Obama Admits to Being Shaken, Emboldened by ISIS Beheading Videos

"I think it would affect anybody who has an ounce of humanity"

U.S. President Barack Obama said Sunday he has personally watched the graphic videos of Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) hostages being executed, saying they have helped catalyze the global community’s revulsion to the militant jihadist organization.

In an interview with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie airing Monday on Today Show, Obama said watching the videos has affected him personally. On Saturday, the U.S. government confirmed the authenticity of a video showing the beheading of Japanese journalist Kenji Goto.

“I think it’s fair to say that, anything related to these terrorist actions, I take a look at,” Obama said. “I think it would affect anybody who has an ounce of humanity. And it’s part of the reason why I think we’ve been so successful in organizing such a broad-based coalition.”

Referencing an American woman still being held by ISIS, Obama said the U.S. is doing anything possible to secure her release.

“Well, what we can say is that, as has been true of all the hostages, that we are deploying all the assets that we can, working with all the coalition allies that we can, to identify her location,” he said. “And we are in very close contact with the family trying to keep them updated.”

Hours after Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Tom Frieden warned of the potential of a “large outbreak” of measles following increasing reports of the disease, Obama called on all parents to vaccinate their children.

“Measles is preventable,” Obama told Guthrie. “And I understand that there are families that, in some cases, are concerned about the effect of vaccinations. The science is, you know, pretty indisputable. We’ve looked at this again and again. There is every reason to get vaccinated, but there aren’t reasons to not.”

“You should get your kids vaccinated,” Obama continued. “It’s good for them and the challenge you have is if you have a certain group of kids who don’t get vaccinated, and if it grows large enough that a percentage of the population doesn’t get vaccinated and they’re the folks who can’t get vaccinated, small infants, for example, or people with certain vulnerabilities that can’t vaccinated, they suddenly become much more vulnerable.”

Obama to propose $3.99 trillion budget

WASHINGTON — President Obama is unveiling a $3.99 trillion budget that is "designed to bring middle class economics into the 21st Century," the White House announced Monday.

 The proposed budget "invests in helping working families make their paychecks go further, preparing hardworking Americans to earn higher wages, and creating the infrastructure that allows businesses to thrive and create good, high-paying jobs," the White House said in a statement.

To pay for new tax credits and other programs involving education, child care, paid leave, and new road and bridge construction, the budget calls for tax hikes on wealthier Americans by closing certain loopholes.

Congressional Republicans said the president's proposals — many of which leaked out in advance of Monday's announcement — involve too many tax hikes and high-spending programs.

"The president said in his State of the Union that the proposals in his budget would be 'filled with ideas that are practical, not partisan,' " said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. "Turns out that's not the case."

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said Sunday on NBC's Meet The Press that Obama is trying to "exploit envy economics. ... It may make for good politics. It doesn't make for good economic growth."

Modern presidential budget proposals are as much political documents as accounting ones, often declared "dead on arrival" in Congress by opposing political parties. The result has been a series of budget bills funding the government temporarily.

In a pre-Super Bowl interview Sunday on NBC, Obama said he is hopeful of getting Republican support for many of his proposals. For example, he said both parties agree on infrastructure spending; the dispute is over how to pay for it.

"My job is to present the right ideas," Obama told NBC, and if the Republicans have better ideas "they should present them."

Monday's proposed budget also calls for ending the automatic spending limits known as sequestration, the result of the 2011 stand-off over the debt limit. The plan calls for 7% increases over sequestration limits for national defense and domestic programs, according to the White House.

That includes defense spending of $561 billion, some $38 billion over sequestration levels. Defense priorities include the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, resisting Russian aggression in Ukraine, and a "good governance" project in Central America.

On Sunday, the White House said that the budget will include a six-year, $478 billion program to build and upgrade roads, bridges and other transit systems, to be financed by a one-time 14% tax on overseas profits.

The projected deficit for Obama's proposed budget is $474 billion, which officials said is only 2.5% of the gross domestic product.

