### Shimon Peres to Vladimir Putin: “I said to him: ‘You are 63 years old, and I am 93. Tell me, what do you want to achieve over the next 30 years? What are you fighting for? Are you hoping to irritate America?’ He replied: — No. — Does America want to take part of Russia? — No. — Do you have problems with Obama because of some misunderstanding? He asked: — Why are you asking me this? I said: — Listen, I am not a spy. You can talk to me about anything. He asked: — And what do you think? I replied: — America will win, no matter what you do. — Why? — he asked. — Because they are happy, and you are not. And I continued: When an American wakes up in the morning, what does he see? To the south, Mexico — and Mexicans are welcomed into his country. To the north, Canada, his best friend in the world. And to the east and west, fish swimming in the water. What does Obama have to worry about? And you? Who do you see around you when you wake up in the morning? Japan, China, Afghanistan? My God! They know you have an enormous territory, yet you give them nothing. You possess 20 percent of the world's freshwater reserves, but you share nothing with others. And when the snow in Siberia melts, the first people you will see there will be the Chinese. After all, there are many Chinese in the east and very few Russians. The second thing I told him was this: America has the best ratio of land area to population in the world. You have the worst. Twenty million square kilometers! My God! But you don't have enough people to develop that territory. Your people are dying. Do not be seduced by applause or by what people tell you. They will never forgive you for this. Why do Russians live, on average, only 62 years, while Americans live to 82? And then I told him: — You behave like a tsar. What did the tsars do? They built two cities — St. Petersburg and Moscow — as showcases. You can find anything you want there. But the rest of Russia is Nigeria covered in snow. Your people are dying. You are not giving them the opportunity to live with dignity. Do you really think they will forgive you? — Why is America great? — he asked. — Because America gives. And why does Europe have problems? Because Europe takes. America gives. People think Americans do this because they are generous. I believe they do it because they are wise. When you give, you make friends. The most valuable investment you can ever make is an investment in friendship. America had the courage to implement the Marshall Plan. It devoted an enormous share of its GDP to helping Europe, which was lying in ruins at the time. And by doing so, America proved that such assistance is one of the best investments in the world. There was not a single European country that had not been an empire. The French, the British, the Portuguese — they all had colonies. And what happened? They were driven out and left with nothing. Britain was the greatest empire, the empire on which the sun never set. It controlled all the oceans. But even the nonviolent resistance of the Indian people forced Britain to leave, reducing it to just three small islands that it now doesn't know what to do with. Believe me,’ I told Putin, ‘enemies and hostility are the greatest losses in life. You are investing in stupidity.’” — Attributed to Shimon Peres, former President of Israel, recounting a conversation with Vladimir Putin.

This is Tommy. Tommy had a question about my allegiances. Listen to the end to hear about his.

