CARTOONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS: december 2009

dinsdag 8 december 2009

BELGIAN PRIME MINISTER MARTENS

In 1985, the Prime Minister, Martens, of Belgium, ruled with special powers for more than a decade. He promised the naive Belgian folk that the end of the crisis was in sight. He saw light at the end of the tunnel and led the people to believe that we could fight the crisis. He was also the one who let the Americans install nuclear missiles in our country, knowing the general public was against it. I came all to nought when we demonstrated against nuke, because the deal was signed just the day before the rally was to happen.One-hundred-thousand Belgians marched through the capital against it, thinking they could still stop it.

ALADIN AND ABU

HE'S BAD

THE GANG FROM NIJVEL 1985

In 1985, a gang known as the Bende van Nijvel (Gang of Nijvel- an industrial town in Belgium) terrorized Belgium with brutal attacks on supermarkets and shooting the shoppers down at random. Among them there was a giant known as "de Reus" (The Giant). They never caught them. or arrested any of them It was believed they were financed by the extreme right to destabilise Belgium.

I made this cartoon about them queuing up at the dole office ( In Belgium you had to get a stamp on a card for every day you were unemployed to benefit from the government allowance; you needed to sign on everyday with your pink coloured card). It was crisis and I see parallels with the crisis today.

I have never seen so many reports on gangsters in Belgium as back then. There was also the extreme left wing gang known as CCC (Cellules Combatantes communistes).

However, recently we are back with jihad terrorism, to square one. I made loads of government critical cartoons.