Only a dickwad could look at Gabby Douglas’s performance and criticize her hair!

#NBC (National Boys’ Club) FAIL!
Sexist FAIL
Patriarchy FAIL

And in spite of their relentless sexism misogyny, in spite of the obstacles placed in our way…
GIRLS AND WOMEN STILL ASPIRE, ACCOMPLISH, AND EXCEL!

21 Years Later, Aung San Suu Kyi Receives Her Nobel Peace Prize
By STEVEN ERLANGER

OSLO — When she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, while under house arrest in Myanmar, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said Saturday, she realized that the Burmese “were not going to be forgotten.”

When the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded her the prize, she said in her Nobel lecture here on Saturday, 21 years later, it was recognition that “the oppressed and the isolated in Burma were also a part of the world, they were recognizing the oneness of humanity.” But “it did not seem quite real, because in a sense I did not feel myself to be quite real at that time,” she said. “The Nobel Peace Prize opened up a door in my heart.”

She said the prize “had made me real once again; it had drawn me back into the wider human community,” and it had given the oppressed people of Burma, now Myanmar, and its dispersed refugees, new hope. “To be forgotten,” Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi added, “is to die a little.” In a quiet, throaty voice on Saturday she asked the world not to forget other prisoners of conscience, both in Myanmar and around the world, other refugees, others in need, who may be suffering twice over, she said, from oppression and from the larger world’s “compassion fatigue.”

It was a remarkable moment for the slight Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who turns 67 next week and is now a member of Parliament and the leader of Myanmar’s opposition. She dressed in shades of purple and lavender, her hair adorned with flowers. It is a gesture she makes in honor of her father, Gen. Aung San, an independence hero of Burma, who was assassinated in 1947, when she was 2, but whom she remembers threading flowers through her hair.

The audience in Oslo’s City Hall, which included the Norwegian royal family, listened raptly, applauding often, standing to clap when Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi entered the hall and when she finished her speech, which was at the same time modest, personal and touching, an appeal to find practical ways to reduce the inextinguishable suffering of the world. “Suffering degrades, embitters and enrages,” she said. “War is not the only arena where peace is done to death.”

Absolute peace is an unattainable goal, she said. “But it is one towards which we must continue to journey, our eyes fixed on it as a traveler in a desert fixes his eyes on the one guiding star that will lead him to salvation.”

She had thought much on the Buddhist idea of “dukkha,” or suffering, in her long years of isolation and house arrest, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi said. “If suffering were an unavoidable part of our existence, we should try to alleviate it as far as possible in practical, earthly ways.”

One crucial avenue, she said, was simple kindness. “Of the sweets of adversity, and let me say that those are not numerous, I have found the sweetest, the most precious of all, is the lesson I learned on the value of kindness,” she said, with a rare shred of humor. “Every kindness I received, small or big, convinced me that there could never be enough of it in the world.” Kindness, she said, “can change the lives of people.”

Her comments on Myanmar were careful but considered. She called for national reconciliation and cease-fire agreements between the government and “ethnic nationality forces,” which she said she hoped would “lead to political settlements founded on the aspirations of the peoples, and the spirit of the nation.”

“In my own country,” she said, “hostilities have not ceased in the far north,” and “to the west, communal violence” has flared in the days before she left Myanmar. She spoke of the Burmese concept of peace, which she defined as “the happiness arising from the cessation of factors that militate against the harmonious and the wholesome.” The term, nyein-chan, translates literally, she said, as “the beneficial coolness that comes when a fire is extinguished.”

She had never thought of winning prizes, she said. “The prize we were working for was a free, secure and just society,” she said. “The honor lay in our endeavor.”

Her endurance against dictatorship and steadfastness to her principles has brought comparisons to Nelson Mandela. Her life has also been one of personal sacrifice.

For her country, and for the legacy of her father, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi could be said to have given up her family: her beloved husband, Michael Aris, a professor of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies at Oxford, and her two children, Alexander and Kim, who grew up largely without her. Myanmar’s former military government persistently refused to grant them visas to visit her, even when Mr. Aris grew ill with prostate cancer, apparently in the hope that she would leave Myanmar herself to visit them.

She refused to do so, fearing with reason that the government would not allow her back into the country. After Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s initial house arrest in 1989, Mr. Aris was allowed to visit only five times, the last time during Christmas in 1995. He died in March 1999, on his 53rd birthday; to the end, he supported her decision to remain in Myanmar.

