Censorship Again.

Efforts to post my John Rawls essay after fixing the spacing of paragraphs were obstructed both from my home computer and public computers. I will continue to try to post essays from various public computers while repairing the damage caused by hackers to posted works.

I believe the reason why the Rawls essay could not be posted is because I raise the issue of a contradiction between America's public statements concerning values and the reality of censorship at these blogs at the hands of Cuban-American thugs and their organized crime associates. America can no longer count on the respect which we should expect for our human rights pronouncements as long as we are seen to engage in this kind of hypocritical abuse of dissidents while asking others for protection of human rights.

This morning the Yale University Professor Carlos Eire was interviewed on the PBS program "Religion and Ethics." I admire this program. I have not read Mr. Eire's memoirs, although I am interested in his scholarly work on eternity as a concept in theology. I am sympathetic to the view that the experience of "eternity in one hour" is possible not only in religion, but also in erotic bliss and aesthetic ecstasy. However, I differ with Mr. Eire concerning the Cuba issue.

Mr. Eire questions the motives of Canadian and European tourists visiting Cuba by suggesting that such vacationing is comparable to travelling as "tourists to the Third Reich." The analogy between Cuba and Nazi Germany is far-fetched or absurd in my view. UN human rights inquiries have certified Cuba's compliance with revisions and modifications of Cuban laws suggested by international authorities aimed at enhancing human rights for all Cubans. Cuba's political prisoners have been set free.

I say this as someone who has strongly criticized Cuba's early human rights crises -- for example, concerning homosexuals. For a comparison, see "Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal." I doubt that there are many writers in Cuba subjected to the horrors that I have endured or the cybercrimes that are my daily reality.

Today, the US receives as much (or more) criticism from international sources on human rights issues as does Cuba. We are responsible for concentration camp-like torture centers, such as Guantanamo, which are profoundly offensive to persons of conscience everywhere in the world, including New Haven, Connecticut. Mr. Obama's promise to close the Guantanamo prison has not been kept.

As a tortured and raped dissident, whose efforts to communicate are censored and suppressed, illegally, to the indifference of American government officials -- whose life-or-death struggle to write is a war against licensed computer crime that is displayed to the world in these blogs -- I am somewhat skeptical concerning Mr. Eire's sensitivity to denials of freedom of speech for Americans who disagree with his Right-wing views or with prominent Cuban-American politicians. ("Time to End the Embargo Against Cuba.")

Will Mr. Eire criticize those persons who steal my writings and suppress my creative works because I disagree with our policies on the Cuban Revolution? Will Mr. Eire join me in calling for a full public debate on these matters without insults and torture (or threats) against those who hold minority views? Will Mr. Eire agree with me in opposing corruption and hypocrisy in government even when Cuban-American politicians are guilty of these offenses? If so, then we can enjoy a healthy discussion of the controversy concerning the Cuban embargo.

I am a member of Professor Eire's social class in Cuba. I lost a father and suffered a great deal as a result of the revolution. Nevertheless, it seems clear to me that socialism and Cuba's Revolution may be right for the vast majority of the Cuban people if they can be combined with greater prosperity and more freedoms resulting from an end to the embargo and termination of all hostilities with the United States of America. ("Havana Nights and C.I.A. Tapes.")

This end of hostilities should be the goal for all of us -- Cuban-Americans and our brothers and sisters hurting in Cuba as I am hurting in America -- to work towards or bring about peace while there is still time to make a difference in millions of people's lives. (Again: "Time to End the Embargo Against Cuba" and "Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me.'")

Mr. Obama, you must not remain passive to this spectacle of suppression of speech and cruelty directed against me that is visible to the world. At stake is the applicability of the Bill of Rights for all Americans and our credibility on human rights issues in the world. I am especially saddened at the orchestrated media silence from America's docile press. If I can be tortured and censored in this way, then anyone in American society may be subjected to such treatment. ("What is it like to be censored in America?" and "How censorship works in America.")

Finally, I was able to post the repaired texts from a public computer at 8:10 P.M. on March 30, 2011.