Your task is to extract the thesis of an opinionated news article by selecting some of its text segments. The thesis is a summarization of what the author wants to persuade the reader of. Your answer should consist of segments of the given text. Note that you are not allowed to combine different sentences.

Fearmongering in Sydney. Australians turning on their televisions Monday morning to watch breakfast and cooking shows were instead greeted with news channels beaming minute-to-minute fearmongering of the ongoing siege at a chocolate shop in Sydney . When customers and employees were taken hostage by a lone gunman , and a flag with"There is only one God" inscription in Arabic was held in the window , it was enough to hold the rest of the country hostage to their fears and TV screens . Should it be that way and what should an appropriate response look like? First ,  consider what this violent thug had designed our reaction to be . The site of the siege was likely no afterthought - located in the heart of the Sydney CBD and directly opposite a major television station, the shop had made it ideal for the media to report on . Streets were cordoned off , public transport diverted , and a strong contingent of police sent to the Opera House . All made for good visuals of the incident and terror in an otherwise peaceful city . Even the most left-leaning and progressive members of parliament, like Greens MP Adam Bandt, who have repeatedly defended the Muslim community from unjust discrimination and generalisation, tweeted to their followers in the first hours of the siege that it was "terrifying" . Was it really? Was it at all terrifying for you personally, Adam? If it was , I'd hate to know what the hostages experienced, including the two who were murdered . A strike in the public's dark . For once, Prime Minister Tony Abbott had a more mature response than his colleagues on the opposite side . Such a situation can "scare people out of being themselves", he said in his first press briefing, before urging all Australians to go about their business as usual . Although he told the public to remain vigilant and report any suspicious activity to the authorities , he said so with calm and caution . Vitally, he avoided using the t-word at this early stage, or any formulation thereof . No doubt we have since learnt a lot more about this deranged outsider and his motives , and it is clear he had terrorist intent . His website, which was shut down during the final hours of the siege, had a message dated December 14, which described why Muslims "fight against the oppression and terrorism" of the US and its allies, including the UK and Australia . The rampant speculation before this was unnecessary and unhelpful, however , and letting the siege sow fear, enough so to publicly describe it as "terrifying", was handing a victory to an extremist . With the hot Australian summer setting in, many people's minds turn to beer, barbeques, family, and Christmas presents, not the possibility of "politically motivated violence", as Abbott wisely phrased it . Intriguingly, Australians fear terrorism more than a foreign invasion, despite many believing we'd have no hope of fending off the latter and despite us never directly experiencing the former . Given the opportunity to attribute a complexly motivated act to terrorism , it's no wonder this all-too-easy escape mechanism which avoids rigorous thought or objective analysis was adopted en masse . The most noted incidents in Australia's experience of terrorism have been mostly foreign tragedies, like the Bali bombings in 2002 and 2005, or the 2004 Australian embassy bombing in Jakarta . Although the September raids and arrests of suspected domestic terrorists in Sydney and Brisbane set a new landscape and brought the thought of an attack to our own shores , they merely raised the thought, not the authentic actuality . The raids sparked limited local backlash against peaceful Muslims at the time , and this was both unwarranted and unwanted . Though it only goes to further support my thesis ; Australians just aren't used to this sort of thing and thus are unpractised in their response . That said , it hasn't stopped thousands on social media to show solidarity with minorities through the #IllRideWithYou campaign . When the Abbott government raised the domestic terrorism threat level to high before the September raids , many local commentators criticised what they branded as political theatre (both before and after the arrests) . To consider this is to suggest an even baser type of political animal than is presently expected by even the most cynical of observers . Would any rational actor toy with people's lives for short-term political ends in what was an unimportant political week? What end does that even achieve? Plainly, none, and it is sensationally conspiratorialist to suggest otherwise . To protest against such raids and continue looking at them through a political lens was just as unwarranted and unwanted as the racial-profiling and racial- hatred which events like these have sparked . Terrorism isn't something that we should let foster, anywhere , and the public reactions to the raids were unjustifiably sceptical in comparison to the response to the Sydney siege . Even so ,  the authorities' heed for caution may have come too late for some . Slipshod media reports that the flag held in the shop window was an ISIL flag - when it was not- may have already fuelled the imaginations of too many . Whatever the outcome of the full investigation, one thing remains clear : This was a tragic learning experience for the Australian media, public, and politicians . Keep calm and carry on, though pay a thought or two to how we ought to respond to events like these in the future .