She had returned to Myanmar from Britain in March 1988 to nurse her ill mother, Daw Khin Kyi, and became caught up in the swirling protests against years of eccentric autocracy and military rule. In January 1989, just after her mother’s funeral, she and her husband sat for a rare interview at her mother’s house in Rangoon, now Yangon, as their children ran about the rooms, with their faded colonial elegance.

“You know, when I married Michael,” she said, “I made him promise that if there was ever a time that I had to go back to my country, he would not stand in my way. And he promised.” Mr. Aris said: “That’s true. She made me promise.”

She said then that she understood how much her stature depended on her father’s aura. “I don’t pretend that I don’t owe my position in Burmese politics to my father, at least at the beginning,” she said. “It’s time to look at what people do.”

At another moment, she said: “Really, I’m doing this for my father. I’m quite happy they see me as my father’s daughter. My only concern is that I prove worthy of him.”

Once fate intervened, she chose the life she has lived, and there is little doubt that she has proved herself fierce, loyal and worthy, both to her father and to her people.

Thorbjorn Jagland, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, praised her and thanked her “for your fearlessness, your tenacity and your strength.” He said: “Your life is a message to all of us.”

nytimes.com

Michigan Wimminz Lawmakers Brown & Byrum silenced for saying “vagina” and attempting to regulate vasectomies.
June 15, 2012 by Uppity Woman

Do you remember when Florida State Rep Scott Randolph (D-Uterus) said the obscene word “Uterus” in front of all of Florida’s God and Vagina-Fearing Republicans, and all hell broke lose when the leadership declared that this was an inappropriate and obscene word to say on the floor in front of young pages and visiting children? If you don’t remember that, then read That filthy, disgusting and obscene U-word.

Hell, that was nothing. Now women (you know, those creatures that own the vaginas all these legislators want to regulate) dare not mutter the word, “Vagina” on the same legislative floors where men try to regulate vaginas.

Yes that’s right folks. This is happening right here in the USA.

We have Congress and State legislators and other jerkoffs discussing  and probing our vaginas practically day and night. We have to listen to them discussing our menstrual periods as well (See Arizona regarding a woman being considered pregnant on the first day of her period, even if she hasn’t had any sex and doesn’t plan to; Just in case!). We’ve watched that dickhead Daryl Issa  conduct panel discussions on what to do with women’s reproductive organs while declaring that women are not qualified to testify;  And we’ve put up with about all we can take from the Vatican and their obsession with making as many babies as possible to keep women in that kitchen, in between increasing the flock–whether they want to or not. All of this is happening without input from the actual owners of the vaginas being regulated . This doesn’t seem to appear out of place at all to these  women-hobbling psychos straight out of a Monty Python skit with actors on steroids.

However, don’t one of you wimminz DARE say Vagina yourselves, you hear? Men will decide what to do with your vagina, ovaries and womb and don’t you dare mention it. Your personal parts and processes belong to your government now. Furthermore don’t you dare discuss  Boyz body parts or try to make any legislation that regulates them. Regulations are for you subordinate wimminz not boyz.

Well, Michigan House Rep  and obviously Uppity Bitch Lisa Brown got that all wrong. These damned bitches just are so hard to train, who let them in the chambers, dammit.
It seems that Brown…..sputter… referred to her ewwwwwy vagina on the floor and completely forgot that her vagina is not her own. To make matters worse, her co-conspirator, Rep. Barb Byrum, indirectly referred to men’s parts with Brown’s blessings, which is a definite bad thing because men’s body parts belong to men and women’s body parts belong to men. That was two strikes against this obviously audacious and aggressive woman.

As punishment for speaking out of turn and not submitting to their superiors, Reps Brown and Byrum were barred from speaking on the floor on any issue.

A Michigan lawmaker was blocked from speaking on the state House floor as punishment for referencing her private parts in an earlier speech.

In a Wednesday speech on a controversial bill that would further regulate abortions, Rep. Lisa Brown concluded, “Finally Mr. Speaker, I’m flattered that you’re all so interested in my vagina, but ‘no’ means ‘no,’” according to The Detroit News. A day later, House Republicans refused to allow Brown, a Democrat, to weigh in on a school employee retirement bill.

This gets better.

