SHEEP
IN THE ROAD FEBRUARY 2016
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REDS UNDER BEDS
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SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 7
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CONTENTS –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Edit & Design: Alan Rutherford Published online by www.handoverfistpress.com Cover artwork: Alan Rutherford Photographs and artwork sourced from found, no intentional copyright infringement intended, so, for treading on any toes ... apologies all round! Deadline for submitting articles to be included in the next issue, will be the 15th day of the next month, in your dreams!
Opening 03 Untitled Poem 1
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On Satire
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America’s Pimple
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Colonies of Empire
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Endi Poskovic
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Carbon Copy
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Gin Lane
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Spain 1936
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Untitled: William Kentridge
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The Circulus
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Anarchists 41 Underground 42 A Boyle On All Your Bums
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Brit Expats Sent Home
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Untitled Poem 2
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Just another short Story
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Letters
Articles and all correspondence to: alanrutherford1@mac.com
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OPENING Blah-blahblah-blahblah––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Hello, Welcome to magazine number 7. A piece about us all being carbon atoms comes from a re-reading of the final chapter in Primo Levi’s excellent ‘The Periodic Table’ ... but does not actually mention it? Coca-Cola suffers with other companies willing to work with and champion the devil, its a ‘just so you know’ piece to remind you of ‘Holocaust Day’ on the 27 January. Martin Taylor helpfully slips in 2 untitled poems, and I have had fun nursing a sick mac through the process ... half-inching images from my scrapbook, giving credit if known ... too much coffee, twitchy! Until next time, get active, stay alive ...
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N ew r o m a nt ic N e w L ab o u r N e w W o rld O r d e r B r a n d n e w f l av o u r D r i n k y o u r C o ke E a t y o u r fr ie s Ask no questions T e l l n o l ie s G o t o w o rk T o b uy m o r e s t u ff P ay y o u r t a x e s D r i n k y o u r D u ff B e l ie ve i n G o d Wa l k w it h Je s u s Be good because Yo u k n o w h e s e e s u s Wave y o u r f l a g Honour your dead Re m e mb e r w h a t y o u r T e a c h e r s a id W e a r e r i g ht
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T h ey a r e w r o n g Lets join together W it h a s o n g Learn your history A s w e t e l l it Give u s a “ l i ke ” A n d h e lp u s s e l l it S t r ip t h e e a r t h P o l lu t e t h e a i r Yo u’l l b e d e a d s o o n W hy s h o u ld y o u c a r e I f y o u d o ub t t h i s W o rld w e l ive i n I suggest you N e ve r g ive i n Eat your greens D r ive y o u r P r iu s Hope the Martians C o m e t o fr e e u s • M a r t i n Ta y l o r
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Nobody is doing what Joe Sacco is doing; the writer-artist has visited some of the world’s worst war zones and not merely written movingly about them but carefully drawn them, as well. The effect is transporting – Sacco drags readers into war-torn Bosnia and gives them both a sense of place and a sense of urgency, and like the best journalists, he’s got an eye for the rich, contradictory, infuriating people who can make you care about something you ought to care about.
He is best known for his comics journalism, in particular in the books Palestine (1996) and Footnotes in Gaza (2009), on Israeli–Palestinian relations; and Safe Area Goražde (2000) and The Fixer (2003) on the Bosnian War. In addition to his 1996 American Book Award, 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship, and 2001 Eisner Award, Sacco’s Footnotes in Gaza was nominated for the 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Graphic Novel award, was awarded the 2010 Ridenhour Book Prize and the 2012 Oregon Book Award ... and awarded the 2014 Oregon Book Award Finalist for Journalism.
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REVEALED AMERICA’S –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
PIMPLE
information correlated from Mark Thomas on Coca Cola www.diggerhistory.info www.killercoke.org www.11points.com
An early taste-bud thrill for me as a child was my first bottle of Coke, I think it was bought for a thirsty-me in a store in Durban, South Africa around xmas time, the iconic bottle hoisted out wet from its large red freezer box and opened at the bottle-opener that was a fixture on the side of Coca-Cola freezer cabinets. The whole experience was wonderful, that smokey vapour fizzing from the bottle as the cap flew off and landed in its small box below the opener, the foaming inside threatening to waste, so quickly then, the first few glugs which burnt the throat so pleasurably, followed by the belch which came from deep ... its only failing was that there never seemed enough in the bottle and that it did not quench my thirst.
