Let Us Die Young

it’s like a more delicate version of apple cider and i basically live off of this stuff when the weather starts to cool!

Apple Tea (for two)

1 large apple or 2 small, shredded (you can use a cheese grater)

3 cups water

1-2 cinnamon sticks

2-3 pc clove (optional)

honey to taste

1 tsp of lemon juice (add at end)

green tea (optional! the lebanese version usually calls for green tea but i actually prefer it without. up to you!)

throw it all in a pot and let it simmer on a low temperature for an hour or so. while it’s simmering, it will also make your home smell delicious! (if you make it with green tea, add the tea at the end, about five minutes before taking it off the heat so the flavor doesn’t become bitter from oversteeping). strain into your cups and enjoy hot.

end result:

"People die rushing. You have no idea who I am. You need to be more careful."

So, this year, one of the invited teams is "Israel Premier Tech". It's, as its name clues, an israeli team. But, again, as you can see in the name, it's not just a team from Israel, but a team whose motive is being a Israel promotional tool. So when they were included in the team rooster this year, there was a huge uproar because, you know, Israel is actively committing a genocide as we speak.

The race org take was that this is a private team that doesn't officially represent the country (unlike what happens, for example, in Eurovision), but it's kind of hard to defend when the team owner is close friends with Netanyahu and, well, the fact the team is literally called "Israel": if you're not familiar with cycling, the usual name convention is that the teams use the name of the company that sponsors them (Cofidis, Lidl Trek, Movistar team, etc), and in this case, the sponsor is a company called Premier Tech, so adding "Israel" to the name is a way to tie the identity of the team with its country of origin.

So long story short, the Vuelta organization refused to ban them from the tournament, which has been going on already for two weeks...

... And chat, the Spaniards have risen to the occasion like an evening star.

You see, all these kinds of cycling races are done on public roads. Most of the days the rides go over 200km of public roads, so people can just go to the streets of their town and see them pass by. So, unlike Eurovision, it's literally impossible to have any kind of control access.

And, well...

This has been happening every day for the last two weeks. A couple of days ago, the organization even cut the daily race three kilometers short because there were too many people protesting by the real finish line (12 people were detained by the police in the protests).

Even the general attitude of the media and politicians had been looking at the protests and going "good for them": some of the biggest sport journalists in the country have declared their support for the protests, the Spanish government has publicly asked the Vuelta organization to ban the team, etc.

Yesterday's stage had to be cut 8km short because of the massive protests by the real finish line. The race keeps going on every day until next Sunday, where it ends in Madrid. Protests are not showing any sign of stopping.

But in reality, FIFA matches are a private competition organized by a private entity played on private locations. I think it's disgraceful that they are not doing anything, but it's their own private business.

But oh, Madrid. Madrid has become legend today.

Madrileñes have manage to make the Vuelta org

CANCEL THE LAST STAGE, CANCEL THE LAST DAY, INCLUDING THE AWARDS CEREMONY AND EVERYTHING.

The last stage was supposed to arrive to Madrid, and then the riders would ride the last 30km or so by doing 8 laps on an urban circuit around Madrid's central neighborhoods.

The very-much-right-wing Madrid major had mobilized 1500 cops to control this urban circuit... but there was just to many protesters. They torn down the fences, the took the roads. So when the riders arrived to Madrid, they found a solid block of people stopping them from entering the city center.

So the Organization decided to just cancel everything and send everyone to their hotels. The last day, the big day, the finish line. All done.

This is fucking glorious, folks

For the second summer in a row, I find myself writing about Punjabis in Italy under the urge of a tragedy. In 2024, it was the horrible death of Satnam Singh, the farmworker left to die by his employer in Latina. This year, it is the July 18 road accident that took the life of Balvir Kumar “Birra,” who was run over by a car while cycling to the fields where he harvested the same zucchini that arrive so cheap and fresh on our tables. The case last summer had triggered widespread outrage, both due to its bloody details (Satnam suffered severe wounds after an accident with an agricultural machine) and to the cruelty of his employer (who dumped Satnam’s body in front of his house instead of taking him to the hospital, which resulted in his death). It attracted international attention, being featured on global news and inspiring waves of protests, demonstrations, and police interventions in the area and beyond. Birra’s death, in contrast, passed almost completely unnoticed — dismissed quickly as yet another fatal accident on the Via Pontina, “the most dangerous road of the Lazio region.” Like Satnam, Birra met his death in the Latina province, south of Rome, where the death rate in road accidents increased by 47 percent from 2019 to 2023, and where agricultural labor is mostly performed by migrant workers, a large share of them Punjabis. Yet Birra’s death — rather like Satnam’s — should not be ignored as a mere accident: it could have been avoided, if only the employers and the state assumed the responsibility of protecting their most vulnerable and essential workers.

