Category: Uncategorized

by KIT KLARENBERG

Newly leaked documents expose Washington’s ongoing, covert push for regime change in Iran. With millions funneled into secretive initiatives, the US aims to infiltrate civil society, manipulate political participation, and engineer unrest, all while keeping its Iranian beneficiaries in the shadows.

A bombshell leak reviewed by The Cradle exposes the depths of Washington’s long-running campaign to destabilize the Islamic Republic. 

For years, the US State Department’s Near East Regional Democracy fund (NERD) has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into covert operations aimed at toppling Tehran’s government – without success. Details on where this money goes and who benefits are typically concealed. However, this leak provides a rare glimpse into NERD’s latest regime-change blueprint.

Covert funding for Iran’s opposition

The document in question is a classified US State Department invitation for bids from private contractors and intelligence-linked entities such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and USAID. 

Circulated discreetly in August 2023, it solicited proposals to “support Iranian civil society, civic advocates, and all Iranian people in exercising their civil and political rights during and beyond” the next year’s electoral period, “in order to increase viable avenues for democratic participation.”

NERD summoned applicants to “propose activities” that would “strengthen civil society’s efforts to organize around issues of importance to the Iranian people during the election period and hold elected and unelected leaders accountable to citizen demands.” 

The State Department also wished to educate citizens on purported “flaws of Iranian electoral processes.” Submissions were to “pay special attention to developing strategies and activities that increase women’s participation in civil society, advocacy, rule of law, and good governance efforts.”

The document is filled with lofty, euphemistic language. NERD claims to champion “participatory governance, economic reform, and educational advancement,” aiming to cultivate “a more responsive and responsible Iranian government that is internally stable and externally a peaceful and productive member of the community of nations.” In other words, another compliant western client state that serves imperial interests in West Asia rather than challenging them.

NERD envisaged successful applicants coordinating with “governments, civil society organizations, community leaders, youth and women activists, and private sector groups” in these grand plans. 

State Department financing would produce “increased diversity of uncensored media” in Iran, while expanding “access to digital media through the use of secure communications infrastructure, tools, and techniques.” This would, it was forecast, improve the “ability of civil society to organize and advocate for citizens’ interests.”

‘Human subjects’

NERD viewed Iran’s 2024 election cycle and the campaigning period as “opportunities” for civil society infiltration. The plan envisioned a network of “civic actors” engaged in electoral strategies ranging from “electoral participation” to “electoral non-participation” – in other words, either mobilizing voters or undermining turnout. 

Meanwhile, “technical support and training” would be offered to aspiring female, youth, and ethnic minority leaders at all levels of governance – though no “currently serving” Iranian government official was eligible for assistance.

Once in place, this network of Iranian regime change operatives would, it was hoped, organize “mock national referendums” and other “unofficial” political action outside the Islamic Republic’s formal structures to highlight the alleged disparity between government action and public will. 

Iranians would also be assisted in drafting “manifestos” on the local population’s “unmet needs and priorities.” Reference to how crippling US and EU-imposed sanctions contribute significantly to public discontent in Tehran was predictably absent. Instead, it stated:

The Cradle for more

by SIMON MAKIN

Breakthroughs in synthetic biology could create mirror versions of natural molecules, with devastating consequences for life on Earth

A category of synthetic organisms dubbed “mirror life,” whose component molecules are mirror images of their natural counterpart, could pose unprecedented risks to human life and ecosystems, according to a perspective article by leading experts, including Nobel Prize winners. The article, published in Science on December 12, is accompanied by a lengthy report detailing their concerns.

Mirror life has to do with the ubiquitous phenomenon in the natural world in which a molecule or another object cannot simply be superimposed on another. For example, your left hand can’t simply be turned over to match your right hand. This handedness is encountered throughout the natural world.

Groups of molecules of the same type tend to have the same handedness. The nucleotides that make up DNA are nearly always right-handed, for instance, while proteins are composed of left-handed amino acids.

Handedness, more formally known as chirality, is hugely important in biology because interactions between biomolecules rely on them having the expected form. For example, if a protein’s handedness is reversed, it cannot interact with partner molecules, such as receptors on cells. “Think of it like hands in gloves,” says Katarzyna Adamala, a synthetic biologist at the University of Minnesota and a co-author of the article and the accompanying technical report, which is almost 300 pages long. “My left glove won’t fit my right hand.”