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Later in life, in my trampship travels visiting to the world’s children; benefiting from faraway places, there was always comforting hazardous child labour in El Salvador; Coca-Cola refreshing those childhood guilty of tax evasion ... belches and still leaving me thirsty. To find that during World War Two CocaA campaign by comedian/activist Mark Cola played for both teams is no surprise, Thomas in 2004 to highlight Cocafor while it was obviously the drink of Cola’s poor human rights record in South choice for American forces ... to find it America where trade union activists at equally popular with the Nazis should be Coke bottling plants were victimised, some surprising, but for some reason is not. losing their lives mysteriously ... made In his campaign to expose Coca-Cola, me reconsider my attachment to Coke ... Mark Thomas asked artists to supply and feel the loss of a childhood friend. spoof Coke/Nazi posters to be displayed That Coca-Cola is a successful monster at exhibitions he organised to highlight company of capitalism is not in doubt, but Coca-Cola‘s murky past (see opposite) that it takes its monster image seriously is another thing, sinuating its phoney brand Coca-Cola (GmbH) were the German of american consumerism worldwide. bottlers for Coke under the leadership of the CEO Max Keith (pronounced Kite). Coca-Cola, according to www.killercoke. Coke sponsored the 1936 Nazi Olympics org, is: complicit in the murders of where Hitler showcased his Aryan vision to trade union leaders in Columbia and the world, while hiding the ‘Don’t shop at Guatemala; guilty of cheating workers Jewish shops’ posters. and the government of Mexico out of hundreds of millions of dollars; is Coca-Cola GmbH sought to be associated involved in trade union busting schemes with the Nazis, it became a bit of a joke throughout the world; has a history of that if Hitler or a high ranking Nazi was racial discrimination in the US; is involved on the front cover of a magazine Coke in depleting and polluting water resources would advertise on the back. Coke in Asia, Africa, Latin America and advertised on billboards that were by wherever there is a Coke bottling plant; the Berlin stadiums, so people attending aggressively marketing harmful beverages Goebbel’s rallies had to walk past them. SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 7
exhibited artwork: Alan Rutherford
We’d like to teach das weld to sing in perfect harmony
As Max Keith’s supplies of Coke dwindled in 1941 he gave his last batches to Nazi soldiers. And after the US entered the war in 1941, when he couldn’t get Coca-Cola syrup from America to make Coke, he invented ‘Fanta’ out of the ingredients he had available to him. Fanta was made After the Nazi invasion of the Sudetenland Coke advertised in the Nazi Army paper with specifically for the Nazi market and the Third Reich. This new soda was often made a picture of a hand holding a bottle of coke over a map of the world, the slogan was ‘Yes from the leftovers of other food industries: whey (a cheese by-product) and apple we have got an international reputation.’ fibre from cider presses found their way Coke opened up a bottling plant in the into the drink. The choice of fruits used Sudetenland shortly after the invasion. in the formulation depended on what From Mark Prendergrast’s book, For God, was available at the time. In its earliest Country and Coca-Cola we have, ‘Later incarnations, the drink was sweetened with in the war, Keith used Chinese labour and saccharin, but by 1941 its concocters were ‘people who would come from anywhere permitted to use 3.5 percent beet sugar, and in 1943 alone Coca-Cola GmbH sold 3 in Europe – the war brought them from million cases of Fanta in the Nazi empire. everywhere.’ For Keith to say blandly that ‘the war brought them’ implies that they Mark Prendergrast writes, ‘In March of were willing refugees, which is somewhat misleading. In fact, the wartime railroads 1938, as Hitler’s troops stormed across the Austrian border in the Anschluss, Max Keith not only carried Jews, Gypsies and others convened the ninth annual concessionaire to concentration camps, but some 9 million Fremdarbeiter, or forced foreign labour, who convention, with 1,500 people in attendance. Behind the main table, a huge accounted for a fifth of the German labour force by 1944. Coke nearly certainly used banner proclaimed in German, “Cocaforced labour. Note: Coca-Cola in the US Cola is the world-famous trademark for have paid into a fund for the compensation the unique product of Coca-Cola GmbH” of people who were forced to work for the Directly below, three gigantic swastikas Nazis. stood out, black on red. At the main table, Coke financially supported the Nazis by placing advertising with Nazi newspapers and, in one instance, Coke published denials to accusations from rival bottlers that they were a Jewish company. .
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Max Keith sat surrounded by his deputies, another swastika draped in front of him ... The meeting closed with a ceremonial pledge to Coca-Cola and a ringing threefold “Seig Heil” to Hitler.’ At another convention Mark Prendergrast notes ‘Then Keith ordered a mass SiegHeil for Hitler’s recent fiftieth birthday, to commemorate our deepest admiration and gratitude for our Fuhrer who has led our nation into a brilliant higher sphere.’ At the Reich ‘Schaffendes Volk’ (Working People) Exhibition celebrating the German worker under Hitler, Prendergrast describes ‘A functioning bottling plant, with a miniature train carting Kinder beneath, bottled Coca-Cola at the very centre of the fair, adjacent to the Propaganda Office. Touring the Dusseldorf fair, Hermann Goering paused for a Coke, and an alert Company photographer snapped a picture. Though no such picture documented the Fuhrer’s tastes, Hitler reputedly enjoyed Coca-Cola too, sipping the Atlanta drink as he watched Gone With The Wind in his private theatre.’ Coke sales in Nazi Germany 1934 – 243,000 cases. 1936 – 1 million cases. 1939 – almost 4 and a half million cases.
