Private interests behind the political machinations

How do we verify explanations when we can't differentiate verified aspersions to declarations by the tin-foil hat brigade? Will it then be left primarily to confirmation bias i.e. if it fits your world-view then it must be true? 

I have no answer apart from the need to conduct our own verification - this is also a Quranic injunction. But Monbiot is a writer I follow who exposes all these queasy relationships - his view is the threat to the progressive liberal space. My view is trying to understand the world and fashion a position for a response. Just like Fisk, whose views on the Middle East is so shockingly non-mainstream for western Judeo-Christian political worldview, Monbiot is not afraid to speak his mind.

The fourth estate still lives in the western world. 

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From: http://www.monbiot.com/2017/02/04/dark-arts/ and Guardian

How a dark money network is taking power on both sides of the Atlantic.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 3rd February 2017

It took corporate America a while to warm to Donald Trump. Some of his positions, especially on trade, horrified business leaders. Many of them favoured Ted Cruz or Scott Walker. But once he had secured the nomination, the big money began to recognise an unprecedented opportunity.

Trump was prepared not only to promote the cause of corporations in government, but to turn government into a kind of corporation, staffed and run by executives and lobbyists. His incoherence was not a liability but an opening: his agenda could be shaped. And the dark money network that some American corporations had already developed was perfectly positioned to shape it.

Dark money is the term used in the US for the undisclosed funding of organisations involved in political advocacy. Few people would see a tobacco company as a credible source on public health, or a coal company as a neutral commentator on climate change. To advance their political interests, such companies must pay others to speak on their behalf.

Soon after the Second World War, some of America’s richest people began setting up a network of thinktanks to promote their interests. These purport to offer dispassionate opinions on public affairs. But they are more like corporate lobbyists, working on behalf of those who founded and fund them. These are the organisations now running much of the Trump administration.

We have no hope of understanding what is coming until we understand how the dark money network operates. The remarkable story of a British member of parliament provides a unique insight into this network, on both sides of the Atlantic. His name is Liam Fox. Six years ago, his political career seemed to be over.

The scandal he had caused by mixing his private and official interests, that was highly embarrassing to David Cameron’s government, had forced him to resign as Secretary of State for Defence. But today he is back on the front bench, with a crucial and sensitive portfolio: Secretary of State for International Trade.

In 1997, the year the Conservatives lost office to Tony Blair, Liam Fox, who sits on the hard right of the parliamentary Conservative party, founded an organisation called The Atlantic Bridge. Its patron was Margaret Thatcher. On its advisory council sat the future cabinet ministers Michael Gove, George Osborne, William Hague and Chris Grayling. Fox, who became a leading campaigner for Brexit, described the mission of The Atlantic Bridge as “to bring people together who have common interests”. It would defend these interests from “European integrationists who would like to pull Britain away from its relationship with the United States”.

The Atlantic Bridge was later registered as a charity. It was part of the UK’s own dark money network: only after it collapsed did we discover the full story of who had funded it.

Its main sponsor was the immensely rich Michael Hintze, who worked at Goldman Sachs before setting up his own hedge fund, CQS. Hintze is one of the Conservative party’s biggest donors. In 2012, he was revealed as a funder of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, that casts doubt on the science of climate change. As well as making cash grants and loans to The Atlantic Bridge, he lent Liam Fox his private jet to fly to and from Washington.

Another funder was the drug company Pfizer. It paid for a researcher at The Atlantic Bridgecalled Gabby Bertin. She went on to become David Cameron’s press secretary, and now sits in the House of Lords: Cameron gave her a life peerage in his resignation honours list.

In 2007, a group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) set up a sister organisation, The Atlantic Bridge Project, to run the US arm of Fox’s initiative. ALEC is perhaps the most controversial of the corporate-funded thinktanks in the US. It specialises in bringing together corporate lobbyists with state and federal legislators to develop “model bills”. The legislators and their families enjoy lavish hospitality from the group, then take the model bills home with them, to promote as if they were their own initiatives.

