poster/paste-up/sticker

Rotten And Corrupt

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“Rotten And Corrupt: Christopher Little (39) entered guilty pleas to nine charges at Belfast Crown Court last month – including attempting to have sex with a child. [Irish Times] 20 officers shared racist, sexist and misogynistic messages including texts and images which mocked Arabic and Islamic people. [Spotlight programme] Six PSNI officers all had hearings for an array of alleged offences. PSNI revealed they themselves had dismissed 11 police officers amid claims of over 130 misconduct cases throughout the force. [Belfast Live]”

It’s not clear who is behind these flyers in north Belfast; the harpist on the electical box is by Kerrie Hanna (ig).

New Lodge Road, Belfast.

Update: the posters have been removed (by the end of July, 2023).

See also the Visual History page for electrical boxes.

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Copyright © 2023 Cathal Woods
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Choose Life

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Voters go to the polls tomorrow in the loca government elections. Of the parties standing, the TUV, DUP, and – presumably this west Belfast household’s preference – Aontú are against the legal status of abortion in NI.

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X-Wing Land Rover

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Here is a Leo Boyd (ig) print of an x-wing police land rover – one in a series of land rovers: see previously: ice-cream-van land rover | wind-up land rover | surveillance land rover.

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Joe Biden, Globalist

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“Joe Biden, globalist. Not welcome in Ireland.” Joe Biden landed in Belfast yesterday and was greeted by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (Bel Tel | Reuters). This morning, he will deliver at the Belfast campus of UU, before heading south to Louth, Dublin, and Mayo (Journal).

This is an Ógra Shinn Féin (ig | web – youth division of Sinn Féin Poblachtach) sticker in Divis Street; they also have a “Joe Biden, warmonger” version (tw).

In the same vein is the poster below from the “Belfast Anti-war group” advertising rally outside city hall and an upcoming conference at Queen’s: “No to Biden, no to war”

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The Sporting Wing

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Three Celtic-related stickers from Belfast.

Above, in the city centre, the “Holy Trinity” of …
Glasgow Celtic (see previously The Celtic Football Club | The Bould Bhoys | and many others),
Cliftonville (Belfast) (see previously Let’s All Do The Huddle | The Red Army | others),
and St Pauli (Hamburg) (see previously Good Night, White Pride | Gegen Rechts | also Armed With Taste).

Below, second, from the Shankill: “Big Jock Knew”, that is Celtic manager Jock Stein knew of the sexual abuse of Boys Club manager Jim Torbett. Torbett was sacked by Stein in 1974 but returned to the position in the 1980s. Torbett was tried in 1998 for crimes during the earlier time-period and served 30 months, and again in 2018, for various offenses, receiving a sentence of six years (WP). More charges are to be heard in April, 2023 (Daily Record). The phrase is the title of song sung by fans of teams playing against Celtic (WP).

Below, third, from city centre (and also seen on the Falls): “The sporting wing [of the IRA]” is a play on the idea that Sınn Féın was the “political wing” of the IRA and so Celtic FC is the group’s “sporting wing”. Instead of Celtic’s usual four-leaf clover, three hooded gunmen fire a funeral volley.

The GAA has also been given the title (BelTel 2020); Sammy Wilson, as DUP press officer defending UDA attacks on GAA halls in Belfast and Banbridge, in September 1993, described the GAA as “the IRA at play” (WP). (For a history of the two organisations, see Irish Peace Process.) Instead of Celtic’s usual four-leaf clover, three hooded gunmen fire a funeral volley.

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An Injustice To One Is An Injustice To All

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In his Letter From A Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr wrote, “I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” The marchers portrayed in the poster above carry placards supporting immigrants (“No human is illegal”), the poor (“Poverty is the worst form of violence”) and Palestine. The poster calls for participants in the annual march, which retraces the route taken on the fateful day in 1972, beginning at Creggan shops and proceeding to Free Derry Corner. Yesterday’s march concluded a week of talks and other commemorative events. Today – January 30th – is the fifty-first anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Derry.

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Copyright © 2023 Andy McDonagh/Eclipso Pictures (ig | Fb)
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Fáılte Go ACT

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The Irish “Fáılte” is included among the many languages at the entrance to the ACT (Action For Community Transformation) visitor centre on the Shankill. See previously the signage at Boyd’s in the lower Shankill (which does not have a “Fáılte”) and the Coıste claim that All Flags Are Welcome (which does not have a Union Flag).

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Political Leaders Are Not Listening

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Here is a second set of images showing the “peace or protocol” poster that has appeared in PUL areas in the city, three in east Belfast – along the Newtownards Road. Two others in north Belfast were seen previously in A Return To Violence, which also explains the poster.

For the murals along “Freedom Corner” see 50th Anniversary; for the black-and-white mural, see Please Pay Here. See also Choose One Or The Other.

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A Return To Violence

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Following yesterday’s east Belfast “Peace or proticol” graffiti, today we have “Peace or protocol – it’s your decision”, aimed at Leo Varadkar on the day that he again became Taoiseach (Irish Times) and repeating his words back to him from a speech in 2018: “The possibility of a return to violence is very real”. At that meeting, Varadkar was anticipating violence by anti-Agreement republicans in response to customs posts on the Ireland-Northern Ireland border, and brought a newspaper describing the death of four customs officials, two lorry drivers, and three IRA volunteers at a Monaghan post in 1972 (BelTel).

The authors of this poster are not known, but the parallel statement (mutatis mutandis) would be that anti-Protocol agents – perhaps the “young loyalists” that the UVF “can no longer contain” (UK Daily; see also RTÉ from November) – might return to acts of violence such as the 1974 “Dublin & Monaghan Bombings” that killed 33 people – in the background of the poster is part of a photograph (Irish News) of bomb damage in Talbot Street – if the Protocol’s “Irish Sea border” is not removed.

The instance of the poster shown in today’s post is on the edge of Tiger’s Bay, on North Queen Street; the posters have also been appearing in east Belfast: Newtownards Rd (at Templemore Ave tw; at Dee St tw) | Beersbridge Rd (reddit).

A group called Let’s Talk Loyalism greeted the new premier with a mock funeral in Dublin for the Good Friday Agreement; the flowers behind the coffin read “GFA is dead” (tw).

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Ireland Out Of The EU

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“Britain out of Ireland, Ireland out of the E.U.” Strict Irish independence is the policy of the IRSP (web). Back in 1972, Sinn Féin campaigned against Irish membership in the EEC (DFA), but (in the north) supported the ‘remain’ position on Brexit (UNU).

The poster is on Lecky Road, in the Brandywell, on top of what used to be ‘Derry Women Make Communities’ – see Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History.

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