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Lucky Salt Lake. The annual conference of Super Computing is bringing 800Gbps of bandwidth with it to the mid-size Utah city.

The Salt Palace hosts one of the world’s most powerful networks starting today.

(Credit: Dana Sohm/Visit Salt Lake)

This weekend and next week in Salt Lake City’s Salt Palace Convention Center, there are likely to be more gigabits flying around, and at a faster amount per second, than just about anywhere else on the continent.

That’s where a cadre of volunteers from top universities, government labs, and industry have put together a sort of dream network for this year’s SC2012 Super Computing conference, beginning today in Utah. Using multiple 10 gigabit per second (Gbps) and 100Gbps circuits, SCinet links the convention center to other powerful networks around the world, including the Department of Energy’s ESnet, Internet2, and National LambdaRail.

To set up the super network, SCinet teamed with the Utah Education Network and the University of Utah to acquire access to miles of fiber optic cable in the Salt Lake metro area and into the Salt Palace.

While a wireless network for the conference will be one of SCinet’s uses, part of that massive pipe will also be set aside for the SCinet Research Sandbox (SRS), which “provides a unique opportunity for researchers to showcase disruptive network research using emerging technologies like 100Gbps circuits as well as OpenFlow technology,” according to a release from the conference.

Altogether, SCinet will deliver nearly 800Gbps in total capacity for the duration of the week-long conference. Then it will be deconstructed, leaving attendees in a state of major bandwidth withdrawal. Sorry Salt Lake, but you should probably disconnect and get outside anyway — ski season is right around the corner.

Crave: gorgeous gadgets and other crushworthy stuff. – CNET

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A Syrian rebel fighter takes aim at government forces from an apartment in the northern city of Aleppo on Saturday. While the fighting rages, the Syrian opposition is holding talks in Qatar in an attempt to create a new, more unified front. The U.S. announced last week that it favors an overhaul of the opposition leadership.

Could a united Syrian opposition be the game changer that finally topples President Bashar Assad, after almost 20 months of revolt and more than 30,000 dead?

“You need a game changer, either military or political, and hope it will break the stalemate,” says Amr Azm, a Syrian-born professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio.

The Obama administration appears to embrace this view, and last week Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the surprise announcement that the U.S. backed a plan to overhaul the Syrian opposition.

Hundreds of Syrian dissidents began five days of intense talks Sunday in Doha, Qatar. Clinton added urgency by also withdrawing support for the Syrian National Council, the exile-led group that has claimed to represent Syria’s revolution for more than a year.

The SNC is widely seen as dysfunctional and has lost legitimacy with young activists as well as front-line militias. The group also has failed to convince Syria’s minorities that it is a credible political alternative to Assad, who has ruled the country for 12 years, succeeding his father, who was in power for three decades.

A Rough Beginning

The so-called makeover meeting in Qatar got off to a rocky start Sunday as U.S. hopes clashed with the reality of fractious opposition politics.

Divisions quickly emerged. SNC leaders complained about a reduced role; Islamists disagreed with secularists; young activists charged that longtime exiles are out of touch. And the goal to build an alternative leadership could be infected with the same “virus” that sunk unity within the SNC, says Randa Slim, with the New America Foundation.

Enlarge Philippe Desmazes/AFP/Getty Images

Syrian rebel fighters prepare to launch a rocket in the northern city of Aleppo on Saturday. The rebels say they have launched a major assault on a government air base in northern Syria.

Philippe Desmazes/AFP/Getty Images

Syrian rebel fighters prepare to launch a rocket in the northern city of Aleppo on Saturday. The rebels say they have launched a major assault on a government air base in northern Syria.

“The demise of the SNC is a result of self-inflicted wounds,” says Slim. Syrians are “fed up” with the SNC, she says, but that doesn’t make it easier to quickly create a credible alternative. “Their intuitive reaction is mistrust,” says Slim, especially with the call for a major overhaul coming from the Americans.

However, the plan for a leadership shake-up came from a widely respected Damascus dissident, Riad Seif. The 66-year-old is a former member of parliament and was also jailed by the government. He comes from the Sunni business class.

