A few weeks ago, the US and Cuba announced to the world their plans to restore full diplomatic relations. A happier Christmas wish there could not have been. The global analysis of the situation has been optimistic – a positive change for Cuba, a step towards the democratic nirvana the West supposedly enjoys. Then, just before the New Year, Cuba went and detained several well-known political dissidents in Havana. And once again the world was reminded that though Cuba’s relations to the US might be changing, those to its people remain grimly unchanged. Beyond looking at the potential for a myriad of invisible trade routes to open up, the world needs to remember the Cuban people. Economic freedom does not mean social freedom. When private enterprise is still strictly regulated in Cuba, the possibility to buy US Coca Cola over Cuban Cola means little to the average Habanero or Guantanamero.

So what does the historic announcement made on 17 December 2014 mean for the two countries? Well, for the US, their citizens will now be able to travel to Cuba and use their American credit cards there. It will be easier to buy Cuban goods (ideal for those congressmen partial to a good cigar), and easier for the US to export its own products. But who in Cuba will benefit from this trade? The state-controlled economy has hardly allowed the average Cuban to acquire a disposable income. That the effects of trade and business might eventually trickle down to the Cuban people is of course hoped for but, while the current regime remains in place, even this seems unlikely.

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However, most of our assumptions are being made (perhaps erroneously) on the premise that the US trade embargo of Cuba, otherwise known as the Helms-Burton act, will be lifted. Unfortunately, there seems little hope of this occurring anytime soon. Relations between Cuba and the US frosted over in the early 1960s when Castro and his guerrillas overthrew the corrupt right-wing dictator Batista who had let US businessmen make their fortunes and launder their dirty money on the island. Obama’s proposals to end the trade embargo are still awaiting approval by the US congress, where they are being met with strong opposition.

The US trade embargo has shaped the island through economic and political isolation for over five decades. Walking through downtown Havana, the lack of brands and product advertising is striking. Cuba has remained sealed off from tidal waves of global brands and advertising that have swamped nearly every other corner of the globe. It’s nigh on impossible to track down a can of Coca Cola in Cuba, though of course their own version, Cuban Cola, is on sale everywhere. The extremely limited scope of goods on offer in shops, just like those elegantly dilapidated colonial mansions, may seem charmingly quaint to a burgeoning tourist industry that pulls nearly 3 million visitors a year to the island (set to grow once the gate is opened to US citizens). But it is a stark reminder of daily life for the average Cuban.

What is not so immediately obvious when you visit Cuba is the sheer enormity of state-control the government has over its citizens, who are neatly indoctrinated through their education system from an early age. Although Cuba’s atrocious record of human rights was allegedly one reason why the US clung to the frosty relations (in the mean time turning a blind eye to countries such as China, Vietnam and Venezuela), the US seems to have put to rest all hope of changing Cuba’s internal politics through the embargo. Certainly, it should not have taken the US over half a century to realize the futility of its aim – the embargo was benefitting no-one – but one is now left to wonder how realistic the dreams of democracy are for the Cuban people.

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While its aged figurehead Fidel Castro has retreated from public life, his younger brother Raúl has tentatively allowed the development of a small private sector, and many Cubans are beginning to voice their opposing views. Yoani Sánchez is one such example. She writes an award-winning blog, Generación Y which records the oppressive reality of life in Cuba’s capital city. The regime censured her website in Cuba but it is maintained abroad via emails of blog posts Sánchez sends to her loyal friends and supporters. In April 2014 she established Cuba’s first independent digital media outlet, 14ymedio.

However, with Cuba it can sometimes seem one step forward, two steps back. Sánchez’s husband, journalist and dissident Reinaldo Escobar, was among those arrested on 31 December 2014. His arrest, like many of those before him, comes under the ominously titled Law No. 88 for the Protection of National Independence and Economy of Cuba. It prevents organized group meetings, protests or any action suspected of bolstering so-called anti-Cuban measures. The law has resulted in numerous human rights violations and prison sentences last between seven and twenty years for those found guilty.

Since Law No. 88 repeatedly cites as its raison-d’être the US’ Helms-Burton Act, many are hopeful that better US-Cuba relations would remove a pretext for the regime’s repression. Yet again though, without any concrete assurance that the US will repeal the Helms-Burton Act, significant domestic political change in Cuba seems far off.

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In light of the recent arrests, the regime is not showing any sign of abandoning its strong grip over its people. According to an independent Cuban human rights group, the regime carried out a record number of detentions in 2014, totaling nearly 900.

The US have found a short-term solution to the tricky subject of human rights. As part of the deal, the two countries agreed to trade political prisoners. US Aid-worker Alain Gross, who was convicted of espionage five years ago, was released in exchange for the three remaining Cuban spies who formed part of the Grupo de Los Cinco, imprisoned in the US since 1998. Cuba has not published the identities of the 53 people who will be released which has aroused concern. Without the details of each prisoner, for all anyone knows, the 53 people could be US common criminals instead of Cuban nationals and dissidents who truly deserve their freedom. This trade-off of prisoners changes nothing.

