normblog

Songs of California

[The series and its rules are explained here, where you will also find links to the songs for the other states.]

5:1. California Here I Come: 'Open up that Golden Gate / California here I come'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:2. California Girls: 'I wish they all could be California girls'. (1, 2.)

5:3. Leonard: 'When Leonard finally came to California'. (1.)

5:4. Hotel California: 'Plenty of room at the Hotel California'. (1, 2.)

5:5. Route 66: 'When you take that California trip'. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5.)

5:6. The Lady Is A Tramp: 'Hate California, it's cold and it's damp'. (1, 2 three minutes in, 3.)

5:7. Me And Bobby McGee: 'From the Kentucky coal mines to the California sun'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:8. If We Make It Through December: 'Got plans to be in a warmer town come summer time / Maybe even California'. (1, 2.)

5:9. Promised Land: 'California on my mind'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:10. Stop In Nevada: 'Now she's headin' out to California'. (1, 2.)

5:11. Do Re Mi: 'California is a garden of Eden'. (1, 2.)

5:12. Ford Econoline: 'She drove west from Salt Lake City to the California coastline'. (1, 2.)

5:13. Take Me: 'And it would be just like spring in California / As long as I knew you were mine'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:14. California: 'California's been good to me'. (1, 2.)

5:15. Hard Times in New York Town: 'I'll take all the smog in Cal-i-for-ne-ay'. (1, 2.)

5:16. Lone Star State Of Mind: 'Sippin' the California wine'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:17. California Dreaming: 'California dreaming / On such a winter's day'. (1, 2.)

5:18. I'm A Ramblin' Man: 'I've played in California'. (1, 2.)

5:19. California: 'But I'm used to four seasons / California's got but one'. (1.)

5:20. Tangerine: 'She's a tangerine / Made in California'. (1, 2.)

5:21. Get Back: '... for some California Grass'. (1, 2.)

5:22. Leroy's Dustbowl Blues: 'They say California is a paradise'. (1.)

5:23. Illinois: 'South California / Your sun is too cold'. (1, 2.)

5:24. Boston: 'I'll get out of California, I'm tired of the weather'. (1, 2.)

5:25. California Man: 'I'm a California man'. (1, 2.)

5:26. Northfield - The Plan: 'Cole, bring Jim back from California'. (1.)

5:27. The Heart Of California: 'Yeah the heart of California's / Haulin hard times again'. (1.)

5:28. There Oughta Be A Law Against Sunny Southern California. (1.)

5:29. California Uber Alles. (1, 2, 3.)

5:30. This Land Is Your Land: 'From California, to the New York Island'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:31. California Soul. (1, 2.)

5:32. Call Me The Breeze: 'I might go out to California'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:33. Do It Again: 'The California girls and a beautiful coastline'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:34. California Sun: 'In that warm California sun. (1, 2, 3, 4.)

5:35. Surfin' USA: 'Then everybody'd be surfin' / Like Californi-a'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:36. Hold on: 'She went and took that California trip'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:37. Orange Blossom Special: 'Or maybe Californy'. (1, 2, 3, 4 two minutes in.)

5:38. Rock 'n Me: 'Northern California where the girls are warm'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:39. It Never Rains In Southern California. (1, 2, 3.)

5:40. Hard Times in New York Town: 'I'll take all the smog in Cal-i-for-ne-ay'. (1, 2.)

5:41. Tulsa Time: 'I was goin' on to Arizona, maybe on to California'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:42. Kids In America: 'New York to East California'. (1, 2.)

5:43. Rosalita: 'I know a pretty little place in Southern California down San Diego way'. (1, 2.)

5:44. Gold: 'When the lights go down in the California town'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:45. Tennessee Plates: 'Since I left California, baby, things have gotten worse'. (1, 2.)

5:46. Sweet Home Chicago: 'Back to the land of California'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:47. California Zephyr: 'To California's golden shore'. (1, 2.)

5:48. See America Right: 'If we never make it back to California / I want you to know I love you'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:49. You're my Home: 'High up in the hills of California'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:50. If We'd All Been Living In California: 'If we'd all been living in California / We wouldn't have worked at all'. (1.)

5:51. Dani California: 'California, rest in peace'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:52. Country Boy Can Survive: 'We're from North California and south Alabam'. (1, 2, 3, 4.)

5:53. New England: 'I have been out west to Californ'. (1, 2.)

5:54. The Beaches Of Cheyenne: 'Their dreams that they'd been livin' / In the California sand'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:55. Back In The USA: 'From the coast of California to the shores of Delaware Bay'. (1, 2, 3, 4.)

