"Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now."

That's how Edward Snowden, the source behind the bombshell revelations about the National Security Agency's surveillance programs, responded to accusations that he's a Chinese agent during a Q&A Monday on the Guardian's website. Here are the highlights from the fascinating conversation, which was moderated by journalist Glenn Greenwald:

Read on

If you believe the polls, we could be witnessing the beginning of the end of Islamist dominance in Egypt. Two new surveys suggest Egyptians are losing patience with the Muslim Brotherhood and President Mohamed Morsy.

First, a word of caution about polling in Egypt: It's not easy. If the public opinion surveys conducted before the presidential election were accurate, Egyptians would now be living under President Amr Moussa. But these latest polls should be taken seriously for two reasons: They were conducted by organizations that have long experience working in Egypt, and both have gauged Morsy's approval rating over time -- and now find a clear downward trend.

The first piece of evidence is a survey conducted by the Egyptian Centre for Public Opinion Research, which found that the percentage of Egyptians approving of Morsy's performance dipped to 42 percent, while those disapproving of his time in office rose to 52 percent. The center has recorded a dramatic decline in Morsy's popularity from his early days in office, when over 70 percent of Egyptians approved of his performance. A majority, 54 percent, also said they favored early presidential elections.

The second poll, conducted by Zogby, contains even worse news for Morsy and the Muslim Brotherhood. It found what it described as a "crisis of leadership," where Morsy enjoyed the support of only 28 percent of Egyptians. Meanwhile, a whopping 61 percent of respondents say they are worse off than they were five years ago, and 72 percent disagreed with the claim that the Muslim Brotherhood is committed to democracy.

But what opposition force could emerge to replace Morsy? Zogby divides the Egyptian electorate into three blocs: The Islamic Tendency, represented by the Brotherhood and the Salafist Nour Party; the Organized Oppositionists, including the National Salvation Front (NSF) and the April 6 Movement; and the Silent Disaffected Plurality. Of those groups, only the Brotherhood and the Nour Party are actual political movements -- the NSF is a conglomeration of opposition parties that struggles to work in a coherent fashion, April 6 is a youth movement that has resolutely refused to transform into a political party, and the "disaffected plurality" are, by definition, represented by nobody.

Zogby's findings confirm the opposition's failure to rally around a viable replacement for Morsy. Respondents gave universally negative marks to the president's rivals: 70 percent of respondents said former presidential contender Ahmed Shafiq was not a credible leader, while 81 percent said the same about opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei. The only living figure who received high marks is comedian Bassem Youssef, who has emerged as one of the Islamists' most prominent critics. But imagining him as the political leader of the opposition seems more likely to be the basis for a sketch on his famous satire program, rather than reality.

Egyptian politics today isn't a popularity contest -- it's a competition to see which group can get organized most effectively. And by this measure, the Brotherhood is still winning: The movement doesn't have to be popular if it can rally its cadres around a cause and to the ballot box. Until the opposition builds an organization that can compete, the Islamists will remain on top -- regardless of what the polls say.

In May 2012, Jerome Cohen, a professor of law at New York University, advised blind activist Chen Guangcheng on his negotiations with the United States and Chinese government, which ultimately resulted in Chen accepting an offer to be a visiting fellow at NYU law school.

Now Chen's saga has taken another dramatic turn. On Thursday, the New York Post ran a story claiming that the university had "booted" the dissident  in the face of pressure from the Chinese government over the school's construction of a controversial branch in Shanghai. And on Sunday night, Chen stated that NYU did indeed urge him to leave (a claim that NYU denies). "As early as late August and September, the Chinese Communists had already begun to apply great, unrelenting pressure on New York University," he wrote. "So much so that after we had been in the United States just three to four months, NYU was already starting to discuss our departure with us."

In a phone interview with Foreign Policy on Monday, Cohen disputed Chen's statement and the Post's report. The interview is below, edited and condensed for clarity.

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The revelations about the National Security Agency's spying programs just keep piling up.