ALEC has claimed that over 1000 of its bills are introduced by legislators every year, and one in five of them becomes law. It has been heavily funded by tobacco companies, the oil company Exxon, drug companies and Charles and David Koch: the billionaires who founded the first Tea Party organisations. Pfizer, that funded Gabby Bertin’s post at The Atlantic Bridge, sits on ALEC’s corporate board. Some of the most contentious legislation in recent years, such as state bills lowering the minimum wage, bills granting corporations immunity from prosecution and the “ag-gag” laws, forbidding people to investigate factory farming practices, were developed by ALEC.

To run the US arm of Atlantic Bridge, ALEC brought in its director of international relations, Catherine Bray. She is a British woman who had previously worked for the Conservative member of the European Parliament Richard Ashworth and the UKIP member Roger Helmer. She has subsequently worked for the man who brought us Brexit, Daniel Hannan. In 2015, she married Wells Griffith, who became the battleground states director for Trump’s presidential campaign.

Among the members of The Atlantic Bridge’s US advisory council were the ultra-conservative senators James Inhofe, Jon Kyl and Jim DeMint. James Inhofe is reported to have received over $2 million in campaign finance from coal and oil companies. Both Koch Industries and ExxonMobil have been major donors. Coincidentally, he has described man-made global warming as “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”.

Jon Kyle, now retired, is currently acting as the “sherpa” guiding Jeff Sessions’s nomination as Trump’s attorney general through the Senate.

Jim DeMint resigned his seat in the Senate to become president of the Heritage Foundation, which is probably, after ALEC, the second most controversial thinktank in America. It was founded with a large grant from Joseph Coors, heir to the Coors brewing empire, then built up with money from the banking and oil billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. Like ALEC, it has been richly funded by the Koch Brothers. Heritage, under DeMint’s presidency, drove the attempt to ensure that Congress refused to pass the federal budget, temporarily shutting down the government. Fox’s former special adviser at the Ministry of Defence, an American called Luke Coffey, now works for the foundation.

The Heritage Foundation is now at the heart of Trump’s administration. Its board members, fellows and staff comprise a large part of his transition team. Among them are Rebekah Mercer, who sits on Trump’s executive committee, Steven Groves and Jim Carafano (State Department), Curtis Dubay (Treasury) and Ed Meese, Paul Winfree, Russ Vought and John Gray(Management and Budget). CNN reports that “no other Washington institution has that kind of footprint in the transition”.

Trump’s extraordinary plan to cut federal spending by $10.5 trillion was drafted by the Heritage Foundation, which called it a “Blueprint for a New Administration”. Russ Vought and John Gray, who moved onto Trump’s team from Heritage, are now turning this blueprint into his first budget.

It will, if passed, inflict devastating cuts on healthcare, social security, legal aid, financial regulation and environmental protections, eliminate programmes to prevent violence against women, to defend civil rights and fund the arts, and will privatise the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Trump, as you follow this story, begins to look less like a president and more like an intermediary: implementing an agenda that has been handed down to him.

In July last year, soon after he became trade secretary, Liam Fox flew to Washington. One of his first stops was a place he has visited often over the past 15 years: the office of the Heritage Foundation, where he spoke among others to Jim DeMint. A freedom of information request reveals that one of the topics raised at the meeting was the European ban on American chicken washed in chlorine: a ban that producers hope the UK will lift under a new trade agreement. Afterwards, Fox wrote to DeMint, looking forward to “working with you as the new UK government develops its trade policy priorities, including in high value areas that we discussed such as defence.”

How did Fox get to be in this position, after the scandal that brought him down six years ago? The scandal itself provides a possible clue: it involved a crossing of the boundaries between public and private interests. The man who ran the UK branch of The Atlantic Bridge was his friend Adam Werrity, who operated out of Michael Hintze’s office building. Werrity’s work became entangled with Liam Fox’s official business as defence secretary. Werritty, who carried a business card naming him as Fox’s adviser but was never employed by the Ministry of Defence, joined the secretary of state on numerous ministerial visits overseas, and made frequent visits to Fox’s office.

