The Banana Mortgage Belt

As we leave July and enter August 2011, buying a banana is still a luxury for many on the NSW North Coast at around $14-$16 a kilo in some of the larger supermarkets.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics kindly places the pain in our wallets into perspective.

ABS CPI June quarter 2011 up 0.9%

The ABS Consumer Price Index rose 0.9% in the June quarter 2011, compared with a rise of 1.6% in the March quarter 2011.

The most significant price rises this quarter were for fruit (+26.9%), automotive fuel (+4.0%), hospital and medical services (+3.4%), furniture (+6.0%) and deposit and loan facilities (+2.1%). The most significant offsetting price falls were for vegetables (–10.3%), audio, visual and computing equipment (–6.3%), electricity (–1.5%), domestic holiday travel and accommodation (–1.5%) and milk (–4.6%).

Fruit prices increased by 26.9% in the June quarter 2011 mainly due to an increase of approximately 138% in the price of bananas due to shortages created by Cyclone Yasi. Banana prices increased 470% over the six months to the June quarter 2011.

The ABS Consumer Price Index rose 3.6% through the year to the June quarter 2011, compared with a rise of 3.3% through the year to March quarter 2011.

When is a Christian not a Christian? When he embarrasses the flock of course!

The disconnected Labelling Debate score stands at
Breivik 'the Christian': 1 O'Reilly 'the Christian': 0.

This is Breivik writing in his manifesto:

Q: Do I have to believe in God or Jesus in order to become a Justiciar Knight?
A: As this is a cultural war, our definition of being a Christian does not necessarily constitute that you are required to have a personal relationship with God or Jesus. Being a Christian can mean many things;
- That you believe in and want to protect Europe’s Christian cultural heritage.
The European cultural heritage, our norms (moral codes and social structures included), our traditions and our modern political systems are based on Christianity - Protestantism, Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity and the legacy of the European enlightenment (reason is the primary source and legitimacy for authority).
It is not required that you have a personal relationship with God or Jesus in order to fight for our Christian cultural heritage and the European way. In many ways, our modern societies and European secularism is a result of European Christendom and the
enlightenment. It is therefore essential to understand the difference between a “Christian fundamentalist theocracy” (everything we do not want) and a secular European society based on our Christian cultural heritage (what we do want).
So no, you don’t need to have a personal relationship with God or Jesus to fight for our Christian cultural heritage. It is enough that you are a Christian-agnostic or a Christian-atheist(an atheist who wants to preserve at least the basics of the European Christian cultural legacy (Christian holidays, Christmas and Easter)).
The PCCTS, Knights Templar is therefore not a religious organisation but rather a Christian “culturalist” military order.

Religion: Christian, Protestant but I support a reformation of Protestantism leading to it being absorbed by Catholisism. The typical “Protestant Labour Church” has to be deconstructed as its creation was an attempt to abolish the Church Religious: I went from moderately to agnostic to moderately religious

My parents, being rather secular wanted to give me the choice in regards to religion.
At the age of 15 I chose to be baptised and confirmed in the Norwegian State Church. I consider myself to be 100% Christian.

Regarding my personal relationship with God, I guess I’m not an excessively religious man. I am first and foremost a man of logic. However, I am a supporter of a monocultural Christian Europe.

This is FoxNews Impact host Bill O’Reilly in runaway denial:

Now, on Sunday, the "New York Times" headlined "As Horrors Emerged, Norway Charges Christian extremist". A number of other news organizations like the "LA Times" and Reuters also played up the Christian angle. But Breivik is not a Christian. That's impossible. No one believing in Jesus commits mass murder. The man might have called himself a Christian on the net, but he is certainly not of that faith.
Also Breivik is not attached to any church, and in fact has criticized the Protestant belief system in general. The Christian angle came from a Norwegian policeman not from any fact finding. Once again, we can find no evidence, none, that this killer practiced Christianity in any way.
So why is the angle being played up? Two reasons: First, the liberal media wants to make an equivalency between the actions of Breivik and the Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh and al Qaeda. The left wants you to believe that fundamentalists Christians are a threat just like crazy jihadists are.


http://youtu.be/Z3_DEp--J8c

Extended YouTube compilation of O'Reilly commentary:

http://youtu.be/mAxf3aL1WmU

The Young Turks response to O'Reilly:

http://youtu.be/dl6lOP_BfLg

A thought for News Ltd journalists to ponder

Journalists (or most of them) wish to report what they see as the truth. If there are opposing views about some political or artistic issue, they may seek a balance by presenting an account that lies somewhere between the two extremes. This is not the same as impartiality, which involves a refusal to favour one point of view, particularly where politics is involved. In science reporting, though, balance and impartiality seem often to be conflated. When faced with strongly opposed views in a scientific discussion a journalist may not be certain of the facts presented by each side and may apply balance while describing it as impartiality – but if one proponent is presenting dubious evidence that claim is not justified.

As some within the world of broadcasting perhaps fail to realise, impartiality checks are built in to the scientific enterprise. The objectivity of researchers is judged as they undergo a series of painful processes from the successful grant application, to endless discussion within a group as to the validity of a result, to a journal’s peer review before a piece of work becomes public and then, quite often, to the presentation of contrary views in the scientific literature. Many of those put up in opposition to a scientist on the broadcast media have had, in contrast, no scrutiny at all of the claims they put forward. A certain amount of emphasis might be placed on the differential examination that the ideas of each party have undergone when considering the need for due impartiality. [BBC Trust review of impartiality and accuracy of the BBC’s coverage of science,July 2011]

The beauty of ephemeral art

From the studio of Anna-Wili Highfield
these sensitive paper sculptures of Australian wildlife.

Seahorse

Barn Owl

Brown Warbler