In the animated movie "Aladdin" the genie says, "I can't bring anybody back from the dead -- it's not pretty!" ...while a rising, rotting corpse provides illustration.

Yep, it doesn't get much uglier than the long-dead, even to an all-powerful genie. But it looks like both the Establishment media and right-wing Republicans must have missed that movie (probably boycotting Disney for employing gays). Or maybe they just don't care about ugly. Either way, recent media coverage of China is nothing but the old Cold War "Red China" scare campaign dragged from the grave. I'm talking about the whole "China-gate" scandal -- the alleged pilfering of U.S. nuclear weapons secrets by China, the associated charge of Chinese donations to Clinton's re-election effort -- plus numerous portrayals of China as a nuclear threat, a slave-labor totalitarian regime bent on aggressively asserting itself as the world's new dominant nation.

The Invasion of the Body Snatchers
It^Òs all there: slippery Chinese worming like alien pod-people into top-secret U.S. laboratories, clandestine attempts to control the very President, and multiplying A-bombs in the Orient where, as everybody knows, they value human life less than we do. Then there's the theme of teeming Chinese hungry to burst their borders --now gobbling Hong Kong, trampling the delicate flower of Tibet under state-issued boots and eyeing the flourishing, free nation of Taiwan.

All straight from the propaganda campaigns of the 1940's and 50's. And that says it all, for back then Washington was bent on overthrowing the Chinese Revolution by any means necessary, including military invasion and the use of nuclear weapons -- while domestically unleashing a wide-ranging campaign of witch-hunting that cast a pall of fear and hysteria across the land for more than a decade. But almost nobody realizes that today's charges about the Chinese bogey-man are nothing but re-runs, re-runs of a production once driven into the vault by public hue and cry.

Ugly times
After all, you^Òd have to be over 40 to remember establishment of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China (at the height of the VietNam war, twenty years after the Chinese Revolution). You^Òd have to be damn near 50 to remember "Red China" -- the name always used for the world's largest country back when the United States government refused to recognize its existence. Then, "China" was the island of Taiwan ("Formosa") where the native people dwelt under the dictatorship of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his hangers-on, all fugitives from the Chinese Revolution .... and the real government of China in the eyes of Washington.

The actual China --where capitalism had been overthrown (if imperfectly)-- was the incarnation of evil, to be engaged only by a war on every front and by every means (sabotage, assassinations, gangster contras, biological weapons, attempted military invasion and [almost] nuclear bombs). (Of course you can be 14 and recognize this -- it^Òs Washington's treatment of revolutionary Cuba, minus the hysterical nationwide witch-hunt and the phony exile government on the one hand, and several decades of length on the other.) And you'd have to be easily 60 to recall that China and the U.S. fought a bloody land war in the Korean peninsula. But then if you were that old you still wouldn't remember it -- it's been washed from most peoples' brains. (Maybe because hundreds of thousands of Chinese volunteers rallied to defend Korea against U.S. invasion ... thwarting MacArthur's plans to conquer China itself, and forcing Washington^Òs armies to beat an punishing retreat halfway down Korea.

Red Menace
As for the witch-hunt over "who lost China" to Communism -- well, you^'d probably have to be approaching 70 to remember that. But talk about ugly -- how about hundreds of thousands of workers fired for alleged political beliefs, ........ and the parents of two young children fried in the electric chair for serving the Red Menace with an impossible act of treason. Of course it was all about the International Communist Conspiracy, not just about China. But it was the McCarthy "investigation" into "who lost China" that started it all. Imagine under-secretaries of State, Congressmen, and judges --plus teachers, professors and movie celebrities hauled before the Inquisition, humiliated, fired, and blacklisted for life.

But the domestic terror and the trumpeted menace of the "Red hordes" or the "Yellow Peril" (actual phrases used in the media fifty years ago) were just filthy and hysterical cover for U.S. counter-revolutionary action --and military invasion-- against the non-capitalist world, from China to Eastern Europe and Russia. Cover for building a military machine capable of destroying life on Earth, cover for deploying over a million invading troops in Korea and (later) VietNam.

In other words: war propaganda.

The Manchurian Candidate
All of which makes the current charges of hidden Chinese spies, treason in high places, and the Yellow Threat worthy of serious attention. It was war propaganda 50 years ago -- and it's war propaganda today. After all, the charges are ridiculously thin. (Guess how many nuclear warheads China has: 1200? 12,000? Nope -- twelve. Just twelve. And the infamous campaign contributions to Clinton--IF there were any--would hardly rate notice in the ocean of campaign funds, let alone buy ^Ótreason.^Ô) But the proof is a whole series of aggressive U.S. moves against China -- the effort to ring it with anti-ballistic missiles (effectively destroying Chinese nuclear defenses), the attempts to impose trade barriers, the announced plan to invade north Korea (in "self-defense" of course), the blocking of China's membership in the World Trade Organization, and, yes, the bombing of the embassy--Chinese soil--in Belgrade. Plus the recent virtual independence declaration by Taiwan (the Chinese province ruled by counter-revolutionaries) made possible only by U.S. military backing.

Retro
Mix in a domestic witch-hunt and --presto--we're back in the fifties, back at war with Communism, and on the road to war against Eastern Europe, Russia ... and China. Impossible?

How about the decade-long campaign to shatter the Yugoslav Federation culminating in a massive bombing campaign and occupation by nearly 100,000 Western troops? How about adding Poland and Hungary to NATO^Òs encirclement of Russia? Or NATO's open transformation into an offensive military organization? Take the recent practice military invasions of cities in Califoronia and Pennsylvania -- and of Camdem (New Jersey) where bombs and live rounds were used in a working class neighborhood. Or the "anti-terrorism" preparations, and the witch-hunt against supporters of Puerto Rican independence. Ugly stuff, all. Last time shows like this were playing it took decades of domestic protest movements and revolutionary uprisings in Africa, Asia and Latin America to drive them back into the vault. Now that's one script worth re-making -- especially with a bigger and broader cast.

But this time, let's bring the wooden stake.

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