"The Language Movement catalysed the assertion of Bengali national identity in Pakistan..."

"... and became a forerunner to Bengali nationalist movements, including the 6-point movement and subsequently the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. In Bangladesh, 21 February is observed as Language Movement Day, a national holiday."

Bangladesh is today's "History of" country.

Here is the monument to the Language Movement martyrs:

 

What was so important about language?

When the state of Pakistan was formed in 1947, its two regions, East Pakistan (also called East Bengal) and West Pakistan, were split along cultural, geographical, and linguistic lines. In 1948, the Government of Pakistan ordained Urdu as the sole national language, sparking extensive protests among the Bengali-speaking majority of East Pakistan. 

Would East and West Pakistan be one country today if the government hadn't been so hardcore about Urdu?

Great differences began developing between the two wings of Pakistan. While the west had a minority share of Pakistan's total population, it had the largest share of revenue allocation, industrial development, agricultural reforms and civil development projects. Pakistan's military and civil services were dominated by the fair-skinned, Persian-cultured Punjabis and Afghans. Only one regiment in the Pakistani Army was Bengali. And many Bengali Pakistanis could not share the natural enthusiasm for the Kashmir issue, which they felt was leaving East Pakistan more vulnerable and threatened as a result.

"In California, a war memorial cross that once stood on a rocky hilltop in a national park before being deemed unconstitutional and ordered removed was being resurrected..."

"... in the stunningly stark Mojave desert, marking the end of a longstanding legal dispute that had become entangled in patriotism and religion...."

The settlement approved by a federal judge in April permitted the Park Service to turn over the acre of land known as Sunrise Rock to a Veteran of Foreign Wars post in Barstow and the Veterans Home of California-Barstow in exchange for five acres of donated property elsewhere in the 1.6 million acre preserve, about a four-hour drive east of Los Angeles.

The donated land was owned by [Henry] Sandoz and his wife, Wanda, of Yucca Valley.

Sandoz has cared for the memorial as a promise to World War I veteran Riley Bembry, who with other shell-shocked vets went to the desert to help heal and erected a wooden cross on Sunrise Rock in 1934....

Sunrise Rock wasn't part of the Mojave National Preserve until 1994, putting the Christian symbol on public land. The ACLU brought its lawsuit in 2001.

Ahmadinejad's underlings in Manhattan go shopping at Payless, Costco, Walgreens and Duane Reade.

They love America... in the form of discount stores:

The two-term president was criticized at home for bringing an estimated 140 people along for his final UN speech as Iran’s leader.

“Many . . . have only traveled there for a picnic,” sniped Mansour Haghighatpour, deputy head of the parliamentary committee on national security.

The delegation insider disagreed, saying the guests wanted no part of jewelry stores, boutiques or high-end retailers — like the plush Lord & Taylor directly across Fifth Ave. from the Payless.

Instead, they preferred any drugstore where they could stock up on over-the-counter medication....

The cut-rate shopping sprees come despite an assortment of landmarks within walking distance of the hotel: Central Park, Rockefeller Center and Carnegie Hall... [But] the Iranian visitors did make sightseeing trips to one unlikely destination: The Statue of Liberty.

Unlikely? Really? Stores with shelves and shelves of cheap shoes and cheap Tylenol are a big thrill. Maybe not for you, but if it is for them, that says something about the liberty we take for granted.

"Less than a month after reopening, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is full of algae, a sea of green overshadowing the nearly two-year, $34 million renovation of the famous site."

"This is a direct consequence of the fact that this is a green project,” said spokeswoman Carol Johnson. “The conditions are pretty good for algae, once it gets in there.”

Visitors to the pool described it as similar to “split pea soup,” “muddy,” like the “surface of the moon” and “icky-looking.”

“It doesn’t look like a $34 million circulation job,” Jim Carroll, 85, of Wisconsin said as he looked out over the pool....

“It doesn’t reflect well on the city at all,” Carolyn Rossinsky, 49, of Miami said as she sat near the pool.

“It looks like green fluff,” she added.

You wanted green... and you got it.

"A chair is still a chair, even when there's no one sitting there...."

