News of Beneath the FloorBoards RSSTue, 23 Jun 2026 16:44:07 GMTJune 23—This past month, two teams of human beings reached into the two ends of the universe at once. In the hills of southern China, the JUNO observatory—a 20,000-ton sphere of liquid scintillator, watched by more than 43,000 light-sensors, 650 meters underground—caught the near-weightless flicker of the neutrino, and in just 59 days of operation measured the laws governing that ghostly particle more precisely than all prior experiments of recent decades combined. In those same weeks, the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration published its latest catalog of gravitational waves: some 390 collisions of black holes and neutron stars have now been recorded—ripples in the fabric of spacetime itself, one of them traced to a merger more than three billion light-years away. A decade ago, we detected exactly one.Neither the neutrino nor the black hole can be seen, heard, or touched. They lie, as Lyndon LaRouche wrote in 2010, beyond the reach of the senses altogether: “In the very large, as the very small, the metrics of sense-perception can no longer claim authority over the principles which reside, essentially, in what Riemann points to as those extremes of our universe.” And it is precisely there, he added—“in nothing as much as those same extremes”—that the deepest laws of the universe must be sought. To discover them, humanity does not wait for biological evolution to provide us with better eyes; we build new senses. Our species is the only one we know of that reaches past its own senses to grasp the very large and the very small and changes the universe by what we learn.Let’s measure the present against that image of mankind.In Switzerland, the first round of U.S.-Iran negotiations under the 14-point Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding concluded June 21 at the Bürgenstock resort, mediated by Qatar and Pakistan, with the U.S. and Iran not yet speaking directly. They agreed on a roadmap to a final deal within 60 days, a High-Level Committee to oversee it, and, most consequen... Read more

]]>Tue, 23 Jun 2026 16:44:07 GMTMay 29—President Donald Trump has in his hands a Memorandum of Understanding, whose language has been agreed to by U.S. and Iranian negotiators, and which, according to reports, has been signed off on by the Iranian leadership. The deal, which will open the Strait of Hormuz and which will end Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions (if they ever had any), is the exit ramp Trump has searched for from this disastrous war that Israel's messianic lunatic Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu suckered the President into joining in his fool's-errand mission of regime change on Feb. 28.The deal is acceptable to Trump, a source close to the White House said this morning, "but it is totally unacceptable to Bibi. He wanted a dysfunctional Iran, in total chaos, and one that Bibi could continue to fight. And, the deal will also restrain his genocidal operations against Lebanon and Hezbollah. In short, it is a strategic and political disaster for him. The question for Trump is: Does he have the guts to sign the deal and face the wrath of Bibi and his allies in the Zionist Lobby in the U.S.? The indications are that he will sign off on it."Trump’s Strategy and Political CalculationsThis and other sources say that Trump agreed to keep the Israelis at a distance while the negotiations on the wording of the MoU took place over the last several weeks. He has repeatedly told people that "Bibi cannot go against me. He will be forced to go along, whether he likes the deal or not." While critics in the MAGA camp, and Democrats, accurately argued that the Iran war was in Israel's interest and not the United States', Trump was maneuvering to cut a deal that was in his interest, and focused on two issues—the elimination of Iran's nuclear weapons capability and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to global traffic, reducing the effect on the global economy, which was headed towards a collapse in real production, including in food."The nuclear issue is critical for Trump politically," said the ... Read more

