The 1998 bombing of Omagh, Northern Ireland, was the largest single terror attack in the UK at the time, killing 29 people and injuring over 200. The men convicted of the attack in 2009 are appealing the case, citing a dodgy MI5 agent.

As reported today by The Guardian:

An MI5 agent's credibility is at the centre of an appeal by four republicans accused of being behind the Omagh bomb atrocity, a court heard today.

David Rupert infiltrated the Real IRA and provided evidence against the four men, who are appealing against a historic civil case judgment that held them liable for the massacre.

His intelligence for MI5 was used in the civil action against the Real IRA founder Michael McKevitt and three other men - Liam Campbell, Colm Murphy and Seamus Daly.

They were found to be responsible for the terrorist attack by a judge in a landmark civil case brought by victims' families at Belfast high court in June 2009. The judge recommended that they pay £1.6m in compensation to the victims' families.

All four who were named in court as leading Real IRA activists have started their appeal against that judgment in the court of appeal in Belfast.

Fluoride's been added to municipal water supplies for decades to prevent cavities, but authorities think it's time to lower the dose.

On the heels of a new report finding that 89 percent of city tap water supplies tested are contaminated with cancer-causing chromium-6, two government agencies are announcing that there could be too much of something else in your water, as well - in this case, something that they put there on purpose.

On Friday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) jointly announced that "based on the most up-to-date scientific data," they want to start cutting down on the amount of fluoride that's intentionally added to tap water to prevent cavities and tooth decay, and reduce the amounts that creep into water by way of nature and industrial pollution.

The HHS is proposing that its range of 0.7 to 1.2 milligrams of fluoride per liter of water added to water by municipalities be capped at the low end of that range, 0.7 milligrams per liter. And the EPA, which monitors all fluoride (the stuff that's added, plus the stuff that gets in unintentionally), has said that it will review its current limit of 4.0 milligrams per liter. EPA didn't provide a new proposed limit, but just announced that it may revise its current recommendations.

Vaccine Insanity

The children's flu vaccine does contain mercury. The children's flu vaccine does contain mercury. The children's flu vaccine does contain mercury. Mercury is an exceptionally strong neurological poison. Mercury is an exceptionally strong neurological poison. Mercury is an exceptionally strong neurological poison. These repetitions are directed toward doctors and medical officials who have a hard time with reading comprehension and still insist there is no evidence of harm from vaccines containing thimerosal, which is 50 percent mercury by weight.

Dr. Richard Halvorsen, author of the book, The Truth About Vaccines, said: "Thimerosal is an extremely toxic substance and a known poison to the brain. There is enough convincing evidence linking thimerosal with developmental disorders and learning problems in individual children to warrant its removal from any childhood vaccine." Of course these same reading-handicapped officials and doctors don't even listen to other doctors who have a better grasp of the real science and chemistry of mercury.

One should remember that they have been putting mercury into vaccines since the 1930s and it was an American company, Eli Lilly, who developed thimerosal and sponsored its use for many decades even though they knew it was dangerous from the very beginning after everyone in the first medical study died. Mercury can compromise the health of anyone - adult or child - being a heavy metal and potent neurotoxin.

Telling voters to 'reload' and 'aim for' Democrats was perfectly fine, Sen. McCain argued in March

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), who was shot Saturday during a public event in Tucson, was among 20 other members of Congress who were on a so-called hit list published by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

Palin, who has never publicly advocated violence against fellow US politicians, has often employed rhetorical attacks that leverage imagery and terminology familiar to gun owners and evocative of firearms. She said in March that her supporters should "reload" and "aim for" Democrats, ostensibly with their votes.

A map of the US, published on Palin's Facebook page, featured targeting crosshairs over individual congressional districts Palin had targeted for intense campaign efforts. While her note called for "pink slips," she added that supporters should fire a "salvo" at those lawmakers. Rep. Giffords was on the list.

The Irish Government has recently passed the harshest budget in the history of the State with further austerity promised for the next three years and perhaps for decades. Prime Minister Brian Cowen and Finance Minister Brian Lenihan have steered Ireland from the booming prosperity of a Celtic Tiger to a ruined shell of a country where unemployment, poverty, emigration, and despair are proceeding to destroy a once proud, industrious people.

Cowen and Lenihan also bear the ignominy of having brought in the International Monetary Fund who, along with EU banksters, are now dictating Irish fiscal policy. The IMF has long had a vulturish reputation for plundering weaker countries by stripping the flesh of its victims down to the bare bones. This repulsive scavenger is well known for promoting austerity and misery, grabbing national assets for its bankster and corporate friends, and leaving the skeleton of a country's economy in its wake. The first piece of offal to be plucked from the Irish carcass by this opportunistic carrion eater was the nation's €20 billion pension fund, the life savings of working people.

As a result of Ireland's dramatic reversal of fortune the names of Brian Cowen and Brian Lenihan are now being reviled as the villains who inflicted horrendous financial disaster upon the Irish people and forced the enslavement of future generations to a criminal cadre of International Banksters.

Doctors and other health professionals working for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) might have been illegally performing research on detainees after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to a new report issued by the advocacy group Physicians for Human Rights.