Here you can see how Rep Brown created her own third strike against herself  by supporting regulating the Sacrament of Vasectomy, which incidentally, has to do with men’s reproductive parts and therefore is neither wimminz’ business nor government business in the same way that vaginas are. So she and Rep Barb Byrum were barred from speaking, a punishment akin to Go Stand In The Corner because you displeased the Principal. (And just wait till your father gets home, bad girl! Now fetch me a beer!).

A spokesman for Michigan Speaker James Bolger released a statement explaining that Brown and fellow Democratic Rep. Barb Byrum “will not be recognized to speak on the House floor today after being gaveled down for their comments and actions yesterday that failed to maintain the decorum of the House of Representatives.” (Byrum had tried to introduce an amendment to ban vasectomies except when one’s required to save a man’s life.)

The obviously insubordinate and fractious Reps. Brown and Byrum got pretty sick and tired of this crap, so they had the audacity to hold a press conference of their own. It also appears that some other citizens showed up to support them. But, coincidentally, unless I missed something in this video, none of the Michigan Legislative boyz are very supportive of the concept that vaginas belong to women and men have no right to Regulate them. I don’t see what appears to be one  male State House Democrat in this video. Or maybe they just all had a “prior commitment’ and couldn’t make it to this press conference:
Imagine the nerve of these two broads, fighting back against regulation of their bodies!

I recommend the witch burnings proceed immediately. I suggest they tie bricks on these two wimminz feet, throw them in the river and check to see if they float. But first, let us preview a Committee On What To Do About Women In Our Chambers, led by Michigan House Speaker James Bolger.

(Article republished with permission.)

Hillary seen as big winner in an Obama defeat
Paul Bedard, 2012-06-06 11:59

With the buzz growing about a potential 2016 presidential bid by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, strategists are beginning to consider how she will spin her service in the Obama administration as a positive if President Obama is defeated by Mitt Romney in the fall.

Apparently it’s not that hard: One strategist said that Obama, fighting a crushing economy that threatens to make him a one-term president, would be left with a legacy of potentially just one major victory, foreign policy, especially if the Supreme Court guts Obamacare.

And guess who will get or at least share the credit for a winning foreign policy? Hillary Clinton.

“He will be left with a skimpy legacy except on foreign policy and that’s only because of Hillary,” said a strategist. “So she can say she repaired U.S. relations under Obama and helped balance budgets when her husband was president. That’s pretty effective,” said the political insider.

Obama, said an official, gets the credit for improving relations with foreign nations in the wake of the War on Terror. But a Clinton advocate said that unlike former President Jimmy Carter, who personally built his foreign policy record through the Camp David Middle East peace talks, it’s been Clinton who’s done most of the international spade work, not Obama.

Clinton has shrugged off a second presidential try, but her fans are talking her up now in part to separate her from the administration as more signals point to a tough reelection fight in the fall.

They see her as the frontrunner in 2016 against heavyweights such as New York Gov. Mario Cuomo because of her depth of government experience and her high popularity.

The buzz around Clinton comes as her husband has been undercutting Obama’s reelection efforts, most recently urging Washington to extend some of the Bush tax cuts because the nation is back in a recession.

h/t foxyladi14

This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-grandmothers;
they lived only 91 years ago.

Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.

The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive.

Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden’s blessing
went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of ‘obstructing sidewalk traffic.’

Lucy Burns
They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and! left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.

Dora Lewis
They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head
against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate,
Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack.

Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the ‘Night of Terror’ on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson’s White House for the right to vote.
For weeks, the women’s only water came from an open pail. Their food–all of it colorless slop–was infested with worms.

Alice Paul
When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

So, refresh my memory.
Some women won’t vote because- -why, exactly?
We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn’t matter? It’s raining?

I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO’s movie ‘Iron Jawed Angels.’ It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth
and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.

All these years later, voter registration is still my passion.
But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.

My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women’s history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it,
she looked angry. She was–with herself.
‘One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie,’ she said. ‘What would those women think of the way I use, or don’t use, my right to vote?
All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn.’ The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her ‘all over again.’

HBO released the movie on video and DVD. I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn’t our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.

It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized.

And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn’t make her crazy. The doctor admonished the men:
‘Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.’

Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know. We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women.
Whether you vote democratic, republican or independent party
- remember to vote.
History is being made.

Read more: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/tactics.html

From HillaryIs44.org :
Run Quaddafi Run – Quit Obama Quit – How To Run Obama Out Of Town

Strap your Pink Grenades On!

