Joe Biden has turned 81 with plans for a low-key celebration in Nantucket - as his administration deploys a 'Bubble Wrap' strategy to stop him from falling in public.

The President has seen repeated questions over his fitness for office, with polls and pundits suggesting it is a huge problem with less than a year to the 2024 election.

When asked to respond to concerns about his age by the New York Times, the White House swerved and tried to rattle off a list of his achievements.

'Because of President Biden's decades of experience in public service and deep relationships with leaders in Congress, he passed legislation that has helped to create more than 14 million jobs, lower prescription drug costs, invest in America's infrastructure and technology and led to the strongest economic recovery in the developed world,' White House Communications Director Ben LaBolt said.

Webmaster addition: It isn't the age, it's the dementia!

A protest by about 1,000 people angry over U.S. support for Israel in its war with Hamas entered the convention center where the California Democratic Party was meeting Saturday evening, causing security guards to lock entrances to the SAFE Credit Union Convention Center in downtown Sacramento and prompting an early end to the day's official events.

Delegates and other participants were temporarily blocked from exiting and entering the building after demonstrators barged through security around 6 p.m. and opened several doors, allowing more people to stream into the building where California Democrats gathered for a weekend of events gearing up for the 2024 election.

“Cease-fire now. Cease-fire now," they chanted as they marched through the convention hall waving Palestinian flags and carrying "Free Palestine" signs.

California Democratic Party officials canceled evening meetings and parties "for the safety and security of our delegates and convention participants," spokesperson Shery Yang said in a statement.

Saturday Night Live took aim this weekend both at President Joe Biden and the strained US-China relationship as understand via panda diplomacy.

The show's cold open mocked the 80-year-old president's frequent public speaking blunders when cast member Mikey Day - doing a Biden impression - flubbed a line from the teleprompter, referring to Chinese President Xi Jinping as 'Roman Numeral 11.'

Referring to Biden's meeting with Xi at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, Day said: 'We mad agreements about communications, fentanyl, climate change, but most importantly, got the thing America really needs right now: more pandas!'

Webmaster addition: When SNL gets on your case, you know you are toast!

Webmaster addition: Very long, but worth it!

An Israeli police investigation into the Hamas attack on the Nova music festival near the Gaza border on October 7 revealed that an Israeli attack helicopter killed some of the attendees, Haaretz reported on Saturday. 

According to a police source, an investigation into the incident showed that an Israeli combat helicopter that arrived at the scene from the Ramat David base fired at Hamas fighters and other Palestinians who crossed through the border fence from Gaza into Israel, but also fired on some of the Israelis attending the music festival. According to the police, 364 people in total were killed there.

It was the 1970s. Dry cleaning bags lurked quietly behind couches waiting patiently for the opportunity to pounce on the hapless child who dropped a Lego nearby. Unguarded five-gallon buckets stood brazenly in the middle of basement floors hoping to entice their next drowning victim. Discarded refrigerators prowled the land looking for unsuspecting eight-year-olds to gobble up. GI Joes and Barbies, with the help of their little owners, were making out everywhere.

It is the 2020s. Entire schools ban peanut butter and jelly sandwiches because maybe one kid might have an allergy. Parents get visits from county protective services for letting their children play unsupervised in the park across the street. Jungle gyms are an endangered species. And third-graders are taught to not impose cisnormative constructs, let alone behaviors, on anyone or anything.

The odd thing is that the events described in the first paragraph (except the GI Joe one) were not actually happening on any grand scale. The sad thing is that the events in the second paragraph are.

It is the type of essential item that touches nearly every aspect of our lives; the bakery relies on ovens, the repair shop on power tools, and the local grocer on refrigeration, and on and on. A consistent and affordable power source ensures that they can operate without interruption and keep prices competitive for their customers despite low margins and a fragile economy. Unfortunately, misguided federal policies now threaten to further disrupt our electric grid and could cause these business to shutter.

In the last several years, the U.S. has rapidly pivoted from a common sense, ‘all-of-the-above’ energy strategy to one motivated by the singular desire to eliminate fossil fuel-generated electricity. That goal of a energy change could even be somewhat defendable if not for the fact that our economy and power grid are clearly not ready for the rushed and reckless transition that federal regulators are rushing.

