Oh yeah? You think the UN will take over and make the revolution?

How are any of us supposed to stop global warming, if even the UN (with who knows how much money, connections, and media access) can't get anything done? — Yohan

Well, you could stop spreading disinformation.

I am afraid that the UN is unable to deal with climate change, or any other really serious problem. For a while now they have behaved like a headless duck, still running around aimlessly in the global courtyard. The sustainable development agenda is a case in point: there's absolutely everything in there. But if everything is a priority, nothing is.

the UN's Sustainability Development Agenda I assume includes handling human generated global warming. But I worry their smart cities will be hell cities. And did we the people get a say in whether or not we want to be part of this agenda? — Yohan

Actually, yes. There was a massive crowd sourcing of people's concerns prior to defining the sustainable development agenda. See for instance:

https://www.kff.org/news-summary/u-n-releases-results-from-myworld2015-survey/

The one circa 70,000 yr ago almost whipped out our species by the way...

The biggest threat to what exactly?

Not sure who you call the globalists. It seems to me that naïve, enthusiastic globalisation was killed by COVID.

The real problems are in the places that are already in dire straits before the largest impact of climate change. — ssu

No doubt the poor will suffer sooner than the rich. But climate change is evidently happening faster than we can adapt, and it's probably not going to stop before a few thousand years, so ultimately, every single nation will suffer gravely. And mind you, the poles are warming twice faster than the rest.

Some change is in store, yes.

Cui bono from the truth?
— Olivier5
Is that a rhetorical question? — Yohan

Yes, it is. A less rhetorical question would be: cui bono from climate change denial?

The year 2100 or 2200 there will very likely be humans around. That's the alarmism I'm talking about. — ssu

There will be humans around in 2200, I agree. The question is: How many? Already scores of youth are opting for not having kids because of CC.

BAU is not going to help anyone. We need to be alarmed.

do you think you and your family will die directly or indirectly because of climate change? — ssu

Nothing impossible there. It happens to many folks already.

Cui bono from the truth?

Have a look at Pakistan right now. Climate change already kills, and will kill many more. At the hardship menu, we're just nipping off the aperitive right now.

But the World will not end. That's the point. — ssu

The world will not end, but our world of permanent growth will end. That's the point. The belief in progress, in the indefinite growth of science and the economy, will end. Total population will shrink. Total economic output will shrink. It may well be that science will shrink as well.

I'm skeptical about the alarmism.
— Tzeentch

I think this is one of the main concerns for many. Alarmism is creeping into many discourses, actually. — ssu

At this point, I am highly skeptical about anyone who pretends not to be alarmed by climate change. These 'non-alarmed' folks are just trying to ignore the problem, to reassure themselves.

Mind you, it is because they didn't want to sound 'alarmist' that the IPPC has somewhat systematically toned down its language and scenarios for decades. And now it appears that the problem is worse and growing faster than they said it would. So all this drama about 'alarmism', all these snowflakes afraid of their own fear, contributed to our doom.

They feel as if everyone but themselves is allowed a social narrative that they can identify with and can be proud about. Why can't white people have White Lives Matter? Why can't men have a men's rights movement? Why can't heterosexual people have straight pride events? — _db

You might be into something here: narrative envy. But it seems to me that such envy is easily satisfied: there are men's right movements, including progressive ones, and they do develop alternative narratives about men in society that are more positive than run-off-the-mill men bashing, and more progressive than standard machismo.

Try googling it — I like sushi

Since Sushi's apparently gone, I did google it out of curiosity. Here is one source:

An association between the kinship and fertility of human couples
Authors
Agnar Helgason 1, Saebjörn Pálsson, Daníel F Gudbjartsson, Thornórdur Kristjánsson, Kári Stefánsson
Affiliation
1deCODE Genetics, Sturlugata 8, 101 Reykjavik, Iceland. agnaratdecodedotis
Science. 2008.

Abstract
Previous studies have reported that related human couples tend to produce more children than unrelated couples but have been unable to determine whether this difference is biological or stems from socioeconomic variables. Our results, drawn from all known couples of the Icelandic population born between 1800 and 1965, show a significant positive association between kinship and fertility, with the greatest reproductive success observed for couples related at the level of third and fourth cousins. Owing to the relative socioeconomic homogeneity of Icelanders, and the observation of highly significant differences in the fertility of couples separated by very fine intervals of kinship, we conclude that this association is likely to have a biological basis.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18258915/

I don't have full text access, but here is another article quoting the above study in greater detail:

When Incest Is Best: Kissing Cousins Have More Kin
Study analyzing more than 200 years of data finds that couples consisting of third cousins have the highest reproductive success

By Nikhil Swaminathan on February 8, 2008

... The results of the exhaustive study are constant throughout the generations analyzed. Women born between 1800 and 1824 who mated with a third cousin had significantly more children and grandchildren (4.04 and 9.17, respectively) than women who hooked up with someone no closer than an eighth cousin (3.34 and 7.31). Those proportions held up among women born more than a century later when couples were, on average, having fewer children. ...