The authors are worried about mirror bacteria, the simplest life-form their concerns apply to. The capability to create mirror bacteria does not yet exist and is “at least a decade away,” they write, but progress is underway. Researchers can already synthesize mirror biomolecules, such as DNA and proteins. At the same time, progress has been made toward creating synthetic cells from nonmirrored components. In 2010 researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in California installed synthetic DNA into a cell to create the first cell with a fully synthetic genome.

Further breakthroughs would be required to create mirror life, but they are achievable with substantial investment and effort. “We’re not relying on scientific breakthroughs that might never happen. I can draw you a list of things that need to happen to build a mirror cell,” Adamala says. “It’s not science fiction anymore.” Adamala previously worked toward creating mirror cells, but she now fears that if mirror bacteria are created, the consequences could include irreversible ecological damage and loss of life. The article’s authors, who include experts in immunology, synthetic biology, plant pathology, evolutionary biology, and ecology, as well as two Nobel laureates, are calling for researchers, policymakers, regulators and society at large to start discussing the best path forward to better understand and mitigate the risks the authors identify. Unless evidence emerges that mirror life would not pose extraordinary dangers, they recommend that research aimed at creating mirror bacteria should not be conducted.

Scientific American for more

by DEAN BAKER

Elon Musk has been running wild with his DOGE team, on the one hand pretending shock over facts that were always public information, and on the other hand getting into our tax, banking, and medical records where he has no business being. However, the unifying theme of his quest is supposedly to shut down the deep state, and by some accounts, dismantle the federal government.

Many liberal types are all too willing to accept the latter claim. The idea is that Musk and his crew somehow want a world without government. This is self-serving crap that no one who is not on his team should ever accept.

These self-imagined libertarians want government for all sorts of things. The small grain of truth to the story is that they don’t want government social programs that help people who are not rich. Musk’s view is that the government should only be there to make him and his fellow billionaires richer.

Starting with my favorite, government-granted patent and copyright monopolies come from the government. I know the beneficiaries want us to believe that they came from God, but those of us who have not taken a vow of stupidity know better.

And these government-granted monopolies are hugely important in determining the distribution of income. In the case of pharmaceutical products alone, patents increase what we pay to those in a position to benefit from this monopoly by close to $500 billion a year. That’s roughly half of what we pay out each year in Social Security benefits.

And that’s just the beginning, we pay big bucks for medical equipment, iPhones, computers, software and many other products because of patent and copyright monopolies. If we add all of these together, we are almost certainly talking about well over $1 trillion a year, close to half of all after-tax corporate profits.

Does Elon Musk and his band of anti-government libertarians want to get rid of these government-granted monopolies? To be clear, these monopolies serve a purpose in promoting innovation and creative work. But they are not the only way to provide this incentive, and more importantly for the question at hand, this does not change the fact that these monopolies are government.

Next let’s ask our billionaire libertarians in finance if they want to get rid of government deposit insurance for banks and other financial institutions. There don’t seem to be lots of libertarians pushing for that.

And when banks manage to blow themselves up through their greed and incompetence, as happened in a big way with the housing bubble and its collapse in 2008-09, and more recently with the Silicon Valley Bank panic in 2023, the libertarian billionaires are first in line demanding the government come to their rescue.

This is only part of the story of how the government makes money for finance. As Musk showed us this week, it can create markets for the industry by not providing more efficient competition, as he sought to shut down the I.R.S.’s free direct file system. There is a much bigger story here with Medicare. We could have a much more efficient insurance system if we had Medicare for All, but that would wipe out the private insurance industry. Instead, we are going the other way and whittling down traditional Medicare and increasing costs by pushing people back to private insurers with Medicare advantage.

Elon Musk wants to get rid of all government regulation. That’s cool, so everyone can use whatever broadcast frequency they want whenever they want. That will be great news for radio and television networks. I gather Musk wants to get rid of the federal air traffic control system that determines flight patterns and take off and landing paths at airports. Oh, I guess Musk probably doesn’t mean those regulations.