5:56. Bobbie's Gone: 'Bobbie's gone to California / I won't see her anymore'. (1.)

5:57. The Alley Song: 'And he told me go to California'. (1, 2.)

5:58. Tar Top: 'California, New York too'. (1, 2.)

5:59. Wanted Man: 'Wanted man in California'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:60. The Old Man No One Loves: 'His daughter owns a bank in California'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:61. L.A. County: 'She left Dallas for California'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:62. If I Were The Man You Wanted: 'So if you're going out to California'. (1.)

5:63. The Beaches of Cheyenne: 'And all the dreams that they'd been livin' / In the California sand'. (1, 2.)

5:64. If It Ain't Dixie: 'And the lights of San Francisco / On a California night'. (1.)

5:65. (I'm Spending) Hanukkah In Santa Monica: 'Amid the California flora / I'll be lighting my menorah'. (1, 2.)

5:66. Leaving West Virginia: 'And I'm headin' out that California way'. (1, 2.)

5:67. Speedway At Nazareth: 'I drove Long Beach, California with three cracked vertebrae'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:68. When The Morning Comes: 'California's callin'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:69. California Saga: 'On my way to sunny California'. (1, 2 - six and a half minutes in - 3.)

5:70. California Love: 'California knows how to party'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:71. Hollywood's Not America: 'She moved west to California'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:72. Talk To Me Of Mendocino: 'Rise up over the Rockies and down on into California'. (1, 2, 3.)

5:73. Tape From California: 'But I'll send you a tape from California'. (1, 2, 3, 4.)

5:74. Sign On The Window: 'Her and her boyfriend went to California'. (1, 2, 3.)

Does a nation's sovereignty allow it to destroy its own people?

That question heads a piece by Nat Hentoff in the Village Voice, on Zimbabwe and Sudan. I urge you to read it.

Amnesty International, raising its voice back on April 25 against the storm that was gathering even before the election, declared: "The actions taken by the police today are unacceptable. The Zimbabwean police must stop harassing political and human rights activists immediately and act to protect victims of post-election violence."

To whom are Mugabe's atrocities "unacceptable?" The United Nations, of course, is useless, as it has been for five horrifying years in Darfur. The members of the African Union confer among themselves, with only Tanzania and Zambia being openly troubled. South Africa's president, Thabo Mbeki - still the main negotiator on Zimbabwe - calmly said, in the days before Mugabi's government unleashed its scorched-earth approach to the runoff: "It's just an election. I see no crisis there." Now Mbeki admits there may be one—but he remains as ineffective as U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Meanwhile, some of Mugabe's terrorists are preening about their success in intimidating opponents of the deadly regime before the June 27 runoff.

Hentoff doesn't explicitly answer that question about what sovereignty allows. But we already know the answer. It shouldn't allow such destruction, as a matter not only of morality but also of international law. But too often it does allow the most blatant violation of every fundamenatal principle of both morality and law. Nothing happens. The 'realists' tut tut. (Thanks: KS.)

Lawless George

True to his word, George Monbiot yesterday tried to make the citizen's arrest he said he would, but failed in the attempt. The Hay Festival organizers had taken legal advice beforehand and were told - just as I had surmised - that the arrest would be 'completely unlawful'.

Nothing daunted, Monbiot has expressed a desire to see his initiative followed up. He might like to try arresting Clare Short. But, my, doesn't he have a flexible attitude to the rule of law? Effecting an arrest, even if it's unlawful to do so, that's a grave matter, a matter of conscience perhaps, a duty; getting rid of a torturing, murdering, blood-spattered tyrant - no way; it violates national sovereignty, don't you know?

Power to the Tower

The Leaning Tower of Pisa may continue to lean without any harm befalling it, or befalling those nearby from its (b)falling on them. It can do this for another 300 years at least - which is a matter for celebration.

Live questions in literature

Jonathan Taylor writes:

Ideas that literature might encompass the "human condition", that literature might be a force for good, that there's such a thing as great literature and that literature speaks to us as individuals are all dead and gone.

He's writing about the state of affairs in literature departments. I'm not too clued up on this subject, and it's possible that he's exaggerating. But if he isn't, it's bad news. There's got to be something wrong with the condition of the study of literature if the theses he formulates above are now considered dead. Taylor puts this down to the influences of 'feminism, Marxism, poststructuralism and new historicism'; and he sees some hope in the study of 'creative writing' which gives legitimacy again to questions like these:

"How is this fictional character rounded, three-dimensional, realistic?", "What are the choices facing this character?", "What does this character's story tell me about the human condition?"