Interestingly, one evolutionary argument for mating with a relative is that it might reduce a woman's chance of having a miscarriage caused by immunological incompatibility between a mother and her child. Some individuals have an antigen (a protein that can launch an immune response) on the surface of their red blood cells called a rhesus factor—commonly abbreviated "Rh." In some cases—typically during a second pregnancy—when a woman gets pregnant, she and her fetus may have incompatible blood cells, which could trigger the mother's immune system to treat the fetus as a foreign intruder, causing a miscarriage. This occurrence is less probable if the parents are closely related, because their blood makeup is more likely to match. ...

"It may well be that the enhanced reproductive success observed in the Iceland study at the level of third [and] fourth cousins, who on average would be expected to have inherited 0.8 percent to 0.2 percent of their genes from a common ancestor," Bittles says, "represents this point of balance between the competing advantages and disadvantages of inbreeding and outbreeding."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-incest-is-best-kissi/

Try googling it maybe before putting your foot in your mouth. — I like sushi

So you are unable or unwilling to provide any evidence for your claim that "There actually is an optimal range for procreation and this optimal range is regarded to be (by experts in the field) with breeding between 3rd and 4th cousins". I wonder why. It should be easy, if you just checked the info as you pretend.

I also wonder why your reaction is so defensive and angry. We are just having different views here. Where's the offence, pray tell?

Too much genetic variation is too much. Too little is too little. There actually is an optimal range for procreation and this optimal range is regarded to be (by experts in the field) with breeding between 3rd and 4th cousins if I recall correctly. — I like sushi

Please quote those experts of yours, then. That notion does not mix well with what I know of genetics, and I believe I know far more than you do.

There is a natural desire between 'races'. This desire is strong enough to beat any apartheid law. That's all I wanted to point out.

I also said it made sense from a Darwinian standpoint, and I still think it does.

There can be no such thing as a scientifically optimal mate, because we cannot predict the kind of traits that will be beneficial in the future. We do know however that inbreeding and incest are risky strategies, and that maintaining some degree of genetic diversity minimizes risks.

E.g. if the ozone layer is depleted, only black people will have a chance to survive the resulting UV influx. Under such circumstances, a white skin would become a grave handicap.

Anecdotal evidence is often all there is, and I find its discarding rather facile, most of times.

Beside, there is ample historical evidence that the antebellum American South was both 1) adhering formally to a totally racist ideology justifying slavery and separating the 'races' in a form of apartheid; 2) having quite a lot of sex going on across the colour divide, as testified by the large mulatto population in the US. This contradiction cannot be explained other than by some strong sexual desire happening between 'races'.

when racism was at its peak, interracial unions were forbidden, punishable by death since even consensual marriages/sex were/was taken to be rape/beastiality or something like that. — Agent Smith

Even in the antebellum American South, people were having much biracial sex, from what historians can tell. Slave owners were the first one to do so, due to their power over their victims, but there were also instances of consensual biracial sex, eg through prostitution. So even such a thoroughly racist society could not eradicate it. That's how powerful the sexual pull is between different ethnicities.

And for good (Darwinian) reasons: hybrids tend to be stronger than their parents. In a state of nature, biracial sex would give one's genes a greater chance of future survival and propagation than 'monoracial' sex.

Death of Gorbachev at 91


"I don't care to know what happens next."

... xenophobia, and ... xenophilia
— Olivier5

Which is the rule and which is the exception? — Agent Smith

In my experience, heterosexual males tend to be attracted to females of another ethnicity, while being fearful of, or antagonistic to men from another ethnicity. Vice versa for hetero females. It makes sense from a Darwinian standpoint, given hybrid vigor.

E.g. even the worst "frog basher" wouldn't mind a French girlfriend...

That is true: there is such a thing as near universal xenophobia, and there is also such a thing as a near universal desire or attraction for the exotic -- which I like to call the "Pocahontas effect", or simply "xenophilia": sexual or intellectual attraction for other folks.

