Foreign Digest: Gaza Strip, Venezuela, Nepal, Slovakia and Russia

Gaza Strip: There were protests in the Gaza Strip against Hamas, the Islamist terrorist organization backed by Iran that has ruled the autonomous territory after splitting with the Palestinian Authority, which rules the West Bank. Gazans suffer because Hamas has focused more on munitions and tunnels than their needs and has subjected them to a war with Israel after the Iranian-backed Hamas launched a terrorist attack on October on the Jewish State that killed over a thousand civilians and injured several thousand more. Hamas also took hundreds of hostages. Among the many international casualties and hostages were several Americans. Venezuela: After a campaign of intimidation, arrests and vandalism against the Venezuelan representative republican opposition ahead of the elections promised after an internationally mediated deal between the Socialist dictatorship and the opposition, Venezuela has ruled the opposition candidate ineligible and thus broken the agreement. The Socialists have tyrannically ruled the South American State since 2000 after seizing power through elections and then usurping representative government and violating human rights. Nepal: Nepal has banned Nepalese from volunteering to fight in the Russo-Ukrainian War, most of whom were fighting on the side of the Russian aggressors. The Himalayan State has also asked for its citizens fighting in the war to be sent home. Slovakia: The new leftist President of Slovakia who had threatened to cut off aid to Ukraine, has changed his mind in response to Russian war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in its aggression against Ukraine. He signed an agreement to continue aid. Slovakia is an ally of the United States as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Russia: Anti-war opposition candidate Boris Nadezhdin has gathered the requisite number of signatures to seek the presidency in this year’s Russian presidential elections. The municipal legislator, professor, television pundit and former aid to a Russian Prime Minister had to obtain at least 100,000 signatures, with a certain minimum from at least 40 regions across Russia. A previous candidate had been nominated by an alternate process of a gathering of a requisite number of people, but the Kremlin-controlled state election commission rejected her nomination. Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin, an ex-Soviet intelligence officer, does not tolerate anything more than opposition by certain extreme parties that make his party seem moderate, as long as they do not criticize him harshly. Human rights activists, political opponents and journalists are routinely jailed, assaulted, murdered, or driven into exile. The main opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, who is from the center-right, and who has been imprisoned on multiple charges by the judiciary that is loyal to Putin, after surviving assassination attempts, and is currently a political prisoner in Siberia above the Arctic Circle in solitary confinement again, backs Nadezhdin. Another major Putin who is in exile supports the opposition candidate. Nadezhdin opposes Russia’s aggression against the former Soviet Republic of Ukraine, in violation of Russian recognition of the former Soviet Republic’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, which is becoming less popular because of conscription, heavy Russian losses and the effects of international economic sanctions. Putin, who wishes to restore the Soviet Empire, authorized an invasion of Ukraine in 2014 to seize Crimea and then a full-scale invasion in 2022. Nadezhdin favors a rapprochement with the West.