Who remembers the 1983 film by David Cronenberg (and the 1979 novel by Stephen King) The Dead Zone, in which a rabble-rousing US president comes this close to launching nuclear Armageddon? He's stopped - sorry, spoiler alert - on the campaign trail, before he even gets to the presidency, by King's, Cronenberg's, and if we're getting really detailed here, Christopher Walken's damaged hero, who has visions of the future if (I think I'm remembering this correctly) he comes into contact with people by (I think) touching them. He shakes your hand, he sees your future.
     There's a thing with today's US president about whether or not you shake his hand. Heard an anecdote told by a comedian - sorry, wasn't really listening, didn't pick up the name, sorry - about being told several times, before meeting the president, not to shake his hand. The punchline being that Trump turned up, said "I'm Donald Trump," and held out his hand - although the end-point was (comedian sitting down, The Donald standing up) a touch of the head rather than a handshake. Think I've got that right. Trump apparently has small hands. And now he's banned various media companies from his press briefings (one press briefing so far, but let's agree that it's a big deal).
     We've established, or at least the media have established to their own satisfaction, that Donald Trump doesn't read (see also the post State of the Union earlier this month). Or at least - this is the media speaking - that he doesn't read but does keep a bound volume of a certain failed dictator's speeches in or on his bedside table (if this isn't making any sense, that earlier post will open in a new window - just glance at it). Not sure where I stand on believing that. But I would believe an unsubstantiated allegation that at least one of Trump's advisers reads Stephen King (and maybe Tom Clancy).
     And if you went on to suggest that at least one of Trump's advisers has trouble distinguishing between fact and fiction, I'd go along with that too, And hey, yeah, you're right - the handshake thing. The Dead Zone, right? Copy of the paperback, on the bedside table? Right. Where's a damaged hero when you need one? Some of those journalists look pretty - no, you're right. The D-word here is dishevelled, which even the spellcheck doesn't like. But hey, don't let them get too close.
     Meanwhile, back here in the old continent, Francois Fillon seems to be getting the French equivalent of the Hillary Clinton email treatment. Maybe Vladimir Putin sees something in Marine Le Pen that a lot of people don't. And in the UK, Jeremy Corbyn has come out fighting after his by-election defeat and by-election Pyrrhic victory. He's going to go on fighting against austerity and for various forms of justice. Forgive me, but I remembered something about mid-twentieth century communism. It was always in the future. The justification for current chaos was always - no, not jam, but a perfect society tomorrow. Similarly, I suppose, the Labour Party is going to emerge triumphant from its present total collapse.
     Somebody should shake Jeremy Corbyn's hand.

This from the book A Bright Red Scream by Marilee Strong (Virago, 2000). "The history of medicine makes it abundantly clear that many 'diseases' - from atherosclerosis to Alzheimer's disease to alcoholism - are identified and diagnosed at increasingly higher levels once the name, the clinical description, and diagnostic procedures become well known among doctors. Diseases and disorders without a distinct identity simply aren't on the mental map."
     Once a condition has a label, doctors know to look out for it - or rather, it's on their checklist of possible diagnoses. To diagnose an individual as having an entirely individual condition is problematic, not least because medicine isn't about crafting entirely individual remedies. Medicine uses mass production. Attaching a label also enables communication - I can tell you I have a cold, and be understood. If I go into a list of symptoms, and let's assume I'm both accurate and comprehensive and start from the beginning, it might take a little longer for you to work out that I just have a cold.
     A label is a generalisation. It's useful - if I have a cold, I can be given a cold remedy. It's easier to dramatise Storm Doris than to wake people up to the low-pressure area swirling towards us across the Atlantic. We now have JAMs - who are Just About Managing - alongside the hard-working families, benefits scroungers and others in the political lexicon. Politically useful labels, I guess. But a label is also problematic. If I come into your surgery and launch into a lengthy account of a different set of symptoms, there's a chance that (for example) you'll think "Aha! Athero-[you can't expect me to spell it twice in one blog post]" before I've got to the end of the account. And miss the final symptom that takes us off towards something else.
     I haven't read enough of Marilee Strong's book to say anything about it (that quote came from the beginning of Chapter Three), but I do think sometimes about the labels that get attached to people. They do get attached, and it can be quite hard to be seen through them. It's a recurring theme of mine, I think. People get labelled. They're individuals, but the label stands in front of them and insists on giving you [a simplified version of] their identity. I wonder how much it matters to individuals not to be fitted into the crowd like that.

