Democracy – It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing!

It is no good. I can’t just publicise my own activities at this time. What is going on the Russian border and in the Middle East, as well as in the Sudan and elsewhere, demands to be addressed. I will be eighty this year. 2024 was most definitely the worst year I have ever experienced in terms of the state of the world. Yes, I have known worse years in terms of personal tragedy, but as far as I am concerned the world itself is in the most pitiful condition that I have ever known (and that includes the years that brought the destruction of Yugoslavia and the invasion of Iraq). Most of these tragedies are caused by the West. Both the USA and the UK are run by a two party system where there is actually very little difference between the two blocs.

How do we rescue genuine democracy from the deep state that enforces a uniparty upon us, however we vote? Politics has become a career that you embark upon if you wish to become a billionaire. In my view, things will only get worse unless we refuse compromise. Vote for Reform if you must, or vote for the Workers Party of Britain. But for heaven’s sake let’s get rid of the two smug middle-of-road entities which force a corrupt establishment regime upon us. To vote either for the Tories or for Labour is to cement to status quo that has got us into this mess. Kemi Badenoch, Keir Starmer – Yah Boo Sucks!

The Liberal Democrats were wont to occupy the middle ground between the Labour and Conservative parties. They always attracted far fewer votes than the two ‘main parties’. And yet today, it is precisely that middle ground that both Labour and the Conservatives seek to occupy. The theory, if you can call it that, is that unless you resemble the opposing party as far as you possibly can, so as to attract their swing voters, you haven’t a chance of getting into power. But if that is the case, why were the Lib Dems not the biggest party? To aim strategically for the middle ground leads to a form of communism by statistics. When dissatisfied, we kick the buggars out and get the other buggars and the same policies.

First-past-the-post democracy works best when there is a radical difference between the two major parties. This suggests that democracy should be a risky business. A genuine left gets in and implements genuine left-wing policies. Should these go too far, in the opinion of the majority, then, at the next election, the genuine right gets in and reverses the more unpopular policies, and then it may well implement right-wing policies, some of which may prove unpopular. And so it swings, between ideologies at variance with each other. Risky as it is, this is how it should be. It reminds me of Robert Graves’ wonderful poem, Flying Crooked:

The butterfly, the cabbage white,
(His honest idiocy of flight)
Will never now, it is too late,
Master the art of flying straight,
Yet has — who knows so well as I? —
A just sense of how not to fly:
He lurches here and here by guess
And God and hope and hopelessness.
Even the aerobatic swift
Has not his flying-crooked gift.

Forever relying on caution and compromise renders democracy innocuous. A beltway elite, or a Westminster mob, get accustomed to running the show, installing their civil service apparatchiks and going hand-in-glove with shady security services. Matters rapidly become corrupt. On either side, they know that they are playing the same game. I say, avoid all persuasion that would have you vote strategically. Vote with your heart, however small the number of like-minded people may be who choose to vote the way you do. This is democracy’s only chance. Uniparty democracy is one colossal sham.

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New Handle at YouTube

I’ve changed my handle at Youtube. So now I am https://www.youtube.com/@theanthonyhowell

Lots of videos here of performances as well as slideshows of painting projects and of course recordings of poems. Enjoy!

And also another place where there are videos of performances etc is https://www.anthonyhowell.org/Reading.htm

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The Kurdish Female Guerrillas Fighting ISIS 

PKK

Documentary on Kurdish Women Soldiers.

Another documentary.

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The Government of President Assad was not ‘Ghastly’

This is an irritated response to a post that was entitled “The Assad Regime was Ghastly but the West’s Favourite Jihadists HTS May Be Even More Bloody”

The Assad government was not “ghastly”. And it is an insult to call it a ‘regime’. That is just Zionist/US/UK propaganda.

Sunnis are the majority in Syria, yes. But a coalition of Shia, Christian, Druze and Alawite minorities constituted a larger electoral group. This is how Syria managed to protect its minorities. And as for imprisoning Sunni Takfiri terrorists, for heaven’s sake! What was Assad expected to do? We imprison terrorists as well. The same problem confronted Ataturk and the last Shah of Iran. Nobody has ever wanted an extremist and violent religious majority to win an election and then clamp down on every other sect. If you really want to call a governing body a ‘regime’ and  ‘ghastly’ then look no further than the oligarch rulers of the Gulf, who invented Takfiri extremism in the late 19th century, in order to invent an external ‘scapegoat’ and deflect the populace from rising up against their own utterly corrupt elitist police states. It’s the same as when Europe sent its restive young men off to die in the Crusades. This coalition of minorities in Syria could not survive after Israel sponsored Al Qaeda, Daesh, HTS or whatever you care to call them, and America occupied the oil rich part of Syria via the CIA arming (in the name of a concocted ‘opposition’) brutal Takfiris while imposing sanctions. Not to mention the enduring sponsorship of these extremists by the ghastly opportunist Erdogan.

