Sydney

Monday

Terry Barnes

Bondi Beach and the heroism of Ahmed al-Ahmed

As the appalling story of Sunday’s anti-Jewish mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach continue to unfold, and 16 people are now dead, there have been few glimmers of light in the darkness. The men identified as the shooters are a father and son, Sajid Akram, 50, and Naveed Akram, 24. The father was shot and killed by police last night, and the son was overpowered and taken into custody. The New South Wales police commissioner says little is yet known about the pair, but Sajid Akram was a licensed gun owner, with six guns in his possession. Old social media posts have also emerged of Naveed Akram being praised for his Islamic studies in 2022.

ahmed

Monday

James Morrow

Aussie’s rules: COVID is becoming Australia’s state religion

Sydney Social media is depressing at the best of times, but when you are on Day 60 of a lockdown that doesn’t let you stray more than five kilometers from your house, it’s a nightmare. Open up Facebook, and there’s an old high school mate smugly plopped down in a business class seat heading for Hawaii, toasting you with a glass of second-rate fizz. Flick over to Instagram, and your favorite little hotel in Tuscany has got the long table set for a 'celebration of love’ and the union of a couple who live someplace that doesn’t require exit visas of its citizens.

sydney australia

Saturday

Jane Stannus

Salami of the sea

‘Seacuterie’ is a crime of a word. It looks OK in writing, if you don’t think about it too much, or if you’re the kind of person who approaches words like a scientist observing a new strain of bacillus. A linguistics student would point out that seacuterie is a portmanteau word, in which segments of multiple words are cut loose from their motherships and roped together into rafts of new meaning, producing such fantabulous and indispensable neologisms as ‘sheeple’ and ‘frenemies’. ‘Seacuterie,’ he’d tell you, is a portmanteau of ‘sea’ and ‘charcuterie.’ That’s all very well, but portmanteau or no portmanteau, ‘seacuterie’ sounds silly when you say it aloud.

seacuterie