“A new Ireland will work for you”, whoever you are. The recent Sinn Féin advertising campaign features generic figures straight from central casting, perhaps designed to offend absolutely no one. The locations are in north and west Belfast.
Vintage graffiti in Elswick Street, west Belfast, commenting on the quality of matériel available to Óglaigh na hÉireann and perhaps a specific reference to the discovery of an arms dump in woods near Dunleer (Guardian). [Update: for context see GAABoard; hat tip to ejsalty] The group disbanded in 2018, with a new group – the Irish Republican Movement – vowing to fight on (Irish News).
Noah Donahoe, whose body was found on June 27th after six days missing, is drawn as an angel at the bottom of the Serpentine Road, north Belfast. The current line of enquiry in the search for an explanation for how he ended up in a storm drain involves a possible assault in the city centre, somewhere between the art college and Yorkgate (Belfast Live).
“PSNI Out” is the latest message on Sliabh Dubh from Gael Force Art, mounted in response to what it sees as disparate treatment of nationalists – intruding, ostensibly on Covid-related grounds, upon a flower-laying ceremony in commemoration of the attack on the Sean Graham bookies shop on the Ormeau Road (Feb 5th, 1992) and arresting one of the victims, Mark Sykes (RTÉ) – and unionists – PSNI monitoring but not confronting a UVF show of strength in Pitt Park (iTV). Michelle O’Neill called the Ormeau incident “a watershed moment for public confidence in policing” (Irish News); one officer has been suspended. The writing on the mountain is seen here over the Captain America panel of the wall of superheroes, enhanced versions of their human alter egos: Steve Rogers, Bruce Banner, Clark Kent, etc.
Máirtín Ó Dochartaigh, one of the founders of Club Óige Mhachaire Botháin in 2001, died in 2011. The club was renamed in his honour in ?2020? as Cumann Óige Uí Dhochartaigh (Fb | ig) (An Phoblacht). The mural, bearing the original name of the club, dates back to 2012.
“‘Anyone who goes to Mary and prays the Rosary cannot be touched by Satan’ – Fr. Gabriel Amorth, Chief Exorcist of the Vatican”. According to Wikipedia, Amorth performed “tens of thousands” of exorcisms during his lifetime, though notes that people can be possessed by more than one demon at a time, which inflates the numbers. His favorite film, naturally enough, was The Exorcist. (WP)
Hearts are painted on the ground outside Seaview Primary School, 2 metres apart, so that children can maintain physical distance from one another when lining up.
Mairéad Farrell (on the right of the image above) was arrested for planting a bomb at a hotel in Dunmurry in April 1976, one month after Special Category Status for republican prisoners had been revoked. Kieran Nugent (on the left) began the “blanket” protest in September that year and Farrell was the first person to join the protest, when she arrived in Armagh women’s prison to begin her fourteen year sentence. She later took up a dirty protest and joined the 1980 hunger strike. She stood for election in 1981 (in Cork), but, unlike “Óglach Bobby Sands, MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone”, was not successful. (WP)
“I am oppressed as a woman and I am oppressed as an Irish person. Everyone in this country is oppressed and yet we can only end our oppression as women if we end the oppression of our nation as a whole.” Máiread [sic] Farrell