By Sara Flounders
June 16, 2023

The U.S. corporate media creates such unbelievable fabrications that sometimes the Pentagon and the U.S. war planners must reject them. Anyone who disbelieved Cuba and China’s denial of the Wall Street Journal’s charge that China paid Cuba billions of dollars for a spy base in Cuba was quickly proved wrong.

The Hill, a publication that claims to be “a top U.S. political website, read by the White House and more lawmakers than any other site,” reported that the Pentagon also denied the accuracy of the WSJ report!

Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder called the WSJ report “inaccurate” during a June 8 briefing. “We are not aware of China and Cuba developing any type of spy station,” said Ryder, adding that “the relationship that those two countries share is something that we continuously monitor.” (thehill.com, June 8)

White House national security spokesman John F. Kirby then denied the WSJ story. “I’ve seen that press report. It’s not accurate,” Kirby told MSNBC. (June 8)  How the media and the politicians handled the false report illustrated how the U.S. ruling class and its political system is geared to moving toward confrontation and war.

Other media, politicians spread the lie

The WSJ published a false report in full detail. This anti-China, anti-Cuba attack was given wide circulation in The New York Times, CBS News, CNN, Reuters, Fox News, The Miami Herald, The Guardian in London, Newsweek and Bloomberg News. The list goes on to 12,400 other news links.

In preparation for every imperialist war, lies and fabrications play a potent role in creating hostility among the people. Even if denials follow, as they did in this example, the clarifications are intentionally perfunctory and played down. By repeating the WSJ report thousands of times in other media, the initial lie takes life and sets the political agenda.

Usually politicians or generals lie, and the corporate media repeats it. This time, the WSJ lied; the rest of the media reported the WSJ’s lie, and U.S. politicians followed their usual script. They denounced China and Cuba and called for harsher actions.

Democratic Sen. Mark Warner and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who head the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and are usually briefed on important security matters, said in a statement that they were “deeply disturbed” by the Wall Street Journal report and urged Biden to take action. “The United States must respond to China’s ongoing and brazen attacks on our nation’s security,” they said. (warner.senate.gov, June 8)

This adventure into an alternate universe began when the WSJ headlined its breaking news on June 7: “Cuba to host secret Chinese spy base focusing on U.S.” and “Beijing agrees to pay Havana several billion dollars for eavesdropping facility.”

The article contained the usual attacks against China and Cuba, unnecessary to repeat here. Clearly, major forces in the U.S. ruling class who set policy through the corporate media and well-funded think tanks are pushing hard for an even sharper attack on China and Cuba. Truth has nothing to do with it.

At the start of almost every U.S. war and every international crisis, some voices among those who will be called on to do the actual fighting can seem more cautious. But they more often quickly get in line, silence their qualms and move ahead with putting military plans in place.

The people of the U.S. can’t depend on the Pentagon or the White House to issue a denial. It just happens that at this moment, it serves no interest of the administration, nor of the Pentagon establishment, to get pushed into a war based on a mythical danger.

Cuba, China present facts

People here looking for the truth should pay attention to the explanations of the Cuban and Chinese leaders, who have a record of telling the truth during crises, unlike the spokespeople carrying out imperialist diplomacy.

Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister, Carlos Fernández de Cossío Domínguez, called the WSJ reports “totally mendacious and unfounded… Cuba rejects all foreign military presence in Latin America, including the many U.S. bases and troops” and the U.S. occupation of Guantanamo. “Slander of this kind is often fabricated by U.S. officials.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said: “As we all know, spreading rumors and slander is a common tactic of the United States, and wantonly interfering in the internal affairs of other countries is its patent. . . . The United States should reflect on itself and stop interfering in Cuba’s internal affairs, under the banner of freedom and democracy, and immediately cancel the economic, commercial and financial embargo against Cuba.”