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Cuba

Christmas Card From Cuba: Thaw Delivers Santa Claus, But Not Human Rights

Essay: A dissident blogger recalls the secret Christmas of her youth. The holidays are now acknowledged out in the open, but the other troublesome topic -- human rights -- is still off limits.

The colors and contradictions of Havana (Leshaines123)
The colors and contradictions of Havana (Leshaines123)
Yoani Sánchez

HAVANAOf all the naughty words and phrases I remember from childhood, two stood out as being particularly taboo: "Christmas' and "Human Rights."

I remember hearing the first occasionally, but only in a hushed voice. It was something a grandmother might mention from time to time, someone who'd once had the experience of decorated trees, Christmas sweets and turkey. But the second of those off-limits words, when acknowledged at all, was muttered with contempt – to allude to our so-called enemies: people who were said to be involved in counterrevolutionary acts.

That's how I grew up, far from the end-of-year festivities enjoyed in so many other countries and believing that evil lurked behind the U.N."s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. My limited vocabulary was evidence of how I'd been conditioned to be full of fears and to accept restriction after restriction.

This December, the shops are adorned with flashing lights and trees brimming with decorations. A rather slim Santa Claus smiles through a store window in a major Havana shopping mall. When people meet up with each other they casually say things like "Merry Christmas," or "I'm out doing my Christmas shopping," or "Come on over to the house to celebrate Christmas."

The "human rights crowd"

Yes, Christmas – considered for decades to be a bad word – has made its way back into the island's general vocabulary. But that same neighbor who might invite you over for a Christmas meal may also tell you: "Watch out. Don't get too close to those people. They're part of the human rights crowd."

At some protest rally somewhere on the island, the mention of "human rights' will still prompt the political policeman stationed on the corner to mummer into his radio: "Yes, here come some of those people from the Human Rights faction." We all have a friend still who tells us to keep our voices down, saying "if you're going to talk about that kind of ‘stuff," it's better to turn the music up."

A hypothetical snow has begun falling on our red Christmas caps. But before it even has time to collect, it's being washed away by the same tropical downpour of intolerance and arrests that has swamped Cuba for decades and that blows the breath right back into the mouths of anyone who dares utter the words "human rights."

Read the original story in Spanish

Photo - Leshaines123

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Israel

Bibi Blinked: Can Netanyahu Survive After Backing Down On Judicial Putsch?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu has backed down in the 11th hour on his plans to push forward on a major judicial reform bill that had sparked massive protests.

Bibi Blinked: Can Netanyahu Survive After Backing Down On Judicial Putsch?
Pierre Haski

-Analysis-

Benjamin Netanyahu played the sorcerer's apprentice and lost. By announcing Monday night the suspension of his judicial reform, which has deeply divided Israeli society and brought hundreds of thousands of people onto the nation's streets, he signed his defeat.

One thing we know about the Israeli prime minister is that he has not said his last word: the reform is only suspended, not withdrawn. He promised a "real dialogue" after the Passover holiday.

Netanyahu is not one to back down easily: he had clearly gone too far, first by allying himself with extreme right-wing forces from the fringes of the political spectrum; but above all by wanting to change the balance on which the Jewish State had lived since its foundation in 1948. His plans threatened to change the nature of the state in a patently "illiberal" direction.

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