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Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci removing her chador during her tense 1979 interview with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Qom, Iran...
In October 1979, Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci traveled to Qom, Iran, to interview the Islamic Revolution's supreme leader. To get inside the room, Fallaci was forced to cover herself from head to toe in a heavy black chador, leaving only her face visible.
The conversation inside the room was tense from the very start. Fallaci did not hold back her questions.
She pushed the Ayatollah on political executions, the sudden shutdown of independent newspapers, and the sharp loss of rights for Iranian women under the new regime.
When she asked about the forced wearing of the veil, Khomeini dismissed her concerns and claimed the garment was meant to protect young and respectable women. He then added,
"If you do not like the Islamic dress, you are not obliged to wear it."
Fallaci took his words literally and replied, "Thank you, Mr. Imam. Since you tell me so, I am taking it off right now."
With a quick move, she pulled the chador off her head, leaving her hair completely exposed right in front of the Supreme Leader.
Khomeini was furious.
He stood up without saying another word and walked out of the room. The room fell silent, and the interview was abruptly stopped. However, Fallaci refused to leave Iran until he returned a day later to finish the conversation.
This confrontation became legendary in the history of journalism.
It showed a reporter refusing to bow down to authority, even in one of the most dangerous settings imaginable.
Fallaci proved that real journalism requires standing up to power, asking hard questions, and refusing to be silenced by fear or tradition.
When journalists trade raw courage for easy access and comfortable silence, we lose one of our strongest shields against tyranny.
In an era where true courage in reporting feels rare, her brave stand reminds us that honest journalism still has the power to light up the dark, giving a voice to the voiceless and inspiring future generations to speak truth without fear.
#archaeohistories
This is @aakashibhatt & @shantanubhatt95,
8 years - 2,923 days of our father, Mr. Sanjiv Bhatt's unjust incarceration.
Today, 5th September, marks 8 years since this regime came into our home and took our father from us, tearing our family apart under the guise of trumped up charges manufactured to silence his voice of truth. Eight years is an extraordinary amount of time to measure the life of a family, but there are moments when time becomes a strange and almost meaningless measure: the calendar insists that eight years have passed; however, our hearts and souls remain rooted in that September morning when our world was turned upside down and torn apart.
When I look back at these past years, I often think about what our father chose to stand for, and the principles that have given meaning to everything that followed. From him, we learned that there are moments when an individual has to decide whether the safety of silence is worth the price of surrendering one’s conscience. From him we realised what it truly meant to stand in the path of power, when power had decided that it would rather not be questioned. Our father knew that the battle before him was profoundly unequal, uphill and lonesome; that institutions capable of protecting a society, when captured by power and stripped of their independence, become deadly instruments capable of destroying it. He was aware of the consequences of refusing to bend to the whims of this totalitarian regime and yet, he did, and still continues to fight against it with all his might!
That is who Sanjiv Bhatt is …
Not simply a name that appears in newspapers, nor the IPS officer who has become a symbol of something much larger, but our father, a man who possess the extraordinary strength and resilience to keep fighting a battle he knew would cost him everything, because he believed that some principles are more important than the preservation of one's own comfort, career or freedom.
His sacrifices were never made for himself. He fought for people who had suffered hate and violence for the political ambition of one man. He raised his voice when remaining silent would have been infinitely easier. He placed his career, his reputation, his freedom and, ultimately, years of his life on the line because he believed that those who wield enormous power must also be held to an enormous standard of accountability.
And for that, years of his life, his freedom have been cruelly ripped away from him.
But there is something the passage of these eight years has made increasingly clear to me: the greatest victory of repression is not breaking the person it targets, but convincing everyone watching that there is nothing they can do!