]]>Fri, 29 May 2026 18:45:06 GMTMay 23—Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced Thursday that she will resign at the end of June, citing a family medical crisis involving her husband, according to a resignation letter addressed to President Donald Trump.In the letter, dated May 22, 2026, and marked "Unclassified," Gabbard said her husband, Abraham, was recently diagnosed with "an extremely rare form of bone cancer," prompting her decision to step away from public service."Unfortunately, I must submit my resignation, effective June 30, 2026," Gabbard wrote. "At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle."Gabbard, a former Hawaii Democratic congresswoman and Army veteran, has served as director of national intelligence for 18 months. She thanked Trump for "the trust you placed in me and for the opportunity to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence."Following her departure, Principal Deputy DNI Aaron Lukas will step up to serve as acting DNI until a permanent replacement is confirmed by the Senate.Gabbard’s Intelligence Assessments on IranAlthough she has never contradicted or spoken out against Trump's sometimes wild mis-assertions of intelligence estimates, Gabbard has served as a sober counsel on matters. For example, she mobilized U.S. intelligence to present an assessment prior to last summer's strike against Iran that there was no intelligence to support Israeli assertions that Iran was close to developing a bomb or represented a threat to U.S. interests in the Gulf. When asked about this by Congress, she stated that it was up to the President to make the final determination.Similarly, prior to the launching of the Feb. 28 joint Israeli-American aggression against Iran, she presented the President with American assessments that the attack would not lead to regime change, and could lead to Iranian attacks on Gulf states and the economic chaos of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, while seriously... Read more

]]>Sat, 23 May 2026 07:52:50 GMTMay 22—Less than week remains before the high-level open debate on “Upholding the Purposes and Principles of the UN Charter and Strengthening the United Nations-Centered International System,” to be convened by China at the UN Security Council on May 26 as the culminating event of Beijing’s May rotating presidency. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi will chair; UN Secretary-General António Guterres will brief the meeting.China’s framing of the debate is direct, identifying more than 60 armed conflicts active today, “trust lacking among major countries, raising risk of major miscalculation,” and the “rise of power politics” and “bully practices” as the principal threats to the rule of law in international affairs. The language echoes Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s address to the BRICS Foreign Ministers Meeting in New Delhi on May 14, in which he attacked “American bullying” and “declining imperialist powers.”The debate is the immediate venue that Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche identified at the May 15 EIR Emergency Roundtable for advancing the combined framework proposed by former Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu—a new security architecture for the Middle East grounded in the equal sovereignty of nations—and Lyndon LaRouche’s Oasis Plan for economic development in the region. Davutoğlu agreed in dialogue with Zepp-LaRouche to personally contact the mediator nations he had proposed: Türkiye, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia.The May 26 debate is the venue at which the new-paradigm framework—China’s explicit Charter theme, the convergent Davutoğlu architecture, the Russian critique of “neocolonial methods” advanced by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and the LaRouche movement’s economic-development perspective—can be put before the Security Council in a single setting.With Wang Yi chairing and Guterres briefing, with the Putin-Xi joint declaration on a “multipolar world” already in the background, and with Trump’s reported willingness to d... Read more

]]>Sat, 23 May 2026 01:47:20 GMTMay 22—The decision, which is still in process, to dissolve the Knesset and hold elections in Israel seems to be having an effect in loosening up the discussion process there. Public debates about genocide and apartheid are becoming more prominent.Avraham Burg, former Speaker of the Israeli Knesset and one-time chairman of the Jewish Agency, has published a scathing assessment of Israel’s upcoming elections, arguing that the Israeli political system no longer offers voters any meaningful path away from the subjugation of Palestinians—only a choice between its cruder and more refined expressions: a choice between genocide and apartheid.Writing in his Substack newsletter on May 21, Burg strips the election down to three layers. The surface layer is political theater—a talent show of egos competing over image and body count. Beneath it sits the years-long Netanyahu psychosis, which, he argues, has collapsed Israeli politics into a binary personality cult of “yes or no to Netanyahu,” crowding out any genuine debate over borders, occupation, or peace. But the deepest layer, Burg contends, is the one that unites nearly the entire establishment: a tacit acceptance that “Palestinians between the river and the sea, will never have real freedom.”The Israeli right, he writes, has simply stopped concealing what it once euphemized, openly pursuing transfer and ethnic cleansing. But the liberal “alternative,” Burg argues, offers a more polished management of the same reality—occupation with a functioning High Court and “Jewish supremacy with softer constitutional language.” His conclusion is stark: the real electoral choice is between genocide or apartheid.Burg’s piece carries unusual weight: He is not an outside critic but a former pillar of Labor Zionism who has spent two decades in painful public reckoning with its contradictions. The piece is, among other things, a eulogy for the political tradition he once embodied.... Read more

