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.

VANO SHLAMOV/AFP/Getty Images

The political blogosphere roared back to life Monday after a week of relative quiet, with some rampant speculation about whether Barack Obama plans to pick Joe Biden, the Delaware senator, as his running mate.

Adding fuel to the fire, Adam Nagourney and Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times report this evening that Obama has "all but settled on" his veep choice, and that it's most likely either Biden, Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, or Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine.

Biden, who traveled to Georgia this weekend at the behest of President Mikheil Saakashvili, would be seen by many as a solid choice for Obama on foreign policy. He hasn't hesitated to launch sharp attacks on John McCain, and he has a record of making prescient comments about Pakistan, among other issues.

Still, I wonder what people will say about Biden's ideas about Iraq, and what kind of influence they would have on Obama's position. The Biden-Gelb plan, described here by George Packer, took a lot of heat from respected Iraq experts such as Joost Hilterman of the International Crisis Group and was widely panned by Iraqis. It was rejected by the Iraq Study Group and the Bush administration as unworkable. Has Biden talked about it lately? Given how much the surge exceeded everyone's expectations, I doubt it. But I'm curious to know what the senator thinks about it these days.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can't get a break at home. His newly approved interior minister, Ali Kordan, has been in office for just over a week, and a fake diploma scandal has only gained steam, complete with demands that the minister resign.

When there was a debate in parliament earlier this month over Kordan's qualifications for the post -- he's previously served as Iran's deputy oil minister and in the Revolutionary Guards -- Ahmadinejad had to go so far as to announce that Ayatollah Khamenei personally supported him, a rare (and extreme) strategy. Key to the issue were damning accusations about Kordan's honesty, with MPs claiming that Kordan lied about receiving an Oxford University law degree. So, Kordan produced his "diploma" (at right) and, with Khamenei's critical backing, sailed to approval.

Problem is, Oxford has now said the diploma is a fantasy. Have a look at the document Kordan produced: He must have made quite the impression at the university, seeing as how they saw fit to claim that his "research in the domain of comparative law... has opened a new chapter, not only in our university, but to our knowledge in this country." (Go ahead and ignore the misspellings and punctuation errors.)

When the the obviously faked diploma hit the Web, it caused a popular firestorm in Iran, with calls for Kordan to step down immediately if he can't produce the real thing. The Iranian Web site that first revealed the bogus document has now been blocked inside the country. Some analysts even think Ahmadinejad may have set Kordan up to embarrass his likely rival in the next presidential race, Ali Larijani. Kordan is a former aide to Larijani, who is also speaker of the parliament and looking slightly worse for the wear as the controversy continues. Stay tuned.

The Hoover Institution, the conservative-leaning think tank located at my alma mater Stanford University, is finding itself in a bit of hot water over some 7 million pages of Baath Party records that both Iraqi and American archivists now say were taken by an "act of pillage" and must be returned to Iraq immediately.

The documents came to Stanford as part of a deal with the Iraq Memory Foundation, a nonprofit group run by Kanan Makiya (above left) -- an Iraqi exile known for his outspoken advocacy for the war in Iraq. Makiya, who stumbled upon the documents during the invasion's nascent period in 2003, maintains the information they contain is too dangerous for general view because they explicitly mention individuals who collaborated with the Hussein dictatorship:

This was not stuff for every Tom, Dick, and Harry to have access to," he said in a recent interview. "This stuff was dynamite."

While the last thing Iraq needs is more dynamite, this episode is yet another example of the United States and a certain cabal of Iraqi exiles thinking they know what's best for the country. As long as there's a reasonable enough guarantee that the documents will be safe, I agree with Jon Weiner's op-ed in Friday's Los Angeles Times: "It's up to the Iraqis to decide what to do with them."

VINCE BUCCI/AFP/Getty Images

Nobody ever could have predicted that easy listening would fail to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict:

A West Bank radio station that sought to bring Israelis and Palestinians together to the tune of pop music has gone of the air because of a lack of funding.

RAM-FM had been broadcasting English-language talk shows and artists like Michael Bolton and Air Supply from a studio in the town of Ramallah since last year.

I guess songs like "How Can We Be Lovers" and "Can I Touch You...There?" don't excite the same emotions in the Middle East as they do in... wherever it is one can find Michael Bolton fans these days.

