CALL IT THE CORVETTE REVOLUTION – AT 8:27 A.M. ET:  Saudi women have heard the call, "Ladies, start your engines."  A great story from Fox:

A number of Saudi women drove cars Friday in response to calls for nationwide action to break a traditional ban unique to the ultra-conservative kingdom.

"We've just returned from the supermarket. My wife decided to start the day by driving to the store and back," columnist Tawfiq Alsaif said on Twitter.

"My wife, Maha, and I have just come from a 45-minute drive. She was the driver through Riyadh streets," said Mohammad al Qahtani, president of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association, in another tweet.

Many Saudi women had pledged on Facebook and Twitter to answer the call to defy the deeply entrenched ban, in the largest such mass action since November 1990, when female demonstrators were arrested and severely penalized.

Instead of staging demonstrations, which are strictly banned in the absolute monarchy, women with driving licences obtained abroad were encouraged to take individual action.

Veteran women's rights activist Wajiha al Huwaider said she did not expect a huge turnout as hoped for by sympathizers abroad because of the severe response by officials to women who have taken the lead in recent weeks.

COMMENT:  Let's see how much support these women receive from "women's" groups in the West, many of whom have shown a marked indifference to the plight of Muslim women.  (The reasoning seems to be that if you support Muslim women you are helping "American militarism," or, horrors to horrors, the polices of BUSH (!!) or CHENEY (!!!!).

And let's see how much support these women receive from other "rebel" groups involved in the Arab spring throughout the Mideast.  One of our greatest dilemmas in dealing with these revolutionaries is finding out who they actually are and what they actually believe.  Do they believe in women's rights?  Important question, I think.

June 17, 2011