An old song, with new currency after the GOP convention. Here are the lyrics to "A House Is Not a Home," if you'd like to work on an election 2012 parody. And, by the way, Althouse is not a home.

IN THE COMMENTS: I was surprised to read Tyrone Slothrop's comment:

Tell me, Althouse, are you able to manipulate world events in order to provide fodder for your blog? Did Hal David pass away just to give you a segue to this post?

I didn't know Hal David had died the day this post went up. He was 91. I and maybe you thought: Burt Bachrach. But Bachrach wrote the music. "A chair is still a chair, even when there's no one sitting there" and many other memorable lyrics were written by Hal David.

I intended a comical reference to the Clint Eastwood incident, not anything mournful about an empty chair symbolizing death.

Remember the "Field Of Empty Chairs"?

Does a landlord have an ethical obligation to disclose that the previous tenant died in the apartment you're thinking of renting?

The NYT ethicist thinks the obligation is "seemingly obvious" or even "compulsory." He's responding to somebody who wasn't informed before signing the lease and now finds it "unsettling and slightly disturbing" to know that the previous tenant died. Of an overdose. Not a murder, just an overdose. A forgotten man slipped away through the portal to the beyond that exists within that rental unit... and everywhere else on the face of the earth.

This last week, we've been driving quite a distance across that face. Maybe an eyelid's expanse of earth-face. Much of the eyelid has been Montana, where the Montana American Legion has been carrying out its White Cross Highway Fatality Marker Program since 1953.

The unique idea of marking fatal traffic accident sites with a white cross was the brain child of Floyd Eaheart, a member of the American Legion Hellgate Post #27, Missoula, Montana; after six lives were lost in the Missoula area over the 1952 Labor Day Holiday. The safety program started out as a county and later district project for the Missoula American Legion Post. However, the idea was so good that it was soon adopted as a statewide program. The Montana Highway Commission (now Department of Transportation) approved the program in January 1953, with the blessing of the then 13th governor of Montana, J. Hugo Aronson (the Galloping Swede)....

The program is intended as a highway safety, not a memorial program.  Still, many families place wreaths or other decorations on the white crosses, which may be considered a memorial to a loved one lost in an accident.  Obstruction of the white cross with these decorations defeats the purpose of the safety program.  

You appropriate an individual's death for your message of traffic safety, with the state's approval, and you don't like when the people who loved that person pile on a message of their own. Either it's a speech forum, where viewpoint discrimination is banned or it's the state's own speech, and it's an Establishment Clause violation (unless the courts say it's not).

The white crosses serve as a public service message, reminding drivers to “Please Drive Carefully.”  They are a sobering reminder of a fatal traffic accident, a place where a human being lost his/her life....

Not all highway fatalities are marked.  Due to a federal ruling, white crosses are not allowed along interstate highways.

Here's some discussion of the case. I don't see what the interstate has to do with it. The Constitution applies off the off ramp. But the crosses are all over the place in Montana, reminding us where people have died. How unsettled the skittish NYT reader might feel, driving in Montana, knowing about all that death. Or perhaps it's soothing to see so few doorways to oblivion have opened up in the years since 1953. Half a century has gone by and yet there are long spaces on the road that have never swallowed a human being. Often you can traverse an entire eyelash on the face of the earth without seeing a white cross.

Seeing the white crosses, I wonder about the places where there has been death. What if you could — everywhere — see who (and what) has ever died on that spot. How covered with death would the earth be? I'm blogging in the breakfast room of a Holiday Inn Express in Bismarck, North Dakota. Am I sitting on a dinosaur carcass?

Does chalking count as graffiti?

"A Virginia mom charged with vandalism must serve 50 hours of community service after she let her 4-year-old daughter draw on rocks with chalk."

But when it comes to vandalism, Ralph White, park manager for the James River Park System in Richmond, says “it’s all the same thing.”

“A couple of weeks ago, I was covering over pornographic drawings done in chalk,” White told WWBT. “It doesn’t matter what the medium is. It’s offensive.”

If you're going to ticket for the porn chalking, you have to ticket for kid's scribbles. Otherwise, it's viewpoint discrimination.

Previously on this blog: Confronting the chalking "Workers of the World Unite" on a Civil War monument.

"This is probably one of the most obnoxious things I've ever seen."