It was the most important story of the day and we hoped to discuss it and give it the attention it deserves. Today thanks to Republican/conservative website HotAir, the time is ripe for such a discussion.

In April of 2010, PUMA P.A.C. discussed the Big Pink strategy for the 2012 elections.
Our strategy, as stated then, is simple, elegant, effective:

“While we don’t think Hillary Clinton will directly challenge Obama for the nomination in 2012, we do think it is the job of sensible Democrats and smart Hillary supporting websites to drive Obama from the 2012 race. It is also the job for American citizens who care about the country.”
In our inaugural article of 2011 we restated the strategy:

“In 2012 things will be a lot better – after November – if we do our jobs right. Let’s get the job done in 2011 and drive Obama out to a life of retirement at the Rezko house. That’s enough Hope and Change for now, isn’t it?”
Read the rest here.

From the birthplace of the term PUMA.
From Riverdaughter
Before Obama takes credit for the end of Qaddafi’s reign in Libya…
Posted on August 20, 2011 by riverdaughter
Let’s remember who had to drag Obama kicking and screaming to enforce a no-fly zone to keep up the momentum of the Arab Spring uprisings:
“As the United States and allies began their airstrike against Libya over the weekend, several news outlets reported on the growing tension between Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was allegedly annoyed that the president had been taking so long to commit to a plan in Libya. “Obviously, she’s not happy with dealing with a president who can’t decide if today is Tuesday or Wednesday, who can’t make his mind up,” a friend of madame secretary told The Daily’s Josh Hersh, whose delicious March 17 piece on Clinton’s frustrations is a must-read. The source continued, “And she doesn’t have any power. She’s trying to do what she can to keep things from imploding.”

Dakinikat at Skydancing
Live Blog: Breaking News in Libya
You may not have heard the news from Libya, but it appears that Rebel and NATO forces have entered Tripoli and it may mean the end for Ghaddafi. Most of the sources I’ve found are coming from the foreign press and are being tweeted.

From UppityWoman: Your government – power hungry,out of control and just plain mean: It’s not just in DC anymore.
Posted on August 20, 2011 by Uppity Woman
Hunger For Power.
It rolls downhill and touches your lives in the most ridiculous of ways. Because when power hungry people go unchecked, they can’t stop looking for ways to punish and control you. Power Hungry people are insatiable.
Please read these little stories and tell me that your government, right in your own county, town, or city isn’t out of control, power-hungry, and treating itself like it is YOUR customer.
Continued here.

Yesterday, at The Confluence, commenter Joanie in Brooklyn, on August 18, 2011 at 11:03 am said:
“Good Morning, RD, since I don’t have to worry about being called racist: I’m Black and by definition can’t be racist (snark) let me say I didn’t like him in ’08, like him even less now; didn’t think he was smart in ’08, can prove he’s not smart now; thought he was teleprompter champion in ’08, know he’s inarticulate now; found his phony “black, southern” twang condescending and demeaning in 08, find his be-bop home-boy strut even more annoying now; didn’t know what the hell he stood for in 08, know he stands for nothing now.
Any white people reading this comment and agree but don’t want to be called racist, just say “what Joanie said”. Amen, thank you Jesus.”

If you voted for Obama in 2008 to prove you are not a racist…
You’ll have to vote for someone else in 2012 to prove you’re not an idiot.

DRAFT HILLARY
Send your request for Hillary to run for the Presidency to Hillary with or without a contribution of $20.12 to:
Hillary R. Clinton, c/o Friends of Hillary, 1900 M Street NW, Suite 500, Washington, DC 20036
(This is the same address used by long time Hillary supporters “No Limits”.)
Sign the petition to draft Hillary:
Click here!


Thanks to the generosity of CasperCat, PumaPac is now offering BOTH free “DRAFT Hillary” and “Hillary 2012″ standard size bumperstickers, as seen above, to PUMAs and other supporters of a Hillary Presidency.

Thank you, Caspie!

Please send two first class stamps to:
ModemButterfly, 1442 Essex Street, Suite 4, San Diego, CA 92103
(Allow 2 weeks for delivery and please print your return address legibly.)

Hope for change in 2012!

