(1742)

15. Just a few more

a. Times Radio: “This government has made it clear that MPs who vote against it will be punished and will have the whip removed.” Cutting the winter fuel payment is wrong but dissenting Labour MPs will not vote against it through fear of having the whip removed, says Labour MP @RosieDuffield1.

b. Ryan Fournier: “Liz Cheney lost her primary by a margin of 37.4%. No one cares about your opinion or the opinion of your father, who should be in jail for war crimes.”

c. Torquaymada quotes a lady at 802: “But real, mass-destructive evil is typically grand-scale and long-term. Because the sociopaths who drive it by definition a) don’t care about their fellow human beings at all and b) crave (and believe they’re entitled to) power over others. So they stop at nothing and gravitate to others who stop at nothing and inhabit enduring power structures that stop at nothing.”

14. The best approach, imho

… is to remember the names of sites you often see or have them on a dead tree sheet, and/or having a range of search engines … you’ll get the site’s home page, look around … I did and found this:

While the EU and EU countries roll out biometric digital IDs and facial recognition across various public services, including border control, US authorities continue to push for access to EU member states’ biometric databases to conduct traveller screening as part of its “visa-free travel regime.”

The US wants all countries participating in the US Visa Waiver Programme (“VWP”) to sign the Enhanced Border Security Partnership (“EBSP”) agreement by 2027.

Alongside the International Biometric Information Sharing Program (“IBIS”), EBSP is designed to gain access to national biometric databases to authenticate travellers’ identities. The EBSP would require direct connections between the biometric databases of participating states and the US’ IDENT/HART system.

All right … now, there are topics where the task is not to attribute but to further explore to your own satisfaction using trusted sites and that is the end game. We’re not looking for traffic, we’re looking for corroboration.

Then there are topics where something is on the say-so of a known figure that it depends on for authenticity. I for one must get far better at jotting down names which are iffy, with a few words why … and keeping that on dead tree, not online, not even on drives.

So we end up in this no man’s limbo where we need to remember our prime directive … we report as accurately as we can, as our bona fides depend on that. Also, we need breaks from politics … not healthy 24/7.

13. War report

Plan, in Steve’s absence, is to run one of our main three correspondent journos, maybe in rotation, plus take a look at what Rhona has (deliferate mistale).

12. Just going to run this without comment