"After my ears stop bleeding from the music, and my eyes stop bleeding from this hot mess of silly text and bad editing maybe I can find words for how loathsome I find this."

If this couple had wanted some weird busy-body taking pictures, I'm pretty sure they would have hired a photographers for the big moment. Now they're on YouTube because some hillbilly thinks they have a viral video on their hands.

Gladys Kravitz, please just close the curtain and go sit on the sofa....

Well, one thing is for certain. It is NOT a picture of a proposal.... This is a scam for publicity.

Ha ha. I love when I think something is bullshit and the comments are already there calling bullshit.

UPDATE: "It wasn't a proposal."

The veterans monument and the giant bunny statue.

"When the veterans want to do something, we allow them to do those things. Why can't the town of Dedham put the bunnies that show the spirit of Dedham where they want to go?"

Memorial Day.

The architect Frank Gehry — responding to complaints — changes his design for the Eisenhower Memorial.

The NYT reports:

Yet Mr. Gehry then went on to present changes that mainly affect the memorial’s bas-relief sculptures — changing them to three-dimensional statues – and did not alter the most controversial element. “I still believe that the sculpture of Eisenhower as a young man looking out on his future accomplishments is a powerful image,” Mr. Gehry wrote....

The image of Eisenhower as a young man is based on remarks he made in 1945 upon his return from World War II to his hometown of Abilene, Kan., where he referred to himself as having once been “a barefoot boy.” There is also a photograph at that age that Mr. Gehry said he drew upon.

From the Dwight D. Eisenhower website:

Even by the standard of the day, the Eisenhower home on southeast Fourth Street in Abilene, Kansas, was small, modest, and-with six growing boys underfoot-crowded....

From their mother, Ida, Dwight and his brothers learned to cook, clean, iron, and sew. On Sunday, the boys were responsible for family meals entirely. David, their father, worked long hours as a refrigeration engineer at nearby Belle Springs Creamery. Still, there was never money enough. Ida recycled David's old clothes for the boys. To his embarrassment, Dwight sometimes had to wear his mother's old high-top, buttoned shoes to school or go barefoot. To earn money for extras, the Eisenhower boys grew and sold vegetables, door to door. For variety, they peddled hot tamales from their mother's Texas recipe.

One year ago today at the Wisconsin protests: A communist slogan on a civil war monument.

And an explanation of why "tea bagger" is "homophobic." The video is long, but it cracks me up every time, especially around 6 minutes in, when the guy with the Scott-Walker-as-Marie-Antoinette sign says, with disbelief, "homophobic?!!"

One year ago at the Wisconsin protests: Protesters redirect hopes to the Wisconsin Supreme Court election.

"April 5, keep hope alive, vote Kloppenburg."

I photographed damage done to the door plates and hinges by the protesters.

And the Smithsonian sends a curator to Madison to select protests signs "to document, in general, occasions when American citizens interact with their government and petition... for change."

And Meade removes another war monument desecration — the "Solidarity" T-shirt on the Heg statue.

I do my "won — duh! — in the rotunda" poem.

One year ago today at the Wisconsin protests: Meade is attacked by a mob.

This is one of the more disturbing of the videos we recorded last year. Meade was protectively standing by a woman, a Walker supporter, who went into the big anti-Walker crowd at the Capitol to stand with a sign that read "Public workers don't need collective bargaining." At first the woman is confronted, and eventually Meade asks some questions and people turn to him.

I'll start you off a couple minutes in, but feel free to scroll back to an earlier point so you can see how this ugliness develops. Stay for the very end, where an old woman gets up in Meade's face and says "You are a person against all of us. The whole nation is looking at you."



How thoroughly awful and creepy these people were! I hadn't watched this video since I edited it, but I just watched it now. How terrible people were! And I was just reading John Nichols book, "Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street." He assures readers that media talk of thuggery was a lie:

Yes, of course, talk radio’s Rush Limbaugh would condemn the marches and rallies by Wisconsin workers, farmers, teachers, and students as “thuggery,” “mob-ocracy” and “an anti-democratic movement.” Dismissing the protesters as “union thugs,” Limbaugh ridiculed “the same old traditional argument; the rights of working people are being trampled on,” as if the fact that the rights of working people were being trampled on, and had been trampled on for a long time, was rendered irrelevant by the mere use of the term “union thugs.” 

