Obama takes his case to people for "fiscal cliff" deal

REDFORD, Michigan (Reuters) - Making no visible headway in direct talks with Republicans, President Barack Obama took to the road on Monday to apply pressure on his political opponents to agree to a "fiscal cliff" deal that would raise taxes on the richest Americans.

Wearing shirtsleeves with no suit coat and speaking in front of an array of auto workers, Obama plunged into his new campaign a month after winning re-election on a vow to raise taxes on the wealthiest and take care of the middle class.

Obama made his appeal in Michigan where his popularity is high due in part to the 2009 government bailout of the state's auto industry. He won Michigan easily in the November 6 election.

Now, Obama is trying to convince Americans that congressional Republicans need to avert a year-end fiscal crisis by increasing taxes on people making more than $250,000 a year.

If no agreement is reached by January 1, Bush-era tax cuts on all Americans expire and spending cuts agreed to last year kick in, a scenario known as the fiscal cliff that could hurl the economy back into recession.

A typical middle-class family of four, Obama said, would see an income tax hike of $2,200 a year if no deal is done.

"How many of you can afford to pay another $2,200?" he asked workers at a Daimler automobile manufacturing plant near Detroit. "That's a hit you can't afford to take."

Polling shows most Americans would blame Republicans if the country goes over the fiscal cliff, and pressure has been building from some Republicans for House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner to get an agreement quickly, even if it means tax hikes on the wealthiest.

Obama painted a stark picture of what would happen if bipartisan talks fail.

Consumer spending would go down because families would have less expendable income, meaning businesses would have fewer customers and the economy would go into a "downward spiral," he said.

"There's good news," he said. "We can solve this problem."

Republicans accuse Obama of not proposing sufficient cuts to entitlements, like the Medicare health insurance program for seniors, to make a tax increase more palatable to Republicans.

The two sides have hit back at each other with rhetorical broadsides and appear no closer to an agreement than they did a month ago. The White House and Boehner's office held more talks on Monday.

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Who's living past 100 in the U.S.? Mostly white women

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Women have long been known to live longer than men, but when it comes to hitting the century mark the difference is stark: just 2 out of 10 Americans who live to 100 or longer are male.

Of the 53,364 Americans age 100 and older, more than 80 percent are women, a U.S. Census Bureau report released on Monday showed.

The agency's findings, based on data collected from its 2010 census, also found those who make it past 100 are also more likely to be white city-dwellers in the Northeast and Midwest.

"Due to sex differences in mortality over the lifespan, the proportion of females in the population increases with age. This is especially true in the oldest ages, where the percentage female increases sharply," Census researchers wrote.

"For every 100 centenarian females, there were only 20.7 centenarian males," they added.

While reaching 100 years of age may not attract as much fanfare as it did a few decades ago, the public still marvels at those who reach "super centenarian," status.

Guinness World Records, which certifies the oldest living person, said the title was held by Besse Cooper, an American woman who died last week at age 116 in a Georgia nursing home soon after having her hair done.

Guinness announced on its website that the new person to certified to be the oldest anywhere on the globe is 115-year-old Dina Manfredini, an immigrant from Pievepelago, Italy, who has lived in Des Moines, Iowa, since 1920. She is just 15 days older than Japan's Jiroemon Kimura, Guinness World Records said.

Although still rare, the number of people living past 100 can have an impact as policymakers consider and plan services and programs that affect older adults, Census said in its report.

The findings are not necessarily all rosy for women.

Living longer can mean greater medical and retirement expenses, among other issues.

And the number of those living past 100 continues to grow. Just 32,194 Americans reached 100 or older in 1980, far below the current level, according to the Census Bureau.

Still, centenarians in the United States remain relatively rare compared to those in other developed countries.

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Cold, mold loom as hazards in Sandy disaster zones

NEW YORK (AP) — A month after Sandy's floodwaters swept up his block, punched a hole in his foundation and drowned his furnace, John Frawley still has no electricity or heat in his dilapidated home on the Rockaway seashore.

The 57-year-old, who also lost his car and all his winter clothes in the flood, now spends his nights shivering in a pair of donated snow pants, worrying whether the cold might make his chronic heart condition worse.

"I've been coughing like crazy," said Frawley, a former commercial fisherman disabled by a spine injury. He said his family doesn't have the money to pay for even basic repairs. So far, he has avoided going to a shelter, saying he'd rather sleep in his own home.

"But I'm telling you, I can't stay here much longer," he said.

City officials estimate at least 12,000 New Yorkers are trying to survive in unheated, flood-damaged homes, despite warnings that dropping temperatures could pose a health risk.

The chill is only one of the potential environmental hazards that experts say might endanger people trying to resume their lives in the vast New York and New Jersey disaster zone.

