#akhm

[straight-to-the-pain]

I don't know if anyone else in the whump community has read 'A Constellation of Vital Phenomena' by Anthony Marra but it is genuinely a really good book and also has some of the best depictions of torture and its aftermath that I have read in fiction.

I wanted to share some of my favourite quotes, hopefully without too many spoilers as it is out of context, but maybe skip this post if you don't want to know anything at all going in.

To give a brief summary, the book centres around the lives of people in Chechnya during the first and second war between the Russian government (Feds) and the separatist rebels. The main story focuses on a man (Akhmed) who is trying to save his neighbour's daughter from being killed by the Feds after her father is taken away in the middle of the night. He does this by taking her to a hospital where he then volunteers. One of the people in his village (Ramzan) becomes an informer for the Feds after being tortured, and this is explored in the excerpts below.

‘Information the Feds would torture them for was written here on the walls for all to see. It was well understood among the men that the Feds had as much sense as two bricks smashed together. It was also understood that pain, rather than information, was the true purpose of interrogation.'

'During his first detention in the landfill, in 1995, in the first war, he had refused to inform. They had wrestled down his trousers, shown him the bolt cutters, and still he had said no. Screaming, thrashing, with his manhood half severed, he had said no. He had done that, and now he was ready to start saying yes.'

'He would have confessed everything, but they didn't ask, weren't interested, threatened to cut out his tongue and put pliers to his teeth if he spoke one more fucking word. Electric wires were wound around his fingers. A car battery was drained into his bones. God might have been watching, but it wasn't God's finger on the battery switch. The interrogating officers didn't speak. Instead he was an instrument they played, performing a duet, and in their own way they conversed through his sobs. They both wore very shiny shoes. That was all he would remember.'

'He had trouble walking, He had forgotten torture could be so exhausting. The new interrogator, the one with less shiny shoes, held him upright, using his whole body as a crutch, and helped him walk. He carefully wiped Ramzan's forehead with a handkerchief before opening the door to the next room.'

'The interrogator with less shiny shoes crouched behind him. His hands were wet. Ramzan promised everything, and the interrogator, like the parent of a child too old to believe in ghosts, watched him with disappointment, his clear eyes saddened by Ramzan's sincerity. The interrogator took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, laid the live wires on Ramzan's chest and mapped the border of their shared humanity. Ramzan offered his soul. He begged to be enslaved. The known universe contracted to the limits of the cement floor, and on it, the interrogator was both man and deity, prophet and god. By ten o'clock the interrogator with less shiny shoes asked his first question. By eleven the electrical wires were unwound from Ramzan's fingers. By noon he was allowed to dress. By one he was on the FSB payroll. He kept thanking the interrogator with less shiny shoes.'

‘Greed didn’t motivate his informing, at least not primarily; primarily he informed by necessity, to survive, for his love and hate and above all awe of the power wielded by the interrogating officer with less shiny shoes.'

'That was his greatest fear. Could he stay silent? Could he withstand what awaited him? He told himself that his love for the girl should fortify him against any torture, but this, like so much of what he told himself, was a lie. After all, he was squeamish at the sight of blood, what would he say when lying in a puddle of his own? But he saw no other way. He would pray for the strength to stay silent, for a quick heart attack, and leave the rest to God.' (This is Akhmed POV)

'When they threatened to beat me, I said nothing, Akhmed. When they threatened to beat me, I said nothing. When they threatened to electrocute me, I said nothing. When they threatened to castrate me, I said nothing. I said nothing, Akhmed. Whatever you think of me, you remember that once I said nothing when a wiser man would have sung. And the interrogators, they couldn't believe it. They called in others to examine me. I was there on the floor, and above their faces were dark ovals silhouetted by the ceiling lights. They had beaten me hard and I couldn't hear right, but I kept saying no, with every breath I had. The main reason they let me go, the only reason they didn't shoot me right there was out of perverse respect, some sort of professional courtesy. But I wish they had shot me, Akhmed, because the good part of me died there, and all this, everything since, has been an afterlife I'm trying to escape.'

‘I knew what was coming. I knew it never stops. They put a shame inside you that goes on like a bridge with no end, the humiliation, the fucking humiliation of knowing that you are not a human being but a bundle of screaming nerve endings, that the torture goes on even when the physical hurt quietens. People treated me differently when I came back the first time.'

