Some context
My step-sister currently attends one of the schools whose students were on the bus. She wasn't personally involved.
The yobs didn't force their way onto the bus. They were allegedly in school uniform and had valid bus passes, so the driver let them on when they hailed the bus down, a bad decision he no doubt now profoundly regrets. The fact the yobs were drunk and/or drug-affected at 3 o'clock in the afternoon suggests they had not actually been at school, but the driver's attention was probably elsewhere.
Reading some of the more breathless reports in the international media, you'd think this was jihad come to the streets of Sydney. I don't think so. If there was the smallest hint that any of the yobs had been Muslim, or even the slightest bit brown, their identities would have been all over the Murdoch media like a heat rash on Rupert's senescent tackle. Their uncharacteristic restraint suggests, to me, a little bit of embarrassment that the yobs were by reports Anglo-Australian, which doesn't fit their narrative very well.
Basically, feral bus bogans gunna bogue. I can go into a tedious rundown of Australian racial politics if youse guys want, but the tl;dr is this was very likely a generic drunken racist scum thing, rather than a specifically anti-Semitic drunken racist scum thing.
Anyway, my sister's school now has armed guards posted at the front.
My step-sister currently attends one of the schools whose students were on the bus. She wasn't personally involved.
The yobs didn't force their way onto the bus. They were allegedly in school uniform and had valid bus passes, so the driver let them on when they hailed the bus down, a bad decision he no doubt now profoundly regrets. The fact the yobs were drunk and/or drug-affected at 3 o'clock in the afternoon suggests they had not actually been at school, but the driver's attention was probably elsewhere.
Reading some of the more breathless reports in the international media, you'd think this was jihad come to the streets of Sydney. I don't think so. If there was the smallest hint that any of the yobs had been Muslim, or even the slightest bit brown, their identities would have been all over the Murdoch media like a heat rash on Rupert's senescent tackle. Their uncharacteristic restraint suggests, to me, a little bit of embarrassment that the yobs were by reports Anglo-Australian, which doesn't fit their narrative very well.
Basically, feral bus bogans gunna bogue. I can go into a tedious rundown of Australian racial politics if youse guys want, but the tl;dr is this was very likely a generic drunken racist scum thing, rather than a specifically anti-Semitic drunken racist scum thing.
Anyway, my sister's school now has armed guards posted at the front.
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