Thursday 22 December 2016

Working on an open, egalitarian and abundant 2017 with a mind to history's lessons - you too?

Seasons Greetings folks,
A general shout out to everyone... :-)
I'm very glad to have played a part in our large discussion and movement for an egalitarian state.
So rest and allow the lessons of 2016 play over, distill and think big.
Christmas reflections
I know our values are shared by many - how to engage all in a visionary project is key to 2017?
The following link is to a brief essay on publicly held values in NZ I wrote in November, drawing the Flag referendum 'Stand For Values' together with the Colmar Brunton published, 'Better Futures Report' (November 2016) highlighting that values matter to New Zealanders:
Do we find ourselves referencing the public as sheeple and uninformed? The truth is that most people are benign and like to think of themselves as ethical.
However we might find we denigrate the values of the other – the point from the above link is most hold good values and would prefer to be in a place where they might be systemically enabled to express themselves ethically.
Government – purpose and performance
I hold that view and are working to share the idea we would prefer a systemically ethical governance structure. One in which the rule of law is based in human and planetary beneficial outcomes. The UN system is undermined by systemic corruption as the Exceptionalism of the Veto enables the most powerful to avoid consequence for their actions. The US use this as they have launched the following list of 60 or so wars and interventions in state's business in the years since World War 2.
We in Aotearoa New Zealand can remain locked in the constraints imposed by being a lackey and part of the UK/US Empire or we can burst the bonds. The world turns in the most recent events in Syria, Trump, Brexit, Cuba, the order is moving and we must ensure that our values are front and central in the mix of ideas competing for ascendancy.
We need to think big in order to create, mobilise and change in a big way.
It requires big actions with profound effects which are widely appreciated - so networks and media.
What are we up against? What approach do we adopt?
Greg's approach for what it's worth
I've been very involved in presenting evidence to the NZ Government at both a local level and direct to Central Government, as well as work publicly as an activist in the democracy. I acknowledge that there's a lot of people doing similar work. I promote my activities as public advocacy so I desire that people appreciate what tasks and efforts I have contributed.
There's a kicker as I desire ongoing sustenance from your largesse :) see over in there >>>
Local government lobbies
Along with a cast of thousands we managed to get 12 major local councils to adopt a policy solution to the toxic TPP treaty. The policy was written by a Wellingtonian, transmitted through the Labour party, picked up and inserted into Auckland Council policy on TPP in December 2012, then disseminated to the other councils from 2013 to 2015 when South Wairarapa District Council became the twelfth. My role was analogous to a carrier pigeon with a loud mouth and a lot of original paperwork inserted into council administrations, plus presentations to council forums:
Central Government lobbies
On the TPP treaty examination process the following are links to NZ Parliamentary recording of my oral evidence or presentation uploaded to Soundcloud.
(The dropbox links to relevant papers are in the explanation on the page. The oral recordings might be of limited value as the recording quality varies and in one I take a bit to get wound up)
Globalist approach to legislation in various jurisdictions
As well as the globalist approach to trade treaty negotiations and content, the powers are using similar approaches in different jurisdictions using various ploys and false flag events. In Washington, (which is what initiated this essay) is the introduction of legislation which similar to our maritime crimes amendment bill, will criminalise civil disobedience:
Sen. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale, has introduced his Preventing Economic Disruption Act (PEDA) for consideration during the 2017 legislative session.
The measure targets illegal activities that aim to create economic harm by impeding legally permitted economic activities. It allows prosecuting attorneys to file special charges that increase penalties for misdemeanors and felonies.
New Zealand experience – fascism is catchy
In NZ the Government is up to it - constantly pursuing similar policy and legislative programs out of the fascist/globalist playbook. I have engaged with the following list offering evidence to the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade (FADT) select committee:
Countering Foreign Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill 2014. I offered oral and paper evidence to that:
Maritime Crimes Amendment Bill 2016 also paper and oral presentation:
Proposed spy legislation Intelligence and Security Bill 2016, off the back of a review by eminent persons... one ex NZ Treasurer Michael Cullen and the other, the present Governor General Dame Patsy Reddy:
The point in all of this is to advance an evidence trail that can be referenced in any legislative attacks we later make in respect to due process or failure to account for the public interest or even the plain facts of denial of human rights and state hypocrisy.
Conclusion
The point in my papers is that there are many connections; trade, economy, globalism, monopoly, hegemony, intelligence and security state, environmental destruction, unbalanced application of law, loss of democracy and overriding of genuine and informed public opinion - which has led us to our present poverty plus the unhealthy and unsustainable mess that is NZ and global ecological wellbeing.

