Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan is a vast but sparsely populated former Soviet republic that is now an independent nation. The country was under the rule of the Mongols, was part of the Russian Empire of the Romanovs, and was then part of the Soviet Union before becoming an independent nation.

The name most associated with Kazakhstan is it's former president following independence, Nursultan Nazarbayev. The country is rich both in energy resources and in minerals.

The way of life on the steppe area of Kazakhstan was traditionally nomadic, living in the round tents called yurts, but the largest city is Almaty, formerly known as Alma Ata. The first five images of central Almaty are from Google Street View.

There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >, After clicking the up arrow, you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you wish.

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.2411111,76.9179529,3a,75y,103.5h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipOvZ84vxPs8JmCehBtsKtZn60rx7ZWwrpK187MU!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOvZ84vxPs8JmCehBtsKtZn60rx7ZWwrpK187MU%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya128.45357-ro0-fo100!7i13312!8i6656

Here is more of the central area of Almaty.

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.2505776,76.950461,3a,75y,1.5h,92.93t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipMG58k4C5-wZusmfgG4szfRq5fDy5dNNPzReciC!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMG58k4C5-wZusmfgG4szfRq5fDy5dNNPzReciC%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-2.9338646-ya11.500023-ro-0-fo100!7i6912!8i3456

This is to the south of the central city area of Almaty. The first two images are from Google Street View.

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.2284246,76.9629379,3a,75y,1.5h,93t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipOORcJA38sY_4iPR5CVLEVGKJ6X8JNG9FJgLWt_!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOORcJA38sY_4iPR5CVLEVGKJ6X8JNG9FJgLWt_%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-2.9999962-ya349.5-ro-0-fo100!7i10240!8i5120

These are the mountains adjacent to Almaty. You can tell just by looking at the mountains how they were formed. A range of high mountains with sharp peaks, such as these, are formed by tectonic collision and are not volcanic. Volcanic activity can form a single high mountain, such as Ararat or Kilimanjaro, but when there is a range of volcanic mountains, they will be lower and rounded. The first three images are from Google Street View.

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.054015,76.9784783,3a,75y,3.26h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipNYeteCyXFXzytZUj_BcxfT4RuoXmumigxRswRm!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipNYeteCyXFXzytZUj_BcxfT4RuoXmumigxRswRm%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi0-ya3.2645402-ro0-fo100!7i5656!8i2828

Astana was especially built as the capital city of independent Kazakhstan, in the same way as Brasilia and Canberra. The following scenes are of the central city of Astana. Much of this area is still under construction. 

You can see the influence that Paris has on cities, there is a copy of the Arc de Triomphe all the way out here. The first eight images of the highlights of central Astana are from Google Street View. The building with the single blue dome is the Akorda Presidential Palace. The tower is the Baiterek Tower.

The pyramid is the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation. The monument is in Independence Square. The monument, the pyramid, the Akorda Presidential Palace and the Baiterek Tower are all aligned in a straight line. The Triumphal Arch is not on the line but is on a perpendicular street. But the arch in the building is on the line.

These six images of the cityscape of Astana are from Google Street View.

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.109573,71.415667,3a,75y,320h,110t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipO4AC2IOJOr-dNbFIHMEmESBY1AOFtTBvy8RzQK!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipO4AC2IOJOr-dNbFIHMEmESBY1AOFtTBvy8RzQK%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-20-ya320-ro-0-fo100!7i12000!8i6000

This is further away from the central part of Astana.

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.1555723,71.4323776,3a,75y,310.5h,96.94t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPz-TPyxOE4KaDC_uVaTcLTqe8dHfouvtQ7THSA!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPz-TPyxOE4KaDC_uVaTcLTqe8dHfouvtQ7THSA%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-6.941883-ya310.5-ro-0-fo100!7i12868!8i6434

The northern part of Astana is more of a residential and business area. The first two images are from Google Street View.