Slim says he has broad-based connections and “brings to the table leadership skills and credibility.”

Seif led a group of 20 opposition figures in Amman, Jordan, ahead of the Qatar talks to hammer out the details of a new leadership group that would consist of about 50 members.

Bringing In Younger Activists

Called the Syrian National Initiative, the council would include many young activists who have played an important role on the ground in Syria’s revolt. The new body would then choose a 10-member executive council as early as this week.

“The goal is to appoint a group of technocrats as a transitional government,” says Amr Azm, which could set the stage for support from the Arab League and international recognition.

In Qatar, Seif dismissed speculation that he would lead a transitional government. He’s been diagnosed with prostate cancer and told Agence France-Presse in an interview, “I am 66 and have health problems.”

He said an alternative government to Assad’s regime is “dearly needed,” to secure more foreign aid and international support.

Seif, a longtime opponent of the Assad regime, joined peaceful street protests in the capital, Damascus, early in the revolt that began in March 2011. He was beaten and arrested in the capital with hundreds of young activists.

“He realizes that the young people are dominant,” says Andrew Tabler, with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “He’s an inside guy who has street cred.”

Tabler believes that activists from the provincial and revolutionary councils in Syria should have been given leadership positions a long time ago. Tabler also cautions that opposition politics are splintered in Syria, and that won’t change anytime soon.

For the Obama administration, shifting the generational power balance appears to be one selling point for a new opposition leadership. In addition, there are the changes that have taken place on the ground. This summer, rebel militias seized control of large areas across northern Syria.

Training The Opposition

The U.S. has been giving nonlethal aid to the opposition, including training programs conducted in Istanbul and in southern Turkey, a $ 6 million program geared toward activists coming out of Syria.

The first group included 36 activists, members of revolutionary councils from the northern province of Aleppo. Later groups came from Idlib, in the northwest; and Deir el Zour, a rebel-held area near the Iraqi border.

The intense course work focused on helping the Syrian opposition set up administrations in towns and villages. For the first time, U.S. officials met face to face with young activists creating grass-roots representative bodies that provide humanitarian services and a fledgling judiciary.

The French government has gone even further by directly distributing cash to revolutionary councils under rebel control.

“There has to be a representation of those who are on the front lines, fighting and dying today to obtain their freedom,” Clinton said. “And we also need an opposition that will be on the record strongly resisting the efforts by extremists to hijack the Syrian revolution.”

However, those doing the fighting and the dying are the rebel militias, but they have not been invited to the Qatar meeting.

“That’s an important thing that’s missing,” says Tabler. “The big problem in this is not engaging armed groups directly. Those taking the shots will be calling the shots, at least in the interim.”

But the Obama administration has become increasingly concerned about the radicalization of the militias. The U.S.-backed political initiative is an attempt to empower secular civilians who would have stronger links with commanders on the ground.

Over the past 20 months, the Syrian revolt has become a grinding military contest. Militia leaders concede that radicals, including some who share the ideology of al-Qaida, are well-trained and well-armed by a network of private funders, and are crucial to the rebels’ campaign.

“Until the opposition can hold a major city, they can’t create an alternative Syria,” says Joe Holliday, a senior research analyst at the Institute for the Study of War.

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Unidentified Afghan civilians broadcast a radio program from the radio studio at Forward Operating Base Shank in Logar province, south of Kabul. The U.S. military is training Afghans to disseminate anti-insurgent messages via local radio.

Spc. Tia Sokimson/DVIDS

Unidentified Afghan civilians broadcast a radio program from the radio studio at Forward Operating Base Shank in Logar province, south of Kabul. The U.S. military is training Afghans to disseminate anti-insurgent messages via local radio.

From the outside, this white metal container looks like all the other mobile structures at Forward Operating Base Shank, the main NATO base in Afghanistan’s Logar province. But rather than housing soldiers, offices or latrines, the building contains a fully functioning — if spartan — radio studio.

