You say the refusal of America to trade with Cuba is an 'illegal blockade' ... but isn't a country free to trade or not to trade with whoever it wants to?

The need to move away from the dollar system into a new world currency can be found not on trading only with whom ever you want to, but rather as Peoples China says basing world trade on 'mutual benefit'. The second world war was a war to end all wars as it was fought from the anti-fascist side. The United Nations Charter says its reason of being is to make aggressive war just a long distant memory for the comming generations. The blockade of Cuba is an illegal aggressive war method against a country that does not threaten anybody, but rather leads by example in that it sends tens of thousands of doctors and literacy teachers throughout the former colonized world to deliver modern health requirements and produce a literate world community, such as in Venezuala, and Bolivia. Alba the trade and cultural association of Latin America is a fan and student of the Bolivarian Revolution that is studying and practicing ways to get out of the dictate of the U.S. Imperialists, and their policy of 'Manifest Destiny' in which all the western hemisphere is to be owned and controlled by the U.S.A. That is not mutually benificial trade, it is the unequal taking of the metropolis country of the resources of south and middle America unequally, and leaves the South Americans in poverty and illiteracy and ill health. We need the removal of the blockade so that Cuba can enjoy mutually beneficial trade not extended oppression and misery from the U.S. Imperialist America.

Already the majority of people in the world are against the U.S. as the General Assembly vote in the past decade and so has shown a huge vote of all the nations except the U.S. Israel and the U.S. territories has shown. End the blockade of Cuba vote this year was something like 185 vs 4. Still the U.S. does not obey the majority of the worlds democracy of peoples as signified by the United Nations General Assembly. Clearly the U.S.A. is acting illegally nationally and internationally. Hence a new world economy is indicated so that a ' mutually beneficial economic trade balance' can take place, not the U.S. Imperialist model of only the rich survive and pollution for money is the rule and buisness is taking more than they give. End the blockade and free the Cuban five. Workers of the world, unite!!

The blockade was strengthened in the 90s to include extraterritorial componenets, which make it an 'illegal' blocakde, as it attempts to prevent trade between Cuba and other soverign countries. These changes included:

1/ US-controlled subsidiary companies in other countries cannot trade with Cuba, which makes it illegal for a Cuban to stay in a Hilton hotel in the UK. It also means that Cuba has to constantly abandon previously viable sources of food and medical supplies as the old suppliers are bought out by US companies.

2/ Non-US companies that have dealings in the US can be fined millions of dollars if they trade with Cuba. A UK example of the effect of this is the discision of Lloyds TSB, a British Bank, to suspend all transfers to/from Cuba for its British customers.

3/ Any ship that docks in a Cuban port is banned from docking in a US posrt for 6 months afterwards.

Every year there is an overwheleming vote to condemn the blocakde in the UN general assembly. It now wins with only 4 countries abstaining/voting against ( US, Israel, Marshal Islands, Microsnesia). The strength of this opposition is due to the fact that countires like UK, EU etc regard the bloackde as an interference with their sovereign right to trade with any country in the world, and therefore legally questionable under international law.

Couple (or more) of points.

1. US controlled subsidiaries - yes, they're controlled by the US and so the US can tell them what to do. Illegal?

2. Companies that don't do business in the US can trade with Cuba;
and

3. You're saying it's illegal for the US to say which ships can enter its ports?

If the action is illegal, why doesn't the EU or China or Russia challenge it in say the WTO?

Scoobie.

These laws are obviously legal as far as US laws go. As far as international law goes they are legally dubious because the intention and effect of them is to hinder third countries' trade with Cuba.

You ask why it is not challenged. It is every year, in the UN general assembly, as I explained.

Despite all this, you can persist in saying that 'illegal' is an inacurate term to use, and you would have a point, because there is no way for other countries to enforce it. Incidentally, there is just no way any country, is going to get anything in the WTO passed in relation to this, as the WTO is fundamentally anti-democratic and dominated by the US and other imperialist countries.

The point is that the blockade has caused huge suffering for the Cuban people. It is an attempt by US imperialism to kill the Cuban Revolution. That's why you should be opposed to it - not because it fulfills the definition of 'illegal'

Victoria.

The WTO dominated by imperialist powers? What, like Russia and China?

I agree with you that the blockade is counter productive - I think that if the blockade were lifted, the Castor regime would collapse faster.