Awwww. "Report: Hezbollah in dire financial straits," from YNet News, December 18:
While Hezbollah General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah appeared to be in high spirits recently during a rare public appearance in a suburb of Beirut, his organization is experiencing a severe financial crisis, French daily Le Figaro reported over the weekend.
According to the article, which was based on information obtained by French intelligence agencies, the civil uprising against President Bashar Assad in Syria has significantly reduced the flow of money to the Lebanese terror group.
Moreover, the report said, Iran has recently cut its financial aid to Hezbollah by 25% due in part to the international sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program.
Le Figaro said the financial crisis has led some Hezbollah terrorists to deal drugs in north Lebanon. Just last week US prosecutors indicted a Lebanese national who they said led a massive international drug smuggling ring with links to Hezbollah.
The US Treasury and the FBI have banned American organizations from donating to Hezbollah, which is designated under US law as a terrorist organization.
Last month Nasrallah claimed Hezbollah had unraveled a web of CIA informants and officers in Iran and Lebanon. According to Le Figaro's report, the network caused significant damage to the Shiite group.
Hezbollah's financial woes are also the result of corruption, the report said. According to Le Figaro, the terror group's investment manager had embezzled close to $1.6 billion.
The report said that during a speech in Beirut two weeks ago Nasrallah chastised the organization's female members for becoming, as he put it, too "bourgeois" and spending too much of the organization's money. Le Figaro said this was yet another indication of Hezbollah's dire financial situation.
The French daily claimed that the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005 was planned by top Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh, without Nasrallah's knowledge.
'Jihad causes poverty', anyone?
Here's some news for ya... The USA and Europe are "in dire financial straits" too, and we're doing quite fine.
By the way, so is Iran...
I can't help but get the feeling somehow Hezbollah will be just fine. They always do. Remember jihadists are always innocent and the victim. Some how they will turn this all around to blame Israel and the United States.
"...by their fruits ye shall know them."
Matt 7:20
islam is a band of thieves - and the koran preaches thievery.
Maybe muslims should aspire to a higher belief system.
islam is slavery - abolish slavery
Hamas in dire financial straits! Hmmmm... Well, maybe they could economize by using less fuel in their rockets and a lighter payload! And if the situation gets even more dire, they could stop firing rockets altogether.
Economic hudna for dummies! :)
OPEC is a cartel designed to distort the price of oil by restricting supply. It is a sort of theft, extraction of economic rent. We could and should terminate recognition of the exemption of OPEC from GATT. The price today should not be 3 times what it was just 10 years ago. There's some serious "theft" (rent) going on, where Islamic-expansionists and their multinational corporation allies are positively gleeful.
If the original vilification of Jews was because of their role as money lenders then we could apply the same reasoning to the Islamist money lenders of today. We just need to call the Saudi Royal Family Jews, or something.
Off Topic
We are too much bedeviled by the charge of ISLAMOPHOBIA. As I understand it, this was coined by the MB early in the game to put us on the DEFENSIVE; it has worked remarkably well in wasting valuable media time by impugning a shortcoming on the part of the Islamophobe.
LOATHE means to hate, as in, I loathe evil.
Surely we can do much better, and the sooner the better, by this simple scenario as an example:
Interviewer: Mr Spanner, are you an Islamophobe?
Mr Spanner: No, I am an islamoloathe.
Interviewer: You mean you hate Islam?
Mr Spanner: Yes
(Note: a move has occurred from a defensive posture to an offensive posture)
Interviewer: Can you briefly tell us why you hate Islam?
Mr Spanner: They kill escapees don't they?
Interviewer: Are you implying that Islam is a prison?
Mr Spanner: Yes.
Interviewer: We will have you on the program again and I will do some homework on this escape thing.
Mr Spanner: Look up Islam and apostasy.
Well then, there you have it.
Off Topic
As SSL has oft repeated, "We are at war!"
The squeamish need to stand aside, "for civilization's sake."
Being islamophobic without going to its logical progresseion, that is, being islamoloathic, is IMO a sort of PC (political correctness).
In this "war on terror" the only thing that has had a little success has been the freezing of the money and those actions taken to find ways to cut off the money...things like freezing assets, investigating and closing down bogus Islamic charities, busting up Islamic run drug cartels and other Islamic schemes to fund their terror organizations...
Not to worry. I'm sure BHO will send some money to them.
Is Ahmedinijad not sending money any more? Or is it that they had spent all their money on rockets to shoot to Israel? Is US government becoming more careful about Muslims in US sending money to terrorist organizations?
Or is it that the "leaders of Hezbollah" had stolen all the money designated for their people and stashed it in European banks, as PLO and Hamas did and do, and which are now going bust? Oy vey!
Those Muslim guys who had destroyed Lebanon will have to learn how to do something useful for life, rather then dreaming about death to the Jews, and sending their young men to blow themselves up to reach Koranic promised Paradise with 72 virgins. Perhaps young men are starting to doubt those teachings?
Stop beating around the bush.
The thing that has funded the explosive growth of islam in the last fourty years has been OIL MONEY.
Take it away from them. Take Saudi oil, take Kuwaiti oil, take Iraqi oil, take Iranian oil.
Cut them off, then eradicate islam, promptly, because with an EMP weapon, which they will soon have, they are an existential threat, and not only Israel, but all of Western Civilization can be wiped off the face of the earth.
islam declared war on all of Dar al-Harb fourteen hundred years ago.
Their primary weapon of war today is oil.
We give them trillions of dollars for their extortionately priced oil, with which they buy our weapons, that they use to kill US.
It's time to defend Western Civilization and retaliate against them.
Take their oil weapon away from them.
No more Saudi oil money to build mosques and madrassas, no more money to train and fund terrorists, no more oil money to buy Western weapons, no more money to buy Western politicians or Main Stream Media news organizations to spew out their brainwashing propaganda.
Let them go back to herding camels in the sands of Arabia.
islam is slavery - abolish slavery.
Hmm, no oil and can't (yet) collect jizya = Islamic stagnation.
Thats OK, the US government will give them loads of money in thier support against Isreal!!!
Please do not equate any of this to anything remotely related to Jew(s), Jewishness, or any other form of Jewish life. (If such a thing exists as a thing unto itself).
Hezbollah need not worry. I'm sure our muslim president will be sending them some of our hard-earned taxpayers' money to
make up the shortfall.
Iran's government may have reduced its funding of Hezbollah, which is good, but Iran's clerical establishment can & still does privately transfer enormous amounts of khums taxes that they receive from their congregations for Hezbollah. This flow is not handled through the mega-banks and is less likely to be impeded by U.S., EU, Japanese, Canadian, etc, sanctions.
Feel-good news: Hizballah "in dire financial straits"
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Ha ha!