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.1953653,71.4074267,3a,75y,240h,100t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipN-fh7tAyN6LYRSJMVGs_K4m8gKIW8GQ2f61OTD!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipN-fh7tAyN6LYRSJMVGs_K4m8gKIW8GQ2f61OTD%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-10-ya240-ro0-fo100!7i12868!8i6434

The first satellite, Sputnik, and the first human, Yuri Gagarin, that was launched into orbit from earth were launched from Kazakhstan. The reason that the Soviets' Baikonour Cosmodrome was located here is, of course, the vast open spaces made it less likely that a rocket would land on a populated area if something went wrong with the launch. The following scenes are of a museum of the Soviet Space Program. The first two images are from Google Street View.

https://www.google.com/maps/@45.909472,63.3180281,3a,75y,349.5h,92.93t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipOzqJI4OBDjNWXkMLS1fccp2TpdrGG_u_eU3vk_!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOzqJI4OBDjNWXkMLS1fccp2TpdrGG_u_eU3vk_%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-4.467352-ya349.1922-ro-3.7553082-fo100!7i5376!8i2688

This is some scenes of the actual launch pads at Baikonour. Russia now has a new launch site in Siberia and so will no longer need this one in Kazakhstan. But this will be forever a part of history. The first image is from Google Street View.

https://www.google.com/maps/@45.9200912,63.3389296,3a,75y,91.5h,92.93t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipNuC-2ez2BaYCXCe_yrng7Z84q1F3zsvEw2BwM!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipNuC-2ez2BaYCXCe_yrng7Z84q1F3zsvEw2BwM%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-2.9338646-ya0.4604024-ro-0-fo100!7i6000!8i3000

The city of Kurchatov is adjacent to the Semipalatinsk Test Site, where more than four hundred nuclear weapons were detonated. In a continuous effort to perfect nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union tested a bomb here on average about once every six weeks. The vast and sparsely populated landscape of Kazakhstan made it ideal as not only the place to launch spacecraft but also for nuclear tests.

https://www.google.com/maps/@50.75277,78.5497378,3a,75y,140h,110t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipOCczVuhxzxdSoB-c38QKKxuWTjha-R9Xs6dIwy!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOCczVuhxzxdSoB-c38QKKxuWTjha-R9Xs6dIwy%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-20-ya177.29333-ro0-fo100!7i7168!8i3581

From Kazakhstan Into Space

On the subject of Kazakhstan, let's remember that the first human in space left from there. America ultimately reached the moon with astronauts, and it is only Americans that have been on the moon. But the Soviet Union put the first satellite in orbit, Sputnik, and then the first astronaut in orbit. His name was Yuri Gagarin. Both left from Kazakhstan, and both had long-term effects on the world.

THE SPUTNIK VECTOR 

There seems to me to have been a change of direction in America's attitude toward learning in the Sixties that I would like to term "The Sputnik Vector". This explains much about the U.S. and the world today. In 1957, the Soviet satellite Sputnik was launched as the first satellite to orbit the earth. America's reaction to it created the Sputnik Vector.

According to news reports, the American rocket community and those of other western countries did not really consider Sputnik as a big deal. It was an aluminum sphere about the size of a basketball with a radio transmitter emitting beeps as it orbited the earth. Amateur radio operators across the world tuned in to the beeps. But the media and the public perceived that Sputnik represented a falling behind in technical capability.

The result was a new emphasis in American learning on science and technology. A major step in the new emphasis on science and technology was the 1964 New York World's Fair. The Unisphere was the symbol of the World's Fair and is still there. It has the orbital paths of satellites around the earth. Image from Google Street View.

The most obvious result was the Apollo missions to the moon and the robot spacecraft missions to explore the planets. I actually see the most important result of space exploration not as the moon landings but as the Hubble Space Telescope, and now the James Webb Telescope. Back on earth, the media in the sixties manifested the Sputnik Vector with popular television shows like Lost in Space and Star Trek.

The Sputnik Vector ultimately returned to earth in the form of the internet. It became more about technology than science. The Sputnik Vector continued to produce terrestrial fruit with personal computers, global positioning systems, cell phones (just like on Star Trek) and satellite and cable TV.

But the Sputnik Vector did not come without a price. It came at the expense of history, geography and foreign languages in education. We had redistributed the learning pie in the direction of technology without increasing the pie. So, some things had to become comparatively more neglected.

The Vietnam War was very much affected by the Sputnik Vector. There was more emphasis on high-tech warfare than there was on understanding the people we were fighting with and against. The public reaction to the Communist Tet Offensive in early 1968 mirrored the reaction to Sputnik. The offensive was not really a military success but the public perceived it as a testament to the ineffectuality of the war effort.

I was caught up in the Sputnik Vector myself. I landed in the U.S. as an eight year old in the autumn of 1968. The space program was close to putting a man on the moon and I could not get enough of reading about space. The result is today the blog you are reading. But yet, I also consider it vital to understand the world and that is the reason for the weekly visits on this blog.

