Snowden's Email Provider is Shutting Down and The Government Won't Let Him Say Why!

As one of my Russian colleagues likes to say, we are becoming more and more like the Soviet Union every day.  Here is the letter from the owner and operator of Lavabit, the email provider that Snowden used:

My Fellow Users,

I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what's going on--the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.

What's going to happen now? We've already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company.

This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.

Sincerely,

Ladar Levison
Owner and Operator, Lavabit LLC

Defending the constitution is expensive! Help us by donating to the Lavabit Legal Defense Fund here.

Craig Shirley and Newt Gingrich Give the GOP Surrender Caucus a History Lesson

Things used to be pretty dark for the GOP, standing up for principles helped save it:

By January 1977, only 11% of citizens younger than 30 identified with the Republican Party. The party had been on fumes for years, ever since the Great Depression and only challenged the Democrats for national authority when they screwed up, as in 1946 and 1968, or when Republicans nominated an overwhelmingly popular figure, such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, in 1952.

And with the election of Carter, a smart, moderate Democrat from the South, the prospect for Democratic rule for another generation seemed bright. The party of Andrew Jackson had smothering control of the House, a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and in the South, there were states such as Mississippi that had almost no elected Republican officeholders.
The only state in the country that had GOP control of the legislature and the governor's mansion was Kansas. The other 49 states had partial or complete Democratic control.

The old ways of accommodating the establishment by the GOP of the 1930s, '40s, '50s and '60s would no longer work. Something else had to be tried. To conservatives such as Reagan, accommodation was tantamount to capitulation and they asked themselves, "If we surrender on everything, what is the purpose of having a Republican Party?"

For several years, the U.S. government had been making plans to yield control and ownership of the Panama Canal to Omar Torrijos, the dictator of the Panama. All of the establishment was going along with it, from Lyndon Johnson to Nixon to Ford, Henry Kissinger and by 1977, Carter. Nearly all the editorialists supported the "giveaway" of the canal at the height of the Cold War.

Control of the canal was vital to American military interests, especially with Soviet control of Cuba and designs on Central America.

Into this void stepped former California Gov. Ronald Reagan, who launched a national campaign to oppose the giveaway. He gave speeches, stumped across the country and testified before Congress. A "New Right" rose up and organized a "Panama Canal Truth Squad" led by Richard Viguerie, Phyllis Schlafly and Paul Weyrich, among others. Petitions were circulated at the grassroots and delivered to Capitol Hill.

In speech after speech, Reagan thundered, "We built it! We paid for it! It is ours! And we are going to keep it!" Polling had shown American support for the two Panama Canal treaties, but by 1978, the American people had switched and agreed with Reagan and the conservatives -- and not Carter.
In the end, the treaties to declare the canal a neutral zone and eventually surrender it to Panama passed by the barest of margins, only by one and two votes more than the two thirds required in the Senate.

The war had been lost but the battle was worth it. Principles had been established and arguments made. It led to Republican victories in the off year elections of 1978 and launched Reagan's third campaign for the White House.

Years later, Carter himself acknowledged the potency of the canal issue in the election of 1980, which not only saw the rise of Reagan, but the loss of scores more Democrats who had voted for the treaties.

First Paul Krugman and Now Thomas Friedman Gets Something Completely Wrong in His Column

In yesterday's column titled "Daring to Fail", Thomas Friedman lauds Kerry's efforts to bring the Palestinians and Israelis together.  In making a point that Israel really needs to make peace he writes this:

Let’s start with a small item in Britain’s Independent newspaper on July 24, which began: “He once sang, ‘You Gotta Get Outta This Place,’ but now Eric Burdon is not even turning up at all having deciding to withdraw from a planned concert in Israel. ... The Animals frontman, whose hits include ‘House of the Rising Sun,’ and ‘San Franciscan Nights,’ had been due to perform alongside local Israeli bands in Binyamina. ... However, in a statement, Mr. Burdon’s management, said: ‘We’ve been receiving mounting pressure, including numerous threatening e-mails, daily. ...’ Burdon was just the latest of a rising number of artists and intellectuals who have started boycotting Israel over the occupation issue.”

