A Reader Sounds Off on PayPal’s Ban on CN

As with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, journalism that tells some truths that might undermine the case for war can’t be tolerated, writes Jim Kavanagh. 

By Jim Kavanagh

After seeing the news about, and doing a radio segment on, the new Disinformation Governance Board and PayPal blocking  the accounts of Caleb Maupin, Mnar Adley, Alan MacLeod and  MintPress News, I now see that PayPal has “permanently limited,” and may seize, the account of Consortium News, “because of” — get this: “potential risk associated with this account.”

This is utterly outrageous, and true political censorship. Consortium News, founded in 1995 by the late, great Robert Parry, and continuing under Joe Lauria, has been and still is one of the most honest, trustworthy, unimpeachable sources of information and analysis in the world — infinitely more trustworthy and unassailable than the NYTs and NPRs of the world. It is completely ridiculous, an obviously hollow pretext, to brand it as a “potential risk” to anything but ignorance.

But, of course, that’s the point: The United States government and the ideological and financial apparatuses of the state are now blatantly determined to keep you ignorant of anything but what they want you to know. There is a risk: that people will hear something true that smashes the heavily-tinted Overton window.

The establishment of a Ministry of Truth within the Department of Homeland Security — a repressive state apparatus — coordinated (and you’d have to be quite a fool to think it’s not coordinated) with the sanctions-come-home blockage of the paltry sums that allow independent journalists and media platforms to get by is part of what is now a full-court censorship offensive.

This is actually a program of wartime censorship. Again, one would have to be a fool not to see that this is coordinated with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s visit to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, where they declared the U. S. objective of permanently “weakening Russia” and providing all the arms and training to make sure Ukraine wins, and with the congressional delegation’s visit, where Nancy Pelosi declared that “America stands firmly with Ukraine” in its “fight for freedom.”

In other words, it’s a program of wartime censorship where the objective is to solicit Americans’ consent for doing whatever is necessary to ensure Kiev’s victory, including entering and escalating war with Russia.

As Joe Lauria, no fool, says: “Given the current political climate it is more than conceivable that PayPal is reacting to Consortium News’ coverage of the war in Ukraine, which is not in line with the dominant narrative that is being increasingly enforced.”

The very real potential risk is that Joe Lauria and Consortium News (or Caleb Maupin, Mnar Adley, Alan MacLeod and  MintPress News) will do what Julian Assange and WikiLeaks did — tell some truths that might undermine the case for a war based on lies. Can’t have that. Ain’t got time for that now. Gotta shut them up and shut them down. Have to make people understand: It’s already life during wartime.

Consortium News is one too many, but not the final straw. We are in a lot of trouble, and it is going to get a lot worse. Rage is the appropriate attitude toward this machine.

Everyone — and certainty everyone on the left—who jumped on the censorship train the moment it left the Alex Jones station — who (‘Cause what good are they?) enjoyed the ride through Trump Twitter Territory, Robert Malone Pass and Joe Rogan Ravine — should have known where it was going, should be ashamed ever to have boarded it, should now loudly and explicitly say so, get the fuck off, and work hard to derail it, right now. Or forever hold your peace about being in any way “progressive.”

Jim Kavanagh is a journalist and a reader of ConsortiumNews. He writes at thepolemicist.net 

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15 comments for “A Reader Sounds Off on PayPal’s Ban on CN

  1. LeoSun
    May 4, 2022 at 13:45

    As with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks,” The “Evil Doing” PayPal, Strikes, Again!

    May 3, 2022, “A Reader Sounds Off on PayPal’s Ban on CN,” AND, unlocks ? the “Donation Gate!” Securely by Patreon’s Form aka a Direct Pay to CN. YaY!!!!

    The Evil Doers’, PayPal’s, beyond twisted reach, imo, accelerates the NIMBY “Opposition/Resistance” to straight-up, ALL Funding “In Your Face!” SEIZED!!!

    It’s savage. Freezing, w/o NOTICE, the Account Holder’s funds; maybe forever, i.e., “Gotta shut them up and shut them down.”