The Sputnik Vector created one America at the expense of another. In a way, the 9/11 attack was a clash between the two. If the Sputnik Vector had never come about and the non-Sputnik America had happened, we would have fewer technical capabilities than we do today and you may not be reading this blog now. But we would understand the world better and 9/11 may not have happened.

THE STORY OF YURI GAGARIN 

Yuri Gagarin was a Soviet cosmonaut and the first man in space. He never made another space flight and was later killed in a military plane crash. But Yuri Gagarin has a far-reaching story that, as I see it, really changed the world.

With a charming smile Yuri Gagarin was popular wherever he went. At the height of the Cold War he was really the Soviet Union's most effective weapon, and visited countries around the world.

He visited my native England. The initial plan was a visit to London but he accepted an invitation to Manchester, and charmed people wherever he went. The Queen and prime minister had originally not intended to meet him but, taken by surprise by his popularity, arranged a meeting.

John F. Kennedy was clearly alarmed by his popularity and he was barred from entering the United States. Yuri Gagarin spoke at the United Nations but he was taken there from the airport by helicopter so, not having gone through customs, he technically didn't enter the U.S.

America ended up landing the first astronaut on the moon. How much of a coincidence is it that Neil Armstrong bore a striking resemblance to Yuri Gagarin? The U.S. was well aware of Gagarin's popularity and was clearly trying to create it's own version of him in Neil Armstrong although Gagarin, by the time of Armstrong landing on the moon, had been killed in the plane crash.

After we had landed in the U.S., but before the astronauts landed on the moon, I remember my mother and father telling me about a man who had been in space and had visited our native England. Had I not been told that I might not have picked up a children's book titled "Space" in the 60th Street School library. This is what began my interest in science and without it I might not be writing this blog. 

More than twenty years after Yuri Gagarin's orbital flight times were changing. Mikhail Gorbachev took leadership of the Soviet Union in 1985. He began a "charm offensive", as well as extensive internal reforms.

Gorbachev's charm offensive took the world by surprise. It was clearly well-planned. I am sure that the earlier, highly successful, charm offensive of Yuri Gagarin, that was clearly feared by John F. Kennedy, was the model for Gorbachev's charm offensive. 

Gorbachev made the world a better place. I consider him as the world's most important person of the second half of the Twentieth Century. But since Gorbachev's policy abroad was modeled on Yuri Gagarin that means he changed the world in ways that go far beyond being the first man in space.

On 9 / 11 four passenger aircraft were hijacked and three were flown into buildings. On the fourth aircraft the passengers rallied and stormed the cockpit of the plane, overwhelming the terrorists. All were killed as the plane crashed into a field, but their actions saved whatever their target was, likely the U.S. Capitol.

As they stormed the cockpit the rallying cry of the heroic passengers was "Let's Roll". What I have never seen written about 9 / 11 is that "Let's Roll" was what Yuri Gagarin had said as his spacecraft was being launched.

Mercury And Theia

It was in the news this week that Theia is believed to have originated in the inner Solar System. Theia was a planet, about the size of Mars, that once collided with earth and shattered into pieces. The pieces continued in orbit around the sun, alongside the earth, until they merged together by their mutual gravity to form the moon. 

Let's review this posting about my hypothesis that there is a connection between Theia and Mercury. More has been added to it.

There is a saying about "putting two and two together". Why don't we see if we can apply it today?

It is widely believed that a planetary object once collided with earth. The fragments of this object collected back together by gravity to form the moon. The object has been named "Theia". There is also believed to be parts of Theia embedded in earth's mantle.

There is reason to believe that the moon formed from such a collision. First, the moon lacks a large iron core like the planets have. Iron is as far as the ordinary fusion process goes, in the star that preceded the sun that exploded in a supernova. This is why iron is so abundant in the inner Solar System. It is the most abundant element on earth by mass. We know that the moon is made of rock, lacking a large iron core, because it is 1/64 the volume of the earth but only 1/81 the mass of the earth. The moon also has practically no magnetic field, which is created by an iron core.

Another reason for believing that the moon formed from fragments is how it's surface gravity varies from place to place. This actually caused the first astronauts that landed on the moon to miss their intended landing site by several km.

My geology theory expands on this concept of Theia to explain the continents as part of the planetary object that remained on earth, instead of being hurtled back into space to form the moon. An abbreviated version of the geology theory, on this blog "Geology Theory With Satellite Imagery And Maps", March 2024.

