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	Peace and Corruption Report by Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP)   Corruption is a leading indicator for political instability and 64 countries where fraud and bribery are widespread risk falling into violent upheaval, the Institute for Economics and Peacea a global think tank said in a new report.   While anti-corruption researchers long have argued the corrosive power of corruption, its political impact has never before been measured globally.   By examining the linkage between corruption measures and peaceful societies, the research by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) finds strong statistical evidence that high and rising levels of corruption can undermine security, and that only small increases can cause civil unrest.   "The most striking aspect of this relationship is that there is a tipping point," said Aubrey Fox, executive director for the group.   "This is enormously important for countries, because if you can, through incremental efforts, knock corruption below that tipping point and control it, you can avert the most difficult consequences," he said in an interview.   The IEP examined trends in peace and corruption over the past 15 years by looking at Transparency International''s Corruption Perception Index (CPI), the World Bank''s Control of Corruption measure, and its own Global Peace Index.   It found that when a country''s CPI score is under 40 out of a possible 100 that would denote minimal corruption, it has reached a threshold for collapse of government institutions and a rise in internal violence, IEP said.   From this tipping point, small increases in corruption can trigger large declines in peace, as measured by its Global Peace Index. High levels of corruption in the police and judiciary are critical factors for undermining social cohesion, it said.   Over the last seven years, IEP said the indices show the world has become less peaceful and that corruption has increased.   The two institutions that have the most impact on levels of peace are the police and the judiciary. These institutions underpin the rule of law in a country, high levels of corruption within them can lead to a breakdown of the legal framework, as well as formal and informal codes of conduct, leading directly to an increase in the likelihood of crime and violence.   Corruption is commonly understood as the ‘abuse of entrusted power for private gain’, and includes acts such as bribery, fraud, extortion, embezzlement and kickbacks. The exact boundaries of what constitutes corruption can be somewhat blurred.   However, gains in building a peaceful society do not show any statistical linkage to lower levels of corruption, indicating how persistent and challenging is the job of tackling fraud, bribery and abuse of power, IEP said.   http://www.visionofhumanity.org/#/page/news/1162   Fragile States Index 2015 (Fund for Peace)   South Sudan has topped the Fragile States Index for the second year in succession, as the country continues to be wracked by internal conflict, fractious politics, and poverty. South Sudan is joined at the most fragile end of the Index by countries that have long struggled, such as Somalia, Central African Republic, Sudan, and D.R. Congo. However, a lack of change at the most fragile end of the Index -- not to mention a similar lack of change at the sustainable end of the Index, where primarily Scandinavian countries continue to excel -- belies the significant movement of a number of countries over the past year and indeed the past decade.   According to FFP Executive Director, J.J Messner, “When you see the most fragile countries continuing to worsen and the most stable countries continuing to improve over time, it suggests fragility begets fragility and stability begets stability.”   Decade trends reflect continued strife in Libya, Syria, Yemen and Iraq   In the 2015 FSI, Syria became one of the top ten most fragile countries for the first time in the history of the Index. Reflective of the escalating insecurity in the post-Arab Spring world, marred by complex local ethnic and social-economic tensions overlaid with sectarian Sunni and Shia divides and regional power plays, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Iraq all made the top ten in the Most Worsened countries for 2015.   Though each country has its own conflict dynamics, political fragmentation and humanitarian crises, the deepening fragility across the four states over the past year is reshaping the whole regional landscape. The headline-grabbing rise of the Islamic State in the past twelve months has exacerbated sectarian divides across the region, contributing to continued insecurity.   Cuba most improved country of the decade   As Cuba continues to dominate headlines in the United States for the thawing of relations between the two countries, it has managed to be one of the three most improved countries of 2015 Index, and also the most improved country of the past decade. Under President Raul Castro’s leadership, Cuba has seen a slow but steady improvement in social and economic indicators. One of the driving forces behind this improvement has been the success of Castro’s economic reforms.   Ukraine dramatically worsens, Russia not far behind   In tandem with the international headlines throughout 2014, Ukraine’s score worsened by 9.1 points, one of the largest year-on-year increases in the history of the Index. The removal of a president, incursions by Russian-backed rebel forces and conflict throughout much of the country’s east, the shooting down of a Malaysian commercial jet over its territory, and the annexation of Crimea, has contributed to a dramatic shift in this year’s indicators scores. On the other side of the fence, Russia was the fourth most worsened country year-on-year in 2015, with the country beset by the economic pressures of sanctions and plummeting oil prices, and growing indicators of group grievance. Russia worsened from 85th in 2014 to 65th in 2015 Index.   http://library.fundforpeace.org/fsi15-overview Visit the related web page