In his weekend radio address, Obama said his budget is designed to "help working families' paychecks go farther by treating things like paid leave and child care like the economic priorities that they are. We'll offer Americans of every age the chance to upgrade their skills so they can earn higher wages."

The budget proposes to raise tax revenue by closing loopholes on items involving carried interest, capital gains and trust funds.

Recent years have seen a government shutdown, near-shutdowns and a debt limit crisis, ending with the passage of resolutions that fund the government temporarily, as opposed to a specific budget.

Anyone involved in the process "would acknowledge that this is the beginning of a negotiation," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. "But it's important — budgets are important because they're a way that we can codify our values and our priorities."

The proposed budget released Monday also calls for full funding of the Department of Homeland Security for a year. While the current spending plan funds most of the government to the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, it finances homeland security only through February.

The reason: A GOP protest against the president's new immigration actions. The Republicans are trying to pressure Obama into changing actions that would defer deportations for some migrants in the country illegally.

Obama — who has said that the GOP wants to "play politics with our homeland security" — will speak about his proposed budget during a Monday event at the Department of Homeland Security.

Among the economic plans in the proposed budget:

• A child care tax credit of up to $3,000 a child.

• $750 million for a Department of Education preschool development program, an increase of $500 million.

• More than $3 billion for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education.

• A $500 tax credit for "second earners" in working families.

• A program encouraging paid leave programs for employees.

• Two years of community college tuition for qualified students, a program that would cost $60 billion over 10 years.

• $1 billion for a "long-term, comprehensive strategy" to develop a Central America "that is fully democratic (and) provides greater economic opportunities."

Russia says nuclear arms to keep military edge over NATO, United States

(Reuters) - Russia's top general said on Friday a strong nuclear arsenal will ensure military superiority over the West as Moscow forges ahead with a multi-billion dollar plan to modernize its forces by 2020.

Russia, facing a likely recession because of a fall in oil prices and sanctions over Ukraine, must deal with new forms of Western aggression, including economic confrontation, said Chief of the Armed Forces General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov.

But despite the deep economic woes, he said the Russian military would receive more than 50 new intercontinental nuclear missiles this year.

"Support for our strategic nuclear forces to ensure their high military capability combined with ... growth of the military potential of the general forces will assure that (the United States and NATO) do not gain military superiority over our country," said Gerasimov.

Tensions between Russia and the West have risen over the conflict in eastern Ukraine, where the United States and Europe say Moscow is fuelling an insurgency by sending in troops and weapons. Moscow denies this.

Russia has criticized NATO expansion in eastern Europe and President Vladimir Putin has accused the Ukrainian army, which is fighting pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, of being puppets of NATO with a policy of "containing" Russia.

Russian war planes have increasingly been spotted over Europe in recent months. Britain summoned the Russian ambassador on Thursday to complain about two Russian long-range bombers that flew over the English Channel, forcing British authorities to reroute civil aircraft.

Russia promises to push through by 2020 a more than 20-trillion-rouble ($286.62 billion) military modernization plan conceived by Putin, and military expenditures will remain unchanged even in the face of a growing economic crisis that has cut the budgets of other ministries.

The modernization project aims to revamp Russia's weapons systems to assure that 70-100 percent of the armed forces weapons and equipment has been modernized by the end of the decade -- a plan confirmed by Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.

"We plan to fulfill the government armament program and reach by 2020 the intended quantities of modern weapons systems," he said at the meeting.

Russia keeps its state nuclear capabilities shrouded in secrecy, but its military has approximately 8,500 warheads in total, including those non-deployed -- some 1,000 more than the United States possesses -- according to a study last year by the Center for Arms-Control and Non-Proliferation.

Speaking against a backdrop of rising prices brought on in part by a weaker rouble, Gerasimov said Russia had to deal with new kinds of Western aggression.

"Western countries are actively using new forms of aggression, combining military as well as non-military means. Political, economic and information methods are also being used," Interfax news agency cited him as saying.