This list can be extended at length. Section 230 protection for Elon Musk’s social media platform didn’t come from God. Labor laws in the U.S. that prohibit secondary boycotts (which shut down Tesla’s operation in Sweden) are also not God-given.

Even “regulations” that limit greenhouse gas emissions can be seen as simply a form of property rights. People don’t have a right to dump their sewage on their neighbor’s lawns. In the same way, they don’t have the right to dump greenhouse gases into our atmosphere that destroy the planet.

And yeah, the corporate structure itself is created by the government. We can all form partnerships with our buddies where we act collectively in forming a business. But then our names are associated with all our business dealings, and we are personally liable for all the partnerships liabilities. How many people would be throwing their money at Elon Musk and Tesla if they could be personally sued for whatever idiocy Musk got himself into?

The point here should be clear to anyone not totally blinded by ideology; government regulations structure the market. A modern economy cannot exist without government regulation. When Elon Musk or anyone else says they want to get rid of government regulation they are lying. It’s that simple.

It is absurd that people on the left have allowed the Musk billionaire libertarians of the world to pretend they are anti-government. They just want a government that only serves their interest rather than society as a whole.

CEPR for more

by JONATHAN COOK

During Netanyahu’s visit, Trump dropped Washington’s sugar coating of Israel’s 15-month genocidal destruction of Gaza. This was always about ethnic cleansing

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House this week tore the mask off 16 months of gaslighting by western leaders and by the entirety of the western establishment media.

United States President Donald Trump finally dropped Washington’s sugar coating of Israel’s genocidal destruction of Gaza.

This was always, he told us, a slaughter made in the US. In his words, Washington will now “take over” Gaza and be the one to develop it.

And the goal of the slaughter was always ethnic cleansing.

Palestinians, he said, would be “settled” in a place where they would not have to be “worried about dying every day” – that is, being murdered by Israel using US-supplied bombs.

Gaza, meanwhile, would become the “Riviera of the Middle East”, with the “world’s people” – he meant rich white people like himself – living in luxury beachfront properties in their stead.

If the US “owns” Gaza, as Trump insists, it will also own Gaza’s territorial waters, where there just happen to be fabulous quantities of untapped gas to enrich the enclave’s new “owner”. Palestinians have, of course, never been allowed to develop their gas fields.

Trump may even have let slip inadvertently the true death toll inflicted by Israel’s rampage. He referred to “all of them – there’s 1.7 million or maybe 1.8 million people” being forced out of Gaza.

The population count before 7 October 2023 was between 2.2 and 2.3 million. Where are the other half a million Palestinians? Under the rubble? In unmarked graves? Eaten by feral dogs? Vaporised by 2,000lb US bombs?

Wrecking spree

Trump presented his ethnic cleansing plan as if he had the best interests of the Palestinians at heart. As if he was saving them from a disaster-prone earthquake zone, not from a genocidal neighbour he counts as Washington’s closest ally.

His comments were greeted with shock and horror in western and Arab capitals. Everyone is distancing themselves from his blatant backing for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza’s population.

But these are the same leaders who kept silent through 15 months of Israel’s levelling of Gaza’s homes, hospitals, schools, universities, libraries, government buildings, mosques, churches and bakeries.

Then, they spoke of Israel’s right to “defend itself” even as Israel caused so much damage the United Nations warned it would take up to 80 years to rebuild the territory – that is, four generations.

What did they think would happen at the end of the wrecking spree they armed and fully supported? Did they imagine the people of Gaza could survive for years without homes, or hospitals, or schools, or water systems, or electricity?

They knew this was the outcome: destitute Palestinians would either risk death in the ruins or be forced to move out.

And western politicians not only let it happen, they told us it was “proportionate”, it was necessary. They smeared anyone who dissented, anyone who called for a ceasefire, anyone who went on a protest march as an antisemite and a Jew hater.

In the US and elsewhere, students – many of them Jewish – staged mass protests on their campuses. In response, university administrations sent in the riot police, beating them. Afterwards, the universities expelled the student organisers and denied them their degrees.

And yet western politicians and media outlets think now is the time to express shock at Trump’s statements?

Still dying

Trump’s appalling, savage honesty simply highlights the depths of mendacity over the preceding 16 months. After all, who did not understand that the three-phase Gaza ceasefire, which came into effect on 19 January, was a lie too.