... free themselves from slavery, at last?

The way I see it, all human groups tend to be fearful or hateful of other groups (but also fascinated by them, it's complicated). — Olivier5

Been thinking about this; maybe I was a bit hasty. Xenophobia might be nearly universal, as I pointed out, but xenophobia is not the same thing as racism, which as @180 Proof reminds us, is more than just a psychological trait: racism is an ideology.

Racism is the theory and practice – ideology – of the oppressor and his functionaries. — 180 Proof

And when understood as an ideology, racism is definitely Western, ie European and American, and a recent phenomenon ie dating from the 19th century onward.

Some Africans have developed a racist ideology too, eg Hutus vs Tutsis, but it seems that such were based upon the racist theories of European colonialists. In Asia there's plenty of ethnic prejudice as well, including some that is institutional (eg the treatment of non Siamese folks in Thailand) but to my knowledge it hasn't been made into an ideology yet.

Point well taken. I was being polemical.

Yeah, @baker, what's with the Russophobia in Ukraine anyway? — jorndoe

It might be useful to remind @baker that Ukrainians are Slavs. In fact Ukraine, the region around Kyiv in particular, was historically the cradle of all Slavic nations. That's where the trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks ran. The Varangians were Vikings who came to rule a mix of folks living in those parts circa 8th century if memory serves. The word originally means "war gang" or "war party". They founded the Rurik dynasty, which ruled the Kievan Rus from the 9th to the 13th century. They waged wars against Constantinople and lost, but settled along the Danube and in the Balkans. And then they allied themselves and traded with the Eastern Roman Empire.

Hence the establishment of the highly profitable trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks, running through Kyiv. The Varangians or Rus traded with Byzance in fur, metals, but mostly slaves, as previous traders had done along this ancient route. The etymology of "slave" is "Slav".

Hence also the Slavs being generally Orthodox, because they forged a strong link with Byzance at that time. They even supplied the personal gard to the emperor: the Varangian Gard. The Varangian gard traveled wherever the emperor had to go, and they left runic inscriptions all over the empire.

The Slavs were born in Ukraine.

I will continue to love free Slavs.

To me, the very term "reverse racism" is in effect racist, in that it assumes that there is a 'normal' or 'regular' type of racism and then there is its reverse. The way I see it, all human groups tend to be fearful or hateful of other groups (but also fascinated by them, it's complicated). So racism cuts both ways -- there's no front or reverse.

the increase of CO2 concentration will drive the specific heat of air DOWN, not UP.

Therefore the CO2 increase in air is NOT conducive to global warming.

If you don't understand the physics here, please ask — god must be atheist

You evidently don't understand the physics here.

a Russian investigative publication. ....

https://storage.googleapis.com/istories/index.html — SophistiCat

Looks like a pretty good source, thanks.

Watch Ukraine retake all the Donbas and Crimea? — boethius

And why not?

You considered Ukraine vanquished from day one of the invasion. And yet, didn't they repel the attack on Kiev? Didn't they bring the Russian steamroller to a halt in Dombass?

It's not over until it's over. Neither you nor I can tell the future.

They turned us into savages’: Russian soldier describes start of Ukraine invasion
In this extract from former paratrooper Pavel Filatyev’s memoir, he recalls wild looting after soldiers entered Kherson

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/17/they-turned-us-into-savages-russian-soldier-describes-start-of-ukraine-invasion

However, the truth is that the principle of "can't send NATO troops" or "can't send too many arms", to avoid WWIII, is simply used as a manipulation tool to calibrate the arms and intelligence support to maintain the war by propping up Ukraine, but not nearly enough support for Ukraine to have a chance of winning. — boethius

LOL. Just watch....

...

So what does that account by Tabari tell us? For one, that the episode stemmed from Mohammad's desire for acceptance as a prophet among Meccans (who were on the whole rejecting his ministry by then).

The passage immediately before the incident reads:

... he longed in himself for something to come to him from God which would draw him close to them [Meccan pagans]. With his love for his people and his eagerness for them, it would glad en him if some of the hard things he had found in dealing with them could be alleviated. He pondered this in himself, longed for it, and desired it. ...

The verses look like a freudian lapse, acting on a secret desire. For Tabari, this secret longing for acceptance is what the devil acts upon, but it looks like almost the same idea. The Id is the devil.

For two, archangel Gabriel (the vector between God and Mohammad) reproaches the latter for having strayed away from the real, authentic text of the Surat an-Najm. This I interpret as yet another illustration that Mohammad is not the author of the Quran -- God is. The Prophet is not allowed to add to what is revealed to him.