Uncounted numbers of families have returned to coastal homes that are contaminated with mold, which can aggravate allergies and leave people perpetually wheezing. Others have been sleeping in houses filled with construction dust, as workers have ripped out walls and flooring. That dust can sometimes trigger asthma.

But it is the approaching winter that has some public health officials worried most. Nighttime temperatures have been around freezing and stand to drop in the coming weeks.

New York City's health department said the number of people visiting hospital emergency rooms for cold-related problems has already doubled this November, compared with previous years. Those statistics are likely only the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

Mortality rates for the elderly and chronically ill rise when people live for extended periods in unheated apartments, even when the temperature is still above freezing, said the city's health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Farley.

"As the temperatures get colder, the risk increases," he said. "It is especially risky for the elderly. I really want to encourage people, if they don't have heat in their apartment, to look elsewhere."

Since the storm, the health department has been sending National Guard troops door to door, trying to persuade people to leave cold homes until their heating systems are fixed. The city is also carrying out a plan to spend hundreds of millions of dollars helping residents make emergency repairs needed to restore their heat and hot water.

Convincing people that they could be endangering themselves by staying until that work is complete, though, isn't always easy.

For weeks, Eddie Saman, 57, slept on sheets of plywood in the frigid, ruined shell of his flooded Staten Island bungalow. He stayed even as the house filled up with a disgusting mold that agitated his asthma so much that it sent him to the emergency room.

Volunteers eventually helped clean the place up somewhat and got Saman a mattress. But on Sunday the wood-burning stove he had been using for heat caught fire.

Melting materials in the ceiling burned his cheek. A neighbor who dashed into the house to look for Saman also suffered burns. The interior of the house — what was left of it after the flood — was destroyed.

Two days later, another fire broke out in a flood-damaged house across the street, also occupied by a resident trying to keep warm without a working furnace.

Asked why he hadn't sought lodging elsewhere, Saman said he didn't have family in the region and was rattled by the one night he spent in an emergency shelter. He said it seemed more populated by homeless drug addicts than displaced families.

"That place was not for me," he said.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency offered to pay for a hotel, but Saman said he stopped looking because every inn within 100 miles of the city seemed to be booked solid through December.

Saman's case may be extreme, but experts said it isn't unusual for people to hurry back to homes not ready for habitation.

After Hurricane Katrina, medical researchers in New Orleans documented a rise in respiratory ailments among people living in neighborhoods where buildings were being repaired.

The issue wasn't just mold, which can cause problems for years if it isn't mediated properly, said Felicia Rabito, an epidemiologist at Tulane University's School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. There was simply so much work being done, families spent their days breathing the fine particles of sanded wood and drywall.

People complained of something that became known as the "Katrina cough," and while it subsided once the dust settled, researchers later found high lead levels in some neighborhoods due to work crews ignoring standards for lead paint removal.

A group of occupational health experts in New York City, including doctors who run programs for people sickened by World Trade Center dust after 9/11, warned last week that workers cleaning up Sandy's wreckage need to protect themselves by suppressing dust with water, wearing masks and being aware of potential asbestos exposure.

"There are clearly sites that you don't want children at ... and it is very challenging for homeowners to know whether it is safe to go home," said Dr. Maida Galvez, a pediatrician and environmental health expert at The Mount Sinai Hospital who is part of a team evaluating hazards in the disaster zone.

U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler has urged FEMA and the Environmental Protection Agency to develop a testing program that could give residents an indication of whether their homes were free of mold, sewage and other hazardous substances.

Farley, New York City's health commissioner, said people entering rooms contaminated by floodwater should wear rubber boots and gloves, and exercise care in cleanup. The hazard posed by spilled sewage is a short-term one and experts say the disease-causing bacteria found in it can be wiped out with a good cleaning. But they say anything absorbent that touched tainted water, like curtains or rugs, should be thrown out.

As for the bitter cold, there was no test needed to tell John Frawley that his home is no place to be spending frigid autumn nights.

"A couple of days ago, I was shivering so badly, I just couldn't stop," he said.

Yet with winter nearly here, he still had no plan for getting his heat working again or his ruined electrical system restored, although he also has passed up some of the programs designed to help people like him.

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Japanese chef dishes on North Korean leader and missile launch

The Japanese chef who cooked for North Korean leaders for 13 years – before finding a pretext to return to Japan – believes North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has no desire to upset other countries by sanctioning the firing of a long-range missile later this month.

“It’s hard to understand why surrounding countries are so sensitive,” says Kenji Fujimoto, who left North Korea in 2001 but returned for several weeks last summer at Kim Jong-un’s invitation. “Even if a nuclear warhead were attached,” he says, “North Korea would never actually push the button.” North Korea’s nuclear program is “only a deterrence” he believes, to attack by other countries.