True to his promise to continue disclosing NSA secrets, Edward Snowden has now revealed to the Guardian that the agency intercepted the communications of former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other world leaders in 2009. Not only are the leaks embarrassing for the agency, but they also present the NSA with a Catch-22: How do you defend yourself publicly while keeping a lid on classified operations? In the latest installment of Washington's PRISM spin war, the NSA has opted for vaguely worded, highly legalistic denials and assurances -- ones that are often difficult to square with what's been reported so far about the U.S. intelligence community's surveillance programs.

Consider the NSA's latest fact sheet, released on Saturday, which seeks to address allegations about two different programs geared toward collecting Internet data and telephony metadata. And, oh boy, is the NSA's public relations department trying hard to make Americans feel like they have nothing to worry about.

Let's begin with the collection of telephony metadata. According to the Washington Post, the NSA is engaged in a large-scale effort to rake in this data -- information like the origin and recipient of a call, call length, subscriber information, and the type of device used. The government has code-named this program MAINWAY. 

Here's how the NSA fact sheet describes the system: "The government does not indiscriminately sift through the telephony metadata acquired under this program.... The metadata acquired and stored under this program may be queried only when there is a reasonable suspicion, based on specific and articulated facts, that an identifier is associated with specific foreign terrorist organizations." (The emphasis is the NSA's.)

Here's what the NSA isn't saying: In order to build this database, it is collecting telephone records en masse. If the government is to be believed, it only looks at the data "when there is a reasonable suspicion," but that doesn't change the fact that your telephone records are sitting on a government server. We don't know exactly whom the government has collected records from, but the Post revealed Sunday that the NSA has pulled records from other large telephone companies, including AT&T and Bell South.

Next, let's look at PRISM, the scope of which is hotly disputed. The initial reports describing PRISM alleged that the program involves "direct access" to the servers of several major tech companies. This allegation has since been scaled back, and the current operating wisdom is that PRISM functions as something of a lock box. The government requests information from the companies, and they deposit the relevant information in a secure repository. Under such an arrangement, the NSA might conceivably ask for every Facebook profile in Peshawar, Pakistan -- data that Facebook could then deposit in the lock box for the NSA to download.

According to the NSA fact sheet, this program "does not allow the government to target the phone calls or emails of any U.S. citizen or any other U.S. person anywhere in the world, or any person known to the in the United States. It only allows the targeting of communications of foreigners, and even then only when those communications may have foreign intelligence value." The agency further notes that "any information about U.S. persons that may be incidentally acquired" is subject to "minimization procedures." 

First, when evaluating the government's statements about PRISM, it's crucial to note that it is dealing with Internet content, not metadata. That is, PRISM can give the NSA access to the contents of an entire email inbox. It sweeps up this data in targeted requests to companies, not in bulk as with telephone records. In its statement, the NSA emphasizes that this power is not directed at Americans, only foreigners. But implicit in this program is the fact that Americans' communications are bound to be swept up when the government collects something like an entire email inbox. When it does so, such information is subject to "minimization procedures." This is where the NSA's Catch-22 comes in: Since they are highly classified, the government can't reveal what those minimization procedures entail.

Stepping back, the NSA fact sheet explains that both PRISM and MAINWAY are "subject to strict controls and oversight." In the case of MAINWAY, "only a small number of specifically trained officials may access the data; the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) reviews the program every 90 days; and the data must be destroyed within 5 years." With PRISM, the Department of Justice and the director of national intelligence regularly review the program, Congress and the FISC receive semi-annual reports, and the FISC "must renew the program each year upon certification" by the attorney general and the director of national intelligence.

What this description of oversight, meant to convey that these intelligence programs are tightly controlled, omits is that the controls on the program exist entirely out of public view. Though some members of Congress are kept in the loop on the NSA's activities, they are barred from disclosing any of that information to the public. This is why Sen. Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat, has been issuing apocalyptic warnings about the NSA's activities for years without offering any detailed information to substantiate those accusations.

In other words, when President Obama's interview on the NSA leaks airs Monday night, pay as much attention to what he omits as to what he says.

The graphic above is a screenshot of a real, live poll conducted on Al Jazeera Arabic. It asks readers to give their opinion on who is responsible for turning the Syrian revolution into a sectarian conflict. And it offers two choices: Sunnis or Shiites.

In what may be an indication of the audience of Al Jazeera, which has been accused of favoring the predominantly Sunni opposition against Bashar al-Assad, an overwhelming 95.7 percent of readers as of this morning said the Shiites were to blame.