For three, the following revelation is then made:

'We never sent any apostle or prophet before you but that, when he longed, Satan cast into his longing.' [Surat Al-Ĥaj:52]

And thus Mohammad is like any other apostle or prophet, and Satan tempts them all. This is something presented as universal, related to the nature of Satan which is to try and oppose God's will.

This is in my mind a very important point: even the Prophet made mistakes. And some rather grave ones, too, as reported by Tabari. And not because he was bad but precisely because he was an instrument of God, and thus attracted Satan.

Satan (or the Id) who acted upon Mohammad secret longing for social acceptance and made him lapse the so-called satanic verses.

It follows that even the holiest of leaders make mistakes, and can be tempted by Satan.

We can now start to understand what is at play in the historic evolution of Muslim dogma, from one that originally recognizes Mohammad's temptation and lapse, to one that denies it, hides it under a technical name ("the verses of the cranes"), and considers it apocryphal. I think it's about moving from an open society, where all men make mistakes but can correct themselves, to a closed society where some leaders at the top are beyond reproach.

Some posters have said that Islam needs a reformation, and I agree. I wonder if Rushdie's book was not an attempt at reminding readers, including Muslim readers, that Islam was a brilliant, successful civilisation once, precisely when it held the modest, yet surprisingly progressive idea that all men, including the greatest prophet of all, make mistakes, and that rejecting this idea has something to do with what sent Islam into a decline.

Didn't original muslims scholars (back in the 600s-700s) actually refer to them as inspired by Satan? Rhushdie's version sounds at least as historically true. — Benkei

I was getting to that. The second point I would like to raise is related to the current status of Muslim doxa or exegesis on the gharāniq verses, in terms of their being considered authentic history or not. I quote from wiki again:

The incident is accepted as true by modern scholars of Islamic studies, under the criterion of embarrassment, citing the implausibility of early Muslim biographers fabricating a story so unflattering about their prophet.[3][4] It was accepted by religious authorities for the first two centuries of the Islamic era, but was later rejected by some religious scholars (Ulama) as incompatible with Muhammad's perfection ('isma), implying that Muhammad is infallible and therefore cannot be fooled by Satan.

Emphasis added to show the evolution in the interpretation, from the story being genuine early on in the history of Islam, to it being seen as improbable based on dogmatic grounds of the Prophet's infallibility.

I can't verify all the authors but the original account seems to be that of Tabari in his History of Kings and Prophets (c. 915 CE), volume 6. It goes like this:

... The prophet was eager for the welfare of his people, desiring to win them to him by any means he could. It has been reported that he longed for a way to win them, and part of what he did to that end is what Ibn Humayd told me, from Salama, from Muhammad ibn Ishaq, from Yazīd ibn Ziyād al-Madanī, from Muhammad ibn Ka'b al-Qurazī:

When the prophet saw his people turning away from him, and was tormented by their distancing themselves from what he had brought to them from God, he longed in himself for something to come to him from God which would draw him close to them. With his love for his people and his eagerness for them, it would gladden him if some of the hard things he had found in dealing with them could be alleviated. He pondered this in himself, longed for it, and desired it.

Then God sent down the revelation. 'By the star when it sets! Your companion has not erred or gone astray, and does not speak from mere fancy…' [Q.53:1] When he reached God's words, "Have you seen al-Lāt and al-'Uzzā and Manāt, the third, the other?' [Q.53:19–20] Satan cast upon his tongue, because of what he had pondered in himself and longed to bring to his people, 'These are the high-flying cranes and their intercession is to be hoped for.'

When Quraysh heard that, they rejoiced. What he had said about their gods pleased and delighted them, and they gave ear to him. The Believers trusted in their prophet with respect to what he brought them from their Lord: they did not suspect any slip, delusion or error. When he came to the prostration and finished the chapter, he prostrated and the Muslims followed their prophet in it, having faith in what he brought them and obeying his command. Those mushrikūn of Quraysh and others who were in the mosque also prostrated on account of what they had heard him say about their gods. In the whole mosque there was no believer or kāfir who did not prostrate. Only al-Walīd bin al-Mughīra, who was an aged shaykh and could not make prostration, scooped up in his hand some of the soil from the valley of Mecca [and pressed it to his forehead]. Then everybody dispersed from the mosque.

