Aldi Belgium: No to Sunday Work! ---- Aldi employees are on strike. Initially launched in Flanders on April 23, the movement quickly spread throughout the country, affecting approximately 60 stores, before rebounding in Brussels and its surrounding areas on May 2 (where 85% of stores were closed). This massive mobilization reflects a major social conflict within the Belgian retail sector, marked by a head-on clash between the profitability strategies of the chains and the employees' right to rest. Working on Sundays is out of the question! The strikers are denouncing a deterioration of their living conditions in the name of flexibility.
A domino effect in the sector: Aldi is not an isolated case. This movement follows the franchising of Delhaize and Intermarché, as well as the Sunday openings already implemented by Carrefour, Okay (Colruyt), and announced by Lidl. The government bears responsibility, as legislative reforms (allowing work until 9 p.m., 7 days a week) facilitate this widespread adoption of Sunday work. Faced with this global offensive, it is urgent to move towards a united front among retailers to force employers in the sector to back down and protect the status of retail workers!
Belgium & Banksters: ING Bank, suspected of complicity in money laundering practices in the Reynders affair, reached a criminal settlement of EUR1.6 million, thus avoiding any further prosecution. Didier Reynders, former minister of the Reformist Movement (right-wing) and former European Commissioner, allegedly laundered EUR1 million, notably through e-tickets from the National Lottery. At the heart of the case: financial transactions deemed atypical, notably 245 cash deposits over 16 years totaling EUR836,500, as well as 779 transfers linked to the National Lottery for over EUR200,000. Since 2017, banks have been legally obligated to exercise due diligence regarding money laundering. They are required to know their customers in order to identify so-called "atypical" transactions. If suspicious transactions are detected, the bank is obligated to notify the "financial intelligence processing unit." ING detected nothing... Reynders was already implicated in "Kazakhgate," a case involving bribes paid by associates of Nicolas Sarkozy to various individuals to facilitate the sale of French helicopters to Kazakhstan. Alleged corruption, cronyism among the bourgeoisie, class-based justice, and money laundering.
Revolutionary May Day - Brussels/Saint-Gilles
Five thousand people participated in the Revolutionary May Day demonstration, despite attempts at prohibition and intimidation by the mayor of Saint-Gilles. Workers and activists from various revolutionary currents, including anarchists, autonomists, communists, trade unionists, antifascists, feminists, anti-imperialists, and radical environmentalists, both Belgian and international, gathered for a show of strength and solidarity. This year, the "Revolutionary May Day Alliance" announced: "We will also be in the streets this May Day for all those who do not have the opportunity: those who are victims of fascism, those who are imprisoned, those who are undocumented, or those who survive in the ruins of imperialist wars." "Along the demonstration route, a building belonging to the NN insurance company was targeted by some of the protesters. We can only note the relevance of this choice! Capital institutions are everywhere in a city like Brussels, but when the windows of an insurance company involved in the construction of a 186km-long anti-migrant wall in Poland are smashed, there's cause for celebration. We reiterate here: no regrets!" asserts one of the Alliance organizations.
Nestor Makhno (1889-1934), anarcho-communist militant. Makhno led the Ukrainian insurrectionary army. The Makhnovist movement was a manifestation of the 1917 Russian Revolution. From July 1918 until August 1921, it was a political, social, armed, anarcho-communist movement. Peasants and workers led the class struggle against all forms of oppression, those of the Bolsheviks and those of the Whites-the counter-revolutionary forces. After the defeat of the Makhnovist movement in 1921, Makhno was sent into exile in Western Europe. By 1925, he was living and working in Paris, where he remained politically active in the anarchist movement until the end. He died in 1934, and his ashes were placed in an urn at Père Lachaise Cemetery. Five hundred people of various nationalities attended his funeral.
Makhno recounted the history of the anarchist group Hulyai Pole and the events in revolutionary Ukraine: "Our agrarian commune was simultaneously the vital economic and agricultural center of our social system. Societies were not based on individual selfishness, but on shared principles and local and regional solidarity. At the same time, while each member of the community was in solidarity with their neighbor, each community was federated with the others... Our communities were a mix of agriculture and industry, and some were even purely industrial. Everyone fought and worked. People's assemblies made decisions. For the guerrilla war, it was the war committee, composed of delegations from each guerrilla detachment, that made the decisions. In short, everyone acted collectively to prevent the emergence of a ruling class that would have monopolized power." "Makhno's name is forever linked to the revolution in southeastern Ukraine.
Will they dare to repatriate and enshrine Makhno's ashes in Ukraine?
"I learned with some suspicion of a meeting at the Presidential Palace, bringing together the leaders of the Rada (Parliament) and the Institute of National Remembrance, during which the initiative to create a Pantheon of prominent Ukrainian figures in Ukraine was revived.
Until now, Nestor Makhno's name has regularly appeared on the proposed list of 20th-century independence fighters, and since the time of Yushchenko (President of Ukraine from January 23, 2005, to February 25, 2010), we have consistently opposed his reburial." We opposed it primarily because this initiative was spearheaded by ruthless enemies of Makhno's ideas, of the Ukrainian societal model that the social movement bearing his name had built and that the Makhnovist army had defended. Unfortunately, since then, our country has sunk even further down the path of anti-socialism and right-wing extremism, and bringing back the remains of this world-renowned Ukrainian anarchist would be tantamount to allowing his enemies to use his name to conceal their atrocities against the working people he defended.
I hope that French anarchists, with the support of the global anarchist movement, will not allow such sacrilege to occur. Rest in peace on foreign soil, dear Batko["little father"], until the dictatorship forces ordinary Ukrainians to return to your ideals! "Vyacheslav Azarov, March 28, 2026
[https://t.me/s/last_makhnovist]is run by Vyacheslav Azarov, a Ukrainian historian based in Odessa, an anarchist activist, and a specialist in Makhno and the revolutionary period (1917-1921) in Ukraine. https://t.me/last_makhnovist/1290
For your information, here is one of Vyacheslav Azarov's recent posts, published on the occasion of March 8: On the occasion of International Women's Day 2026, Ukrainian state media published articles about Ukrainian women who fought for Ukraine's independence. Unsurprisingly, no mention was made of Galina Kuzmenko, wife of the founder of the famous Makhnovist movement." She was not only a professor of Ukrainian, but also the founder of the "women's councils" within the Makhnovshchina, where women's rights, particularly the issue of free marriage, were debated. Unlike today's patriots, Kuzmenko was an anarchist and fought for the independence of Ukrainians, not for that of the state that oppressed them. Our contemporaries still struggle to understand this difference.
http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4737
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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