Sabbath 5/10/36/120                                                                                                     

Dear Friends

The greatest problem the world faces is in the question of the honesty and integrity of its various national administrations.  Each nation is getting more and more seriously impugned.  In relation to a scale of measurement of 1 to 100 there is no nation that is rated at 100 and the two nations rated equal first in the integrity of their administration and relative freedom from corruption according to the graft watchdog Transparency International in their recently released schedule each scored 91 out of 100.  Australia only ranks at a score of 81 in the world's top ten clean countries.  Worldwide almost 70 percent of nations are thought to have a "serious problem"   with corrupt public servants.  Not one of the 177 countries surveyed this year had a perfect score according to the Berlin based non-profit group. Its annual list is the most widely used indicator of corruption in National institutions such as political parties, police, justice systems and civil services. Corruption undermines development and the fight against poverty. Drugs are one of the most corrupting influences in national systems.

It is widely acknowledged that corruption hurts the poor the most in all countries.

Lead researcher Finn Heinrich stated: "That's what you see when you look at the countries at the bottom. Within those countries, it's also poor people who get hurt the most. These countries will never get out of the poverty trap if they don't tackle corruption."

Among countries that have slipped the most on the group's 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index are the war-torn nations of Syria as well as Libya and Mali.  All three have faced major military conflict in recent years.

Afghanistan, North Korea and Somalia are seen as the world's most corrupt countries by Transparency International. "Corruption is very much linked to countries that fall apart, as you see in Libya, Syria, two of the countries that deteriorated the most," Heinrich told AAP.

"If you look at the bottom of the list, we also have Somalia there. These are not countries where the government is functioning effectively, and people have to take all means in order to get by, to get services, to get food, to survive." Heinrich said Afghanistan, where most NATO-led Western forces are pulling out next year after more than a decade-long deployment, is "a sobering story. We have not seen tangible improvements". "The West has not only invested in security but also in trying to establish the rule of law. But there have been surveys in the last couple of years showing the share of people paying bribes is still one of the highest in the world." Also at the bottom of the list is North Korea, "an absolutely closed totalitarian society", said Heinrich, where defectors report that famine is worsening corruption "because you have to know someone in the party who is corrupt in order to even survive".

In comparison Denmark and New Zealand are nearly squeaky-clean, so graft watchdog Transparency International said. Among the "most improved" countries, although it came from a low base, was Myanmar, where a former military junta has opened the door to the democratic process and, facing an investment boom, has formally committed to transparency and accountability rules.

"That's the only way countries can avoid the 'resource curse', where the resources are only available to a very small elite," said Heinrich. "Nigeria and other oil-rich countries are obviously very good examples." Huguette Labelle, chair of Transparency, said "all countries still face the threat of corruption at all levels of government, from the issuing of local permits to the enforcement of laws and regulations".

The group says that because corruption is illegal and secretive, it cannot be meaningfully measured. Instead, Transparency collates expert views on the problem from bodies such as the World Bank, African Development Bank, Economist Intelligence Unit, Bertelsmann Foundation, Freedom House and other groups. It then ranks countries on a scale of 0-100, where 0 means a country's public sector is considered highly corrupt and 100 means its system is regarded as very clean.

According to Transparency the latest survey "paints a worrying picture". It says: "While a handful perform well, not one single country gets a perfect score. More than two-thirds score less than 50." The bottom-ranked countries, scoring 10 to 19, included Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan and South Sudan, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

At the top, between 80 and 89, aside from Denmark and New Zealand, were Luxembourg, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Singapore, Norway, Sweden and Finland. Note the US and UK do not rank in the top ten clean countries and both scored below 80 percent.

"The top performers clearly reveal how transparency supports accountability and can stop corruption," said Labelle.

This report shows us all just how far we have to go and how serious the problem is.  We may have to re-introduce the death penalty to deal with it and eradicate it completely.  Corruption is totally against Biblical law and has to be eradicated among God's people. Corruption is theft and has to be repaid under the same penalties as does theft. Look at the papers Law and the Eighth Commandment (No. 261) and Law and the Tenth Commandment (No. 263). 

Corruption leads in to the breach of the commandments entire and is based on a breach of the Ninth Commandment from the outset (see the paper Law and the Ninth Commandment (No. 262)) as it does with the Tenth Commandment also. The total breach of the Second Great Commandment (No. 257) follows on and hurts all families and breaches the entire obligation to God under the First Great Commandment (No. 252).

A number of the nations at the bottom of the list and the most corrupt will end up wiping themselves out in the forthcoming conflicts. These nations will include Somalia, North Korea and the Islamic fundamentalist nations in conflict from Syria to Afghanistan.  What is evident from the lists is that the Islamic nations are failing as functional societies and their interpretation of the Koran simply does not work and is itself corrupt and the source of its national corruption (see also the paper Introduction to the Commentary on the Koran (QI) and the related papers). The Sunday worshipping Trinitarian Societies under Vatican or Orthodox control also fail and most are under 50 in their national scores. In short their major religions do not work and do not follow biblical law or are totally disregarded by their people.  The world systems are collapsing and simply have to be removed.  They will be done away with as their national systems are also eliminated by Christ and the Laws of God will be reintroduced at the point of the sword.

Wade Cox
Coordinator General