If the government and big or transnational business interests are linked and mutually supportive where is the advocate for people and planet and their long term sustenance?

We need to acknowledge that whilst we twerk for Empire we deny the ability to love ourselves as we ought.
The values offered by the people in the “Stand For" process were their values that underpin what it is to be part of Aotearoa New Zealand. These values are our values and were offered in a binding Constitutional process!

They ought be the underpinnings of our public and national interest - So our constitution.

The words with the most public support in their Stand For offerings are represented in largest font; 
Equality, History, Freedom appear to be hands down winners.
Working on an open, egalitarian and abundant 2017 with a mind to history's lessons - you too?
Best for the season from greg
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Tuesday 29 November 2016

Pot Calls the Kettle Black - The Hypocrisy of the Fourth Estate

On Brexit, Trump and Reality – Who's Winning, Losing and Why?

What role do the media play in constructing our reality? 

Is social media a force for good?

The following arises from an article by the British paper the Guardian complaining that the dissemination of social media news was undermining the democracy. The article “The Pedlars* of Fake News Are Corroding Democracy” is here, but read on for the moment:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/25/pedlars-fake-news-corroding-democracy-social-networks

*Pedlars might be spelled "peddlers"

Clinton and DNC Trumped by Own Dirty Tricks


I was one of a small group of individuals who thought that the Brexit vote would have Britain leave the European Union. I also was not surprised at the recent US election result which saw Hillary Clinton trumped by her own Machiavellian plans. This article from the US site Salon explains why and how she tripped up:
Wikileaks release of the Democrat National Committee (DNC) emails revealed the strategy employed to ensure their candidate was successful. For it to be successful the US media must play along with the tactics outlined by the DNC and Hillary Clinton. Nothing like an independent press. From the article:
In its self-described “pied piper” strategy, the Clinton campaign proposed intentionally cultivating extreme right-wing presidential candidates, hoping to turn them into the new “mainstream of the Republican Party” in order to try to increase Clinton’s chances of winning.
The concluding passages of the story indicate the bloody mindedness of the Clinton and Democrat elite and the bastardy to the Bernie Sanders' campaign, the real people's choice:
Sanders, a self-described Democratic socialist, repeatedly warned in the primary that he would have a greater chance of defeating Trump. Poll after poll showed that he would have beaten Trump in the general election by wide margins. Instead, his candidacy was repressed — and now Clinton has lost to Trump.
Trump and Clinton were the least popular major-party presidential nominees in U.S. history, according to an August poll. An October report cited Sanders as the most popular political figure in the country.
There has been an outpouring of grief and anguish from the liberal and left types in the US over the US election outcome that has brought Trump to the throne of Empire. Many are crying about the new fascism that will sweep the USA and the world. How true is this?
Trump is not ideal by any stretch of the imagination. Nor was Brexit. However they both represent the fruits of the elite's organising the World to maintain their privilege and status, in the face of austerity, poverty, inequality, war mongering, renditions, and ecological genocide. Where were the cries of foul of Obama's terrible record on just about everything? He extended the Terror War and introduced the National Defence Authorisation Act an annual act to authorise defence spending. The 2012 act contained controversial provisions in subsections 1021–1022 of Title X, Subtitle D, entitled "Counter-Terrorism", authorizing the indefinite military detention of persons the government suspects of involvement in terrorism, including U.S. citizens arrested on American soil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fiscal_Year_2012

