The century-old building housing Egypt's upper house of parliament, just a few blocks from my old apartment in Cairo, has gone up in flames:

KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images

The BBC has the story:

At least 13 people have been hurt in a fire at the upper house of the Egyptian parliament in Cairo, officials say.

The cause of the blaze is unclear, but officials say it could have been caused by an electrical short-circuit.

Elijah Zarwan relays word that newspaper Al-Badil was banned for its coverage of the blaze. You can download a compressed PDF of the paper here.

Here is a video of the fire:

The Arabist comments:

Several times last night as I went out to see the blaze I heard people make jokes about how they hoped the senators where still in there (especially Safwat al-Sherif, the head of the Council) or how this was revenge for the highly unpopular new traffic law.

NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP/Getty Images

There's some interesting Kremlinology (or Moscvology as Blake might have us call it) from Anna Smolchenko in today's Moscow Times. She notes that Dmitry Medvedev's bellicose comments in North Ossetia yesterday -- vowing a "crushing response" to future attacks on Russian citizens and referring to Georgia's leaders as genocidal morons are sharply at odds with the more conciliatory rhetoric he has used in the past. Smolchenko suggests that the president may be getting tough in an effort to reassert his own relevance.

This seems plausible to me. Last Tuesday I noted that it was Medvedev who declared a ceasefire while Vladimir Putin had been the one who effectively started the war. This seemed to be evidence of a good-cop-bad-cop approach from the tandem. But Russia's continued operations in Georgia this past week while Medvedev has repeatedly assured the world that a withdrawal was taking place have only helped confirm what most already suspected: that Medvedev is a glorified PR guy with no power over a state still run by Putin.

Condoleeza Rice seemed to be not-so-subtly hinting at this over the weekend:

The word of the Russian president needs to be upheld by his forces or people are going to begin to wonder if Russia can be trusted."

Members of the foreign press were barred from attending any of the events on Medvedev's trip to the Caucasus which could suggest that the president -- known to read several foreign newspapers every day on the Internet -- isn't happy with how he's being portrayed in the international media.

He might be calculating that if he can't actually influence the policy set by hawks like Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, he might as well just out-hawk them at the podium.

MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP/Getty Images

Here's a conundrum for you, dear readers.

In days of yore, it was handy for journalists to write "the Kremlin" to refer to the people in charge of Russia. It's a word that has a certain allure and mystique to it, and using it helps avoid cumbersome repetition. As a short word, it's also great for headlines.

But now that Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, is not really running the country from his Kremlin office, and its prime minister, Vladimir Putin, is demonstrably in control, this usage isn't always accurate anymore.

This headline, for instance, is OK because it's technically true. Medvedev did sign the truce:

Kremlin Signs Truce but Resists Quick Pullout

But this one is not, because it may not be "the Kremlin's" policy at all:

The Kremlin's New Containment Policy

So, does this mean we ink-stained wretches can no longer always use "the Kremlin" as a shorthand for "the Russian government"? And what of "Kremlinology"?

Or has "the Kremlin" become part of the lexicon now, akin to saying "Moscow" or somesuch, to such an extent that the details don't matter? After all, it might get confusing to refer to the "White House," which is where Putin's new office is located, when talking about decisions the Russian government makes.

Discuss.

Picking up on Katie's post: What happens when you give in to a massive lobbying effort, somehow believe bogus promises of improvement, wallow in corruption, and ultimately give the Olympics to a country that never deserved them? Just ask the International Olympic Committee:

IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies said journalists should not be prevented from doing their jobs, a day after John Ray of London-based ITV News said he was wrestled to the ground and briefly held by police who apparently mistook him for a protester.

Asked repeatedly if IOC officials are embarrassed that China was not living up to its promises, Davies would only say they are happy with the way China is running the sporting events."

And, of course, the opening ceremony was lovely.