If life for the Cuban people is to improve, two key things need to happen: the US trade embargo needs to be lifted and Cuba needs to introduce real political changes to aid the move towards a more democratic form of government. Amid the excited flurries from international press that a new era of friendship has dawned between two historic enemies, a closer examination of the actual terms of this new friendship is needed. The world also needs to be reminded that the official Cuba, whose envoys speak to the US and arrange such deals as the one in December, is still not the Cuba of the Cuban people. While the dictatorship continues, so does their hardship. 

As Charlie Hebdo releases their ‘Survivors’ issue, in which the Prophet Mohammed is depicted, people have appealed to the values of a society in which such publications can exist, and defended our right to offend. But whilst we might accept no one has the right to not be offended, is it the case that we do have, as Charlie Hebdo’s lawyer argued, “the right to blaspheme” or, in general, the right to offend?

For many in the wake of the attack in Paris, upholding the right to free speech is the most important thing we can do. Drawing the Prophet, making jokes at the expense of Islam or parts of it, no matter how insulting it is to some, is crucial in showing that we will not be swayed by the oppressive actions of others.

And of course, there is something powerful in that message. We know all too well that we could have called for an invasion or an upping of the bombing over IS-held areas. We’ve done it before in response to terrorist attacks. But this time, instead, we pledged to buy a magazine, brandished pens in the air, walked through the very city that was attacked and declared that our values will not be swayed by the actions of a maligned few.

Yet, this is to encourage the publication of images that we know will probably be insulting not only to radical extremists but also to the overwhelming majority of Muslims that do not hold the beliefs of the Hebdo attackers. That we desire to offend a few at the expense of many who are our friends, neighbours and fellow citizens seems contradictory to another of our beloved values: tolerance.

The depiction of Prophet Mohammed to a non-Muslim is inconsequential. In isolation, for any non-Muslim individual, it means absolutely nothing at all. Depicting him only becomes meaningful to a non-Muslim when it’s done in relation to others – when it’s done to provoke, to insult, to offend.

There will be those who argue that in a tolerant society, there will be opinions against particular creeds, and whilst we tolerate religion and religious diversity we must also tolerate those who speak out against what they see as something damaging for society. We cannot be tolerant of one without being tolerant of the other.

Certainly, I have no right not to be offended by the words and actions of others. I might be offended when someone preaches the Second Coming or that abortion is sinful, but I have no right to have these people silenced. As I express my opinion, so too can they express theirs.

Neither, however, do I have the right to intentionally offend others.

I am offended by the street-corner preacher because my beliefs are in conflict with those of the person who offended me. The preacher’s intention was to change my beliefs, to persuade me, and not to offend me. Were the preacher to say certain things just to make me angry, I would question his right to say those things. Similarly, I have no right to swear in a church just because I wish to rile the local Vicar.

I can be offended, and accept that as the case, without someone having the right to offend at the same time. This ‘right’ as a concept seems nothing more than a glamorous attempt at justifying the entitlement of people to be deliberately hurtful towards others.

In the aftermath of such horrific attacks, where we seek to reassert and find solace in our values, we should be careful not to misconstrue their meaning and damage those values in the process. We hold free speech dear because it promotes tolerance, acceptance and constructive debate.

Publishing depictions of Prophet Mohammed is not a re-affirmation of our values in the way we think it is. Whilst no one has the right not to be offended, we certainly don’t have the right to offend. Free speech and tolerance are values we hold to ensure cohesion and peace, not animus. 

There are plenty of reasons to be frustrated with celebrity feminism. In the past couple of years young, pretty, mostly white celebrities have started rushing to assure the world of their sparkling feminist credentials.  The most cringeworthy moment surely came last September, when Chanel’s Karl Lagerfeld – a man whose grasp of feminism had previously been restricted to the insight that ‘no one wants to see curvy women’ – staged a mock feminist protest on a Paris catwalk. Nascent grassroots feminism suddenly became just another way of selling clothes.

But despite all this, we shouldn’t absolutely condemn celebrity feminism. Feminism is at its root very different from the other causes that celebrities jump on. When Leonardo Di Caprio talks about climate change for the UN, few seem to notice or care. But when Emma Watson stood up and made that He For She speech last year, social media exploded.

The reaction to Emma Watson’s speech strikes at the heart of why celebrity feminism matters. First, Watson talked about her own experiences of sexism, recalling that the media started sexualising her at the age of just 14. Of course, the experiences of one of the wealthiest women in the world will inevitably be very different from most women’s. But there’s a reason that feminism starts from the principle that the personal is political.

Throughout history women’s issues have been belittled because they are concerned not with the public sphere but the personal, the private. Watson’s ‘personal’ will be very far from mine, and farther again from the ‘personal’ of the 15.5 million girls who she says will marry as children in the next 16 years. But that does not make her experiences of sexism and inequality any less true. And in speaking out about those personal experiences she links them to a wider system of oppression that affects everyone.

What is more important, though, is that celebrities’ personal experiences are not just their own experiences. In a Hollywood where only 15% of screenwriters and 9% of directors are women, women on camera are all too often simply sexist caricatures, as the Bechdel test demonstrates. Off-camera, the press scrutinises female celebrities remorselessly. And that has consequences that go beyond those women as individuals.