Hackers target UW website with ties to terror group

SEATTLE -- A group with ties to the Islamic State is claiming responsibility for hacking into several areas of a University of Washington website.

 The Moroccan Islamic Union-Mail posted pictures to Facebook Thursday of defaced UW website pages. The hacked site shows a photo of a memorial for American soldiers and warns other Americans in Iraq.

"Again site down. Iraq is the cemetery of American ... Hello to the death that awaits you at the hands of the Mujahideen in Iraq," the message reads.

The group has claimed responsibility for past hacks on various governmental and religious websites.

University of Washington officials sent out a statement on Thursday acknowledging that some websites were defaced, but they avoided calling the incident a "hack." The officials say they're investigating and have taken actions to resolve the issue.

As of Thursday night, at least one section of the website was still showing the message posted by the Moroccan Islamic Union-Mail.

WATCH: McCain calls protesters 'low-life scum'

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called protesters "low-life scum," after they interrupted a hearing by calling for former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to be arrested for war crimes.

Protesters from the group Code Pink chanted, "Arrest Henry Kissinger for war crimes!" and raised signs in the air as Kissinger entered the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing room.

McCain, the chairman of the committee, at first asked, "Could someone find out where the Capitol Police is?"

Kissinger sat calmly in his witness chair, as protesters and photographers gathered around.

The protesters were objecting to Kissinger's past roles in the Nixon administration during the Vietnam War, the bombing of Cambodia and other issues.

As the protesters were led out by police, McCain said, "I've been a member of this committee for many years, and I've never seen anything as disgraceful and outrageous and despicable as the last demonstration."

Finally, McCain said, "Get out of here, you low-life scum."

Different protesters then interrupted the hearing at two other times. At one point, George Shultz, the secretary of State in the Reagan administration, who was also testifying, stood up and defended Kissinger, leading to a standing ovation in the hearing room.

"I salute Henry Kissinger for his many contributions to peace and security," Shultz said.

McCain likewise called Kissinger "a man who served his country with the greatest distinction."

U.S.-based ISIS cell fundraising on the dark web, new evidence suggests

New revelation is part of wider trend of jihadists seeking refuge in the 'dark web' to avoid detection by authorities.

LONDON — A Tel Aviv analyst working for a Singapore-based cyber intelligence company says he has uncovered concrete evidence that a terror cell, purporting to be related to Islamic State and operating in the Americas, is soliciting for Bitcoins as part of its fundraising efforts. There has long been evidence that terrorist cells use the Web — including the highly anonymous network found within the "dark web" which is not indexed or even seen by standard search engines — for both recruiting and fundraising purposes.

Concerns have also been voiced that the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, might begin using Bitcoin — the underground digital web currency that allows for anonymous transactions. But this is the first time, says analyst Ido Wulkan, 25, that evidence is being made public linking what claims to be a specific Islamic State cell to Bitcoin fundraising in the dark web. This could be a one-off fundraising effort, admits Wulkan, or even — possibly although very unlikely, he says — a hoax or a joke. But it could also be pointing to a larger, more worrying trend.

The information gathered has been passed on to various authorities tracking Islamic State activities. “Due to the increasing efforts of social media websites to close ISIS-related accounts it was estimated that global jihad activists would seek refuge in the dark web,” says Wulkan, who is a senior web-intelligence analyst at S2T, a Singapore company that develops big data and cyber intelligence solutions for governments and big corporations. Wulkan was scouring the deep web for a client — using S2T’s GoldenSpear data discovery system — as part of a project “having to do with international jihad,” he says, declining to give more details.