The poll itself, of course, is a painfully ham-handed effort -- the assumption that either the Shiite or Sunni communities as a whole are responsible for the gruesome turn of events itself endorses a sectarian view of the conflict. But it also suggests a broader, sadder truth: While Syrians may not have harbored religious hatreds two years ago, they are increasingly being forced to choose sides in a sectarian conflict.

As the radicalization of both sides continues, it's not just Al Jazeera readers who are being asked to look at the Syrian revolt as a struggle between rival faiths -- regular Syrians are being forced to think this way as well. It's a view that boils the war down to a simple choice: Who do you hate, the Sunnis or the Shiites? Check a box.

Father's Day celebrations may have originated in Washington state in the early 20th century, but the United States isn't necessarily the friendliest place for the paterfamilias.

What it means for a country to be good for fathers, of course, differs across time and cultures. But, as we noted last year on Mother's Day, some countries simply prioritize parenting more than others.

When it comes to family-friendly government policies, for instance, there's Scandinavia and then there's the rest of the world. Many of the countries offering the most generous paid paternity leave are Scandinavian, and Norway in particular emerges as arguably the best place in the world to be a father.

Norway is a perennial favorite in best-country lists -- most recently topping the United Nations' Human Development Index -- and it's just as formidable when it comes to fatherhood. Famous for generous parental leave for both sexes - either 46 weeks off at full pay or 56 weeks off at 80 percent of salary (to be divided up between the two parents) -- Norway ensures that new fathers take advantage of the opportunity with its policy of pappapermisjon - a 10-week period of leave reserved exclusively for men. Combine this with two weeks of paid paternity leave carved out for immediately after childbirth, and dads in Norway can look forward to 12 weeks off to spend with their new baby. Ninety percent of Norwegian fathers are now participating in the program, compared with the two to three percent of fathers who were taking parental leave back in the early 1990s, when Norway established its pappapermisjon policy.

Another northern European overachiever is Iceland. Although paid leave policies took a bit of a hit following Iceland's 2008 banking crisis, the country's parliament has since striven to restore what was originally one of the most generous systems in the world. While current Icelandic law provides nine months of paid leave with a 3-3-3 split (three months for mothers, three for fathers, and three to split between parents), by 2016 Iceland will have adopted a 12-month, 5-5-2 system, in which fathers receive five months of paid parental leave, plus an additional two month to be split as the couple sees fit.

If you're searching for that elusive combination of good family policies and stellar Father's Day traditions, it's hard to beat Germany. Like its neighbors to the north, the Father-Friendly Land is no slouch when it comes to parental leave. The government offers 12 months of leave, paid at 67 percent of a parent's salary, to be split between a couple. While there is no leave exclusively reserved for the father, families receive an additional two months of paid leave if the father also takes at least two months off.

But while giving fathers a chance to bond with their newborn babies is nice and all, what really makes Germany great for fathers is the Father's Day party.

Vatertag (also known as Männertag) is celebrated every year on Ascension Day, 40 days after Easter. Originally a religious festival, today Father's Day is a booze-soaked celebration of everything manly. German men of all ages spend the day hiking through town and country pulling large wagons (Bollerwagen) filled with beer or wine (depending on the region), and consuming their precious cargo in large quantities. Der Spiegel warns that people in Germany on Father's Day should expect "grown men slumped against lampposts, or lolling dazed and confused in wooden carts, clutching barrels of beer."

So, who's moving to Germany?

Residents of Tehran are celebrating in the streets tonight.

Earlier on Saturday, Iran's interior minister confirmed that Hassan Rowhani had secured an outright majority in presidential elections, eliminating the need for a run-off. Rowhani trounced the competition, securing just over 50 percent of the vote and beating his nearest rival by a three to one margin.

Taken together with Saeed Jalili's third place finish -- he was the Ayatollah's preferred candidate -- Rowhani's victory sends a strong message of discontent to Iran's ruling clerics and serves as a reminder that the reformist sentiment that brought thousands into the streets following the hotly contested election in 2009 has not faded. Though Rowhani was not the most progressive candidate to throw his hat into the ring, he at least pledged to break somewhat with the prevailing orthodoxy.