By the time details of this relationship began to leak, the Charity Commission had investigated The Atlantic Bridge and determined that its work didn’t look very charitable. It had to pay back the tax from which it had been exempted (Hintze picked up the bill). In response, the trustees shut the organisation down. As the story about Adam Werrity’s unauthorised involvement in the business of government began to grow, Fox made a number of misleading statements. He was left with no choice but to resign.

So when Theresa May brought him back into government, and gave him a portfolio that should, in principle, involve setting clear boundaries between public and private interests, it was as strong a signal as we might receive about the intentions of her government.

The trade treaties that Fox is charged with developing set the limits of sovereignty. US food and environmental standards tend to be lower than ours, and they will become lower still if Trump gets his way. Any trade treaty we strike will create a common set of standards for products and services. Trump’s administration will demand that ours are adjusted downwards, so that US corporations can penetrate our markets without having to modify their practices. All the cards, following the Brexit vote, are in US hands: if the UK resists, there will be no treaty. What May needed – even before Trump became president – was a person prepared to strike such a deal.

As the Financial Times reports, “the election of Donald Trump has transformed the fortunes of Liam Fox”. He is now “an indispensable member of Theresa May’s front bench team”. The shadow diplomatic mission he developed through The Atlantic Bridge plugs him straight into the Trump administration.

Long before Trump won, campaign funding in the US had systematically corrupted the political system. A new analysis by US political scientists finds an almost perfect linear relationship, across 32 years, between the money gathered by the two parties for congressional elections and their share of the vote. But there has also been a shift over these years: corporate donors have come to dominate this funding.

By tying our fortunes to those of the United States, the government binds us into this system. This is part of what Brexit is about: European laws protecting the public interest were portrayed by Conservative Eurosceptics as intolerable intrusions on corporate freedom. Taking back control from Europe means closer integration with the US. The transatlantic special relationship is a special relationship between political and corporate power.

In April 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt sent the US Congress the following warning. “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism.” It is a warning we would do well to remember.

www. monbiot.com

A Shariah-compliant world?

A few pointers from yesterdays's discussion that requires further thinking.

Practicality and function

1. Halal certification is necessary as a means to validate halal-ness of food intake for muslims. It is the determinant of whether certain food choices are open to muslim adherents or not. The limitation is that when you see food stalls / street food vendors not having halal certification, due to business non-compliance or increased costs, but you'd assume it would be halal if it was a muslim vendor. If you visit a muslim household, no questions would be asked. 
2. We then examine the perimeter of that assumption. What is the expected behaviour when visiting a non-muslim household? Alcohol and pork are clearly unacceptable. Would we need to examine the source of meat? Or refrain by just eating vegetable and pastry? What if pastry is made using wine? Or vegetable dishes are made using alcohol? What about utensils? Should they obtain halal certification before inviting guests? These are valid questions.
3. What then is the outcome of examining the perimeter? Would Islam, a very social philosophy outlining leadership of community based on principles of humanity, enlightened by divine guidance, accept the unintended outcome of a stratified community where the ones who want to safeguard their iman are 'locked-out' from mingling, as food (and halal drinks) are perhaps a common denominator for humankind? Is this a call for muslims to dominate the food supply chain?
4. Would JAKIM and other halal certifying bodies be able to absorb the latest capabilities for traceability, and therefore uncovering that non-halal sources could be used for many processed food and medicine? Would halal stand for healthy, or just halal? What is the standing on the many halal but uncertified food products, or halal food products that may use non-halal sources (but converted within the process).
5. It would seem that in its current state, the individual is required to find the answers from his own trusted Shariah source, and apply the above within his daily behaviours.

Then, for a Shariah-compliant product financing. I'll admit the crude and clumsy jump in the analogy being used.