After the War Coca-Cola ruthlessly consolidated its position as one of the most iconic brands of both the 20th and 21st centuries. Promoting itself as the drink of freedom, choice and US patriotism, the company’s feel-good factor is recognised worldwide and reflected in its enormous profits. In its betrayal of its professed ideals, Coke was just the tip of an iceberg, for whilst people were being encouraged to fight and die waging a noble and just war against the fascist Nazis, big business just went on with big business ... By their enthusiastic and treasonous support of this grotesque tyrany they helped give it birth and then prolonged the suffering and agony of the Nazis victims ... Now, just so you know, from Sam Greenspan at www.11points.com, see the following roll-call of shame. During World War Two, Kodak’s German branch used slave labourers from concentration camps. Several of their other European branches did heavy business with the Nazi government. And Wilhelm Keppler, one of Hitler’s top economic advisers, had deep ties in Kodak. When Nazism began, Keppler advised Kodak and several other U.S. companies that they’d benefit by firing all of their Jewish employees. (Source: The Nation) FEBRUARY 2016
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In the 1930s, Hugo Boss started making Nazi uniforms. The reason: Hugo Boss himself had joined the Nazi party, and got a contract to make the Hitler Youth, storm trooper and SS uniforms. That was a huge boon for Hugo Boss ... he got the contract just eight years after founding his company ... and that infusion of business helped take the company to another level. The Nazi uniform manufacturing went so well that Hugo Boss ended up needing to bring in slave labourers in Poland and France to help out at the factory. In 1997, Hugo’s son, Siegfried Boss, told an Austrian news magazine, ‘Of course my father belonged to the Nazi party. But who didn’t belong back then?’ (Source: New York Times) Ferdinand Porsche, the man behind Volkswagen and Porsche, met with Hitler in 1934, to discuss the creation of a ‘people’s car.’ (That’s the English translation of Volkswagen.) Hitler told Porsche to make the car with a streamlined shape, ‘like a beetle.’ And that’s the genesis of the Volkswagen Beetle... it wasn’t just designed for the Nazis, Hitler NAMED it. During World War Two, it’s believed that as many as four out of every five workers SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 7
at Volkswagen’s plants were slave labourers. Ferdinand Porsche even had a direct connection to Heinrich Himmler, one of the leaders of the SS, to directly request slaves from Auschwitz. (Source: The Straight Dope) Bayer. During the Holocaust, a German company called IG Farben manufactured the Zyklon B gas used in the Nazi gas chambers. They also funded and helped with Josef Mengele’s ‘experiments’ on concentration camp prisoners. IG Farben is the company that turned the single largest profit from work with the Nazis. After the War, the company was broken up. Bayer was one of its divisions, and went on to become its own company. Oh ... and aspirin was founded by a Bayer employee, Arthur Eichengrun. But Eichengrun was Jewish, and Bayer didn’t want to admit that a Jewish guy created the one product that keeps their company in business. So, to this day, Bayer officially gives credit to Felix Hoffman, a nice Aryan man, for inventing aspirin. (Source: Alliance for Human Research Protection, Pharmaceutical Achievers)
Siemens took slave labourers during the Holocaust and had them help construct the gas chambers that would kill them and their families. Siemens also has the single biggest post-Holocaust moment of insensitivity of any of the companies on this list. In 2001, they tried to trademark the word ‘Zyklon’ (which means ‘cyclone’ in German) to become the name a new line of products ... including a line of gas ovens. Zyklon is the name of the poison gas used in Nazi gas chambers during the Holocaust. A week later, after several watchdog groups appropriately freaked out, Siemens withdrew the application. They said they never drew the connection between the Zyklon B gas used during the Holocaust and their proposed Zyklon line of products. (Source: BBC)
get their planes off the ground. Standard Oil was one of only three companies that could manufacture that type of fuel. From Ethyl, a Standard subsidiary, 15 million dollars worth of Tetraethyl lead was sold to the Nazis in 1939. Without this, the German air force could never have got their planes off the ground. When Standard Oil was dissolved as a monopoly, it led to ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP, all of which are still around today. (Source: MIT’s Thistle)
Henry Ford is a pretty legendary antiSemite, so this makes sense. He was Hitler’s most famous foreign backer. On his 75th birthday, in 1938, Ford received a Nazi medal, designed for ‘distinguished foreigners.’ He profiteered off both sides of the War – he was producing vehicles for the Nazis AND for the Allies.
IBM custom-build machines for the Nazis that they could use to track everything... from oil supplies to train schedules into death camps to Jewish bank accounts to individual Holocaust victims themselves. In September of 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, the ‘New York Times’ reported that three million Jews were going to be ‘immediately removed’ from Poland and were likely going to be ‘exterminat[ed].’ IBM’s reaction? An internal memo saying that, due to that
Standard Oil (shareholders included Rockerfellers and IG Farben) The Luftwaffe needed tetraethyl lead gas in order to
A lot of banks sided with the Nazis during World War Two. Chase is the most prominent. They froze European Jewish customers’ accounts and were extremely cooperative in providing banking service to Germany. (Source: New York Times)
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‘situation’, they really needed to step up production on high-speed alphabetizing equipment. (Source: CNet)
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Random House publishing. Random House’s parent company, Bertelsmann A.G., worked for the Nazis ... they published Hitler propaganda, and a book called ‘Sterilization and Euthanasia: A Contribution to Applied Christian Ethics’. Bertelsmann still owns and operates several companies. I picked Random House because they drew controversy in 1997 when they decided to expand the definition of Nazi in Webster’s Dictionary. Eleven years ago, they added the colloquial, softened definition of ‘a person who is fanatically dedicated to or seeks to control a specified activity, practice, etc.’ (Think ‘Soup Nazi’.) The Anti-Defamation League called that expanded definition offensive... especially when added by a company with Nazi ties... they said it, quote, ‘trivializes and denies the murderous intent and actions of the Nazi regime... it also cheapens the language by allowing people to reach for a quick word fix... [and] lends a helping hand to those whose aim is to prove that the Nazis were really not such terrible people.’ (Source: New York Observer, ADL)
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And I leave you with this summation by Alfred Sloan, president of General Motors, the US-based multinational, on the out break of the Second World War. ‘We are too big to be incovenienced by these pitiful international squabbles.’ Throughout the war Sloan remained on the board of General Motors’ German subsidiary, maintaining financial links through JP Morgan to the Opel branch of General Motors which was a major truck manufacturer for the German army during World War Two. 27 January 1945: The Red Army liberated the Nazi’s biggest concentration camp at Auschwitz in Southern Poland.