    The Evil Doer’s, PayPal’s, manipulation of the Publishers’ “infrastructure” is beyond f/outrageous. It’s economic warfare. It’s $anctions on it’s Customers. It’s Social Murder. It’s “Mutually Assured Destruction.” It’s f/MADness.

    The land of the free and the home of the brave, is a f/war zone. “Protest ?and Survive.”

    No Doubt About It, “Consortium News, founded in 1995 by the late, great Robert Parry, and continuing under Joe Lauria, has been and still is one of the most honest, trustworthy, unimpeachable sources of information and analysis in the world“—

    “continuing under Joe Lauria,” w/an aboveboard Board of ? Directors IS preparing for “it is going to get a lot worse.” $upporting Consortium News, MintPressNews, the Truth Tellers, the Investigative Journalists, The Publishers, A FREE Press, is Crucial!!! “Keep it Lit.” TY.?????

  2. Chris Cosmos
    May 4, 2022 at 10:24

    Rage is NOT the appropriate reaction to this steady drift towards totalitarianism we are experiencing. The sad reality is that we, in the West, want, at minimum, a more authoritarian political culture and are open to a full-out totalitarian culture which the ruling elites are joyfully instituting. It’s too late for rage or anger because it will go nowhere. The left is effectively dead and been replaced by a pro-war, pro-oligarch, anti-labor, identity/tribal politcs “left” that is not even remotely actually in the tradition of Western leftism. The only effective opposition lies on the right whether its Victor Orban or the Trump/DeSantis right along with most libertarians and paleo-conservatives. Rage will get you physical disease, broken relationships, and personal misery.

    I’ve seen this coming for a long time and predicted it when the USSR collapsed. Now we are precisely where I believed we would be. The West lives in a confusing culture–all traditions and moral values are exploded therefore we are entering the Brave New World with Orwellian flavoring because that is what the populations of the Empire want because all culture require a sense of meaning and direction. Since our collective culture has been given over to pure hedonism, manufactured fantasies, and the destruction of all sources of moral philosophy the State (including the unofficial parts of the State like social media, corporations, and oligarchs) will provide direction with carrots and (more and more) sticks.

    The only solutions are to grasp the situation as it is, strengthen ourselves as human beings, come together in real communities, and find spirituality so, at minimum, we can discover the foundations of morality that only come from a spiritual direction. Rage will only create a toxic cocktail of chemicals in our body.

  3. May 4, 2022 at 10:13

    For what it’s worth, I received a similar message barring me from Paypal. Something about mysterious activity. Probably not related but next day found a way to donate. Maybe Consortium will get a windfall because of Paypal. You didn’t do that on purpose, did you Joe? Anyway, we lose a lot if Consortium is not there to provide some balance. Out gunned but not outfought.

  4. Mikael Andersson
    May 4, 2022 at 04:54

    Hello Jim. Scott Ritter penned a fine article on the difference between wining the Propaganda War and the shocking reality of the Real War. Yes, propaganda is a specialty of the MIC state, but facts will out. Yes, the USA must maintain the consent of its population to transfer their wealth to the private property of MIC corporations, and seduce them to go without health care, education, infrastructure along with other features of an advanced civilisation. But the rest of the world isn’t the USA. The “progressives” or regressives of the USA aren’t much relevant, apart from amusement. We all inhabit the tangible world. When Russia has obliterated all Ukrainian military assets I guess everyone will agree who prevailed. Watching Germans and Finns freeze next winter will be interesting however. How obedient will they prove to be? I guess we’ll see.

  5. Pasquale Carbone
    May 3, 2022 at 22:25

    It was only a matter of time after Canada screwed the supporters of truck convoy, that paypal and the USA would begin to financially hurt others for truth telling.
    CN needs to get off hosted websites (go private servers) and use the old cash/check system for funding.

  6. David Otness
    May 3, 2022 at 15:25

    Thank you, Jim Kavanaugh.

    “We are in a lot of trouble, and it is going to get a lot worse. Rage is the appropriate attitude toward this machine.”

    A point well-stated and taken. Now for the rest (even a vocal minority) to stand (get off their asses) and come to terms with how advanced this federal/corporate “Cosa Nostra” (Our Thing) truly is.
    We as a nation, as Patrick Lawrence also inferred today, are stuck on ourselves, so insulated by continental-oceanic geography of separation that it has allowed focused and amoral men and women to systematically induce us to internalize and mythologize our supposed ‘exceptionalism,’ a ploy undertaken and echo-chambered into the msm landscape as something easier to believe than not.

