The man President Obama is expected to choose to be the next secretary of defense has a long history at the Pentagon, having served in senior positions there for nearly five years. But one of his specialties is particularly timely: Ashton B. Carter is considered one of the country’s top administrators and students of military technology. Carter, an Oxford and Yale-educated physicist, served as the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics from April 2009 until October 2011, as the Pentagon ended its eight-year war in Iraq and surged thousands of additional troops into Afghanistan. The job required him to find ways to rush into the field new equipment that was needed by troops and to prepare for emerging national security issues, including cyber warfare and the proliferation of drones.

Stephen Lendman ■ Ashton Carter at DOD Means More War

The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved an Arab-backed resolution Tuesday calling on Israel to renounce possession of nuclear weapons and put its nuclear facilities under international oversight. ● The resolution, adopted in a 161-5 vote, noted that Israel is the only Middle Eastern country that is not party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. It called on Israel to "accede to that treaty without further delay, not to develop, produce test or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons, to renounce possession of nuclear weapons" and put its nuclear facilities under the safeguard of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency. The United States, Canada, Palau and Micronesia joined Israel in opposing the measure, while 18 countries abstained. Israel is widely considered to possess nuclear arms but declines to confirm it.

Ukrainian General-Colonel Yan Kazemirovich from Kiev reveals CIA, Masons, Judaic Oligarchs, and ultimately, Hasidic rabbis, primarily Chabad behind overthrow of Ukraine. English subtitles.

Ukraine's energy minister said Wednesday an accident at a nuclear power plant in southeast Ukraine posed no danger and that the plant would return to running as normal on Friday. Volodymyr Demchishin said a short circuit at a power-generating unit in the Zaporozhiya plant led to a drop in electricity production. He said the problem occurred in the electricity transmission system and not in the reactor. "There is no threat ... there are no problems with the reactors," Demchyshyn said at a briefing. He added that the accident affected the power output system and was "in no way" linked to power production itself. The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna said it had no immediate comment on the report. Under an international convention adopted after the 1986 Chernobyl accident in what was then Soviet Ukraine, a country should notify the agency of any nuclear accidents that can impact other countries.

RT.com: Accident at Ukraine nuclear plant revealed by prime minister

British man found with nailbomb, weapons cache, and plans to mass murder immigrants, not charged with terrorism. ● A soldier who wrote of murdering immigrants and who praised Adolf Hitler has been jailed for two years after building a viable nailbomb packed with 181 pieces of shrapnel to maximise the carnage it would cause. Ryan McGee, 20, described by his defence team as “a bit of a loner”, wrote in a journal: “I vow to drag every last immigrant into the fires of hell with me.” He downloaded a video of two bound and gagged men beneath a swastika flag, one being beheaded and the other killed by a gunshot to the head and went online to tell people to do something if they hated immigration. He supported the English Defence League, Ku Klux Klan and praised then British National party leader Nick Griffin. A nailbomb and cache of weapons including an imitation firearm, an air pistol, axes and knives were found in the bedroom of his family home in Eccles, Salford, and he had researched buying guns on the web. McGee also posted several pictures of himself in EDL and Ku Klux Klan clothing and standing next to EDL flags. When he was interviewed by police, McGee said he made the bomb while on leave “out of boredom” and he was interested in rightwing politics because he did not like mass immigration.

Disturbing video of a Denver police officer brutally beating an unarmed suspect in August has surfaced after police allegedly attempted to erase the footage that was taken on a bystander’s Samsung tablet. ● The witness, identified as Levi Frasier, told Fox 31 that police seized his tablet once they realized he was recording the beating, telling him that if he refused to give up the device they would do it “the hard way.” When it was returned, the video was gone. Luckily, Frasier was able to recover the 55-second clip of the arrest and beating because it had been stored in the cloud. Now, Frasier is sharing his story and the disturbing clip that may land the unidentified plainclothes cops and two other officers, Charles Jones IV and Christopher Evans, in hot water. The video shows an officer punching drug-using suspect David Nelson Flores in the head six times before tripping his pregnant girlfriend on the ground. She lands, belly first, onto the pavement.

Simon Black ■ On October 22, 1981, the government of the United States of America accumulated an astounding $1 TRILLION in debt. At that point, it had taken the country 74,984 days (more than 205 years) to accumulate its first trillion in debt. It would take less than five years to accumulate its second trillion. And as the US government just hit $18 trillion in debt on Friday afternoon, it has taken a measly 403 days to accumulate its most recent trillion. There’s so much misinformation and propaganda about this; let’s examine some of the biggest lies out there about the US debt.