Like all other areas of the economy, energy markets adhere to the basic laws of supply and demand. Regulators have distorted the sector to force conventional power plants into early retirement, reducing total power generation and increasing prices. The Biden Administration has backed these actions based on the dubious claim that positive incentives for solar and wind projects will allow new arrays and wind farms to fully replace conventional power plants. 

Respected Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported that over 40 US transport aircraft, 20 British transport aircraft and seven heavy transport helicopters have flown to RAF Akrotiri, Britain’s vast base on Cyprus, carrying equipment, arms and forces.

RAF Akrotiri has long been the staging post for British military operations and bombing campaigns in the Middle East. It sits 180 miles from Tel Aviv with a flight time of 40 minutes. 

The planes have been loaded with cargo from strategic depots belonging to the US and NATO in Europe, Haaretz reported. Around half the US flights are said to be “delivering military aid”. 

An Israeli official called for the complete destruction of Gaza. In six weeks of bombing Gaza, Israeli forces have killed over 5,500 Palestinian Children. Still, Deputy Speaker of the Knesset Nissim Vaturi said, “We are too humane. Burn Gaza now no less!”

Vaturi, a Lukid Member of the Knesset, made the remarks in response to the Israeli government allowing a small amount of fuel into Gaza. “All of this preoccupation with whether or not there is internet in Gaza shows that we have learned nothing. We are too humane. Burn Gaza now no less!” he demanded. “Don’t allow fuel in, don’t allow water in until the hostages are returned back!”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to allow two trucks of fuel into Gaza every other day. However, aid groups say the small amount of fuel is insufficient to maintain basic humanitarian operations.

• Israeli tanks surround Indonesian Hospital in Gaza where at least 12 people killed following direct Israeli strikes since the morning.
• Gaza’s health ministry director dismissed Israel’s claim that it had found a Hamas tunnel at the al-Shifa Hospital, describing it as a “pure lie”.
• More than 13,000 people killed in Gaza since Israeli bombardment began on October 7. In Israel, the official death toll in Hamas’s attacks stands at about 1,200.
• Yemen’s Houthi rebels have seized an Israeli-linked cargo ship in the Red Sea and taken two dozen crew members hostage, raising fears of a wider escalation.

Demonstrators the world over have rallied in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, condemning the high rate of civilian casualties in Israeli attacks and calling for an immediate ceasefire.

Protests were held on Thursday across Spain and in Mexico City, Rotterdam, New York, Rabat and elsewhere.

People also showed solidarity with the Palestinian people and called for a ceasefire during various 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifiers across Asia.

Students across Spain held a second strike following similar action last month. University and high school students gathered in 38 cities, including Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Malaga, Bilbao, Zaragoza and Madrid.

Yes, on a radio show, Israeli Minister of Heritage Amihai Eliyahu insisted that there were “no non-combatants in Gaza” (assumedly including the thousands of young people slaughtered in recent weeks in that “children’s graveyard”). He then added that “one option” for Israel was to consider using a nuclear weapon and so wiping out more or less everyone left in that strip of land hardly bigger than two Washington, D.C.s. (Forget the radioactive fallout that would hit Israel as well.) And yes, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly “suspended” him from regular cabinet meetings (even if that, as it turns out, wasn’t the most meaningful of actions).

It’s also true that Israel, one of the planet’s nine nuclear powers, has only — and given the nightmarish impact of such weaponry that has to be italicized — an estimated 90 such weapons, while the United States and Russia each have more than 5,000. Still, consider Eliyahu’s comment a rare admission by an Israeli official that his country is even nuclear armed. As Netanyahu himself typically said years ago, “We have a longstanding policy that we won’t be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East.”

The U.S. military has deployed thousands of troops to the Middle East since Hamas’s surprise October 7 attack on Israel but refuses to disclose the military bases or even host nations of the deployments — not for security reasons, but to spare the host nations embarrassment.

One such base, the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, welcomed several new F-15 attack jets last month, the same aircraft used to bomb facilities used by Iranian-backed militias in Syria at least twice since October, following attacks on U.S. troops by groups supported by Iran. 

An NBC News poll found that President Joe Biden is beginning to struggle with a key demographic. The President’s approval rating is continuing to sag, and young Americans are definitely opposed to his foreign policy, especially support for Israel. 

The poll conducted by NBC from November 10-14 found that Biden’s approval rating has sunk to the lowest level of his presidency, 40%. The sagging approval indicates Americans have grown tired of the current administration. The survey found that if the 2024 election were held today, former President Donald Trump would beat Biden. 

