Downtown Elko: Mojorider2/FlickrAmerica is full of small towns that bolster our national identity even though most of us rarely visit them. They are repositories of authenticity like Flint, Michigan; Treynor, Iowa; and Abilene, Kansas—factory, farming, and ranching towns. Every few years, national politicians parachute into a few carefully selected ones to stake claims to one political mythology or another. Which is essentially what Mitt Romney and Ron Paul were doing this week in Elko, a remote gold-mining town that's home to 0.7 percent of Nevadans, most of whom could drink whiskey all day long and still kick the shit out of the other 99.3 percent in a bar fight.

The romance of mining and its close relative, fistfighting, factors heavily into the Silver State's brand of rugged individualism. Nevada's most famous early senator, William Stewart, once bragged of defending a mining claim by tackling an interloper into a ditch and strangling him with a woolen shirt. But while most of Nevada's prospecting happens at the slots these days, and its most talked-about fistfights are pay-per-view, Nevadans still look to places like Elko to keep it real. In the lead-up to the 2008 election, Barack Obama visited Elko twice.

Possibly the best window into Elko life is Goldie's, a watering hole near the downtown casinos where, naturally, the gold miners hang out. A few years ago, I was nursing a beer there when the sloshed tatterdemalion sitting next to me saw it fit to call a guy with a cratered face ugly. Soon I had to get up from my barstool because the drunk's forehead was about to be pinned against it, his neck oddly immobile in Crater Face's vice grip.

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Putin's grip on Russia: Over the two-plus decades since the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, Vladimir Putin has been in charge for more than half the time. Currently prime minister, he is running for president—again—in the March 4, 2012 elections. The ex-KGB officer served as the nation's president from 2000 until 2008. After two four-year terms, Putin then stepped into the role of prime minister, while his former chief of staff, Dmitri Medvedev, took over the presidential gig. Is it totalitarianism redux? Current Russian law mandates that no president may serve more than two terms consecutively; by leaving the presidency without really leaving the top of the Kremlin, it looked like Putin was smoothing his eventual path back to his old seat. He and Medvedev confirmed as much last September, admitting that they'd agreed years ago that Medvedev was to function merely as a "seat-warmer" president.

Meanwhile, former KGB officers—including some of Putin's former pals in the notorious intelligence agency—have been assigned top Kremlin posts. And Putin has encouraged a number of policies that hearken back to Soviet days: He's overlooked a culture of corruption and extortion, cracked down on free speech, and has persistently degraded social benefits, especially for the elderly and veterans. Interestingly, Putin's popularity, and that of his party, United Russia, has since declined dramatically.

What's happening now? The latest large-scale demonstration is set for Moscow on Saturday, February 4. In anticipation, some pointed anti-government art has been zipping around Russia's interwebs and beyond. A few examples: a Putin speech dubbed over a Lego video, a Titanic parody, and a lewder version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movie poster. Protesters have also put together a resolution listing their movement's demands, which include annulment of the December 4, 2011 parliamentary election results, new elections that are free and fair, and the release of imprisoned activists. Some have predicted that protest turnout on February 4 will be lower than it was during December's massive rally, due to even colder temperatures. According to the protest movement's Facebook invite, however, more than 27,000 people have pledged to attend. Russian publications are also predicting disunity at Saturday's rally. With presidential candidates from each of the four other political parties scheduled to speak, the protests are likely to be a sum of divergent groups—nationalists, liberals, and leftists who can agree on being anti-Putin…but not much else.

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When it comes to manipulating charitable giving for personal and political ends, Newt Gingrich wrote the book. In 1997, his charity work won him the dubious distinction of being the first House speaker ever disciplined by his peers for ethical wrongdoing. Congress fined Gingrich $300,000 in connection with claiming tax-exempt status for "Renewing American Civilization," a college course he'd taught for political purposes.

Gingrich has been at it again. Over the past two years, a Gingrich charity called Renewing American Leadership paid $220,000 to Gingrich Communications, one of his for-profit companies. The purchases included books authored by Gingrich, such as The Fight for America's Future and Rediscovering God in America. Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy, told ABC News that the arrangement violates the spirit of how nonprofits are supposed to work.

