Free Republic

Democratic societies are built around the principle of free and fair elections, and that each citizen’s vote should count equally. National elections can be regarded as large-scale social experiments, where people are grouped into usually large numbers of electoral districts and vote according to their preferences. The large number of samples implies statistical consequences for the polling results, which can be used to identify election irregularities. Using a suitable data representation, we find that vote distributions of elections with alleged fraud show a kurtosis substantially exceeding the kurtosis of normal elections, depending on the level of data aggregation. As an...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLdPRwvwc2Y

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has recently suspended a decision that was described by analysts as one of the geopolitical shocks of the decade. In February, the President announced he would rip up the long-standing Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the United States, which operationalises the two countries' Mutual Defence Treaty (MDT), signed in 1951. The MDT is similar to Australia's ANZUS security pact with the US — also signed in 1951 — as an attack in the Pacific threatening either party's "territorial integrity, political independence, or security" will automatically trigger a consultation process between Manila and Washington. The cancellation of...

The Philippines has suspended its plan to terminate a key defense pact with the United States, Manila's top diplomat announced Tuesday, after President Rodrigo Duterte in early 2020 threatened to pull his country out of the bilateral agreement... In the letter, which was dated Monday, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs indicated that its decision in February to scrap the VFA was "hereby suspended" due to "political and other developments in the region," and that Manila had decided to hold off for six months on its planned withdrawal... "The abrogation of the Visiting Forces Agreement has been suspended upon the...

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines and the United States are already in talks to craft a new and more equitable Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) and are looking at similar pacts involving Japan and Australia as templates. “We are now in the process of trying to find ways and means to be able to see how we can either come out with something similar perhaps,” Ambassador to the United States Jose Manuel Romualdez said at a forum hosted by the think tank Stratbase ADR Institute in Makati City. Romualdez said the talks were looking to resolve sovereignty issues in the 1999...

MANILA, Philippines – Former foreign secretary Albert Del Rosario on Wednesday, February 12, denounced President Rodrigo Duterte's decision to terminate the Philippines' Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the United States, calling it a "national tragedy" that was harmful to Filipinos. "This continuing shift in foreign policy casting aside a long time reliable ally in favor of an aggressive neighbor that has been blatantly demonstrating its lack of respect for international law is incomprehensible and harmful to our country and our people," Del Rosario said in a statement. "What is unfolding before us must be considered a national tragedy which should...