Via Salon.com: ‘ “We are living in the most peaceful century in human history; however the 2014 Global Peace Index shows that the last seven years has shown a notable deterioration in levels of peace.”So begins this year’s peace index, an annual report released by the nonprofit Institute for Economics and Peace. The study ranks 162 countries covering 99.6% of the world’s population according to a complex set of indicators that gauge the absence of violence and political instability. These include a nation’s level of military expenditure, its relations with neighboring countries and the percentage of the population held in prisons.’