The Quraysh went out and were delighted by what they had heard of the way in which he spoke of their gods. They were saying, 'Muhammad has referred to our gods most favourably. In what he has recited he said that they are "high-flying cranes whose intercession is to be hoped for".'

Those followers of the Prophet who had emigrated to the land of Abyssinia heard about the affair of the prostration, and it was reported to them that Quraysh had accepted Islam. Some men among them decided to return while others remained behind.

Gabriel came to the Prophet and said, 'O Muhammad, what have you done! You have recited to the people something which I have not brought you from God, and you have spoken what He did not say to you.'

At that the Prophet was mightily saddened and greatly feared God. But God, of His mercy, sent him a revelation, comforting him and diminishing the magnitude of what had happened. God told him that there had never been a previous prophet or apostle who had longed just as Muhammad had longed, and desired just as Muhammad had desired, but that Satan had cast into his longing just as he had cast onto the tongue of Muhammad. But God abrogates what Satan has cast, and puts His verses in proper order. That is, 'you are just like other prophets and apostles.'

And God revealed: 'We never sent any apostle or prophet before you but that, when he longed, Satan cast into his longing. But God abrogates what Satan casts in, and then God puts His verses in proper order, for God is all-knowing and wise.' [Q.22:52]

So God drove out the sadness from His prophet and gave him security against what he feared. He abrogated what Satan had cast upon his tongue in referring to their gods: 'They are the high-flying cranes whose intercession is accepted [sic]'. [Replacing those words with] the words of God when Allāt, al-'Uzzā and Manāt the third, the other are mentioned: 'Should you have males and He females [as offspring]! That, indeed, would be an unfair division. They are only names which you and your fathers have given them".

[...] When there had come from God the words which abrogated what Satan had cast on to the tongue of His prophet, Quraysh said, 'Muhammad has gone back on what he said about the status of our gods relative to God, changed it and brought something else', for the two phrases which Satan had cast on to the tongue of the Prophet had found a place in the mouth of every polytheist. They, therefore, increased in their evil and in their oppression of everyone among them who had accepted Islam and followed the Prophet.

Rushdie is probably one of the greatest living fiction prose writers in the English language — Tom Storm

I agree, and I love his books. Just trying to understand the mainstream Muslim position here.

With @baker's permission :joke: , I will continue to explore the Muslim grievances re. the Satanic Verses. The bold parts give a summary.

There are two points in that wiki article quoted above that may be worthy of some further digging. One is this:

The first use of the expression ["satanic verses"] in English is attributed to Sir William Muir in 1858.

So this is not an Arabic phrase, but one coined by a British orientalist, hence a Westerner. Arab scholars do not call these two verses ("These are the exalted gharāniq, whose intercession is hoped for.") the "satanic" verses; they call them the gharāniq verses (the verses of the cranes).

The title of Rushdie's uses a phrase borrowed from a western characterisation of an incident in the life of Mohammad, a phased not used in Islam. Probably because the reference to the cranes is less embarrassing, less sensational, and more technical.

The title "satanic verses" may thus be seen as tendentious, as not using the due respectful tone and vocabulary one should use while speaking of the Prophet. And it is also western and therefore ideologically suspect from a modern Muslim perspective.

And rightly so IMO, since Muir was a colonizer, in a very literal sense: he was a colonial administrator, enrolling at the age of 18 and serving mainly in the North-West Provinces of British India (now Pakistan) from 1837 to his retirement in 1876, when he became a member of the Council of India in London after a distinguished career. He studied Arabic history and literature. His older brother was John Muir, the Indologist and Sanskrit scholar.

As a matter of fact, Muir's writings about the case have been criticized as polemical or irreverent. These polemics included the episode of the gharāniq verses.

His original book "A Life of Mahomet and History of Islam to the Era of the Hegira" was initially published 1861 in four volumes. The book received attention in both literary and missionary circles, and provoked responses ranging from appreciation to criticism. ... A significant rebuttal to Muir's book was written Syed Ahmed Khan in 1870, called A Series of Essays on the Life of Mohammed, and Subjects Subsidiary Thereto.[9] Khan praised Muir's writing talent and familiarity with Oriental literature, but ... accused Muir of misrepresenting the facts and writing with animus. ... Later reviews of the work have also been mixed, with many scholars describing Muir's work as polemical. — Wikipedia

In conclusion, one reason for Muslim ire may be that Rushdie attracted attention to an embarrassing (alleged/reported) incident in Mohammad's life, and used in his book's title a sensationalistic phrase, one that rings well, a bit too well, one that catches attention instantly.

