J'accuse!

The United States currently claims that the governments of Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria all sponsor and support terrorism. Whatever that is.

Here's something I just read.

From pages 311-313 of The Hidden Hand: Britain, America, and Cold War Secret Intelligence, by Richard J. Aldrich, Overlook Press 2002:

Matters reached a crisis point on 11 April 1955, toward the end of the First Taiwan Straits Crisis. Against the background of growing artillery barrages between Taiwan and mainland China, Taiwan's secret service arranged the bombing of an Air India airliner, The Kashmir Princess, carrying Chinese communist journalists to the neutralist Bandung Conference of Asian leaders in Indonesia. The bomb was planted when the plane refueled at Hong Kong and the plane exploded and plunged into the sea as it approached the Indonesian coast. All passengers and crew were killed...they [the Chinese government] asserted the device was a small time bomb supplied by the United States.

Beijing insisted that the raids provided evidence that [head saboteur] Chou Chu had received his training in explosives from Taiwan and had 'escaped...under cover and aid of the United States'.

How true were Beijing's accusations? Files declassified in 1999 show that the Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, was told in October 1955 that the Hong Kong Special Branch was in no doubt that evidence it had procured independently proved that Chou Chu had indeed been recruited by Taiwan's Secret Service. After the crash he had boasted of his actions to four separate witnesses...

Just something to keep in mind next time some patsy tries to set fire to his shoe or his underpants--and your government tells you to step up for a virtual strip search.

I'm turning into a regular Samuel Pepys, aren't I? Just don't call me Alex Jones...