Dark-gray with sometimes heavy rain this afternoon on California’s north coast — into the great wetness.

An item I spotted earlier of a mega-rare, anywhere-near humorous story coming out of the nightmare war zone of the Middle East was this at International Business Times from Tuesday:

An Egyptian man has reportedly delivered a financial blow to the Islamic State (Isis) by becoming “emir” of its alms department and then fleeing with almost one million US dollars to Turkey.

Or a ‘billion Syrian pounds.’

(Illustration found here).

The guy’s name is Abu Obeida (or Ubaidah) al-Masri, and was secretary of the Zakat (charity) bureau, treasurer of IS Syrian branch, and apparently carried some serious, nervy moxie. Those ISIS assholes are indeed a nightmare horror.
Although the claim could not be independently verified by IBTimes UK, this was duly noted: ‘According to some rumours, IS militants have issued an order to stop recruiting Egyptian jihadists because of the incident.’

Obeida stole from an ISIS-sanctioned charity, twisted in form by crazed, blood-soaked minds, and levied upon merchants and industrialists around-about Aleppo, Syria:

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Isis “has forced the merchants and industrialists to pay 2.5 percent of each sale.”
The merchants told the militants that they are already paying money to the poor families, but IS responded that those families should report to the Zakat bureau instead.
“The money paid to the poor without reference to the Zakat Chamber is an act of charity, but it doesn’t exempt traders from paying to the Zakat Chamber,” IS reportedly said.

Double dumb-ass done…
And now Obeida is on the lam in Turkey — does ISIS have hit-squads to go after such people as Obeida?