If Rushdie had used a different title, less catchy and sensational, maybe the book would not have sold so well. "The Verses of the Cranes"?

And this too is an accusation one reads on social media: Rushdie did this to sell books. Back to what my door keeper told me: don't write a novel, a work of fancy about Mohammad, in part because that would be disrespectful but also because it would be lowly commercial, hence consumerist, capitalist, sensational, etc. Not serious. Not good.

None of this of course justifies murder but it's an effort to understand the beef.

Russian soldiers refusing to fight undermine Moscow's offensive
By Denis Kataev and Eric Biegala, Radio France
Published on Tuesday, August 16, 2022 at 8:57 am

There are a few hundred of them, maybe thousands. Russian "refuseniks" who refuse to fight any longer and are imprisoned, even tortured according to the father of one of them. Some would also be sent back into combat.

Recently, the Russian army seems to be struggling in Ukraine: its advances in the Donbass are particularly slow and costly in terms of men and equipment. And obviously it is struggling to recruit fighters, especially since desertions and refusals to fight seem to be multiplying.

"I will solve the problem by my own efforts, I will talk to these soldiers who are responsible. He is my son. I will not leave without him": for several weeks now, Maxime*, in his fifties, has been wandering between the disparate units of the Russian army engaged in Ukraine, in the region of Luhansk where his son Youri*, 26 years old, has disappeared. He did not die in combat, nor was he wounded, he simply refused to continue the offensive started by Moscow on February 24. Since then, he has not been heard from again.

Yuri was an active soldier, a lieutenant assigned to a unit based on the island of Sakhalin in the Pacific, in the Russian Far East. In April, his unit found itself engaged in Ukraine, in the battle of Izium, south of Kharkiv. Izium is a neuralgic point which commands the communication axes towards the Donbass. The battle is hard, the Ukrainians defend themselves with great effort, the Russians finally take Izium, at the price of heavy losses. In June the young lieutenant decides to throw in the towel and refuses to fight any longer. He was immediately arrested, along with other Russian soldiers from his unit who were just as resistant, and incarcerated in Bryanka, a prison in the Luhansk region.

He still managed to reach his father on the phone, who said: "He told me about torture, he said they were tortured. I had already understood this from talking to the parents of other soldiers. According to Yuri, the rebels are regularly beaten and tied up on the floor. There are even mock executions. "Many of those who have been there have told me that they could never have imagined such a thing, that their own country could treat them in this way", Maxime tells us.

The objectors were kept in detention for some time, then transferred: "They were exfiltrated to unknown destinations... Why? I think it's clear, so that they can't say anything about what happened in the prisons. They are not sent back to the units where they used to serve, but to special units, to the areas of the front where the army is suffering the most losses. I think they don't want them to get out alive."

Some Russian units seem to have been condemned as a whole, such as the infamous 64th Motorized Rifle Guards Brigade, probably responsible for the abuses against civilians in Boutcha during the Battle of Kiev. The unit, although decorated by Vladimir Putin, was immediately reintroduced into the battle in Ukraine after its evacuation from the outskirts of Kiev. Its losses have been so great in the Ukrainian Donbass that some are now talking about its probable dissolution.

The losses, in men as well as in equipment, are obviously sufficient for the Russian General Staff to have decided to completely recompose certain units, combining sections with no experience with other more seasoned ones. Yuri, Maxim's son, probably found himself forcibly re-enlisted in one of these units: "He was taken to the prison in Perevalsk, where the men of the Wagner group said they needed him because he was a specialist - Yuri is a sniper - he couldn't refuse, so he went back" to the battle. Maxime traveled all the way to Ukraine, to the province of Luhansk, to try to find his son, who was undoubtedly reengaged in the fighting against his will.

How many are these refractory members of the Russian army? At least several hundred, perhaps even several thousand. In June and July, two units present in the Ukrainian Donbass, the 205th Cossack Motorized Rifle Brigade and the 11th Airborne Assault Brigade, about a thousand men each, reported a total of more than 378 soldiers, non-commissioned officers, and officers who refused to continue fighting in Ukraine.

*First names have been changed

https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceinter/guerre-en-ukraine-les-refuzniks-de-l-armee-russe-plombent-l-offensive-de-moscou-3992522

The prophet comes across as a great man, and there is no contempt for Islam in that book whatsoever.
— Olivier5

You don't get to decide that. — baker

I do, at least for myself. If you disagree, you are welcome to pinpoint what you personally see as the contemptuous parts in Rushdie's book.