Kabul, Afghanistan - Afghan authorities say a roadside bomb killed eight civilians in southern Afghanistan when it struck their vehicle.

The governor's office in Helmand province says the Wednesday afternoon explosion in Marjah district was massive and that the bodies are difficult to identify.

The U.N. says last year was the deadliest on record for civilians in the Afghan war, with 3,021 killed as insurgents ratcheted up violence with suicide attacks and roadside bombs.

The U.N. says Taliban-affiliated militants were responsible for more than three-quarters of the civilian deaths in 2011.

Source: The Associated Press

So the still-unnamed U.S. Army perpetrator of the Sunday slaughter in Afghanistan apparently suffered a traumatic brain injury two years ago. Could this have triggered what by all accounts was an irrational act? You better believe it, current and former Army mental-health professionals say.

While they stress that such an assessment in this case is premature, they agree that even mild traumatic brain injuries -- concussions, in other words -- can cause problems years later. "What you see often with TBI is a disinhibition," says an Army psychiatrist who recently served just outside Kandahar, near where the shootings took place. "TBI could be responsible if it leaves him predisposed to bipolarity or manic episodes."

The Army's one-time top psychiatrist concurs. "A mild TBI certainly can contribute to irritability and impulsivity, even two years later," says retired colonel Elspeth "Cam" Ritchie. "I don't think it would cause somebody to snap, but I think it could be a contributing factor, a straw that breaks the camel's back."

A British teenager has been arrested and will appear in a UK court as a result of a comment he posted on Facebook about the deaths last week of six British soldiers in Afghanistan.

On March 8th, 19 year old Azhar Ahmed posted a comment on his Facebook page about the deaths of 6 British soldiers in Afghanistan on the 6th March. On the same day as Azhar's post, a Facebook group entitled Azhar Ahmed Scumbag!!! was created (with large Union Jack flag as its logo) and, someone (perhaps the creator of the FB page) reported his comment to the police. The following day, Friday, Azhar was arrested and charged over the weekend. He was then released on bail and will appear in Dewsbury magistrates' court on March 20th. An online petition has also been created that demands that Azhar be "sent to prison for hate crimes against British soldiers".

Most disturbing here is not that there are many rabid Right Wing Authoritarian types on Facebook, but that the British police clearly took the complaint seriously and took the time and effort to investigate the matter and saw fit to send a squad car to Azhar's house to arrest him.

Everyone in the world seems to recognize the obvious crimes perpetrated by the Bush/Cheney regime. Their overwhelming negative status in the world has now confined them to personal prisons where they can no longer travel abroad for public events. It appears they're only welcome in heavily-secured private dragon lairs for the rest of their waking years. But even those locations are shrinking for these torturers and mass murderers.

Cheney, scheduled to speak in Toronto with his daughter next month, had to cancel the speaking appearance due to "security concerns stemming from their experiences in Vancouver in September 2011," according to a press release about the event.

The September event referred to in the press release was hardly a public event at all. It cost $500 a ticket to attend and took place at the Vancouver Club which the Canadian Press called "one of Vancouver's most exclusive clubs." Still, the public caught wind of the event and staged a rambunctious protest calling for Cheney's arrest. The angry crowd caused Cheney to be locked in the club for seven hours longer than he was scheduled.

In February of last year, George W. Bush had to cancel a speaking engagement in Switzerland because human rights groups put pressure on the Swiss government to arrest him over torture allegations if he enters the country. Even though officials claimed Bush had diplomatic immunity because he was a former head of state, they recognized that torture is a legitimate crime under international law. Organizers of the event felt the "atmosphere had become too threatening" and the gala went on without Bush.

Qatar's aggressive stance towards Assad has led to a string of resignations at the country's al-Jazeera TV news channel. Those who left describe bias at the station which they say has become a tool to target the Syrian regime. RT's Paula Slier describes those accusations.

An archived clip of different Congressional hearings exposes the fact that the CIA directly plants stories in the media, both in the United States and the rest of the world.

Question: Do you have any people being paid by the CIA who are contributing to a major circulation journal?

Answer: We do have people who submit pieces to American journals.

Question: Do you have any people paid by the CIA who are working for television networks?

Answer: This I think gets into the details I'd like to get into in executive session. [so the public doesn't hear how we control all the networks]

Considering that this was going on in the 1950s, it is highly likely that this is happening now and at a much larger extent. The CIA and other government agencies literally control the corporate controlled media.

Anytime you hear a story on the major networks that has any implication in US foreign or domestic policy rest assured that it was, at the very least, vetted by the CIA before being released.

In the early 90s CNN was also used to test Army psychological operations.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has foregone a trip to Canada on the grounds that it's "too dangerous," according to a report in Canada's National Post.

Cheney was set to appear at an event in Toronto on April 24, but canceled on grounds that the risk of trouble from protesters was too great.

Cheney's last Canadian appearance in September of 2011 erupted in violence as protesters swarmed the entrance of the private Vancouver club where the former Bush administration official and Iraq War architect was speaking. The protesters rained down verbal abuse on attendees and, in once instance, choked a security guard.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum says that even his home-schooled 12-year-old could "out-reason" HBO comedian Bill Maher.

During his Friday "New Rules" segment, Maher had called out Santorum's stance against public education.

"The Taliban may want to live in the eighth century but the Christian right wants to go back even further - to Adam and Eve, who screwed it up for everybody when they ate an apple from the Tree of Knowledge," Maher explained on the March 9 broadcast. "Rick Santorum home schools his children because he doesn't want them eating that fucking apple. He wants them locked up in the Christian madrassa that is the family living room, not out in public, where they could be infected by the virus of reason."

"If you're a kid and the only adults you've ever met are mom and dad then they're also the smartest adults you've ever met. Why not keep it that way? why mess up paradise with a lot of knowledge? After all, a mind is a terrible thing to open."

Remember the story about the Wall Street guy who rented out all 94 rooms of an Aspen hotel for three days for his daughter's Bat Mitzvah?

The main character in that tale was an individual named Jeffrey Verschleiser, a former Bear Stearns executive who was instrumental in helping blow up that venerable firm. Verschleiser among other things was reportedly involved with an elaborate Wall Street version of a merchandise return scam, only instead of taking the proceeds from returned TVs and stereos, his unit was pocketing the cash from crap mortgages sold back to banks on behalf of investors.

Verschleiser also made a bundle burning Bear's bond insurers, whom he bet against after inducing them to insure his crappy mortgage bonds, nicknamed "Sack of Shit" bonds by one of the funny dudes in his department. Verschleiser reportedly bragged that he made $55 million shorting his own bond insurers in the space of three weeks. Those interested in the whole sorry story should check out reporter Teri Buhl's excellent Atlantic magazine piece entitled, "E-mails Suggest Bear Stearns Cheated Clients Out of Billions."

After Verschleiser decided to monopolize the elegant Hotel Jerome in Aspen for his daughter's Bat Mitzvah, news reports about his identity leaked out, and the event spurred some local controversy in Aspen and plenty of inflamed commentary around the interwebs. But it seems that the negative press has not hurt Verschleiser's career.

Fort Collins -- Some northern Colorado cities are earning thousands of dollars selling water for use in hydraulic fracturing or fracking.

The Fort Collins Coloradoan reports the town of Windsor sold more than 8.4 million gallons for nearly $17,000 between Nov. 1 and March 1.

In all of 2011, Greeley sold more than 491 million gallons, mostly to the oil and gas industry, for $1.6 million.