Obama's Legacy Bigger Eternal War, Renditions, Drone Assassinations and NDAA

Such provisions breach all human rights norms. This and many more points are made by Dolores Vek about the previous Obama, Bush and Clinton presidencies, in the following article castigating the alarmist liberals who feel suddenly threatened by the spectre of fascism under a Trump presidency and a GOP controlled Congress:
Delores offers in a passages, but read the whole thing for the full picture if you have time:
I know it’s ancient history to be talking about the Bush years, just like it’s hopelessly passé to unironically talk about “imperialism” in 2016, but please indulge me. I remember back when George W. Bush was president, torturing people around the world, “shredding the Constitution,” attacking Iraq and Afghanistan and threatening Iran with nukes. At the time, it was pretty common, even popular and fashionable, to call the president a fascist. Even on TV! Everyone who wasn’t a Republican was radical: it seemed like Democrats and communists alike could gripe over everything from a stolen Florida election to the invasion of Iraq.
Then sometime around 2007, a neoliberal and fundamentally conservative mediocrity named Barack Obama showed up, and while he made a lot of noise about how different he was, there was almost nothing of substance to back it up. Once he was president, all the stuff that was proof of George W.’s fascism became a trifling issue, a simple mistake, or a regrettable necessity when Obama did it. As Obama continued George Bush’s legacy, and as Dick Cheney came out in support of Hillary Clinton, liberals stopped thinking of the Bush administration as a fascist criminal enterprise and started seeing it through Sorkin-colored glasses, with a George Bush-Michelle Obama hug at the twilight of the Obama presidency marking the decisive transition.
The recriminations are not confined to the US, with concerns about the Trump presidency uttered from all corners of the world. Even the New Zealand Green Party refused to support a motion in the Parliament congratulating Trump on his victory. Would they have congratulated Hillary?