[guy60660]

Akhmed Khatamzadeh

[theanticool]

Akhmed Magomedov vs Kevin Boehm - Bellator 283

Timestamp - 1:21:40

As Coker has finally entered his own era of Russian MMA supremacy inside of Bellator, he’s signed more and more interesting fighters. One such fighter is featherweight Akhmed Magomedov (10-0). Another Dagestani fighter with a crushing grappling game. Check the way he gets after Boehm’s neck here for the submission. So aggressive yet so smooth. Excited to see more of him.

And we will see Akhmed Magomedov this Saturday (Feb. 4) on the Bellator 290 prelims as he faces off with long time Bellator veteran Henry Corrales (20-6).

[mariacallous]

In a small corner of the disintegrating Soviet Union, a young Shakespearean actor named Akhmed Zakayev stepped off the stage and took up arms.

Zakayev, like many Chechens, had been hopeful when the USSR collapsed. A new state had been declared in the capital of Grozny almost immediately, inspired by the massive and peaceful popular uprisings across the ex-Soviet satellite states: the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.

But Moscow wasn’t keen to lose any more territory. In 1994, tanks rolled Grozny and asserted that the republic was no more: Chechnya was a member of the new Russian Federation. That’s when Zakayev joined the resistance.

Thirty years later, Zakayev is the prime minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria’s government-in-exile.

“I couldn’t have imagined that my fate would become what it is today,” Zakayev told Foreign Policy during an interview in Kyiv this spring. “We’ve experienced a lot of tragedy, a lot of bloodshed, a lot of violence since 1994, when we became the victims of Russian aggression.”

For three decades, across two brutal wars waged against the Chechens, Zakayev has tried to convince the world to back his nation’s independence. He has not had much luck: Although the republic was once recognized by Georgia and Afghanistan, no nation currently explicitly recognizes its status as the government of Chechnya.

Today, many of Russia’s separatists, including Zakayev, see enormous opportunity in Ukraine’s struggle for self-defense against Moscow’s aggression. They have supported the resistance both in spirit and by joining Ukraine’s fight. This has led to an extraordinary partnership—not just with Kyiv, but also among the various dissidents hoping to be free from the Russian Federation.

Together, they believe they can bring about the end of President Vladimir Putin—and Russia itself.

The drab boardroom in which I met Zakayev, in Kyiv, is a fairly recent home for the Chechen separatists. On the table before us were the green, red, and white flag of the Republic of Ichkeria; the Ukrainian bicolor, and the European Union flag. Along the wall behind Zakayev were rows of portraits of past Chechen leaders—and the dates of their deaths, usually at Russia’s hands.

“The fact is that, for over 30 years, the world has simply been watching the Chechen tragedy,” Zakayev said. “They have simply been watching as we were being murdered, as we were being forced to leave the country, as we were being scattered across the world.”

Since the 1990s, the official U.S. position on the conflict has been simple: “We consider Chechnya a part of Russia.” That position only hardened when Washington began describing Chechnya’s paramilitary opposition to Russian rule as a movement that was affiliated with al Qaeda. Terror attacks committed against Russia in the name of the Chechen resistance have only made a change in U.S. policy more unlikely, even if serious doubts remain about the responsibility for some of those attacks.

Zakayev, who represents a more moderate wing of the Chechen resistance, has spent more than two decades since the end of the first phase of the Second Chechen War in exile, mostly in the United Kingdom. He has worked to avoid having his portrait added to the wall of martyrs.

In 2007, police at Scotland Yard warned Zakayev that he was high up on a Russian hit list. But he survived. And in 2022, as Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Zakayev decamped to Ukraine—“unquestionably the leader of the entire free world,” he said.

He sees plenty of parallels between their struggles. “Ukrainians have felt what it was like for us, back in 1994,” Zakayev said. “We were branded as terrorists, as Islamic extremists.”

Zakayev said that this view of the Chechens, fostered by Putin but accepted by the West, is a “great pity.” It has brought about a global view of the Chechen people as either Putin’s shock troops or as violent terrorists. These are views that Putin has relished, broadcasting images of Chechen fighters in an attempt to carry out psychological warfare in Ukraine and using Chechen contract killers to kill Russian liberals such as Boris Nemtsov. Since the start of Russia’s war in eastern Ukraine in 2014, Chechen fighters have been dispatched to fight across Ukraine.

