria since 2014, according to prosecutors.
“As far as we know there is no one profile that brings [together] all these people who are leaving,” says Abdisalam Adam, an imam at Dar Al-Hijrah Mosque in Minneapolis. “Some people say, ‘Oh they are the ones who are not doing well,’ or whatever. That’s not true. There are some of them who have the opportunity of working, some are in school.”
Are any bombings not horrific?
@The Guru: all bombing are horrific.
@The Guru: It’s a quote from the police official who is the source for the story. Captain Mohamed Hussein is unlikely to be implying that Islamist bombings are more horrific than any other kind.
Has not Al-Shabab aligned itself with ISIS?
@Warthog: Think that was part of Boko Haram – they became Islamic State in West Africa.
Lovely group of moderate islamists. Respectors of human rights par excellence. A beacon of humanity to the world.
Little Mogadishu,Minnesota, home to high concentration of Somali support for Al-Shabab and ISIS is now represented by Jew-hater Muslim convert Keith Ellison in the house and is running for DNC leadership.
Ellison has tried to thwart the FBI from blocking the money supply from Minnesota to Al-Shabab.
—”The Little Mogadishu neighborhood is represented by Democrat congressman Keith Ellison, who liberals proudly tout as the first Muslim-American Congressman. Ellison – who famously swore his oath of office on a Koran – has been a key player in public attacks on those seeking to expose the threat of radical Islam, including former Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert.
Somali terror cell Al-Shabaab has been actively and successfully recruiting in Ellison’s district for years, even producing a slick recruitment video inviting young men in Minnesota to travel overseas and join the jihad. The video has proven disturbingly effective.—-”
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/05/05/the-texas-terror-connection-to-muslim-congressman-keith-ellisons-minneapolis-district/
What a hole
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