The Guardian's Offending Article

But what is the issue, why were people so pissed with the establishment to vote for Brexit and Trump? Well in Britain The Guardian's Andrew Smith has the answer, it's the masses of people who gain their news and information from social media rather than the traditional media sources (dominated by capitalist owners), in his article published 7:34pm GMT Friday 25 November, “The Pedlars of Fake News Are Corroding Democracy.”
Andrew's thesis is of note: “If most adults get their news from Facebook we need laws to make the social networks accountable.” He goes on to state;
The most interesting question about 2016 is not why the Brexit result and Trump happened, but whether historians will regard both as incidental; whether this will go down as the year democracy revealed itself unworkable in the age of the internet – in which reality, already engaged in a life-or-death struggle with inverted commas, finally gave way to “alt-reality”.
The results of these votes were shocking, but not surprising. The rules of capitalism have been gamed by the ruling kleptocracy and a lot of working people are angry. No mystery there. In the past week, however, the collective postmortem – on the left and right of politics – has focused on a concern with far greater long-term impact: the accidental or deliberate propagation of misinformation via social media. Many millions of people saw and believed fake reports that the pope had endorsed Trump; Democrats had paid and bussed anti-Trump protesters; Hillary Clinton was under criminal investigation for sexually assaulting a minor. About the only accusation not levelled at Clinton was implication in the murder of JFK, and that was because Trump had already used it against his Republican primary rival Ted Cruz. If democracy is predicated on reliable information, it’s in serious trouble right now.
Very few people saw this coming. Back in the 1990s, at the height of the dotcom boom, the internet pioneer Josh Harris tried to sound a warning – but at that early utopian stage, when the web was assumed to be decentralising, democratising, enlightening, almost no one understood what he was saying. Later, in 2002, George W Bush’s own Voldemort, his deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, chided a reporter by saying: “People like you are in what we call the reality-based community. You believe that solutions emerge from judicious study of the discernible reality. That’s not the way the world really works any more.” The gnomic taunt caused more bemusement than consternation at the time, but Rove was ahead of the game.
The reference to Karl Rove's, “reality based community” is of import and ought be considered carefully for its implications for world events as they unfold, link and quote below:
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.
This process of actors initiating events is not new, it is more a case of the reality is out in the open for observation for any with eyes to see. Ideologues will continue with their theories, however the history of the world unfolds as particular actors move the chess pieces on the board.
For instance the Clintons and the DNC thought they were moving chess pieces in a winning strategy, to clear Sanders out and ensure the Republicans were stuck with a pig. The problem they faced is that their own pig was too much for most White Americans. Their play had insufficient power to create the desired reality. So we get Trump as opposed to Bernie.
In hindsight is Hillary remorseful and wishing that Bernie won the Democratic nomination?
So let's go back to the Andrew Smith article, “The pedlars of fake news are corroding democracy.” I read the article through with much interest. It contained many trigger points for me as I surveyed its indictment of the gullible and lazy who inform themselves using the new media platforms as opposed to the sanitised version of news offered by the traditional Fourth Estate:
Andrew might be having a go at the new phenomenon known as the Fifth Estate:
Irrespective of who particularly he is denigrating and suggesting should be regulated for truth, I found his thesis more than a little infuriating, as my issue has been with the role played by the traditional news media in the political economy and democracy. The Free Press is an institutional and important element in a well functioning democracy. Its supposed role is to report news and hold the powerful to account for their decisions and deeds, particularly governments and large corporate interests when they trample the rights of the people and their commons. It is now well known and well established that the corporate media is often a tool for establishment and elite interests. Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman's 1988 thesis, “Manufacturing Consent” makes the case, and this page summarises the logic with remarkable brevity relative to Chomsky's tome:
http://beautifultrouble.org/theory/the-propaganda-model/

My Comment Disappears - Guardian Censor Strikes

I might add that The Guardian is not the worse offender in this regard, however the article was on their webpage and so they got my ire. There were about 700 comments on the article when I got to it Saturday afternoon NZ time, nevertheless I felt motivated to make a contribution. You won't find it in the comments section of the article because the moderator(s) removed it for failing to meet the Guardian's Community Standards: https://www.theguardian.com/community-standards
I reviewed the material in the community standards and FAQs to see how my comment might have breached their sensibilities, here's my comment:
26-11-2016 4:20pm..
I find the hypocrisy over the top. The traditional corporate media is a concentrated power structure that has never held power to account when it mattered.
The case for war with Iran in 2003 was made by the corporate media! John Pilger makes the case here, "The War you don't see": 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glnYs7Fz0SM
Why don't we see the war? What role does the corporate news media play in informing the democracy of what criminal and genocidal shenanigans their leaders are up to?
What didn't the news media know, that lots of citizen based journalists and writers knew? Are the media corporations not getting the info? or choosing not to share it?
How much does a bomb cost a taxpayer and how many are deployed?
And how many people on the receiving end are munted? Dead not counting injuries and displaced:
The cover up of the 9/11 crime a military exercise well executed was never allowed critique. Tony Rooke's documentary of the collapse of building 7 and the apparent collusion by the BBC in broadcasting the story 20 minutes prior to the 5:20pm collapse is one of many proofs:
Add this to the pile of shit that is the cover up which highlights the deep state corruption a subtle fascism has been in place for a long time, subtle for the West, genocidal for those in the the war mongers way to make profit and loot resources:
So Afghanistan 7 October 2001 declaration of war. Why? The story was 19 Saudi Arabians organised from a cell in Hamburg Germany hijacked 4 planes and smashed them into US assets.. what did that have to do with Afghanistan? What was the corporate media doing then?
What are the corporate media doing about the escalation of the wars in Syria and Iraq now alleged to be stirred by a mythic creature called ISIS?
MediaLens investigates Nafeez Amhed's termination for exposing the Israeli despotism in Palestine and the grab for resources:
.....and finally this, like it is all the people's fault!! Particularly after you the corporate news media have been sharing so much truth in a timely way so the democracy is well informed to make the necessary informed choices....
and then you share this! You the corporate media are systemically evil and corrupt to the core... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community
....and expect us to be able to take down the most powerful force ever created on the planet!
Working on it...
mirror mirror on the wall who's the biggest whore of all? Who prostitutes truth for the powerful?

