From today’s Sydney Morning Herald:

A Brisbane woman who claims to have been drugged and raped by coworkers in Dubai plans to sue the Commonwealth of Australia after she was jailed for adultery.

Alicia Gali, 29, has already been granted leave to sue the Le Meridien Al Aqah Beach Resort in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, alleging her employer breached its workplace obligations by failing to have systems in place to protect workers against assault.

But on Tuesday, Ms Gali will seek leave to sue the Commonwealth in the Brisbane Supreme Court, claiming a consular official failed to warn her that a complaint of rape in Dubai could see her jailed.

Ms Gali spent eight months in a Dubai prison after the alleged assault by three coworkers while drinking at the resort bar in June 2008.

In the UAE it is illegal to have sex outside of marriage.

Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates, is promoted as a top world tourist destination and seen by many in the West as a gateway to the Middle East, with a more relaxed approach to many things that non-Muslim travellers value. However, quite often non-UAE citizens fall foul of those same laws that are billed as being more progressive than those of its neighbours.According to Wikipedia:

When contrasted with other Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia for instance, the UAE has comparatively very liberal laws. The country has a civil law jurisdiction. However, Shari’a or Islamic law is applied to aspects of family law, inheritance and certain criminal acts. Women can drive in the UAE and there is a strong emphasis in equality and human rights brought by the UAE’s National Human Rights Committee.

Immediately there, in that last sentence, you can see the disparity between laws in the West and laws in much of the Arab world. Women are allowed to drive in UAE, making it liberal — meanwhile, this is a liberty taken for granted in most of the Western world. When you delve into areas such as sexuality and alcohol use, you find that the two are worlds apart… to the extent that a victim of sexual assault can be charged with adultery.

British Formula 1 driver, Lewis Hamilton is no stranger to controversy. And he has courted it once again with post-race comments on Sunday, where he pulled out the race card.

I’ll throw my bias out here from the get-go: I’m not a fan of Hamilton’s personality. In much the way of other sports stars (such as basketball’s LeBron James) who have been talented from a young age, he has rubbed me the wrong way with his egotism and sense of entitlement.

However, I don’t think that Hamilton is wrong in this case, nor did he do anything that a large number of us wouldn’t have done in the same case. In summary, he was angry with a series of calls to the F1 stewards’ offices and in the heat of the moment tried to deflect the situation with some humour. Or did he?

Before going on, let’s take a look at the actual commentary in question, which was captured during a BBC post-race interview:

And for the sake of comparison, you can see the Ali G line that Hamilton was attempting to reference at about the 2:30 mark of this video:

“Is it coz I iz black?” is a fairly common catchphrase of the Ali G character, portrayed by Sacha Baron Cohen. And perhaps it would’ve been taken more in jest if Hamilton had pulled off the line with more faithfulness to the original Ali G schtick.

This from an AFP news report on the situation:

Hamilton expressed his annoyance after being punished during the race for one alleged misdemeanour and then summoned to appear before the stewards for a second.

“It’s an absolute frickin’ joke,” he told the BBC. “I’ve been to see the stewards five times in six races this season.”

Asked why that was the case, Hamilton said: “Maybe it’s because I’m black! That’s what (British comic character) Ali G says.”

During the early part of the race, Hamilton was given a ‘drive-through’ penalty for a brush with Brazilian Felipe Massa of Ferrari.

He was then called in again by the stewards after a late clash with Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado of Williams, as he passed him in the closing stages for which he received a 20sec penalty which did not affect his final placing.

Hamilton said he felt he had done nothing wrong in both cases.

“Massa held me up in qualifying,” he said. “I got the penalty. He turned in to me (during the race). I got the penalty. These drivers are ridiculous. It’s stupid.”

Now, the thing is, Hamilton has been involved in racism controversy in the past. In 2008, after a falling out with then-teammate, Fernando Alonso, Hamilton was taunted by Spanish fans:

The McLaren driver, 23, was subjected to racist comments and was faced with a group of spectators wearing wigs, dark make-up and t-shirts with the slogan “Hamilton’s Family” on the front during pre-season testing near Barcelona. And although the Briton insisted he still loves being in Spain, he admitted he was not prepared for what occured at the Circuit de Catalunya, in Montmelo. 

Hamilton reportedly was also taunted by Spaniards with monkey noises during that period too. Then in 2009, it happened again in Spain, with news reports focusing on fans in black face (see image below - credit):

The questions here are:

• Does Hamilton truly feel racially vilified?
• Is he feeling permanently victimised after events of the past?
• Did he simply try to make a joke (gone wrong), with no true feeling of victimisation?
• Or, did he put the race card out there, as can be easy to do, because it was a defense/coping mechanism in a tough situation for him?