So we're back on the edge of Mosul. [I'm sure we've been here before.] Media and armed forces massed for a final assault to take the city from Invariably-Referred-To-As-So-Called Islamic State. [Didn't we do this a couple of months ago?] Much emphasis on the role to be played by Iraqi forces - everybody else is just backing them up, you see. It's their country. They're doing this.
     Interview on the radio this morning with a US colonel (not an Iraqi colonel) who was apparently handling the PR for the assault. [There's something fundamentally wrong with the idea of an assault having its own PR function, but never mind.] Asked about civilian casualties, the PR colonel seemed to be explaining - I was busy making coffee, and distracted anyway - that the munitions to be used in the assault were "precision" munitions carefully selected not to hurt anybody. The assault would feature surgical strikes on targets agreed in advance with the local Iraqi authorities.
     Yes, US forces do have a track record of bombing Iraqi civilians, wedding parties mostly, and no, I wouldn't be reassured by a press release clarifying that Falmouth Town Council had agreed that my militant neighbour could be bombed but not me. Set all that aside. I was distracted by the on-the-ground report that preceded the PR colonel's input. The reporter was embedded with a collection of Iraqi ground troops. While those troops were waiting for somebody in authority to say "Go! But Don't hurt anybody!", IRTASC Islamic State were sending over drones loaded with grenades.
     Even before the official start time of the assault, there had been casualties. I'm on our side, but I wonder sometimes about the incompatibility between control, oversight, management and PR blah blah on the one hand, and on the other, actually getting anything done. Look up "Battle of Mosul" on Google, and you find accounts of the final assault to take the city that began in October 2016. Today's PR spin on that - PR spin may not survive first contact with the enemy; we shall see - is that the October Battle was aimed at taking the bit of Mosul that they did manage to take (with their ten-to-one advantage).
     Let's hope today's assault doesn't turn out after all to have been an initiative just to alter (rationalise?) the amount of Mosul held by the good guys.

Let's not go there. This week, Donald Trump held a couple of lengthy press conferences. Apparently, he's right and the media are wrong. Tony Blair delivered a speech calling for the British people, who voted for Brexit last year, to "rise up" against Brexit this year. If we voted to leave the EU, we were told by the man who took us into a killing war on the basis of a "dodgy dossier" largely cut and pasted from a student's article, our decision would cause serious damage to the British economy. Check the date on that speech, er, Tony (yes, of course I remember who you are). Read The Financial Times. Any recent edition, but maybe look out for one of their leaders on what the Brexit vote didn't cause. No, nobody's looking for WMD in Brussels, and here's the nice lady to take you back to your room. [That was Cherie in the audience, wasn't it? Looking well, if I may say so.]
     Eventually, something bad will happen that we can all pin on the Brexit vote, to the exclusion of all other causes, but let's leave all that for now. This was also the week in which the General Synod of the Church of England discussed a report by "The Bishops" on same-sex relationships. Gay marriage, as one or two headline-writers put it. People who love each other and want the standard official recognition from the state's primary religious organisation. Despite their near-identical, er, plumbing.
     Now, Mr and Mrs Bishop are an influential couple, living on the edge of the "Westminster Village" in a big house that they've called, somewhat whimsically, The House of Bishops. No, sorry, I'm pasting from the wrong student article. The Bishops are one of the Houses that make up this General Synod thingummy, which is clearly some kind of central committee. The Bishops are a group of mostly men (they started recruiting women in the UK in 2014) who produce reports on such matters as homosexuality. According to their own belief system, they stand between us and that Individual who arrived some 2017 years ago to tell us to love each other.
     Love is central to that Individual's teaching (yes, I agree, capital I), and so far as I remember, He didn't say too much along the lines of "Those two can love each other, but you're free to stop those two from getting too close." Okay, capital H as well. He was reported as saying (yes, I know the Bible accounts were written after His death and yes, I am aware of the current furore over fake news) that marriage was intended for the making of children, and no doubt somewhere there's a report by The Bishops on what to do with childless different-sex marriages. But I do remember getting the very clear impression, very early in life, that we weren't supposed to stand in judgement over each other.
     The issue with same-sex relationships is not that the two people love each other - we're allowed brotherly love, family love, no doubt sisterly love, the love of a priest for his parishioners (uh oh) and so on - but that if we're thinking about marriage, we have to, er, promise to bonk, to abandon any kind of "birth control," because that's not ours to control, and to be capable of producing a result. The traditional marriage vow should be rephrased: "We can do this, and we're going to give it our best shot." So we're really talking about controlling procreation - setting rules for what people do with their bits, and then applying them selectively (those childless couples, specifically the ones who decided against children, who should be compulsorily divorced according to the logic we're discussing).
     The teachings of Christ are either simple - love each other and everything else flows from that - or very complex, if you've got the mindset that goes through the paperwork to find the letter of the law. However "prayerfully" you might approach the job, you're still combing the texts for bits you can quote to support your point of view. I'm not competent to judge middle-aged men in clerical dress who pronounce on morality, and this is no place to mention to (now retired) bishop who evicted the Occupy protesters from the grounds of St Paul's a few years back because the financiers objected to their presence, but I will say one thing. Some of my best friends are gay, and some of them are certainly married in the sight of me.
     Such a lovely pink sunrise this morning. Pink sky, that is, followed by a big red sunrise over Pendennis Point. The hippeastrum has done its thing, but the daffodils are really getting on with it. Everything's coming up, and the roses are awake. Pleasant to realise, this late, that I haven't thought to check the conclusion, if there was one, of the General Synod's musings. We're alive. It's morning. Enough.