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Photograph: Auschwitz, May 1944, photograph taken by a fucking nazi
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– INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBERANCE DAY
FEBRUARY 2016
From the 16th century onwards, a number of European powers competed with each other to establish colonies in distant parts ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– of the world – largely in order to control the profitable trade in raw materials and to provide new markets for their manufactured goods – exploitation. By the 19th century, inspired by a mixture of religion and rank racism, colonialists had developed an ‘imperial’ ethos, with the high moral purpose of bringing what they saw as the advantages of Western civilisation to their ‘primitive’ colonial subjects. Barely disguised under this veneer, however, ‘grubby’ commercial interests played a crucial role – exploitation.
EXPLOITED
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EMPIRE
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Any plan to keep matters as they were backfired when exposure to Western values of democracy and equality led the educated elites in the colonised countries to question the right of the imperial powers to ‘lord it’ over them. – giving rise to nationalist movements and a slow and sometimes violent process of decolonization in the second half of the 20th century. Many now agree that political imperialism as an aid to exploitation, has merely been replaced by economic imperialism ... and that the exploited still languish in penury.
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$ £ ¥ €
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Endi Poskovic ... the juxtapositioning of phrases, rational and absurd, with abstract images evoking ideas suggested by memory ...
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‘Poskovic’s relief-printing method involves the use of around four individual blocks. The first three are inked with a blend of colours, overlaid to make the vivid and vibrant sunset and skyline-like imagery typical of his work. One final end block, which contains the main graphic and text, will be printed in black on top to complete the image.’ Caspar Williamson.
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FEBRUARY 2016
YPOC NOBRAC ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– ? H U H N O I T A N R A C N I E R
06 dnuora fo tuo edam si tenalp eht no gnieb namuh yrevE fo snoillim ni delbmessa skcolb gnidliub cisab ,stnemele lacimehc – meht fo evfi tsuj fo tuo tliub si ydob ruo fo tsoM .syaw tnereffid .muiclac dna negortin ,negordyh ,nobrac ,negyxo
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dna muidos ,ruhplus ,muissatop ,suorohpsohp ekil ,srehtO .efil rof laitnesse era tub seititnauq llams yrev ni rucco ,enirolhc hcus ,stnemele fo snoitanibmoc fo pu edam osla si esle gnihtyrevE enirolhc dna muidos ,retaw mrof ot dnib negyxo dna negordyh sa .no os dna ,tlas ekam esrevinu eht nehw taht ,yas siht ekil sgniht otni evled taht esohT stnemele cisab eht fo owt ylno ,oga sraey noillib 41 tsomla ,nageb dna nobrac ro negyxo on saw erehT .muileh dna negordyh ,detsixe nialpxe oT .somsoc eht ni erehwyna efil fo ytilibissop on erofereht yeht morf emoc esrevinu eht fo skcolb gnidliub rehto eht erehw fo straeh eht ni delbmessa erew yeht ... rewsna na detalumrof evah .srats daed-gnol
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CARBON COPY ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– R E I N C A R N A T I O N H U H ?
Every human being on the planet is made out of around 60 chemical elements, basic building blocks assembled in millions of different ways. Most of our body is built out of just five of them – oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and calcium. Others, like phosphorous, potassium, sulphur, sodium and chlorine, occur in very small quantities but are essential for life. Everything else is also made up of combinations of elements, such as hydrogen and oxygen bind to form water, sodium and chlorine make salt, and so on. Those that delve into things like this say, that when the universe began, almost 14 billion years ago, only two of the basic elements existed, hydrogen and helium. There was no oxygen or carbon and therefore no possibility of life anywhere in the cosmos. To explain where the other building blocks of the universe come from they have formulated an answer ... they were assembled in the hearts of long-dead stars.
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Most of the stars in the sky, including our sun, shine by turning hydrogen into helium, the process releases vast amounts of energy ... for instance, the sun converts 600 million tonnes of hydrogen into helium every second. That is a million times more energy than the United States uses in a year. Of course, this process can’t go on forever because, even though the sun is so vast that you could fit a million Earths inside, 600 million tonnes is a lot of hydrogen and eventually, the sun will run out of fuel and begin to collapse under its own immense gravity. Some perspective needed here to reassure ... our sun has enough hydrogen in its core to shine for at least another 5,000 million years, but eventually, like everything, our sun will die. And as any dying star begins to collapse, its core will heat up to unimaginable temperatures ... the temperature at the heart of our sun is currently around 15 million degrees Celsius, but when it eventually begins to collapse its temperature will rise to more than 100 million degrees. When this happens, the helium in its core will begin to fuse together to form beryllium, oxygen and carbon. It is this process of SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 7
a dying star that is the origin of all the carbon and oxygen in the universe. And theres more ... really massive stars in the universe continue, as they die, sticking oxygen and carbon together to make all the chemical elements up to iron. Brian Cox says, ‘We know this because we can see it happening in the sky today. Next time the sky is clear, have a look for the constellation of Orion. If you look carefully, you’ll see that the star at the top left-hand corner glows a pale red colour. This star is called Betelgeuse (often pronounced “beetle-juice”), and it is frantically building heavier elements in a last desperate battle against gravity. In the process, it has swollen into a true giant. If you put Betelgeuse in the same position as the Sun in our solar system, it would completely engulf all the planets out to Jupiter. Eventually, even stars as enormous as Betelgeuse must run out of their nuclear fuel and then gravity will take over once more, forcing the star to collapse catastrophically. For these most massive of stars, the final collapse gives rise to one of the rarest and most spectacular sights in the universe – a supernova explosion.’