1. Shariah-compliant, I'll just use Green, is a way to identify public listed entities by filtering out the ones with dodgy business fundamentals, and the ones using dodgy capital sources, e.g. non-Shariah compliant loans and such. By that, muslim investors can choose green assets to fit his green portfolio. The intent is rather different in this case to food, which is a basic necessity, whilst for financing this can be hajjiyat in nature. I'll just dodge the Islamic banking products for now as it's a means to open muslim adherents to participate in banking operations for now.
2. Private financing then can be a bit fluffy when it involves preferences. Malaysian standards that allow for preferences when combined with waivers is a nice solution to bringing the same standards into play.
3. Now, slight issue is - where or when does private muamalat become non-halal? My sense is that when the principles of equality, justice is not served. Would backing out / locking out muslims from participating in hajjiyat financial practices constitute justice, especially so when wealth creation activities are centred on technological progress?
4. This is my biggest beef with yesterday's discussion. I understand the principles / guidelines for shariah-compliant exists and will be the perimeter within which the edict can be issued, but stepping back I can't help but feel that more needs to be done to develop new principles / guidelines that allow muslims to develop - fast.
5. I would perhaps just put it out there that private transactions - that were willingly entered into by two participants - if judged as unethical from a third party from one lens is insufficient to call it within or without compliance. Risk taking, and the ability for a VC to take on bad decisions as part of a learning process, whilst enabling the creation of a bigger pie for both the VC and the entrepreneur to succeed in their endeavours to create a better world for humankind seems to me like the area that the Shariah should be most concerned with.

Zaharudin, MAZA and Zabidi springs to mind. Could just be my inability to articulate the need but I can't help stepping away from the meeting thinking that it seems like a reform is needed.

Exposed lies.. as if they were ever in doubt

Sepandai-pandai tupai melompat... except in this case, the "tupai" is a sleazy, scumbag, hypocritical, holier-than-thou, pretentious, arrogant, deceitful, lying Israel.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/08/israeli-diplomat-shai-masot-plotted-against-mps-set-up-political-groups-labour

Obama's farewell tour - keeping Netanyahu in check

Obama's actions can sometimes be in contradiction with this stated oratory - perhaps compromises happening along the way in favour of executing some much-needed reforms. In which case, I think the narrative will be quite sympathetic over time - no one doubts that the charisma of the cause exceeds personal charisma - truth will always prevail.

And that is why this last-minute determination to push through the two-state solution and keep Netanyahu in check must be supported. It may not matter much that this may be too late. It will be too late anyway if nothing is done, but he has created conditions for the global community to act upon and slam-dunk the tiny, haughty and friendless (not so many, but Singapore is unfortunately one of their friends) Jewish state.

Is there hope for that though? Turkey is mired in domestic terrorism, Iran is in empire building mode, Syria which needs the global community and its Arab neighbours help is being left to drown on its own? Again, reshaping the global muslim agenda should be a key political objective, but we are all left to deal with our own internal problems aren't we?

May Allah help us.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/28/the-two-state-solution-in-the-middle-east-all-you-need-to-know  John Kerry's excellent speech schooling Israel on values in the video.

Keystone events - need to normalise Muslim agenda

In prognostication mode, but this development rather stands out as a marker for developments in the mid-term.

Obama finally showed some spine on the settlement issue - threatening to do something about Middle East peace before becoming US President, and strangely subdued thereafter and finally with weeks to go, showing a bit of teeth. Gnarly, but still a bit. Yeah Obama.

Yes, I think I can probably understand the shenanigans of politics - US, or the world politics - where the ones making decisions can hardly be relied upon to make decisions for those not of their ilk, to confirm that beyond bluster, there is always more than a hint of self-interest, that justice for all is a concept difficult to pursue in its entirety.

But, this is different. This is Netanyahu the bully and the spoilt brat, upping the ante and recalling diplomats (of the smaller nations, for sure after calculating that the backlash will be minimal or hoping there will be an overturning of positions from NZ and Senegal), threatening that he'll report to his master (lapdog perhaps, pet dog?) - the incoming US President-elect, and Trump reciprocating that things will change, Paul Ryan confirming that the unified Senate/Congress/President - the axis of evil perhaps? will change things. Trump's lack of credibility in international relations seems to be a major risk factor. So, the US electorate thought that political correctness is a liability huh.