There is a bird in this picture, but I'm really not sure why it reminds me of e e cummings, whom I remember as preferring to dispense with capital letters. He wrote, "It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are," Google tells me, but I remember him for the poem below - scroll down. [Notice the capital A. I'm struck by the contribution of the spellcheck, which underlines the word 'another's' in red.]

it may not always be so

it may not always be so; and i say
that if your lips, which I have loved, should touch
another's, and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart, as mine in time not far away;
if on another's face your sweet hair lay
in such a silence as i know, or such
great writhing words as, uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;

if this should be, i say if this should be-
you of my heart, send me a little word;
that i may go unto him, and take his hands,
saying, Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face, and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands.

e e cummings

Pleasingly old-school moment in the middle of the week. We started with the row about Donald Trump's invitation to come over on a State Visit. All rumbling along nicely, punctuated by the occasional weather warning about an "Arctic Blast" heading our way from Siberia (translation: forecast of an east wind), and then some journalist asked whether the US President would be invited to address both houses of parliament while he was here. That hadn't been on the agenda, and generally wouldn't be on the agenda with a run-of-the-mill State Visit, but Somebody In Government accepted the premise of the question, and all of a sudden, we had a new argument.
     Then the Speaker of the House of Commons took it upon himself to tell the House, and the media, that he wouldn't be inviting The Donald into his House any time soon. Unexpected, but yes, strictly, the invitation to address the Commons was his to send. Not the invitation to address the House of Lords, but we'll come to that later.
     Pretty average week so far. There was a row about Brexit, and then a vote, and members of the Shadow Cabinet either resigned or didn't resign, were or weren't punished for it. The sun came up in the mornings and went down in the evenings. My daffodils are coming up, though not so much the snowdrops this year, and the tulips are beginning to show. Roses are waking up, and I'm optimistic about the big camellia. Flat-calm high tide this morning, down at Fish Strand Quay, mirroring the early sky.
     So anyway - here it is. Driving into Truro midweek, I turned on the radio. Veteran Tory MP expressing his view of the Speaker's intervention. Of course, the Speaker was entitled to his view, and it would be for the Speaker to reflect himself on whether his intervention had been appropriate to his role. The Speaker had been in the job for nine years, and it would be entirely up to the Speaker to decide whether nine years was long enough. He might decide to stay on, but after nine years... No, there was no question of a Vote of No Confidence in the Speaker, because of course the Speaker was entirely competent to make his own mind up as to what the future held...
     I remember that expression "the men in grey suits". Regime change in the Conservative Party was generally attributed to "the men in grey suits", who moved (almost) entirely behind the scenes. There was never anything so gauche as, well, a Vote of No Confidence, and of course, the Speaker, although this time round he happens to be a Conservative MP, is a neutral figure and thus immune to party discipline. No doubt that veteran Tory MP was only mentioning a Vote of No Confidence to make the point that nobody was mentioning a Vote of No Confidence and the Speaker had nothing to worry about, really, nothing at all.
     I haven't heard a politician so expertly delivering that particular brand of reassurance in years. It became known, the following day, that the Speaker of the House of Commons had apologised to his counterpart (and fellow party member), the Speaker of the House of Lords (who no doubt owns several grey suits), for not consulting him before speaking out.
     The week ended with a younger (45) Tory MP tabling a Vote of No Confidence in the Speaker. Reports suggest that senior members of the Conservative Party are standing behind the Speaker.
     Right behind him, I imagine.

