Despite that restriction, until June 2010, it was possible and legal to engage in cross-border securities swaps to repatriate funds.  In short, a party could swap Venezuela-Bolivar denominated securities, such as Venezuelan government debt bonds (DPN bonds), for foreign currency denominated securities held abroad and subsequently liquidated these latter securities for foreign currency abroad.

Amendments to the Foreign Exchange Crimes Act enacted in May 2010 prohibited this swap mechanism.  The amendments characterized securities denominated in foreign currency as forms of foreign currency.  The law made straight swaps of Bolivars for U.S. currency or other foreign currency denominated securities unauthorized transfers of “foreign currency.”

A technique now used by multinational to obtain foreign currency and repatriate funds back the United States or other jurisdictions is to buy gold (or some other commodity) abroad and pay for it with Venezuelan securities denominated in Bolivars, namely DPNs.  Such a transaction apparently does not constitute a breach of the country’s foreign exchange system.  In sum, gold or securities denominated in Bolivars are not included in the definition of “foreign exchange” in the country’s Foreign Exchange Crimes Act.

Throughout the hour long documentary, Dr. Gates suggested that Cuba would have been a country of racial equality had it not been for the intervention of the U.S. during its war of independence from Spain.  Along with attempting to include Cuba under its sphere of influence, the U.S. exported its ideas of racial hierarchy and the suppression of blacks.  Former slaves who had fought in the war of independence with Spain quickly found themselves considered to be second class citizens though there were no official segregation laws.

Gates spends a lot of time affirming that everything of African origin was repressed.  Even Fulgencio Batista, the dictator and military leader before being overthrown as a result of the Cuban Revolution and who was himself a mulatto, did not see fit to uplift blacks.  It was then left for Fidel Castro to attempt to create the long needed change.

Click here to watch PBS video.

This year marked the 15th anniversary of CABL.  As Alleyne notes, in the past 15 years, CABL has made great strides in becoming a strong and vibrant association representing the diverse interests of the black community in Canada but there are many challenges.  According to Alleyne, some of the challenges for the near term include strengthening CABL’s chapters outside of Ontario and ensuring that black law students have a good chance to find articles and be called to the bar.

Alleyne notes that, in the past 20 years, “Bay Street” firms have become more diverse, although they have a very long way to go towards becoming fully representative of the community.  For example, in his Toronto office there are three black partners that are three of the only 18 black partners that the CABL was aware of last year when it gathered to toast the achievements of the black partners on Bay Street.  According to Alleyne, of the hundreds of partners of the firms represented at that event, 18 is a small number but placed in the perspective that, in the early 1990s, there may have only been two or three black partners on Bay Street, that there has been improvement.

The CABL, formed in March 1996, is a national Canadian network of law professionals and individuals committed to reinvesting in the community.  CABL’s continuing goal is to bring together law professionals and other interested members of the community from across Canada to cultivate and maintain the association of black legal professionals in Canada.

Click here to read the full article in Sway.

Each year, on December 5, the morning before the feast of St. Nicholas, Dutch children all over the country wake up excited for gifts and candy, while thousands of adults go to their mirrors to paint their faces black and their lips red. Once in their Zwarte Piet costumes, they fill central Amsterdam and small village streets, ushering in the arrival of Sinterklaas who, according to local tradition, rides a flying white horse.

Zwarte Piet—or his immediate ancestor—was introduced in 1845 in the story “Saint Nicholas and his Servant,” written by an Amsterdam schoolteacher named Jan Schenkman. In the story, Sinterklaas comes from Spain by steamship bringing with him a black helper of African origin. The book was wildly popular and with it began the inclusion of Santa’s helper in Dutch Christmas festivities.  A century later he was given the name Piet.

During recent years the role of Zwarte Pieten has become part of a recurring debate in the Netherlands.  Foreign tourists, particularly Americans, often experience culture shock when encountering the Zwarte Pieten holiday revelers blackening their faces, wearing afro wigs, gold jewelry and bright red lipstick and walking the streets throwing candy to passersby.

Since the last decade of the 20th century there have been several attempts to introduce a new kind of Zwarte Piet to the Dutch population, where the Zwarte Pieten replaced their traditional black make-up with all sorts of colors. In 2006 the NPS (Dutch Program Foundation) as an experiment replaced the black Pieten by rainbow-colored Pieten, but in 2007 reverted to the traditional all-black Pieten.