FILE; Warrick Page/Getty Images

Looks like the United States isn't planning on sticking its neck out for Pervez Musharraf:

The United States said Thursday that a move by Pakistan's ruling coalition to impeach President Pervez Musharraf, a close US ally, was an "internal" matter for the Pakistanis to decide.

"We have consistently said the internal politics of Pakistan is an issue for the Pakistani people to decide," said State Department spokesman Gonzago Gallegos.

Considering what State Department spokesmen used to say about Musharraf, that's tantamount to saying, "Sayonara, Pervez!"

Jane Perlez has more on the latest developments.

But first, a brief comment. I called for the United States to ditch Musharraf in March 2007, and I still think it was the right move over the long haul. That said, I've been disappointed -- if not altogether surprised -- by the performance of this new government. One variable that I didn't account for was Afghanistan's growing relationship with India, which seems to be pushing Pakistan's security establishment (or elements thereof) to want to back the bad guys. It's a policy that has the added bonus of undermining civilian rule, portraying the military and intelligence services as the only folks who can restore order -- thereby playing the dual role of arsonist and fire brigade.

I'm glad to see the Bush administration isn't buying into this game, but we may be in for a rough ride for a while. Musharraf may choose to fight it out, and it will be child's play to turn the two major parties against one another. He could also dismiss Parliament if he dares. And even if Musharraf resigns or is impeached, the military has vast resources at its disposal, and it won't brook civilian oversight lightly. Expect fireworks for months to come.

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Officers in Mauritania's military have overthrown the government of President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi and established a ruling military junta led by the former chief guard to the president. Abdallahi had been the first democratically elected leader in 20 years, but has come under fire recently for catering to hard-line Islamists. The coup comes after two weeks of political turmoil, which included a vote of no-confidence in the cabinet, a walk-out by 48 members of parliament and the dismissal of several top military officials. The president's daughter called it "a textbook coup d'etat."

Mauritania is an oil-rich country, one that scientists in 2006 predicted could churn out 300,000 barrels of oil a day. While this is just a drop in the barrel relative to the global oil market (Saudi Arabia alone provides over 10 million barrels a day), the volatile mixture of oil and political instability is never good for a country or for a region, as the Nigerian example clearly shows. It is also noteworthy that Mauritania is an Islamic republic that recognizes Israel, and that it has its own terrorism problem, with four French tourists murdered last December by al Qaeda affiliates.

Although these factors might make you think that Mauritania is a nation of strategic interest for the U.S., it shouldn't exactly shock you that this isn't making headline news in American newspapers. You almost need a shovel to find it on the websites of The New York Times or The Washington Post. A state department spokesman condemned the illegal seizure of power, but that's likely to be the extent of it.

With Darfur still the atrocity du jour, it may be hard for many Westerners to pay attention to more than one crisis in Africa.

VLADIMIR RODIONOV/AFP/Getty Images

The public's verdict seems to be in on Dmitry Medvedev. According to a new poll, only 9 percent of Russians think the president is the true leader of the country. That's 11 percent lower than last March. Thirty-six percent say that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is in charge and 47 percent think the two share power equally.

The poll can't be encouraging for Medvedev, whose new anti-corruption campaign could be a sign that he's trying to distance himself from Putin.

(Hat tip: Johnson's Russia List)

MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/Getty Images

With Ehud Olmert's resignation announcement today, the floodgates have opened for speculation on who will emerge as the Kadima Party's choice in the September 17 primary. As I noted earlier, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz are the two likeliest candidates. The two candidates lead in the polls at 38 percent and 33 perfect, respectively.

Daniel Levy, director of the Middle East Initiative at the New America Foundation and a one-time advisor to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, stressed to me in an interview this afternoon that the differences between the two candidates are incredible. Livni is a narrow frontrunner, he says, as numbers show her ahead of the hawkish Mofaz, who made headlines in June by saying that an Israeli strike on Iran was "unavoidable" if Iran did not abandon its nuclear program.