Uhhh, I hate to break it to you but Eric Burdon never cancelled the show and did play in Israel.  Here is what he said, "it was not my decision to cancel the show, it was my manager's, who as a result of lots of threatening emails she received, was genuinely afraid for my life," he said.  "I'm not afraid to perform here and very happy to be back in Israel."  And here is a picture from the show:

Thomas Friedman really had two things wrong.  First, and importantly, the show went on (almost an entire week before he published his column!).  Secondly, even the original story had nothing to do with Eric Burdon or his manager's feelings about the disputed territories.  It was about people threatening his life if he performed there.  There's a pretty big difference. 

Seriously these overpaid New York Times columnists (Paul Krugman got basic math wrong the other day) need better fact-checkers.

Obama's Nonsensical Housing Reform Plan

After reading Obama's remarks, I honestly had to wonder whether people actually thought about the plan he was going to propose or they just had him say things that sound good in front of a friendly audience?  Seriously.  And of course he couldn't resist a remark about " an endless parade of distractions and political posturing and phony scandals".  Why scandals are phony?  Did the NSA not collect data on innocent Americans?  Did the IRS not target groups that were seen as opposed to the administration?  Did an Ambassador not die?  I'd really like to know.  Anyway, on to his plan:

1.  "Congress should pass a good, bipartisan idea to allow every homeowner the chance to save thousands of dollars a year by refinancing their mortgage at today's rates."  This definitely sounds good but why exactly does it need Congressional action?  The reasons people typically can't refinance are because they are underwater in their home and no bank will give them a new loan at the home valuation that they need to get rid of the first mortgage and because they don't meet current credit/lending standards.  Congress "fixing" this only creates more problems.  First, the current owner of the mortgage is going to take a loss.  So banks are going to lose capital and investors in mortgage backed securities will see the valuations of those securities go down.  Considering the Federal Reserve is having to prop up that market right now, I don't think it could use any more bad news like having the government cram losses into them.  Also, if the reason for the lack of ability to refinance is bad credit, is a new loan going to fix anything?  Plus, if you force banks to give new loans to people with bad credit aren't you just creating another class of subprime loans that will one day blow up in our faces?

2.  "We're cutting red tape for responsible families who want to get a mortgage but keep getting rejected by the banks.  We need to give well-qualified Americans who lost their jobs during the crisis a fair chance to get a loan if they've worked hard to repair their credit."  How do you judge if someone has "worked hard to repair their credit"?  If it's improved from 400 to 500?  Even irresponsible people have periods where they haven't done anything completely idiotic or simply have periods of good luck.  But we're talking about 30 year mortgages here.  If people have had financial disasters in the past they probably are more likely to have more in the future (works the same as heart attacks) and any bank giving them additional funds are liable to take a loss.  So once again, this would create another subprime lending mess.

3.  "And step three is something that you don't always hear about when it comes to the housing market, and that is fixing our broken immigration system.  It would actually help our housing market. "  So printing dollars isn't working well enough now we need to get more people too?  Anyway, he might have a point if he was talking about fixing the immigration system so educated, skilled people could come here easier.  But he's not.  The vast majority of people who are going to be assisted by the current immigration proposals probably don't have good enough credit to buy a home.

4.   "Let's put construction back -- construction workers back to work repairing rundown homes, tearing down vacant properties so that the value of homes in those surrounding areas start picking up."  Just what we need, more government funded construction jobs.  Because that worked oh so well with his $900 billion stimulus (remember that?).   Anyway, what we need are industrial jobs in sustainable industries, not jobs that go away once the project is done.

5.  "Instead, let's invest in affordable rental housing.  Let's bring together cities and states to address local barriers that drive up rents for working families. "  Does that mean he wants rent control which might keep rents low but also leads to a restriction of supply?  Or does he want to overrule local zoning boards and force them to put up low-income housing whether they want to or not?

6.  "Right now there's a bipartisan group of senators working to end Fannie and Freddie as we know them.  And I support these kinds of reform efforts...   I believe that our housing system should operate where there's a limited government role and private lending should be the backbone of the housing market.  And that includes, by the way, community-based lenders who view their borrowers not as a number, but as a neighbor."  I actually like this section a lot.  Honestly.  I'm wondering if he put it in there so he can take credit for it or something when it happens because it actually flies in the face of other sections of his plan.  First, because Fannie and Freddie were able to borrow money with the full backing of the US government, they helped reduce mortgage rates.  Hence, getting rid of them will most likely increase mortgage rates somewhat making housing less affordable.  Also, community based lenders are not the folks who will be too willing to give loans to people "working really hard to improve their credit".  Community banks tend to hold on to the mortgages they lend and not sell them off for someone else to worry about hence they are much more conservative than the fly-by-night brokers that originated 2/3 of the subprime loans in 2006.  Taken together, this part of the plan will likely reduce affordability and access, which seems to be the exact opposite of the spirit of the speech.  I guess I'm happier though with Obama being right for the wrong reasons than being just plain wrong like he is usually.