It was a lie even before the ink dried on the page.

It was a lie because the ceasefire was officially intended not just to create a pause in the bloodshed. It was also supposed to allow for the mitigation of harm to the civilian population, bring the hostilities to an end, and lead to the reconstruction of Gaza.

None of that will happen – at least not for the Palestinians, as Trump has made clear.

Despite its claims, Israel has clearly not ceased firing munitions into Gaza. It has continued killing and maiming Palestinians, including children, even if the carpet bombing has ended for the time being.

In media coverage, these deaths and injuries are never referred to as what they are: violations of the ceasefire.

Israeli snipers may no longer be shooting Palestinian children in the head, as happenedroutinely for 15 months. But the young are still dying.

Without homes, without access to properly functioning hospitals and with only limited access to food and water, Gaza’s children are perishing – mostly out of view, mostly uncounted – from the cold, from disease, from starvation.

Even Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, says it will likely take 10-15 years to rebuild Gaza.

But the people of Gaza don’t have that much time.

This month Israel instituted a ban on the activities of the United Nation’s aid agency, Unrwa, in all of the Palestinian territories it occupies illegally.

Unrwa is the only agency capable of alleviating the worst excesses of the hellscape Israel has created in Gaza. Without it, the recovery process will be further hampered – and more of Gaza’s people will die waiting for help.

A blind eye

But in truth, Netanyahu has no intention of maintaining the “ceasefire” beyond the first stage, the exchange of hostages. Afterwards, he has all but promised to restart the slaughter.

Dissident Voice for more

by BRIAN O’NEILL

The AI agents big tech companies are now developing possess the ability to take actions on your behalf.

Interacting with AI chatbots like ChatGPT can be fun and sometimes useful, but the next level of everyday AI goes beyond answering questions: AI agents carry out tasks for you.

Major technology companies, including OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce, have recently released or announced plans to develop and release AI agents. They claim these innovations will bring newfound efficiency to technical and administrative processes underlying systems used in health care, robotics, gaming, and other businesses.

Simple AI agents can be taught to reply to standard questions sent over email. More advanced ones can book airline and hotel tickets for transcontinental business trips. Google recently demonstrated Project Mariner to reporters, a browser extension for Chrome that can reason about the text and images on your screen.

In the demonstration, the agent helped plan a meal by adding items to a shopping cart on a grocery chain’s website, even finding substitutes when certain ingredients were not available. A person still needs to be involved to finalize the purchase, but the agent can be instructed to take all of the necessary steps up to that point.

In a sense, you are an agent. You take actions in your world every day in response to things that you see, hear, and feel. But what exactly is an AI agent? As a computer scientist, I offer this definition: AI agents are technological tools that can learn a lot about a given environment, and then—with a few simple prompts from a human—work to solve problems or perform specific tasks in that environment.

Rules and Goals

A smart thermostat is an example of a very simple agent. Its ability to perceive its environment is limited to a thermometer that tells it the temperature. When the temperature in a room dips below a certain level, the smart thermostat responds by turning up the heat.

A familiar predecessor to today’s AI agents is the Roomba. The robot vacuum cleaner learns the shape of a carpeted living room, for instance, and how much dirt is on the carpet. Then it takes action based on that information. After a few minutes, the carpet is clean.

The smart thermostat is an example of what AI researchers call a simple reflex agent. It makes decisions, but those decisions are simple and based only on what the agent perceives in that moment. The robot vacuum is a goal-based agent with a singular goal: clean all of the floor that it can access. The decisions it makes—when to turn, when to raise or lower brushes, when to return to its charging base—are all in service of that goal.

A goal-based agent is successful merely by achieving its goal through whatever means are required. Goals can be achieved in a variety of ways, however, some of which could be more or less desirable than others.

Many of today’s AI agents are utility based, meaning they give more consideration to how to achieve their goals. They weigh the risks and benefits of each possible approach before deciding how to proceed. They are also capable of considering goals that conflict with each other and deciding which one is more important to achieve. They go beyond goal-based agents by selecting actions that consider their users’ unique preferences.

