Winds of Change has written about Omar Karsou before. Today, he comes out with a newspaper article (The Telegraph, UK), giving his perspective on reform. He speaks a lot of hard truths, and for that reason alone he's the day's required reading.

Worthy quotes include:

• "These days, the tightly controlled Palestinian media are trying to suppress the fact that many ordinary Palestinians are heartened by the calls for democracy for Palestinians from around the world."
  
• "Palestinians have been manipulated for too long now."
  
• "Ordinary Palestinians came to understand that their cause has been transferred to benefit the new ruling class."
  
• "Middle Easterners love to dwell on the past - it is part of our 'victimhood game': it seems always to be somebody else's fault. But to forge ahead, we need to go beyond the past."
  
• "But democracy is not just a simple practice of electing a leader. After all, the Soviet Union held elections regularly, and Cubans go to the polls every five years."
  
• "In order for us Palestinians to attain our dreams of freedom and statehood, we have to put our house in order first."
  

All good stuff. Quick show of hands now: how many of you think we would have seen this choice of rhetoric before the June 24 George W. Bush speech?

Decisiveness and telling the truth publicly has an effect on the ground, where it matters. That's where Karsou is working, at no small risk. My assessment of Karsou's odds? As long as Arafat is alive, zero. But Arafat won't be around forever. Karsou and those like him doing work on the ground in the "Democracy in Palestine" movement, are important to the future that might be.