Articles

From November 1 to 12, leaders from 196 countries will gather in Glasgow, Scotland for COP 26, the annual climate conference hosted by the United Nations. It is time to remind them that the big polluting multinationals have been destroying our planet for far too long. That's why Comac, the PTB student movement, is organising a trip to Glasgow to get active and make our voices heard. Save the climate, go to Glasgow!

Dear friends, dear comrades, A friend in need is a friend indeed. That's what the popular wisdom says. This summer, there was a lot of need. And there were many friends. After the floods, there was an unprecedented wave of solidarity. From the very first day, thousands and thousands of volunteers went to Wallonia to help the people there. To empty the cellars. To distribute soup. To clean schools and shops.

On Wednesday and Thursday, July 14 and 15, several European countries were hit by heavy rainfall and flooding. In Belgium, the disaster killed 41 people. Tens of thousands of people lost their belongings and became temporarily homeless. The PTB-PVDA launched an appeal for solidarity from day one: "We want to offer help now. Solidarity is a verb." A photo report.

Presentation of part of the programme

It's not every day that you hear such a dissonant voice in parliament. Raoul Hedebouw, leader of the group in the Belgian parliament and spokesperson of the Workers' Party of Belgium (PTB-PVDA), refuses to play along with the United States, which wants to guarantee its supremacy and the profits of multinationals. Watch the video.

Pensions remain a sensitive issue: the government wants to raise the pensionable age even further, while a majority of the population is calling for exactly the opposite. In order not to provoke resistance, the Minister for Pensions, Karine Lalieux (French-speaking Socialist Party), is quietly working on a new reform. Her plan is expected to be on the government's table in September. Kim De Witte, pension specialist of the PTB, explains the stakes of the new battle to come.

Nuclear weapons and the Cold War are back, driven by NATO. But what exactly is NATO, and what does it intend to do?

On Monday 14 June, the first NATO summit under the presidency of the new US President Joe Biden took place in Brussels.

Some of the parties on Rue de la Loi* intend to split up our country even further in 2024 and set the people of Brussels, Wallonia and Flanders against each other. However, the vast majority of Belgians are more than fed up with the division of our country and instead want more cooperation, more solidarity and more unity. That which unites us makes us stronger; that which divides us weakens us. The working class in our country has known this for a long time. Together, those of Liege, Ghent, Brussels, Charleroi, Antwerp and all the other regions have built the workers' movement of our small country. And they have built the wealth of our society and made a strong social security system possible. Together we are building a movement for the unity of our country, against the threat of a split. The split in our country is anti-social, costly, absurd and brutal. More unity is social, cheaper, efficient and humane. That is why we want the federal state to become the centre of gravity of our country again. We are one. Nous sommes un.

The weekend of 15-16 May, all over the world, from Brussels to Johannesburg, via New York, Washington and London, citizens of all origins gathered to show their solidarity with the Palestinian people on the occasion of the 73rd commemoration of the Nakba, which refers to the consequences for the Palestinians of the occupation and colonization by Israel in 1948. This year, the Nakba, a day of commemoration but also and above all of resistance, has a special meaning while the Israeli army is bombing Palestinian civilians.

A jar of chocolate spread. That's what the garbage collectors in Bruges get as a reward for their hard work. A jar of chocolate spread.

A survey of 77 epidemiologists from 28 countries conducted byThe People's Vaccine Alliance* indicates that two out of three of these suspect that we have a maximum of one year before the coronavirus mutates to the point where most first generation vaccines will lose their efficacy and new vaccines will be needed. So, we will need more vaccines soon. Not only in Europe, but also worldwide. Variants know no borders, after all.