Professor Cox gives an example of a supernova, ‘A thousand years ago, a great civilization existed in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. The Chacoans were avid stargazers and built vast 700room mansions aligned with the sun, moon and stars. On the night of July 4, 1054AD, the Chacoan astronomers saw for themselves what happens when a star like Betelgeuse finally loses its fight against gravity. A new star appeared in the clear, dark skies of New Mexico, shining as brightly as the moon for several weeks before gradually fading from view. We now know they had witnessed a supernova explosion that happened 6,000 light years from Earth – relatively close by cosmic standards. In a single instant, the dying star emitted more energy than our sun will emit in its entire lifetime, casting shadows on the distant Earth. The Chacoans documented the explosion in a painting that still exists on an overhanging ledge in the canyon. It depicts the crescent moon, a handprint pointing to the place in the sky where the supernova happened, and a brightly glowing new star beside the moon. We know so much about this explosion because we can still see its remains today. In the place in the sky where the star once
shone, there is now a brightly coloured cloud of interstellar gas known as the Crab Nebula. This cloud is filled with the chemical elements that the star produced in its lifetime, including the carbon, oxygen and iron vital for life.’ Not sure if you remember something from a previous issue of ‘Sheep in the Road’ where a question of why gold is considered so valuable arose ... hmmm, well Cox goes on about that too ... ‘The assembly of the heavier elements in the cores of stars stops with iron, element No.26. Stars cannot in the normal course of their lives build anything heavier than iron because this process does not release energy and does not help the star in its fight against gravity. So, if you are wearing a gold wedding ring or gold jewellery, look at it now. Gold is heavier than iron, so it is not made in the hearts of stars.’ So where did gold come from? Cox says that gold is made in the last seconds in the lives of the most massive stars in the universe, the supernova explosions. ‘Gold is so rare because the conditions needed to make it are rare. On average, in a galaxy of a 100,000 million FEBRUARY 2016
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stars, there will only be one supernova explosion per century, and the explosion itself is only hot enough to make gold for about a minute. In our topsy-turvey world rare equals valuable. Throughout the whole of human history, we have only discovered enough gold on Earth to fill three Olympic-sized swimming pools (gulp).
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OK, now back to the story of the origin of the chemical building blocks of human beings ... our ingredients were cooked in the hearts of ancient suns, thrown out into the universe at their deaths and eventually brought back together by the relentless pull of gravity over billions of years to form our solar system. The elements we constitute were forged at the moment of these magnificent stellar deaths, new life born from the ashes of old. We are part of a vast cycle of cosmic death and rebirth, and when we die, the elements that make up our bodies will be returned to the universe to begin the cycle again. What a wonderful thing to be part of this universe, and what a story. What a majestic story ... of carbon recycling ...
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HIGHWAYMAN I was a highwayman Along the coach roads I did ride With sword and pistol by my side Many a young maid lost her baubles to my trade Many a soldier shed his lifeblood on my blade The bastards hung me in the spring of twenty-five But I am still alive I was a sailor I was born upon the tide And with the sea I did abide I sailed a schooner round the Horn to Mexico I went aloft and furled the mainsail in a blow And when the yards broke off they said that I got killed But I am living still
I was a dam builder Across the river deep and wide Where steel and water did collide A place called Boulder on the wild Colorado I slipped and fell into the wet concrete below They buried me in that great tomb that knows no sound But I am still around I’ll always be around, and around and around and around and around ... I’ll fly a starship Across the Universe divide And when I reach the other side I’ll find a place to rest my spirit if I can Perhaps I may become a highwayman again Or I may simply be a single drop of rain But I will remain And I’ll be back again, and again and again and again and again ...
Words: Jimmy Webb
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Ready to explode ... dying star Betelgeuse
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GIN LANE William Hogarth 1751
One of Hogarth’s best-known engravings, the setting is laid in a slum street of St Giles in Westminster. the central figure, a drunken woman with syphilitic sores on her legs, drops her baby in order to take a pinch of snuff as she sits on the steps leading to the gin cellar with its flagon emblem ‘Gin Royal’ and the characteristic inscription, ‘Drunk for a Penny, Dead drunk for Twopence, Clean Straw for nothing.’ At the foot of the steps sits a dying (or dead) gin-and-ballad-seller. Under the pawnbroker’s sign, Gripe, the owner, is taking a carpenter’s saw and coat as a pledge for gin money, while a housewife waits to pawn her household utensils. In the background a naked woman is being buried and on the barber’s shop (indicated by the pole) the barber has hanged himself, perhaps because there is no need for his services in Gin Lane. The gin merchants on the right, Kilman’s Distiller, are, however, doing roaring business. All these details, powerfully juxtaposed, combine to make up one of the most savage of all Hogarth’s prints
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REVIEW
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SPAIN
1936 32
The anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was still in full swing. To anyone who had been there since the beginning it probably seemed even in December or January that the revolutionary period was ending; but when one came straight from England the aspect of Barcelona was something startling and overwhelming.
It was the first time I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and HOMAGE TO CATALONIA black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was writing in June 1937 scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the intials of the revolutionary parties; almost every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were being systematically demolished by gangs of workmen.