Levy figures that Livni has a better chance to defeat the likely Likud Party candidate, Benjamin Netanyahu, in a general election. "She's way more popular, and would be way more competitive [than Mofaz]," he says.

Livni is also a much better fit for the centrist reputation that Kadima has tried to build for itself. Mofaz? Not so much, according to Levy:

He looks and sounds a lot more like a Likud politician. He began his campaign by saying he might move to live in the Golan Heights. He has been a skeptic of the peace process. He's got quite a lot of baggage to carry... He is not considered to have been an effective chief of staff or defense minister. Many people look at the army that fought the Lebanon War [in 2006] and say, 'Well that was your army, Mofaz; you're the one who led to a lot of the cuts in training, the focus on the West Bank rather than being prepared for more significant missions.'"

But lest we rule him out, Levy says, there are quite a few things working in Mofaz's favor, including a more effective political machine inside Kadima and a potential endorsement from Olmert -- both of which are extremely important in a small, Kadima-only voting electorate.

It should be an interesting summer.

Photo pool/Getty Images

In a (somewhat) surprising move, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has announced that he will resign after his ruling Kadima Party chooses a new leader on September 17.

And who might be replace Olmert, both from party ranks and in the next nationwide election? Check out FP's list -- which we compiled more than a year ago. Our friend Ehud was able to hang on longer than we thought.

Updated for today, we might add Shaul Mofaz, the transportation minister, to the mix. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is still the most likely to succeed Olmert -- at least within Kadima -- but the hawkish Mofaz could use the Iranian threat to his advantage. Beyond that, there's no telling whether other parties will be able to push for a general election that could unseat Kadima.

Eli Lake reports:

The matter [of endorsing Barack Obama's withdrawal timeline] was taken up at a meeting of Iraq's National Security Council on Thursday on the recommendation of Mr. Maliki, who had been advised by the Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi to express public support for the Obama withdrawal plan. Asked for a comment yesterday, Mr. Chalabi, an old hand at working the American political process to the advantage of Iraq, conveyed a statement via his Washington representative, Francis Brooke: "This is an honor I will not claim and a rumor I will not deny."

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has a remarkable knack for planning big international trips precisely when the world is least likely to pay attention to him. In April, he made his big U.S. debut the same week that Pope Benedict was in town. This week, he's visiting Iraq and Israel at the same time that a certain American presidential candidate you may have heard about is in the region. Haaretz even quipped that "visiting Israel on the same week that Obama is expected to arrive is like being the opening act for the Beatles."

Attention charismatic world leaders: if you're planning a big trip abroad, try to send Gordon Brown a text or a Facebook message or something. It's only polite.

DESMOND KWANDE/AFP/Getty Images

There's heavy speculation that today's agreement between Zimbabwe's government and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) could be setting the stage for a power-sharing arrangement between two sides. South African President Thabo Mbeki as well as mediators from the African Union (AU) and Southern African Development Community (SADC) are all pushing the idea of a "government of national unity" along the lines of the one that was formed during Kenya's election crisis earlier this year.

It's understandable that the African community likes this solution. It's a quick way to stop the bloodshed while giving some concessions to the opposition who, after all, won the original election. But it's a rather feeble solution nonetheless. Although the deal in Kenya may have put an end to the violence, the divided government in Nairobi remains highly dysfunctional.

In Zimbabwe, there's even less reason to believe that Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, who openly hate each other's guts, could ever form a workable partnership. Any sort of power-sharing deal is little more than a fantasy while MDC leaders still fear for their lives.

But what's most worrying is the precedent this sets for elections in Africa. From now on, if a strongman leader loses an election, all he needs to do is ignore the result and provoke violent unrest. Before long, AU or SADC mediators will swoop in to propose a "government of national unity" in order to defuse tensions. In most places, when you lose an election, you have to step down. In Africa, it's just a starting point for negotiations.

