What's In A Name?

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

It’s been a splendid few days for the Australian franchise of the Diversity World theme park. In the law and order arena, we had three concurrent highlights in the week past:

(1) Last Friday (ABC News - Bourke Street attack), there was a mass stabbing (two injured, one killed) and attempted car-bombing in Bourke Street Mall, in the pedestrian heart of Melbourne, by (of course) a ‘man’. Despite being attired in regulation Muslim clobber and beard, it took the authorities over a day to reveal that the ‘man’ was Hassan Khalif Shire Ali, a black Somalian Muslim immigrant inspired by ISIS.

(2) In a Bourke Street double-header, the trial opened for one Dimitrious Gargasoulas, a self-described ‘Greek Islamic Kurd’, who murdered six people after mowing down pedestrians in his car last year (ABC News - Bourke Street car attacker trial opens).

(3) The person responsible for contaminating punnets of strawberries with sewing needles two months ago, bringing the strawberry industry in Australia to its knees and causing the layoff of hundreds of workers, has been arrested (ABC News - Strawberry needle contamination arrest). She was a strawberry farm supervisor in Queensland, pursuing an employment grievance by aiming to cause economic sabotage. Her name? My Ut Trinh, a ‘refugee’ from Vietnam.

(4) Two Adelaide University students were sentenced for bribing a government driving licence examiner because one of the students was ‘too anxious’ to sit a driving test and sent his friend to take it and slip the examiner $450 to issue a successful test certification in his fretful friend’s name (ABC News - Driving licence bribery). The Judge noted that people who “obtain a licence [improperly] could be incompetent drivers, who could pose a threat to the safety of our community." The bribers’ names, by the way, are Abdul Kajani and Ethan Quadros. The corrupt public official is one Jawad Dimachki.

Ali, Gargasoulas, Trinh, Kajani, Quadros, Dimachki: Sure, the Merves, Norms, Clarries, Bruces and other dinky-di Australians contribute to the crime and justice scene but it’s good to know that at least one aspect of Australian life continues to be enriched and expanded by immigration.