The largest Sinterklaas celebration in Western Canada within the Dutch-Canadian community, slated for 3 December 2011 in New Westminster, British Columbia, was cancelled for the first time since its inception in 1985 after clashes of opinion surrounding Zwarte Piet. Rather than leaving out Zwarte Piet from the celebration, the organizers decided to cancel the entire public festivity.

Click here to read full article on Slate, “In Holland, Santa Doesn’t Have Helpers. He Has Slaves.”

Click here to read full article on The Root, “A Very Racist Christmas?”

Click here to read full article on The Record, “New Westminster Sinterklaas Festival Cancelled”

Chair of the BSN’s City Group since 2008, Mastin also co-runs Linklaters’ internal diversity initiative – the Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic (BAME) Network – that aims to encourage the recruitment, ­retention and promotion of such people at all levels within the firm. Linklaters recently teamed up with the BSN City Group and a leading banking client to hold a panel event on global capital ­markets specifically designed for black City lawyers.

In her ­experiences as a black lawyer it is clear that Mastin sees the value of ­internal and external networks that support diversity. Mastin believes that law firms should be as diverse as their client base.

Asked how the BSN engages and ­promotion of recruitment with City firms to promote the interests, its members, Mastin ­outlines a number of agendas the organisation is pursuing.

“The BSN Diversity League Table [DLT] is particularly instrumental in this regard, in that it provides a comprehensive analysis of the demographics of many ­leading law firms and chambers,” she explains. “Through this ­publication law firms, including ­Linklaters, are encouraged to share best practice and are able to gauge their progress in the area of recruitment of BAME lawyers.”

This results, ­published in November, show that 16 per cent of all DLT year’s trainees are from ethnic minority backgrounds, ­representing a year-on-year increase since 2007. The proportion of ethnic minority associates increased from 10 per cent to 11 per cent over the same period, while the figure for partners rose slightly to 5 per cent.  In total, 44 firms volunteered to participate in the survey. This figure includes 13 international firms, 26 UK top 100 firms and six of the City’s finest.

Despite the slow trickle of those from BAME backgrounds over the years, Mastin remains positive but stresses that more still needs to be done.

Click here to read full article on The Lawyer.

The day is marked on the anniversary of the death of Zumbi dos Palmares (1655-1695), the last leader of the Quilombo dos Palmares, a fugitive community of escaped slaves and others in colonial Brazil that developed from 1605 until its suppression in 1694. It was located in what is today the Brazilian state of Alagoas.  The day has special meaning for those Brazilians of African descent who honor Zumbi as a hero, freedom fighter, and symbol of freedom. Zumbi has become a hero of the twentieth-century Afro-Brazilian political movement, as well as a national hero in Brazil.

On November 20, members of the organization “Black Movement” (the largest of its kind in the country) organize educational and fun events involving mainly children of African descent. Their focus during these events is to dissolve the perception of Africans’ inferiority in society. Other “hot topics” in the black community during the Day of Black Awareness are the assimilation of African-Brazilian laborers with Caucasian-Brazilian and other laborers, ethnic identity, and black pride.

Black Awareness Day has been celebrated since the 1960s and has only amplified its events in the last few years.  The 13th of May is now a holiday (Brazilian Abolishment of Slavery).

Clearly, more can be accomplished.  Franchised businesses on the continent could create and join a Pan-African Franchise Association to serve as a resource center for the African franchise industry and practitioners through the continent to foster an understanding of franchise “best practices.”

An important function of the association could be to arbitrate disputes between franchisor and franchisees.  This would be particularly important in those African countries where the judicial system is not particularly efficient.  These associations could also,  in effect, be self-regulatory bodies of the franchise sector.  Among other things, they could even facilitate grow in the industry by organizing franchise shows and/or meetings between prospective master franchisees and international franchisors, manage the qualification process of interested franchisors, organize international trade missions and seminars on topics of interest.

The Namibian Supreme Court recently ruled that conditions imposed by its nation’s antitrust regulator on Walmart’s takeover of assets in that country must be reviewed by the Namibian trade minister.  It is a move that could deal a blow to the R16.5bn (US$2.1 billion) deal.  The ruling gives Trade and Industry Minister Hage Geingob a final say over whether conditions attached to the deal by the Namibian Competition Commission are adequate.

Under Namibian competition law, Geingob’s review of the conditions could lead to the deal being overturned or having conditions amended and added.

The Namibian Competition Commission approved the deal earlier this year, on condition it does not lead to job cuts and Walmart sells stakes to historically disadvantaged communities, among others.

While Walmart welcomed the ruling, it said any new conditions imposed by the trade minister would be open to a legal challenge.

