The State Department gets a lot of flak, much deserved, but much undeserved, as its job is often to play the good cop or be the make-nice agency of the government. What it rarely does is load both rhetorical barrels and let a highly-courted country have it. Amazingly and gratifyingly, this is exactly what they’ve done with Russia, telling the truth in vivid and moral language. It’s even a bit amusing, beginning:

As Russia spins a false narrative to justify its illegal actions in Ukraine, the world has not seen such startling Russian fiction since Dostoyevsky wrote, “The formula ‘two times two equals five’ is not without its attractions.”

Read the whole thing.

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.