But how could such a mass of rock like Theia have formed in the Solar System without an iron core? This would be completely unlike the rest of the inner Solar System. Or is what remains of Theia, including an iron core, still out there somewhere?

Now let's go to another mystery in the inner Solar System, that of the planet Mercury. The smallest and closest planet to the sun has the opposite mystery to the missing iron core of the moon. The iron core of Mercury occupies a much higher proportion of the planet's cross section than that of earth. Mercury is sometimes referred to as the "Iron Planet". Mercury's rocky mantle and crust takes up a much lower proportion of it's cross section than that of earth.

The following diagram represents the cross section of the earth. The inner red circle is the iron core and the outer blue circle is the rocky mantle and crust.

In the following diagram the double circle at left represents the cross section of Mercury. The inner red circle is the core and the outer blue circle represents the rocky mantle and crust. The circle at right represents the moon, made of rock but without a significant iron core.

There is speculation that Mercury must have underwent some type of collision to have lost much of it's former rocky mantle. I can't see that anyone has "put two and two together". What if Mercury, which is the smallest planet, is the remainder of Theia, which collided with the earth to result in the formation of the moon? The collision caused it to lose orbital energy so that it fell into a lower orbit closer to the sun, where we see it today as Mercury.

Something else that is interesting is that Mercury has undergone a tremendous impact in it's past. There is an impact crater, known as Caloris, that is one-third of the diameter of the planet. The impact was so great that it distorted the terrain on the diametrically opposite side of the planet. The crater is said to be from relatively recently in the planet's history, because it doesn't contain as many craters as the terrain outside the crater, but this could be due to a factor like lava emerging from the crater and possibly the crater is from the impact with earth.

I think this deserves some consideration because it is just "putting two and two together".

THE OUTER PLANETS 

With the connection between Theia and Mercury, let's now have a look at the possibility of a similar connection in the outer Solar System. There are two mysteries in the outer Solar System, and I wonder if there could be a connection between them caused by an impact resembling that of Theia.

The first mystery is Uranus. This is the third largest planet, after Jupiter and Saturn. The other planets have their rotational axis fairly close to perpendicular to their plane of revolution around the sun. The earth's axis has a considerable tilt of 23.5 degrees. This is what causes the seasons. But the axis of Uranus has an extreme tilt of nearly 98 degrees. 

It has long been presumed that the planet must have been "knocked on it's side" by some kind of collision. What I think happened is that there was a collision, and the added mass unbalanced the planet's rotation. To regain stability, the planet shifted on it's axis so that one of the poles was centered on the added mass. Since the tilt of the axis is more than 90 degrees, there must have been at least two separate impacts and axial shifts. This is very similar to what I proposed in my geology theory of the earth, as referenced above.

The second mystery is Neptune and Pluto. Neptune is the next planet after Uranus. The orbits of Neptune and Pluto, around the sun, are in a resonance of 3:2. Pluto orbits the sun twice for each three orbits of Neptune. The two are also connected in that the orbit of Pluto crosses that of Neptune. This means that, for a time, Pluto is closer to the sun than Neptune. The general conclusion is that Pluto was once a moon of Neptune.

The obvious conclusion is that a planet-sized object, something like Theia in the inner Solar System, approached from further out in space. It's gravity transferred some of it's orbital energy to Pluto, which was then a moon of Neptune. The higher the orbit of an object the greater it's orbital energy. This broke Pluto away from Neptune's gravity, although it continued in an orbit around the sun that was coordinated with Neptune.

The object's loss of some orbital energy caused it to fall inward, closer to the sun, where it collided with Uranus, probably breaking into at least two pieces first.

This is very similar to the scenario that I proposed for the inner Solar System and both are just "putting two and two together".

Ants And Cosmology

My concept of the "Lowest Information Point", December 2017, also applies to living things. 

We know that the universe always seeks the lowest energy state. This is why an object in the air will fall to the ground, it requires less energy than holding it in the air. My theory of how information works has energy and information as really the same thing. We can see that energy and information is really the same thing in how we cannot add information to anything without applying energy to it and we cannot apply energy to anything without adding information to it.

Another way we can see that energy and information is really the same thing is how we can make our lives physically easier by technology, but only at the expense of making them more complex. We can never, on a large scale, make our lives physically easier and also less complex.