    A product of decades-long psychological seduction that abides no independent critical thinking to trespass its component makeup. That which has made our hijacked government an autonomous organism, solely concerned with its own survival, and having gone rogue to its citizens’ best interests—if actually and so rarely anymore expressing any interest whatsoever—has taken on the characteristics of a rapidly-metastasizing cancer…

    One more time:
    “We are in a lot of trouble, and it is going to get a lot worse. Rage is the appropriate attitude toward this machine.”

  7. May 3, 2022 at 13:57

    Masks are coming off. Hopefully American public will now realize that the difference between the two parties is between 0.000 and 0.001. But I do not hold out hope.

  8. JonnyJames
    May 3, 2022 at 13:26

    Rage Against the Machine. Yes, it may get worse: today I cannot access rt.com nor sputniknews.com. “unable to reach website”. Is this Nina Jankowicz’s work at the Ministry of Truth? Thoughtcrimes have been committed and “Russian disinformation” will not be allowed in a nation that claims “free speech, the rule of law and democracy”. Right-wing authoritarian “liberals” and right-wing authoritarian “conservatives”. Two sides of the same coin

    • JonnyJames
      May 3, 2022 at 18:38

      Good news: I can access RT and Sputnik sites now. It was suspicious that both sites were inaccessible this morning.

      Also: I just saw this on RT mentioning the PayPal and Consortium News issue.

      hxxps://sputniknews.com/20220503/i-thought-id-never-see-it-paypal-seizes-funds-of-independent-media-without-offering-explanation-1095244405.html

  9. John R
    May 3, 2022 at 10:23

    Thank you for this offering. I am not even a little surprised by the actions of our government and those acting on their behalf to shut down any opinion or thought that goes against the madness of war, and all of the horror that ultimately delivers.

    Approximately 30-miles to the northwest of my home in northern New Mexico, lies LANL / Los Alamos National Laboratory, where they continue to develop WMD’s and upgrade our nuclear arsenal. This is what our misleadership spends our time, energies and money on – none of it makes us or the world any safer. We are on a sure path of ruin and destruction. Opinions squashed at CN only hasten the inevitable.

  10. Tony
    May 3, 2022 at 08:40

    On the other hand, it does show that you are doing the right thing.

    In the UK, Keir Starmer has silenced his MPs by threatening to remove the whip from them and thus making them ineligible to stand as Labour Party candidates at the next general election if they say anything against the war.

    He also called for the banning of RT.

    • Carolyn L Zaremba
      May 3, 2022 at 13:53

      Well, Kier Starmer (or, as he is more accurately called, “Der Sturmer”) is an asshole of the first water.

  11. Fran Macadam
    May 3, 2022 at 08:33

    Progressives are the cohort most promoting censorship as it gets progressively worse.

    • Bob M
      May 3, 2022 at 23:47

      Meaning what? Which progressives?

      • Chris Cosmos
        May 4, 2022 at 08:49

        Meaning the vast, vast majority of progressives. The left, already dying during the Obama years is now miniscule and largely limited, largely, to those of us who remained on the left from the 60s and 70s. In contrast people who would have been part of the left in the working class are now mainly on the right and the educated professional and college students are on the fake left, i.e., the Democratic Party/NY Times/NPR “left” which is not even remotely left if you take the vast sweep of leftist policies over the past century and a half.

        The majority of the left accepts, at face value, tribal and identity politics as described by the State media outlets (all the mainstream media in the West is now run by the virtual “deep” State). The only dynamic dissent against the current State is on the “right” though they lack a deeper understanding (completely lost by the vast majority of the fake left) of class struggle.

        I’m not going into the timeline and markers that show all this but, as far as the “educated” class is concerned all this comes from the destruction of the intellectual class’ abandonment of the career of the Western intellectual tradition (which most of those of us who, as students, opposed the Vietnam War were a result of) and embracing the comic book fantasies of much of post-modernism and critical theory.

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