Because democracy does not disappear in a single dramatic moment. Its foundations are eroded far more quietly when institutions that were created to restrain power begin serving it; when the judiciary, which should be the last refuge of the powerless, fails to protect them; when due process becomes something that can be manipulated; when truth becomes inconvenient and therefore dangerous; and, perhaps most dangerous of all, when ordinary citizens decide that it is safer to look away, instead of raising their voices in the face of atrocities! That is how the pillars of a democracy begin to crumble. Not because people do not know what is happening, but because remaining wilfully oblivious is far “safer”.
For eight long years, we have watched this unfold around our father. We have watched the extraordinary machinery of power descend upon one man, and we have watched institutions that were supposed to stand between the citizen and the State fail, again and again, to live up to the promise for which they exist.
And still, our father continues to fight …
That, more than anything else, is the measure of his courage, his legacy!
Because courage is not measured by how loudly someone speaks when the world is listening, it is measured by what they are prepared to endure when the world has stopped listening!
Our father has and continues to endure …
He has endured the loss of his freedom, the destruction of his career, the years stolen from his family and the extraordinary weight of a system determined to break him.
Yet somehow, after eight years, the thing this regime has been unable to imprison is the very thing that made him dangerous to them to begin with … his refusal to surrender his conscience!
And perhaps that is why his fight matters now more than ever. For years, too many people learnt to lower their voices before they had even spoken. Questions were replaced by silent acceptance; outrage by apathy; courage by cowardice. An entire generation watched examples being made of exemplary individuals who dared to stand up against this regime and slowly began to believe that the safest way to survive was perhaps to remain silent …But silence comes with a terrible price!
A country cannot remain free when its people are afraid to question power. Institutions cannot remain independent when citizens stop demanding accountability. And justice cannot prevail when the judiciary ceases to be a shield for the people and becomes a weapon against those who dare to dissent. Democracy can survive only when ordinary people are willing to defend its most fundamental promise, that no power is above accountability, and no citizen should have to surrender their freedom, dignity or voice to remain safe.
And yet, perhaps that willingness to speak truth to power is beginning to return. Across the country, once again, people are raising their voices to question. They are beginning to look beyond the empty noise, beyond the propaganda, beyond the carefully constructed narratives that ask them to blindly accept rather than use their agency to examine. A generation that was taught to keep its head down is slowly beginning to lift it with courage and defiance!
Perhaps that is how the endless night finally begins to give way to a new dawn, not through one spectacular event, but through millions of ordinary people deciding, each in their own way, that they will no longer surrender their capacity to question!
And if there is one thing I have learnt from watching our father through all these years, it is that courage is contagious!
One person standing up against an entire regime can look insignificant. One voice can appear almost absurdly small against the mammoth machinery of power. But history has a way of remembering those who refused to bend, and of showing how one person’s courage can awaken the courage of millions!
Our father knew exactly what he was risking, and still chose courage over self-preservation, truth over silence, and conscience over fear. He did not stand up against this regime because he believed he was invincible; he stood because he believed some things were worth fighting for, whatever the cost!
Today, doesn’t just mark 2,923 days of separation, it marks 8 years of our relentless fight for justice …
I hope that everyone who reads this today will once again remember Sanjiv Bhatt ...
Remember the courage it took to confront power when doing so came at an unimaginable personal and professional cost …
Remember what happens when institutions created to protect citizens are weaponised against them …
Remember that the independence of the judiciary, the integrity of institutions and the rule of law are not abstract constitutional phrases; they are the barriers that stand between an ordinary citizen and the unchecked power of the State.
And remember that those barriers remain standing only for as long as we have the courage to defend them!
Eight years have passed since they tried to silence our father’s voice of truth.
Eight years since they stole his freedom, but failed to shake his courage.
Eight years since they tried to bury his resolve, but could not break his indomitable spirit
Eight years in which we have been reminded, again and again, that justice delayed is not merely time lost, it is a test of whether a society still possesses the courage to demand justice at all!
Our father dedicated his life fighting to protect the very secular, democratic fabric of our society, our nation. The least we can do is to refuse to let his voice stand alone!