“We are destroying this image by siding with Ukraine and by being here,” Zakayev said.

The Chechens’ support for Ukraine isn’t just symbolic. Chechen volunteers have also fought with the Ukrainians in the Donbas since 2014. Since the full-scale invasion in 2022, they have joined the Russian Legion and other militias of Russian citizens who are fighting alongside Ukraine. When he spoke to Foreign Policy in March, Zakayev’s soldiers were taking part in cross-border incursions into the Belgorod region, a precursor to Ukraine’s larger offensive in Kursk today.

“It’s a very important strategic step, of transferring the combat actions to the enemy’s territory, because it’s the first time in years that the Russians have finally felt what the war is,” Zakayev said. “Since World War II, Russia has waged a lot of wars, but they’ve never felt what a war is like on their own territory. Finally, they’re beginning to experience aid raid alarms, they’re beginning to experience explosions, and they’re starting to feel this war on their own territory.”

To that end, Zakayev no longer sees independence as a regional and isolated concern. In his eyes, independence for Chechnya—and Ukraine, Siberia, Dagestan, and other Russian subjects—can only be achieved through toppling the Russian state itself.

“Putin’s war, that he started in Ukraine, must end in Moscow,” Zakayev continued. “And the people who are going to end this war must be Russians.”

Earlier this year, a correspondent with Russian state broadcaster Channel One toured the trenches on the front lines, reviewing “trophies” taken from Ukrainian fighters killed in action. In the video, the correspondent holds up two patches removed from the fighters’ uniforms—one of which, he says, is the Canadian flag. He looks to the camera: “The presence of mercenaries in the ranks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is no secret.”

The video prompted dozens of laughing face emojis when it was posted on Telegram by an account run by Free Ingria, a separatist movement in Russia’s Leningrad Oblast. The patch was not the Canadian red maple leaf at all, but the flag of Udmurtia, a republic in the Urals.

The Ingria separatists, who want independence for the historical Baltic region around the former imperial capital of St. Petersburg, and the Udmurtia separatists, who want an independent state in their region west of the Ural mountains, may be more than 800 miles apart, but they have recently made common cause.

It’s all thanks to Oleg Magaletsky.

Shortly after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, Magaletsky founded the Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum. Composed of two dozen regionalist movements from across the Russian Federation, including the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, it has become the coordinating body for those hoping to dismantle Russia itself.

It is not the only game in town: The Lithuania-based Free Russia Forum, founded by Russian chess grandmaster and dissident Garry Kasparov, has aimed to become a think tank and philosophical hub for this post-imperial Russia.

Magaletsky’s group is much more hands-on.

“We need to be prepared for big changes—for the collapse,” Magaletsky told me, sitting in a pie shop in Kyiv.

Magaletsky is an unlikely champion for the cause of Russian secession—he’s a soft-spoken and personable Ukrainian restaurateur who was turned on to politics by the Euromaidan protests. Yet he has thrown himself into the work, and he’s moved quickly.

His forum has served as a hub to coordinate the exiled leaders of these independence movements, who, in turn, coordinate with their compatriots who are still in Russia. They’ve also held a series of summits to connect some of the leaders of Russia’s “captive nations” with academics, strategists, and government officials around the world.

When the Free Russia Forum brought some of its members to Washington for a series of talks at the Jamestown Foundation in March, they stressed just how much of Russia’s might comes from its imperial conquests: its access to the Black Sea, its natural resources, and even the fighters who feed its army.

“[There] has been a litany of trials and losses of lives, lands, resources, culture, and language, taken away by the empire,” Radjana Dugar-DePonte, the co-chair of the Buryad-Mongol Erkheten Democratic Movement, told the attendees. The Buryat people are wildly overrepresented in the death toll from the Russia-Ukraine war, as are other ethnic minorities.

When he had the opportunity, Pavel Mezerin enlisted to fight alongside the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

While Zakayev’s forces joined the fight early, more and more Russian dissidents in exile were signing up to fight with Ukraine. Magaletsky rattles off the component members of his forum and which unit they fight under. He said that some are with the Siberian Battalion, others serve with the Free Russia Legion, and others are fighting directly under the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Mezerin, who hails from Ingria, joined the Siberian Battalion but soon grew disenchanted with the mission.