Page 22.

It was not uncommon during the course of 2011 to hear protests by middle-class families and prim-and-proper students dismissed as gatherings “of filthy hippies,” “criminals” and “union thugs.” The truth is quickly sacrificed by those who fear the numbers and the message of protesters against a corrupt status quo.

Page 160.

But there were thugs. Going downtown in our own city to see what was happening, Meade was surrounded by thugs. Watch that video and see how the mob creates its own energy and attains a righteous belief that it can designate a human being as "a person against all of us." And, as we learned later, it was just the previous day that a vicious mob had surrounded GOP state senator Glenn Grothman.

People were losing their humanity:

I see some people descending into irrationality — beginning to form a cultish mentality that demonizes outsiders.... [W]hen they perceive that Meade isn't one of them they flip... into fear. Meade had been trying to talk to them rationally about why the pro-Walker woman might not want to debate her ideas in that setting, and instead of seeing Meade as a citizen who's finding out what's going on and helping 2 women who are surrounded and outnumbered, they spread their "plant" theory. And it's not just a theory. They know he's a plant. 

But he's not a plant. He's a human being. An individual human being. And so are all the protesters, but I fear they are losing their grip on that reality.

Later, Meade defends a monument.

A year ago today at the Wisconsin protests — 100,000 people marched around the Capitol in the snow.

Meade and I walked against the flow of the crowd so we could photograph a lot of faces, and I edited his video down to 10 minutes, that included a huge union presence, a man dressed as a rich man declaiming "In the old days, we knew how to deal with peasants!... Burn you like marshmallows!," ladies who harass me for blocking their view of some people in "Star Wars" outfits, the voice of Peter Yarrow, a protester complaining that Obama's not there, and a view into the soul of a puppet. [More of Yarrow here.]

Inside the Capitol, I made use of my fisheye lens.

We checked back at the Veterans Memorial, where, the day before, the protesters had promised us they were going to clear their signs and things away from the memorial.



"The signs were off the memorial, but, as you can see, the junk was still piled against it, and Meade had a long talk with them — and the Capitol Police — about it. The protesters were very polite and circumspect, even as they fell back on the argument that they thought it was enough to take down the signs — and that they'd thought, yesterday, that it was enough to tape the signs only on the back of the monument. The assertion was made, as it was yesterday, that people can't tell from the back that it's a war monument."

ADDED: Here's the edited video of our return to the Veterans Monument.

Also, I traced the timeline of the protests to date and believed that there was "this slowly tightening cordon will effectively accomplish the end of the occupation at 4 p.m. this afternoon."

And, on this short video, Meade questions a man with a sign that reads "Egypt, Libya/Madison, Wisconsin/Civil Unrest Is Best." The conversation ends when the man leans over to Meade and says "Get your head fucked." There's also a cute (but cold) doggie at the end."

"Make the pie higher!"

Said George Bush, that one time. I quoted him, with fondness and enthusiasm, when I saw this high pie in the bakery window.



So we got a couple slices of pie and cups of black coffee and went over to the seating area, which looked like this:



Forget it. It's Madison. Enlarge to read. Read and laugh or weep or whatever. The pie wasn't even that good. The decor was flaky but the crust was not. It was rubbery, and the forks were made from super-thin plastic. Not a workable combination.

In a glass case, there was this National Organization for Women display:



"Let's support children who do exist." Oh, that reminds me. The great atheist Richard Dawkins acknowledges that God might exist. In that spirit, shouldn't pro-choice people acknowledge that children in the womb might exist? But the big question, in both cases, is: What are you going to do about it?

ADDED: In the photo with me holding a cup of coffee, the sign right above "Kill the Bill!" says "Info Station/location/West Gallery/2nd Floor/(Behind the Flags)." That's directing you to the display that disrespected the Veterans Memorial, which was the subject of last night's "A year ago today at the Wisconsin protests.". The video at that post begins with the flags referred to on that sign. It continues with a defense from the protesters that because they are using the back of the monument: "If you take a picture of this, you can't tell its a war memorial." But the sign directing folks to the "Info Station" said look for the flags.

