Despite a sharp rise in the number of night raids, there have been no benefits in the form of decreased insurgent attacks, and anger over the operations has continued to mount among Afghan civilians, found the report by the Open Society Foundations and The Liaison Office, a research and analysis group in Kabul.

“The dramatic increase in the number of night raids, and evidence that night raids or other operations may be more broadly targeting civilians to gather information and intelligence, appear to have overwhelmed Afghan tolerance of the practice,” wrote the authors of the report. “Afghan attitudes toward night raids are as hostile as ever, if not more so.”

Propelled by an increase in prescription narcotic overdoses, drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in the United States, a Times analysis of government data has found.

Drugs exceeded motor vehicle accidents as a cause of death in 2009, killing at least 37,485 people nationwide, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This country is a big, sad pathetic joke.

[A] long-term study at the University of Texas in Dallas has used a new technique to measure blood flow in the brains of sufferers and has detected “marked abnormalities” in brain function that can probably be attributed to low levels of exposure to sarin nerve gas. This abnormal blood flow has persisted or even worsened over the eleven years of the study.

“The findings mark a significant advancement in our understanding of the syndrome, which was for years written off by the Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs as a form of combat stress rather than an objectively diagnosable injury,” reports the Dallas Observer.

The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan has suspended the transfer of detainees to several Afghan-run detention centers because of allegations by the United Nations of torture at the facilities.

The suspension took effect several days ago and affects detention centers run by Afghanistan’s intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, and by the Afghan police, a coalition official said.

Andrea LeBlanc, whose husband died aboard one of the 9/11 hijacked planes, speaks out about alternatives to war — the path taken by the United States after the 2001 attacks.

The United States went to war in Afghanistan, whose Taliban leaders had harbored the al Qaeda network responsible for 9/11, the month after the September 11 attacks and then invaded Iraq in 2003. U.S. troops are still engaged in both wars.

LeBlanc, 67, said she is certain of one thing — her husband would not have wanted retaliation after the September 11 attacks.

“It depends what kind of culture we want and if we want kids to be thinking, caring, human beings, then they need to be given tools to imagine other ways,” LeBlanc, a retired veterinarian, said from her home in Lee, New Hampshire.

“Wars do not bring peace,” added LeBlanc, whose husband Robert LeBlanc taught cultural geography at the University of New Hampshire for 35 years. “So much of what’s happened has been at the expense of our own humanity.”

JPMorgan Chase has a long, glorious history of honoring “the troops,” or whatever. In 1998, the New York Daily News reported:

While many other U.S. businesses and banks closed down their Paris operations after France fell to the Germans, Chase National remained open and even thrived.

The relationship between Chase and the Nazis apparently was so cozy that Carlos Niedermann, the Chase branch chief in Paris, wrote his supervisor in Manhattan that the bank enjoyed “very special esteem” with top German officials and “a rapid expansion of deposits,” according to Newsweek.

Niedermann’s letter was written in May 1942 five months after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the U.S. also went to war with Germany.

Never forget? More recently, JPMorgan Chase has been mining for gold in Afghanistan:

To Hannam, chairman of J.P. Morgan Capital Markets, Afghanistan represents a gigantic, untapped opportunity — one of the last great natural-resource frontiers. Landlocked and pinioned by imperial invaders, Afghanistan has been cursed by its geography for thousands of years. Now, for the first time, Hannam believes, that geography could be an asset. The two most resource-starved nations on the planet, China and India, sit next door to Afghanistan, where, according to Pentagon estimates, minerals worth nearly $1 trillion lie buried. True, there is a war under way. And it’s unclear how the death of Osama bin Laden will impact the country’s political and economic environment. But Hannam is not your usual investment banker: A former soldier, he has done business in plenty of strife-torn countries. So have all the members of his team, two of them former special forces soldiers who have fought here.

Haha. None of this bothers my unfortunate alma mater, of course, since “critical thinking” is a “bias incident,” probably. Wheaton College is very, very proud of its participation in 9/11 Day:

In 2009, President Barack Obama established the National Day of Service and Remembrance to honor the victims of the terrorist attacks, as well as the first responders, largely due to the advocacy and encouragement of loved ones like McGinty. Volunteers from all walks of life are encouraged to engage in service in all 50 states on September 11.

It’s pretty wild, actually, especially since the Office of Service, Spirituality and Social Responsibility likes to brag about how it promotes “informed political activism.” You know: do whatever Barack Obama says — that’s “informed political activism”:

Or just check out what Wheaton graduate and 9/11 survivor Elizabeth Morton says (on Wheaton’s website):

On September 11, now known as “Patriot Day,” we must not forget the event that changed the world a decade ago, but we must also forge ahead in order to honor all who lost their lives on this fateful day, as well as the countless lives lost fighting terrorism around the globe.

So, so gross.

In all fairness, Wheaton did collect canned goods on 9/11, which were donated to a local food pantry. Hooray! This is probably the closest Wheaton College will ever come to doing anything meaningful on 9/11 — poverty in this country has skyrocketed since 2001. The Kids Count Data Book (which uses 10 indicators — including infant mortality rate, teen-pregnancy rate and the percent of teens who are not in school or working — to track the welfare of kids across the country) found that 38 states have seen an overall increase in poverty in 2011. According to the Data Book, “Since 2001, the number of low-income children climbed steadily from 27 million to 31 million in 2009, or 42 percent of children.” The Census Bureau reported that “the percentage of Americans struggling below the poverty line in 2009 was the highest it has been in 15 years.”

And here’s the most recent poverty news, compliments of Serve.gov:

The ranks of America’s poor swelled to almost 1 in 6 people last year, reaching a new high as long-term unemployment left millions of Americans struggling and out of work. The number of uninsured edged up to 49.9 million, the biggest in more than two decades.

The United States is the richest country in the world — how the hell did this happen?

Maybe we should spend less money on Raytheon “Smart Bombs,” and more money of “food and stuff”? Wheaton would look silly if it suggested this, of course, since Raytheon is Wheaton’s fuck buddy. You know, it’s nice that Wheaton collected food for poor people in honor of Obama’s JPMorgan-9/11 Day or whatever — but maybe instead Wheaton could stop lending credibility to the assholes (i.e. Raytheon, etc.) who are destroying our country and every brown person-place on earth? Or is that too much to ask? Oh well! Here’s some “politically informed activism,” brought to you by Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts:

You’re changing the world, Wheaton! Yay!