Driving Biden’s poor performance is dissatisfaction with his foreign policy. Only 33% of voters approve of Biden’s foreign policy. While 34% of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of Israel’s onslaught in Gaza. 

Representative Becca Balint of Vermont has become the first Jewish member of the US Congress to call for a ceasefire in Israel's war on Gaza.

On Thursday, 16 November, in an opinion piece the congresswoman penned that appeared in the Vermont publication, Vtdigger, she detailed her concerns over the continued violence in Gaza and the need to stop the bombing to prevent further casualties.

"What is needed right now is an immediate break in violence to allow for a true negotiated cease-fire. One in which both sides stop the bloodshed, allow critical access to humanitarian aid and move towards negotiating a sustainable and lasting peace," the congresswoman wrote.

Gaza's oldest mosque, the Great Omari Mosque located in the Old City, has reportedly been hit by an Israeli air strike on Thursday, according to Al Jazeera Arabic. 

Middle East Eye could not independently verify the reports of the strike or confirm the extent of the claimed damage due to ongoing risks to its reporters in the area. 

Also known as Gaza’s Great Mosque, it is the oldest in the besieged region and was built around 700 CE during the Umayyad period.

Its structure was developed out of the older cathedral of John the Baptist, which was built in 406 CE.

“I will die of a gunshot, but not of hunger,” Fayza says as she separates the olives from the leaves, sitting on the ground. The 62-year-old has been harvesting olives in the West Bank village of Salfit, the largest olive oil producing area in Palestine, since she was a child. Fayza and nine other members of her family are the only people from the surrounding area working in the olive groves at the height of harvesting season. It also appears that they will be the last. Since October 7, when Hamas launched an incursion into Israel, leaving 1,200 people dead, attacks on farmers have multiplied throughout the West Bank, preventing Palestinians from accessing their land and even being killed if they get too close to their fields.

Federal government workers from the State Department to NASA are circulating open letters demanding that President Joe Biden pursue a cease-fire in Israel’s war against Hamas. Congressional staffers are picking up microphones in front of the Capitol, speaking out to condemn what they say is the silence of lawmakers about the toll on Palestinian civilians.

As the deaths soar in Gaza, Biden and Congress are facing unusually public challenges from the inside over their support for Israel’s offensive. Hundreds of staffers in the administration and on Capitol Hill are signing on to open letters, speaking to reporters and holding vigils, all in an effort to shift U.S. policy toward more urgent action to stem Palestinian casualties.

The captives held in the Gaza Strip are now the most sensitive issue in Israel.

It has been more than a month since around 240 people were taken captive by Palestinian fighters during the Hamas-led attack on Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip.

Yet no one really knows what is going on in the negotiations to free them. There have been various media reports, including by Middle East Eye, suggesting that swaps for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel have been close.

Hamas has been relatively open about the issue. It has suggested freeing a handful of civilian captives in exchange for a cessation of hostilities, followed by around 100 more in exchange for Palestinian women and minors being held in Israeli prisons.

In the weeks since the Israel-Hamas war erupted on Oct. 7, people across the globe have taken to the streets en masse — some in support of Israel and some in support of Palestinians.

In Tel Aviv, Israel, friends and family of some 240 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza call for their return as they participate in a five-day “March for the Hostages” from Tel Aviv to the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem.

In Manila, capital of the Philippines, activists scuffle with police while marching toward the United States Embassy in solidarity with the Palestinians. In Washington, D.C., a river of people fills the National Mall in support of Israel — a sea of Israeli and U.S. flags.

In front of Columbia University’s Low Memorial Library, seven infant-sized bundles of white cloth rested on the steps, splattered with red paint. Behind the swaddles, plywood boards read “10,600 lives slaughtered,” “4,412 children,” and “let Gaza live,” alongside images of Palestinian flags and olive trees.

This was the scene where Columbia students gathered last Thursday for a “peaceful protest art installation” and demonstration organized by the campus chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine. Hundreds of students demanded that Columbia publicly call for a ceasefire in Gaza, divest its endowment from corporations complicit in Israeli apartheid, and end its academic programs in Tel Aviv.

The next day, Gerald Rosberg, chair of the Special Committee on Campus Safety, announced Columbia had suspended its chapters of JVP and SJP through the end of the semester, citing an “unauthorized event” that “included threatening rhetoric and intimidation.” The announcement quickly drew widespread criticism, including from hundreds of Jewish faculty who denounced the “vague allegations” that served as grounds for the suspensions.

