Grassroots democracy is thriving in Europe.

France has suspended some workers in the medical system for not being vaccinated.

Requiring their vaccination is important to reduce the risk of Covid-19's spreading in clinics and hospitals. If the fraction suspended is around 5%, the system can cope, and many will get vaccinated and resume work in a couple of months.

Having all staff vaccinated could reduce the number of staff that at any time must stay home due to detected or possible Covid-19 infection. It will also contribute to reducing the country's general level of infection.

We must reject the idea of seeing wars as opportunities for Americans to bond with each other.

It is difficult to avoid killing civilians in a war, but how difficult depends on the way the fighting is done. When fighting with swords, it's not hard to see whether someone is a soldier. With air strikes, it is not easy to avoid mistakes, as Nigeria has discovered.

War without a front line (that civilians can keep away from) is especially likely to mean killing them. And we saw, a few weeks ago in Kabul, that this is still true for the US military.

A new "compromise" voting rights bill has the ostensible support of all 50 Senate democrats, including Manchin and Sinema.

Despite not being as strong as the For the People Act, it will make a big difference.

There are many problems with US elections that this bill will not fix. It is not enough.

Will Manchin and Sinema turn around and kill the bill they just agreed to support, by insisting it needs to win 10 Republican supporters to avoid a filibuster? Or will they agree to eliminate that obstacle?

The author grew up with national ID cards and doesn't understand how they increase government power for repression. In addition, the existence of national ID cards leads to indexing all sorts of person data by them, so that all databases are automatically cross-indexed by default.

US citizens: call on the House and Senate Judiciary Committees to advance the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, which would forbid governments from tracking people by buying data about them from companies that track people.

Really we should stop companies from collecting data to track people at all.