George Orwell
Every shop and cafe had an inscription saying it had been collectivised; even the bootblacks had been collectivised and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal.
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Tipping was forbidden by law; almost my first experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a lift-boy. There were no private motor-cars, they had all been commandeered, and all the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and black. The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs of mud. Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town where crowds of people streamed constantly to and fro, the loudspeakers were bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night.
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And it was the aspect of the crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small number of women and foreigners there were no ‘well-dressed’ people at all. Practically everyone wore rough working-class clothes, or blue overalls, or some variant of the militia uniform. All this was queer and moving. There was much in it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognised it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for.
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UNTITLED (Chairs) from Zeno Writing II, 2002 by William Kentridge
By South African, William Kentridge, this print comes from a suite based on the novel, ‘Confessions of Zeno’ (!923) by Italo Svevo, the imagery overlaid with looping abstract calligraphy, like a visual stream of consciousness. The novel centres on a middle-class businessman in Trieste shortly before the First World War, as he recalls the moments of indecision and irresolution that have shaped his life, and coloured his familial relationships. Written as if from the psychiatrist’s couch, it conveys the hero’s weakness and guilt, and the limitations of his self-knowledge. It is this idea of guilt, and of impotence despite self-knowledge, that Kentridge has explored repeatedly as he confronts the implications for individuals and societies, of their responses to political events. Kentridge writes, ‘When I first read Svevo’s book some 20 years ago, one of the things that drew me to it was the evocation of Trieste as a rather desperate provincial city at the edge of an empire– away from the centre, the real world. This felt very similar to Johannesburg in the 1970s. In the years following this has persisted. And caused me to return to the book.’
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Oh shit! Forgot to remove the ...
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SHITARTICLE ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
THE CIRCULUS
OR NATURAL CIRCLE
In exile in Jersey, Pierre Leroux, author of the first ecological utopia, mixed sand and cinders with his shit and grew haricot beans. ‘Don’t you find gentlemen, I am a singular alchemist? Ordinary alchemists look for gold and I’ve found shit.’ ‘Human excrement is the most fertile there is.’ Leroux argued its use would quadruple agricultural production. There would be enough of it to fertilise the land necessary for growing cereals to feed the whole of the human race. In China, since the revolution, traditional shit-collecting has been mechanised and night-soil is still used for fertilising the fields. FEBRUARY 2016
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Anarchists suggest that humans are by nature both benign and cooperative, they are only corrupted by government, which both exploits and oppresses them. Anarchists are anti-capitalist, maintaining that industrial capitalism warps and disempowers human beings and prevents them from realizing their true potential. Although perceived as on the ‘left’ anarchists reject conventional marxism’s endorsement of state control as a necessary stage on the route to true communism. French philosopher and socialist, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, 1809–65, the first person to call himself an anarchist declared, ‘Property is theft’ ... and so it is! FEBRUARY 2016
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UNDERGROUND
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DNUORGREDNU
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the bastard
is onto us chief ...
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‘Of course, the representation of Labour in corporate media is going to be everything Cameron could hope for because he, Murdoch and pretty much everybody they know works for the same boss: FINANCIAL AND CORPORATE INTERESTS. Cameron is middle management and Murdoch is more senior, something high up in their PR department. Another problem for Corbyn is the intrinsic conservatism of the concision demanded by news shows: it’s difficult to explain why an ingrained assumption is wrong in a soundbite, and it’s to his credit that he can’t seem to be bothered trying. Then there’s the overwhelming lack of context in our news coverage. How many stories about the US’s recent deal with Iran mention that the US overthrew the Iranian government in a 1953 CIA-backed coup? There’s bias there – no doubt if Russia had sponsored a coup in Iran it would have made it into the coverage – but there’s another reason this happens. Removing context makes it much easier to engage readers with emotions such as surprise, or outrage. Our news media instinctively removes context, because “look at this inexplicable shit that just happened” sells more papers than the more depressing “look at this inevitable shit that will no doubt keep happening”.’
A BOYLE ON ALL YOUR BUMS! ‘Faced with this level of inherent bias, the rhetoric of anti-austerity is failing in a few ways. The first is that it tries to construct a persuasive moral argument against a case for austerity that hasn’t been framed morally. It has been very effectively framed as a necessary evil. In any case, I’ve always found the idea of “speaking truth to power” faintly ridiculous. Powerful people are generally quite well aware of what they are doing and – should you ever make it past their security – will respond to your truthspeaking with a look that says: “you don’t know the half of it”. The thing you can rely on about self-interested people is that they won’t really be interested in you. They don’t care, and you’re not going to find the right form of words that suddenly makes them care.’ Frankie Boyle
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95 percent of Brit Expats Sent Back to UK for Failing Language Test Joe Mellor thelondoneconomic.com
The biggest movement of migrants since the Second World War began today, as countries across the world demanded UK expats had to speak the language of their chosen country, or they had to leave … and most failed. Foreign officials have said the test wasn’t even that rigorous. You only had to know how to say “Two Beers” “Please” “No” “Yes” and “Do you have real brown sauce?” but almost one hundred per cent flunked it. A Foreign Office Spokesman said: “We don’t know how to cope with the influx, even some Brits in Australia failed the test, as they didn’t add “mate” to the end of the brown sauce question.” Steve Tate, 35, who was packing up his belongings in Alicante said: “I was just about to learn the Spanish for ‘two beers” but I just couldn’t find the time, I’ve only been here eight years. I did integrate though, I went to the Black Lion pub, with Stevie, Gaz and Larry everyday. I remember that day we ate squid, it was rank though, never again.” Shelia Predegast, 45, who lives in Albufeira, was seething after being told she had to leave, telling customs officials, “I didn’t want to learn Spanish anyway.”