When Miley Cyrus is forced to deny that she is pregnant because she dared to appear in public with body fat, or when the press sexualises even young girls in the public eye, it tells all women that they will be forced into narrow categories and judged on them. Paradoxically, the women who seem most powerful are actually used to oppress and belittle other women.

So when Beyoncé chose to open her fantastically successful last album with the song ‘Pretty Hurts’, or when Cyrus called herself a feminist, or when Watson made that speech, it changed what it meant to be a female celebrity. Without rejecting all the tropes the entertainment industry uses to define women, female artists have shifted the meaning of those tropes. Recently Taylor Swift – another convert to feminism – did just that in her ‘Blank Space’ video: Swift takes sexist scrutiny of her personal life and turns it into a parody that forces us to laugh at the stereotypes we foist on women in the public eye.

Increasingly, instead of accepting the two-dimensional images the media makes of them, female celebrities are taking control of the interplay of those images. And when that comes together with a declaration of feminism, that act of subversion becomes explicitly political. From this perspective, Lagerfeld’s mock protest starts to looks like a doomed attempt to take control of a movement quickly escaping the boundaries of patriarchal control.

All this isn’t to say we should sit back and applaud celebrity feminism. It’s still just as true that celebrities are the winners in a system that overwhelmingly favours young women who conform to Western beauty standards. Correspondingly, we should expect that they will have an interest in maintaining a status quo that disproportionately values what young, rich and privileged women have to say. But neither should we reject celebrity feminism altogether. In claiming feminism, celebrities strip back the images and illusions that the media uses to oppress women, and show us that they are not just caricatures but real, complex individuals; individuals, in fact, like all women are.

Since the Sony hack, which breached thousands of confidential company emails and made terrorism threats against any US cinemas that aired ‘The Interview’, our newspapers have been filled with accounts and updates on the cyber-vandalism incident. After the FBI claimed that hackers, working under the codename ‘Guardians of the Peace’, were in fact representatives of North Korea, America has imposed economic sanctions against three North Korean companies and ten government officials. While seemingly an appropriate and (if you’ll forgive the pun) peacekeeping response, this retaliation is in fact highly provocative and unjustified.

Multiple experts, including Marc Rogers (Cloudfare Principle Security Researcher) have come forward to question whether the communist regime really was behind the hacks. He has claimed that it “feels more like someone who had an issue with Sony”, writing in The Daily Beast that it was most likely a disgruntled employee. This seems highly likely, especially when one takes into account that it was not until the media made the link between the ‘Guardians of the Peace’ and ‘The Interview’ that hackers started mentioning the film.

North Korea’s National Defence Commission (NDC) has in fact accused Washington of “groundlessly linking the unheard of hacking at the Sony Pictures Entertainment to the DPRK.” While labelling the act a “righteous deed”, they deny any involvement.

Why would such a reactionary country, quite willing to make nuclear threats and arguably racist remarks about America’s leader (they have labelled Obama a ‘monkey’ on multiple occasions) deny involvement in an act which they clearly approve of, unless they truly did have nothing to do with it? Similarly, if the FBI really does have conclusive proof that North Korea was to blame, why hide it?

It seems that instead, the White House may be trying to make an example of the country, rather than acting justly.

Dan Roberts, Washington Bureau chief for The Guardian, reports that the US’s latest actions are designed to complement existing sanctions against North Korea’s attempts at nuclear proliferation. He argues that the specified agencies and individuals were not targeted because the US believes they were directly involved in the hack.

But if the US were justly retaliating to a specific attack, the Sony hack, why would they target those not involved?

The Treasury Secretary Jack Lew stated that: “Even as the FBI continues its investigation into the cyber-attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment, these steps underscore that we will employ a broad set of tools to defend US businesses and citizens, and to respond to attempts to undermine our values or threaten the national security of the United States.”

Let’s look at the implications of this statement for a moment. The FBI has not finished its investigation. It “continues” to examine the situation as economic sanctions are placed upon individuals who most likely had nothing to do with the hack. The US acts so as to send a message to North Korea, that it may not “threaten the national security of the United States,” as Secretary of the Treasury Jacob J. Lew said. If we were certain that this was a threat to US security, this would be an appropriate response. However, with doubt being voiced by numerous experts, we have not yet proved ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’ that the country being punished is to blame – or even involved.

Not only this, but the hacking of the private company was used by Obama in his last press conference of 2014 as proof that it is “so important for Congress to work with us to get a bill passed that allows for the kind of information sharing we need,” and that “this points to the need for us to set up an international community … to set up some rules of the road.” The incident is actively being used to forward government proposals.

While I disagree with the overwhelming majority of the statements issued by the North Korean government, it seems that they may have been correct to label Obama “reckless” in his reaction to the Sony hack. In a world where we advocate the innocence of parties until proven guilty as well as freedom of speech, Obama’s desperation to make an example of North Korea, before investigating the issue fully, seems to be more a political move than a judicious one.