Daaaaaaaaang. This clusterfuck, looks like the SAA was totally blindsided.
Aleppo fell, but the Kurds are there too. Looks like a fugging free for all. Although I guess the SDF has some type of deal with the Syrian government.
An offensive is also going on southward, towards Hama. One of the news snippets says the SAA left the place.
Assad's gonna be busy again.

Fuck, accidentally created a thread instead of posting here. Oh well.
Whole Aleppo is getting on the hand of the rebels, SDF/Kurds withdrawing, and they were also forced out from their enclave around Tell Rifat. Rebels also pushed further around Aleppo but no advancement on Hama. Perhaps the SAA stabilized the front there.
Fun snippet about the "blocked" Iranian flight transporting arms to the Hezbollah.

Dug up the oldest screenshot I had, and pic#2 is that. Taken on 2018 january 15. Might be couple earlier somewhere, I dunno where. Similar situation, fighting near Hama, however I think Aleppo never fell completely.

Meanwhile a month advancement in south Donetsk.
RuAF extended the front south of Pokrovsk, towards Shevchenko. I assume as they occupy the lands near Kurakhove they'll move west more, towards Udachne. If they want Pokrovs, they want to surround it. Plus cutting the road north of Udachne would be quite useful for that.

Romanian presidential election is heading towards a potentially spicy result.
The neighbours held their presidential election last Sunday, normal schedule, happens every 5 years. It's a fairly important position, since their system is apparently a semi-presidential, their head of state holds some executive powers, and not just a figurehead, who signs the laws.
If a candidate gets 50%+1 votes, then he wins, if not the two top supported candidate will race for the office in a second round. And ofc last Sunday they failed to get a decisive result. So the two candidates are:
1. with 22.94% Calin Georgescu is the leading candidate;
2. Elena Lasconi with 19.18% is the second.

According to Politico:
https://www.politico.eu/article/calin-georgescu-romania-elections-far-right-tiktok-nato-skeptic-russia-ukraine-exports/
...Calin Georgescu is
>A Russia-supporting vaccine skeptic who praises his country’s WWII fascist leaders
Hilarious.
The authors (it needed three guys to write it! lol) of the article really like the word "skeptic":
>a far-right, NATO-skeptic Russia fan,
And even when writing about his sportsmanship we get:
>Georgescu was shown barely breaking a sweat on the running track, flipping opponents in judo — à la Putin
And they give a summary about him at the "Fascist and Communist" heading:
- he said the 1989 revolution was a coup he is right tho

Keep postponing to write about this.
Since the International Criminal Court issue an arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu our politicians did statements that cast judgement on the ruling, calling it from concerning to scandalous. Considering how strong the Jewish lobby on the Hungary this had to come as a surprise to noone. Those who ignore the impact of Israel on Hungary's foreign politics, they won't understand our relations at all.
Interesting article by NYT:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/22/world/middleeast/netanyahu-orban-icc-hungary-israel.html
This quotes one of the media statements:
>The arrest warrant against the Israeli leader, Mr. Orban told Kossuth Radio, was “fundamentally wrong” and an “outrageously brazen” political decision that would only lead to “the discrediting of international law” and “add fuel to the flames” of conflict in the Middle East.
Also rightfully notes:
>the Hungarian leader has been one of Israel’s most stalwart allies in Europe
However this is a horribly false view:
>Mr. Orban’s defiance of the I.C.C. as a “continuation and expansion of his anti-establishment logic”
Even opposition here wouldn defy the ICC. It's not the result of going against the grain, and a mistake to lump it with the other contrarian behaviour.
Some stuff about Germany:
>Many are supporters of the court in general, but also allies of Israel.
>This is particularly true for Germany, where a desire to separate itself from the horrors of the Holocaust during Nazi rule has made it wary of criticizing Israel and its leaders.
Citing the instilled collective guilt this openly in one of the most notable newspaper... that's really something.
>One of the countries clearly promising to enforce the arrest warrant should Mr. Netanyahu visit was Slovenia, which in June officially recognized a Palestinian state.
Slobenia, yuo are nazi!