UPDATE: Chris Blattman chimes in from Liberia:

As I read the post, none other than Michael himself was crooning over the speaker of the Cape Hotel in Monrovia.

He's also a favorite in northern Uganda, although Bolton is easily eclipsed by Dolly Parton and Bette Midler. "Wind beneath my wings" still conjures images of dusty displacement camp canteens in my mind.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that Michael Bolton caused the wars in northern Uganda and Liberia to end, but it is the power of love...

I'm only mildly insulted that Chris filed his post under the "drivel" category. 

Abid Katib/Getty Images

I see that the good folks at Little Green Footballs are outraged about Thursday's photo essay on a Hamas-affiliate's graduation ceremony in Gaza. The LGF author writes of FP, "They're currently running a light-hearted slice-of-life photo essay on a Hamas terror training camp."

At issue is this bit of text:

Photo Essay: Are You Tough Enough for Hamas Boot Camp?

Think you have what it takes to join the Islamic resistance? Here’s how Hamas militants in Gaza have been spending their summer.

Commenter Tazzerman writes,

This is beyond the pale. I'm sorry but it sounds like a Hamas training brochure. Do these people at FP understand or realize what they're doing here? This is an out and out BLATANT advertisement for Hamas recruiting.

"It makes me sick to my stomach that someone actually is trying to glorify these cowards," says FldDoc.

"[W]hy is a reputable magazine giving positive propaganda to these ersatz stormtroopers?" Outrider asks.

Mosse wonders, "Is this postmodern drollery or something more sinister?"

Let's all take a deep breath, people. As the person who put this thing together for ForeignPolicy.com, let me make one thing clear: Nobody here is trying to glorify Hamas, which is duly listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department and others. It's pretty newsworthy, though, that the Hamas-affiliated Popular Resistance Committees (PRCs), also widely considered a terrorist organization (though not explicitly listed by State), are training in this way and so openly, and the captions tell a broader story of the rising tensions that threaten to destroy the fragile Gaza cease-fire. As for the photographs themselves, I think we can all agree that they make for compelling viewing.

It's clear, however, that LGF commenters are furious that this photo essay doesn't take a strong, anti-Hamas line. Do they really fear that somehow, FP readers will be motivated by these photographs to join the "Islamic resistance"? I'm not worried.

One final note: Analytically speaking, I'm not so sure about using the term "terror training camp" to describe what is going on at this facility. I don't think the PRCs aren't terrorists, mind you -- of course they are -- but from these photographs it doesn't look like they are learning terrorist methods such as firing rockets at civilians or blowing up buses (and the PRCs have certainly done such things in the past) but rather learning how to fight like an irregular army. Other Palestinians are probably just as much a target as Israel. If anyone has any information to the contrary, please send it my way. But the real terrorist training happens far away from the cameras, I'd wager. This stuff is all just for show.

MARWAN NAAMANI/AFP/Getty Images

Think the declining dollar is a bane for American consumers but a boon for everyone else? Think again. Even in Dubai, where glitz and glamorous construction continues unabated and soveriegn wealth funds prowl international markets, the consequences are showing up where you wouldn't expect:

Taxi drivers have become more fractious as fines for bad driving or declining to pick up passengers have eaten into pay packets that have also been eroded by the weakness of the United Arab Emirates dollar-pegged dirham against currencies in their home countries.

Dubai is now in talks with Pakistan after attempting to deport some 50 drivers who went on strike last month. The drivers were fed up with increased regulations and the rising cost of living, which the declining dirham doesn't help.

But the systemic problems caused by the dollar's slide aren't going to be so easy to whisk away. The emirate's record-setting growth is fueling inflation, and the weakened dirham is making imports more expensive. Despite speculation late last year that the UAE would drop the dollar, nothing seems to have changed since February, when the central banks of the Gulf Arab countries restated their commitment to the greenback. We'll see how long they can hold out.

Some straight talk from Moammar el-Qaddafi:

What Iran is doing stems simply from arrogance," Gaddafi said during a visit to Tunisia after Tehran ignored another western deadline to accept an incentives package in exchange for full transparency on its nuclear drive. [...]

"In the event of a decision against Iran, this country will suffer the same outcome as Iraq... Iran is not any stronger than Iraq and won't have the means to resist (a military attack) on its own... The challenges are greater and exceed Iran's ability to reply."

JOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images

During the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, many social scientists have decried the U.S. Defense Department's lack of cultural sensitivity. Now, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a former president of Texas A&M University, is doing something about it. He has announced Project Minerva, which will fund research by social scientists on topics such as the influence of religion and economics on terrorism.

Rather than welcoming Project Minerva, however, many academics, particularly anthropologists, oppose it. In the recent FP Web exclusive "When Professors Go to War," anthropologist Hugh Gusterson wrote that many anthropologists -- who are in a largely left-leaning discipline -- simply won't stomach being funded by the Pentagon. Thus, those social scientists who do apply for funding will be a thin slice who have no qualms about accepting the Defense Department's money. This will lead to "selection bias," in which only a narrow range of perspectives end up being funded.

In response, Duke University professor Peter Feaver argues this week in "Pentagon Funding? Bring It On." that the challenge of selection bias can be overcome and that Gates is committed to openness and academic freedom. Proposals will be selected on the importance of the topic being investigated and the quality of the methodology -- and not on whether the results will end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy for the military.

What do you all think? Should social scientists be funded by the Defense Department in an effort to bring more cultural sensitivity to the military's methods? Who's right? Gusterson or Feaver?

Wow: Arabic-speaking soldiers could start raking in $150,000 bonuses.

Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a longtime critic of the Egyptian government, has been convicted in absentia for "tarnishing Egypt's reputation" and sentenced to two years in prison. Saad spent about 10 months in jail after an earlier conviction in 2001, and he was released thanks to U.S. pressure.

Saad was my boss and mentor while I worked at the Ibn Khaldun Center in Cairo, the pro-democracy NGO and think tank he founded. An extraordinarily gracious and charismatic man, all he wants is to see a free and democratic Egypt. Under constant threat of arrest, the 69-year-old sociologist has been living in exile, his income under severe strain.

This new conviction is ludicrous, though it has been a long time coming. It's obviously payback for Saad's efforts to lobby for cuts in the U.S. aid package. Though he is hardly the shadowy, all-powerful player the Egyptian state media make him out to be, Saad does have a lot of admirers in the media and on Capitol Hill who will not look too kindly on this move. But with the "freedom agenda" long dead, perhaps Hosni Mubarak's government -- which has been ruling under a repressive "state of emergency" since 1981 -- thinks it can get away with it.

Turkey's top court announced today that the ruling AK Party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not, in fact, violating the fiercely secular constitution. Instead, Erdogan got off with a warning and the party's state funding was cut in half. Six of 11 justices ruled against the AKP, but luckily for Erdogan, seven votes were required to give him the boot. Close call.

Political analysts everywhere breathed a sigh of relief, as did investors in Turkey's stock market. Interestingly, investors began to bet on Erdogan surviving before the decision was announced. Bloomberg reports:

Markets extended gains after court officials started admitting journalists into the court building in Ankara pending an announcement by court chief Hasim Kilic later today.

Loose lips sink short-sellers? In this case, it doesn't seem like insider trading is to blame. Newspapers had apparently been speculating for days that the AKP would win its case. But it sure would be interesting to see when the upward trend began vs. when the first rumors started to leak out in the press.

UPDATE: The Century Foundation's Jonathan Kolieb writes in with a clarification:

10 judges found them guilty of being in some sense anti-secularist. But only 6 voted to ban them. That is an interesting split. This really does put the AKP on notice. Gives something to everyone, but everything to no one.

He also observes that, according to Today's Zaman, JPMorganChase told investors it was "80 percent sure" that the AKP would not be disbanded and that even if it were, it would stay in power. Interesting.

Some weeks back, I blogged on an Israeli human rights group's campaign to distribute video cameras to Palestinians, who could then capture incidents involving Israeli settlers, soliders, and the abuses that often take place as Israel continues to build new settlements in the West Bank. Recent attacks by Israeli settlers have included an assault on elderly Palestinian shepherds using sticks, as well as an attack last week on a Palestinian village by 20 Jewish settlers.

The human rights group, B'Tselem, says it has succeeded in educating not only Western readers and viewers, but also Israeli citizens, who do not always have a clear picture of what transpires in the disputed areas and settlements.