Mr. Fujimoto offered the rationale for North Korea’s plan to launch the missile sometime between next Monday and Dec. 22 during a barrage of questions by journalists after he talked here about his return to North Korea in July. His sanguine view contrasts with that of officials in Japan, the United States, and South Korea who see the plan to launch the missile as a hostile move that can only exacerbate tensions in the region.

QUIZ How well do you know North Korea's leaders? Take the Kim challenge

Earlier in the day, for instance, Lt. Gen. Salvatore Angelella, commander of the 50,000 US troops in Japan, characterized the plan as possibly creating “a very dangerous situation.” And in Seoul, South Korea’s unification ministry said the South would “sternly deal” with what it called “a direct and serious security threat to us.”

Fujimoto, who served as a chef specializing in preparing sushi for North Korean leader Kim Jong-il from 1988 to 2001, is convinced this response misses the central reason why North Korea plans to launch the missile.

“I do not believe Kim Jong-un is acting aggressively,” he says. Rather, “he has the idea somewhere in his heart to shoot off something to honor his father” on the first anniversary of his death on Dec. 17. “It’s unavoidable to have the launching of the rocket on that day,” he goes on. Moreover, he adds, “he feels he must do this as a demonstration of his future.”

That remark suggests Kim Jong-un’s need to prove his strength against the background of a power struggle in which a number of top generals have lost their jobs. Fujimoto accepts the widespread view that Kim Jong-un's uncle by marriage, Jang Song-thaek, husband of Kim Jong-il’s younger sister, is the country’s second most powerful leader – “in the background” possibly making the key decisions.

Fujimoto believes Kim Jong-un actually would like to improve relations with the US, South Korea, and Japan.

“Though on the surface, it seems North Korea is taking a very adversarial position,” he says, “there is the feeling North Korea wants to clasp hands as soon as possible.” He adds, for emphasis, “that feeling exists toward Japan as well.”

Japanese leaders, however, clearly do not subscribe to this view.

The central government has sent detailed confidential messages to local officials outlining how to respond “if flying objects should drop on the mainland” as a result of the missile shot. The message states that North Korea has said the missile will fly over the Yellow Sea on a trajectory past the Philippine islands but outlines precautions in case it veers over Japan. (Read more about North Korea's prep for a rocket launch, despite international warnings)

Fujimoto says Kim Jong-un invited him back to North Korea with warm memories of their friendship from when Kim Jong-un was a child. In answer to a question about Kim Jong-un's age, the topic of much speculation, he says's he's 29 and will turn 30 on Jan. 8.

Fujimoto married a North Korean woman, but she remained in the North when he returned to Tokyo in 2001 on what was to have been a mission to purchase food to satisfy the tastes of Kim Jong-il.

Kim Jong-un greeted Fujimoto with a hug and a handshake in July and hosted a welcome banquet attended by Mr. Jang and North Korea's ambassador to Switzerland, where Kim Jong-un had gone to school for several years, he says. Fujimoto gives the impression, however, that he did not discuss policy issues deeply with his host.

Although the visit seemed to have been a success, Fujimoto's access remains uncertain. He was to have gone again in September but delayed the trip for a week at the request of Japan's foreign ministry.

He said that an official had asked him to wait while the government prepared a letter for him to carry on behalf of Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. At the end of the week, however, the official said Mr. Noda had decided not to send a letter, and the North Korean Embassy in Beijing then turned him down when he showed up expecting to get a visa.

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Human rights report names names in Kashmir, invokes international law

Two prominent human rights groups in India-administered Kashmir Thursday accused New Delhi  of institutionally blocking justice in thousands of cases of crimes like enforced disappearance, killings, rape, and torture allegedly committed by its forces in the disputed region during the past two decades.

A report "Alleged Perpetrators: Stories of impunity in Jammu and Kashmir" released by the groups analyzes 214 cases and for the first time names 500 specific perpetrators including 469 military, paramilitary, and police officials besides 31 government-backed militants and associates.

The report, which took two years to prepare by International People’s Tribunal for Human Rights and Justice in Indian-administered Kashmir, or IPTK, and the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, paints a grim climate of impunity under which Indian forces are operating in the territory controlled by India and also claimed by Pakistan.

“Beyond naming the alleged perpetrators, the report explains that the Indian state has not failed but succeeded in its policy of maintaining control [over the disputed region] through absolute impunity accorded to perpetrators of crimes,” says Kartik Murukutla, an author of the report who has worked in a UN tribunal on Rwanda for five years.

Kashmir 101: Decoding Kashmir's conflict

Residents of the Kashmir Valley and resistance leaders opposed to Indian rule of the region have long accused the Indian government of using its institutions to meet the ends of control rather than address issues of justice and political rights.

In a shift in strategy, armed rebellion against Indian rule has been largely replaced with massive rock throwing street protests since 2008, but India has not countered with meaningful legal reforms or political initiatives.

