"The more power a government has the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects. Power will achieve its murderous potential. It simply waits for an excuse, an event of some sort, an assassination, a massacre in a neighboring country, an attempted coup, a famine, or a natural disaster, to justify the beginning of murder en masse."
R. J. Rummel, Mass Murder and Genocide, 1994
Keep in mind that this is an 'average' and that exogenous events can greatly affect the normalized results.
Chart courtesy of friend Brian at ContraryInvestor. 
Gold Seasonality with Gold 2010 Daily Price Chart Overlay