Even the most left-leaning and progressive members of parliament, like Greens MP Adam Bandt, who have repeatedly defended the Muslim community from unjust discrimination and generalisation, tweeted to their followers in the first hours of the siege that it was "terrifying"

Southern Baptist Convention President: The spiritual state of our union. Questions Worth Asking . I love America and believe each citizen needs to be involved in charting the future of our nation . Our churches have compartmentalized faith and kept it from influencing our nation for far too long, just as most of America's leaders compartmentalize their faith from their politics . Today, our nation has become a product of this sad reality . We need to return to the conviction that a faith worth believing in is a faith worth dying for . Our faith cannot be checked at the door like a piece of luggage at an airport . The Time is Now . The time is now for our nation to recognize that we cannot fix ourselves . The signs of our brokenness are glistening in our dark world . The blatant destruction of the family, the killing of unborn children, the continuing racial tension, the rebellion against authority, the ongoing reality of poverty, the rising threat of our security, the clear attacks against religious liberty and, of all things, the arrogance to believe the highest court in our land can rule on what the Bible says is genuine marriage testify to just how broken we really are . Where Do We Go From Here? 1 \. We need to repent . Repentance occurs when we have a change of mind . This change of mind changes our behavior . As a nation, we need to personally and collectively repent of our sins . We need to ask God for His free gift of forgiveness for the sins we have committed, resulting in change from that point forward . 2 \. We need to return to God . America is a nation that was built on a deep belief in God . A desire for religious liberty was the catalyst for the beginning of our nation . While we have gone through ups and downs in our history , God has been very merciful and gracious toward us . It is time to return to God . It is time to stop making every issue about ourselves, posturing to ensure we get our way . God's way is the only way . There is no other . Anything less than God's way diminishes our happiness, our fulfillment and even our liberty . 3 \. We need our churches to wake up . Churches all over our nation need to wake up from the slumber we find ourselves in as a whole . We need pastors to return to their spiritual calling, be rekindled by the fire of God and declare the hope we have in the Lord . As a pastor goes, so goes the church . As our churches go, so goes our nation . The evidence is overwhelming of just how broken we are as a nation . This is the greatest hour for our churches to rise up . Never more has America needed our churches to lead the way forward , serving and influencing our communities with compassion and hope . 4 \. We need a spiritual awakening . In our history, there have been seasons of spiritual awakening that have influenced the spiritual state of our nation dramatically . Lives were changed and subcultures became different . Spiritual awakening is our greatest need in America today . There are many who have probably never even thought about this need . Others may feel we have gone too far . But I want to assure you : God can do more in a moment than we can ever do in a lifetime . Wherever you are in life, would you just stop for one moment and pray something like this:"God, would you please bring spiritual awakening to America? It is our greatest need."? America's greatest need is the next great move of God . This is our hope .
Churches all over our nation need to wake up from the slumber we find ourselves in as a whole We need pastors to return to their spiritual calling, be rekindled by the fire of God and declare the hope we have in the Lord

Sia's video: let's be wary of seeing paedophilia everywhere. Australian musician Sia has apologised to anyone "triggered" by her video for Elastic Heart, featuring Shia LaBeouf and 12-year-old dance prodigy Maggie Ziegler, dancing together, in flesh-coloured outfits (Ziegler sporting a platinum Sia wig), in a cage . The video has caused uproar in some quarters . Fame-averse Sia(who generally performs with her face hidden) tweeted:"I anticipated some 'paedophilia!!!' cries for this video . All I can say is Maddie and Shia are two of the only actors I felt could play these two warring 'Sia self states'" , adding that her intention was to "create some emotional content, not to upset anybody" . The video is jarring . Famously troubled LaBeouf and Ziegler dance around, wrestling, attacking, playing . At one point, LaBeouf holds Ziegler aloft ; at another, he tries to stroke her and she kicks and hisses to get away . Elsewhere, Ziegler wraps her tiny limbs around LaBeouf in a feral grip . Watching it, I realised that the intensity(Sia's "emotional content") was the reason it was jarring - the mere fact that the video wasn't carefully benign, cheaply titillating or just plain boring, like so much else in the genre . In Elastic Heart, the grown man and the young girl are alive with feelings for each other, running the gamut from amusement and play through to fury to despair . What isn't there is sexuality . In fact ,  it baffles me how anyone could look seriously at Elastic Heart and claim to see any sexual content whatsoever . Can't a grown man and a young girl produce art with edge and beauty of any kind without a squalid sexual subtext instantly being read into it? Sia seemed to apologise for potentially