It’s known by the U.S. military as a RIAB, or “radio in a box.” But the Afghans, says DJ and presenter Saifitullah, call this station Unity Radio. It broadcasts daily from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. to the surrounding provinces, and Saifitullah says the station gets calls from listeners some 30 to 40 miles away.

“We have different shows in this radio station, including political shows and also some recreational music and also messages,” he says.

‘Fighting Is Not The Answer’

The propaganda messages are usually from the Afghan National Army, or ANA.

“The main focus of these messages is to tell the local people who the enemy is, and that the enemy is supported by people from outside Afghanistan,” says Col. Hayatullah Mamond, one of the chief message writers.

Mamond, who is with the Afghan Army’s 4th Infantry Brigade, says there are also messages that target insurgents, calling on them to lay down their weapons and join the peace process.

“We tell them that fighting is not the answer,” he says. “When there is peace in a country, there is development and jobs and people can live in prosperity.”

Maj. Topal Wared fills the relatively new position of information dissemination officer for the 4th Brigade. He’s charged with gathering information from locals in areas patrolled by the Afghan Army. Wared also researches Taliban propaganda and prepares counter messages.

“For example, the enemy recently went to a school in Maidan Warak District,” Wared says. “They told the students that the ANA are not good people, because they are cooperating with the Americans. So, we have to counter this propaganda.”

U.S. Scales Back Its Role

Maj. Chris Lawson, information officer with the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, has been helping the Afghan National Security Forces, or ANSF, since June.

“Initially, we were doing coalition-led messaging,” Lawson says. “Then, about a month or two in, our brigade commander said from here on out he wants all ANSF messages.”

The Afghans are increasingly self-sufficient, Lawson says. In addition to the Radio in a Box, the Afghans can interact directly with the people and deliver messages face to face. That’s important in a culture with a strong oral tradition, he adds, and where there are not a lot of TVs or radios to go around.

“When it’s time for us to leave, I think they’ll be able to sustain that,” Lawson says. “But they need to start relying more on the local media.”

That’s because the U.S. assets are disappearing amid the drawdown of forces. When he arrived in June, Lawson had nine RIABs in Logar and neighboring Wardak province. Now, he says, they are down to four.

The most difficult part of the equation is determining whether the radio messages, like one calling on young people to join the security forces and fight the foreign-backed enemies, are getting through and making a difference.

“Since I’ve been here, I haven’t done a study of how many people in whatever village listens to these RIABs that we have,” Lawson says.

So with coalition resources dwindling, getting the message out — and ensuring it’s actually effective — is just one more challenge the Afghans must face as they confront the ongoing insurgency in Logar.

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A Libyan military guard stands in front of one of the U.S. Consulate’s burned out buildings on Sept. 14. The U.S. is offering new details of the attack on the consulate that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

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A Libyan military guard stands in front of one of the U.S. Consulate’s burned out buildings on Sept. 14. The U.S. is offering new details of the attack on the consulate that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Mohammad Hannon/AP

Once a mob began attacking the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on the night of Sept. 11, officials in Washington, D.C., watched with alarm. Now, new details are emerging about their response to the deadly attack.

President Obama and his entire national security team monitored what was going on half a world away. Army Gen. Carter Ham, who was the regional commander for Africa, happened to be in Washington that day.

One source familiar with the events said there was a sense of urgency.

The consulate was burning, and Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was visiting the consulate with a small security team, was missing in the smoky chaos. For the next six hours or more, top officials in Washington watched and tried to send help as a second attack centered on the consulate’s annex, a secret CIA base.

Officials say that U.S. forces from Europe and Fort Bragg in North Carolina were dispatched in an effort to help, but they arrived too late. Officials considered sending U.S. warplanes from Italy, but it was decided that dropping bombs would lead to civilian casualties.

Officials dispute a report on Fox News that there was a delay, a “stand down” for CIA operatives and Libyan guards to help those under fire at the consulate.

Could The U.S. Military Come To Their Aid?

The officials had little time to respond. There were no U.S. troops anywhere near the consulate, either in Libya or even in neighboring countries. So dozens of special operations forces and CIA guards from Tripoli were sent by aircraft to Benghazi, 480 miles to the east. They could not get there in time to help defend the consulate.

