Author: ppadmin

War weather. A recent published in the 24 August 2011 issue of “Nature,” has statistically quantified the connection between extreme weather and violent conflict, essentially doubling the risk of civil war. Among the study’s findings is that 20% of the 250 conflicts between 1950 and 2004 were triggered by the El Niño cycle, which brings hotter, dried weather patterns, frequently causing droughts and food shortages. Solomon Hsiang, who led the research at Columbia University, New York, said: "This study shows a systematic pattern of global climate affecting conflict right now. . . . When crops fail, people may take up a gun to make a living," said Hsiang. — anonymous

The Spanish, in their conquest of Americas, looked to Scripture to justify their imperial reign: 1 Kings 10:22-25. "For the king had a fleet of ships of Tarshish at sea with the fleet of Hiram. Once every three years the fleet of ships of Tarshish used to come bringing gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks. Thus King Solomon excelled all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom. The whole earth sought the presence of Solomon to hear his wisdom, which God had put into his mind. Every one of them brought a present, objects of silver and gold, garments, weaponry, spices, horses, and mules, so much year by year." — anonymous

Witness: The Greek word is martis, where we get the English word martyr. — anonymous

In 2011 political columnist David Brooks asked readers over 70 to write and send him “‘Life Reports'—essays about their own lives and what they done poorly and well.” Maybe the most revealing of the conclusions he drew: “Lean toward risk. It’s trite, but apparently true. Many more seniors regret the risks they didn’t take than regret the ones they did.” — anonymous

Seven Deadly Social Sins, Mahatma Gandhi * Politics without principle * Wealth without work * Commerce without morality * Pleasure without conscience * Education without character * Science without humanity * Worship without sacrifice His grandson Arun Gandhi added an eighth: Rights without responsibility — anonymous

“The disciples carried weapons,” Derek Melton, assistant chief of police in Pryor Creek, Okla., and senior pastor at Pryor Creek Community Church, told Religion News Service in 2012. “Peter cut a man’s ear off. I believe if more honest citizens were armed, the safer our communities would be.” — anonymous

Indispensable nation? If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future. (Interview on NBC-TV "The Today Show" with Matt Lauer, Columbus, Ohio, February 19, 1998, defending the US role in enforcing an embargo on Iraq in the aftermath of the first Gulf War in 1991. Historian James Chace and President Bill Clinton presidential aide Sidney Blumenthal apparently coined the term in 1996 to capture the essence of Clinton’s liberal-internationalist vision of the post–Cold War world. President Bill Clinton used it in his January 20, 1997, inauguration speech and in a 1998 speech outlining the rationale for the NATO’s intervention in Bosnia. President Barack Obama used the phrase at least twice, in his January 24, 2012, State of the Union Address and May 2012 commencement address at the US Air Force Academy Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton repeated the "indispensable nation" claim in a February 2013 speech and again in her 2014 book, Hard Choices. — anonymous

Recalling cynically those politicians who gush on about gallantry and sacrifice in warfare, E.B. Sledge, a veteran of the World War II campaigns at Peleliu and Okinawa wrote, “The words seemed so ridiculous. Only the flies benefited.” — anonymous

It is common, as William Sloan Coffin notes, that we are prone to use the Bible as a drunk uses a lamppost—for support rather than illumination. — anonymous