We must stand together and raise our voices… not only for our father Mr Sanjiv Bhatt, but also for all those who have sacrificed everything to protect the rights, freedoms and values that belong to every citizen of our country.
Eight years on, our father is still standing strong, with his head held high, his conscience intact, and his resolve unbroken!
He refuses to bend, to be silenced, or surrender …And neither will we!
Our fight for justice continues!
We may be bloodied, battered and bruised ... but we remain unbroken, unbent, unbowed!
#justiceforsanjivbhatt #FreeSanjivBhatt #EnoughIsEnough
Here’s a war crime caught on tape.
IDF terrorist throws a stun grenade into a Palestinian family’s car & holds the door shut as it detonates.
A small child was permanently blinded.
Do you think the terrorist will face justice? Will Faux News cover this?
Ethanol has 30% less mileage, but we should look at it positively
~ Executive Director, Bharat Petroleum
When you are giving us adulterated fluid in the name of fuel, which not only has less mileage but also damaging our vehicles, how can we look at it positively?
Only Gadkari and Sons can look at it positively, as they creating generational wealth from it. 🤡
@vdsatheesan sir, that's a great book written by a man who is easily the greatest living original thinker whose ideas resonate closest with your own Nehruvian Socialist ideals. Proud that the 36 million people of Kerala have chosen you as their leader!
@yanisvaroufakis
A language is a window. Open enough windows, and you see the whole world.
Read across tongues. Dream across borders.
Through languages and books, we weave hearts closer —learning to respect, to listen, to live in harmony.
Happy #WorldBookDay
The RSS was among the world's fascist movements founded in the 1920s–30s.
The group adopted many methods of Balilla (image 1), Mussolini's youth group. Even today, the RSS likes to target boys for indoctrination. A good example is India's PM Modi (image 2).
Nirbhaya was sent to Singapore for treatment, her rapists were hanged
Manisha Valmiki’s body was burned using old tyres and scrap, in front of her parents.
Not a single person convicted for her rape & murder
That’s how much India had changed in just 8 years
I travelled through Great Nicobar today.
These are the most extraordinary forests I have ever seen in my life. Trees older than memory. Forests that took generations to grow.
The people on this island are equally beautiful - both the adivasi communities and the settlers - but they are being robbed of what is rightfully theirs.
The government calls what it is doing here a “Project.” What I have seen is not a project. It is millions of trees marked for the axe. It is 160 square kilometres of rainforest condemned to die. It is communities that have been ignored while their homes have been snatched away.
This is not development. This is destruction dressed in development’s language.
So I will say it plainly, and I will keep saying it: what is being done in Great Nicobar is one of the biggest scams and gravest crimes against this country’s natural and tribal heritage in our lifetime.
It must be stopped. And it can be stopped - if Indians choose to see what I have seen.
Viktor Orbán’s huge defeat in the Hungarian election creates hope for all progressive forces in the world. The defeat suggests that ordinary Hungarians realized that right-wing ideology is nothing but a cover for cronyism.
The aircraft that took the Iranian negotiators to Pakistan was called Minab 168 for the 168 girls killed by the US-Israelis. It carried not just their photos on 168 seats but also their backpacks. It was a powerful symbol of what the negotiators carried with them in their hearts. They came to negotiate with them in mind. No more war.
The cross is part of the mission. The imperialist occupation of the world is disrupted from within; the violence that until now has been the law is unmasked. The poor, imprisoned, and rejected Messiah descends into the darkness of death, yet in so doing He brings a new creation to light. #HolyThursday
israeli troops engage in the yearly “Beating up of Christians” festival which starts on Good Friday: spitting, bashing, arresting, wounding
Stay Away from our Land! This is our Homeland! Iranian Woman Don’t Need Israel’s Bombs to liberate them!