Analysts say this latest report adds urgency to calls for an international legal intervention by bodies like the International Criminal Court (ICC) as well as movement toward a political resolution for the long-running Kashmir dispute. “This report should be sent to the prosecutor of ICC who can take suo moto cognizance on the basis of the evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity it contains and persuade the court for proceedings on the subject,” says Professor Sheikh Showkat Hussain, who teaches international law at the Central University here.

TWO MAJOR GENERALS, THREE BRIGADIERS, AND MORE

The accused perpetrators include two major generals and three brigadiers of the Indian Army, besides nine colonels, three lieutenant colonels, 78 majors, and 25 captains. A recently retired director general of police and a serving inspector general are also named along with 37 senior officials of the federal paramilitary forces.

The 354-page report contains significant evidence against the government forces’ personnel named but notes that any institutional or political will was absent for “a trial where the crime and the guilt of a perpetrator can be proven beyond reasonable doubt.”

The Armed Forces Special Powers Act, an emergency military law extended to Kashmir in 1990 in the wake of a full blown armed rebellion against Indian rule, requires New Delhi’s permission for prosecuting federal armed forces personnel accused of crimes like extra-judicial murder. Not a single such sanction has been granted despite dozens of requests by the local authorities.

Based on the information gleaned mostly from official state documents, the authors of the report insist that crimes “have not been committed, despite the Indian state, but because of it” accusing the government of “willfully putting in place structures specifically meant to carry out these crimes.”

“We call for international humanitarian intervention when the Indian state has failed to deliver justice and instead works its institutions for crimes with impunity in Kashmir,” says Pervez Imroz, a prominent human rights lawyer and another author of the report.

Government officials said they were studying the report. “We will have first to go through the contents of the report and then we will respond,” the region’s law minister, Ali Mohammed Sagar told the Associated Press Thursday.

SECURITY STATE

The report comes at a time when militant violence in the region has significantly dropped. However, India maintains a presence of an estimated 700,000 soldiers stationed in camps dotting its held territory and along the de facto border with Pakistan dividing the former kingdom between the nuclear armed South Asian neighbors.

International rights bodies like Amnesty International have long maintained that Indian forces have routinely operated with impunity in the region calling for impartial investigations into numerous violations blamed on them in the past. (Read more on the issue)

“The defining feature of human rights violations here is that in the name of countering militant violence the Indian State authorizes armed forces to carry out every kind of operation, often without adherence to laws and norms,” the report says. “In a majority of cases crimes are not noted or investigated at all.”

INDIA: 'ABERRATIONS'

India has often responded to allegations of widespread human rights violations against its forces as “aberrations” saying a handful of military personnel have been punished after military trials found them guilty.

However, Thursday’s report alleges that perpetrators of crimes are “assisted by a system where impunity is available right from the commission of the crime to the ultimate cover up.” Its authors indict the Indian judiciary for “lowering the standards of justice delivery system” to ensure impunity and by highlighting the fact that India has not legislated for crimes of torture and enforced disappearance.

“Even if the state wanted to prosecute the guilty, what will it prosecute them for in absence of the required legislation?” Murukutla asked pressing for the need to invoke international law.

The report recommends, among other things, that international rights bodies such as those of the United Nations be allowed free access to Kashmir to investigate specific allegations under the international human rights laws.

New Delhi has consistently declined requests for international intervention in Kashmir even in matters like forensic investigations into more than 6,000 unmarked and mass graves in the region that are suspected to be linked to the thousands of cases of enforced disappearances. However, the government has also said that it does not possess the capacity for such wide scale investigations itself.

Earlier this year, the Indian government allowed, for the first time, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, and Arbitrary Executions, Christof Heyns, to visit the region. However, the groups say the visit was a “regulated one, being confined by the authorities.”

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McAfee's rise and downfall via technology

Computer protection guru John McAfee’s high-profile run from the law is over, and it may have been a simple slip in digital security that helped lead to his downfall.

Mr. McAfee, on the run for nearly a month since his neighbor in Belize turned up dead, was arrested Wednesday in Guatemala for crossing into the Central American country illegally. He is being held in a detention center with other migrants, authorities say.

Guatemalan authorities say he will be sent back to Belize, where he is wanted for questioning related to his neighbor's death. Fernando Lucero, spokesman for Guatemala’s immigration office, tells the Monitor that the timetable for doing so was not clear.

“This is a matter in the hands of the courts,” Mr. Lucero says. “At this time, we have no court order.”

For a man on the run, McAfee has been in the public spotlight frequently in recent days, granting interviews with television reporters and writing regularly on a blog WhoIsMcAfee.com. All the while, he was doing so from a concealed location.

RELATED: Think you know Latin America? Take our geography quiz!

Among those to reach him were video journalists from the magazine and website Vice who are planning an “epic” documentary about the ordeal. But in promoting their access, the journalists accidentally revealed McAfee’s location.