Singularity Hub for more

by MADHUMITA PAUL

That is almost one-third of the Arab region’s population

In 2022, 2.8 billion people globally were unable to afford a healthy diet. Of these 151.3 million resided in the Arab States, representing 5.4 per cent of the global population.

The 151.3 million people constitute almost one-third of the Arab region’s population, according to a report by the United Nations.

The report, titled 2024 Near East and North Africa Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition, was launched on December 18, 2024, by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme (WFP), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA).

The analysis covers 22 Arab states spread across West Asia, North and East Africa: Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

The Arab region remains off-track to meet the food security and nutrition targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, the document warned.

Conflict is the main driver of food insecurity and malnutrition in the region, while economic challenges, high income disparities and severe climate impacts also play important roles in this matter, according to the report.

Regional food production is limited due to scarcity of fertile land and water, impacts of climate variability and the increased frequency of extreme weather events.

Shocking figures

The prevalence of undernourishment in Arab states reached a new level, as per the report. A shocking 66.1 million people, equivalent to about 14 per cent of the region’s population, faced hunger in 2023.

In 2023, moderate or severe food insecurity affected 39.4 per cent of the Arab population (186.5 million individuals), a 1.1 percentage point increase from the previous year, and 15.4 per cent of the population (72.7 million people) faced severe food insecurity in 2023.

The Arab region continues to struggle with a triple burden of malnutrition — undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies (anemia among women) and obesity.

In 2022, the prevalence of overweight among children under 5 years of age and among adults over 18 years was around double the world average. Egypt, Qatar, and Kuwait reported the highest country-specific obesity rates.

Down to earth for more

by B. R. GOWANI

for antisemitism, Kanye West, now Ye, lost contract with Gap

business ended with Balenciaga and others for similar crap

Ye’s worth was $1.8 billion before Adidas with him broke

after losing 78% of wealth, $400 million worth was this bloke

recently, T-shirts with a Nazi symbol of swastika on it he sold

Ye could have lied; it was a logo of many religions — new and old

in an AI-generated video, Jewish celebrities are full of glee

they are wearing T-shirts with raised middle finger for ye

Bar says: “Your antisemitism and incitement to violence” is rough

it has really “crossed every possible line. Enough is enough.”

a video of Israel’s genocidal war Guy Bar should now make.

Palestinians should be allowed to express their anger, real not fake

instead of middle finger, Palestinians should show an Imperial Dick

the ID is made of marble, granite, and other material but no brick

who should ID be exhibited to, i.e., whose names on t-shirts to appear?

of course, the perpetrators and their hardcore supporters, is it clear?

Biden, Netanyahu, Smotrich, Gallant, Schumer, Ben-Gvir, and others

who extinguished lives of over 100.000 Palestinians, including mothers

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

by MARIS PAEZ VICTOR

The melodic Canadian national anthem proclaims that its sons and daughters “stand on guard for thee.” Well, now is the time as Canada faces insults, lies and threats from Trump. The idea that the US would annex Canada and make it one of its states, has provoked palpable indignation among Canadian people, Indigenous and non-indigenous. Ironically, Canada, which celebrates its “special relationship” with the USA, has been thrust into the category of nations vilified by the US: the long-standing animosity towards Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua remains, but now Trump has added US allies Canada, Panama, Denmark (EU), and Colombia. One can only wonder who will be next.

Canadian spokespersons deny these outrages but at the same time add with a bit of a whine: “but, but, we are your best friends!” To its detriment, Canada has long ignored Henry Kissinger, well-known former US Secretary of State, who declared that the US has no friends, only interests.  

It has been a rude awakening for all Canadians, especially its elites. Suddenly, they are mentioning “Canadian sovereignty,” a concept that it seemed only the Quebecois and indigenous peoples understood. Certainly, sovereignty is a concept that Canadian governments have often willfully ignored or belittled with respect to other countries such as Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti, among others.

Unlike his father Pierre who was a Canadian nationalist, in 2017 Trudeau the younger astonishingly expressed the view that Canada is a “post-national” country and that “there is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada.”