I’m not a psychologist, so I’d welcome the views of anyone trained in this field in analysing Hamilton’s behaviour. What are your views on the issue?

Is eating meat murder?

Whilst that is a somewhat passe debate these days, with most people having jumped into one camp or another, there is another more interesting related topic: would you be able to kill the meat you’re about to eat? Or, like most people, are you just happy to see it appear on your plate in its cutlet, breast or fillet form?

If you’re like me, you may not have given the question sufficient thought. Could you do it?

Documentary maker, Madeleine Parry has attempted to address the fleshy thought with a short doco entitled Murder Mouth. The film was recently shown at the St Kilda and Dungog Film Festivals and features Maddie grappling with the idea and process of killing a series of animals that she usually eats.

You can see highlights from the film and behind-the-scenes thoughts and images at its Facebook page.

Read more about Murder Mouth at the Adelaide Advertiser and at Greg King’s Film Reviews. In addition, you can listen to a great interview with Parry via the Sunday Night Safran podcast, on triple j — download it here.

Meanwhile, today it has emerged that Facebook founder (or co-founder, depending on who you ask!), Mark Zuckerberg has taken up the same challenge (though he doesn’t cite Murder Mouth as his inspiration):

When he’s not too busy connecting people across the universe, Mark Zuckerberg is pursuing a new “personal challenge,” as he calls it. “The only meat I’m eating is from animals I’ve killed myself,” says the Facebook founder and CEO.

It’s an odd dietary direction for the 27-year-old Internet billionaire, but since he has taken to killing goats, pigs and chickens, “I’m eating a lot healthier foods. And I’ve learned a lot about sustainable farming and raising of animals,” he says. “It’s easy to take the food we eat for granted when we can eat good things every day.” 

Regardless of what you may think of Facebook (that is a discussion for another time), you have to give credit to Zuckerberg for donating to charitable causes and in this case, bringing attention to a thought-provoking topic.

So, think about it, if you will; how prepared would you be to kill an animal that you’re about to eat? Would you regard killing a fish as easier to do than say a cow? Would your attitude change if you didn’t have the option of getting someone else to kill animals for you?

All, food for thought (I don’t expect you to pardon the pun).

We only live on this crazy, big, messed up world once. It’d be a shame not to explore the cultures, ethnicities, languages and religions that exist out there, right?

Or am I wrong?

You see, that’s what this site is all about: opinions and the duality of them. I’m sure that like me, there have been times in your life where you’ve been adamant about being right on a certain topic… so sure that you were right that no one could change your mind. And then, it turns out, you weren’t as correct as you first thought you were… and you changed your mind completely.

Perhaps you just hadn’t stopped to consider a different viewpoint. Or maybe you really didn’t know all of the facts, because you hadn’t been exposed to them in the first place.

We all come from somewhere. We all have our biases and we all have our limitations, forced upon us by our environment and upbringing. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t change that by expanding upon what we learnt as toddlers, kids and youths… life does not stop at age 18 and neither should our learning.

So, what is half-italian.com really all about?

That long-winded, vague introduction was a way of saying this: this site is a place to explore. A sanctuary for answers and more importantly, the asking of questions. I want you to think… to attempt to see things from another perspective and allow yourself the chance to change your mind; or at least expand your answer.

I have selfish intentions here too — I want to use this platform to explore topics that I have interest in, but have never learnt enough about. I want to read your opinions and soak up your knowledge. There is almost always someone out there who knows more about a topic than we do… and even if they don’t have a greater degree of knowledge, quite often they can lead us to ask questions that send us down another path of thought and inquiry.

Yes, culture, religion, ethnicity and language…

These are the topics that we focus on here. There is such a rich, diverse tapestry of all of the above, around the world, for us to explore.

It’s going to be fun. I can already feel it.

I know that you have an opinion on this, because you live on the globe too — you’ve got a culture. You’ve got a language. And no doubt, you’ve come across people that have different cultures, ethnicities, religions/beliefs/faith systems and languages to what you do.

Join the discussion. Or just read on. But either way, open your mind to the possibility that you don’t know it all… (nor do I).

One other thing…

Where does the name half-italian come from? Well, my ethnicity is half-italian. The other half is a mixture of English and Irish. I’ve always found it amusing that in English-speaking countries we will focus on the ‘half-italian’ of the situation and ignore the other half as ‘boring’ or ‘normal’. My influences come from Europe, Australia, America and Asia. Increasingly they are coming from other continents too… as you will glean through half-italian.com.