One way that the universe seeks the Lowest Information Point can be illustrated by related ratios. Consider the following two equations. A/B = C/D and A/B = B/C. The second equation contains less information because it contains only three points of information, while the first contains four. The reason for this is that, in the second equation, the denominator of the first ratio is also the numerator of the second.

In my cosmology theory everything in the universe, both space and matter, are composed of nearly-infinitesimal negative and positive electric charges. This is why Planck's Length shows up in so many physics formula. It is the length of one of these electric charges.

This must mean that the scale halfway between the scale of one of these electric charges and the scale of the entire universe must be a favored scale in the theory of the "Lowest Information Point", based on this concept of related ratios.

I had long wondered why so much of the solid matter in the universe is in the form of dust. It seemed as if dust is in some kind of favored position. According to the Lowest Information Point indeed it is. The average scale of a typical mote of dust is about halfway between the nearly-infinitesimal scale of the fundamental electric charges and the nearly-infinite scale of the entire universe.

I soon realized that this also explains why metals exist, as opposed to non-metals. Most of the elements of the Periodic Table are metals. In a metal, a large group of atoms share their outermost electrons. This gives metals different physical properties from non-metals. A group of atoms that share their outermost electrons is known as a crystal. The simple explanation for metals is that the typical scale of a crystal, like a mote of dust, is a favored position because it is about halfway between the nearly-infinitesimal scale of the electric charges and the nearly-infinite scale of the entire universe.

When it comes to living things, the Theory of Evolution never made a lot of sense to me. I was interested in science long before religion and I thought that there must be more to this in explaining life on earth. I won't go into detail here but I described it in the blog "God Must Have Created Us".

One living thing that really stands out as stars of the race to be the "survival of the fittest" is ants. Countless other species have come and gone but ants remain. I see little doubt that ants are the most successful creatures on earth over the long-term.

But what is it that makes ants so successful? Could it be that ants have something going for them beyond earth? What if ants have the whole universe going for them? Notice that the average scale of ants is about the same as for dust, this puts them in a favored position. Just as the universe has a bias toward dust, the earth has a bias toward ants. Image from the Wikipedia article "Ant".

Apocalyptic Developments

This is in regard to the parallel postings "The End Of The World As We Know It" and "Inducing The Apocalypse", both June 2025.

We know that the Antichrist will be the greatest leader that the world has ever seen, and will have a high degree of control over the world and it's people. The fabled "Mark of the Beast", which will be necessary to buy or sell, could be an app and the digital ID that is required to access it. A number of governments have introduced all-purpose, or "super apps". These are government apps that provide everything from social media to making payments. Russia is introducing it's MAX app, and China has WeChat. Access is gained by a special digital ID. Governments can shut down part, or all, of the rest of the Internet so that only it's own app works.

Donald Trump is really setting the pace for the Antichrist, because we know that it will be followed by the Kingdom of Jesus on earth. Donald Trump is the most prominent person in the world and is now claiming to have begun the end of the war in Ukraine. All that the Antichrist will have to do is to step into the role that Donald Trump has created.

Donald Trump has come up with a plan for peace in Ukraine. The plan clearly favors Russia, which seems to find it acceptable. But Europe and Ukraine do not really like the plan, although it is a step toward peace. What is interesting is that Donald Trump introduced the plan just as the G-20 meeting was to take place in South Africa, where the peace plan would clearly be a main topic of discussion. Donald Trump then snubbed the G-20 and didn't attend the meeting. Was this to prompt the Europeans to come up with their own peace plan, that was more acceptable? But Europe is still so many different countries, what if the European Union could come up with a great leader of their own, instead of relying on Donald Trump to negotiate their future? We know that the Antichrist will be from Europe.

Remember the three Reagan-Gorbachev Summits of the 1980s, to reduce the number of nuclear missiles. While it was a definite step toward peace, there was resentment in Europe about their future being decided for them, over their heads, by an American and a Russian. What Europeans could do was to join together and a few years later the Maastricht Treaty was signed, which created the European Union as we have it today. What Europeans could do today is to come up with a great leader of their own, instead of relying on Donald Trump.

We know that the final series of wars of the world will begin with an invasion of Israel by a nation to it's "uttermost north" (Ezekiel). The only nation that fits this description is Russia, and Moscow is due north of Israel. Russia has introduced it's own peace plan for the Middle East that is much more favorable to the Palestinians, and it is very unlikely that it will be accepted by Israel.