The MDC may have no other choice but to accept such a deal, but African leaders are heading down a very dangerous path by pushing for it.

A show of hands: Who remembers anything that happened during John McCain's travels to Colombia and Mexico?

Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?

Well, I'd bet you have a good handle on what Barack Obama is up to this week. He just came from Afghanistan, and now he's in Iraq, where he got a big boost when Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki basically endorsed his withdrawal plan. After a few more days in the Middle East, he'll head to Europe, where by all accounts he'll be treated like a savior coming to rescue transatlantic relations from George W. Bush.

His trip is getting major, wall-to-wall coverage -- with much more to come -- but in fact, Obama has gotten the lion's share of media attention since the general election began:

Since June 9th, when Obama effectively clinched the votes for the nomination, the Project For Excellence In Journalism took a weekly look at 300 political stories in newspapers, magazines and television. In 77 percent of the stories, Obama played an important role, and 51 percent featured McCain.

A quick look at Google Trends shows that McCain hasn't even been able to capitalize on the times he has made news. Here's a graph of searches and news mentions for the past 30 days, with Obama in blue and McCain in red. As you can see, McCain's Latin America trip was during the first week of July (point A), and it barely made a dent:

Many conservatives, no doubt, will see the dark hand of media bias at work here. But is that really the case? Is McCain the victim of the liberal media? Or is Obama just more interesting and new than McCain? Discuss.

UPDATE: As for this, maybe the New York Times did McCain a favor. Check out this line from the op-ed that the Times supposedly spiked:

[Obama] makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

Well, 2010 is getting fairly specific, no?

ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP/Getty Images

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi got Italy's lower house of Parliament to agree today on a controversial crime bill, which critics say would allow him to wiggle out of various corruption charges.

Here's what the oft-prosecuted Berlusconi had to say:

I'm the universal record-holder for the number of trials in the entire history of man -- and also of other creatures who live on other planets."

I'd fact-check this, but I'm not sure there's an intergalactic version of the Guiness Book of World Records. Guess we'll have to take his word for it.

Isaac Chotiner is surely smoking something if he thinks that "no one would have even noticed" this week's New Yorker cover had Team Obama
not made such a stink about it. We're talking about a magazine with a paid circulation of more than a million, one that is read by probably half the country's media elite. No way this is getting ignored.

No, the smart play here for Obama would have been to laugh it off as brilliant satire. Imagine if he'd said something like this:

"I love it," Obama told reporters, referring to the controversial magazine cover. "It does a great job of showing just how ridiculous a lot of this stuff that gets said about me really is. Kudos to the New Yorker for creativity. I hope they sell a lot of magazines."

Would that end the controversy? Of course not. The cable talk shows would chew this thing to death regardless. But laughing it off would project a real air of confidence. Instead, the campaign just looks rattled.

ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images

Remember that little feud between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei? Well, the spat between the two men isn't quite over.

Ahmadinejad shot back today at comments made by Velayati in an Iranian daily newspaper criticizing Ahmadinejad's hardline nuclear rhetoric, saying that the former foreign minister and Khamenei advisor had no role in the country's nuclear program:

Velayati is a respected man. Like everyone else in Iran, he is free to have personal views... But he is not involved in nuclear decision making."

Ahmadinejad may be more delirious than I thought if he actually thinks that "everyone in Iran is free to have personal views." Did he get the memo about Ahmad Batebi, Iran's estimated 250 executions last year, the systematic suppression of journalists and bloggers, or that the country was ranked 181st out of 195 countries in Freedom House's annual Freedom of the Press survey last year? Apparently not.

And with tensions brewing between Iran and the West, it would help to know who is actually in charge of the Islamic Republic. I never thought I'd say this, but let's hope it's Khamenei.

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images

I thoroughly enjoyed John McCain's response to the recent remarks of retired Sen. Phil Gramm, his top economic advisor. Gramm told the Washington Times earlier this week that the United States' current economic troubles represent "a mental recession" and that America had become "a nation of whiners."