And honestly I simply question the need to do much, if anything, to encourage greater home ownership.  The home ownership rate is 65.4% today while pre-bubble it was closer to 64%.  There is simply no evidence that Congress needs to enact any major legislation other than to get rid of Fannie and Freddie.

This Chart Should Keep You From Worrying About Carbon Dioxide and Temperatures

Looking at historical carbon dioxide (purple line) and temperature (blue line) levels, recent fluctuations are nothing more than a blip (see article here):

The Pro-NSA Camp is Getting Unhinged

Last night's piece by Jonathan Tobin in Commentary, "Snowden, Amash and the Isolationist Peril", is a great example of how the pro-surveillance forces in the GOP are getting desperate.  The tide within the GOP is shifting and they clearly don't like it.  They've decided to flush logic down the drain in favor of emotion and insults.  The main points of the piece were:

1.  Those that want to restore our civil liberties are part of the "September 10th Caucus", as in they want to turn the clock back to before 9/11, inviting another mass casualty attack

2.  If you value civil liberties you are an isolationist

3.  The worldwide travel warning and closure of our embassies justifies the NSA spying

The first point really goes hand in hand with Chris Christie's comments against libertarianism and Rand Paul.  If you aren't for NSA spying on you, your wife and your children, you are in effect betraying the widows and orphans of 9/11.  Please.  I saw 9/11 transpire from my office window.  I didn't need to watch CNN, I was seeing it myself and that image and feeling is burnt into my soul.  I have no problem with the national security apparatus going after terrorists.  I WANT them to go after terrorists.  What I don't want is for them to go after AMERICANS without any probable cause.   I don't want them molesting some 3 year old girl with spina bifida in a wheelchair on the way to Disney World for no legitimate reason.  How in the heck does that add to our security or prevent another 9/11?  The Israelis have much more security than the US but they don't violate little children like that mostly because they are out to actually stop terrorists, not make sure that the ethnic composition of their security checks is appropriate.  What is also laughable about referring to a "September 10th caucus" is that Jim Sensenbrenner voted for the Amash amendment to stop NSA spying on Americans and he was the author of the Patriot Act.  He rightly believes that the government is abusing the power it was given and is not weak on national security at all.

It's also laughable to claim that the government simply didn't have the means to stop 9/11 on September 10th.  That is completely untrue.  The CIA knew that two al-Qaeda operatives (who eventually made it on to jets used in the 9/11 attacks) were living in California and purposely hid the information from the FBI (despite being legally bound to notify them).  If the FBI had this information, they would have had probable cause, been able to get warrants and stop the attacks before they began.  I don't think that we really need to let the government turn on the microphones in our phones remotely and start recording whenever they want.  Oh all these programs are strictly monitored to ensure they aren't abused?  I have two problems.  I really have no faith in secret government courts to limit government power.  And also, if oversight is so strict how come they still don't know for certain what exactly Snowden took?  Just because the NSA has all of our data doesn't mean they are efficiently policing themselves.

The second argument that is being used is that people who don' like the NSA spying are isolationists.  That is actually confusing two different issues, national security and interventionism.  You can be someone who wants the NSA to spy the crap out of American citizens and yet not want to send a dime to Pakistan.  Also, you might want to maximize civil liberties at home and want the US to intervene in the name of freedom and democracy across the globe.  Or you can be a bunch of things in between.  Not wanting your kids phones tapped by the NSA does not mean you don't want to give foreign aid to Israel or that you want to withdraw from NATO or something.  This is just a ludicrous straw man created by some very nervous people.

The third point, that the worldwide travel warning justifies the NSA snooping is about as valid as the other two arguments.  Yes an intercepted communication led to the alert, but it was a communication from al-Qaeda chief al-Zawahiri to the chief of the Yemen affiliate ordering an attack.  Last I checked neither of them were in the US and even if they were, there probably wouldn't be too much difficulty in getting a warrant as probably cause is pretty sufficient to snoop on both men.  All this proves is that the NSA does some good things, but it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that innocent Americans are being snooped on.