Make Philippines Fun Again
That takes a Duterte.
The daughter of the good old Prez we all loved, Sara Zimmerman Duterte-Carpio, who serves as vice presidend, is a similarly hilarious personality as his dad.
https://philnews.ph/2024/11/23/vp-sara-duterte-reveals-final-wish-kapag-pinatay-ako-patayin-mo-sila-pbbm/
>Wag kang mag-alala sa security ko kasi may kinausap na ako na tao. Sinabi ko sa kanya, ‘pag pinatay ako, patayin mo si BBM, si Liza Araneta, at si Martin Romualdez. No joke. No joke,”
According to google:
Don't worry about my security because I'm talking to someone. I told him, 'When I was killed, kill BBM, Liza Araneta, and Martin Romualdez.
BBM is the current president, Ferdinand "Bongbong" Romualdez Marcos Jr., Liza Areneta is his wife. Martin Romualdez is the Speaker of the House and cousin of BBM. Well the Philippines apparently a family enterprise like a mom-and-pop store. Also now I want a prez or pm whose name is Bongbong.
So apparently Sara Duterte talks about an assassin who is contracted to assassinate the Prez and his family in case something happens to her. Let's hope she won't choke on a fishbone.

One could think the Hungarian Revolution of '56 had great impact to the other Eastern Block countries. It is hard to measure but it seems the opposite is the truth. Officialy it was labelled as a counter-revolution and the rest of the opinions were suppressed. There were little to no samizdat activity that could give a voice, censorship ruled.
We already had some understanding with Poland, but Romania was openly hostile, Czechosolovakia ditto (with serious anti-Hungarian chauvinist overtones in both countries). Officially in the latter country as a direct reaction there was a "secret" memorandum that declared support for the leadership of Antonin Novotny, securing his position of First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia which he held since 1953, then he became president in 1957, held both offices till the Prage Spring removed him.
As our Revolution gained some of the ideas from the de-Stalinization and some wind too, Novotny's reign started with that - but as a counterweight. He seems he was more of a hardliner, who put effort into halting any thawing processes, and his "socialist" constitution of 1960 was even more formally communist than the previous one they accepted in 1948. So this "destalinization" went slow with occasional pushes from more reformist elements (such as writers, or the next First Secretary, Alexander Dubcek), eroding Novotny's popularity.
I can't say how wide was the popular support, but judging by the events that followed the later Soviet/Warsaw Pact invasion it seems that sympathizers were from all over the country from all level of the society - but not in any impactful numbers. People wanted changes but did not want to risk a more serious push for them. What we should see, that the changes were the product of the rise of an internal political opposition, and were introduced upside down, no armed uprising against the communist leadership happened unlike at Hungary.
In 1968 January Dubcek and a pal cornered Novotny, and Brezhnev (probably already probing the opinions of the leaders of the satellite states) decided to green light Novotny's retirement. The issue seemed to be decided but then Dubcek and many reformists started to talk nonsense about living standards, multi-party systems, democracies, building relations with the West and such. This compelled Brezhnev to engage them and tell 'em they should slow down a bit. They agreed, but The Head and Brow of the Soviet Union was not convinced, he saw that the process will lead to losing Czechoslovakia, and ordered the tanks of the SU and allied Warsaw Pact (Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary) countries' tanks rolling. No clash happened between the two sides, almost only civilians resisted, mostly with non-violent methods.
Dubcek had to go, he was replaced by Gustav Husak. All enacted laws and reforms were reverted, except the one that made Czechoslovakia a federation of two countries. Later some of the reforms were activated again as amendments if I understood correctly.

As for Hungary.
It appears that at the same time the Czechoslovak reforms started, the Kádár regime here introduced new economical practices, trying to make the country's economy actually work. The changes put forward in the neighbour were mostly political in nature, so our leadership started to pray to Saint Lenin that they keep them very "moderate". They feared if things were getting out of hands then our economical project will be scraped, or perhaps even the thoughts of resistance will be reignited here or at least Moscow will think that's happening too.
Since their fears seemed to become true, they decided to show they are loyal subjects of Moscow, and they can march along with the Warsaw Pact, right into Czechoslovakia, when finally Brezhnev decided at the military solution. Kádár even declared that if it comes to counter-revolution in Czechoslovakia, he will vote wholeheartedly for military intervention. Well he did the same with his own country so I don't see how could he not applied the same principle elsewhere.
From his opinion we could also deduce, that the Dubcek-turn, was went far enough for him to consider it a counter-revolution. However this is not the case. He gave the opinion to Brezhnev (on the day of the invasion, on August 21), that the events in Czechoslovakia are closer to the Polish events of 1956 than to the Hungarian counter-revolution of the same year. Still, Hungarian forces were participated the same.

Supposedly later in 1988-89 when our socialist system started to collapse they considered the moral Czechoslovakian lesson and example.