Ham, back in Washington, requested a military counterterrorism force from Europe. But they arrived in Libya the day after the attack and deployed to Tunisia two days later. A larger special operations force was sent from Fort Bragg, complete with their own helicopters and trucks. They arrived in Sigonella, Italy, too late to be any help. No American forces were denied by Washington, officials say.

American attack aircraft? An AC-130 gunship would seem to make sense. That’s the lumbering black cargo plane, a flying battleship with three types of heavy guns and high-resolution cameras. It’s often used to support special operations forces in tight urban areas and can zoom in on enemy forces. But there were no Spectre gunships in the area, officials learned.

Attack helicopters? None around. There were two Navy ships in the Mediterranean — the USS Laboon and the USS McFaul — but only the Laboon is equipped with a Seahawk helicopter, the Navy’s version of the Black Hawk.

There were American warplanes based in Aviano, Italy, just across the Mediterranean, but they could not arrive in time to help with the consulate fight. When the attack began, consulate officials made an urgent call to the CIA guards at the nearby annex: We’re under attack.

Was The Rescue Delayed?

The CIA official there organized his force and the Libyan guards at the annex. Some tried to find heavy machine guns to bring along to the consulate, about a mile away. One of the CIA operatives waiting to leave grew increasingly angry, convinced they were being told to “stand down” on two occasions, according to a report on Fox News.

CIA officials in Washington strongly deny there was any order not to mount a rescue mission. And the source tells NPR there was never an order to stay put. It was all about getting ready, not delaying. Within 24 minutes, the American and Libyan team moved out toward the consulate.

The convoy drove along an indirect route to avoid hostile militias, and the Americans and Libyans hustled along on foot for the last half mile, arriving an hour after the call for help.

The source said that surveillance cameras establish what time they left the annex and what time they showed up at the consulate. When they arrived, Ambassador Stevens was missing. He was carried to a hospital by looters, and later died there of asphyxiation from the smoke he inhaled while in the consulate’s safe room.

The American and Libyan team loaded up the wounded and the survivors, and made their way back to the annex. They got lost in the maze of streets, and some militia members shot at their tires as they made it back to the annex. In Washington, there was relief. At the White House and the Pentagon, top officials believed the worst was over after the successful rescue mission.

The Second Attack

For several hours, there was a lull in the fighting. Then a second attack began, at the well-fortified annex. In Washington, the issue of attack aircraft came up among top officials.

The F-16 Fighting Falcons could come to the rescue from their base in Aviano, some officials thought. But there were no clear targets, it was decided. An unarmed Predator drone flew over the area, just before the consulate attack ended. But it offered only a “soda straw” view hundreds of feet below near the annex. There were no armed drones in the area.

Officials watched the grainy footage from the drone. It was hard to determine, among the hundreds of people, who was with a militia supporting the U.S., who was taking part in that second attack, and who was a spectator — people, as the source said, “watching a war movie in front of them.” Sporadic gunfire added to the confusion about separating friend from foe.

Officials eventually decided they couldn’t drop large bombs in a residential neighborhood.

A decision was made: no close air support, not even as a show of force that could possibly disperse the fighters. The Americans, and their Libyan allies fighting with them on the ground, were on their own.

At some point, the Quick Reaction Force arrived from Tripoli to help. Rocket-propelled grenades and mortars slammed into the annex. One mortar curled into the base and killed two Americans. The annex was never breached, and the attackers were fought off. The force from Tripoli helped move the survivors to the airport.

There was frustration in Washington that no more American firepower could be brought to help, according to the source. No more troops. No aircraft at all. If the Quick Reaction Force from Tripoli had not been able to fight off the attackers and evacuate the annex, there would have been even more casualties and perhaps more pressure to send in some type of additional American force.

In the end, four Americans were killed: Ambassador Stevens; Sean Smith, a U.S. Foreign Service officer; and two embassy security personnel, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods. Another 30 Americans and Libyans were wounded.