The Eastern Delay

The conflict in Ukraine illustrates something in geopolitics that I think should have a name. I call it "The Eastern Delay". It is necessary to understand this in order to understand the conflict.

There were two great splits in the Catholic Church. The Eastern Orthodox Church split away in the Great Schism of the year 1054. The Protestants split away in the Reformation that began in 1517.

Following the Reformation, Europe was convulsed by more than a century of warfare between Protestants and Catholics. The Protestants succeeded in splitting away but it left Europe drained and devastated by war. However there was no comparable level of warfare when the Eastern Orthodox Church split away, even though that split was at least as consequential and acrimonious as the Protestant split.

The comparable conflict brought about by the Eastern Orthodox split actually did happen. But it was delayed into far in the future by what I call "The Eastern Delay". The conflict finally arrived in modern secular form, as Napoleon's Invasion of Russia, the eastern fronts of both world wars, and the Cold War. By this time the original religious conflict had been supplanted by the modern secular ideologies of Communism, Capitalism and, National Socialism, but had to be played out nonetheless.

In the early 1990s, after the end of traditional Communism, two multi-ethnic former Communist nations came apart. These were the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.

The Soviet Union came apart peacefully, but Yugoslavia didn't. Yugoslavia was composed of six republics, based on ethnicity, but a lot of ethnic mixing had taken place. The northernmost republic of Slovenia, where America's first lady is from, slipped away with minimal combat. But there were Serbs living in Croatia, and in Bosnia, and Croatians living in Bosnia.

Each of these tried to split away into an ethnic enclave when the republic itself declared independence. The Serbs in Croatia tried to claim part of the eastern area of the new country, called Krajina. Serbs living in Bosnia declared "Republic Skrpsa", when Bosnia declared independence. 

The multi-faceted war that resulted was extremely nasty. Almost all of the conflict involved Serbs, first against Croatians and then against Bosnians. The goal was not to hold Yugoslavia together but to create a "Greater Serbia". There was a limited amount of combat between Croatians and Bosnians. Finally there was part of Serbia, that was populated by ethnic Albanians, called Kosovo that succeeded in breaking away from Serbia.

Even in our modern secular time religious history is a very powerful force. The Yugoslav conflict was not overtly about religion but the theaters of the multi-faceted conflict were almost all along traditional religious lines. Croatians were traditionally Catholic while Serbs were Eastern Orthodox. During rule by the Ottomans Islam was introduced into the area and many Bosnians were Muslim.

The breakup of the much-larger and more multi-ethnic Soviet Union, in contrast, was peaceful. But was it relatively peaceful in the same way that the splitting away of the Eastern Orthodox Church, in 1054, was relatively peaceful? With the combat just being delayed until later by what I have termed " The Eastern Delay"?

There was a medieval kingdom, known as Kievan Rus, that was the predecessor of Ukraine, Russia and, Belarus. As the name implies the central city of Kievan Rus was Kiev, now spelled Kyiv. The center of the Eastern Orthodox Church moved from Kiev (Kyiv), which is what made Moscow an important city, because Kiev (Kyiv) was so devastated in a Thirteenth Century attack by the Mongols.

The present conflict in Ukraine isn't really anything out of the ordinary. It is what might have happened at the breakup of the Soviet Union, matching the parallel conflict in Yugoslavia, except that it was delayed by thirty years by "The Eastern Delay".

Happy Thanksgiving

This week is U.S. Thanksgiving. It is a harvest festival commemorating the first settlers having enough to eat. Just in case they didn't, we will make up for it for them. Why don't we take the opportunity to review what the Western Hemisphere is about?

www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-western-hemisphere.html?m=0

Baku

Like neighboring Georgia and Armenia, Azerbaijan is a small country. It is a former Soviet republic that has Russia to the north, Iran to the south, and Turkey to the southwest. Azerbaijan is an independent nation, but there is also a bordering region of Iran known as Azerbaijan, divided into West Azerbaijan and East Azerbaijan provinces. Like Iran, Azerbaijan is predominantly a Shiite Moslem country by religion.

Azerbaijanis are sometimes referred to as Azeris.

The first thing that most people think of when it comes to Azerbaijan is oil. The oil is relatively near the surface and was discovered long before the oil in the Middle East. In the Second World War, the Nazis very much wanted control of the oil in the Caucasus region, and that is likely what caused them to overextend their forces before the Battle of Stalingrad, which proved to be the turning point of the war.