Mata Hari, the exotic dancer and international sex symbol, photographed at the height of her fame. On October 15, 1917, she was executed by firing squad after being convicted of espionage for Germany. Born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle on August 7, 1876, in the Netherlands, the woman who would become one of the world’s great sex symbols began life in privilege. This ended when her father declared bankruptcy when she was 13. From there, her life took a series of increasingly unfortunate turns: a teachers’ college where she was pursued by the headmaster and blamed for the resulting scandal, followed by marriage to a Dutch colonial military officer more than 20 years her senior whom she met through a personal ad. The marriage was a disaster. Her husband was an abusive alcoholic and adulterer, their eldest son died at just two years old, and after their divorce, he refused to pay child support and never returned their daughter after a visit. While living with her husband in Java, Zelle adopted the name Mata Hari, from the Malay word matahari, meaning “eye of the day.” After her marriage collapsed, she moved to Paris and reinvented herself as an exotic dancer, rapidly rising to fame. Drawing on her years in Indonesia, she crafted a persona as a Javanese princess of Hindu birth who had studied sacred Indian dance since childhood before being cast out of her homeland by the Dutch military. The story was largely a fabrication, but it made for one hell of an act. Mata Hari adopted elaborate East Indies-inspired costumes and jewelry, incorporating a form of striptease into her performances. She gradually removed her robes until she was left wearing little more than a jeweled breastplate, sometimes, jeweled armbands, and ornaments in her hair and on her body. Drawing on some of the dances she had encountered in Indonesia, she combined the exotic persona with her striking looks, confidence, and willingness to flaunt her body. Audiences were captivated. She went from performing in modest salons to larger theaters, attracting the attention of Gabriel Astruc, one of the era’s most prominent promoters and agents. She was hired for ballets and operas, invited to lavish parties, and traveled extensively for performances and at the expense of the many wealthy men who desired her. Intelligent and adaptable, she remained a celebrated sex symbol even as her dancing career began to decline, attracting wealthy patrons, senior French military officers, politicians, and other powerful figures. Then World War I changed everything. At 40, Mata Hari fell passionately in love with 23-year-old Captain Vladimir Maslov of the Russian Expeditionary Force. She described herself as “blindly in love,” supported him financially, and hoped to marry him. When Maslov was wounded and blinded in one eye, she traveled to see him and demanded access. Instead, French military intelligence, the Deuxième Bureau, offered her a deal: help them gather intelligence, and she might get the access and money she wanted. What followed was complicated, murky, and still debated. There is evidence that Mata Hari had contact with German intelligence before the French recruited her, although the precise nature and significance of those contacts remain uncertain. She did accept money from German officials, claiming it was repayment for belongings the Germans had seized. In Madrid, she met with the German military attaché and sought a meeting with Crown Prince Wilhelm, an objective that was reportedly part of the arrangement she had made with French intelligence. Her activities attracted the attention of General Walter Nicolai, a senior officer in Germany’s Abteilung III b intelligence service. Nicolai apparently concluded that she was of little intelligence value. German officials subsequently transmitted messages identifying Mata Hari as a German agent using a code the French had already broken. Whatever the intention, the messages helped lead to her arrest by the French. In 1917, as France struggled with military setbacks, unrest, and mutinies, Mata Hari’s high-profile espionage trial began. She was accused of being a German super-spy responsible for the deaths of thousands of French soldiers, but the evidence against her was far less convincing than the prosecution’s dramatic claims. It is possible she engaged in espionage, but there is little to support the image of the master spy who single-handedly brought disaster upon the French army. She instead became a convenient scapegoat for a government desperate to demonstrate that it was taking action against its enemies. Mata Hari was found guilty and sentenced to death by firing squad. She was executed on October 15, 1917. According to British reporter and eyewitness Henry Wales, she was not bound and refused a blindfold. As the soldiers took their positions, she reportedly blew a kiss toward the firing squad.

For the first time in human history, everyone has access to a personal tutor who can spend unlimited time explaining unlimited things in an unlimited number of ways. The factors that determine outcomes are now curiosity and impetus. Asking questions is a superpower

EXCLUSIVE: Elon Musk approached Donald Trump with the idea of slowing down Starlink in Ukraine, The Telegraph can reveal. The billionaire tech entrepreneur approached the US president with the proposal to introduce speed limits on the system, which hampered Ukraine’s drone defences, according to four sources familiar with the discussions. 🔗 telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2…

Trump: we are running low on ammo not because of my war on Iran but because Biden gave “massive amounts” of Tomahawks to Ukraine. The U.S. didn’t supply a single Tomahawk to Ukraine.

🚨🇺🇸🇮🇷 The Army's top general warned in DECEMBER that Patriot and THAAD stocks would stay critically low until 2030... we went to war with Iran anyway and fired the general who said it... His warning sat inside the Pentagon’s own global force plan, the document that decides where American weapons go each year, two months before the first bomb fell on Iran. Then the war did exactly what he feared: CSIS estimates the US went in with about 2,300 Patriots and fired up to 1,430, as much as 61% of the stockpile, while THAAD was worse, roughly 355 interceptors going in and up to 290 fired, 82% gone. Fewer than 500 replacement Patriots and zero THAADs were due this year, a new THAAD order takes four and a half years to deliver, and one official told CBS that even if nothing else is fired anywhere, the stockpile doesn’t get back to December’s already-low level until 2030. Here’s what this adds up to. The commander in chief and his defense secretary were handed an honest assessment from the man who runs the Army, in writing, BEFORE the war. They went in anyway, fought for seven months without a plan to replace what they were firing, and the officer who told them the truth was shown the door while his numbers came true. Whether or not the warning is why he was fired, the signal to every other general was received. This isn’t a munitions problem anymore, it’s a leadership discipline failure: an administration that treated bad news as disloyalty and bombed its way into an exposed position the country can’t shoot its way out of until 2030. It’s hard to find a precedent for a war started with the magazine already flagged empty by the people who count the bullets. Source: CBS News / Writer: Daniel

Let's check back in on the American middle-class...

Someone take Grandpa’s phone away