Obama and some of the same senior officials who huddled in Washington and tried to send them help assembled at Andrews Air Force Base three nights later to meet the four caskets.

Update at 6:45 a.m. ET, Nov. 2. Some Other News Outlets’ Headlines:

— “CIA Had Pivotal Part Fighting Attackers In Libya.” (The New York Times)

— “CIA Rushed To Save Diplomats As Libya Attack Was Underway.” (The Washington Post)

— “U.S. Says CIA Responded Within 25 Minutes To Benghazi Attack.” (Los Angeles Times)

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A Libyan military guard stands in front of one of the U.S. Consulate’s burnt out buildings on Sept. 14. The U.S. is offering new details of the attack on the consulate that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Mohammad Hannon/AP i

A Libyan military guard stands in front of one of the U.S. Consulate’s burnt out buildings on Sept. 14. The U.S. is offering new details of the attack on the consulate that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Mohammad Hannon/AP

Once a mob began attacking the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on the night of Sept. 11, officials in Washington, D.C., watched with alarm. Now, new details are emerging about their response to the deadly attack.

President Obama and his entire national security team monitored what was going on half a world away. Army Gen. Carter Ham, who was the regional commander for Africa, happened to be in Washington that day.

One source familiar with the events said there was a sense of urgency.

The consulate was burning, and Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was visiting the consulate with a small security team, was missing in the smoky chaos. For the next six hours or more, top officials in Washington watched and tried to send help as a second attack centered on the consulate’s annex, a secret CIA base.

Officials say that U.S. forces from Europe and Fort Bragg in North Carolina were dispatched in an effort to help, but they arrived too late. Officials considered sending U.S. warplanes from Italy, but it was decided dropping bombs would lead to civilian casualties.

Officials dispute a report on Fox News that there was a delay, a “stand down” for CIA operatives and Libyan guards to help those under fire at the consulate.

Could The U.S. Military Come To Their Aid?

The officials had little time to respond. There were no U.S. troops anywhere near the consulate, either in Libya or even in neighboring countries. So dozens of special operations forces and CIA guards from Tripoli were sent by aircraft to Benghazi, 480 miles to the east. They could not get there in time to help defend the consulate.

Ham, back in Washington, requested a military counterterrorism force from Europe. But they arrived in Libya the day after the attack and deployed to Tunisia two days later. A larger special operations force was sent from Fort Bragg, complete with their own helicopters and trucks. They arrived in Sigonella, Italy, too late to be any help. No American forces were denied by Washington, officials say.

American attack aircraft? An AC-130 gunships would seem to make sense. That’s the lumbering black cargo plane, a flying battleship with three types of heavy guns and high-resolution cameras. It’s often used to support special operations forces in tight urban areas and can zoom in on enemy forces. But there were no Spectre gunships in the area, officials learned.

Attack helicopters? None around. There were two Navy ships in the Mediterranean, the USS Laboon and the USS McFaul, but only the Laboon is equipped with a Seahawk helicopter, the Navy’s version of the BlackHawk.

They were American warplanes based in Aviano, Italy, just across the Mediterranean. But they could not arrive in time to help with the consulate fight. When the attack began, consulate officials made an urgent call to the CIA guards at the nearby annex: We’re under attack.

Was The Rescue Delayed?

The CIA official there organized his force and the Libyan guards at the annex. Some tried to find heavy machine guns to bring along to the consulate, about a mile away. One of the CIA operatives waiting to leave grew increasingly angry, convinced they were being told to “stand down” on two occasions, according a report on Fox News.

CIA officials in Washington strongly deny there was any order not to mount a rescue mission. And the source tells NPR there was never an order to stay put. It was all about getting ready, not delaying. Within 24 minutes, the American and Libyan team moved out toward the consulate.

The convoy drove along an indirect route to avoid hostile militias, and the Americans and Libyans hustled along on foot for the last half mile, arriving an hour after the call for help.

The source said that surveillance cameras establish what time they left the annex and what time they showed up at the consulate. When they arrived, Ambassador Stevens was missing. He was carried to a hospital by looters, and later died there of asphyxiation from the smoke he inhaled while in the consulate’s safe room.

