international

Lady Shani

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Lady Shani is a masked Mexican wrestler, fighting for AAA (“triple-A”) promoters, and two-time Reina De Reinas in 2017 and 2018. In August 2018, she defeated long-time rival Faby Apache, who had to shave off her hair as a forfeit. Some lucha libre bouts have continued (without live audiences) during the coronavirus epidemic – here is Lady Shani fighting La Hiedra – but many fighters (according to the LA Times) are struggling to get by.

“Tu dieta no es solo lo que te comes…. Es lo que ves, lo que escuchas, lo que lees, la gente con la que te rodeas y las cosas con las que alimentas tu mente y tu alma. Ten mucho cuidado con las cosas que le das a tu cuerpo, emocional, espiritual y fisicamente”
[Your diet is not just what you eat … It’s what you see, what you hear, what you read, the people you surround yourself with and the things with which you feed your mind and your soul. Be very careful with the things you give your body, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.]

Previously on Extramural: Free For All – lucha libre on the Lisburn Road.

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Political Policing

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“Black lives matter”, a campaign against police brutality originating in the US, beneath a 32CSM (web | tw) tarp “Oppose British political policing”. The stencil is sponsored by People Before Profit (web | tw). Divis Street, Belfast.

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Support The 5 Demands!

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100+ politicians, academics, and signed a letter calling for the release of some ETA prisoners during the coronavirus epidemic. This is only the first of the five demands (recalling the Blanket protest here) in this 32CSM poster from King Street, Belfast: “Support Basque political prisoners! Support the 5 demands! 1. The freeing of vulnerable prisoners and those who are coming to the end of their sentences. 2. To receive family visits. 3. Access to materials to avoid being infected (gloves, sanitisers, etc.). 4. Carrying out of Covid-19 tests on prisoners and jailers. 5. In the event of the death of family member, the possibility of a prisoner going to the funeral home to pay their last respects. Stop the torture!”

See also Patxi Ruiz.

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You Cannot Put A Knee Upon The Neck Of An Idea

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“Please, I can’t breathe. My stomach hurts. My neck hurts. Everything hurts. They’re going to kill me.” These were among the last words of George Floyd, killed on May 25th after Minneapolis PD officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes. The killing has drawn universal condemnation. All four officer were fired immediately and Chauvin was soon charged with third-degree murder, (to which second-degree murder was later added.) The other three officers, J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane, and Tou Thao have been charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder.

“Black lives matter.” “Fight racism.” Every day since the killing protests have taken place in cities all across the United States and the world demonstrating against police brutality and racism (here is a collection of images from Saturday June 6th, 2020) Murals painted around the world, including the one above on the so-called “International Wall” on Divis Street (here is a Guardian gallery of George Floyd murals which describes the incomplete Belfast mural in rapturous terms).

As the in-progress shots show (below), Chauvin was originally painted with sunglasses on his head but these have been replaced by a MAGA cap. Two members of the Ku Klux Klan appear in the top right. Three officers with shaved heads and Minneapolis PD (“City of lakes”) badges are shown on the left in the poses of the three monkeys Mizaru, Kikazaru, and Iwazaru who hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.

The title of today’s post is derived from a line in Seán O’Casey’s The Story Of Thomas Ashe (1917, under the name “Seán Ó Cathasaigh”; also later published as The Sacrifice Of Thomas Ashe): “You cannot put a rope around the neck of an idea; you cannot put an idea up against a barrack-square wall and riddle it with bullets; you cannot confine it in the strongest prison cell that your slaves could ever build.” Sometimes erroneously attributed to Bobby Sands, as in this 1981 mural.

Update: the mural was vandalised and black-washed – see No Profit On Pandemic

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A Living Hell For Children

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Civil war continues in Yemen with 111 soldiers killed, allegedly by Houthi rebels, in a missile attack on a military mosque on January 18th (BBC). The country remains the country with the most humanitarian need: according to the UN, 24 million people, 80% of the population, are in need. The mural on west Belfast’s International Wall from April 2019 has been completed with the flags of Spain, Canada, and China being added to those of the US, UK, and France on the missiles raining down (now in two ranks) on civilians, blood dripping from cash-filled Saudi hands, and a UNICEF statistic included in our original post: “1 child dies every 10 minutes as a result of the war in Yemen”

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Free Kashmir

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Kashmir has remained a disputed territory since the partition of India in 1947. It remains under Indian administration, despite different groups rebelling since 1987, some seeking union with Pakistan and others an independent Kashmir. Indian forces have been accused of human rights abuses against Kashmiris. For the mural on the right, see This Is Our Republic.

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Merdeka

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Merdeka! Independence! West Papuans live under Indonesian rule since 1962 when United States, in the guise of the UN, “entrusted” the territory to Indonesia in exchange for a captured CIA pilot (WP). Leader-in-exile Benny Wenda is shown here against a backdrop of the flag of (independent) West Papua, the Morning Star, shown here hanging vertically.

The adjacent mural expresses solidarity with the Syrian Kurds – see Rojava Offensive.

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Rojava Offensive

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“In solidarity with the Kurdish fighters YPG/YPJ. Against ISIS, fundamentalism & patriarchy.” Turkey commenced its ‘Rojava Offensive’ on Tuesday (October 9th) with airstrikes along the border with northern Syria in the autonomous area of Rojava (Guardian). Its aim is to establish a “safe zone” 20 miles deep along the entire length of Kurdish-controlled Syria. Standing against them are the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces), including YPG and YPJ units – Yekîneyên Parastina Jin are the Women’s Defense Units, an all-female militia from Rojava founded in 2013 (WP).

Not involved are US forces – US President Trump withdrew American forces in advance of the attack, a move decried by both Democrats and Republicans as a betrayal of Kurdish partnership in the campaign against ISIS, which took 11,00 Kurdish lives (WP). Trump added insult to injury by defending the move on the grounds that the Kurds “did not help us with Normandy” (Guardian). You would expect no less from the man who on Monday touted his own “great and unmatched wisdom” (tw).

The mural above, which reproduces a popular poster on social media, is on the International Wall.

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And The Cry Was “Keine Kapitulation”

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The third (and surely not the final?) season of the popular UK drama Brexit is keeping people guessing. This week, it looks like Boris might betray the ever-loyal Arlene and agree a Northern Ireland-only backstop with EU before time runs out on October 31st. In Belfast, lower Shankill residents are not amused by this potential turn of events and have invoked the classic “No surrender!” catch-phrase from 1688’s Siege Of Derry, painted on the wall between the security gates dividing Catholic and Protestant west Belfast. (Just kidding, of course; this is serious stuff. But the twists and turns are worthy of a telenovela. As Belfasters have always said, “If you’re not confused, you don’t know what’s going on.”)

Other recent messages below the Imagine mural: Victory To Isreal | Your Wall, Your Border

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End Apartheid

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15 year-old Fıan Gerald McAuley was the first member of the IRA to die in the Troubles. He was shot in Waterville Street by a loyalist sniper while helping people move from burned-out homes in Bombay Street, along which the “peace” line separating the Falls and Shankill now runs, overlooking the Clonard Memorial Garden, site of the service for the 50th anniversary of McAuley’s death. In the windows of a nearby house we also see a poster in support of Palestine and a Bobby Sands-Che Guevara hurl.

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