Whoops.

Gramm later said that he meant that U.S. politicians were the whiners, not regular Americans who are choking on high gas prices and a weak job market.

As you might imagine, McCain rushed to distance himself from Gramm's comments:

I think Sen. Gramm would be in serious consideration for ambassador to Belarus," McCain said with a broad smile. "Though I'm not sure the citizens of Minsk would welcome that."

Ouch.

For the record, the current American ambassador to Belarus is Karen Brevard Stewart, a career foreign service officer. Her most exciting moment in office? Temporarily vacating the embassy in March after Belorussian officials essentially kicked her out of the country.

The Belorussian ambassador in Washington could not be reached for comment on McCain's joke today.

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John F. Kennedy visited the Brandenburg Gate after declaring "ich bin ein Berliner" in 1963. Ronald Reagan stood at the gate in 1987 and challenged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall."

Following in the footsteps of two U.S. presidents whose images he often evokes, Barack Obama is planning a speech of his own there, too. But the address, planned for July 24, has apparently caused a stir between local authorities and the German government.

The decision is formally up to Berlin's mayor, who reportedly has given Obama his stamp of approval to speak at the gate. Advisers to German Chancellor Angela Merkel worry, however, that allowing the speech there would be seen as a formal endorsement of Obama by the German government:

The Brandenburg Gate is the best known and most historically significant site in Germany," said a Chancellery official, explaining why until now only elected presidents have been allowed to perform there.

A spokesman for Merkel this morning said the speech would be
"inappropriate" and referred to it as "electioneering." More German politicians are also weighing in on the address, with the head of the German Liberal Democratic Party stating his support of the speech, while the head of the German Greens has voiced his skepticism.

Obama is tremendously popular in Germany, enjoying the support of 72 percent of the population. The Berlin address is expected to be Obama's only public speech during a trip that includes visits to England, France, Israel, and Jordan and is designed to shore up the candidate's foreign-policy credentials.

What will Obama say during the speech? Some expect he will spell out a new vision for U.S-European relations. But I like blogger Lynn Sweet's prediction best: "Ich bin ein Obama."

JUDE MAK/AFP/Getty Images

After Kenya's violent polls in December, and Robert Mugabe's "sham" reelection last month, electoral violence is rearing its ugly head once more. The latest victim? Mongolia, an otherwise respectable democracy now "facing its biggest challenge since its birth in 1990," The New York Times reports:

Following cries of fraud in parliamentary elections — accusations that were disputed by international election observers — hundreds of rioters, many of them drunk, attacked the headquarters of the dominant political party and the neighboring national art gallery on July 1. Fires were started. Five people were killed. More than 1,000 pieces of artwork were destroyed, damaged or looted.

But not everyone's jumping off the democracy bandwagon just yet. While the government's response to the violence--which included declaring a state of emergency, shutting down media outlets, and deploying troops into the streets--was far from ideal, there are reasons to remain optimistic.

For one, the violence appears not to be caused by any inherent flaws in Mongolia's system, but rather by the unfortunate confluence of economic frustrations and cheap vodka. Second, as we noted in the March/April edition of FP, Mongolia's parliament is among the world's strongest, and recent research shows that countries with strong legislatures are more likely to have resilient democracies.

While the government must answer for its stronghanded response to the recent violence and address the ecnomic concerns that may have caused it, I'd expect the only democracy from the Sea of Japan to Eastern Europe will endure.

On a ridiculously early flight this morning, I finally got around to finishing the Sunday New York Times and noticed this little gem in the lead story in the Business section, a sweeping look back at how the United States failed to prepare for today's oil crisis:

Mr. Helms, of course, would be Sen. Jesse Helms, the long-serving senator from North Carolina, who died early Friday, some two days before the paper hit newsstands. The NYT's excuse? The section went to press on Thursday. Egg, meet face.