This was the same week Anis decided that ploughing a truck through a civilian market was a jihad. By doing so, the Tunisian, Syrian, Libyan and mainly muslim immigrants who fled turmoil in Islamic countries to find shelter in non-Islamic ones are now targeted for further filtering, the right-wingers are further energised and the Islamic state who has been losing the ground war in Syria further destabilises the Islamic agenda. The Arab Spring was the spark that seemed to bring life to Islamic moderation, but in reality, it brought forth a chain of events where Islam is now being brought forth as a global threat. Whose side is Islamic State and Baghdadi working for?

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From:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/24/israel-rejects-shameful-un-resolution-amid-criticism-of-netanyahu

Israel rejects 'shameful' UN resolution amid criticism of Netanyahu

Israel orders steps against a number of countries that backed motion calling for halt to building of settlements in occupied territories

 Israel’s ambassador to UN rejects ‘shameful’ resolution to halt Israeli settlements

Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem

Saturday 24 December 2016 21.24 GMT First published on Saturday 24 December 2016 08.39 GMT

Israel has responded furiously to a UN security council resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, recalling two of its ambassadors to countries that voted for the motion and threatening to cut aid.

The security council adopted the landmark resolution demanding Israel halt all settlement building and expansion in the occupied territories after Barack Obama’s administration refused to veto the resolution on Friday.

A White House official said Obama had taken the decision to abstain in the absence of any meaningful peace process. The resolution, which passed by a 14-0 vote, was met with loud applause in the packed chamber after the US ambassador, Samantha Power, abstained.

The move was immediately condemned as “shameful” by the office of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. A spokesman pointedly referred to Israel’s expectation of working more closely with the US president-elect, Donald Trump.

On Saturday Netanyahu said Israel would reassess its ties with the UN and had ordered a review of the funding of UN institutions and the presence of UN representatives in Israel.

“I have already instructed to stop about 30m shekels (£6.3m) in funding to five UN bodies that are especially hostile to Israel ... and there is more to come,” he said, without giving any further details.

The security council last adopted a resolution critical of settlements in 1979, with the US abstaining then too. The US vetoed a similar resolution in 2011, which was the sole veto cast by the Obama administration at the security council.

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 US abstains from UN vote to end Israeli settlement building

Amid emerging criticism of the handling of the vote by Netanyahu, whose manoeuvres were seen as an attempt to sideline Obama and his administration, Israel ordered action against a number of countries.

The response included the recall of the Israeli ambassadors to New Zealand and Senegal, who voted for the resolution, the cancellation of a planned visit by the Senegalese foreign minister to Israel in three weeks’ time, and the cancellation of all aid programmes to Senegal.

New Zealand’s foreign minister, Murray McCully, said his country’s vote should have been no surprise to Israel. “We have been very open about our view that the [security council] should be doing more to support the Middle East peace process and the position we adopted today is totally in line with our long-established policy on the Palestinian question,” he said.

The UK, France, Russia and China also voted in favour of the resolution, which described Israeli settlement building as a “flagrant violation” of international law.

The vote has sharply underlined the extent of Israel’s international isolation under Netanyahu, and in particular the hollowness of Netanyahu’s boast at the UN general assembly in the autumn over Israel’s purported diplomatic advances at the UN, not least among African members.

While Israel may expect a much easier ride after the inauguration of Donald Trump, support for the motion from countries such as the UK and France demonstrates the deep frustration in Europe with the policies of Netanyahu’s rightwing coalition over settlements and the moribund peace process.

For its part, the Obama administration made clear that the US decision to abstain was in direct response to choices made by Netanyahu on settlements.

The resolution also serves as a warning to the incoming Trump administration over its policies after the selection by Trump of a far-right pro-settler, David Friedman, to be ambassador to Israel.

While the US and EU have worked closely together in coordinating foreign policy on the Israel-Palestine question, there has been growing support among European governments for tougher steps against Israel, which has already resulted in a directive on the labelling of settlement products.