The Ukrainian leadership, he told Foreign Policy, “was not interested in forming full-fledged combat units from Russian citizens who would fight for the freedom of Russia.” They were more “political projects than actual military units,” he added. It was “a very sad experience” for Mezerin—he quit the battalion and channeled his energy through Free Ingria, of which he is a coordinator.

Mezerin told me that he perfectly understands that Ukraine’s priority is in recapturing its own territory. He has been watching afar as Ukraine has pulled off its extraordinary invasion of the Kursk region and is cheering on his former comrades. This time, however, the Ukrainians used their regular soldiers instead of Russian militias. “I sincerely envy the people of Kursk,” Mezerin said.

If it was his territory that had been “liberated” by Ukraine, he said, “of course, we would return there immediately. We would be busy organizing armed militias, armed detachments. Ingria would be free.” He dreams of Ukrainian forces continuing their march north to St. Petersburg.

But he knows that this is a fantasy. “Ukraine is not interested in these regions,” he said, recognizing that they would almost certainly be traded for Ukrainian territory in any peace talks. “Ukraine is interested in its own freedom.”

The quest for independence falls on the shoulders of activists such as Mezerin and Zakayev. And independence, Magaletsky said, cannot come from a think tank. That’s why the Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum is actively involved in helping dissidents inside Russia prepare for what comes next.

“We have public activities,” Magaletsky said cryptically. “And, of course, we have unpublic activities.”

While he was careful not to put too much stock in a single operation, Magaletsky said that anything that could dismantle the idea of a “single and indivisible” Russian state would ultimately help their cause. “It is not so much the actual operation of the Ukrainian army in the Kursk region, as the reaction of both the Kremlin and the ‘Russian people’ to it in general.”

To that end, his operation requires a diversity of tactics. “Not all movements have people who are fighting now on the front line,” Magaletsky added, before offering me some of his pie. Others, he said, have members who are still inside Russia, making plans and preparations for when things change.

“They’re preparing, not for a big war on the front line—they’re preparing for their cities fighting.”

Everyone involved said that the work is hard—and dangerous. The Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum was declared an “undesirable organization” by Moscow in 2023 and attacked as an alleged CIA front group by news outlets loyal to the Kremlin. Many of the forum’s members have faced FSB crackdowns for years, and their projects have been declared extremist organizations.

However, Magaletsky said that their work is critical. Although the West has long supported the idea of a democratic Russia, its leaders seem sure that a change at the top is all that is needed. Magaletsky disagrees: “Putin is the result,” he said. “The problem is the imperial, colonial, system of Russia.”

Kyiv is certainly sympathetic to that view. The Ukrainian Rada has recognized Chechnya as “temporarily occupied” by Russia, and it is contemplating full recognition for the independence movements for Tatarstan, Chechnya, and Bashkortostan.

The West, however, is far from any such recognition.

“We, here in Ukraine, remember, of course, the speech of [then-U.S. President] George [H.W.] Bush, the so-called ‘Chicken Kiev’ speech,” he said, referring to the president’s 1991 address to the legislature of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, in which he warned against  “suicidal nationalism” and declared that “freedom is not the same as independence.”

“Now, post-Russia chicken speeches are popular,” Magaletsky wrote to me recently. “We are trying to change that.” He will keep trying to win over converts in Western capitals. The forum held its next round of meetings in Vilnius, Lithuania, in June.

As Mezerin told me, there’s no room for fatalism. “I’m an opposition politician in exile, so I’m an optimist. Otherwise, I would have no reason to go on living.”

[sortyourlifeoutmate]

So apparently Labour is on-course to lose the mayoral contest in the West Midlands (all of the West Midlands have a singular mayor? I must be missing something) and support for independent candidate Akhmed Yakoob and his pro-Gaza stance being seen as a major factor.

The response from Labour? Quote: "Once again Hamas are the real villains."

Guys. Read the room.

[generallemarc]

These are the kinds of people running Hamas, running Hezbollah and the Hothis, and running Iran where the prior groups get their marching orders from. I'm using as many pro-pal tags as possible in the slim hope that at least one person is forced to actually see what the theocrats they're defending are actually like.