Dying for Work In 2024, I had moved to the Latina province for a few months to conduct my doctoral research on the Punjabi community in Italy. The scarcity of public transportation in this rural setting forces most residents to travel either by car or bike. The main roads are heavily trafficked, with large trucks and cars driving fast, not enough space for passing and no speed checks. On both sides of these roads, countless migrants cycle to and from the fields where they work (too many hours, for too little payment), day and night, in all weather conditions; they travel without helmets, on the tiny space between the white lines edging the roadway and the fields, protected only by the bright reflective jackets that the local labor unions distribute among them for free. Driving daily to collect interviews and surveys with Punjabi migrants in the area, I remember feeling a constant terror of getting in a road accident with one of them. Birra was one of the first Punjabi workers I interviewed in the area, though I only got to know his full name after his death. Just six days before he died, I received prasad (sacramental food) from his hands while attending the Sunday liturgy in the temple where he lived and volunteered, cooking and serving food for the community of devotees. Birra was sixty-one years old, came from the village of Salempur near Hoshiarpur in India’s Punjab state, and was married with two children.

He had arrived in Italy at the age of thirty-three, in 1998, simply “kam karan lei” — to work. He was the first of two brothers and five sisters; his father worked as mason, his mother was a housewife. After marriage, his brother-in-law convinced him to go abroad to earn money and helped him pay for the trip. Like many other Punjabis at the time, Birra arrived in Italy “donkey” style — meaning, from India to Russia by air, and from Russia to Italy by road, after paying some thousands of euros to various agents to take him across borders. He had some friends in the Latina province and headed there, where he ended up staying and working in agriculture for the next twenty-seven years. “Zucchine, in serra: pianto, lego, quando cresce poi raccolgo,” (“Zucchini, in the greenhouses; I plant them, tie them, then when they grow, I harvest them,”) he explained, in the few Italian words he knew despite his long-term residence in this country. He had lived without documents for the first four years until, in 2002, he managed to get regularized. Employers demand that Punjabi migrants like Birra pay large fees simply to get a job contract and the proof of dwelling needed to obtain a residence permit, and make them pay their tax contributions from their own pockets. The whole regularization process remains opaque to them: as Birra admitted, “I don’t know the details, I don’t understand these things, they do it all by themselves.” With another Punjabi worker, he shared a room provided by his employer, in exchange for which he looked after the employer’s cattle and fields for €700 per month. Of this, he sent €500 back to Punjab to pay back his debts and sustain left-behind family: his daughter is currently pursuing a law degree in college; his son is also studying but wants to go abroad, too. Birra said he did not want to reunite his family in Italy since the living conditions there were too harsh. He instead aimed to move back to India as soon as he had saved enough money to live comfortably. One year before our interview, Birra had left his flat in town — where he had lived for ten years — because his flatmate’s wife had moved from Punjab and he was told to search for another place. Facing the same housing shortages that all migrant workers in the area complain of, Birra finally found shelter in the temple, where he prayed and did seva (volunteering) daily, being very close to the Baba-ji (priest). Birra was in fact deeply religious: he used to wear a turban in Punjab but removed it during the journey to Italy to avoid attracting attention, and since then had stopped wearing it. He described his routine thus: “I wake up at 3:30, I get ready, prepare some food for lunch, drink tea, then Baba-ji wakes up, so I pray with him and then at 5:30 I go to work by bike; we start at 6.” It was indeed 5:30 a.m. when Birra was hit by a car on his way to work and breathed his last on the road; he was cycling, with three colleagues, on a main street perpendicular to Via Pontina, where so many cyclists before him lost their lives in road accidents (and so many more will, if nobody takes action). He was supposed to start harvesting at 6 a.m. in the field where he worked year-round for €5 or €6 per hour, under short-term contracts that declared far fewer hours than those he actually worked. His coworkers say that he was worried about arriving late to work because the day before, he had left his e-bike at a repair shop and borrowed a regular bicycle to pedal to the field. Moreover, he had been exposed to toxic pesticides without protective gear in the zucchini field two days earlier, and the fumes had left him with breathing problems and high blood pressure. These two details did not emerge in the report, precisely because they make clear that his job conditions and marginal position in Italy played a big role in what happened — making it almost a workplace death rather than a road accident.