800 Lashes for Ashraf Fayadh

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Earlier today, a court in Abha, Saudi Arabia, announced that it has retracted its November 2015 death sentence for the poet Ashraf Fayadh and exchanged it for a sentence of eight years in prison and 800 lashes with a cane. He must also make a public statement of repentance.

This new sentence appears to switch his conviction from one of apostasy, or renouncing his religion, to one of blasphemy, insulting that religion and its leaders. According to the web site Arabic Literature (in English), the charge of “inappropriate relations with the opposite gender” still stands. These “relations” were photos of Fayadh standing next to women in art galleries at exhibitions he curated. The photos were in his cell phone and on his Instagram account because they were appropriate, not salacious, and not worth noticing. In Saudi Arabia’s strict Wahhabi form of Islam, however, this is inappropriate contact with the opposite gender and worthy of legal remedy.
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Confessions of an Iowa Caucus Voter

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The Iowa Caucus will be held Monday night. I was a caucus voter one presidential election, in 2004, so my experience that long-ago January night can perhaps illustrate what we will see unfold next week.

* * * *
Gephardt was down. He was not going to get a vote from our precinct. In the game of three-dimensional chess that is politics, I could see how this was going to be bad for my candidate. I needed to act. Gephardt needed a vote, because it would help my candidate, and that vote needed to not be me. I sprung into action …
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A Thank-You Note to Pete Seeger

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

In 1996, in my then-job of assistant editor at a weekly newspaper, I awarded myself the title of music reviewer for a single issue and attended a concert given at a local high school by Pete Seeger, who died two years ago today at age 94. (Our newspaper’s actual music reviewer was only interested in attending and writing about rock concerts. That was a stroke of luck for me.) I wrote a review, knowing full well that a review is not what one writes regarding a Pete Seeger concert. An appreciation. A thank-you note. But not a mere review judging aesthetic merits.

It was a great concert, by the way.
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