The strength of the language in the resolution reiterating the illegality of Jewish settlements built on land intended for a Palestinian state, occupied by Israel in 1967, is likely to have an impact on multinational companies operating in the occupied territories or working with Israeli enterprises with links to the occupied territories.

Although the resolution is not binding in legal terms, it will have other practical effects, not least in the impact it may have on the Palestinian complaint to the international criminal court, which includes Israeli settlements.

The resolution also includes language calling for differential treatment of Israel within the pre-1967 borders, calling on states to “distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967”, which could potentially pave the way for future sanctions.

Israeli supporters in the US – both senators and lobby groups – were aghast. Morton Klein, the president of the rightwing Zionist Organization of America, railed in unequivocal terms: “Obama has made it clear that he’s a Jew-hating antisemite.”

Leading pro-Israel Republicans also weighed in, including the House speaker, Paul Ryan, who denounced the US abstention as “absolutely shameful” and promised that “our unified Republican government will work to reverse the damage done by this administration, and rebuild our alliance with Israel”.

In Israel, however, questions were being asked about Netanyahu’s handling of the vote. Writing in Haaretz, the columnist Chemi Shalev was particularly scathing about Netanyahu’s diplomatic failure.

“Resolution 2334 shatters the [Israeli] government-induced illusion that the settlement project has been normalised, that it passed the point of no return, that it is now a fait accompli that will remain unchallenged,” he wrote.

“In recent years, after President Obama desisted from efforts to advance the peace process, Netanyahu, his ministers and settler leaders had behaved as if the battle was over: Israel built and built, the White House objected and condemned, the facts on the ground were cemented in stone.

“You can have your cake and eat it too, the government implied: thumb your nose at Washington and the international community, build in the West Bank as if there’s no tomorrow and still get $38bn in unprecedented [US] military aid.”

Right-wing extremists in UMNO provided political cover

Sad that cheap politicians resort to the lowest common denominator for support when support diminishes from the centre and/or ethically minded demography. The cries of "Hidup Melayu" ring hollow when the Melayu they want to protect are themselves and their blatant self-interests. Malays will only prosper when they leave this preponderance for race-based priviledges (or is that affirmative action for an under-priviledged majority?) and start thinking like a citizen, nay leader of the world, just like the prayers in the Quran - make of my wife and my offspring the Qurrata A'yun, and make them of pious and be leaders. (rough translation)  

I provide proof:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_RxDBcB21s
Here's the son of a UMNO Deputy Minister demonstrating his entitlement rights and displaying threatening behaviour to a Parliamentarian who has insulted his father. Fact of life - if you are a public figure fond of using demeaning language on others, wait till you receive a similar treatment, either in your face or behind your back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QRMoogjUx4
Here's a self-declared Malay leader, proud of his Malay heritage, and his silat prowess squeaming like a little girl when getting smacked on his nose. Changed his story not even an hour later, for obvious political currency. So, abusive, violent, lying are traits captured on this video.

http://www.carigold.com/portal/forums/archive/index.php/t-358912.html
How malay self-proclaimed leaders abuse other malays for power ostensibly to help malays, but just leeching on political dominion, and end up demonstrating power only to the unprotected. Here, a Malay died as a result of getting beaten up due to some sorry excuse. Of course, he was later acquitted of the crime.

Where is justice? Allah save us from this fitan.

Humanists and atheists and the fallibility of theories at the outermost limits of science

It is one of the most incomprehensible aspects of humanity that science-based humanists and atheists, putting their faith in the ability of science to derive facts, fail to appreciate the limits of human knowledge in it. Theories abound - and at the outermost limits are found to be wanting, replaced instead with more theories, some proven, some waiting to be proven, but always looking for more theories to explain what the limitations of the existing theorems cannot prove.

An the crux of it all would be the Dawkin's and his ilk - who will put their faith in the improbable statistics that we are the products of a coincidence of creation, an amalgamation of improbable events that brought into being the universe, the earth and the origin of life. This anthropological principle does not bring a creator, an owner, or a powerful God into consideration. Why? Science has no proof of God, so the improbable statistic must be true. A faith in religion is then replaced by a faith in faulty reasoning and misunderstanding of maths and science. Why not if it brings fame as a global spokesman, and stupidity can be dressed up as intellect?