Press Complaints - Self Regulation at The Guardian 

I've emailed the Guardian's moderators seeking an explanation. I've followed this with several follow up emails providing further context. I sense that no answer will be forthcoming which motivates me to commit the saga to posterity herein. To close the record I'll include those emailed follow up comments and publish this online.
The one piece of hypocrisy that does get me is the sub heading Andrew Smith used, “If most adults get their news from Facebook we need laws to make the social networks accountable.”
Now the funny thing is that The Guardian is not a member of the Independent Press Standards Organisation electing for to self-regulate through it's community of moderators:
Here are the contents of my two follow up emails to The Guardian moderator opinion.moderation@theguardian.com
-----------------------------------------

A. 3:15am Tuesday 29 November 2016

Greetings Guardian Opinion moderation,
Have you reviewed my application? Swept under the mat? Brush off?
Hmmmmm....
Mirror on the wall...
The Sovereign is the Sun and the Moon is the people...
In Astrology the Sun is Leo..
In regard to Andrew's article, no matter how accurate... consider it in the light that I've read this: "Other People's Wars" by Nicky Hagar: http://www.nickyhager.info/other-peoples-wars/
And taken an active interest in the Chilcot Inquiry.. and read Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" a long time ago.
John Kerry the US Secretary of State came to Wellington New Zealand and placed a wreath at the New Zealand War Memorial Park Pukeahu ceremony 11:00am Sunday 13 November, he was unveiling a plaque which marks the spot where the US War Memorial is to be built on the site..
I happened to be there:
Lots of links in the thread...
When a person kills another in cold blood it is called murder. When a country does it the crime is Aggression, established in the allies conviction of the Nazis at Nuremburg.
The Australian, New Zealand, Canadian, US and British media all enabled the State to commit the crime of Aggression. If the news media had done their job, hold power to account, there would have been no way that the post 9/11 wars would have proceeded:
For a look at Building 7 go to Tony Rooke UK Film-maker's 'Incontrovertible 9/11':
This movie from Tony Rooke who got off the charge of not paying his UK TV license fee. His evidence made an impression on the old Bailey:
---------------------------------------
You may not like the facts.... you may not like the way I frame my offering... you cannot say that my comments are out of context... nor can you say that my facts are unsubstantiated... I have not used uncouth language... I use strong language.... murder and genocide is no light nor laughing matter...
I suggest you have made a poor decision when you removed my valid comment.
What redress do you propose?
-------------------------------------------------

B. 12:04pm Tuesday 29 November 2016

Dear Guardian moderator
Further to my application for a review of your moderation decision in respect to my comment on your article:
User name: Greg Rzesniowiecki
...this just popped up in my twitter feed..