People like Tobin and Christie need to get their acts together if they don't want to continue to make fools of themselves. 

Peggy Noonan Eviscerates Chris Christie

When she's on point, she's on point:

To call growing concerns about the size, depth, history, ways and operations of our now-huge national-security operation "esoteric" or merely abstract is, simply, absurd. Our federal government is involved in massive data collection that apparently includes a database of almost every phone call made in the U.S. The adequacy of oversight for this system is at best unclear. The courts involved are shadowed in secrecy and controversy. Is it really wrong or foolhardy or unacceptably thoughtful to wonder if the surveillance apparatus is excessive, or will be abused, or will erode, or perhaps in time end, any expectation of communications privacy held by honest citizens?

It is not. These are right and appropriate concerns, very American ones.

Consider just two stories from the past few days. The Wall Street Journal's Jennifer Valentino-Devries and Danny Yadron had a stunning piece Friday that touches on the technological aspect of what our government can now do. The FBI is able to remotely activate microphone on phones running Android software. They can now record conversations in this way. They can do the same with microphones in laptops. They can get to you in a lot of ways! Does this make you nervous? If not, why not?

Reuters has a piece just today reporting that data gathered by the National Security Agency has been shared with the Drug Enforcement Administration. The agency that is supposed to be in charge of counterterrorism is sharing data with an agency working in the area of domestic criminal investigations.

Luckily Lois Lerner is on leave, so the IRS isn't involved yet.

The concerns of normal Americans about the new world we're entering—the world where Big Brother seems inexorably to be coming to life and we are all, at least potentially Winston Smith—is not only legitimate, it is wise and historically grounded.

...

So Christie is wrong that concerns and reservations about surveillance are the province of intellectuals and theorists—they're not. He's wrong that their concerns are merely abstract—they're concrete. Americans don't want to be listened in to, and they don't want their emails read by strangers, especially the government. His stand isn't even politically shrewd—it needlessly offends sincere skeptics and isn't the position of the majority of his party, I suppose with the exception of big ticket donors in Aspen.

And Christie's argument wasn't even…an argument. It was a manipulation. If you don't see it his way you don't know what 9/11 was—you weren't there, you don't know how people suffered. If you don't see it his way you don't care about the feelings of the widows and orphans.

It seems to me telling that he either doesn't have a logical argument or doesn't think he has to make it.

...

It is up to the people in the country, to citizens, to control and limit government surveillance, to the extent they can and in accord with true national-security needs.

That is what a conservative, with all his inherent skepticism toward groups of humans wielding largely unaccountable governmental power, would want to do. What is surprising here is that Christie is so quick and sloppy with his denunciation of conservatives who are acting like conservatives. It is odd because he, too, is a conservative.

His remarks were bad in another way, and it is connected to the word manipulation.

His comments on surveillance were an appeal only to emotion, not to logic and argument and fact, but emotion. This is increasingly the way politics is done in America now. It's how they do politics at the White House, where the president usually doesn't bother to make a case and instead just tries to set a mood. But it's not how Christie normally approaches public questions. In speeches and appearances in the past he's addressed the logic of the issue at hand, whether it's spending or the implications of pension promises, or union contracts, or tax rates. That's part of why he's been so popular—he's blunt and logical, has an argument to make and makes it clearly.

Maybe he's using emotion and special pleading here because he was speaking on a national issue, not a state one, and felt insecure. If this is the best he can do he should feel insecure.

The Federal Reserve Just Lost $192 billion

The Fed is learning the downside of having an enormous balance sheet of US Treasuries:

The yield on 10-year U.S. Treasuries (^TNX) has surged 66% over the past three months. And bond investors, especially those with jumbo-sized positions, are getting hammered. How much money has the Federal Reserve lost?

At the end of July, the Federal Reserve held $1.98 trillion in U.S. Treasuries. (See chart below) That figure represents just over half of the Fed's $3.6 trillion balance sheet. 

Scott Minerd, the Global Chief Investment Officer at Guggenheim Partners notes: 

"Our estimate shows that the spike in bond yields since the first quarter of this year has caused a mark-to-market loss of $192 billion on the Fed's holding assets, equivalent to approximately all of the unrealized gains that the Fed had accumulated since it began to implement quantitative easing in late 2008. Although in keeping with their own accounting principles the Fed does not record mark-to-market losses, a continued increase in bond yields would incur actual losses should the central bank decide to sell assets."