AN IPHONE PHOTO

In an update on the Vice website titled “We are with John McAfee right now, suckers,” the journalists released an iPhone photo with metadata that included the exact coordinates of McAfee’s location. They were in Rio Dulce, a small town near Guatemala’s Caribbean coast not far from the Belize border.

After initially suggesting the co-ordinates were manipulated to hide his location, McAfee later wrote on his blog: “Yesterday was chaotic due to the accidental release of my exact co-ordinates by an unseasoned technician at Vice headquarters.”

A day later, McAfee was in Guatemala City, where he was planning a press conference until he was arrested. On his blog, he wrote, “I am in jail in Guatemala. Vastly superior to Belize jails. I asked for a computer and one magically appeared. The coffee is also excellent.”

It was an unexpected turn for McAfee, who amassed a fortune building software to prepare against security threats. (He sold the company in 1994.)

In hiding, McAfee has displayed a streak of paranoia fitting for a man who built a fortune in security. Belizean authorities have said he’s not a suspect in the murder of Gregory Faull, a neighbor on the small island of Amergris Caye who was found dead on Nov. 11.

Yet, McAfee has claimed Belizean authorities would kill him once in custody. He left the country, slipping through a porous border into a lightly populated area of Guatemala.

Mr. Faull had reportedly complained about McAfee’s rowdy lifestyle and his pack of dogs that occasionally bit passersby. On Nov. 9, four of the dogs died of poisoning. Two days later, Faull was shot in the head in his home.

McAfee has insisted he has nothing to do with the death and authorities have said they only want to question him. It looks like they’re about to get their chance.

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In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood's 'trial of power'

This morning I stumbled across a long story I wrote about the Muslim Brotherhood's struggles with the Mubarak regime  in June 2005 and found plenty of resonance for events today (as well as some personal chagrin in the fact that I'd used the phrase "Arab spring" back then).

Egypt is now finding out something that had been an object of speculation for decades: What the Muslim Brotherhood would actually do if it ever came to power. The prospect long horrified many Egyptian secularists and Christians. As I wrote at the time: "Both Arab regimes and secular opposition groups say the stated support for democracy by Islamists is a chimera."

In the first half of 2005, the Bush administration was still pursuing its "Freedom Agenda" in the Middle East (more or less abandoned after electoral successes for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt made possible by US pressure and a stirring victory for Hamas in Palestinian legislative elections) and the Brothers sensed an opening. They began to openly demonstrate and organize, insisted they were committed to democracy, and argued that any friend of freedom should champion their cause.

Think you know the Middle East? Take our geography quiz.

The Mubarak regime pushed back hard and in June 2005, over 800 Brotherhood activists were in jail. Some of them were tortured.

The debate then, was much as it is now. If democracy came to Egypt would the Brothers win? And if they did, would it fulfill the old cliche of "one man, one vote, one time?" Now many of the people who warned of what would happen then are saying, "I told you so." Tanks have been deployed in Cairo to stop protests against a power grab by President Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader freely and fairly elected in June. In November, he decreed himself sweeping powers and has been trying to force through a new constitution that has ignited a political and social crisis in his country.

FALSE HOPE?

Hossam Baghat, a prominent Egyptian human rights campaigner who has generally avoided hyperbole in the years that I've known him, summed up the mood in two written statements today.

"I know it may look to outsiders like the beginning of civil strife in Egypt," he wrote of the protests and violence in Cairo yesterday that claimed five lives. "But in fact it is many great Egyptians uniting to prevent the establishment of modern day fascism in their country." He followed that up with: "I can't count how many times I said 'being in government would certainly have a moderating effect on Egypt's Islamists.' I was wrong."

That assumption, or hope, that governance would force the Brothers to compromise, was grounded in a difficult reality confronted by all knowledgeable advocates for democracy in Egypt: The Muslim Brotherhood, even though it had been technically outlawed for decades, was the most popular and organized political force in the country. Free elections in Egypt were always going to give them a major share of political power, and the choice for critics of their agenda was to either decide that dictatorship was better than democracy, or find a way to believe the Brothers when they told them that an Islamist imposition on society would not be the result.

With the developing reality in Cairo, and with signs that Morsi and the Brotherhood's political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, are cutting deals with the Egyptian military to cement their position, far more secular Egyptians are in the camp of fear than seven years ago. Suddenly, the young revolutionaries who triumphed in Tahrir Square in Feb. 2011 are on the side of former regime figures like Amr Moussa and Ahmed Shafiq, the Mubarak-era general and cabinet minister who was defeated for the presidency by Morsi in June. The tanks that were defending Mr. Shafiq and Mubarak in early 2011 are now defending President Morsi.

In 2005, the Mubarak government's official stance towards the strength of the Brothers was denial. The then Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazief promised democratic reforms that had been demanded by the Bush administration, but insisted that the Brothers would not be allowed to play a direct political role. Asked if the Brotherhood would ever be legalized he said "never," and added that the group had at most the support of 10 percent of Egypt's population.