The American and Libyan team loaded up the wounded and the survivors and made their way back to the annex. They got lost in the maze of streets, and some militia members shot at their tires as they made it back to the annex. In Washington, there was relief. At the White House and the Pentagon, top officials believed the worst was over after the successful rescue mission.

The Second Attack

For several hours, there was a lull in the fighting. Then a second attack began, at the well-fortified annex. In Washington, the issue of attack aircraft came up among top officials.

The F-16 Fighting Falcons could come to the rescue from their base in Aviano, some officials thought. But there were no clear targets, it was decided. An unarmed Predator drone flew over the area, just before the consulate attack ended. But it offered only a “soda straw” view hundreds of feet below near the annex. There were no armed drones in the area.

Officials watched the grainy footage from the drone. It was hard to determine among the hundreds of people who was with a militia supporting the U.S., and who was taking part in that second attack, and who was a spectator — people, as the source said, “watching a war movie in front of them.” Sporadic gunfire added to the confusion about separating friend from foe.

Officials eventually decided they can’t drop large bombs in a residential neighborhood.

A decision was made: No close air support, not even as a show of force that could possibly disperse the fighters. The Americans, and their Libyan allies fighting with them on the ground, were on their own.

At some point, the Quick Reaction Force arrived from Tripoli to help. Rocket-propelled grenades and mortars slammed into the annex. One mortar curled into the base and killed two Americans. The annex was never breached, and the attackers were fought off. The force from Tripoli helped move the survivors to the airport.

There was frustration in Washington that no more American firepower could be brought to help, according to the source. No more troops. No aircraft at all. If the Quick Reaction Force from Tripoli had not been able to fight off the attackers and evacuate the annex, there would have been even more casualties and perhaps more pressure to send in some type of additional American force.

In the end, four Americans were killed: Ambassador Stevens, Sean Smith, a U.S. Foreign Service officer, as well as two embassy security personnel, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods. Another 30 Americans and Libyans were wounded.

Obama and some of the same senior officials who huddled in Washington and tried to send them help assembled at Andrews Air Force Base three nights later to meet the four caskets.

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Just some of the food labels a Danish government group is evaluating.

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Just some of the food labels a Danish government group is evaluating.

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Wherever you look these days, it seems labels that strive to send a message about our food are on the table. In California, there’s a vote coming up on whether genetically modified foods should be labeled. A few weeks ago, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission updated its guidelines for “green” labeling. And now The New York Times food writer Mark Bittman has stepped into the fray with an op-ed outlining his suggestion for a multicolored, multicategory “dream” food label that aims to convey how healthful, natural and humane a food is.

No question, as consumers have become more interested in the back story of whatever they’re tossing in the shopping cart, the proliferation of “pick me!” logos has become somewhat overwhelming. The international Ecolabel Index, for example, keeps tabs on no less than 432 marks administered by governments, nongovernmental organizations and industry alliances (and those are just “green” labels, having nothing to do with nutrition).

The Index’s Anastasia O’Rourke says this sea of stylized leaves and bean sprouts is confusing not only to individual consumers but to major purchasers like universities trying hard to do the right thing.

Luckily for those of us who’ve experienced the tennis-spectator whiplash of too much time spent deciding between competing bags of do-gooder coffee, there’s hope. O’Rourke can quickly tick off four major efforts working toward standardizing the whole labeling game. Some of the major players include the European Commission, United Nations and International Organization for Standardization.

OK, so hope, but maybe not of the fleet-footed variety. As the magazine Der Spiegel points out, past efforts to pare the list have been less than successful.

Nonetheless, a few individual countries have begun trying to sort things out for themselves. One of those is Denmark, where the government and Consumer Council are currently working out an agreement to analyze some of the most common ecolabels, with an eye for accuracy and areas of overlap. The goal is then to “weed out” some of the labels (to the extent that’s legally possible) and suggest tools that could make life easier for shoppers.