Via HillaryIs44.org :
Flim-Flam Man Without A Plan On The Lam – Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, Sarah Palin – Come On Down

“Imagine you have a bunch of life preservers in the trunk of your car. As you look out over the shore you see Americans about to drown. You run to the shore and shout “I have a bunch of life preservers in the trunk of my car. I’ll toss them to you – in September.””

and

From the birthplace of the term PUMA.
Via Riverdaughter
Thursday: These liberals reject Obama
“One of the commenters from the previous thread implied that if we didn’t like the Republican candidates, we must be Obama supporters. This is an example of black-white thinking that used to be the sole provence of the right but has now spread to the left as well. But I’m going to assume that the commenter was from the right side of the aisle. So, let me clear up a few things for you.”

and this from The Confluence commenter Joanie in Brooklyn:

Joanie in Brooklyn, on August 18, 2011 at 11:03 am said:
Good Morning, RD, since I don’t have to worry about being called racist: I’m Black and by definition can’t be racist (snark) let me say I didn’t like him in ’08, like him even less now; didn’t think he was smart in ’08, can prove he’s not smart now; thought he was teleprompter champion in ’08, know he’s inarticulate now; found his phony “black, southern” twang condescending and demeaning in 08, find his be-bop home-boy strut even more annoying now; didn’t know what the hell he stood for in 08, know he stands for nothing now.
Any white people reading this comment and agree but don’t want to be called racist, just say “what Joanie said”. Amen, thank you Jesus”

at UppityWoman’s:
President Hillary Clinton speaks to America while the lame Figurehead In Chief plays at Martha’s Vineyard
Posted on August 19, 2011 by Uppity Woman

“How many things can you find wrong with this picture. As a matter of fact, how many things can you find RIGHT with this picture.

“New Democratic Party”……you blew it. You should all be run ouf of the real Democratic Party on a rail. We will try to help make that happen in 2012. We haven’t gone away, we Hillary supporters. We were right and you know it. What’s more, we don’t forgive you. We don’t forgive your lies. We don’t forget your threats. We don’t forget your misogyny. And we don’t forget the FILTH you hurled at us.”

and this in California:
On July 30th the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party passed a resolution proposing that a primary challenge be offered to Obama next year. The Progressive Caucus’s certification expired at the same time, and while other caucuses were routinely recertified that day by the state party, the Progressive Caucus would not have been, had a vote been held. So the recertification was tabled, and the Progressive Caucus is in limbo.
(and the wheels on the bus go round and round…)

Happy Birthday, Mr. President!

DRAFT HILLARY
Send your request for Hillary to run for the Presidency to Hillary with (or without) a contribution of $20.12 to:
Hillary R. Clinton, c/o Friends of Hillary, 1900 M Street NW, Suite 500, Washington, DC 20036
(This is the same address used by long time Hillary supporters “No Limits”.)

Thanks to the generosity of CasperCat, PumaPac is now offering BOTH free “DRAFT Hillary” and “Hillary 2012″ standard size bumperstickers, as seen above, to PUMAs and other supporters of a Hillary Presidency.

Thank you, Caspie!

Please send a self-address stamped business size envelop to:
ModemButterfly, 1442 Essex Street, Suite 4, San Diego, CA 92103
(Allow 2 weeks for delivery.)

Hope for change in 2012!

Brig. Gen. Loretta Reynolds

Reynolds congratulates Col. Steven Hanson as he takes over her post at the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force Headquarters April 28. Reynolds is also the first female Marine Corps general to hold a command post in a battle zone

Reynolds and Hanson salute during a Change of Command ceremony April 28. The 200,000-member Marine Corps has just 1,224 female officers

Famed Parris Island Marine base gets first female general
By Mara Gay, 17th June 2011

A female general has been appointed to the top post at Parris Island, marking the first time ever that the famed Marine Corps training depot has been headed by a woman.

Brig. Gen. Loretta Reynolds is taking command of the historic South Carolina base today, where a gruelling training regime turns out 20,000 new Marines each year, just 2,400 of them women.

In the 96 years it has graduated recruits, Parris Island has never seen a female commander.

Loretta Reynolds is the first female general to take charge at the famed Marine Corps training depot at South Carolina’s Parris Island
Reynolds, who is also the first female Marine to have held a position of command in a battle zone, may be just the woman for the job.

In a yearlong tour of Afghanistan, the one-star general — one of only three female generals in the Marine Corps — lead five Marine battalions and a Bahraini company.

