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It does not diminish the horror of mass casualty attacks on civilians, in this and other countries, to point out that today’s terrorist incidents provide a counterpoint to a declining arc of political violence worldwide. Both violence among states and violence within states have diminished dramatically in the last few generations.

If we look at battle deaths in the last century, the spurts in the Cold War, associated with the Korean, Indochina and Soviet-Afghan wars, were dwarfed by the huge spikes of slaughter associated with the world wars. And with the end of the Cold War came a steep decline in political violence worldwide — mainly because the two sides no longer kept local conflicts going by arming and supplying opposing sides from Latin America to Africa to Asia and the Middle East.

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Laura Miller dug into Candida Moss' scholarly work on Christianity's obsession with martyrdom, titled "The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom." She writes:

"Moss is thorough, strives for clarity and is genuinely fired up in her concern for the influence of the myth of martyrdom on Western societies. 'The idea of the persecuted church is almost entirely the invention of the 4th century and later,' she writes. This was, significantly, a period during which the church had become 'politically secure,' thanks to Constantine. Yet, instead of providing a truthful account of Christianity’s early years, the scholars and clerics of the fourth century cranked out tales of horrific, systemic violence. These stories were subtly (and not so subtly) used as propaganda against heretical ideas or sects. They also made appealingly gruesome entertainment for believers who were, personally, fairly safe; Moss likens this to contemporary suburbanites reveling in a horror film."

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"The defence ministry and China military online websites have faced a serious threat from hacking attacks since they were established, and the number of hacks has risen steadily in recent years," said a ministry spokesman, Geng Yansheng, on Thursday according to Reuters."According to the IP addresses, the websites were, in 2012, hacked on average from overseas 144,000 times a month, of which attacks from the US accounted for 62.9 percent."

China has called "groundless" claims that one of its military is responsible for hacks against U.S. corporations, newspapers and government sites, but evidence gathered by security firm Mandiant reportedly points strongly to one People’s Liberation Army unit based in the outskirts of Shanghai.

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Cliburn died at his home in Fort Worth surrounded by loved ones, said his publicist and longtime friend Mary Lou Falcone.

"Van Cliburn was an international legend for over five decades, a great humanitarian and a brilliant musician whose light will continue to shine through his extraordinary legacy," Falcone said in a statement. "He will be missed by all who knew and admired him, and by countless people he never met."

Cliburn made what would be his last public appearance in September at the 50th anniversary of the prestigious piano competition named for him. Speaking to the audience in Fort Worth, he saluted the many past contestants, the orchestra and the city. "Never forget: I love you all from the bottom of my heart, forever," he said to a roaring standing ovation.

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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The very phrase “world peace” has become something of a synonym for naiveté. Yet in recent years, compelling evidence has emerged to suggest that at least one important aspect of world peace, the absence or rarity of war between countries, may in fact be close to a reality.

Scholarly work on what might be called the “decline-in-violence” phenomenon emerged following the conclusion of a surprisingly peaceful Cold War, but it has lately drawn greater popular and scholarly attention.

In a world replete with dangers, the decline-in-violence proposition is often treated with skepticism. But it is time for the international security community to think seriously about preparing for a durable world peace instead of the constant threat of world war.

To be clear, we cannot expect a violence-free world any time soon. Instead, the data suggest that certain kinds of violence, most notably inter-state warfare such as the two world wars, are becoming less common even as other forms of conflict increase.

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According to the Washington Post, citing Moscow-sponsored outlet Voice of Russia, controversial parliament member Vladimir Zhirinovsky "has blamed Americans for today’s meteorite scare." Reportedly, Zhirinovsky told reporters, "Those were not meteorites; it was Americans testing their new weapons.”

WaPo notes that "Zhirinovsky is known for his nationalist, anti-Western, sometimes outlandish rhetoric" and has been called a “political clown" by German newspaper Der Spiegel.

Although outlandish and not widely shared in the Kremlin, Zhirinovsky's meteor comments come at a time of heightened tensions between the U.S. and Russia. The Economist noted Friday that "to Kremlin ideologists, the very concept of Russia’s sovereignty depends on being free of America’s influence." The Economist notes a series of antagonist measures Russia and America recently introduced against the other:

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Friday’s attack killed a Turkish security guard and seriously injured a well-known Turkish journalist. She’s now recovering in the hospital.

Even before American officials would discuss a possible motive, however, Turkish police linked the attack to a domestic leftist militant group called the People’s Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP-C. It took responsibility the following day.

