Paul,

Considering that the Greens were involved upto the hilt in organising the rally, had senior Greens giving speeches, had the young greens marching in the rally, and has yet to mention a single word to distance themselves from these extremists shows a clear and active support.

That Hamas is essentially a fascist organisation does not help their case.

ALTRAV, your parents are in the 99%, praiseworthy for the effort of leaving a fascists created disaster and making a new and successful life for themselves, and family, in the far off land of Australia. Do not deride Australians, who like myself and Belly are several generations Australian, our forefathers are just as laudable as your good folks for the effort and contribution they made to this great land.

Something forgotten is 'refos', particularly the Italians, were not that well liked and received by many of the locals on arrival in the 1950's. Why? it had only been a few short years since a terrible World War had been fought with some of these very same people, the memories were still fresh. Their war crimes and atrocities commuted by the fascists makes the Muslims of today look like choir boys.

Paul, correct, I have spoken previously on exactly that point of sentiments towards us as the enemy after the war.
That was a large part of the emotional trauma they went through, many a night mum would be in tears with dad trying to console her with constant re-assurance that they had done the right thing in leaving Italy.
They knew full well that they were stepping into 'enemy' territory, so imagine the kind of courage and determination it took to pull if off, and successfully.
From what little I know about the fascists, I'm not familiar with them and their antics at all, because I thought they were a pointless waste of space, in saying that I didn't think they were relevant enough to have done anything, especially anything worse than the Muslims.
The wogs were good at fighting amongst themselves, but when it came to fighting a common enemy they were lackluster at best.
They hated Mussolini for sucking up to Hitler and the majority just went through the motions and couldn't wait to get captured so they didn't have to fight, (I reckon they didn't want to die, especially for some sick bastards like Mussolini and Hitler).
So from memory, people (like my folks) left because of the stupid mindset or attitudes of people and their politics.
Paul, I'm not taking anything away from your folks and their struggles but you have to admit that there is no comparison between our two families and their backgrounds.
You were locals, amongst friends and family, and like minded people, we were not, we were not only foreigners, but the enemy, so I would caution you to consider that even though you and your family 'did it tough', we had the added fear of being attacked at any moment.
Not forgetting the continual taunts and digs or slurs.
So I think we we had it a tad tougher.

ALTRAV, my experience with migrants, at school, and I attended Catholic school where at first a few Italians and Maltese, which were the two large groups of predominately Catholic migrants who made Australia home, attended. These kids copped a hell of a lot from the locals. Most of the migrant kids could not speak English, something they picked up rather quickly, these poor kids stood out, they were taunted, even assaulted for no other reason than they were different. There must have been at least a dozen insulting name to throw at migrants in those days.

Much of what I know, about those times and earlier, has come from my father who was politically very active, the Old Man was Labor, but with the Lang split in NSW he was an ardent Lang man, Premier Lang was a personal friend of his. When Labor PM Chifley announced a new post war immigration policy which was to be run by Labor Immigration Minister Arthur Calwell, and it would include more than those of British stock, the 10 pound Poms as they become to be known. It would also include some people of Southern European extraction. The pub debate was, adding non English speaking people like Greeks, they would never assimilate! When it came to light that former enemies Germans and Italians were to be welcomed, they was much anger, particularly from the Conservative side of politics, Labor was selling out everything Australia had fought for! The Liberal and Country parties made a lot of mileage out of that. To be honest ALTRAV if it wasn't for Labor you probably would not be here. The Coalition changed their minds when it was seen what value "wog" migrants were to business.

Paul, can't disagree with any of that, especially since I was one of those wog kids that got picked on as was the norm.
So I agree with your take on things past.
Maybe that's why I hold this country and it's people with such low regard?
I don't know.
I think my bitch is more to do with later years, my early years of turmoil were forgotten decades ago, no my grief is with the govt and it's stopping people from getting ahead or just doing things such as;
Now that we have no car manufacturing in this country, any more, I submitted that they remove ALL import restrictions on motor cars.
But no, greedy commercial interests like Porsche lobbied like hell and we still cannot import any vehicle we want.
And to top it off we get ripped off more and more.
It's bad enough we are being gouged in the prices of most cars, but not being allowed to import what you want and not what you don't want, is very serious, discriminatory and prejudicial behaviour, which I cannot/will not abide.
And so it is examples like this, not restricted to this only, are the kinds of things that have set this country apart from and a distant shadow of a progressive well meaning govt/society.
This is just one example of my attitude towards this country and it's people.
Because the people are all so well off, never mind what they say, they have become lax and dis-interested in the running and direction of this country.
And so we go backwards.