I've been reviewing The Guardian's coverage of the Terror War and found this article about the competitor Rupert Murdoch's media reporting:
Also this on how the Guardian reported the war on Terror:
And this which indicates advance knowledge by everyone of what was coming:
Which does lead me to a view that The Guardian's reporting of the War on Terror and the alleged justification was not the worst of the media reporting, so tacit acknowledgement to your organisation on that...
However the article critical of Rupert Murdoch's news organisation makes my case for me..
I find this paper,
"REPORTING AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ: MEDIA, MILITARY AND GOVERNMENTS AND HOW THEY INFLUENCE EACH OTHER by Greg Wilesmith Trinity Term 2011"
most interesting as it is a serious effort to describe the news media reporting by particular journalists on the Afghan and Iraq wars themselves:
The wars would not have been possible to prosecute if the media had done their job properly.. extract from page of above report:
--------------------------------------------------------
"Indeed through 2001 Bush administration had hundreds of warnings from the FBI, the CIA and the NSA (National Security Agency) about the threat posed by al Qaeda; its growing role in Afghanistan fighting with the Taliban; running training camps along the Afghan-Pakistani border for Islamic terrorists from around the world; and the strong links with Pakistan’s ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate).
"Some of this information was in the public domain in the US, courtesy of serious newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, the news weeklies TIME and Newsweek and public radio and television. But on the national network television, the news programs which were the major source of information on international issues had been radically cut back through the 1990s. A veteran CBS correspondent Tom Fenton subsequently flayed the main US commercial networks:
As surely as 9/11 pointed up the myriad failures of official agencies in Washington, it also revealed the abject failure of the news media... We had failed to warn the American public of the storm clouds approaching our shores. And in failing to do so, we betrayed the trust of the public.##
##Tom Fenton, Bad News: The Decline of Reporting, the Business of News, and the Danger to Us All (Regan Books: New York, 2005)"
"Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard was in Washington at the time of the attacks, having met President George W. Bush the previous day. He immediately and without any Cabinet discussion publicly pledged that Australia’s military would be available to the US. On his return to Australia, Howard addressed the national security committee of cabinet which agreed to invoke the US-Australia defence treaty ANZUS, even before any formal US request, authorising Australian military support in any conflict to come. Equally committed from the start was the British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Alistair Campbell, Blair’s powerful director of communications quotes Bush telling Blair that 9/11 was “a new war, the Pearl Harbour in the 21st century.”###
###Alistair Campbell, The Blair Years: The Alastair Campbell Diaries (Arrow Books: London, 2008)"
--------------------------------------------
Which brings me to this... premeditation and planning...
Bush telling Blair that 9/11 was “a new war, the Pearl Harbour in the 21st century.” Project for the New American Century (PNAC) report "Rebuilding America's Defences"
I reference that in my paper to the New Zealand Parliamentary select committee in respect to its Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) treaty examination from April 2016:
This on the revolution coming in the art of war;
Absent a rigorous program of experimentation to investigate the nature of the revolution in military affairs as it applies to war at sea, the Navy might face a future Pearl Harbor – as unprepared for war in the post-carrier era as it was unprepared for war at the dawn of the carrier age.*
and
Which brings us back to the commencement of this part of the report to the following statement which is the nub of the thinking.
Any serious effort at transformation must occur within the larger framework of U.S. national security strategy, military missions and defense budgets. The United States cannot simply declare a “strategic pause” while experimenting with new technologies and operational concepts. Nor can it choose to pursue a transformation strategy that would decouple American and allied interests. A transformation strategy that solely pursued capabilities for projecting force from the United States, for example, and sacrificed forward basing and presence, would be at odds with larger American policy goals and would trouble American allies.
Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.Domestic politics and industrial policy will shape the pace and content of transformation as much as the requirements of current missions...**
This is the point where one then introduces the catastrophic and catalyzing event known as 9/11.
** Pages 50 and 51 of RAD and 62-63 of the pdf.
US advance knowledge of Pearl Harbour...
But history never repeats....

Carry on the charade....
Most sincerely from greg  
----------------------------------------------------------

What more can one say? Lots, but let's leave it there, case made - Hypocrisy rules!

Last word from the community opinion editor of The Guardian, just came in 12:14am Wednesday 30 November:
Hello Greg,
Looking at your comment I can see that it was removed by a moderator because it discussed topics which were not the focus of the article under which it was posted. In particular, it touched on September 11th conspiracy theories. Comments of this type have a strong tendency to derail conversations, and we generally block conspiracy theory comments unless they are made under an article discussing the subject.
Regards
Craig
Community Moderator
.