The purported ISIS funding website was tracked down through a referral on a Turkish closed forum and is linked to other, known, jihadist sites,says Wulkan and others at S2T. Once in the site, Wulkan found the following message from the group’s fundraiser, a man identified only as Abu-Mustafa: “Many of us live within the United States, and some are prominent with the community on both coasts,” writes Abu–Mustafa. “We are currently working with recent reverts to Islam and generally training brothers to struggle to establish a new Islamic front both in the U.S. and around the world.” Abu-Mustafa goes on to talk about the scarcity of resources, such as money and facilities, which are available to young Muslims in the United States and South America who want to struggle against “their enemies.” “Donations may be made through various means both monetary and physical,” explains Abu-Mustafa, “...though anything besides economic support through Bitcoin must be approved by the board and taken with much caution due to the security apparatus’ recent crackdown on any and all Islamic change fronts here in the United States.”

 The revelation of this deep web site comes after the publication last July of a pro-ISIS blog titled “Bitcoin and the Charity of Violent Physical Struggle.” In it, a man identified as Taqi’ul-Deen al-Munthir argued that in order for Islamic State to fund its terror operations it needed to go outside the Western financial system. “One cannot send a bank transfer to a mujahid [jihad fighter] or suspected mujahid without the kafir [infidel] governments ruling today immediately being aware,” he wrote on the blog, which received much media attention. Al-Munthir called on ISIS supporters to encrypt their financial transactions by means of the so-called "Dark Wallet" — making it harder for state agencies fighting terrorism to track the transactions.

“This allows our brothers stuck outside of the ardh Dawlatul-Islam [Islamic State] to avoid government taxes along with secretly fund [sic] the Mujahideen with no legal danger upon them,” reads the post. Al-Munthir also extolled the ‘Silk Road” — an online market place running mostly on Bitcoin and accessible, as are all sites on the dark web, only through a Tor network (a software protocol that reroutes traffic through hundreds of servers and computers to conceal identities).

Both Silk Road and Silk Road 2.0 were eventually shut down by the FBI. Despite this red flag indicating ISIS’s interest in Bitcoin, says Wulkan, there was no information made public as to whether ISIS cells had actually set up accounts into which Bitcoin could be transferred — until now. “There was smoke, and now we have found the fire,” says Wulkan.

According to the London-based Quilliam Foundation, the world’s first counter extremist think tank, finding such evidence of Bitcoin fundraising on the dark web should not surprise anyone. “Attempts to block extremist material online will always fail….” they wrote in a recent position paper about the British government’s attempts to shutter extremist activity on the web. “The terrorist material reappears on the Internet as quickly as it is banished and the policy risks driving fanatics on to the “dark web” where they are even harder to track.” According to Wulkan and others at S2T, Abu-Mustafa’s group left a Bitcoin account number showing that it managed to raise five Bitcoin, worth approximately, at the time, $1,000 dollars.

The account, says Wulkan, has since been seized and shut down by the FBI. But even if Islamic State fundraising for Bitcoins on the dark web is a phenomenon one might expect to see more of, observers note that, at present, it still represents only the tiniest drop in the bucket for the terror group.

Available intelligence suggests Islamic State is managing to raise hundreds of millions of dollars — mainly through illicit activities such as kidnapping, extortion and straight out theft. This summer, Islamic State reportedly stole over $425 million dollars worth of Iraqi dinars from Mosul’s central bank, making it one of the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest, terror groups in the world.

Pentagon: US may lose high-tech military superiority to China, Russia

RT.com

The Pentagon has expressed deep concern about the US eventually losing its military technological superiority over rivals such as China and Russia, and is urging NATO states to develop innovative weapons in close cooperation to optimize military spending.

“I am very concerned about the increasing risk of loss of US military technological superiority,” Pentagon arms buyer Frank Kendall told a House Armed Services Committee hearing. “We're at risk and the situation is getting worse,” he warned, specifying that his concerns lay with the heavy investments into weapons design being done by China and Russia.

Kendall noted that development of aircraft carriers and satellite technologies by China and Russia was targeting “critical” US military capabilities, Reuters reported.

In a separate hearing at the House Armed Services Committee, US Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work announced Wednesday that “bold action” was needed to keep the US’s lead in technology as China, Russia and other countries are rapidly developing weapon systems of their own.