This would not have been acceptable to the working classes in towns, cities, farms, factories, logging camps, fishing towns, throughout the country where the Maple Leaf flag flies proudly, had Trudeau’s concept been actually discussed in participation with the people of Canada.  It was a sheer urban elitist commentary. An example of how far the Canadian political elites especially, have problems listening to their own people. In fact, the real defense of Canada will lie as it always has done, in the hands of its working and middle classes, and ironically, with the indigenous peoples, and their pressure and votes upon the political elites. Unlike in the US, there is in Canada a working Parliament where, despite lobbyists, votes do count, and not vast fortunes of the billionaires. 

Trudeau is an ideological product of the financial and commercial elites that embraced globalization and the US empire, wanting to “play with the big boys.” After World War II, Canadian political and cultural elites basically decided to join US imperial capitalism.  In the 1960s the Canadian intellectual, George Grant, railed against this situation, mourning what he felt was the end of Canada as an independent state as the ruling class looked to the US for its final authority in politics and culture (George Grant, Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism, 1965). Through the years, the US has repeatedly attempted to dominate Canada over lumber, water, fishing rights, and other trade issues.

Although there have been almost constant US/Canada trade disagreements that federal and provincial officials have had to contend with, at another level, Canadian elites threw their hat and their county into the hands of the US empire that was consolidating south of their borders. So, they send their children to Ivy League universities, approve of mergers with US corporations, and take vacations in Florida. Canadian media increasingly relies on US outlets such as Associated Press for much of its news, and most significantly, Canada backs the US in almost every vote at the UN and backs US foreign policy, whether it be a sensible one or an irresponsible regime change adventure. There were exceptions with two Liberal Prime Ministers who withstood tremendous US pressure:  Pierre Trudeau who refused to break relations with China or Cuba during the Cold War and Jean Chretien who refused to join the US invasion of Iraq.

The US has, to a certain extent, already “invaded” Canada in a back-handed, quiet, sort of way. The symbol of US “takeover” is plainly visible in Ottawa, where the enormous, ugly, US fortress-like embassy was planted in the middle of the nation’s capital, like a giant carbuncle proclaiming: “we are a permanent feature of your nation.” 

It is surprising especially to many of us in Canada of Latin American origin, how unconcerned most Canadians have been about the encroaching US influence in its political and cultural life. A great scandal was whipped up when there were accusations of China influencing Canadian politics, but when US ambassadors publicly weighed in with their opinions, nobody bats an eye. 

Orinoco Tribune for more

by PAUL SUTTER

The speed of light is important because it’s about way more than, well, the speed of light.

On one hand, the speed of light is just a number: 299,792,458 meters per second. And on the other, it’s one of the most important constants that appears in nature and defines the relationship of causality itself.

As far as we can measure, it is a constant. It is the same speed for every observer in the entire universe. This constancy was first established in the late 1800’s with the experiments of Albert Michelson and Edward Morley at Case Western Reserve University. They attempted to measure changes in the speed of light as the Earth orbited around the Sun. They found no such variation, and no experiment ever since then has either.

Observations of the cosmic microwave background, the light released when the universe was 380,000 years old, show that the speed of light hasn’t measurably changed in over 13.8 billion years.

In fact, we now define the speed of light to be a constant, with a precise speed of 299,792,458 meters per second. While it remains a remote possibility in deeply theoretical physics that light may not be a constant, for all known purposes it is a constant, so it’s better to just define it and move on with life.

How was the speed of light first measured?

In 1676 the Danish astronomer Ole Christensen Romer made the first quantitative measurement of how fast light travels. He carefully observed the orbit of Io, the innermost moon of Jupiter. As the Earth circles the Sun in its own orbit, sometimes it approaches Jupiter and sometimes it recedes away from it. When the Earth is approaching Jupiter, the path that light has to travel from Io is shorter than when the Earth is receding away from Jupiter. By carefully measuring the changes to Io’s orbital period, Romer calculated a speed of light of around 220,000 kilometers per second.

Observations continued to improve until by the 19^th century astronomers and physicists had developed the sophistication to get very close to the modern value. In 1865, James Clerk Maxwell made a remarkable discovery. He was investigating the properties of electricity and magnetism, which for decades had remained mysterious in unconnected laboratory experiments around the world. Maxwell found that electricity and magnetism were really two sides of the same coin, both manifestations of a single electromagnetic force.

Astronomy for more