triggering memories of child sex abuse and grooming (as some accused her of doing, on behalf of abuse victims) . Of course we all sympathise with abuse victims . However, one would imagine that such triggers would be everywhere - perhaps mainly focused on the most ordinary and domestic of situations . All of which couldn't be further away from a highly choreographed performance of an arty cage dance . If some abuse survivors were genuinely disturbed by Elastic Heart then fair enough, but what about those who referred to it as an excuse for their own unease? Are these people aware that Ziegler performed solo, dressed identically, dancing similarly, for Sia's Chandelier video . Did this talented young dancer remind them of child sex abuse then? If not, is it because LaBeouf was in Elastic Heart - so presumably a woman performing the same dance with Ziegler would have been perfectly fine . Is this where we are now: society flinching from the sight of a man and a girl performing together in any way that hasn't been entirely emotionally neutered? Ultimately, this discomfort seems wrapped up in our own dirty, addled, increasingly paranoid 21st-century mindset, in which paedophilia, once so grotesquely secretive, is now seen everywhere and in the most kneejerk fashion . No one could complain about increased awareness of abuse , which means that children are finally protected and believed . Such instincts come from a good (better informed) place . However ,  the situation has surely become overcooked when paedophilia becomes one of the first things we presume and in the most ludicrous settings . It becomes so that everything, even art, is expected to distil and accommodate all the retrospective guilt of bygone eras: the fact that so many perpetrators of the past weren't caught, that we were lax, not observant or protective enough . In some ways, it's good not to forget ; in others, perhaps we need to get past it . The latter is true of Elastic Heart - a video found to be offensive because of sanctioned hysteria, rather than anything happening on screen  - all the more disturbing when set against the wider background of any artist being scared into silence or self-censorship . Sia should not have been badgered into an apology . She had nothing to apologise for . Russia has listed transsexual and transgender people as no longer being allowed to qualify for driving licences . They are to be classed as having "mental disorders" , which would also include exhibitionism, voyeurism and fetishism of any kind (others include compulsive gambling and stealing) . The official line is that this is because there are too many road accidents in Russia and tightening medical controls has become necessary . However ,  Russian psychiatrists and human rights lawyers have condemned the move , which appears to follow on from the infamous 2013 legislation that made the promotion of "non-traditional lifestyles" illegal . Barring a person from driving for no good reason is a serious matter . It takes away not only a civilian right but also a prime symbol of adult autonomy ; never mind the real logistical difficulties that being car-less might present in parts of Russia . It also means that people who might feel that they'd benefit from some degree of psychiatric counselling would feel less inclined to do so if they feared losing their cars . What a farce . There are some of us who would like it proved that a certain Vladimir Putin is mentally fit to ride that horse he is often(and so sexily!) perched upon . There are shots I've seen where he looks quite thrillingly "barking", bobbing about on his saddle, with no top on, brandishing a rifle like the big he-man he oh so obviously is . More seriously, this reminds us that it's still important to keep abreast of Russian moves such as these . Big and small, these laws represent blatant targeting of minorities and cynical affronts to international human rights . This latest one is yet another shift towards the blanket criminalisation of anything other than blessed, state-ordained heterosexuality . We must keep watching . I go pretty low with television, lower than is dignified . But even I have never watched The Jump , the Channel 4 reality show where low-rent celebrities compete in a variety of winter sports, with the slowest two each week being made to perform a ski jump to decide who will be eliminated . There are always casualties during training . This time, Ola Jordan, of Strictly Come Dancing, injured her knee so badly that it threatens her dancing career . The Speaker's wife, Sally Bercow, also injured herself - her ribs, not her gob , so she'll be able to carry on just fine . We all accept this kind of caper as "normal", but on what premise is such dangerous and sadistic television justified? I thought Splash! was irresponsible(unfit semi-famous people falling off high-diving boards after minimal training) . But ski jumping - are they kidding? A test of mettle, my derriere; this is Lord of the Flies with frostbite . Why don't programme makers go the whole hog and push C-listers into fast-moving traffic and allow viewers to vote on who gets squelched by an articulated lorry the fastest? If people dislike celebrities, then fine, but breaking their bones should be off limits .

Ultimately, this discomfort seems wrapped up in our own dirty, addled, increasingly paranoid 21st-century mindset, in which paedophilia, once so grotesquely secretive, is now seen everywhere and in the most kneejerk fashion  the situation has surely become overcooked when paedophilia becomes one of the first things we presume and in the most ludicrous settings