The US must “increase collaboration” equally with NATO members, and allies in Asia and other areas when investing into new weapons.

“We must coordinate and collaborate, avoid duplication, leverage niche capabilities, and push our establishments to innovate in technology, concepts, experimentation and wargaming,” Work told a conference hosted by the Center for a New American Security.

U.S. Suddenly Goes Quiet on Effort to Bolster Afghan Forces

NYT 

WASHINGTON — The United States has spent about $65 billion to build Afghanistan’s army and police forces, and until this month the American-led coalition regularly shared details on how the money was being put to use and on the Afghan forces’ progress. But as of this month, ask a question as seemingly straightforward as the number of Afghan soldiers and police officers in uniform, and the military coalition offers a singularly unrevealing answer: The information is now considered classified.

The American outlay for weapons and gear for Afghan forces? Classified. The cost of teaching Afghan soldiers to read and write? Even that is now a secret.

The military command’s explanation for making the change is that such information could endanger American and Afghan lives, even though the data had been released every quarter over the past six years, and Afghan officials do not consider the information secret.

But as the Obama administration is seeking to declare the long war in Afghanistan officially over, at least from an American standpoint, the move to classify data about the Afghan forces removes one of the most crucial measures for assessing the accomplishments of the international coalition there. And it raises stark questions about the state of the fight against the Taliban, coming after a year in which the Afghan forces took record-high casualties as they battled heavy militant offensives.

The reality is that the United States is still deeply invested in Afghanistan and that it plans to spend billions of dollars to keep the Afghans armed, fed and fighting. At the same time, roughly 9,500 American service members and thousands of contractors remain in the country to help the Afghan forces with the crucial art of military logistics and to build an air force.

Through October, getting a sense of how the American-led project to build a viable Afghan military and police force was progressing could be readily gleaned from quarterly reports released by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the American government’s watchdog for spending in Afghanistan.

The inspector general’s last report, released in October and covering a period through August, included data on the size of the army and the police force — just over 181,000 soldiers and 152,000 police officers at that point.

The report found that each force was at about 97 percent of its targeted strength. It broke down the Afghan military’s manpower numbers by corps, and included data on attrition for the army and police, which sustained record casualties and struggled with desertion, a problem that has persisted for years. Between September and August, for instance, 36,000 soldiers were dropped from the army’s rolls because they had been killed or disabled, or had deserted or concluded their commitment for reasons honorable and dishonorable.

None of that information will be publicly updated for the final quarter of last year in the inspector general’s latest quarterly report to Congress, which was provided to The New York Times ahead of its release on Thursday. Instead, the numbers will now be included in a classified appendix, viewable only by government officials with high-level security clearances. “The classification of this volume of data,” the inspector general said in its report, “is unprecedented.” Initially, the coalition also tried to classify the number of American troops in Afghanistan, a figure that was publicly announced last year by the Obama administration, said an American official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing classified material.

Though the coalition did not end up going that far, it did classify nearly every piece of data used by the inspector general to assess the Afghan security forces. In a letter to the inspector general, Gen. John F. Campbell, the commander of coalition forces, said the information now had to be kept secret to protect the lives of American service members and their Afghan allies, arguing that the Taliban could use the data “to sharpen their attacks.” “I cannot comment upon the precise reason why certain information was considered unclassified in the past,” General Campbell wrote. “However, I am compelled to also protect the lives of those individuals who could be put at risk by the release of sensitive information.” Some of the information could certainly be seen as demoralizing, such as the attrition rates within Afghan forces. But the potential for embarrassment is not considered a legitimate rationale for classifying information, and both Republican and Democratic members of Congress have expressed skepticism about General Campbell’s move. “With few exceptions, the public’s business ought to be public,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, whose staff was briefed on the inspector general’s report this week. “Suddenly classifying information that was public for years raises questions.” Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, was more pointed: “I’m offended that this previously unclassified information is now being classified. “Public access to this information is one of the most powerful tools we’ve got to ensure we’re holding our government accountable, and these reports remain as vital as ever to oversight of taxpayer-financed Afghan infrastructure,” she said.

