Obama, McCain, and Leakey: This week officials and supporters of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Sudan, let's call it PMLS and let's not forget the L, celebrated the election of Barack Obama. This is a Southern Sudanese movement that had been battling the various Islamist dictators who have ruled in Khartoum for decades- they are now part of a governing coalition, for now. The belated celebration comes after someone in the movement claimed to have 'discovered' that Obama's paternal family had originally, somewhere in the distant past, emigrated from southern Sudan to Kenya. So now the southern Sudanese are laying a claim to him as well. As if Dick Cheney wasn't enough. Everybody wants a winner: that's why no tribe in Africa seems to want to claim any part of John McCain.

I would still paraphrase Louis Leakey and say "We are all originally Kenyans, or maybe Tanzanians, baby".

Iraq: the Shi'a clerics insist on a national referendum on the Security Agreement with the USA just passed by Iraq's parliament. Iraqi media note that a referendum will be held to ratify (or not) the modified agreement. Most likely it will be approved by voters. The agreement basically adopts the Democratic (Party) position on Iraq as suggested by Barack Obama and others during the campaign.

Joys of Oligarchy:

"The Saudi stock market index bounced back by 9.5% after a statement by the Custodian of the Two Holy Shrines asserting that the Saudi economy is strong and that Saudis should feel confident, and that the market crisis was caused by panic and it will disappear like a summer cloud." Alarbiya. (I don't know about the summer cloud part, precipitation from summer clouds around here can be as wet as winter clouds. Of course oil prices are still less than half of what they were a few months ago.)