If confirmed, the research would be in violation of the American Common Rule, the Nuremberg Code and other professional, national and international ethical guidelines that ban research on non-consenting human subjects. The CIA has denied that any such research or human experimentation has occurred in its detainee program.

To ensure new "enhanced interrogation" techniques did not cross the line into torture (by causing "severe and long-lasting" pain) after 9/11, the U.S. Department of Justice required health professionals to be present during many CIA interrogation sessions with detainees. But in the process of monitoring, doctors often "collected and analyzed the results of those interrogations, and sought to derive generalizable inferences to be applied to subsequent interrogations," according to the report. And that process, the report authors noted, qualifies as illegal research.

I have to wonder were these suspicious packages an inside job by factions inside the government to justify more control over the American People? We have to ask the question. Who stands to gain from these incidents? Sept 11,2001 gave us the Patriot act, Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration. The Underwear Bomber on Christmas day a little over a year ago on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit gave us full body scanners.

Homeland security recently ordered all international shipments over a certain weight to have a Social Security Number on the package. Weeks before there was a possible threat I believe was exaggerated was the ink in printer cartridges might be a bomb. We heard our Coleman thermoses might be a weapon of mass destruction even though there was no credible threat to substantiate it. They put out the alert this Christmas even though there were no credible threats.

Wal Mart has teamed up with Homeland Security using giant TV screens in stores nationwide telling the people shopping for Christmas to spy on there neighbors with "if you see something say something" talking points. This is right after the TSA abuses at airports, that have had the nation in an uproar ready to revolt.

Now just recently we had an incendiary device go off in a DC post office addressed to Homeland Security. A couple of days prior to that there were two packages detonated outside of a Maryland government office. There were only minor injuries and no deaths. Why all this?

I see now the more the Department of Homeland Security talks and announces that what the TSA did in our nations airports.The TSA and DHS want to go out on the streets of American going into bus stations, interstates, sports stadiums, shopping malls and maybe your county fair. They are up to something and have something up their sleeve to justify this action.

In 2001, Pakistani soldiers captured Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi as he fled Afghanistan. The Pakistani government turned the Libyan paramilitary trainer affiliated with al Qaeda over to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency requested permission to take al-Libi instead and send him to another country - Egypt - for interrogation, permission the Bush administration granted. While undergoing interrogation - potentially of the "enhanced" variety that includes prolonged sleep or sensory deprivation or painful body positions, among other treatments - al-Libi revealed that Iraq had been providing al Qaeda with training in making weapons of mass destruction.

What al-Libi revealed was false, and a trio of physicians now points to this case as an example of how torture provides information of "questionable reliability," in the January 6 issue of Science.

In fact, the doctors, from Physicians for Human Rights and the Bellevue/New York University Program for Survivors of Torture, argue that science has proven that torture is an unreliable method for obtaining accurate information. In support of their claim, they cite a review paper published in Trends in Cognitive Science in September 2009 by neuroscientist Shane O'Mara of Trinity College in Dublin. Dr. Vincent Iacopino and his colleagues also argue in the latest essay that the "enhanced interrogation techniques" employed by the CIA and explicitly authorized by the Bush administration constitute torture.

There is evidence that central banks in several regions of the World are building up their gold reserves. What is published are the official purchases.

A large part of these Central Bank purchases of gold bullion are not disclosed. They are undertaken through third party contracting companies, with utmost discretion.

US dollar holdings and US dollar denominated debt instruments are in effect being traded in for gold, which in turn puts pressure on the US dollar.

In turn, both China and Russia have boosted domestic production of gold, a large share of which is being purchased by their central banks:

It has long been assumed that China is surreptitiously building up its gold reserves through buying local production. Russia is another major gold miner where the Central bank has been purchasing gold from another state entity, Gokhran, which is the marketing arm and central repository for the country's mined gold production. Now it has been reported by Bloomberg that the Venezuelan Central Bank director, Jose Khan, has said that country will boost its gold reserves through purchasing more than half the gold produced from its rapidly growing domestic gold mining industry.

In Russia, for example, Gokhran sold some 30 tonnes of gold to the Central Bank in an internal accounting exercise late last year. In part, so it was said at the time, the direct sale was made rather than placing the metal on the open market and perhaps adversely affecting the gold price.

China is currently the world's largest gold producer and last year it confirmed it had raised its own Central Bank gold holdings by more than 450 tones over the previous six years. Mineweb.com - The world's premier mining and mining investment website Venezuela taking own gold production into Central Bank reserves - GOLD NEWS | Mineweb

The personal doctor of Ariel Sharon says the comatose former Israeli prime minister responds to pinches and opens his eyes when spoken to.

Dr Shlomo Segev made the remarks in a programme broadcast on Saturday (local time) on Israeli television that coincided with the fifth anniversary of the massive stroke that incapacitated the ex-prime minister.

The 82-year-old Sharon is a former war hero who led Israel from 2001 until the 2006 stroke that left him comatose. Severe haemorrhaging caused significant brain damage and he has been in a vegetative state since. Former Sharon spokesman Raanan Gissin told The AP there has been no change in Sharon's condition.

Sharon was moved home in November, but Gissin said he has since been returned to the long-term care facility outside Tel Aviv for treatment.