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In 2010, Mitt Romney and his wife gave just under $3 million to charity, or about 15 percent of their $21.6 million income. That's a sizeable sum even by 1 percenter standards, which is why Romney's backers say it's unfair to castigate him for exploiting tax loopholes. "Mr. Romney's taxes reveal the most generous charitable donor to run for president in recent memory," writes National Review's Mona Charen.

But generous towards whom? Just over half of Romney's 2010 giving went to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The Romneys didn't have much choice there: The church requires Mormons to tithe 10 percent of their income to remain members in good standing. The rest of the money went to the Tyler Foundation, a 501(c3) nonprofit funded exclusively by the Romneys. Though most of its donations defy criticism, others aren't exactly middle of the road.

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Rebecca MacKinnon first began to notice the transformative power of the Internet as a journalist for CNN in Beijing and Tokyo in the late '90s and early aughts. Then, as a scholar at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, she began to take a closer look at the trends she'd spotted in the field, and realized that the rise of the Internet has major consequences not just journalism, but for geopolitics. Her just-released book on politics and power in the Internet age, Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom, couldn't have come at a better time. Fresh off the SOPA/PIPA battle, Americans may be starting to see the web in a newly political light. MacKinnon chatted with us about the aftermath of that fight, the recent "Twitter censorship" scandal, and whether we're in danger of being "entertained to death."

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Courtesy of Basic BooksConsent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom

By Rebecca MacKinnon

BASIC BOOKS

When Facebook filed for its initial public offering Wednesday, the company declared its mission was "to make the world more open and connected," and claimed that "by giving people the power to share, we are starting to see people make their voices heard on a different scale from what has historically been possible." Those sentiments might have sounded lofty for a business deal, but they're of a piece with the techno-utopian vision at the heart of Silicon Valley—the kind of vision characterized by grand proclamations about Twitter revolutions and claims that "if you want to liberate a society, just give them the internet."

In her timely new book, Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom, Rebecca MacKinnon, a former journalist and current fellow at the New America Foundation, offers a sharp, sobering rebuttal to such heady rhetoric, questioning and complicating our understandings of what it means to be free online. For many in the United States, the recent SOPA/PIPA battle, which prompted a huge amount of attention to the politics of the web, will be an obvious reference point—but Consent of the Networked makes clear that it was just one part of an ongoing struggle over the Internet as a political terrain. MacKinnon's book presents a cogent picture of the many ways in which our lives, both online and off, are increasingly affected by regulators, politicians, and companies seeking to carve territories into the still-amorphous web.

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Three Girl Scout troops in Louisiana won't be hawking Thin Mints this year. They've disbanded in protest after the Girl Scouts of Colorado accepted seven-year-old transgender child Bobby Montoya as a member. Montoya was born a boy but has considered herself a girl since she was two years old, says her mom Felisha Archuleta. In October, Archuleta took her daughter to speak with a Denver troop leader about signing up, and took her daughter away crying after the Scout leader referred to the child as "it" and said "Everyone will know he's a boy." Three weeks later, the statewide Girl Scouts body issued a statement saying, "If a child identifies as a girl and the child's family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout." When they heard about this reversal, three moms and troop leaders in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana decided to dissolve their troops and leave Girl Scouts.

Now, 95 years after the organization first starting selling cookies, its signature product has once again become a political pawn. Right-wing groups and some conservative parents and scouts have posted to a site called Honest Girl Scouts, YouTube, and Facebook pages—including one called "Make Girl Scouts Clean Again"—urging Girl Scouts everywhere to go on strike from selling cookies, and their parents to stop buying them. They want Girl Scouts USA to officially bans transgender children from membership, and kick out any known transgender scouts "hiding" in the troops.

One of the former Louisiana troop leaders, a mother at Northland Christian School in Lacombe, told the Baptist Press that by letting Bobby Montoya join, the organization had created an "almost dangerous situation" for other children. Girl Scouts Louisiana East put up a new policy on its website saying transgender children wouldn't be allowed to join if they tried to apply there—as far as they know, none ever have. A video by a 14-year-old Girl Scout from Ventura, California, identified only as Taylor, was uploaded to YouTube Honest Girl Scouts, with Taylor reading off a script urging fellow Scouts to go on strike, claiming the Girl Scouts was putting girls in physical danger during sleepovers and field trips by allowing "transgender boys" to be there, and not letting the other girls know. "Unfortunately, I think it is because GSUSA cares more about promoting the desires of a small handful of people than it does for my safety and the safety of my friends and sister Girl Scouts, and they are doing it with money we earned for them from Girl Scout cookies." The video received 387,000 hits before the poster marked the video “private,” blocking it from the general public.