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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/nov/28/theory-challenging-einsteins-view-on-speed-of-light-could-soon-be-tested

Theory challenging Einstein's view on speed of light could soon be tested

New paper describes for first time how scientists can test controversial idea that speed of light is not a constant

If the Magueijo and Afshordi theory is right, a signature will have been left on the ancient radiation left over from the big bang, the so-called cosmic microwave background that cosmologists have observed with satellites.

The newborn universe may have glowed with light beams moving much faster than they do today, according to a theory that overturns Einstein’s century-old claim that the speed of light is a constant.
João Magueijo, of Imperial College London, and Niayesh Afshordi, of the University of Waterloo in Canada, propose that light tore along at infinite speed at the birth of the universe when the temperature of the cosmos was a staggering ten thousand trillion trillion celsius.

It is a theory Magueijo has being developing since the late 1990s, but in a paper published on Monday he and Afshordi describe for the first time how scientists can finally test the controversial idea. If right, the theory would leave a signature on the ancient radiation left over from the big bang, the so-called cosmic microwave background that cosmologists have observed with satellites.
“We can say what the fluctuations in the early universe would have looked like, and these are the fluctuations that grow to form planets, stars and galaxies,” Afshordi told the Guardian.
The speed of light in a vacuum is considered to be one of the fundamental constants of nature. Thanks to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, it was stamped in the annals of physics more than a century ago at about 1bn km/h. But while general relativity is one of the cornerstones of modern physics, scientists know that the rules of today did not hold at the birth of the universe.



Magueijo and Afshordi came up with their theory to explain why the cosmos looks much the same over vast distances. To be so uniform, light rays must have reached every corner of the cosmos, otherwise some regions would be cooler and more dense than others. But even moving at 1bn km/h, light was not travelling fast enough to spread so far and even out the universe’s temperature differences.
To overcome the conundrum, cosmologists including Stephen Hawking have proposed a theory called inflation, in which the fledgling universe underwent the briefest spell of the most tremendous expansion. According to inflation, the temperature of the cosmos evened out before it exploded to an enormous size. But there is no solid proof that inflation is right, and if so, what sparked such a massive period of expansion, and what brought it to an end.
Magueijo and Afshordi’s theory does away with inflation and replaces it with a variable speed of light. According to their calculations, the heat of universe in its first moments was so intense that light and other particles moved at infinite speed. Under these conditions, light reached the most distant pockets of the universe and made it look as uniform as we see it today. “In our theory, if you go back to the early universe, there’s a temperature when everything becomes faster. The speed of light goes to infinity and propagates much faster than gravity,” Afshordi said. “It’s a phase transition in the same way that water turns into steam.”

New simulation could shed light on dark energy and expansion of the universe

Read more

Scientists could soon find out whether light really did outpace gravity in the early universe. The theory predicts a clear pattern in the density variations of the early universe, a feature measured by what is called the “spectral index”. Writing in the journal Physical Review, the scientists predict a very precise spectral index of 0.96478, which is close to the latest, though somewhat rough, measurement of 0.968.
Science can never prove the theory right. But Afshordi said that if measurements over the next five years shifted the spectral index away from their prediction, it would rule out their own theory. “If we are right then inflation is wrong. But the problem with inflation is that you can always fine tune it to fit anything you want,” he said.
David Marsh, of the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at Cambridge University, is not giving up on inflation yet. “The predictions of inflation developed by Stephen Hawking and others more than 30 years ago have been tested by cosmological observations and faced those tests remarkably well. Many scientists regard inflation as a simple and elegant explanation of the origin of galaxies in the universe,” he said.
And while other theories might also look promising, Marsh said there were elements of Afshordi and Magueijo’s that were not well understood. “It remains to be seen how robust the predictions are when all the theoretical issues have been addressed,” he said.