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Central Asia

More Silk Road Adventures - The Caucasus - War with Armenia

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War with Armenia

 

Leaving Baku we would need to head north into Georgia because the border with Armenia is a war zone.  So it's not possible to cross it, at least not in a tour coach, with any safety. The present enmity dates back to 1917 but the roots are much earlier, perhaps going back to the 12th century and the arrival of Islam; or to the fourth century and the arrival of Christianity; or perhaps even to the 5th century BCE and the arrival of Zoroastrianism?

Coming forward to modern times, from the turn of the 19th century Tsar Nicholas II (the bloody) had made a series of catastrophic military mistakes that got worse at the start of the First World War.  So Russia was in turmoil, culminating in the first revolution at the beginning of 1917.  As a result the Russian Army of the Caucuses was withdrawn and the (Turkish) Ottoman Empire saw an opportunity to invade.  Muslim Azerbaijanis for their part saw their chance for independence.  But it did not go smoothly.  A bloody civil war broke out between ethnic (Christian) Armenians, who remembered the Armenian Genocide in Turkey, and (Muslim) Azerbaijanis, supporting the Turks.

Then in October there was a second, Bolshevik, Revolution in Russia and the Russian Civil War began. In Transcaucasia, particularly in Georgia, the Bolsheviks had been opposed by the Mensheviks (see later) and now inroads were being made by the anti-revolutionary forces known as White Russians (remember Dr Zhivago), who enjoyed initial military success here with western support. 

 

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David Lean (movie) and Boris Pasternak (book) - a very popular story in the West during the Cold War
source: public domain

So neither side were in a position to stop the sectarian violence in Azerbaijan. In 1918 a new, but short lived, Azerbaijani Democratic Republic was declared by the separatists but failed to stop the fighting.  Social stability was not restored until 1920 when the Russian Civil War ended in a Bolshevik victory.  The Russians then prevailed and an Azerbaijani Soviet was established under Lenin.  People who had taken part in that violence were still unsatisfied and old memories, passed on to new generations, die hard.  So traditional enmities and disputes over territory flared up again when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Russians withdrew, yet again.  Our local guide made his still bitter partisan feelings on these matters quite clear.

 

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Taiwan

 

 

 

In May 2015 four of us, Craig and Sonia Wendy and I, bought a package deal: eleven days in Taiwan and Hong Kong - Wendy and I added two nights in China at the end.  We had previously travelled together with Craig and Sonia in China; Russia, India and South America and this seemed like a good place to do it again and to learn more about the region.

Taiwan is one of the Four Asian Tigers, along with Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong, achieving the fastest economic growth on the Planet during the past half century. Trying to understand that success was of equal interest with any ‘new sights’ we might encounter.

Read more: Taiwan

Fiction, Recollections & News

The Meaning of Death

 

 

 

 

 

 

'I was recently restored to life after being dead for several hours' 

The truth of this statement depends on the changing and surprisingly imprecise meaning of the word: 'dead'. 

Until the middle of last century a medical person may well have declared me dead.  I was definitely dead by the rules of the day.  I lacked most of the essential 'vital signs' of a living person and the technology that sustained me in their absence was not yet perfected. 

I was no longer breathing; I had no heartbeat; I was limp and unconscious; and I failed to respond to stimuli, like being cut open (as in a post mortem examination) and having my heart sliced into.  Until the middle of the 20th century the next course would have been to call an undertaker; say some comforting words then dispose of my corpse: perhaps at sea if I was travelling (that might be nice); or it in a box in the ground; or by feeding my low-ash coffin into a furnace then collect the dust to deposit or scatter somewhere.

But today we set little store by a pulse or breathing as arbiters of life.  No more listening for a heartbeat or holding a feather to the nose. Now we need to know about the state of the brain and central nervous system.  According to the BMA: '{death} is generally taken to mean the irreversible loss of capacity for consciousness combined with the irreversible loss of capacity to breathe'.  In other words, returning from death depends on the potential of our brain and central nervous system to recover from whatever trauma or disease assails us.

Read more: The Meaning of Death

Opinions and Philosophy

More nuclear medicine

 

 

 

As a follow-up to my radiation treatment for prostate cancer, that I reported here as: Medical fun and games, I recently underwent a PET scan, to check that all is well. 

When I first heard of them I imagined that a PET scan was a more generic all-encompassing version of a CAT scan - perhaps one involving dogs and rabbits; or even goldfish?

Read more: More nuclear medicine

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