The approach is called by Taylor 'liberal humanist'. More strength to its elbow - if a thing like humanism can have an elbow. But speaking for the type of Marxism I think I have some understanding of, it's not clear to me why a Marxist approach to literature should disqualify either these questions or the theses (on the human condition and such) that I began by quoting here. Marxists who don't admit to there being a human condition, or individuals, or who don't know how explanation of one level of human existence by reference to another level of it can still leave the first level independently intact, weren't reading intelligently when they read Marx.

Passing Motion 25 (by Eve Garrard)

Yesterday I attended the University and College Union's annual congress, where a motion encouraging a boycott of Israel was debated. The union leadership were at great pains to say this wasn't a boycott motion, and it's true that the motion didn't use the word 'boycott': but it called on members to consider the moral and political implications of collaborating with Israeli academics; it asked them to discuss the occupation with those colleagues; it claimed that most Israeli academics are 'complicit' in the conflict; it mentioned that criticism of Israel isn't anti-Semitic 'as such', while ignoring the fact that the proposed measures are not a matter of criticism but of ostracism and punishment; and it raised the question of the appropriateness of continued educational links with Israeli academic institutions. Legal advice on this motion, taken by the Jewish community's Stop the Boycott campaign, has said that it amounts to a call to discuss a boycott of Israeli academics which risks violating the Race Relations Act, and the General Secretary implicitly acknowledged this when she said that the union would implement matters within the law. So it looked to me, and to all the other anti-boycotters I spoke to, exactly like a motion encouraging people to consider a boycott.

Motion 25 was passed, by a huge majority. There was a real, palpable desire in the meeting to take some action against Israel. An otherwise rather somnolent audience woke up at the first mention of Palestine, and applauded every suggestion that action should be taken against Israel. A congress which had just passed very moderate motions on Burma and Zimbabwe and Sudan, about solidarity with trade unions and asylum seekers, and putting pressure on governments, quite clearly felt that these measures weren't sufficient for Israel's crimes: that for Israeli academics, nothing but punishment would do.

At first the discussion was procedurally unexceptionable - both sides of a debate were permitted on an amendment which called, among other things, for the motion to be put to a ballot of the whole membership. This amendment was voted on and rejected - the majority of union delegates didn't want to give the membership of the union the opportunity to choose for themselves on this issue. But when Motion 25 itself was proposed and seconded, several delegates spoke in favour of it - and then it was moved that it be put to the vote. None of the people who wanted to speak directly against the motion were permitted to do so. However, the motion's proposer, Tom Hickey, was at this point allowed by the Chair to speak in favour of it again. No explanation or justification was provided for halting the debate before anyone could speak against the motion, while allowing its proposer to speak twice. I have to say, though, that in my opinion even if the debate had been conducted in an impeccably proper manner, it would have made very little difference: that audience really did want to vote against Israel.

This measure will discriminate against Israeli academics, and will impinge quite disproportionately on Jewish academics here in the UK. Most of them do not support any academic boycott against Israel, nor the de-legitimization of Jewish nationalism and of Israel's existence; and many of them want to work in collaboration with Israeli colleagues. Whether or not the procedures mandated by the motion are actually implemented is a matter on which the union executive will decide, but in some ways the damage is already done - the vote has normalized discrimination, the union leadership has made no effort to address, or to get Congress to address, the relevance and implications of anti-discrimination law in the UK, and if the policy isn't ultimately implemented the membership will be encouraged to think that some inappropriate force has pressured the union to drop it. So whatever now happens, the motion's supporters have achieved one thing: they have exacerbated the sense of isolation and alienation in the union felt by those who, even though they may strongly criticize some of Israel's policies and practices, sympathize with her often terrible problems, see the need for her existence, and wish her well. Their sense that the union is not a friendly environment, that it is ultimately a hostile place for people like them, will have materially increased as a result of today's activities by their union colleagues.

Because motion 25 was passed, I now belong to a union which is trying to discriminate against those of its Jewish members who don't think it's right to single the Jewish state out for punishment over and above far worse polities, or that it's right to hold it, and it alone, wholly responsible for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I spent yesterday afternoon sitting in a room with a large group of otherwise unobjectionable people, knowing that the great majority of them want in practice to discriminate against their Jewish colleagues. It wasn't a pleasant experience. (Eve Garrard)

Abuse of trust

The most recent reports of peace and aid workers sexually abusing children is extremely disturbing. As representatives of Save the Children have said, 'It is hard to imagine a more egregious abuse of authority or a clearer violation of the humanitarian values that these organisations espouse.' And the news is all the more alarming for the fact that, though only a very small number of peacekeepers and aid workers is involved, the practice is said by one spokesman to be general across the organizations involved.