                                                    From a flier on the website HonestGirlScouts.com

At this stage, the proposed boycotts are unlikely to have much effect on the organization's bottom line. Last year, Girl Scouts USA sold 198 million boxes for a record $714 million in profits, and despite what some urging the boycott seem to think, the national governing body doesn't actually pull revenue from local cookie drives; it makes money through membership dues, which are $12 a year per girl, and from contributions from foundations, corporations, and private individuals. Thirty percent of cookie profits go back to the two bakers that GSUSA has contracted with, and the rest are shared between local troops and 100 regional councils across the country—there's about two per state—so revenue from the cookie drives more or less stays in local communities. The national body charges the bakers a licensing fee for use of its brand on the cookie boxes, and says the proceeds go back to local scouts by way of materials and support.

So what badge are they earning here, exactly? Source: rich701/flickr

Beyond organizing cookie sales, local troop leaders and regional directors exert a surprising amount of autonomy over troop activities and membership decisions. While a Scout leader somewhere in upstate New York might decide to sponsor a sex-ed forum hosted by the local Planned Parenthood branch, a local leader in Chatanooga might sponsor abstinence-oriented activities instead. The national organization provides very little in the way of agenda-setting or cultural cues, beyond its ideologically flexible messaging about "empowerment, "paths to success," and reaching one's full potential.

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Most Americans won't need a justification to watch Sunday's game, but if you're a TomDispatch.com reader you might think, even in passing, that celebrating the holiest day of violence, consumerism, and class warfare on your couch is a betrayal of your values or a waste of your time. You might even imagine that it would be better to take a hike, read a book, or meditate.

Not this Sunday, buster. It's an election season. You need to watch this game to fully understand how jobs, religion, leadership, and healthcare dominate every American contest.

1. Joe Hill will be playing: Where else will be you be able to watch more than 100 young men, most of them African-American, working for high wages in a totally unionized shop? True, their jobs are dangerous (more on that later) and relatively short-term (typically three or four years), but they are also high profile. They can lead to TV gigs, even political office. Buffalo Bills quarterback Jack Kemp became a Republican congressman and vice-presidential candidate. The former New England Patriots running back and ESPN analyst Craig James is currently running for the Republican nomination for Senator from Texas, although to less than universal acclaim.

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Update, Feb. 4: On Saturday morning, the UN Security Council held a meeting to vote on a draft resolution that would demand an end to Syria's violent crackdown on protesters and civilians. Thirteen countries voted in favor of the measure, but Russia (facing its own mass protests today) and China vetoed.

BBC News reports that Susan Rice, US ambassador to the UN, said that "any further bloodshed" will be on the hands of the Russian and Chinese actors. Gerard Araud, the French ambassador, said that China and Russia had "made themselves complicit in a policy of repression," and that "[this] is a sad day for this council, a sad day for all Syrians, and a sad day for democracy."

Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin and Chinese ambassador Li Baodong defended their votes, stating that fellow council members had ignored their proposed amendments to the resolution. Margaret Besheer reports that Churkin also said: "I would certainly agree that tragic events are happening in Syria...[but the UN Security Council is] not the only diplomatic tool on this planet."

Earlier in the day, President Obama issued a statement condemning the Syrian regime's "unspeakable assault against the people of Homs," and repeated that the "international community must work to protect the Syrian people from this abhorrent brutality." The statement also read that, "the Assad regime must come to an end."

Update, Feb. 3: On Friday, multiple reports from activists inside Syria described massive shelling and an army offensive in the central Syrian city of Homs. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights puts the casualty figure at over a hundred, and claims many hundreds more are injured; other estimates have the body count at 200 and climbing. Activists report that "nail bombs" were used by the army during a mortar attack on the Khaldiyeh neighborhood. The reports come 30 years after the infamous Hama Massacre was conducted by the Syrian army over the course of four weeks in February 1982 (the operation was ordered by President Hafez al-Assad, father and predecessor to Syria's current ruler Bashar al-Assad).