Several commentators today saying that they've lost confidence in the US. Making their point by talking up the glories of the past. After two weeks of the current administration, they're not going back.
     Were they wrong, and they've seen the light? Or has the US changed? I guess the latter is the intended meaning, and perhaps - no, self-evidently - the election of the current President indicates a change in the attitudes of his fellow Americans. I'll leave out the Mencken quote about the kind of person the US system will eventually deliver to the presidency. We should at least acknowledge the possibility (I'm not arguing this) that Trump might be the right man for the job, even if only in the sense that he'll have a cathartic effect on the world order, wake people up, focus people's attention on the system's workings, because that might get us to the right question.
     What would an anybody-but-Trump candidate have to promise, to beat him? What would be the relationship need to be between promise and delivery, to sustain that victory? There's already a lesson here. And while we're on the subject, the US judicial system seems to be functioning. Those checks and balances were put in place for a reason - those clever old (in fact, young) realists, the Founding Fathers - and maybe losing confidence in the US is premature, given that Trump has - now I come to think of it - woken a lot of people up to the founding promise of the USA.
     Those whom the media wish to destroy, they first accuse of not reading. I saw it said the other day that the US president (1) doesn't read, and (2) keeps a volume of [the failed, dead, genocidal political leader generally cited at moments like this]'s speeches in his bedside drawer. Have to admit that I'm as impressed at the investigative journalism  that went into bringing us item (2), as I am enjoying the idea of The Man Himself finding his way around a bookshop and either locating his book under H or ordering it from, I imagine, the idealistic young person at the counter. Trump's always been recognisable, hasn't he?
     This is no time to be losing confidence in the US. In his own terms, Trump's the CEO. He's not the owner, nor does he hold a majority stake. He's fulfilling his promises (literally), and to look at him, I'd say he's enjoying the job, the desk, the people (men) standing behind him while he gets to sit in the big chair. He's being decisive. And what he's stirring up is a whole lot of stakeholder engagement. We can work out what the President is going to do next, and no doubt somebody's already putting together a bound volume of his speeches. What I say is: watch what the system does next.

Implicit in the way we behave is the world we think we inhabit. Obvious, really. We're offended at behaviours that we think don't fit. So in our gender-friendly, non-discriminatory, equal-opportunity world, we're most offended by, say, crimes that suggest men and women don't get along happily together, or that non-indigenous ethnic groups aren't just like us really, or that some people are getting opportunities that others aren't.
     At my advanced age (even allowing for the likelihood that my age is the new ten years younger), this can look a little odd. A friend, a woman of roughly the same age as me, was describing a recent (perhaps current) case in which an elderly entertainer was being prosecuted for an (alleged) offence that amounted (my friend said) to putting a hand on the leg of a younger person. Now, we're all good at jumping to conclusions these days, so I needn't spell out that the elderly entertainer is male, although perhaps I should say that the younger person is female. My friend's point was that the alleged offence didn't seem to merit the attention it was getting.
     My friend and I are the new young, or perhaps the new middle-aged, and there is a long tradition of "in my day" views expressed by "you're not old!" people like us. But we talked more about the inflexibility of belief these days. Admittedly, we talked a little about that young scamp who's taken the White House and caused such a ruckus. And a little about the likely professional life of that elderly entertainer in his prime - performing in crowded studios, probably jostled by youngsters only too keen to get their hands on him and vice-versa. We did talk, at some length, about prosecuting the crimes of the past as a cheaper and easier alternative to investigating today's crimes for cash-strapped police forces.
     There's a moral hazard, we decided. But mostly, we talked about certainty. About how the now-rejected liberalism of the recent past can see no alternative - apparently asking "why can't they see we're right?" rather than "where did we go wrong?" - and about how much of the world believes in a world different from ours. And yet we stay rigid in our beliefs. We talked about how quickly and completely beliefs and morals, and attitudes change from generation to generation,
     Somewhere in this house, probably in a box, I have a mass-market paperback copy of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. There have been films, plays, television, radio dramas. It's a popular book. Story, anyway. My paperback, mass-market, popular, probably a bestseller, was published in the seventies, around the time the Apollo programme was shuttling people to the moon and back. Published in the seventies, not so long ago, under its original title.