“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Josh Paul, a former top State Department official.
>In a highly unusual move, the White House has requested for it to be able to conduct arms deals with Israel in complete secrecy, without oversight from Congress or the public — in a time when the U.S. is supporting a military that experts say has been committing war crimes in Gaza and beyond.
>The White House made the request within a $106 billion supplemental defense funding request sent on October 20. As reported by In These Times, the White House is asking for up to $3.5 billion in military funding for Israel to be able to purchase weapons and other equipment, from sources like the U.S. military or U.S. defense contractors, without the spending having to be approved by or even disclosed to Congress.
>Crucially, such notifications to Congress are also logged in the Federal Register, where they are viewable to the public — but the White House is trying to get rid of that transparency for Israel for funding through September 2025 and potentially beyond if Israel chooses to set aside funding before then.
>Experts have said that the move is alarming and rare. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Josh Paul, the former director of congressional and public affairs for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs in the State Department, told In These Times. Within the State Department, where he worked for 11 years, Paul helped the bureau in its work on arms deals and resigned in protest of a push to increase arms sales to Israel amid its genocidal siege on Gaza.
> “A proposal in a legislative request to Congress to waive Congressional notification entirely for [Foreign Military Financing ]-funded Foreign Military Sales or Direct Commercial Contracts is unprecedented in my experience,” Paul said. “Frankly, [it’s] an insult to Congressional oversight prerogatives.”
the 98-year-old co-owner (in name only, literally just an old lady in her house) is fucking dead now. they bust into her house with no explanation, rifle through her shit, take her computer internet router and fucking PHONE, then leave. she doesn't sleep or eat for two days from the stress and DIES. fuck all cops everywhere for all time, no faster way to identify yourself as something less than human than to wear the badge
Okay Okay ok ok SHUT IT. SETTLE DOWN. We are gonna talk about a CURRENT SEASON ISEKAI. If anybody in the sub within threadshot thinks that's too CRINGE for your more REFINED TASTES, you are welcome to see yourself out, there are some lovely jojo's memes on page one that should serve as a palate cleanser.
NOW. The show we are going to talk about is named My Unique Skill Makes Me OP Even At Level 1. In this show, an overworked salaryman is Truck Memed into a sort of "Dungeon Crawling" New World, where people have Levels and Skills that determine their abilities and proficiencies, and who live in towns/cities situated around access to Dungeons, wherein Monsters can be found, which can be Killed, dropping their Loot; therefore, a common Job among the population is Adventurer, a job made necessary by the material fact that Farming Does Not Seem To Exist, Neither Animal Husbandry, so all goods must be gathered as Loot Drops from Monsters in Dungeons, with more valuable goods dropping from more difficult monsters. Essentially, your MC has been dropped into a generic video game.
(some extra info but not strictly necessary)
Before i go on; This Is Not A Great Show. Isekai is already an overdone and stale genre, and the titular contrivance wherein the MC is hardlocked to the starting level does not elevate this show above the pack. While the MC cannot level up, he can increase his Skill stats (ranked from F to A for most characters in the world, but MC can rank up to S for each stat) in a way that puts him on par with the world's strongest individuals. The way this is achieved is as such: A New Dungeon appeared in the world, and no drops appeared for anybody in the dungeon. But the MC, who woke up with a Loot stat of S, he gets drops! In fact, he is the only person in the show/world that has an S grade Loot stat, so he is the only person to get drops here. And what are these drops? Seeds that increase the MCs Stat Ranks. Floor one increases Strength (and so quickly the MC has an S-rank Strength stat), floor two increases Toughness, etc.
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Don't ask me how The MC Gets The Only Gun In Universe, Don't ask me why The MC Is Surrounded By Bishoujo (you know why, try not to puke); in classic Isekai fashion, the world feels less like an organic place that the MC lands in and more like a carefully crafted set and setting for the MC to play out an evolving fantasy of wielding power and social capital, things the Late Salaryman was unfamiliar with except as dreams. Quite Boring, by the time you grasp it all. But wait a minute: what was that about strikebreaking???
I am currently halfway through the 6th episode. The local Trader (a pretty girl with pink hair of course) is in a bit of a bind. A wrinkle in the trading space has appeared, thanks to the worldbuilding contrivance of "all goods come from monster drops and each individual good only drops from one type of monster which can only be found on a single layer of a single dungeon." The Adventurers that hunt the monsters that supply Rice(!) have Gone On Strike(!!), demanding that the trading price for rice (and therefore the price they get for collecting and selling it) be raised. Exactly Two Minutes are spent in the show between the time the MC hears this and the time he has 1) spoken to the owner-manager of what can only be described as the in-universe equivalent to the Pinkertons, asking them to "let him take care of it" 2) confronted the mob of striking hunters in the dungeon, eschewing any diplomacy, literally does not speak, just raises his fucking guns, and then 3) simultaneously reveals and utilizes a new skill: combine two Healing Bullets(?) to make a Sleep Bullet(???). Upon firing this bullet, effectively, the MC sleep gasses a large group of striking workers in an enclosed space (The Pinkerton was really impressed!).
Honestly it went so fast I was caught off guard. One moment I'm gritting my teeth that they mentioned a strike as a plot device and then two minutes later the maximal negative resolution has occurred. This show just did A Quick Aside To Break A Strike like it was nothing. No real setup, no real action, no political examination of the situation or labor's demands, just "Striking Workers Get The Sleep Bullet (and quickly, too!)."
It's boring as hell otherwise, chaste-but-gross harem-ish bullshit and a world dropping contrived solutions into the MCs lap. only watch if you are extremely bored. Halfway through the season it's unremarkable boilerplate Isekai riding the backside of the swell, 5/10 at best and honestly losing points unless it comes up with more wacky strikebreaking hijinks