Reynolds is also the first female Marine Corps general to hold a command post in a battle zone

The Baltimore-raised Naval Academy alum served until recently as the head of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Camp Pendleton, California.

She is credited with taking a military base in Afghanistan that was designed to serve 10,000 Marines and expanding it to accommodate the needs of 10,000 more, according to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force website.

Of more than 200,000 active-duty Marines, only 12,339 of them are women.

Reynolds and Hanson salute during a change of command ceremony April 28. The 200,000-member Marine Corps has just 1,224 female officers

Parris Island, which began accepting female recruits in 1949, remains the only Marine base that graduates women candidates.
Today, there are 1,224 female officers in the Marines, according to military figures.
As the top Marine at Parris Island, Reynolds will also be in charge of all Marine Corps recruiting in states east of the Mississippi River. She was promoted to Brig. General in January.

Read more: HERE

Saudi women defy ban to take driver’s seat
Several women drive around in kingdom in open defiance of rule that prohibits them from driving.
A number of Saudi women have defied a ban on driving by getting behind the wheel in the conservative kingdom.

Friday’s show of defiance came in response to calls on social networking sites to defy the ban that prohibits women from driving in the kingdom.
“We’ve just returned from the supermarket. My wife decided to start the day by driving to the store and back,” said columnist Tawfiq Alsaif on his Twitter page on Friday.

“I took King Fahd Road [Riyadh artery] and then Olaya Street, along with my husband, I decided that the car for today is mine,” local resident Maha al-Qahtani tweeted.

She also told the AFP news agency that driving is “a right for women that no law or religion bans … I went out to get my right, so that it would be up to me to drive or not”.

Her husband Mohammed al-Qahtani tweeted that she carried her necessary belongings “ready to go to prison without fear”.
The en masse action was the first since November 1990, when a group of 47 Saudi women stunned men by driving around Riyadh in 15 cars before being arrested.
‘Mutiny against male-only rules’
More here.

Saudi women’s drive for greater freedom
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – A campaign to defy Saudi Arabia’s ban on women driving opened Friday with reports of some female motorists getting behind the wheel amid calls for sustained challenges to the restrictions in the ultraconservative kingdom.
Activists have not appealed for mass protests in any specific sites in Saudi Arabia, but are urging Saudi women to begin a growing mutiny against the male-only driving rules supported by clerics backing austere interpretations of Islam and enforced by powerful morality squads.
Calls for an ongoing road rebellion — inspired in part by the uprisings around the Arab world — could push Western-backed Saudi authorities into difficult choices: either launching a crackdown and facing international pressure or giving way to the demands and angering traditional-minded clerics and other groups opposing reforms.
Special section: Anger in the Arab World
It also could encourage other challenges by Saudi women, who have not been allowed to vote and must obtain permission from a male guardian to travel or take a job.
“We want women from today to begin exercising their rights,” said Wajeha al-Huwaidar, a Saudi women’s rights activist who posted Internet clips of herself driving in 2008. “Today on the roads is just the opening in a long campaign. We will not go back.”
The plan, she said, is for women who have obtained driving licenses abroad to begin doing their daily errands and commuting on their own.
“We’ll keep it up until we get a royal decree removing the ban,” she told The Associated Press.
Read more:

FREE MANAL
“June 17th Saudi Women Drive” Organizer Manal Al-Sharif Arrested, Facebook Twitter and YouTubes Scrubbed

Update to this story: One of the organizers of the June 17th Saudi Women Drive protest has been arrested, and also family members. The Facebook page, Twitter account, and YouTube channel have been deleted by Saudi government authorities. The facebook page had over 13,000 women who committed to participating in the driving protest before it was deleted. The arrested are Manal Al-Sharif, the woman shown driving on the now deleted YouTube video, and her brother.
Saudi police arrested the woman even though there is not actually any law against female drivers. It is on the authority of conservative religious zealots that the ban is in place, even though there is no such prohibition in Islam. Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world with such a ban against women.
According to Arab News there is an anti-women driving campaign now started which advises men to beat women who drive: “Among these calls is a campaign demanding all men to beat up women attempting to drive. The men have been told to use their igals (head bands) to strike women behind the wheels in the streets.”
Another campaign was started by men pledging to protect women drivers, including a Facebook page called Protecting Saudi Females on 17th June.
The Saudi Women’s Revolution FB page is still up, and a page showing worldwide support of Manal Alsharif.
Read more here.