In response to the news, anti-Assad rallies erupted at Syrian embassies in several major cities, including Cairo, Kuwait City, London, Berlin, and Washington, DC. Some of the embassies—including those in London and Cairo—were stormed by protesters, leading to arrests and property damage.

The UN Security Council is scheduled to convene Saturday morning to discuss a much-debated draft resolution on Syria. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is set to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that same morning in Munich.

Here's a rundown of the deteriorating situation in Syria:

The basics: Syria is an Arab country with more than 22 million people; it borders many of the major players in the Middle East (Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey) and is roughly the size of North Dakota. Syria famously lost the Golan Heights to Israel in 1967, during the Arab-Israeli war; negotiations between the two countries have been minimal in recent years. Like many countries in the region, Syria's main export is oil. Unlike Saudi Arabia or Iran, however, Syria's oil reserves are relatively small; it ranks 33rd in the world. Syria is home to a smorgasbord of ethnicities and religions: Arabs, Kurds, Christians, Sunnis, Alawites, and Druze. The capital, Damascus, is a bustling metropolis (many believe it to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world) but is not the site of the country's most significant protests (though rebels captured parts of the city in late January). That city, Hama, is the country's fourth-largest, with fewer than 1 million occupants.

What's happening now? Ever since last March, Syrians, especially those in the country's central region, have protested the iron-fisted government headed by Bashar al-Assad. During the first week of August the Syrian army began a brutal campaign to control Hama, using tanks and troop assaults to kill citizens in a seemingly indiscriminate manner. The situation has continued to escalate in 2012. In late January, rebels known as the Free Syrian Army, reportedly took control of a portion of Damascus' suburbs. On January 31, Syrian government forces, according to Reuters, "reasserted control" of the Damascus suburbs. Elsewhere, in Homs, a central-Syrian town with more than a million people, Syrian government forces killed nearly 100 people—activists say 55 civilians were killed—on January 31. The Free Syrian Army has fought on, asserting that "half of the country" is now effectively a no-go zone for Assad's security forces. Since November, at least 3,000 Syrians reportedly have been killed.

Who's in charge?: Assad has ruled Syria since 2000. His father, Hafez al-Assad, a member of the Baath Party, came to power in 1970 after leading a bloodless coup. Assad's family came from a minority religious sect: the Alawites, an offshoot of Shia Islam. Thirty years ago, Assad launched one of the most brutal massacres in the modern history of the Middle East: His troops killed nearly 20,000 people in the city of Hama. In 2000, Hafez Assad died, and Bashar took over. To some, the shift from Hafez to Bashar suggested an opportunity (albeit a limited one) for Syria to become a more politically moderate society. Last year, Vogue magazine perpetuated that notion with a widely remarked profile of first lady Asma al-Assad published during the height of the Arab Spring. It stated that Syria was "the safest country in the Middle East." Clearly that couldn't have been more off-base, with Bashar apparently intent on following in his father's footsteps. (Vogue scrubbed its archives of the Assad profile, but the internet doesn't forget.)

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In his State of the Union address on January 24, President Obama largely avoided the topic of climate change. He talked about it once, in passing, as a topic on which "the differences in this chamber may be too deep" to enact new legislation. Its less-controversial cousin, "energy," on the other hand, got a whopping 23 mentions as an area where Republicans and Democrats should be able to find agreement.

It became clear well before that address that the president and his administration don't think that climate change is an issue that will carry them to a second term. In his public events following the speech, he's also focused on clean energy while avoiding the other "c" word.

But there are several reasons that Obama won't be able to avoid talking about climate change for too long—and well he shouldn't. The first is the ongoing battle over the Keystone XL pipeline. The proposed 1,661-mile pipeline from Canada to Texas probably would have been approved to little fanfare if environmental groups hadn't waged a lengthy campaign asking the White House to reject it. Similar pipelines hadn't faced much backlash, but this one drew ire from climate-change activists who called attention to the increased emissions stemming from oil from Canada's tar sands, and from local residents in the pipeline's proposed pathway. During two weeks of sit-ins in late August, more than 1,200 people were arrested outside the White House protesting the pipeline. Activists also held a massive rally on November 6 that ended with thousands encircling the White House.

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