Diala Shamas, the coordinator for B'Tselem's "Shooting Back" project, explains:

It started bridging the gap between what is happening in the occupied territories and what the Israeli public can see. There is a silence surrounding not only settler violence, but abuses by the IDF as well. This footage is mostly shocking to Israelis."

The project seems to be doing some good. After footage supplied to B'Tselem by a 17-year old Palestinian girl showed a bound and blindfolded Palestinian prisoner being threatened and then shot in the foot by Israel Defense Forces troops, the IDF opened an investigation that led to the suspension of an Israeli colonel after it was discovered that he ordered a subordinate to shoot the unarmed prisoner. The Guardian has published sample footage online, which includes the shooting mentioned above.

In an ongoing struggle where neither side is innocent, the videos have the potential to help. At the very least, they can keep those on both sides, as well as international observers, more aware of what is actually going on. Who knows? They could help tilt the balance of Israeli politics away from the settler movement, and show Palestinians that nonviolence can get results. And just maybe, cameras can succeed where stones and bombs have failed.

Apparently Russia isn't the only country ready to play politics with its resource exports, BBC reports:

Libya's state shipping company says it has halted oil shipments to Switzerland in protest at the brief arrest of leader Muammar Gaddafi's youngest son.

Yes, the son's name is Hannibal. He was charged with assault. It's not the first time he's been in trouble, either.

Sure, Barack Obama is quite popular in Europe and has received his fair share of endorsements from unusual areas, but the Arab media has had some other things to say.

Courtesy of the Anti-Defamation League, a sampling of political cartoons from Middle Eastern media sources:

Although the ADL lists the collection under the banner of "Anti-Semitism in the Arab/Muslim World," you might want to take this with a grain of salt. Some of these cartoons are undoubtedly offensive (including some toward Obama's race), but others simply echo familiar claims and criticisms regarding the close U.S.-Israel relationship. Personally, I've seen similar cartoons in the Western media as well.

If anything, these cartoons just reinforce the Walt-Mearsheimer argument about the wellspring of anti-Americanism in many parts of the Arab world: "It's Israel, Stupid!"

Here's what Barack Obama wrote in the guestbook at Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial. You have to admit, the man has a way with words:

GALI TIBBON/AFP/Getty Images

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.

Here's a photograph from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's recent trip to Iraq. What do you think was on his mind? Who do you think he wants to see on the receiving end?

Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images

UPDATE: And the winner is... nycbrian, with "do you think i can mow my backbenchers into submission w/ this?"

Any day now, Barack Obama will make his second trip to Iraq and his first visit to Afghanistan, hoping to bolster his foreign-policy credentials and disarm his critics. About time, the McCain campaign says. Others speculate on who Obama ought to see, and what he'll likely be told. But I'm not sure how much it matters. Do trips to war zones really affect lawmakers' perspectives on the conflict?

McCain seems to think so, having suggested that his opponent will change positions on Iraq after meeting with General Petraeus and seeing the surge's success firsthand. But when surveying members of the Senate last summer for The Hill on who has and has not visited Iraq, I noticed that large numbers from both sides of the aisle have made trips, yet many remain steadfast in their support for or opposition to the war. Republicans, for example, often return calling for more time for the troops to secure military gains. Democrats, on the other hand, tend to argue for withdrawal in order to pressure the Iraqi government toward a political solution.

Rep. Jim Marshall noted this tendency in today's Washington Post:

If somebody has been a pessimist about this all along, would their pessimism evaporate? Not necessarily. . . . I'm trying to recall an epiphany," Marshall said. "I can't.

Part of the reason is that most trips are strictly limited to two days, and largely occupied by briefings from military leaders and diplomatic officials. It is often difficult for the junkets to give a true sense of how things are going on the ground, and drawing definite conclusions can backfire politically (recall McCain's embarassing assertion that his heavily guarded trip to a Baghdad market last year was a sign of security and stability).

That said, the trips are still an important piece of the political puzzle. They are more than Sen. Jim Webb's "dog and pony shows" characterization (note that two other would-be Obama veeps, Chuck Hagel and Jack Reed, are accompanying the candidate, not Webb). And while trips alone won't change a candidate's perspective, they can add some much needed credibility to his argument. When Obama returns from his trip and calls anew for withdrawing troops to focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan, he'll be able to back it up, having seen things for himself on the ground.

UPDATE: John McCain says Obama will visit Iraq this weekend.