For years, the inspector general’s quarterly reports were among the few easily accessible sources for information about the state of Afghan forces, in addition to other major areas of American spending in Afghanistan. In the latest report, that information has been reduced to a few top-line spending figures, such as how much has been spent on the transportation for the army ($11.5 billion) or the total spent on police training and operations ($3.5 billion). Where the inspector general once offered breakdowns of what that money had bought, its report now includes boilerplate saying that details “can be found in Appendix E of this report” — that is, the classified section of the report, which even many of the people who work in Congress cannot view, and is completely off limits to the general public.

Isis threatens to behead Barack Obama and 'transform America into a Muslim province'

An Isis fighter has threatened to behead Barack Obama “in the White House and transform America into a Muslim province” before murdering a Kurdish soldier in a gruesome propaganda video.

The footage, entitled “Bombardment of Peaceful Muslims in the City of Mosul” showed damage from shelling allegedly carried out by Peshmerga forces in the Iraqi city earlier this month before killing the captive in retaliation.

The masked Isis fighter threatened attacks on the US, France, Belgium and the Kurds, claiming that the group’s followers will kill the American and Kurdish presidents as well as detonating car bombs and explosives in European countries that are part of the international coalition fighting against it.

He claims Peshmerga forces “shells the peaceful Muslims of Mosul with American Crusader bombs, and has poisoned dozens of them with asphyxiating gases” as images are shown of damaged buildings, bodies and injured children.

Then the jihadist issues “a message to the entire world” in Kurdish, translated by the Memri Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor.

“This is the fate of anyone who opposes Islam. Know, oh Obama, that we will reach America. Know also that we will cut off your head in the White House and transform America into a Muslim province,” he says.

“And this is my message to France and its sister, Belgium. We advise you that we will come to you with car bombs and explosive charges and we will cut off your heads.”

The fighter then beheads the captive with a knife to cheers from the gathered crowd, threatening to send Kurdish president Masoud Barzani a soldier’s head for every missile the Peshmerga launch.

Isis, which has overrun swathes of Iraq and Syria, has made a number of similar statements since a US-led coalition mounted air strikes against its fighters last year and frequently uses beheading videos as a platform for its propaganda.

As well as the filmed murders of foreign hostages James Foley, David Haines, Alan Henning and most recently, Japanese aid worker Haruna Yukawa, public beheadings have become commonplace in its territories where death is the penalty for numerous unproved “crimes”.

According to the Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri), the video threatening Obama was released by Isis on Monday, two days after heavy Peshmerga shelling and coalition air strikes were reported in its stronghold of Mosul.

It is the largest city controlled by Isis and one of its longest-standing strongholds in Iraq.

 On Saturday, news agencies reported an increase in US air strikes around Mosul aiming to disrupt Isis supply routes ahead of an expected operation later this year to re-take it from militants.

Coalition airstrikes hit at least two dozen locations around Mosul, destroying dozens of vehicles, buildings, fighting positions and insurgent units, military officials said.

The US has claimed that the coalition has “halted the momentum” of Isis, which made most of its gains largely unchallenged last year.

No foreign armies have yet sent group troops to fight Islamists in the region as fears increase of more Isis-inspired terror attacks following the Charlie Hebdo massacre, Ottawa shootings, Sydney siege and numerous failed plots in the UK, Belgium and across Europe.

American authorities have launched investigations into reports of civilian casualties reportedly incurred during strikes aimed at Isis in Iraq and Syria but none have yet been confirmed.

Since the strikes began in August, Washington has said it takes reports of civilian casualties seriously but did not acknowledge that it had started formal investigations until earlier this month.

In September, the White House admitted that much-publicised standards imposed by President Obama to prevent civilian deaths in drone strikes did not apply to operations in Syria and Iraq.