🇫🇷 - Overall portrait:

Cars burned down in 8 jails' parkings
Rifle shots fired at 8 jails's doors and windows.
A courthouse evacuated due to a bomb threat.

And now this.

The mailbox is obviously a way to scare the guy, to tell him "We know where you live".

On the long run, if you repress people who are actually smart because you don't want to hurt people's feeling that they are all "equally special and all went through exactly the same stuff"... well its not compatible with modernity on the long run. Modernity needs people who are actually smart, and it needs them doing their job properly without having to rely on "soft skills" to get their projects approved.

Modernity needs people who are smarts, and it needs them doing their smarts guys thing, not being at Walmart to "make other people feel comfortable their ego is in check".

🇪🇺 - ECB cuts interests rates by 25 basis points.

🇷🇺🇩🇪🇺🇦 - Russian Foreign Ministry:

The use of Taurus missiles to strike Russia's critical infrastructure can be regarded as Germany's direct participation in the war on the side of Ukraine.

🇮🇹 - Three dead in a cable car accident in Naples, Italy.

🇫🇷🇪🇺 - Bernard Arnault, CEO of French luxury giant LVMH: "Europe is not run by a political power but by a bureaucratic one".

🇺🇸🇸🇾 - A video allegedly taken tonight in Syria reportedly shows a US convoy withdrawing from the Conoco base in Deir ez-Zor Governorate.

🇺🇸🇸🇾 - #BREAKING NYT confirms the "U.S. Is Withdrawing Hundreds of Troops From Syria" (article published 10 minutes ago)

🇺🇸🇸🇾 - The NYT confirms and says the "US is withdrawing hundreds of troops from Syria", reducing troop levels to about 1,400 from 2,000.

🇺🇸🇷🇺🇺🇦 - US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announces the US will cease efforts to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine within days unless there are clear indications that a resolution is achievable.

🇹🇷 - Erdogan: "unfortunately, the Islamic world has also failed to fulfill what was expected of it" (on Gaza).

Have an happy good Friday.

🇵🇸🇸🇾 - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas meets Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus.

🇻🇦 - Via Dolorosa today,

NEW: U.S. State Department warns of possible attacks in Syria.

“We advise our citizens not to travel to Syria at this time and urge those already there to leave immediately.

Intelligence information indicates imminent attacks in areas frequented by civilians in Syria, including markets, hotels, and places of worship.”

🇺🇸 - Axios reports that Trump's administration will move ahead with a new rule that will make it easier to remove federal employees that are 'undercutting Trump's agenda'

🇮🇹🇹🇳 - Italian police arrest Tunisian ISIS "organiser".

Authoritarianism is bad.

But there is functionally authoritarian level, which you can do business with, and Pol Pot level.

The Pol Pot level, in Salvador, that was when you could get shot over walking in a nearby neighborhoods because local gangs would think you came to attack them.

Salvador’s Bukele only restored a minimal civil life which is, sorry for human rights absolutists, necessary for a decent economic development.

And yes, I do think his strategy is sustainable.

The international liberals are turning on Bukele, but did nothing under the Biden administration, who refused to sanction Salvador or even talk bad about it.

If you are on French Twitter, you just have to post "Something something Macron good catholics bad" and poof you’re instantly with a million view.

Elon taking care of his business interests in France.

Even Google is less supportive of the French govt.

🇩🇪🇹🇷 - Berlin blocks Euro fighter jet sale to Turkey.