Two and a half weeks after sending tanks and ground troops into northern Gaza, Israeli forces have raided al-Shifa Hospital, where thousands of patients and displaced Palestinians are sheltering.

Mohammed Zaqout, the director of hospitals in Gaza, said Israeli tanks were inside the medical compound on Wednesday and that soldiers had entered buildings, including the emergency and surgery departments.

The Israeli army claims that Hamas uses hospitals as cover for its fighters and has set up a command centre in and beneath al-Shifa, the largest medical facility in the besieged territory. Both Hamas and hospital staff deny the Israeli allegations.

A group of 15 Palestinians, including eight children and their families, arrived in Abu Dhabi, UAE, by plane for treatment after being evacuated from Gaza through the Rafah border crossing to Egypt, according to the Reuters news agency.

A few of the seats on the plane were removed to make room for the most critically wounded children, who needed to lie on stretchers. Some children had bandaged arms and legs. Some sat quietly next to their parents or relatives, while others travelled alone.

Mohammed Abu Tabikh, 14, was one of the more seriously wounded children on the flight. He suffered injuries to his neck and spine when a car he was travelling in was hit in an attack.

There have been two official investigations. One concluded Oswald acted alone, the other that there was a conspiracy. After forty years, many of the key documents which could tell the whole story remain classified. Why, if it is an open and shut case? Why the secrecy, if Oswald was just a "crazed lone gunman"?

Russian military sources shared the first footage of the mass use of the RBC-500 cluster bombs in Ukraine. The video was reportedly filmed in the area of Staromayorskoe in the south of the DPR.

The RBC-500 bomb is a powerful munition capable of destroying a column of armored vehicles or a large manpower cluster bombs. One cassette includes 15 Motiv-3 anti-tank submunitions. The bomb explodes in air and the combat elements are scattered over the area. Each of them has a parachute that slows down the fall. Meanwhile, infrared sensors allow submunitions to search for targets within 100 meters. As soon as it positions a target, a charge shoots, creating a cumulative jet of gases and molten copper. It is capable of burning through tank armor of 70 to 150 mm.

Assassination of John F. Kennedy, mortal shooting of John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, as he rode in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. His accused killer was Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine who had embraced Marxism and defected for a time to the Soviet Union.

A US official said Sunday that Israel has the “right” to expand its military operations in southern Gaza but said the Biden administration is looking for a delay in the plan to account for the hundreds of thousands of civilians who have fled fighting from the north.

“In the event that we believe that Israel is likely to embark on combat operations, including in the south, we believe both that they have the right to do that, but that there is a real concern, because hundreds of thousands of residents of Gaza have fled now from the north to the south at Israel’s request,” US Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer told CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”

“We think that their operations should not go forward until those people – those additional civilians – have been accounted for in their military planning. And so, we will be conveying that directly to them and have been conveying that directly to them,” Finer added.

As 2,000-pound bombs crash down on crowded refugee camps in Gaza, the seismic reverberations are increasingly being felt on campuses throughout the United States. “When a 2,000-pound bomb hits the ground, the earth turns to liquid,” Marc Garlasco, a military expert, told The Washington Post. “It’s like an earthquake.”

On October 11, a boxy white truck pulled up in front of the main entrance to Harvard University, a black wrought iron gate adorned with a stylish Georgian Revival wreath. Attached to the truck’s sides and back were three garish billboard-style LED screens displaying the images of dozens of students. Beneath their faces were the words “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites” and the putative URL “HarvardHatesJews.com.”

The doxxing truck was sponsored by the right-wing group Accuracy in Media and its targets were students who had signed a letter sponsored by the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee. “Today’s events did not occur in a vacuum,” it said. “For the last two decades, millions of Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live in an open-air prison. Israeli officials promise to ‘open the gates of hell,’ and the massacres in Gaza have already commenced.” Leaving Harvard, the truck began a McCarthyite search and destroy mission, driving to the homes of each of the students to out their locations and ruin their future job prospects. Some of those targeted would later receive death threats while others worried about what might come next, with at least one losing a job offer. “I have my career on the line,” said one concerned student. Many other forms of harassment targeting pro-Palestinian students have been taking place across the country. The question is whether Israeli intelligence is behind some of it.