Sydney seige :( in Stuff

Well that was an interesting/scary day for Australia, wasn’t it?
I woke up really late (like 6pm) to the news some guy had about 20 people hostage in a central Sydney cafe and had put up an ISIS flag in the window.

Ergh, not this shit again. But you have to take it seriously. Of course the media was all over it, on every channel - the headlines were posted online, The Daily Telegraph even had the headline “Death Cult: Sydney Seige” or something like that. I dunno. I tend to tune it out. The media pretty much always blow things out of proportion.

I eventually turned the TV on to watch what they were saying.
I could only feel for the poor hostages, whom had only gone in for a morning/afternoon coffee and were suddenly held hostage. Footage showed video of some of them with their hands flat against the glass windows.

Around 4 or 5 of them were released. This picture went viral.

Only in the last 45 minutes or so, since I’ve gotten home from work, have I heard that police eventually stormed the cafe. From what I hear, the gunman has been shot dead. Unsure of other details so I won’t comment just yet. But how fucking traumatic for those poor hostages! Of course the guy who caused all of this was already known to police for a variety of offences, including sending horrible letters to families of deceased soldiers.
Ergh, what is WRONG with some people?

You know though, as serious as these things have to be taken, many people have many different opinions, especially my political-minded friends on Facebook, whom were convinced this was all just a distraction from the Federal Mid-year Budget Review.
I do look at the timing of things like this, and shit does always seem to go down.
For me though, it comes back to those who were directly affected by this. Those poor, poor hostages, whom I’m hoping are free now and are receiving the best counselling available.
If it were me in that cafe, I’d have been a mess. I wouldn’t have known how to react to some crazy person. I’d probably have panicked. I feel like I would be a sitting duck if something like that ever happened to me because I’d be too scared to move.
Really scary to think about and to know it’s a possible reality.

Of course, I’ve seen a lot of ridiculous shit said on my Facebook today by over-opinionated, under-educated dickheads, but I’ve seen a fair bit of sense said too. People just sometimes jump the gun in anger, I understand that.

Hashtag:Illridewithyou is trending on Twitter, which is lovely to see someone came up with that idea. It’s basically letting other religious people know not to be concerned too much about coming to work in the coming days, and that if they feel afraid of said uneducated idiots, they’ll ride with them to make them feel safe. That just because one extremist decided to pull this horrific stunt yesterday, doesn’t mean every Muslim person is like that.

Australia is already mostly a racist country (unfortunately), so when something like this happens, most Aussies don’t take it too well and want the offending parties to “Fuck off elsewhere”. It’s completely ignorant and unnecessary, and instead, I just wish there was an easy way to weed out the people with intent to harm others.

Edit: I just saw some footage of the gunfire as they stormed the cafe. Unbelievable! Reports are that three people have died, including the gunman
:( Still needing more details.

Last updated December 15, 2014