Valmiki, Orwell & Twitter – The Missing Link

Propaganda is neither new nor innovative. Propaganda techniques Ravana used 5000 years ago, are being used even today.

Media and academia make much noise, speaking in contradictions | Steve Sack’s Cartoon for 2008 election lampooning Mitt Romney on June 25, 2007; image source and courtesy – cagle.com | Click for image

The US is leading a list of governments which requested micro-blogging platform Twitter to provide user account information in the first half of 2012, says a Twitter Transparency Report.

­The company’s first report of its kind, which includes data from January 1, 2012, through to June 30, 2012, shows that 679 out of the 849 requests for user information came from the United States.

Japan is a distant second with 98 cases, and Britain and Canada have 11 each.

Every other listed nation made ten or fewer requests. (Twitter report: US leads government interference list — RT).

Propaganda is nothing new

Where did Ravana hold Sita as prisoner?

In the अशोकवन – Ashoka Park. अशोकवन – Ashoka Park, Ravana’s prison was an exquisite garden, it’s true intent masked by its name and appearance.

Ashoka in Sanskrit means ‘without sorrow or grief’.

Valmiki‘s political commentary is the true reason why Valmiki Ramayana lives – even some 4000-5000 years after it was first composed. The last 1200 years of religiofication that we have seen, in India, has removed the true political commentary that Indian classical texts contain.

These timeless nuggets of insights is why understanding Ravana is important.

Is there anything that that is clear | Cartoon by By Eric Allie – February 07, 2011; source courtesy – townhall.com | Click for image.

1984

George Orwell outlined this propaganda device as Newspeak and doublethink.

In his book 1984, for workers in the Records Department at the Ministry of Truth, doublethink means creating false public records.

Land of The Free

In the US, the land of the free and leader of the free world, has the maximum number of prisoners – mostly African Americans. They are still paying the price for demanding an end to slavery.

It is not surprising that US leads this list on Twitter records. Of course, this information could easily get degraded by Ministry Of Truth Law, which ensure that fewer requests can be made public by Twitter.

Image from Twitter Help Center web page. Image source & courtesy – rt.com

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• Indian Classical Texts: Are they History, Mystery or Mythology? (2ndlook.wordpress.com)

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• Internet diplomacy (economist.com)