In a statement posted on the internet, the group accused the Turkish ruling AK Party of being a US puppet and condemned Washington for waging war in the Middle East.

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Scuds are ballistic missiles first used by the Soviets during the Cold War. They are extremely deadly and can carry warheads.

The US warning comes amid growing concern Assad will resort to extreme measures — such as chemical weapons — in the face of a stubborn armed rebellion.

One US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told NYT the "total is number is probably north of six now,” adding that the regime was targeting rebel-held areas.

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Born into a blue-collar Buffalo family with a left-wing immigrant heritage, Manuel “Spain” Rodriguez had an instinctual feeling for the underdog. He did stints in foundries where the pounding metal-on-metal percussion was so loud that men went deaf. He rode with a local biker gang, and got into barroom brawls. When the revolution began in the 1960s, he immediately knew what side he was on: “When I was a kid, I kinda didn’t like rich people…I just kinda had a bad attitude.”

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American conservatives, they kept hearing, were claiming credit for ending the Cold War and “liberating” them from the yoke of Soviet communism.

They were puzzled not just because the names of these conservatives — Gingrich, Buchanan, Kemp — were unfamiliar. What baffled them was more fundamental: they hadn’t received American help at all. The CIA, by its own later admission, was entirely absent during the long months and years when East German dissidents organized covert meetings in churches and semi-derelict apartment buildings, usually no more than a step or two ahead of the Stasi, the all-pervasive secret police.

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How about the small towns of rural Colorado? That’s the setting for “Red Dawn,” the 1984 piece of militia porn that pitted a group of American kids against the combined might of the invading armies of Cuba, Nicaragua and the USSR. Led by Patrick Swayze, they lived off the land and harvested what seemed to be a never-ending supply of rocket-propelled grenades, with which they blew up tanks and Soviet-American Friendship Centers.

The film was released in the height of the Cold War, and its ludicrous premise (best summed up as “Hey kids, let’s go fight an insurrection!”) fit well with the rest of the decade’s fear-mongering anti-Soviet propaganda and jingoistic paeans to American exceptionalism. Let’s not forget that this was the same year that Reagan joked, “My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”

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"I think that in 2012, this is the most important election in the history of the United States," said Meat Loaf, singer of the hit power ballad, I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That). "Because there has storm clouds come over the United States. There is thunder storms over Europe. There are hail storms, and I mean major hail storms, in the Middle East. There are storms brewing through China, through Asia, through everywhere."

He went on, "And there's only one man that on the other night when Pres. Barack Obama, God bless him, said to Mitt Romney, 'The Cold War is over.' I have never heard such a thing in my life. The man needs to understand Putin and Russia."

Meat Loaf then sang "America the Beautiful" with Romney and country singers Randy Owen, John Rich and Big Kenny:

h/t Buzzfeed

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First, the Whittaker Chambers Farm is no museum. In fact is neither a requirement nor even an implication that a property designated as a National Historic Landmark need open to the public at all. In "Protecting America: Cold War Defensive Sites (A National Historical Landmark Theme Study)," dated October 2011, the NPS clearly holds the Whittaker Chambers Farm "private property, not open to the public." Further, Whittaker Chambers (my grandfather) never claimed his farm meant much to the outside world. He described it as "a few hundred acres of dirt, some clusters of old barns and outbuildings… a few beeves and hogs or a flock of sheep." ("Witness," p. 517). It hasn't changed much over the years.

Second, Dr. Wiener either visited under cover, through a third person — or not at all. He claims that he saw only horses "where the landmark was supposed to be." He must have come to the wrong place: we have never owned or housed horses. According to John Chambers (my father), who lives and works on the Farm, Dr. Wiener never called on him.

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When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, it all seemed so obvious. Fate had clearly dealt Washington a royal flush. It was victory with a capital V. The United States was, after all, the last standing superpower, after centuries of unceasing great power rivalries on the planet. It had a military beyond compare and no enemy, hardly a “rogue state,” on the horizon. It was almost unnerving, such clear sailing into a dominant future, but a moment for the ages nonetheless. Within a decade, pundits in Washington were hailing us as “the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome.”

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And yet, as I've grown older, I find my "U.S.A.!"-chanting reflex increasingly interrupted by pangs of discomfort, and not because I'm ashamed of our country or our Olympians, but because the relationship between American nationalism and the Olympics has been slowly infused with a different -- and politicized -- meaning. In short, chanting the initials of our nation seems less like it did in 1984 than it has since 1992.

Those two Summer Games were the formative events of my -- and so many others' -- Olympic fan psyche.

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