Values - Dig deep what are we about?

Aotearoa New Zealand Values – What We Stand For?

What Does Our Government Stand For?


This is the question I've been asking our New Zealand Government over the past months on each occasion I made a contribution to a parliamentary select committee in relation to legislation that I've taken an interest in.


Stand For Values - Flag Referendum


This post is based on my contribution to the Parliament's Local Government and Environment select committee in respect to the Local Government Act (LGA) 2002 Amendment Bill (No.2).

In addition I conveyed a similar position to the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade (FADT) committee in relation to the Maritime Crimes Amendment Bill 2016, and the Intelligence and Security Bill.

What is the real object of continually restructuring and making arbitrary changes to our domestic legislation and regulations?

Security and good governance? What is the New Zealand Government purpose?

True security is economic sovereignty, sufficiency and the state of mind that flows from that sense of security obtained through the community's needs being met.

It wasn't long ago that the NZ Government asked the people about their values. It was a component of the Flag Referendum process of 2015/6. New Zealanders were asked, “what they stand for?” The people offered 10,292 flag designs. They offered 43,000 individual contributions of what they stood for. Stand For values are hosted here: http://www.standfor.co.nz/ 

View the word cloud of most frequent values expressed by the New Zealand public. Here is the image from the website.




None of the above suggest the TPP. Forty three thousand (43,000) people is a large sample of the 4.6 million New Zealand population.

The Flag Referendum process was advanced as a constitutional matter. Surely the Stand For values are an important contribution to the values underpinning our NZ Constitution.
Is New Zealand a democracy?

Are the people's values reflected in the Government's policy settings?

To me the obvious and empirically accurate finding is that the New Zealand Government does not reflect the deep values of the people of this State.

It appears the values theme runs deep in the Kiwi psyche.


Colmar Brunton finds ethical values run deep


Most recently Colmar Brunton published their latest Better Futures Report (November 2016) highlighting that values matter to New Zealanders. This Scoop published media release from Colmar Brunton 24 Nov 2016:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1611/S00349/report-kiwis-hot-on-global-sustainability-goals.htm

Report: Kiwis hot on global sustainability goals

Most Kiwis rate global sustainability goals as very important – especially those relating to social issues – according to a report released today.

The Colmar Brunton 2016 Better Futures Report incorporated the results of New Zealand’s first ever survey into the public’s attitude to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to which the Government signed up in 2015.

The 17 SDGs include a mix of social, environmental, cultural and economic goals such as no poverty, climate action, reduced inequalities, clean water and sanitation, decent work and economic growth and quality education.

Colmar Brunton Chief Client Officer Sarah Bolger says the Better Futures Report reveals some valuable insights and plenty of opportunities for business and the Government;

“While there was little unprompted awareness of the goals and the fact New Zealand has signed up to them, respondents had some clear opinions when asked about the individual goals,” Ms Bolger says.

Between 60% and 80% of Kiwis rate each goal as very important. When those people were asked to name the single most important goal the top six in order of priority were: no poverty, good health and well-being, quality education, sustainable cities and communities, clean water and sanitation, and zero hunger.

“It’s clear from this that New Zealanders care most about improving the day-to-day lives of others and there is a strong skew towards social issues in the top six goals.

“In particular Kiwis think we need to do more towards achieving zero hunger, sustainable cities and communities and no poverty, as they believe our performance in these areas fails to measure up to the importance we place on them.”

Link to the Better Business report:  http://www.colmarbrunton.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Better-Business-Report.pdf

http://www.colmarbrunton.co.nz/

Conclusion


I draw from both these sources, the 43,000 New Zealanders who contributed to the Stand For values and the survey results from Colmar Brunton a market and social research company whose clients are invariably businesses in the New Zealand marketplace.

It appears that ethical values are important to the people of our nation. Who doesn't agree?
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