Although Azerbaijan is on the western side of the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijanis are of Turkic ethnicity. The original Turkic homeland was to the east of the Caspian Sea. The nation of Turkey, although well to the west, is so-named because it's people are also predominantly Turkic. In between Azerbaijan and Turkey is Armenia, which is historically Christian and not Turkic. That is why Armenia has had extensive conflict in the past involving both Turkey and Azerbaijan.

A thought that occurred to me once was the unrecognized power of the people who publish world atlases. Their power has been greatly diluted by the internet but, in the days before the internet, companies like Rand McNally and National Geographic actually had a tremendous amount of control over whether declared countries are recognized. 

Consider the would-be countries that would have liked international recognition of their independence, such as Somaliland, Northern Cyprus or those South African "homelands" like Bophuthatswana or Transkei. What might the difference have been if one or more major world atlases had shown them as independent countries? Today, Google Earth and Maps has a considerable amount of authority to recognize countries.

The capital and largest city of Azerbaijan is Baku. It is a fairly old city, probably close to a thousand years old. The city is far below sea level and is located on a peninsula extending out into the Caspian Sea. If you wonder why the water doesn't come rushing into the city, remember that the Caspian Sea is cut off from the rest of the world seas. But the Caspian Sea is saltwater, so that it is a sea and not a lake.

The following scenes begin in the oldest part of Baku. Some of what is here, such as the Maiden Tower, dates to the 12th Century. These three images, from Google Street View, are of the Twelfth-Century Maiden Tower.

These six images, from Google Street View, are of the walls and Old City of Baku.

The building that looks like a folded carpet, that is exactly what it is, a museum of Azerbaijani carpets, which the country has long been known for. These two images are from Google Street View.

This is the older part of the city, but not the original Old City. Three images from Google Street View.

The three tall glass buildings, that are shaped like flames, are known as the Flame Towers, and have illumination at night to appear like flames in celebration of Azerbaijan's oil and energy resources. These two images are from Google Street View.

There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >, After clicking the up arrow, you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you wish.

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.3639273,49.833093,3a,75y,52.5h,96.94t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipO7ecM-os_GU-uEoZ3lYg64-1TRbFfD0bRXcip6!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipO7ecM-os_GU-uEoZ3lYg64-1TRbFfD0bRXcip6%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-6.941883-ya9.499999-ro-0-fo100!7i8704!8i4352

Here are some more views of Baku close to the waterfront.

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.3682826,49.842996,3a,75y,220h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipNmSWWK7B-s2Tjc954KKAAYEV0IY0W1wxAf5OIa!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipNmSWWK7B-s2Tjc954KKAAYEV0IY0W1wxAf5OIa%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-2.2146182-ya6.816127-ro-0.28516307-fo100!7i5760!8i2880

This is the modern city of Baku, further from the waterfront. The first six images are from Google Street View.

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.3887809,49.8380413,3a,75y,193.5h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipNw5uEHo9rTB7jYeLnL-SnVDu3TtOiXS2tGVrPi!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipNw5uEHo9rTB7jYeLnL-SnVDu3TtOiXS2tGVrPi%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi0-ya222.49998-ro-0-fo100!7i6144!8i3072

The modern part of the city extends still further from the waterfront.

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4013101,49.843812,3a,75y,7.5h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipOykPyXL8y31sowWubvya04FBuYPzgy0gWQNe03!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOykPyXL8y31sowWubvya04FBuYPzgy0gWQNe03%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-3.188638-ya29.855492-ro-3.9353476-fo100!7i5376!8i2688

This is more of a residential and small business area of Baku.

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4230366,49.8308786,3a,75y,140h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPv4V7YmkaCemNy9pEX3t1iudqdgUaQetqCl9a2!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPv4V7YmkaCemNy9pEX3t1iudqdgUaQetqCl9a2%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi2.977228-ya284.77484-ro-0.5101744-fo100!7i5120!8i2560

Just as Armenia is in two pieces, with a separate enclave within neighboring Azerbaijan that was known as Nagorno-Karabakh, and is now the Republic of Artsakh, Azerbaijan also has a separate enclave on the other side of Armenia, bordering Iran, known as Nakchivan. 

An obvious question is why don't Armenia and Azerbaijan simply exchange Nakchivan for Nagorno-Karabakh? Since I am not of either nationality myself, I won't try to answer for them. This is what Nakchivan looks like today, on the other side of Armenia from the rest of Azerbaijan. These four images, from Google Street View, are of Nakchivan.