News roundup
(1) The RAF Fairford plot surfaces again, and Andy Burnham claims Iran is somehow behind it. This story keeps morphing and morphing.
A UK-Iranian dual national has been arrested on suspicion of preparation of terrorist acts in connection with the incident at RAF Fairford, counter-terror police have said.
The 27-year-old man was arrested in Westminster, London. A second man, a 26-year-old UK national, has also been questioned under caution, and two properties in the area have been searched.
(2) FlyDubai hired a pilot who was clearly a risk for terrorism, and then they had him fly a Tel Aviv route. This guy appears to have been a smoking gun, and we still don’t know his name:
The prime minister [Netanyahu] went on Fox & Friends to state, “The attacker, the co-pilot who attacked the captain, is now being interrogated, but here’s what we do know: First, we know that he underwent Islamist radical indoctrination.”
Netanyahu pointed out that an Omani should never have been allowed to copilot a flight to Israel in the first place, precisely to avoid terrorist attacks. “Well, he was an Omani national, and we have constraints that say you can’t have pilots from countries that don’t have diplomatic relations with Israel.” Oman has been consistently supportive of the Iranian regime in its ongoing conflict with Israel this year.
Unconscionable.
(3) Ah, but the FlyDubai terrorism incident never happened, according to many people – or bots, or hired anti-Israel shills – on X. It’s just a staged op, like all the other news stories the left doesn’t like.
Or it did really happen, but had it succeeded it would have been justified.
See some of the tweets on this thread, for example.
(4) Attack the Texas Capitol building because you hate AIPAC? Makes zero sense. But why should it make sense?
(5) Meanwhile, Graham Platner’s (remember him?) replacement Troy Jackson has been jabbering away about how Israelis are committing genocide in Gaza. So much so that he decided to issue an apology:
In reiterating his view that that the three-year-old Israel-Gaza war “is a genocide,” Jackson said in the interview, “There are people here in Maine that don’t like to use that term only because, you know, they’re Jewish and, you know, what that means to them with the Holocaust.” …
On Wednesday, Jackson did not walk back his view of the conflict but apologized for offending Jews.
Jackson said in a written statement, “I believe what’s happening in Gaza is genocide, and I also understand that word carries particular weight for many Jewish families given the Holocaust—the genocide of six million Jews. In trying to acknowledge that, I misspoke and made a generalization about Jewish Mainers’ views that doesn’t reflect what I meant to say. I apologize for the pain that caused.”
In the interview, Jackson called for the U.S. to stop providing arms to Israel and labeled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a war criminal.”
In his apology on Wednesday, Jackson continued, saying, “Mainers hold a range of deeply considered views, and I promise I will always listen and work to approach these conversations with the care and respect they deserve. In the U.S. Senate, I’ll fight antisemitism and work for lasting peace and security for Palestinians and Israelis.”
Sure thing. Very believable. Hope you never see the inside of the Senate.
(6) This sounds like a forward-looking idea:
“Warfare, however, has changed dramatically and suddenly,” according to Hegseth’s memo. “Advanced computing now enables precise, low-cost weapons to be produced at massive scale. These systems increasingly threaten our costly legacy platforms and disrupt our force projection. Urgent change is required.”
I can’t make much sense of the RAF-Fairford incident. The Labour government’s response looks a lot like suicidal empathy.
As for the Fly Dubai almost-disaster, what an escape!