A year ago today at the Wisconsin protests — signs and piles of personal belongings everywhere, even on the Veterans Memorial.

In the early morning hours, Democrats filibustered, and then Republicans suddenly, quickly took a vote, enraging the Democrats, who shout "Shame! Shame!"

Meade and I arrived at the Capitol midday, and I'm stunned at the signs taped everywhere, many more than there had been before. There are pillows and sleeping bags and other things piled up, and many people are sitting or lying on the floor.



As we walk around on the first floor, we find some protesters have pushed a table loaded with junk up against the back of the Veterans Memorial and have taped their various notices to the back of it and piled stuff up around its base. Meade insists that they move their table and take down those signs and tells them they are hurting their own cause by disrespecting the monument, and instead of simply apologizing, they defend their actions — they're using the back of the monument, and they are passionate about their cause — even as those who died in wars were passionate. Here's the 9-minute video, which were, for us, among the tensest moments of the protests:

Pictures of Austin, Texas.

Bicycle wheel chandelier at the Bouldin Creek Café:



Masculine fashions:



In the Spider House Café:



On Lady Bird Lake, a monument to the homeless...



... and a monument to Stevie Ray Vaughan (who died in a helicopter crash in Wisconsin):



Barton Springs:



Reflection in the Japanese garden:



At the Cherrywood Coffeehouse... outside....



... and inside:

25 most-watched Althouse/Meade videos of 2011.

1. Wisconsin Capitol protesters disrespect the Veterans Memorial. 66,919 views.

2. Wisconsin protesters get children to chant. 37,011 views.

3. Gov. Scott Walker compared to Hitler. 28,944 views.

4. 14-Year-Old Girl at Tea Party Rally in Madison Drowned Out by Chants and Boos. 26,219 views.

5. First-hand View of the Attack on Althouse at the Wisconsin Capitol Singalong. 25,674 views.

6. Attack on Althouse at the Wisconsin Capitol Singalong. 24,054 views.

7. Protest at the Wisconsin Capitol, Saturday, Part 15. 15,359 views. (Doctors give excuse notes to protesters.)

8. Protesters re-take the Wisconsin Capitol. 12,111 views.

9. Sarah Palin in Madison, Wisconsin. 11,766 views.

10. Anti-Scott Walker protesters get aggressive. 11,657 views.

11. A Class War Is Coming. 10,668 views.

12. Scraping the Stickers and Tape Off the Wisconsin Capitol Marble. 10,502 views.

13. Meade washes communist graffiti off a Madison Civil War monument. 9,375 views.

14. The Silent Majority Walk and the Naked Bike Ride. 6,697 views.

15. Protest at the Wisconsin Capitol, Saturday, Part 12. 6,639 views. (I question a woman who yells about "teabagging.")

16. Althouse and Meade return to the Veterans Memorial at the Wisconsin Capitol protest. 6,217 views.

17. Russ Feingold stirs up the Walkerville crowd. 5,639 views.

18. At the Wisconsin protests: "Hang them all!" 5,007 views.

19. 6 Questions About the Kloppenburg-Prosser Election. 4,852 views.

20. JoAnne Kloppenburg Asks For a Recount of the April 5 Wisconsin Supreme Court election. 4,472 views.

21. Meade Is New Media. 4,087 views.

22. Madison city salt trucks circle Capitol Square blowing horns in apparent solidarity with protesters. 3,992 views.

23. Politicizing the Wisconsin Supreme Court Election. 3,510 views.

24. 2 teachers protest outside the window of Wisconsin State Senator Glenn Grothman. 3,781 views.

25. A Free-Speech Countervoice Takes the Center of the Wisconsin Capitol Rotunda. 3,643 views.

"Unbuilt Washington."

The ziggurat that might have been the Lincoln Monument, the gigantic enlargement of the White House, the Kennedy Center that looks like Monona Terrace, the National Sofa... yes, the National Sofa:

In response to the closing of Pennsylvania Avenue — the first of many hysterical security measures since the Oklahoma City bombing and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — Allegro and Michel envisioned a wide, arching “sofa” in front of the White House, with a giant video screen giving visitors an insider’s peek into the executive mansion.