[happypuppypuppy]

🇧🇭 Akhmed Tazhudinov ass and cock win the 97Kg gold olympic medal (credits to UWW)

[goalhofer]

2024 olympics Bahrain roster

Athletics

Birhanu Balew (Manama)

Salwa Naser (Riffa)

Kemi Adekoya (Manama)

Winfred Yavi (Manama)

Eunice Chumba (Manama)

Tigist Gashaw-Belay (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia)

Rose Chelimo (Manama)

Judo

Askerbii Gerbekov (Roscha, Russia)

Swimming

Saud Ghali (Manama)

Amani Al-Obaidli (Brisbane, Australia)

Weightlifting

Lesman Paredes (Buenaventura, Colombia)

Gor Minasyan (Gyumri, Armenia)

Wrestling

Akhmed Tazhudinov (Gergebil, Russia)

[alcestas-sloboda]

interview of Akhmed Zakayev, leader of free Ichkeria, on 2 Chechen wars, Ukraine and why the russia we know today should and would be destroyed. he also talks about why the West ignored the genocide of Chechen people and how Ukraine is the hope for their independence.

[hjohn3]

Long Hot Summer

The Rise of the Far Right on Britain’s Streets

Source: Sky News

By Honest John

SUDDENLY, BRITAIN’s fascist moment seems to be a little bit closer. As the summer’s temperatures rise, so does the heat on the street, and the far right are now on a wholly nihilistic march. It has been clear for some years that the fascist right in this country has long abandoned its historical attachment to anti-semitism and visceral biological racism and has turned its focus on Islam - portraying the religion, but more importantly, Muslims themselves, as fundamentally opposed to British values and with an intent to “take over” the country culturally and in population terms. This anti-Muslim stance is allied to a hostility to illegal migration (the “small boats” of Rishi Sunak’s half hearted culture war) and a peculiar advocacy for authoritarian law and order despite the far right “protests” being reliably intimidatory and destructive in towns and cities all over the U.K. since the appalling murders of three children in Southport last week.

There have been a series of “incidents” over the last month that have provoked the spin offs of the disbanded English Defence League, which are myriad and hard to pin down but nonetheless organised, to take to the streets in overtly anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and racist riots masquerading as protests. The first was a punch-up at Manchester Airport, recorded on CCTV and phone video footage, when two thuggish Asian lads assaulted police officers called to break up a fight, but which culminated in one of said lads being tasered and then kicked in the head while helpless on the floor by an armed officer clearly out of control. This led almost immediately to a liberal leftist/Muslim activist rent-a-crowd protest against alleged racist policing and the Asian boys being represented by dubious lawyer Akhmed Yakoob (who has form as a pro-Gaza candidate at the General Election, and also outed as a base misogynist). What should have been no more than an “incident” requiring investigation, soon took on the contours of a culture war as hyper liberal activists in possession of half the facts turned the fight into a “Muslim” issue and the reliably loathsome Reform MP Lee Anderson opined that he would like to give the police officer who kicked the prone suspect in the head, a medal for his assault. The temperature began to rise, despite the nuanced nature of the affair (significantly Yakoob has since dropped the case).

This incident had been preceded a few days before by a riot in the Hatfield area of Leeds instigated by the Roma Romanian population in response to some Roma children being taken into care by police and Leeds Social Services for Safeguarding reasons. The riot was large scale, dramatic and involved burned out vehicles, damaged buildings and assaults on the police who at one stage vacated the Hatfield streets altogether. This situation got the right wing media outlets (GB News, Talk TV, the Telegraph and the Mail) into a lather along with malign YouTubers like conspiracy theorist and Muslim-hater Charlie Veitch, who arrived in Hatfield to proclaim the site of a burned-out bus was a result of an “Islamist insurgency”. There are legitimate concerns about how the Roma community behaved in Leeds, but whatever the Hatfield riot was, it was neither Islamist nor an insurgency: it was a reaction to what was perceived as a kidnapping of children by the British state, by a group that is over 95% Christian. The riot had literally nothing to do with Muslims or Islamism. But such facts do not get in the way of the false reporting by the right wing media or the “patriotic” Tik-Tokkers and YouTubers that now proliferate.