...

Granted, the Bernanke & Co. does not value its massive bond portfolio on a mark-to-market basis. But the surge in interest rates has already erased almost $200 billion in the Federal Reserve's capital. But that's not all.

If interest rates continue to head higher, the value of the Fed's liquid assets that it could sell would decline and further undermine its capital cushion. And if the velocity of rate increases intensifies, the Fed, with only $62 billion in capital, could see its entire capital base completely wiped out.

This could have a serious domino effect. It could paralyze the Fed's ability to defend the dollar's purchasing power, causing Treasury prices (NYSEARCA:TLT) to fall further and thereby push interest rates even higher. Just imagine the unimaginable; a weakened and impotent Fed.

Paul Krugman Has Lost the Ability to Do Basic Math

In his latest biased Republican-bashing piece, Krugman included this nugget:

Then House leaders announced plans to hold a vote cutting spending on food stamps in half — a demand that is likely to sink the already struggling effort to agree with the Senate on a farm bill.

Oh those horrible Republicans, out to starve the poor!  Not so fast.  Republicans want to cut food stamps by $40 billion over 10 years or in other words by about $4 billion a year. According to the CBO, the Food Stamp program will cost the taxpayer about $82.5 billion in 2013, so we are talking about a 4.8% cut, a far cry from 50%.  Damn decimal places. 

A Funny Yet Serious Anti-Obama Video from Supporters of the Egyptian Coup

The video is silly and the subtitles are funny in their aranglish sort of way but supporters of the Egyptian coup do seem to be seriously pissed off at Obama.  Even the Egyptian Army chief has criticized him recently:

Waiter/Bartending Jobs are Skyrocketing while Manufacturing Jobs are Diving

Here is a pretty scary chart comparing the employment trends for the food service industry (the blue line), all full time employment (the red line) and manufacturing jobs (the green line).  It's shocking that there are 30%+ fewer manufacturing jobs now than in 1990 despite a 30% larger working age population.  We have the same number of people employed in manufacturing today as we did in May 1941!:

How bad is the jobs market? We currently have the same number of full time jobs as in April of 2005 but 20 million more people aged 16 and over

We're really getting close to having a lost decade.  We have the same number of full time jobs today as we did back in April of 2005, over 7 years ago, while in the interim our working age population has grown by 20 million!  That's millions of people who know have to work part time and essentially say good bye to any hopes of a career or savings.  Check out this chart of full time jobs:

Now compare that with a chart of part time jobs:

As you can see, part time jobs have hit an all time high while full time jobs have been languishing.  That is really a bad sign.  And as you can see from the chart below, historically they grew at pretty similar rates, it's only recently that we have seen such a massive bifurcation:

How can we expect our economy to grow when the only jobs people can get are part-time and usually don't involve actually manufacturing anything other than maybe a hamburger and fries?  We can't survive long term as just being a service economy, we've seen what happens with that.  We need real, full time jobs so people can have actual careers and actual futures.  We need to continue the de-unionization process, loosen the environmental statutes so companies can actually open manufacturing plants in this country again and reform our corporate tax system to get corporations to repatriate the billions upon billions of dollars they have parked overseas.

Putting our GDP Growth in Perspective. In the last 12 months, GDP grew $473 billion. Our debt grew $882 billion!

People have this misconception that our GDP is the economy.  No, it's a proxy for the economy that measures how much we spend every year.  If someone without any sort of job or means of support rings up $100,000 in credit card bills, that is counted as $100,000 in added GDP despite the fact that no sane person would consider that $100,000 expenditure to be a good thing and a sign we are doing well or getting wealthier.  With that in mind, let's take a look at the latest GDP figures and compare it to the latest debt figures.  Over the last 4 quarters, nominal GDP has grown by $473 billion, which even by itself isn't really very much.  When you take inflation into account our GDP has only grown by 1.4% in the last year, which the rate of growth we were at in early 2008, right before the economy crumbled.  What is even worse is the fact that during the same period debt grew from $15.9 Trillion to $16.7 Trillion, a whopping $882 billion difference in just 1 year.  In other words, the only reason GDP is positive is because we are using our credit card, not because the economy is actually doing well at all.  Our expansionist fiscal and monetary policies have not helped us recover at all, they just rang up our debts.

