Ballymacash Bonfire

The bonfire in Ballymacash, Lisburn, is big and getting bigger in recent years, and generating some controversy (e.g. 2015 BelTel | 2017 BelTel) which is perhaps the reason for the “No shooting – police notified” sign in the final image. This year is no exception, as today’s images make clear. The third shows that the pyre can be seen over the tops of the houses. Here is drone footage of the 2017 bonfire.

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Copyright © 2018 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Be There All The Way

The draw for the 4th round matches in the men’s All-Ireland Football Senior Championship takes place this morning at 8:30. Antrim have already been eliminated (in both football and hurling) but four other Ulster counties await their fates: Armagh, Fermanagh, Monaghan, and Tyrone. The new mural shown above celebrates (men’s) Gaelic games in County Antrim (tw) and at two local clubs: Naomh Gall (tw | web), founded in Clonard Street in 1910, and Naomh Pól (tw | Fb) in Hawthorn Street – the site of the mural – in 1941.

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White-Line Picket

“White-line picket in support of Niall Lehd – Saturday 30th June, International Wall, Falls Road [in fact Divis Street] at 2 pm”. For details of his incarceration, see Free Niall Lehd. This IRNC/IRPC poster is in the New Lodge (Join The IRNC | IRPC).

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Resistance Is Not Terrorism

Saoradh (web | Fb | tw) have added a pro-Palestine mural with the slogan “Resistance is not terrorism” to the Falls Road at the old Linden Street (replacing TMN’s homage to Vaughan Bodē).

See also: RNU Stands With Palestine.

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Hard Brexit

A “hard Brexit” would involve the UK leaving the European Union and the European Economic Area. For Northern Ireland, that would mean (at least) customs checks at the border with the Republic. Politicians on all sides are concerned about what that might mean for the peace, but the split is encouraged by the board above on the “sports zone” next to the Mount Inn on North Queen Street, Belfast. The Navy and RAF ensigns perhaps suggest how the UK’s borders are to be secured.

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Cage Exchange

Two in Exchange Place in Belfast city centre: the bird is in the rib cage, the heart is in the bird cage. Artist unknown – please comment/get in touch if you know it!

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Beır Bua

In the background of this board can be seen the old Divis flats. The flats were built to replace the tightly-packed streets of the lower Falls. After the first three blocks were completed in 1969, there was a plan to have a mixture of flats all the way up to Dunville Park (“Phase 2” in this 30-minute BBC video on the flats, which also includes the story of its eventual demise.

On top are the words “saoırse [freedom]” and “beır bua [seize victory]”, along with imagery of the four provinces and a lark in barbed wire.

This board has been added to the “D company” corner at Northumberland and Divis streets (see Our Struggle Continues), in the (blacked out) spot of the Orlando nightclub shooting mural.

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McLarnan, McCabe, Doherty

“Dedicated to the memory of INLA volunteer Matt McLarnon, Nora McCabe and Peter Doherty who were murdered in this area by British state forces during the 1981 H-Block hunger strike. A Mhuıre banríon na nGael guí ar a son”. The area in question is Clonard/Falls. Doherty and McCabe were hit by plastic bullets; McLarnon was shot by a sniper on Divis tower. Erected by a Sınn Féın group (Lower Falls/Clonard Committee) rather than INLA. Linden Street, Belfast.

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Flying The Flag

Here’s a house in Kilburn Street, south Belfast, bedecked in loyalist flags: a Union flag in the door, a 36th (Ulster) Division centenary flag upstairs, a Lord Carson Memorial (Sandy Row, LOL 1050 | tw) flag, and a stand of small flags in the downstairs window.

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Community Notice Board

The notice board for the Factory Community Forum in the Boyne Square/Ferris Park area of Larne has seen better days. The group’s web site is operational but advertising events from 2015.

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