And so the scene was set for the explosion of far right rage that followed the terrible murders of three young girls attending a Taylor Swift dance class in Southport by a 17 year old young man of Rwandan descent, born in Cardiff and a Southport resident. In the time it took for these crucial details about the identity of the murderer to be revealed, the far right had developed an entirely invented narrative of its own: the murderer was an immigrant, worse than that he was an illegal who arrived in a “small boat”; the murderer was a Muslim called Ali Al-Shakati and an Islamist terrorist to boot. The lines between all three incidents were connected to present a situation of migrants and Muslims, aided by their leftist allies, fighting murderously and violently against British values and British citizens. The fact that none of this was true (the alleged murderer, Axel Muganwa Rudakubana, is likely also to have a Christian background) was irrelevant to the EDL successor groups. In no time Southport, Westminster, Hartlepool, Leeds, Nottingham, Sunderland and many other towns and cities became scenes of riot, intimidation, destruction and the violent targeting of mosques. The would-be Ernst Rohm figure of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, absurdly known to his fans as “Tommy Robinson”, swaggered through the streets of London, mouthing anti-Islam banalities, until his arrest under the Terrorism Act, but clearly not in charge of anything very much, and even less so since his flight from the U.K. to avoid his court appearance. The far right cells who are organising the disorder are organic in nature, their actual leaders unknown. Their ideology is unclear, but they are given cover by the cynics of GB News (with particular reference to the atrocious Mike Graham and Isabel Oakeshot) who openly describe the criminal activity as somehow a legitimate expression of patriotic opinion by an English population pushed too far. The groups are however also given legitimacy by the ultimate provocateur, Nigel Farage MP, sitting like a Prussian aristocrat in 1930s Germany speculating on whether the government or the police are being entirely honest about the Southport murders, while the modern equivalents of the Brownshirts run riot in British towns. This is the real danger of the swirling toxicity of the current unrest. The middle-aged flag-waving male thugs are easily dismissed as criminals, conspiracy-believing oddballs and yobboes, but their enablers in the right wing media, Reform and the Tory right, provide a level of encouragement, justification and even ideological ballast to what currently remains a street movement but, under more serious leadership than that of Yaxley-Lennon, could morph into something far more sinister.

So what is to be done?

Keir Starmer for the second time in a month, struck precisely the right tone and spoke for the decent majority of this country when he described the rioting as driven by “far right hatred” and announced an intention to protect Muslim citizens from harm and to pool police, security and anti-terrorism resources to combat the extremists on the street, but also to break up its cellular structure. This hard action must be taken. The issue of a Section 34 Dispersal Notice in Greater Manchester which blunted far right action this weekend, is a start. History tells us that the far right do not go away and a level of force is what works to disrupt them - but administered by the police and judiciary, not by left wing groups and their “smash the fascists” placards, who usually prove themselves incapable, in reality, of “smashing” anything very much.

Probably more importantly, is the need for the government and Ofcom to pay far more attention to the toxic falsehoods sprayed indiscriminately by the likes of GB News and Talk TV, and to insist misinformation posing as news is banned and political opinion is confined to explicit opinion slots. Influence over the Wild West of social media is more difficult but the faux-legitimacy of the right wing TV outlets is dangerous while our streets burn, so their lying output must be controlled. Parliament must also exercise control over maverick MPs. In the aftermath of Southport, Farage chose not to attend the House of Commons and represent his constituents but instead decided to post a video slot encouraging conspiracy theorists and rioters. It is high time that the indulgence of Farage’s hail-fellow-well-met persona ends and if an MP can be seen to be implicitly endorsing criminal activity, he or she should be hauled before the Privileges Committee, or even prosecuted.

My final recommendation is hard to make. I believe we have reached the limits of identity politics and multi-culturalism. We talk casually of the “Muslim community” in this country when in reality, there is no such thing. The self-identification of population groups who once described themselves as Asian or South Asian as “Muslim”, prioritising religious identity above all others, together with the “Arabisation” of Islamic observant clothing and Qu’ranic interpretation thanks to the influence of Saudi-funded preachers and madrassas, makes the Bengali, Pakistani, Afghan and Indian heritage population visibly different and just the sort of potential scapegoat for societal woes that fascism thrives on. Together with assertive Muslim activism, this level of identity politics gives credence to the othering narrative of the far right. As a democrat, this is difficult to write. Why shouldn’t people be able to wear what they want, worship as they wish, believe what they believe? But in an increasingly divided society, I believe the priority for identity groups should be to accentuate the common social concerns they share with all other communities and to seek far more enthusiastically to integrate with the majority population while maintaining their beliefs. Such a shift after at least twenty years of embedded identitarianism will be difficult and it may never happen, but I maintain that social solidarity is a crucial factor in the long term defeat of fascism and racism.

