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© AFP/Dmitry Astakhov"I promised you we would win. We have won. Glory to Russia," Vladimir Putin said Sunday after a landslide victory in Russia's presidential election.
Let's face it, most people don't have the time, energy or inclination to try to separate truth from lies in our world today. The ability to do so is, however, crucial for many reasons. For over ten years, we here at Sott.net have been analysing and writing on what passes for the 'news' and we've come to a conclusion that may be of help to those who can't, or won't, do their own digging for the truth.

The conclusion is that you can, with a reasonable degree of certainty, assume that the truth about any major political event can be found more or less 180 degrees from what politicians or the media (especially US and European politicians and media) claim. Try it out. To do this, you have to do it consciously. So take any current major political news item in the media and, in your mind, flip it 180 degrees. When reading the headline or summary of a news item, simply reverse the statement that it makes. I can assure you that this 180 version will be a lot closer to the truth.

Take for example Vladimir Putin's recent election victory. Check the headlines from major Western 'news' corporations and you'll see that they all smear, subtly and not so subtly, Putin's win with allegations of 'corruption'. Rupert Murdoch's Sky News went so far as to put 'scare quotes' around the words 'wins election'. Virtually all other media outlets carried the same disparaging headline in one form or another, which is not surprising since there are about 3 or 4 actual Western 'news' agencies that report on events and then simply share the information with their subsidiaries. In this case, our 180 degree approach works rather well.

For example, in the Sky 'news' article, it is noted that Russian exit polls more or less coincided with the actual count, which would appear to give Putin's election significantly more validation than George 'Dubya' Bush's election 'victories', where both exit polls and the final tally appeared to have been the subject of massive fraud.

Indeed, earlier today, that same Sky 'news' article, which now has the title 'Putin 'Wins Election' Amid Fraud Claims' had a different title that was very quickly changed:

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With exit polls that tally with a final vote count, it's hard to claim 'fraud' unless, of course, you can claim that the exit polls were manipulated, which doesn't seem to be the case, so, the only alternative is to bury the exit poll data where no one will see it, or just don't mention it at all, which is what most 'news' outlets have done.

As for the allegations of 'carousel voting' (where people cast more than one vote in different stations), these come from a US government-funded 'NGO' called GOLOS, which is controlled by the CIA front organisations USAID and the 'National Endowment for Democracy' which claims to be "supporting freedom around the world". That's the kind of freedom that often requires the death of a million civilians before it can take hold, like 'operation Iraqi freedom' for example.

In December 2011, Russian news website Life News published emails it claimed show correspondence between the US State Dept. and Golos that discuss payments for work done to discredit the results of Russia's parliamentary vote.

None of these flagrant lies and manipulations would be quite so galling however, if they weren't so flagrantly hypocritical. Everyone knows (or should know) that electronic voting machines allowed Bush to steal both of his elections (Obama didn't need to steal his 'election' with McCain and Palin as the alternative). In the USA, vote fraud via e-voting machines has become so easy that hackers were recently able to have a cartoon character elected to the Washington DC School Board. When hackers are not available, election officials simply deny people the right to vote in the land of freedom and democracy, as happened a few days ago in Kennewick, Washington when people turned up to vote in the Benton County caucuses. Where were Golos or any other 'Voting watchdog' organisations (or the Western media) when Bush unashamedly stole his Presidential elections? Where was Sky 'News' with its scare quotes then?

But take note, I'm not suggesting that the Western media cannot use the word 'fraud' when reporting on Putin's win, they just need to be more explicit. For example, the headline 'Voting Fraud Allegations Mar Putin's Win' should be 'Vote Fraud Allegations by US government-funded Organisations tasked with discrediting the results of Russian elections Mar Putin's Win.

Then everyone would be happy.