A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #361 - Belgian News Briefs (and Makhno in the Pantheon?) (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

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
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe https://ainfos.ca/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en