]]>Sat, 23 May 2026 01:41:34 GMTMay 22—At the conclusion of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s May 19-20 series of meetings and summit, the two governments issued a “Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on Further Strengthening Comprehensive Partnership and Strategic Interaction and on Deepening Relations of Good-Neighborliness, Friendship, and Cooperation.”This document specified the two countries’ overview and plan for achieving a “multipolar world order,” “maintain[ing] progress in settlements in national currencies,” the expansion of trade, and so forth. One of the Joint Statement’s driving core concepts is collaboration in space development, including deep-space missions, building the International Lunar Research Station and satellites, etc., which will drive forth scientific-technological discoveries.The parties agreed to continue implementing large-scale space projects that meet the shared interests of Russia and China and are included in their national space programs, actively promote cooperation, and systematically increase the level of interaction in key areas of space activities, including the International Lunar Research Station, lunar exploration, and deep space exploration….The parties agreed to deepen mutually beneficial contacts in the field of satellite navigation, actively implement the Russian-Chinese roadmap for cooperation in satellite navigation for 2026–2030, and ensure the complementarity of the GLONASS and Beidou navigation systems for the benefit of users worldwide.The parties expressed their readiness to continue strengthening Russian-Chinese cooperation in the coordination and use of radio frequencies and satellite orbits, and to continuously deepen Russian-Chinese cooperation and exchange of experience in the field of satellite internet….Simultaneously, the two nations pledged to pursue a breath-taking undertaking in the widest array of the leading edges in both nuclear fission and fusion:The pa... Read more

]]>Sat, 23 May 2026 01:34:44 GMTMay 22—Professor Abdullah al-Ahsan, respected political scientist at the International Islamic University Malaysia and Istanbul Şehir University, endorsed former Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu’s proposed Hormuz mediation framework in a May 21 commentary in Juan Cole’s Informed Comment. Al-Ahsan will be a featured speaker at the May 22 meeting of the International Peace Coalition.Al-Ahsan considers Davutoğlu’s proposal—a joint maritime security force composed of Türkiye, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia to secure and temporarily administer the Strait of Hormuz—the most viable path out of the current standoff. The argument rests on what he calls “dual-acceptability”: these four nations have functional relationships with Tehran, the Gulf Cooperation Council, and Washington simultaneously, in a way no Western-led force can. Tehran, he writes, does not view these “prominent Muslim-majority democracies through the adversarial lens of imperial encirclement,” and Saudi Arabia and the GCC have substantial economic and diplomatic ties with each.The geopolitical asset of dual acceptability—coupled with Davutoğlu’s personal standing as a “scholar-statesman” with “deep conceptual understanding of regional equilibrium and institutional diplomacy”—gives the proposal, in al-Ahsan’s reading, “immediate intellectual credibility” when presented at the UN Security Council and to the international community.The piece arrives at a striking moment. Davutoğlu’s framework, set out in Project Syndicate in April and restated at the May 15 EIR Emergency Roundtable, is now taking the form of concrete diplomatic motion. During his meeting with Trump in Washington in early May, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva handed Trump a copy of the 2010 Brazil-Türkiye-Iran Nuclear Agreement—the same framework Davutoğlu helped mediate as Türkiye’s foreign minister, under which Iran would deposit enriched uranium in Türkiye in exchange for civilian-use nuclear fuel. Pakistan’s General Asi... Read more

]]>Sat, 23 May 2026 01:28:37 GMTMay 22—Sources close to the White House and familiar with ongoing negotiations to end the catastrophic war in Iran say that President Donald Trump is now considering a multi-stage approach that will end the war immediately, open the closed Strait of Hormuz, and allow for commitment by all parties to abide by existing U.N. resolutions and treaty agreements, including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which Iran is a signatory and which bars it from developing a nuclear weapon. In exchange for compliance with this agreement, Iran will see the release of sanctions over time. In addition, the agreement calls for further negotiations to begin within seven days of signing on the specifics of Iran's nuclear program.Saudi news channel Al Arabiya reported today that a draft agreement taking shape between the U.S. and Iran includes an immediate, comprehensive, and unconditional cease-fire across all arenas, according to unnamed sources familiar with the matter. However, the reported deal does not include any direct reference to the nuclear issue—a key sticking point for Israel, which had also been an issue for Trump.According to these sources, the agreement is expected to be announced within "hours" and would take effect immediately following an official announcement by both sides. President Trump reiterated to reporters later today that Iran was "dying to make a deal."Regional Mediation and Diplomatic ActivityAlready in Tehran to push for the agreement, which would take the form of a Memorandum of Understanding, are the top Pakistani negotiators, Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir and Interior Minister Syed Mohsin Naqvi. At the same time, a Qatari negotiating team arrived in Tehran on Friday in coordination with the U.S. in an effort to help secure a deal to end the war with Iran and resolve outstanding issues, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.Meanwhile, both the Iranians and the U.S. threw some cold water on the prospects for a quick deal, with the Ira... Read more