It may be that these riots will fizzle out as the weather cools, but the current moment feels it might be leading somewhere very dark. An organised street fighting movement, aided by a toxic right wing TV media and encouraged by a far right Parliamentary presence carries too many historical echoes for comfort. All eyes are now on Starmer and Yvette Cooper to control the symptoms of street disorder, but by far the greatest priority is for the Labour government to create a fair economic settlement for all British communities and thus consign the paranoid and violent fantasies of the far right into the dustbin of history, once and for all.

3rd August 2024

[theanticool]

What a tournament! Wrestling has consistently been the most entertaining Olympic combat sport and it was really on display in this year. Some really crazy matches in the freestyle portions. Big dramatics.

Japan has really built up that wrestling program. The women came through and did their thing like they always do. Won 4 of the 6 gold medals available in women's freestyle. Despite having their best wrestler get upset in the first round of 50 kg (Yui Susaki). And then they got two bronze medals in the divisions they did not win. Crazy levels of dominance continue for them. But they also won 4 gold medals in the men's divisions, which is a huge shift for them. They had Kenichiro Fumita and Nao Kusaka win gold in Greco-Roman. Then in men's freestyle, they had Kotaro Kiyooka and Rei Higuchi winning gold as well with Daichi Takatani earning silver but beating Team USA cornerstone Kyle Dake in the process. 9 finalists in 18 weight classes. Just crazy.

As for Team USA, it was really a tale of two halves. The women showed up and showed out. Two gold medals for USA women's team with veteran Sarah Hildebrandt avenging her bronze exit in 2020 to win gold here. Another legend of USA wrestling in Helen Maroulis takes home her third Olympic medal, taking a bronze. Plus the coronation of one of the most dominant women in the sport, 20 year old Amit Elor. We also had 20 year old Kennedy Blades make her final to take home silver. The future for the women's wrestling team is extremely bright. I'm just saying, now is the time to enroll your daughter/niece in wrestling.

For the American men though, heartbreak. For the first time since 1968, the men's team did not take home gold. Spencer Lee came up closest, making the final but leaving with a silver medal. Kyle Dake was upset in the semifinals and was forced to settle for another bronze. 4x NCAA champion Aaron Brooks made a great account of himself. Took home bronze after losing his semifinal bout with literally 5 seconds left on the clock. Kyle Snyder and Zain Rutherford came up short in hunts for bronze. Just a really tough year. Team USA will need to regroup heading into the 2028 Olympics in LA.

There were other really big stories too. The biggest, Mijain Lopez getting his record breaking 5x Olympic gold medal for Cuba and cementing himself as the unquestionable GOAT. Just an insane reign of dominance from the Cuban heavyweight. Then leaving his shoes on the mat to signify retire. Just a perfect way to ride off into the sunset. Geno Petriashvili of Georgia, finally getting that Olympic gold on the third shot. For those that don't remember, he came up short in 2020 losing to Gable Steveson at the very last second. Relative unknown Akhmed Tazhudinov continuing to breakout after showing up and dominating in 2023, this time for Bahrain as Russia is banned from Olympic competition. Hassan Yazdani wrestling with the injury heading into the final at 86 kg. Jersey boy Sebastian Rivera getting a bronze medal for Puerto Rico! Taha Akgül retiring after another bronze medal.

Just an amazing tournament overall.

For anyone who may have tuned into amateur wrestling for the first time this year for the Olympics and find themselves becoming a fan, you can follow some of your favs later this year because the non-Olympic world championships are being held in October!

October 28-31, many of the men and women you saw wrestling for a gold medal will be fighting for the right to call themselves a world champion.

Would tell you about amateur boxing but that is a huge mess right now.

[dross-the-fish]

Is he( akhm, Adam, akhm) always patrolling in sleeveless shirt?

Depends on the weather, after 100 years in the arctic England seems warm to him.

Mostly I just wanted to draw his lichtenberg scars

[katchwreck]

On guard of peace, 1975.

Soviet realist painter Akhmed Kitayev, 1925-1996.

[iphijaania]

akhmed yakoob didn’t win birmingham laywood Alhamdulillah 🙏🙏🙏

[frenchcurious]

Streets. - source Akhmed Khatamzadeh.

[happypuppypuppy]

🇷🇺 Akhmed Idrisov (green singlet), 57Kg dagestani wrestler at the Russian Wrestling National Championship 2024 (credits to iskhakov.coach)