Recommended Reading – April 5th, 2016

Hello friends and welcome back to another edition of Recommended Reading. Unfortunately, today I come to you in a profound state of sadness and confusion. This past Saturday night, I accidentally stumbled across a video clip of famed neon-con shitbag “journalist” Milo Yiannopolous admitting on camera that he witnessed the sexual assault of “very young boys” by older men and that he may in fact be protecting the identity of those pedophiles.

This is not an opinion; Milo himself said it during a videotaped interview on the Joe Rogan Experience (Episode 702) back on September 30th, 2015. Shocked and horrified, I then proceeded to spend literally the next three days trying to get someone, anyone with a reasonable media platform to look into the story. I’ve sent it to Gawker, Buzzfeed, Zerohedge, Fusion and several other magazines as well as at least thirty different journalist on Twitter. So far, replies have been few and far between. Perhaps this should not surprise me, but it does ladies and gentlemen; this is not a conspiracy, this is Milo Yiannopolous in his own words, crassly admitting that he’s protecting pedophiles on a nationally broadcast internet/radio show.

In light of this, the first article I’d like to feature in today’s RR is Heart of Darkness: Is Milo Yiannopoulos a criminal, or just a liar? by yours truly. Even if you have no interest in reading the article, please watch the video clip and tell someone else about it. You don’t even have to sit through the creator’s whole explanation; all the relevant comments from Milo Yiannopolous himself are in the first 25-30 seconds – I’m literally begging you folks to check it out. Until then, let’s look at this week’s recommendations which contain a heavy focus on corruption; particularly in the American primary election season:

The Panama Papers – unless you’ve been hiding under a rock since Friday, there’s a reasonable chance you’ve heard about the explosive and developing Panama Papers investigation. Bribery, money laundering, tax evasion, arms sales, narcotics trafficking and financial fraud; this scandal literally has it all folks. At this exact moment, journalists, investigators and government officials are pouring over literally eleven million documents that may well connect members of virtually every government on the planet to a vast network of criminal malfeasance. The link I’ve posted here is to the main Panama Papers site set up by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and offers a number of easy-to understand introductions to what this scandal actually is, what it means and where you can find out more information once you’ve got the basics down. Keep watching this space, because over the coming months I’m virtually certain we’re going to be sharing dozens, if not hundreds of stories that come out of the Panama Papers investigation here at Recommended Reading.

The DOJ Is Investigating Arizona’s Election Mess – this short piece at Huffington Post by Samantha Lachman and Ryan J. Reilly takes a remarkably disinterested peek at what may well be one of the biggest voter fraud election scandals in modern history. Despite the author’s attempts to present the information as blandly as possible, the Civil Rights division of the American Justice Department is no laughing matter and if it turns out there was a racial component to reducing the number of polling stations in Arizona (hint: there was), the resulting investigation could blow the lid off the entire crooked primary run in that state this past March – which could well affect tight races on both sides of America’s political divide.

One State Is Doing More To Keep You From Voting Than Any Other – over at Ben & Jerry’s is an extremely straightforward look at how gutting the Voter’s Rights Act has directly allowed to state of North Carolina to disenfranchise huge numbers of it’s citizens – in particular, minority voters. I must admit that I have a soft spot for articles written like this and if you’d like a short, but fact-filled explanation of the horrible civil rights and democractic abuses being facilitated by the State Legislature in Raleigh; you’d be hard pressed to find a better article than this one. Are Republicans in North Carolina trying to turn back decades of civil rights progress in America by stripping away voting rights from as many minorities and poor people as possible? In a word, yes.

Republic of Fear – in a March 31st piece over at New Republic, Jeet Heer takes an in depth look at the phenomenon of “Trumpism” that is both terrifying and enlightening. This excellent essay examines not only how Donald Trump’s campaign for the Presidency is a result of violent, white aggression in America, but also how the candidate himself is actually calling forth and nurturing the forces of white nationalism. Heer asks the most important question of the 2016 election – does it really even matter if Trump loses the election or will the terrible legacy of his campaign’s bigotry, racism and violence remain long after we’ve stopped talking about the Donald?  Unfortunately, the author’s answer to this question is disheartening, but likely accurate.

How Hillary Clinton Bought the Loyalty of 33 State Democratic Parties – How much do you really know about fundraising for the Democratic Party in the United States? Are wealthy, establishment Democrats all over the country flooding contributions into State based funding initiatives as a clandestine way of avoiding maximum caps on donations to the Hillary Clinton campaign? Former Superman actress and longtime progressive activist Margot Kidder certainly seems to think so. Please be advised while reading this article that Kidder has close ties with the Bernie Sanders campaign and that some of the conclusions she draws are currently difficult to actively prove without more investigation. With that having been noted however, the type of relationship Kidder describes between the Democratic Party in Montana and the Clinton campaign virtually guarantees that something fishy is going on my friends.

• Nina Illingworth