One option might be a mobile phone app that scans product labels to provide even more information about a product’s history, a la the GoodGuide. Another might be a take-along program alerting consumers to which ecolabels cover the issues that matter to them most. The Danish Competition and Consumer Authority already has a nifty prototype for that one on its website, where shoppers can check categories like “organic,” “animal welfare” or “Fair Trade” and see which labels pop up — kind of an ecolabel Whac-A-Mole.

The tug of war between informing consumers and making them want to bury their heads in the sand is nothing new, says Jens Ring, who’s with the European Commission in Copenhagen and has been working in the consumer affairs arena for years. “Before, it was discussion about whether the letters on labels should be 1 millimeter tall or less. There’s always a trade-off. It’s a constant discussion.” And one that’s not likely to be wrapping up soon.

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With the final presidential debate on Monday tackling foreign policy issues, surely China will be a familiar topic. It seems every four years, the U.S. relationship with China takes a beating during campaign events. Host Guy Raz speaks with James Fallows of The Atlantic about why candidates attack China yet presidents always balance their rhetoric.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs the weekly Cabinet meeting at his offices in Jerusalem in October. A new report shows that Netanyahu raised more than 90 percent of his campaign money in the United States.

It’s midday in the cafeteria of the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, and legislators and their aides are busy wheeling and dealing over lunch.

Gil Hoffman, political analyst for The Jerusalem Post newspaper, surveys the cafeteria floor with an expert’s eye.

“Never a dull moment in election season,” he says. “This is where the politicians, when there is something really important to get across to the press, this is where they do it; this is where they meet and make whatever political deals they need to get ahead.”

Israel has entered its political campaign season with parliamentary elections now set for late January.

As politicians race to plan campaigns, a new report by Israel’s state comptroller’s office has revealed that more than half of the campaign contributions made to Israeli politicians in the past two years came from outside Israel.

Across the cafeteria, snippets of conversations in English can be heard. Many of these people are fundraisers who specialize in raising campaign money from abroad.

“They look for any loophole they can,” Hoffman says. “And if they can get away with doing most of their fundraising abroad or doing it before the election period begins … whatever they can get away with.”

Money Comes From The U.S.

For this new report, each member of the Knesset was asked to give a list of campaign donors and the amounts received. Officials at the state comptroller’s office told NPR they are currently in the process of checking and verifying the list, although a quick glance at the figures shows a clear trend.

The report says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised more than 90 percent of his campaign money in the United States. Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon, also from Netanyahu’s conservative Likud bloc, raised 100 percent of his campaign contributions overseas — mostly in the U.S.

Shelly Yachimovich, leader of the liberal Labor Party, was one of the few politicians to raise all of her money in Israel. Political analysts say she made a point of doing so to prove her domestic credentials.

Einat Wilf, a lawmaker from the Independence Party, says that not surprisingly, diaspora Jews are responsible for the bulk of donations.

“Should you allow some money to come from individuals abroad? It’s not ideal,” Wilf says. “I would say that the vast majority comes from Jews abroad, and that reflects … call it a sense of solidarity, a sense of involvement in the Jewish community in what happens in Israeli elections.”

Many Americans Prepared To Give

Wilf didn’t choose to fundraise in the U.S. herself; her campaign money came entirely from her own personal fortune. But she says she understands Israeli politicians who accept help from often eager American donors.

“Americans are trained to give money to politicians. It is in the system,” Wilf says. “They know this is how politics work. So when a politician tells them, ‘I’m running,’ it makes sense to them to give money. I’ve had many American Jews offer to help me. And I tell them, ‘I don’t need it, I’m fine.’ But that’s their way of saying, ‘We want to help you. We want to support you. We like the work that you are doing.’ “

Back in the Knesset cafeteria, politicians speculate about the upcoming elections and what surprises may be in store.

Hoffman says that Israelis have shown time and again they don’t really care where or how their elected officials raise money.

“Israelis don’t care where their politicians get their money from,” Hoffman says. “There are politicians that have been convicted of illegal fundraising that are making political comebacks right now, and people don’t have any problem with it whatsoever.”

What’s more important to Israelis, he says, is that their elected officials have the elbows to get the job done.

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