The result is the probable genocide of Christians, Druze, Alawites, atheists and Shia – and probably moderates of Sunni extraction as well.

What is happening is a tragedy, just as is Gaza, and it is caused by the USA, the UK, Israel, Turkey and the Gulf tyrants.

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Modern Art is over. Embrace Deep Art

Alexander Cozens

The problem is modern art. It’s completely finished. In art a cliché is a sin. Modern art has become a cliché. You cannot abstract from an apple tree in the manner of Mondrian. It has been done. It has been done to death. So bollocks to Pollock, abstract expressions etc. 

Far more interesting these days to look at the paintings of Victor Hugo or Alexander Cozens. I call what they do, and I attempt to do, “Deep Art”.

Victor Hugo: the Burg

To some extent Deep Art has been anticipated by the surrealists, though it is actually earlier than surrealism. Basically it is going in the opposite direction to modernism. Begins with some involuntary chaotic action, splotches, blots, found chaos, even a confused photograph, then works into that chaos to attempt to get somewhere. Not necessarily a figurative result but to a feeling of resolution in the artist’s mind.

Deep art is a departure. It is alchemy. Its primary aim is for the artist to lose consciousness of the self in the engrossment of making art.

This also reminds me of Leonardo da Vinci’s advice: to look at a wall – at its blotches and imperfections, and see what image you might discover there.

Deep art is done as a form of personal meditation. This is the only response to an “artworld” flooded by ambitious practitioners. That artworld only admits of a canon of megastars. Maybe twelve big names at any time. And that is innappropriate for the reality of the vast number of artists that there are in our world today.

Anthony Howell: with Envy

There is also a special sublimity about deep art – particularly as applied to Victor Hugo’s paintings. This is to do with the sense that they work with suggestion, that, unlike Cozens, they never result in a completely figurative image. I go into this further in my essay, An Inquiry into the Sublime.

See also More on Victor Hugo.

Anthony Howell, 23/12/24

And at the Royal Academy in March

https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/astonishing-things?sourceNumber=817685

More recently, I tried reshaping the notion of deep art – to work it into my poem-in-progress, The Runiad:

This isn’t just about winning contracts; it’s about reshaping

The very nature of conflict. This is a struggle about who will sculpt

The basic ontology of conflict in the age of HyperWar,

Where kill-webs and machine-speed decisions could render

Human oversight peripheral, or even obsolete. But, as I see it,

There is a problem looming up with progress going this way.

The problem can be seen in modern art. It’s completely finished.

You see, in art a cliché is a sin. Modern art has just become a cliché.

You cannot go on abstracting from an apple tree in the manner of Mondrian.

It has been done. It has been done to death. So bollocks to Pollock,

Abstract expressions etc. Progress! It’s just so 20th century.

And it seems to me blind, and leading to the annulment of mankind,

So we need to go another way. More interesting today

To look at the paintings of Victor Hugo or Alexander Cozens.

I call what they do, and I too attempt to do, “Deep Art”.

To some extent Deep Art has been anticipated by

The surrealists, though in its beginnings it’s earlier than their time.

It is art rejecting the embrace of progress with a laugh!

Prefers to start from some involuntary acts, flung splotches, blots:

A chaos, that you may have come across, even a confusing photograph.

Work into that chaos and from there attempt to get somewhere.

Not necessarily to arrive at a result but to a sense, of what?

Of resolution in the artist’s mind or of something that

Suggests that it’s intended perhaps. Deep art is a departure.

It is alchemy. Its aim is for the artist to lose consciousness

Of self in the engrossment of mining it, of mining art

From a muddled, arbitrary mess. And so the deep artist is

Not bothered about swanning around Frieze. Deep art is done

As a form of personal meditation. This is the only response

To a careerist “artworld” flooded up to the gills by eager

Beavers. That world only admits to the canon of its megastars.

Maybe twelve big names at any time. And this is inappropriate,

Given the number of artists that are out there making stuff today.