There seems to be a determination now to do something about this situation:

In its report, Save the Children UK makes three key recommendations: establish a way for people to report abuse locally, create an international watchdog agency this year to deal with the problem, and set up a program to deal with the underlying causes of child abuse.

But the various items I've linked to say little about prosecuting the perpetrators of sex abuse. In the report on the problem [pdf] just released by Save the Children, there are these remarks:

Local authorities can feel powerless to act against an international actor. In particular, local authorities struggle to pursue foreign perpetrators who leave the country before they can be prosecuted or even accused... This is compounded by existing obstacles in the international legal system that limit the possibility of successfully prosecuting a perpetrator once he has left the country. Furthermore, should the authorities in the country to which the perpetrator has moved choose to take action against them it is often made difficult by the lack of evidence readily available.

Prosecution has surely got to be a key feature of any attempt to reduce the incidence of abuse by peace and aid workers. Disciplining and firing the perpetrators doesn't meet the seriousness of the case - or of the offence. There's a principle of law - the active nationality principle - that gives a state jurisdiction over its nationals when they have committed a crime, whether that crime was committed within the territory of the state concerned or somewhere else. The threat of serious punishment needs to be central to the action now recommended, if it isn't already.

Grappling for students

It's 'another step in the evolution of egalitarian thinking'. And it's also a way of attracting students to small colleges in the US. What is it? Women's wrestling.

Lucky at work

Tim Birkhead reminds his fellow academics what's good about doing the job they do. Not that it's a reminder I ever felt in need of, but what he says makes good sense. Is it well-balanced? Mostly. Except he forgot one thing on the dark side.

Songs of Arkansas

[The series and its rules are explained here, where you will also find links to the songs for the other states.]

4:1. Ben McCulloch: 'We fell back to the Boston Mountains in the North of Arkansas'. (1, 2.)

4:2. Little Rock 'n' Roller: 'Now I'm in a truck stop somewhere on the Arkansas line'. (1, 2.)

4:3. That's Right: 'Up in Arkansas they're fair'. (1, 2.)

4:4. Tennessee Stud: 'And I never would have gotten through the Arkansas mud / If I hadn't been a-ridin that Tennessee stud'. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5.)

4:5. Bears: 'Some folks say there ain't no bears in Arkansas'. (1, 2.)

4:6. Tom Ames' Prayer: 'How they nearly hung me for stealin' a horse in Fort Smith, Arkansas'. (1, 2.)

4:7. Gypsy Lou: 'Last I heard she's in Arkansas'. (1.)

4:8. The Arkansas Traveler: 'Oh, once upon a time in Arkansas'. (1, 2, 3.)

4:9. Arkansas Traveler. (1.)

4:10. Caledonia Mission: 'Inside the mission walls / Down in Modark, Arkansas'. (1.)

4:11. What'd I Say: 'Tell your mama, tell your pa / I'm gonna send you back to Arkansas'. (1, 2, 3.)

4:12. Mary Queen of Arkansas: 'Mary queen of Arkansas, it's not too early for dreamin'. (1.)

4:13. Fire On The Mountain: 'Two little Indians, one old squaw / Sitting on a rock in Arkansas'. (1, 2.)

4:14. Banjo Pickin' Girl: 'I'm goin' to Arkansas, baby mine'. (1, 2.)

4:15. Terraplane Blues: 'I got a woman that I'm lovin' / Way down in Arkansas'. (1, 2, 3.)

4:16. Southern Comfort: 'Ah-um Arkansas Ah-um Abilene'. (1.)

4:17. Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego: 'Well they never Arkansas her steal the Mekong from the jungle'. (1, 2.)

4:18. Nashville Blues: 'I'm going back to Arkansas'. (1, 2.)

4:19. Moonshine Whiskey: 'She's my Texas sweetheart / Part from Arkansas'. (1, 2.)

4:20. Home: 'Alabama, Arkansas, I do love my ma and pa'. (1, 2, 3.)

4:21. Arkansas: 'Oh oh oh oh, Arkansas'. (1, 2, 3, 4.)

4:22. Going To Tennessee: 'I can see Arkansas from where I am'. (1.)

4:23. When Electricity Came To Arkansas. (1, 2, 3.)