TALK OF FREEDOM

Mahdi Akef, the Brother's then Supreme Guide, told me then there was nothing to worry about. "For the Brotherhood, the issue of freedom is at the top of our agenda now. Freedom is at the heart - it's the principal part - of Islamic law."

Not everyone was buying it. "I'm not ready to sacrifice my nation to these people,'' Said al-Kimmi, an author and historian of Islam, said then. "They may say to you they support democracy, but if you look at the history of their beliefs, democracy really doesn't fit with Islam. The sharia is antidemocratic – the rights of women would be attacked and they'd cut people's throats. If my choices are Mubarak's corrupt regime or them, I'll stick with what we have now."

Ali Abdel Fatah, the Brothers' chief organizer in Alexandria, Egypt's second largest city, laughed off concerns back then: "The Brotherhood should be the ones who are afraid. We haven't had the trial of power, we aren't the ones who've formed military courts to jail opponents, executed peaceful activists, destroyed Egypt's civil society, or transformed the state into a series of personal fiefdoms. All we want is an open and fair system."

Well, the trial of power has arrived. And so far, the Brothers are failing it. The man I quoted to end that long ago article illustrates the point:

Ibrahim El Houdaiby, a Brotherhood member whose grandfather and great-grandfather ran the organization until their deaths, is a student at American University in Cairo. The movement's democracy rhetoric is no trick, he says, and that the Brotherhood is unlikely to push for more open conflict with the government.

"Revolutions don't really lead to democracies, just look at Iran,'' he says. "The Brotherhood really wants a democracy in Egypt, and it's willing to wait to make that happen peacefully."

Well, Egypt has had its revolution. As for Mr. Houdaiby? He broke with the Brotherhood a few years ago and is now a frequent critic. He told NPR's Leila Fadel a few days ago that the choice Morsi has forced on the Egyptian public – either improve an unpopular constitution or to leave him in a position of unchecked power – "means that we are not only creating a pharaoh, but the equivalent of a god."

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Merkel meets Netanyahu as Israel and Germany hit rocky patch

With German-Israeli relations unusually tense, Chancellor Angela Merkel is scrambling today in an apparent effort to assure Israel that the two are still friends as usual.

When Germany abstained in last week’s vote to change the Palestinian Authority's status at the United Nations to a non-member observer state, rather than vote against it, Israel took it poorly.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complained about Germany’s “lack of consistency” toward the Middle East peace process and attacked Chancellor Merkel personally: “I am disappointed in her,” he told German newspaper Die Welt before he went to meet the chancellor for dinner on Wednesday.

“Israel’s security is part of Germany’s raison d’etre,” said Merkel today.

Taking responsibility for the Holocaust has turned Germany into one of the strongest allies of the Jewish state, next to the United States.

But the German public seems to be saying it is not so sure it wants to support Israel as unconditionally as it has in the past. Any criticism, perceived or intended, from Germany is a big deal, as Berlin has solidly backed Israel in recent decades, leaving observers wondering if that support is changing now.

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Even though it is not officially confirmed, Germany’s UN vote is widely seen here as a reaction to Israel’s latest settlement announcement, which the Germans got wind of early.

“Israel has undermined the trust in its willingness to negotiate,” government spokesman Steffen Seibert said of the settlement plans, adding that they led to the “further shrinking of the geographical space for a future Palestinian state which has to be the basic requirement for a two state solution.”

Emerging from the German-Israeli government consultations today, a regular meeting of both cabinets, Merkel and Netanyahu were keen to stress the good state of relationships at all levels between the two countries.

“Thank you, Angela, for the warm welcome,” said Netanyahu.

“What a pleasure it is that we can communicate in this way today, given our history,” said Merkel. And the settlement issue? Quickly dealt with for reporters: “We agreed to disagree.”

'SURPRISED AND HURT'

Germany is not only one of Israel’s most important trade partners, it also provides arms and military equipment at very generous terms, such as submarines specifically developed for the Israeli Navy and capable of launching missiles with nuclear warheads.

“Israel has got used to unconditional support from Germany,” says Avi Primor, Israeli ambassador to Germany between 1993 and 1999. “So it was surprised and hurt by the official criticism.”

But the chemistry between Merkel and Netanyahu has deteriorated over the past months, according to Mr. Primor, and Merkel needs to reconsider her support for Israel against a backdrop of critical German public opinion toward Israel’s role in the Middle East.

“I think Germans are losing patience with our settlement policy and our treatment of the Palestinians in the occupied territories. It’s a factor the German government can’t ignore,” says Primor.

This would not translate into an immediate policy change on the German side. But if after the Israeli elections in January the new government continues a confrontational course toward the Palestinians, there is a possibility that Germany might actually join the chorus of rather strong critics within the European Union, Primor believes.