In Gaza, #WestBank & East Jerusalem, Palestinians are subjected to a continuum of suffering - @FranceskAlbs denounces torture of Palestinians, says it extends beyond Israeli prison walls. “There is no refuge. No safe place to exist.” @UN_HRC #HRC61
https://t.co/9IBBWMCF9C
Saudi YouTuber Maher Musalli’s account was deleted after he posted a powerful video about the Gaza massacres—one that challenges mainstream narratives and sparks important debate.
He deserves support, and this message deserves to be hear
Share it so his voice reaches the world.
In the USA in 1943 they produced a film 'Don't be a Sucker' about fascism.
It perfectly explains Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the entire Right.
From Abhinandan Sekhri of NewsLaundry:
Yesterday, The Washington Post laid off one-third of its staff. It eliminated every single editor and correspondent in the Middle East. Bureau chiefs, from Cairo to Berlin, were laid off, including India’s bureau chief Pranshu Verma. We’re told over 300 people have lost their jobs.
Even by the normal standard of media layoffs that have been documented through Covid, this is a purge.
This should be a wake-up call.
Jeff Bezos bought Washington Post for $250 million. For context, he’s worth over $240 billion.
He paid $500 million for his ‘super-yacht’.
He also has a ‘support vessel’ that cost $75 million.
He spent $237 million on properties just in Miami.
He owns over 420,000 acres of land in the United States.
He spent at least $20 million – a pittance, compared to the rest of his spending – on his wedding last year.
Under him, Amazon spent $40 million to acquire the rights to Melania, a documentary on Melania Trump. Melania herself will get paid 70 percent of this amount. Amazon also spent $35 million to market it.
We’re not even converting these dollar figures to rupees because that’s too many zeros for a single email. But remember this, Jeff Bezos could spend $1 million every single day and only run out of money after 623 years.
Yet here’s Washington Post’s purge, just a year and a bit after Bezos famously said, “The advantage I bring to The Post is when they need financial resources, I’m available…I’m the doting parent in that regard.”
Billionaires don’t have your backs. We’ve said this for 14 years. It’s why we built a series on media ownership and explained NDTV’s crumble after the Adani takeover. Billionaires want to do one thing – make more money. It takes precedence over everything else, whether in America or India.
You don’t have the billions – or the millions either – of a Bezos. That doesn’t mean you don’t have their power. You have even more power. Because there are so many of you, of us. We are all stronger TOGETHER!
Thank you for supporting Newslaundry and building the future of journalism. For every bad decision made by a billionaire, we’re able to offer you the alternative. Because we’re stronger together.
Forward this email to a friend who could use a wake-up call too. Tell them to subscribe. Gift them a subscription if you have to, or reply to this email with their email ID and we’ll email them for you. We’ve got the power together.
In gratitude,
समस्या केवल भ्रष्टाचार नहीं, समाज में जड़ें फैलाती लालच की वो लत भी है जो भारतीय शासन की जवाबदेही निगल गई है।
#TINA
Fun fact: The 1998 paper that introduced Google and PageRank to the world ends with this acknowledgment:
"Supported by the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement IRI-9411306. Funding also provided by DARPA and NASA."
Sergey Brin was on an NSF Graduate Fellowship. Larry Page was a PhD student on the grant.
Google—now worth $2 trillion—exists because American taxpayers funded "the Stanford Integrated Digital Library Project."
Not a startup garage myth. A government grant.
Every time someone says public research funding "picks winners and losers" or "crowds out private innovation," remember: the most dominant technology company of the 21st century was incubated entirely with public money, inside a public university, by researchers on federal fellowships and grants.
The private sector didn't see it coming. VCs passed. The government funded it anyway—not because it would become Google, but because fundamental research into information retrieval seemed worth understanding.
That's the point. You can't predict which grants will change the world. You fund the science and let researchers explore.
The internet (DARPA). GPS (DoD). Touchscreens (CIA/NSF). mRNA vaccines (NIH). Google (NSF/DARPA/NASA).
Public investment in basic research isn't wasteful spending. It's the seed corn of the entire modern economy.
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