Good news for once from the West Bank

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203863204574348292035667088.html?mod=googlenews_wsj from the Wall Street Journal

The Arab Peace Initiative - fascinating article

The Crown Prince of Bahrain, in The Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/16/AR2009071602737.html?sid=ST2009071603564

Palestinian political developments

Two very big, but little-reported developments: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8203362.stm and http://www.thejc.com/articles/changes-fatah-boost-pragmatists

A sick joke in Cuba

The BBC reports that Cuban President Raul Castro told his "parliament" that: "he had not been elected to return Cuba to capitalism." And I'm inwardly shouting like Toby Ziegler: "Of course he wasn't elected to return Cuba to capitalism! That's because HE WASN'T ELECTED!" What really gets me is that if the Castro brothers were fascist dictators, we'd (rightly) never hear the end of their infamy. But because they're communists, people who would never have gone on holiday to Pinochet's Chile or apartheid-era South Africa think that there's something romantic about a Cuban regime that puts people in labour camps for the crime of saying: "Hmm, I've been thinking, how about maybe someone else should be allowed to stand for President?" Amnesty International tells it well here: http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/cuba