So it’s an idealist gesture, a bidding adieu to the modernist

Notion of progress so romantically espoused by the futurists.

But just as they walked into a future that they could not see,

The deep artist stumbles backwards, backwards into a past

That can’t be seen. Because that artist faces the other way,

Anticipating horrors that progress would inflict upon us all,

As evidenced by the tractors that have come to block Whitehall,

Foreseeing the destruction of our green and pleasant land

By forces such as USAID obeying the command of shady NGOs

Owned by oligarchs so rich that they have morphed into lunatics.

From Book 19 of The Runiad

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An Appalling Pardon

Biden pardons criminals, including his son – who would have incriminated Biden himself. These two judges are rotten to the core. But Biden is well-lobbied by the prison industry, which is a business which is massive and growing.

Surely pardons are designed for possible miscarriages of Justice? Miscarriages, rather than for freeing crooked cronies! Another sickening instance of the corruption of our times.

And now people are protesting!

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The Runiad, Book 12 – excerpt in the Fortnightly Review

Charybdis

Very pleased indeed that The Fortnightly Review is up and running again. And here is the latest excerpt from the Runiad.

Enjoy the latest issue of the Fortnightly!

Meanwhile, you can read the entirety of the Runiad as a work in progress at the Heyzine link here. This has now hit 1400 views! A big thank you to all my readers. So encouraging! And here is more from Book 12:

…………“But was he shot?” asked a grandson,

Anxious for some bloodshed. “No; the old gun burst and hurt

My hands, but not a mite of harm was done to Joe. I don’t think

I could tell all that happened for a spell, being dazed and all

By surprise – and by joy at what I had not done – and finding us

Alive; but I was pert as a wren by the time Mother came home

And Joe was at the table eating every mortal thing.”

And nowadays you might refer to this as a black swan event,

For had that old musket not exploded, none of them would have been there

To hear Grandma’s story, for their grandpa would be lying dead

By the kitchen door, and life would have wheeled away, taken

A different turn, just as another, darker swan turns my writing  

Upside down, whirls me in its waterspout, in quantum entanglement

With that event that got me swamped by its own far from likely

Statistics. Note the disproportionate role of high-profile, hard-to-predict,

And rare events quite beyond the realm of normal expectations

In history, science, finance, and technology. The black swan

Alerts us to the non-computability of the likelihood of consequential

Rare events using scientific methods (owing to the nature

Of how few and far between they are). There are these psychological biases

That blind us all to uncertainty and to the substantial

Role of rare results, a role that queers prediction in historical affairs.

Analysing such a swan we delve into facts re the design, especially

The comparatively low tolerance point of the hull’s stability

In the event of its being tipped towards the water – due to the

And extraction vents also invite access to water, if not shut.

Ok for the keel to be up – according to the manual – at the distance

To the shore that it was on the night. But this greatly enhanced

The chance of it capsizing. Also, when the keel is down it makes a noise –

Can’t be disturbing the sleep of the super-rich. Points to there being

A flaw though to the concept of a sailing boat/luxury hotel combo.

…..

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Tucker Carlson interviews Sergei Lavrov

Sergei Lavrov

Perhaps the most important interview of our time. Link is here

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The Runiad – images for books 12 to 15

Book 12 Charybdis

Book 13 The Lost Pleiad

Book 14 The Tree-Man

Book 15 Millstones

The Runiad is my work in progress – an epic poem which will comprise 24 books. Fair drafts of all books so far completed (1-15) can be found on this Heyzine Link.

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THE RUNIAD – Books 1 to 14

Extract from Book 11 in the Fortnightly Review here. However the editorial of the Fortnightly is relocating and there is a delay in publishing extracts from the most recently completed books. When the links to these extracts are available I will publish them.

As a work in progress Books 1-15 can be read for free as a Heyzine online book.

On the Heyzine link there is a contents page – p 5. All the pages are numbered and so each book has a page number. At the bottom of the page is a horizontal scroll bar – use this to get to any specific page.

On the Heyzine page, I suggest turning off the sound and enlarging the text. Pages can be turned by clicking on the arrow at the foot of the page to the right, while clicking to the left turns the pages the other way.

Of course I am still at work, re-reading previous books, improving what I have already got down as what seems my first clean draft of any book appears pretty rough-hewn after a while.

I am also pleased that the Heyzine book has now attracted over 1200 readers. So I’m sending out a big thank you to these readers. It is definitely encouraging to know that I am being accompanied as I continue my journey.

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