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The moon and I, We’re low tonight, Not blue, but golden glow. Alone, together, we search the sky For a pinhole of hope in the deepest darkest black. 48
The cold air gives away my breath, Then takes my breath away, A clue? My companion, The moon, though battered and scarred will once more rise and Face the Light of the Sun Give me a reason to sleep tonight, Give me a reason to rise. ••• Martin Taylor
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JUST ANOTHER SHORT STORY Photographs: David Goldblatt (tweaked) The kitchen was a hive of activity, Lucy moved from cooker to worktop, occasionally to the sink and often exercising a knowing expertise at the flip-top bin. Here, in her domain, she was queen, and she knew it, she had learnt the hard way – years of patronising guff – but now, she was showing off. Margo Van Niekerk watched her from the open kitchen door, still giving unnecessary advice and welling down a feeling of envy. Lucy acknowledged the superfluous advice with a carefully rehearsed tight-lipped smile, playing the kitchen like a TV chef, while cleverly deferring – showing she knew her place in the scheme of things – keeping Margo sweet and maintaining that smidgeon of dignity that kept her sane. The dinner prepared, it was served to the usual crowd of friends the Van Niekerks had invited. Lucy helped with the serving and Mrs Van Niekerk, without a flicker, ingraciously and with throwaway modesty, took credit for, what looked like, a wonderful meal. As the after-dinner banter rose to shrieks Lucy dug her hands into the soapy water and thought of Jerome, how she missed him now. She remembered with tenderness the three nights last month they
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had been together in her kaya, a room at the bottom of the Van Niekerk’s garden. Mr Van Niekerk had said it was alright for ‘John’ to stay but had reminded her that it was against the law and they should be careful. Mr Van was a great guy, she thought, but she couldn’t understand why he kept calling Jerome ‘John’, or why Jerome suddenly volunteered to cut all the lawns, front and back. As she scoured the final pan, she pondered on this but came to no satisfactory conclusion, or, for that matter, why Jerome had left so abruptly… or why he hadn’t written since, now that was a worrying thought. She left the house for her room catching ‘… you’ll have to come over to us sometime, OK?’ and knowing it wasn’t for her ears. Her once narrow bunk, in the neon glare of her whitewashed room, became a vast ocean of tears in the gloom of the Transvaal night, now too big for her alone …oh Jerome. Priscilla was woken by the cockerel’s cry that cold grey morning, the sun had not yet appeared from over the distant dark hills. The plain was deserted, with only the odd hut breaking the flatness with its grouping of goats, cattle, a tree standing proud in the early morning mist. She rose quickly, her breath clouding the air, she covered her nakedness with her best dress, today she would see Umfons again. She paused in her dressing to remember; nine months ago she and the boys had been taken from their home in the city in an open truck and left on this plain; Umfons had cried as they tied their belongings together with red and white string, they’d all cried, but the officials, even though moved by the emotion, had
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their orders to hide behind and whole families were uprooted – to be scattered in their homelands. Umfons had stayed. The date on the Dunlop calendar on the wall, today’s date, was heavily ringed. Her smile shone as she noticed the sun already above the horizon, wobbling in the heat haze like the egg yolk she’d just broken in the frying pan. She started singing and woke the boys.
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Umfons was already on the train, his awkward posture in the crowded carriage dictated by the expensive, but ill-fitting new suit, so obviously admired by his fellow passengers that they made extra room for him, so’s he wouldn’t create new creases. He was going home, he’d told them, although he’d lived all his life in the city and this was his first trip to the Transkei. Good natured banter broke out in the carriage as the sun warmed the sleep from the occupants’ eyes, the distantly familiar clicking of his mother’s Xhosa, now all around him, brought back childhood memories – the slick smoothness of the Zulu he had lived with for so long now seemed ugly by comparison. Friendly suggestions on what to do when he and Priscilla were alone together again were sheepishly laughed off by an embarrassed Umfons, he enjoyed the attention but now he wished he could become just another anonymous passenger again. Someone started singing and he was happy and relieved to join in. He stared at the unchanging, flat, barren plain as they pursued their straight course, occassionally small boys would appear from nowhere to wave and shout as the train trundled by. His thoughts dwelled on the way things were; as a black man he
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was quite well paid at the Dunlop factory and had managed to save some money whilst staying in the hostel, even, after sending half his wages to Priscilla. Now he had two weeks’ leave and a suitcase full of presents, he was going home; they told him it was his home although he’d never been there. How can this be, he thought? Some of the men at the hostel had ideas about this state of affairs, but even he, Umfons, could see their struggle, however just, was almost impossible, yet when they spoke on Friday nights after the stick fights he found he could not fault their thinking. He cursed them for invading his homecoming thoughts. The railway station was crowded with women and children and everyone was craning their necks, looking out along the tracks to the distant horizon, a small boy who had climbed the telegraph pole was dangerously close to losing his grip as he sang out, pointing to the distant smudge of smoke with his free arm. The station heaved with agitated anticipation, the train was coming! The women’s singing rose from the quiet murmur it had been for the last hour to a chorus of pure joy, tears left tracks in the fine dust on Priscilla’s cheeks. Umfons, and the others who were fortunate to be near a window, hung their heads out, risking their sight as small bits of coal from the locomotive peppered their faces. Umfons, screwed up face, searched the track ahead for a first sight of his destination. The station came into view, heads bobbed in and out of the carriage windows as those unfortunate enough to occupy seats in the core of the carriages were allowed a look. There were hurried