There were 66% More Homicides in Chicago in 2012 Than KIA's in Afghanistan

I heard a politician mention that more Americans are killed in Chicago than Afghanistan and I automatically thought it had to be wrong, that they were exaggerating.  Shockingly, they were completely correct.  Last year there were 516 homicides in Chicago but only 310 US servicemen killed in action in Afghanistan.  Even at the peak of violence in Afghanistan in 2010, we still lost less people (499) than we lost in Chicago last year. That is pretty shocking considering we are facing armed guerrillas in Afghanistan that are actively trying to kill Americans.  Looks like the urban policies of the Democrats are more lethal than RPG's and IED's.

Housing Affordability is Falling at the Fastest Rate since the Real Estate Bubble Peak

As you can see from this chart from FRED, thanks to both increased housing prices and higher mortgage rates, housing affordability is crumbling.  The last time we saw a year-over-year decline of this magnitude was July 2006.  Just saying:

A must watch interview on the state of the economy(h/t ZeroHedge):

A Map of What Israel Would Look Like Post Land Swaps with the Palestinians Shows Why the Talks with Fail

I posted this chart back in 2011, it is a map of the Judea and Samaria with the pieces of land that will remain Israel in gold and those parts of Israel given to the Palestinians in red.  See any problems?:

As I wrote before I have two major problems with this map:

1. It does nothing to change the fact that Israel is 9 miles wide at its narrowest.  Downtown Tel Aviv will still be seen from the hills of Palestine and could easily be targeted by missiles and rockets (with little to no warning given to civilians before they hit).  Nobody can live like this.
2. Those rivulets of Israeli territory carved out of the West Bank are a disaster waiting to happen.  Terrorists from Hamas or the PFLP or Islamic Jihad could take pot shots at settlers all day every day.  And if there were ever a conflict between Israel and Palestine (which is probably likely, especially if Hamas stays in or runs the government), those armed gangs could easily cut off those settlements from the rest of Israel.  If you thought a territory 9 miles wide was not defensible, how about 1 km wide (or less).  You could easily have a bloodbath/massacre on your hands which will make Itamar look like youthful vandalism by comparison.

Israeli PM: Not a Single Arab Shall Live in the Land of Israel

Of course Bibi didn't say that.  Can you just imagine the uproar?  Presidents and Prime Ministers from all over the globe would be calling Netanyahu a racist and a Nazi, proposing ethnic cleansing.  The horrible thing is that the Palestinian Authority President Abbas said the equivalent and my guess is that the Obama administration will completely ignore it and still force Israel to negotiate with that anti-semitic terrorist thug (as well as continue to free convicted murderers to placate that anti-semitic terrorist thug).  Here is what Abbas said:

"In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli - civilian or soldier - on our lands".

Israel should stop wasting time negotiating with the Palestinians until they find a real partner for peace.  Not just an Arab Nazi promoting Judenrein.

Rand Paul: Chris Christie is "Sad & Cheap" For Using 9/11 Victims

The EU is Officially Friendlier to Hezbollah than the United Arab Emirates

The Gulf Cooperation Council just blacklisted ALL of Hezbollah, not just the "military wing" like the EU:

Six days after the European Union placed Hezbollah’s military wing on its list of terror organizations while leaving cooperation with the party’s political branch unaffected, a union of six Arab Gulf states has begun officially blacklisting all of Hezbollah. 

The Gulf Cooperation Council, a political and economic umbrella organization encompassing Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait, has begun implementing a decision adopted by its foreign ministers on June 2 to place financial and security restrictions on Hezbollah, “making no distinction whatsoever between its military and political arms,” the Saudi daily Al-Watan reported on Sunday. 

...

The Gulf measures against Hezbollah began in early July through the restriction of all financial transactions emanating from Hezbollah bank accounts in the Gulf. The main reason cited for singling out Hezbollah was its military support of Bashar Assad in Syria. The Arab League, based in Cairo, on June 5 strongly condemned Hezbollah’s intervention in Syria, but fell short of dubbing it a “terror organization.” 

... 

Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah ridiculed the European distinction between his party’s armed and political wings. 

“This invention of a military wing, a political wing; this is a British act. They usually try to find such ways out,” Nasrallah said at dinner marking the end of a Ramadan fast day on July 24. 

“Despite my disagreement with this division and distinction, I propose that our ministers in the next Lebanese government come from Hezbollah’s military wing,” Nasrallah joked.