To get a sense of what Iranians are thinking about this election, consider this: Tonight, the residents of Tehran were chanting the name of Mir Mousavi, the candidate who lost the 2009 election:

Chants: #Mousavi we got your votes back #iran #iranelection #Rohani

— Mehdi Saharkhiz (@onlymehdi) June 15, 2013

With Iran still at loggerheads with the international community over its nuclear program, the big question on every Iran-watcher's mind now is whether Rowhani may abandon his predecessor's hardline stance in nuclear  negotiations.

Though Rowhani's plans for the program remain largely a mystery, a fascinating speech he delivered sometime between October and November 2004 offers some insight as to his thinking about the program and how his country deals with the West.

For those seeking a diplomatic resolution to the stand-off, the speech offers both good and bad news. On the one hand, Rowhani argues that Iran should engage more directly with the West through diplomatic channels. On the other hand, he observes that Iran's strategy of slow-playing the West through negotiations while covertly developing its nuclear program has largely served the country well.

Iran's technical progress, he observed in the speech, "is good for our international reputation and shows that we have made good technological progress and have been successful in the area of technology .... It is going to be a very effective and important statement." The very same progress, Rowhani continued, is the key to Iran gaining the international acceptance it so desperately desires: "If one day we are able to complete the fuel cycle and the world sees that it has no choice -- that we do possess the technology -- then the situation will be different. The world did not want Pakistan to have an atomic bomb or Brazil to have the fuel cycle, but Pakistan built its bomb and Brazil has its fuel cycle, and the world started to work with them. Our problem is that we have not achieved either one, but we are standing at the threshold."

Much of the technical progress that Rowhani praises in fact occurred while the Iranians pretended to be making nice with Western diplomats. Rowhani reveals that Iran's chief goal in negotiations was to at all costs avoid being referred to the U.N. Security Council, and to that end, the country's diplomats pursued a stalling tactic, dragging out talks and negotiations while Iran's scientists worked feverishly behind closed doors. In a telling revelation, Rowhani says that Iranian diplomats only agreed to concessions in areas not beset by technical problems.

This strategy, Rowhani believes, served the country well: "While we were talking with the Europeans in Tehran, we were installing equipment in parts of the facility in Isfahan.... in fact, by creating a calm environment, we were able to complete the work in Isfahan. Today, we can convert yellowcake into UF4 and UF6, and this is a very important matter." UF4 and UF6 -- uranium tetraflouride and uranium hexaflouride, respectively -- are two important materials in the nuclear enrichment process.

There is nothing to indicate in the speech that Rowhani thinks Iran should abandon its nuclear program; rather, his focus on how to best manage the international community and the domestic Iranian population. As soon as Iran has mastered the enrichment process, Rowhani observes, "a country that can enright uranium to about 3.5 percent will also have the capability to enrich it to about 90 percent." (90 percent is weapons grade.) This suggests that Rowhani believes the issue may be settled -- Iran has already achieved 3.5 percent enrichment -- and that the challenge lies in its efforts abroad. Equally important, Rowhani observes, is maintaining domestic support for the program, which as Chen Kane, a senior research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, observes in the accompanying analysis, represents a surprising concern at the highest levels of Iranian politics.

Rowhani is nothing if not an expert on Iran's nuclear program -- he says he led a mid-2003 interagency review of the program and served as the chief nuclear negotiator from October 2003 to August 2005  -- and he also has a clear sense of how to navigate the international waters. By exploiting the differences in the negotiating positions of the major diplomatic powers -- the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany -- Rowhani says Iran can secure protection at the Security Council in the form of a guaranteed veto. Which is exactly what it has often received from China and Russia.

It has to be noted that Rowhani did not advocate in the speech that Iran should pursue a nuclear bomb -- though the possibility of doing so was certainly hinted at in his references to 90 percent enrichment. "As for building the atomic bomb, we never wanted to move in that direction and we have not yet completely developed our fuel cycle capability," Rowhani says. "This also happens to be our main problem."

In Rowhani, Iranians have elected a man well-versed in the country's nuclear program and a man who clearly wants to improve relations with the West.

But to what end is not entirely clear.