Earlier this year, German pollster Forsa published a study showing that 70 percent of Germans thought Israel was behaving recklessly and without taking the interests of its neighbors into consideration, 59 percent called Israel “aggressive.” Both figures had risen by about 10 percentage points in comparison with a similar study carried out in 2009.

Observers like Martin Kloke, a Berlin-based specialist on German-Israeli relations and author of “Israel and the German Left – The History of a Difficult Relationship,” think the reasons for this development are found not so much in Israel’s policy, but in a German desire to rewrite history.

“On the surface it is often ignorance,” Mr. Kloke says. “People see the pictures of Gaza being turned to rubble by Israeli helicopter gunships, and they side with what they perceive as the underdog in this uneven fight.”

But in Kloke’s eyes the coverage of the conflict already betrays a bias in the German media, which hardly covered the week-long rocket attacks by Hamas on Israeli communities.

And that bias is the reflection of a sentiment in wider German society, says Kloke. “Every Palestinian killed by Israeli shells minimizes German guilt. German protest against the mistreatment of Palestinians is not about the Palestinians really, it is about showing that the Israelis aren’t so different from our Nazi grandfathers,” says Kloke.

The government and the political elites in Germany are well aware of the risk that any criticism of Israel can be misused. This is why such criticism from officials is very rare, says Kloke. “But sometimes the Israelis make it quite difficult for Merkel.”

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Egypt's anti-Morsi protests spread beyond Cairo

Violence erupting in the capital between supporters of President Mohamed Morsi and his political opposition is being mirrored outside of Cairo, revealing the extent of divisions across the country as the political crisis over a proposed new constitution continued to spiral today.

Clashes between pro- and anti-Morsi demonstrators broke out in Suez, the port city at one end of the famed canal of the same name, and in the industrial Nile Delta city of Mahalla Wednesday night. In Ismailia, near Suez, protesters stormed the Muslim Brotherhood office, the state-run Middle East News Agency reported. Similar attacks on Brotherhood offices were reported in smaller towns across the country.

In Alexandria, Muslim Brotherhood figure Sobhi Saleh was attacked by opponents of Mr. Morsi, landing the politician in an intensive care unit, the Brotherhood said on its website.

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Though troops were mobilized in Cairo and other cities today after Wednesday's clashes and the situation was calmer, the simmering hostility of Egypt's political divide remains perilously close to boiling over. The day was spent waiting to see how Morsi would shape his next steps. This evening, he addressed the nation, and the response of political activists was one of fury and disappointment. Morsi spoke of the crimes of protesters and of "black money" being used to bribe them to undermine the state, but offered little in way of concessions over a draft constitution he hopes to put to a national referendum on Dec. 15.

“Things will get out of control unless the president tries to break this vicious cycle and reaches out for the other camp and tries to reach a compromise,” said Mazen Hassan, a political science lecturer at Cairo University, shortly before Morsi's address. “Basically what happened yesterday somehow changed the whole scene and… things can slip away very easily.”

If Mr. Hassan is right, Egypt has a dangerous few days ahead of it, since Morsi's speech appeared to double down on his commitment to the draft constitution. Egyptian activists were darkly warning that the tone of his speech was straight out of the Mubarak era, and that they expected imminent arrests of political figures as his next step. There did appear to be one concession in his speech: A revocation of a decree that removed him and the constitutional committee, packed with Islamists who drafted the document, from judicial oversight, if the constitution failed to be approved.

“[Morsi] is setting us up for another dictatorship and taking control of all powers by himself without taking anyone’s opinion on this constitution,” says Esma El-Hagrassi, an accountant who protested Wednesday in front of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party office in Zagazig, another city in the Nile Delta. “He’s just a leader of a group of people with beards."

But if the referendum is held on Dec. 15, it may well pass, leaving Egypt with a constitution rejected by a sizable proportion of the nation. Ms. El-Hagrassi says she is a minority in the city, where many people – as in other rural parts of Egypt – support the Muslim Brotherhood. “But recently we have been hearing people protesting against the Brotherhood in the streets,” she says.

On Thursday, clashes between security forces and protesters erupted near Morsi’s home in Zagazig (until recently he was on the engineering faculty at the university there), and 20 people were hospitalized due to tear-gas inhalation, local press reported.

POPULAR ENOUGH?

“People who support Morsi outside Cairo are much [greater in number] than people against him,” says Ahmed Roushid, an engineer and member of the Brotherhood’s political party. A resident of Mansoura, north of Cairo, Mr. Roushid echoes many Morsi supporters when he says they comprise Egypt’s majority. The Muslim Brotherhood's backers have praised Morsi’s decree as a key to moving toward stability and protecting democracy.