]]>Sat, 23 May 2026 01:07:16 GMTMay 21—Middle East Eye reported on May 18 that the ICC prosecutor’s office last month filed a secret arrest warrant application for Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The charges against Smotrich, the self-anointed leader and spokesman for the settler's movement, reportedly include forced displacement as a crime against humanity and war crime, the transfer of Israel’s own population as a war crime into occupied territories, and persecution and apartheid as crimes against humanity.In a letter to the ICC’s deputy prosecutors in March, which MEE says it has seen, Palestine’s mission to the Hague outlined further evidence of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity by settlers and Israeli occupation forces. The letter also noted that Israel has failed to prosecute the alleged crimes. “The urgency to take action now cannot be overstated in any way, with the erasure and the destruction of the Palestinian people, as manifested by an illegal occupant, materializing by the day,” the letter read.The prosecutor’s office has neither confirmed nor denied that it is seeking an arrest warrant for Smotrich.Smotrich himself responded to the news by threatening to commit even more such crimes against the Palestinians: “Issuing arrest warrants against the prime minister is a declaration of war. Issuing arrest warrants against the minister of defense and the minister of finance [Smotrich] is a declaration of war. And in the face of a declaration of war, we will fight back with a vengeance.” He accused the Palestinian Authority of starting a war by engaging with the ICC to provide evidence.Smotrich said that he is “very proud” of his settlement expansion policies. Then he made his vow: “From today, any economic or otherwise, anything that I can harm within the framework of my powers … will be attacked. Not talk and gimmicks—actions.” He proceeded to sign an immediat... Read more

]]>Thu, 21 May 2026 22:25:53 GMTMay 21—Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir posted a video May 20 celebrating his visit to a detention facility, where he taunted Gaza flotilla activists while they were forced to kneel on the ground, with their hands bound. Two days ago, the IDF illegally kidnapped them in international waters. The video displayed Ben-Gvir as a deranged clown, viciously taunting the peaceful, bound detainees as if they were terrorists, was far beyond the bounds of normal propaganda, revealing him to be a Nazi-like sadist, who should be in some mental institution and not running Israel's security forces. So much international outrage broke out that even Prime Minister Netanyahu had to disassociate himself from Ben Gvir’s public sado-masochism.As recounted by the Times of Israel, a female activist who shouted “Free Palestine” was grabbed by her head, then “shoved to the ground by officers who drag her out of Ben Gvir’s way, as he tours the facility where the proterstors were held. The treatment of the detainees appeared akin to security forces’ handling of the most severe terrorists in the prisons overseen by Ben Gvir’s office… With dozens of bound activists kneeling on the ground, Ben Gvir is seen waving a large Israeli flag and shouting in Hebrew, ‘Welcome to Israel! We are in charge here!’ Another shot pans through the kneeling activists, as Israel’s national anthem is blasted over a loudspeaker. Ben Gvir is subsequently seen shouting ‘Am Yisrael Chai’ (the nation of Israel lives) at a bound detainee trying to argue with him. As a woman is heard crying out, Ben Gvir is also heard urging guards at the facility ‘not [to] be bothered by their screams’.”Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called the video “unacceptable,” that it violated the protestor's human dignity. She posted on X Italy’s action to retrieve her citizens and added: “Italy further demands an apology for the treatment of these demonstrators and for the utter contempt shown toward the explicit requests ... Read more

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