Click here to read article in Fin24 on deal.

Ecuador’s society remains stratified with reports of overt social prejudice against blacks in all spheres of society.  Nevertheless, Ecuador has no formal policies of racial or ethnic discrimination and is constitutionally defined as a “multinational” country. There is only one Afro-Ecuadorian member of congress.  The Collective Rights of Black and Afro-Ecuadorian Peoples law passed in 2006 established The Afro-Ecuadorian Development Council (CONDAE), a government office which creates policies and strategies for improving black communities.  It is the second state-level body explicitly for Afro-Ecuadorians. The other group that informs the president on black issues is the Afro-Ecuadorian Development Corporation (Corporación de Desarrollo Afroecuatoriano, CODAE), formally launched in 2002.  CODAE was created in 1998 during the interim presidency of Fabian Alarcon, but formally institutionalized in 2002.

Although the Development Project for the Indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorians (Proyecto de Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indigenas y Afroecuatorianos, PRODEPINE) took aim at black communities in 1998 with funding from the World Bank, it was predominantly an indigenous-focused initiative.  While Afro-Ecuadorians have mostly benefited from the indigenous rights movement’s promotion of a multicultural, multiethnic, and multinational Ecuador, government development programs for Ecuador’s indigenous populations have simply been applied to Afro-descendants, without taking into consideration their unique situations.  The 2006 Afro-Ecuadorian law sought to disaggregate the needs of Afro-Ecuadorian communities from those of the indigenous.  While the new laws and departments are the first serious attempts to address the problems faced by blacks within society, significant change in Afro-communities has not happened.

Recent constitutional and legal gains are the positive results of the Afro-Ecuadorian movement that began about 30 years ago with the formation of black empowerment organizations. The Center of Afro-Ecuadorian Studies, an organization that studies Afro-culture and advocates racial consciousness, was founded in 1979.  It was the first organization to rally around issues pertaining to marginalized blacks in Ecuador and is still active today. Another long-standing group is the Association of Black Ecuadorians (Asociacion de Negros Ecuatorianos, ASONE), founded in 1988. Its aims include developing cultural pride and reversing environmental damage by logging companies and shrimp farms in the coastal region. In 1989, the Afro-Ecuadorian Institute was founded to revive African traditions among Ecuador’s Afro-descendants.

Since these formative first years of the black movement, many more groups have formed.   Founded by soccer star Agustin Delgado, The Agustin Delgado Foundation works to improve the socio-economic situation of Afro-Ecuadorians in the Choto Valley.  The Center for Studies and Investigations of Afro-descendants of Ecuador studies black communities to better inform the movement’s agenda and has worked with continental black and indigenous groups on children’s issues.  The Equality Alliance fights discrimination and works to increase the national profile of black Ecuadorians.  There is also the Black Community Movement (El Proceso de Comunidades Negras), based in San Lorenzo, Esmeraldas.   One of the largest groups, the Afro-Ecuadorian Cultural Center, lobbies the government on Afro-Ecuadorian issues. These groups primarily work independent of one another or work only on a regional level. The National Confederation of Afro-Ecuadorians (Confederacion Nacional Afroecuatoriana, CNA) is one of two nationwide groups advocating on behalf of Afro-Ecuadorians. CNA was founded in 1999 and recognized legally in 2003.  The other nationwide group, also founded in 1999, is the National Coordinator of Black Women of Ecuador (Coordinadora Nacional de Mujeres Negras de Ecuador), an organization that has been very effective at creating a national profile, as well as making rounds in international policy circles.

Click here to read full assessment provided by Minorities At Risk.

Odendaal gave the name of one of two South Africans who were apparently killed, but this could not be independently confirmed.

Odendaal said he met Gaddafi on Monday when the mercenaries arrived in Libya. Vehicles were sent out of the city on Tuesday to begin transporting Gaddafi to neighbouring Niger.

Odendaal and four other South Africans were apparently in a Jeep when they were chased out of Sirte in their convoy.

“We all believed they wanted him [out of Libya],” he said, but Nato forces started firing at the convoy from the air.

Libyan soldiers attacked the convoy and Gaddafi and a few of his guards fled to the storm water drain where he was found.  Mercenaries fled in all directions.
“It was a gruesome, gruesome orgy,” said Odendaal.

Albie Laubscher, acting head of consular services at the SA Department of International Relations and Co-operation, said that his department had no knowledge of any South Africans’ involvement in Libya. The department had also not been approached to help with a medical evacuation.

Click here for related full article on News24.