	Errors and Lies by Paul Krugman New York Times   May 2015   Surprise! It turns out that there’s something to be said for having the brother of a failed president make his own run for the White House. Thanks to Jeb Bush, we may finally have the frank discussion of the Iraq invasion we should have had a decade ago.   But many influential people — not just Mr. Bush — would prefer that we not have that discussion. There’s a palpable sense right now of the political and media elite trying to draw a line under the subject. Yes, the narrative goes, we now know that invading Iraq was a terrible mistake, and it’s about time that everyone admits it. Now let’s move on.   Well, let’s not — because that’s a false narrative, and everyone who was involved in the debate over the war knows that it’s false. The Iraq war wasn’t an innocent mistake, a venture undertaken on the basis of intelligence that turned out to be wrong. America invaded Iraq because the Bush administration wanted a war. The public justifications for the invasion were nothing but pretexts, and falsified pretexts at that. We were, in a fundamental sense, lied into war.   The fraudulence of the case for war was actually obvious even at the time: the ever-shifting arguments for an unchanging goal were a dead giveaway. So were the word games — the talk about W.M.D that conflated chemical weapons (which many people did think Saddam had) with nukes, the constant insinuations that Iraq was somehow behind 9/11.   And at this point we have plenty of evidence to confirm everything the war’s opponents were saying. We now know, for example, that on 9/11 itself — literally before the dust had settled — Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, was already plotting war against a regime that had nothing to do with the terrorist attack. “Judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] ...sweep it all up things related and not”; so read notes taken by Mr. Rumsfeld’s aide.   This was, in short, a war the White House wanted, and all of the supposed mistakes that, as Jeb puts it, “were made” by someone unnamed actually flowed from this underlying desire. Did the intelligence agencies wrongly conclude that Iraq had chemical weapons and a nuclear program? That’s because they were under intense pressure to justify the war. Did prewar assessments vastly understate the difficulty and cost of occupation? That’s because the war party didn’t want to hear anything that might raise doubts about the rush to invade. Indeed, the Army’s chief of staff was effectively fired for questioning claims that the occupation phase would be cheap and easy.   Why did they want a war? That’s a harder question to answer. Some of the warmongers believed that deploying shock and awe in Iraq would enhance American power and influence around the world. Some saw Iraq as a sort of pilot project, preparation for a series of regime changes. And it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that there was a strong element of wagging the dog, of using military triumph to strengthen the Republican brand at home.   Whatever the precise motives, the result was a very dark chapter in American history. Once again: We were lied into war.   Now, you can understand why many political and media figures would prefer not to talk about any of this. Some of them, I suppose, may have been duped: may have fallen for the obvious lies, which doesn’t say much about their judgment. More, I suspect, were complicit: they realized that the official case for war was a pretext, but had their own reasons for wanting a war, or, alternatively, allowed themselves to be intimidated into going along. For there was a definite climate of fear among politicians and pundits in 2002 and 2003, one in which criticizing the push for war looked very much like a career killer.   On top of these personal motives, our news media in general have a hard time coping with policy dishonesty. Reporters are reluctant to call politicians on their lies, even when these involve mundane issues like budget numbers, for fear of seeming partisan. In fact, the bigger the lie, the clearer it is that major political figures are engaged in outright fraud, the more hesitant the reporting. And it doesn’t get much bigger — indeed, more or less criminal — than lying America into war.   But truth matters, and not just because those who refuse to learn from history are doomed in some general sense to repeat it. The campaign of lies that took us into Iraq was recent enough that it’s still important to hold the guilty individuals accountable. Never mind Jeb Bush’s verbal stumbles. Think, instead, about his foreign-policy team, led by people who were directly involved in concocting a false case for war.   So let’s get the Iraq story right. Yes, from a national point of view the invasion was a mistake. But it was worse than a mistake, it was a crime. Visit the related web page
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