In parliamentary elections earlier this year (a judicial ruling later dissolved parliament), Islamists won almost 75 percent of the seats, gaining much of their support from rural regions where people are generally more religiously and socially conservative than those in the cities. People in rural areas comprise more than 78 percent of Egypt’s poor, the World Bank says, and there is great desire for stability.

“Most Egyptians, not only outside Cairo but also inside Cairo, don’t care about anything but living in a quiet country, having a sort of stability, and their daily income is the first priority for them,” Mr. Roushid says. That desire for an end to turmoil could lead many to vote "yes" in the upcoming referendum.

While some pro-Morsi demonstrators have rallied outside Cairo, protests in rural areas against Morsi and his constitutional decree have been staged by a relative minority who are eager to show they can speak against the president, says Hassan at Cairo University. They typically choose places that draw attention although protests have been small in size compared to those in Cairo.

Even so, the fact that some protests are taking place is indicative of how things have grown worse and the nation is really split in this period, he says. “This means divisions are getting deeper and deeper and the polarization that this country is going through is basically unprecedented as I can see it."

The January and February 2011 revolution against Mubarak reached its breaking point when protests erupted outside the capital, and there is fear that this might happen again, Hassan says. The current extent of unrest, however, does not compare to the 18 days that ended Mubarak's nearly 30 years in power.

ECONOMIC COSTS

Many Egyptians in and outside Cairo are finding it difficult to make a living alongside unrest that has come in waves since early 2011. That is the case for some in Aswan, a sleepy city in Upper Egypt that like Luxor – home to Valley of the Kings – relies on the tourism industry.

“It’s almost dead since the revolution started, and things are going from bad to worse,” says Hassan Abdel Rahim, a tour guide in Aswan, on the Nile River. “The latest clashes killed the season as it was about to start. I have heard about so many reservations being cancelled.”

But even Aswan saw a small protest on Wednesday evening and groups are planning for a larger demonstration on Friday.

“Aswan is an extension of Tahrir Square,” says Ashraf Mekkawi, the local head of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, a liberal group. “We feel we have lots of people who are having the same feelings or ideas against the regime and sympathize with us.”

Further north and in Egypt’s east, the lower half of the Sinai Peninsula hosts a slew of vacation resorts in Sharm El Sheikh and elsewhere along the Red Sea coast. Here some are also struggling from unrest that hinders business.

“I just want tourism to come back and things to keep calm,” says Bedouin Mohammad Hassein, who doesn’t support any of the protesters.

Bedouin here complain of being disregarded in political decisions. Some considered having protests, says Sheikh Sleiman El-Sakhan, a community leader in Nuweiba. “But what is the benefit?” he asks. “We are too far removed from politics so we won’t get anything out of this. People in North and South Sinai… are just waiting for their own daily income.”

“It’s as if we don’t exist on the map,” he added.

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How deadly would chemical weapons in Syria be?

Serious concerns have been raised about chemical weapons in Syria as unnamed US officials on Wednesday told NBC News that Syrian forces have loaded sarin, a deadly nerve gas, into bombs that can be dropped by planes.

The officials said the bombs had not been loaded onto planes and there was not yet a decision from Syria's leader to use them.

President Obama has said the use of chemical weapons in Syria is a “red line” that would draw the US into the war. Embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has denied that he’s planning to use them, unless international forces intervene. And Syrian officials have called recent accusations a “pretext for intervention.”

The international community is now debating if and how to respond to this latest development.

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As the situation unfolds, for many unfamiliar with sarin gas there may be some question as to what it is and just how deadly it can be. Though it’s classified as a weapon of mass destruction and is extremely lethal, it is not in the same league as nuclear weapons.

“Chemical weapons are not nuclear weapons. In order to produce a lot of damage they have to be distributed very efficiently. The problem with them is that they can be very deadly and efficient if used in population centers and their effects are indiscriminate,” says Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.

“The explosion of a single chemical shell would not necessarily be a catastrophe if it went off accidentally at one of these storage sites, but the deliberate use of one chemical shell in a population center could be very deadly,” adds Mr. Kimball.

Sarin is a colorless and odorless nerve agent that can be attached to missiles and artillery rounds and is primarily lethal when inhaled but can also penetrate skin and clothing.

It evaporates quickly, though under the right conditions it can linger for up to five days. As a result, a sarin attack requires little clean up and areas affected by sarin can be quickly reoccupied, making it a desirable weapon for military units looking to advance without destroying infrastructure and equipment.

It was first developed in Germany in 1938, but there was no known use of it as a weapon, until 1988 when Iraq used it against the Kurdish town of Halabja. The Iraqi military is also believed to have used sarin against Iran during the war between the two countries that spanned from 1980 to 1988.

Most recently, it was used by the Japanese group Aum Shinrikyo which manufactured their own form of impure sarin gas and released it on the Tokyo subway in 1995. The attack killed 12 and injured at least 5,500 people.

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