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farewells to friends of convenience, smiles all round as the train jerked into the station, the women’s far off singing had now become a reality of wonderment. Priscilla, with little Steve and Nelson on either arm, scanned each carriage as it went by, Umfons saw her first, their eyes met and it was just like that day they’d first met, all those years ago, at her uncle’s wedding. As he stepped from the carriage, the awkwardness of the suit was gone, his smile broke his face and tears so long held back criss-crossed the folds of his grinning face, wetting both Steve and Nelson as they broke free from their mother’s grasp, burrowing their crinkly heads into his neck as he stooped to lift them. Priscilla looked on, unsure of herself all of a sudden, nine months was a long time, Umfons saw the hesitation and grasped her to him, the four clinging to each other on the emptying platform, oblivious to everyone and everything, two weeks would soon pass… Dinertime and half-eaten sandwiches were being pushed through the chickenwire fencing; Jerome’s attempts to catch the bits before they fell to the floor were less than successful and soon his caged space beneath the Science Labs was littered with crumbled bread. The boys’ school was for the English-speaking elite; they used convicts to work on their sportsfields. Jerome poked about in the bread for the odd piece of meat, his eyes hooded, but defiant, as he flicked looks back at the well-fed, healthy, happy schoolboys who crowded around his cage – their curiosity not yet tempered
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by the racial spite of their elders. Joshua, Jerome’s warder, who was over six feet tall, impressively dressed in neatly pressed khaki and carrying an assegai, which he had promised Jerome he would never use, stood proudly on guard, his confident happy-with-mylot smile countered by Jerome’s seemingly blank and acquiescing facade. Behind the face, overwhelmed by the reality of his situation, Jerome seethed and then simmered, his emotions in turmoil as he battled to control his rage, his systems of survival near to collapse and his only salvation being a relentless plotting of revenge, that bastard, Mr Van, still fresh in his thoughts, had said he had had no option but to report Jerome for his breach of the Pass Laws – and this, after Mr Van had encouraged him to stay, and after he had sweated blood cutting the lawns with a rusty old lawnmower! It seemed to him, his only crime had been to refuse to wash Mr Van’s car, Lucy, oh Lucy… Written in 1982 with the vulgar and soul destroying absurdities of Apartheid in mind, with its vile enslavement of black peoples, draconian pass laws and upheavals of whole communities in the name of racial segregation. This is dedicated to all the Umfons, Pricillas, Lucys and Jeromes – some of whom I am honoured, but equally, in those circumstances, regret to have known – and sadly, initially, to have been a passive observer of their plight. From ‘Writing some Wrongs’, Alan Rutherford Published by Hand Over fist Press, 2007
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WAFFLE LETTERS
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Dear Editor ... I say again, well, because the letters page is a hopeless failure, I say again ... Words fail me, what is the use of words when the person you are saying them to is unable to grasp your, and their, meaning? Worryingly, we are heading down that irrational road again, the one where stupidity reigns, where basic facts and knowledge acquired over time are being replaced by entrenched banal myths, hearsay and superstition. The probability that this age-old fudge of complacency and mad spouters will be defended to the death before reason can be accepted again (if ever) is terrifying. For evidence of this I direct your (giggling now) attention to Donald Trump and his campaign to become US President. As Britain’s government is a happy satellite of US mischief in the world ... and a blindly loyal follower of US foreign policy, what will our government do if Trump suceeds and begins his Term of Ignorance? Whilst I remain optimistic about the future I am absolute in my scepticism about whether the Davos-business-arses and their sycophantic political stooges whooping it up in the Swiss mountains are the answer. More contributions please.
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HAND OVER FIST PRESS
BOOKS • DESIGN at www.handoverfistpress.com
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SHEEP IN THE ROAD Vol. 2 Alan Rutherford 2015
SHEEP IN THE ROAD Vol. 1 Alan Rutherford 2014
IRISH GRAFFITI some murals in the North, 1986 Alan Rutherford 2014
NICETO DE LARRINAGA a voyage, 1966 Alan Rutherford 2014
To read/view a book, please go to BOOK page on website and click on their cover and follow the links ...
KAPUTALA The Diary of Arthur Beagle & The East Africa Campaign, 1916-1918 Alan Rutherford Updated 2nd edn: 2014
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MAGAZINE
â–ź
SHEEP IN THE ROAD issue 6
SHEEP IN THE ROAD issue 5
SHEEP IN THE ROAD issue 4
SHEEP IN THE ROAD issue 3
January: 2016
Xmas: 2015
December: 2015
October: 2015
Sheep in the Road as a magazine has writing, photography, cartoons and odd assemblages of ideas, rants and reviews ... eminating from a socialist and thoughtful core. Contributors included: Brian Rutherford, Rudi Thoemmes, Joe Jenkins, Robert Arnott, Cam Rutherford, Steve Ashley, Lizzie Boyle, Chris Dillow, Chris Hoare, Joanna Rutherford, West Midland Hunt Saboteurs, Chris Bessant, Craig Atkinson, Martin Taylor A pleasure to produce ... thank you
Available to view/read at www.handoverfistpress.com
HAND OVER FIST PRESS
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