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Multi-millionaire Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tom Perkins tried to apologize — kind of — for comparing the protests against the techno-affluent to Kristallnacht, the 1938 Nazi rampage that led to 91 killings and 30,000 Jews sent to concentration camps.

Perkins' feelings about a "progressive war" against the top one percent of earners were published in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend and touched many a nerve in the long-simmering class tensions in the Bay Area. His letter led to denouncements from his own VC firm and from other tech leaders, including Marc Andreessen, another prominent venture capitalist.

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Billionaire Compares Outrage Over Rich In SF To Kristallnacht

Class tensions in the San Francisco Bay Area got even hotter this weekend, over the public musings of Tom Perkins, a prominent venture capitalist and co-founder of the firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The billionaire wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal comparing the class tensions between the San Francisco middle class and the techno-affluent to one of the most horrific events in Western history — Kristallnacht, or "Night of the Broken Glass," a series of coordinated attacks against Jews in 1938 Nazi Germany.

The context here is that in recent years, some Bay Area residents have become increasingly outraged over rising income inequality, housing prices and how newly-rich tech entrepreneurs are changing the city and its culture. (We explored this from several angles in December, look back on the series here.) The simmering resentment has erupted in louder calls for housing policy changes and protests over the private buses that take tech workers to Silicon Valley headquarters, like those of Google. And some protestors have even stalked a Google employee to his home and blocked him in.

The events have clearly frustrated Perkins, a "Silicon Valley pioneer," according to his bio. In his letter titled "Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?" Perkins attempts to draw a line between the "demonization of the rich" in San Francisco to the assault on Jews by the Nazis at the start of World War II — an assault that led to 91 deaths and 30,000 jailed in concentration camps. Some excerpts from Perkin's brief letter:

"I would call attention to the parallels of Nazi Germany to its war on its 'one percent,' namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the 'rich.'

As far as factories go, this one was about as ballyhooed as they come. In 2012, President Obama visited Intel's Ocotillo campus in suburban Phoenix, the day after his State of the Union address.

Obama stood beneath a towering crane at the construction site — a crane so big it could lift 4,000 tons. The president then boasted that Intel's $5 billion factory, known as Fab 42, would someday crank out even more high-powered computer chips for laptops and phones.

"The factory that's being built behind me is an example of an America that's within our reach — an America that attracts the next generation of good manufacturing jobs," Obama said.

What a difference two years make. That multi-billion dollar factory Obama was raving about is finished, but there's nothing happening inside it.

Earlier this month, Intel announced it would delay opening the factory in Chandler, Ariz. A few days later, the computer-chip maker said it would cut more than 5,000 jobs from its global workforce.

In a statement, Intel said the new factory space would be set aside for future use. Many of the 1,000 or so jobs the project was supposed to have created have been relocated to other buildings on this sprawling industrial complex.

So what happened?

The company's stock has actually stagnated since the day Obama made his visit to Arizona. Intel hit headwinds when demand for personal computers plummeted in favor of tablets and mobile phones, says Morningstar Analyst Andy Ng, who follows the semiconductor industry.

"When I think about Intel, it's a company in transition," Ng says. "When you look at what Intel was planning for Chandler, I don't think they figured that the PC market and the demand for PC processors would decline so quickly."

The problem is that 60 percent of Intel's business comes from the processors inside PCs. The company said this month that revenue would be flat in 2014, a big reason for the 5 percent cut in its global workforce by the end of the year.

"Remember this is a big organization too ... so you can't just right the ship overnight," Ng says.

And some industry experts believe Intel has recognized its imbalance; Ng says it's transitioning well into the race for smartphones and tablets. He sees potential in the company's push for building cloud storage and server capacity for the crush of new mobile devices popping up around the world.

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Long Before Most, Intel Chased The Smart Watch

Syrian peace talks in Geneva have produced their first tangible result — an agreement to allow women and children to escape the city of Homs, which has been under government siege for more than a year.

"What we have been told by the government side is that women and children in the besieged area of the old city are welcome to leave immediately," Brahimi told reporters.

Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad confirmed the agreement, but said it was "armed groups" that were preventing their movement.

"I assure you that if the armed terorists in Homs allow women and children to leave the Old City of Homs, we will allow them every access, not only that, we will provide them with shelter, medicines and all that is needed," Mekdad said.

Homs is one of the first cities to rebel against President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Brahimi acknowledged on Sunday that it was only a small step in what he hoped would be a broader peace deal between the two sides, which have been fighting since 2011 in a conflict that has claimed well over 100,000 lives.

"You may gain one hour and lose one week," he said of the uncertain nature of the talks.

As we reported on Saturday, on the first day of talks as representatives eyed each other warily, Brahimi lamented that "we haven't achieved much."

"The situation is very difficult and very, very complicated, and we are moving not in steps, but half-steps," he said on Saturday.