A versus An

Christianity, once again, at the heart of a civilizational battle - this time among Christians themselves. - The Cradle

Clash of Christianities: Why Europe cannot understand Russia by Pepe Escobar opens with this:

Under an ubiquitous, toxic atmosphere of cognitive dissonance drenched in Russophobia, it’s absolutely impossible to have a meaningful discussion on finer points of Russian history and culture across the NATO space – a phenomenon I’m experiencing back in Paris right now, fresh from a long stint in Istanbul.

And I am immediately derailed by the "an" in front of "ubiquitous". Shouldn't that be an "a" instead of an "an"? I did some checking and it kind of depends on how you pronounce ubiquitous.  If you pronounce it oo-bik-wit-us, then the "an" is correct, but if you pronounce it like right thinking stalwarts of Western Civilization, you pronounce it you-bik-wit-us, and you should use "a".

Pepe has appeared here before.

Application of Force

We have two links that are just barely related. One is about military force and the other about financial force. I have lumped them together because those seem to be the only forces the world understands.

Citizen Kane
(an image from the movie)

First off we have Yard Sale of the Mind talking about billionaires and how their influence can be much larger than one might suppose.

May 9 Celebration in Mariupol, Ukraine

The other is from Pepe Escobar about Russia's incursion into the Ukraine and how the story being promoted by the Biden regime might not be accurate.

A couple other things I heard about Ukraine that make a certain amount of sense are -

• The US military is using the conflict in the Ukraine to get rid of a bunch of weapons that are either obsolete or will soon be. Get rid of the old stuff and when you replace it you can get new and better stuff.
• The purpose of the USA led attack on Russia is to maintain the US dollar as the world standard.  Being the world standard is what has allowed us to spend trillions of newly minted dollars to buy stuff from other countries, even though there is no substance behind our money. It's like, we're the USA, trust us, all hale the almighty dollar. However, by freezing Russia's currency reserves we may have shot our selves in the foot as many other countries will take that as evidence that we can't be trusted.

Kazakhstan

Mayor's office on fire in Almaty, Kazakhstan - Valery Sharifulin/TASS

You may have heard about the riots in Kazakhstan and how they were promptly squashed. You may have thought, like I did, that it was entirely an internal matter. The price of fuel shot up when the president stopped subsidizing it. That might trigger a protest that could turn into a riot. But now we have a story from Pepe Escobar telling us that the unrest was fomented by outside forces, namely the Brits and Turkey. If the Brits are involved can the CIA be far behind? What baffles me is what they hope to achieve. I suppose they could be trying to gain some temporary advantage in the petroleum marketplace that would allow them to make a couple extra zillion dollars. That seems foolish since there seems to be an insatiable demand for fuel. Given the CIA's history of shit stirring all over the world, I wouldn't be surprised to find out they were involved. And I wouldn't be surprised if Biden didn't know anything about it. Then again I wouldn't be surprised to find that he engineered the whole thing. I mean the whole US opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is to make sure that transit fees keep being paid to Ukraine. Wretched vultures.

Kazakhstan has appeared here before, mostly because of the spaceship launch facility in Baikonur.

Via ZeroHedge

Afghanistan, Balochistan, Bananastan

Balochistan, Pakistan

That gadfly Pepe Escobar has a story up on The Cradle:

Terror from Balochistan: a menacing tool to disrupt Sino-Pakistani economics

Did you think we were done meddling in southwest Asia? Ha! Think again.