The Year Emma Morano was Born

by Nomad

When Emma Morano was born, Queen Victoria, now weary with age, was still on the throne and William McKinley was president. 

The other players were rehearsing in the wings.
The youthful Albert Einstein had just entered university and, Morano's fellow countryman, Guillermo Marconi was still working out the details of his wireless communication device. The Wright brothers were flying kites in Dayton, Ohio.
Mohandas Gandhi was a just young lawyer in South Africa. Adolf Hilter and Benito Mussolini were just a pair angry teenagers and Franklin Roosevelt was a sheltered young man of Hyde Park privilege, preparing to go to Harvard.

In the year of her Morano's birth, Henry Ford had a falling out with Thomas Edison and started his own enterprise. He called it "The Detroit Automobile Company." The term, "automobile," had only been coined earlier that year in an editorial in The New York Times. A year later, after only twenty vehicles had been built, the company went bust.

In 1899, visionary inventor Nikola Tesla in his laboratory in Colorado Springs told an interviewer:

Life is a rhythm that must be comprehended....Everything that lives is related to a deep and wonderful relationship: man and the stars, amoebas’ and the sun, the heart and the circulation of an infinite number of worlds. These ties are unbreakable, but they can be tamed ..to propitiate and begin to create new and different relationships in the world, and that does not violate the old.

Telsa looked deep into the future and saw a fantastic era in human history about to begin. It was a time of profound optimism. It was impossible not to feel that every problem could be solved and things from here on out would steadily improve. 

Nevertheless, when Morano entered into this world, there were no televisions, no radios, and the motion picture industry was in its infancy. There were no airplanes in the sky and no highways crisscrossing the land and lassoing cities. 

The average life expectancy in Italy- Emma's home- was only 44 years. For an Italian woman today, that figure has nearly doubled to 85.2.

Here's a Simple Way to Lessen the Grip of Fear of Terrorism

by Nomad

Closing Doors: Why Russian Travel Restrictions May Signal a Return to Soviet Days

by Nomad

By the use of tighter travel restrictions and fear tactics, The Russian government may have a few very good reasons for trying to spoil its citizens' vacations abroad.  

The Freedom of Movement
St. Augustine once said:

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”

The liberating effects of leaving your native land and seeing how others live -if only for a short time- are well-known.
The freedom of movement is, in fact, a human right, recognized in Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

This right to travel covers not only inside one's own country but to other countries. Furthermore, the right pertains not just to visiting and holiday-making but, if desired, the right to change one's residence permanently.

The provision in the UDHR states:

• Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.
• Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

In that respect, internal borders should be as limited as possible and external borders should act as a regulator of the flow but not a block.
Like a lot of things in the UDHR, there are quite a few limitations to the real-life applications.  It's is, indeed, hard to imagine how this freedom of movement could be applied strictly or even in a practical way.

Immigration and emigration will always be considered a part of national sovereignty. There will always be zones in every country where people cannot travel. There will always be costs imposed that in themselves limit this freedom.
Moreover, persons charged with or convicted of crimes are  denied this right.

With so many exceptions, you might even wonder about the wisdom of including such a right in the first place. Why was this article deemed necessary you might ask?

Happy Thanksgiving!

by Nomad

Somebody on Facebook pointed out this touch of irony. But it goes even a little further than even this.  Thanksgiving is a holiday about being helped as refugees and giving thanks to God for that blessing." 

The same people who last week absolutely refused to accept refugees from war-torn Syria are now preparing to dine on their Thanksgiving dinner right now and feel no sense of hypocrisy at all.

GOP Congressman's Defense of the First Amendment and Religious Liberty Outrages Conservatives

by Nomad

One Republican Congressman was given a stern dressing down for a letter he sent to a constituent regarding fears of a Muslim takeover. Apparently, upholding the First Amendment and the Constitution's defense of religious liberty makes some conservatives livid.

Earlier this month, a widely-read conservative website, RedState, posted an article expressing outrage about a letter sent to a constituent by Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger from Illinois. As per the Tea Party echo chamber, this article was re-posted ad nauseam.
The original letter sent to Kinzinger's office was related to the fears of the supposed spread of Muslim Sharia Law in his district.
To this, Kinzinger gave a polite and well-considered reply. That did not sit well with the conservatives. At all. 

According to the site:

Kinzinger’s email response begins by acknowledging that many people inside and outside of the expansive 16th congressional district have concerns about Sharia Law, but then took things a bridge too far by stating that Sharia Law was protected under the free exercise clause of the 1st amendment and that it was his sworn duty as an elected member of Congress to defend the Constitution and by extension Islamic Sharia Law.

First elected to Congress in 2010, Kinzinger was re-elected to Congress in both 2012 and 2014 to represent Illinois's 16th congressional district. He is also a United States Air Force vet and flew missions in South America, Guam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. With a military record like that, Kinzinger's loyalty to his nation and all that it stands for is something few would dare to question.

The writer of the RedState piece, Ulysses Arn, said that the reply made Kinzinger, the spokesperson for the House GOP establishment on all things related to the military and foreign policy "look like a fool."
Even for a conservative, that's a pretty disrespectful thing to say to a veteran who risked his life fighting Islamic extremists.