How to Be Brave

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Bravery is a skill. I do not know if I have cultivated it in myself.

A young man sits today in a prison, awaiting a death sentence to be carried out, possibly this Friday. Ali Mohammed al-Nimr was arrested in 2012 when he was 16 or 17 years of age (both ages have been reported), making him a juvenile at the time of his arrest. He was arrested at a protest. His country is Saudi Arabia, and the protests in 2012 in other autocratic nations in that region had been effective in fostering change. At trial, he was not given access to the “evidence” amassed against him, in no small part because there was no such evidence. He was convicted, no joke, of stealing every gun and every uniform from a local police station, single-handed.
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A Love of Books

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

My girlfriend says it is like watching a kid in a candy store when we visit a book store. I suddenly appear to have multiple arms, like a Hindu deity, and my stride becomes a purposeful lurch.

Any purpose to my stride can be attributed to my knowing that she is not much of a fan of shopping at all, and less of a fan of browsing, of idling, in a store whose shelves are taller than six feet and could crush us.
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#OpNimr Strikes to #FreeNimr

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

As of September 28, today, Ali Mohammed al-Nimr‬ has not been beheaded by the justice system of Saudi Arabia.

Human rights activists have not relented in their campaign to somehow pry Ali from this fate, especially with the possibility that the week we are now in was added to his life.

And now hacktivists have stepped in to take action. Several websites in Saudi Arabia—including the site for the Ministry of Justice and the servers of the Saudi Computer Emergency Response Team—were knocked offline this weekend, and members of Anonymous and affiliated groups have revealed that they were behind the attacks on the websites.
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