Sarah Palin fans are certain that the economy would be better and the war on terrorism would be won if she was president. The Uptake's independent reporter Craig Martin Stellmacher visited Minnesota's Mall of America to cover Sarah Palin's book signing there on Monday, December 7th. He found thousands of...

Today marked another day of protests in Minneapolis in opposition to Obama's decision to escalate the war on Afghanistan/Pakistan. Instead of the "taking to the streets" in downtown Minneapolis the night after the President's announcement, today's protest was held in early afternoon...

(photo by Tony Webster)

Last evening's unpermitted march organized by area young people was extremely successful in garnering area media attention (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) just as the

The first time I wrote "war on terrorism" (in my May 2002 memo to FBI Director Mueller) I put it in quotes because I already knew "war" wasn't the right approach. Rush Limbaugh and his ilk are very wrong about this. The most pragmatic method of determining the guilt or...

On Oct. 12, 2003, the Star Tribune published an op-ed I wrote responding to a speech in the Twin Cities by U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft in which he boasted on his "Patriot Act Victory Tour" that Americans were "freer today than at any time in the history of human...

This year's award--the 7th one given by the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence--could not be more timely with regard to the wars being waged in Afghanistan-Pakistan and will be presented to former Chief of Staff at the State Department, Col. Larry Wilkerson, USA (ret.) this Wednesday, October...

Despite the cogent efforts of eight peace and anti-torture activists charged with trespass a year ago, at the 2008 Republican National Convention, a court in St. Paul could not bring itself to admit evidence of the Constitution, binding treaties creating war crimes and the right of conscience embodied in...

Just as new details emerged on Monday, August 24 of CIA interrogators' abuse of prisoners involving mock executions, threatening prisoners with power drills, and choking them to the point of passing out, Associate Law Professor Robert Delahunty quietly resumed teaching fall classes on...

Millions of Americans by now have received the "I'm a Bad American" viral e-mail from their Aunt Jane or Cousin Fred during these last few polarizing years. But how many have responded to their friends or relatives? I myself had probably quickly hit the "delete" button on a half dozen...

The facts are still very sketchy. Additionally the difficulty of getting hold of anyone on a weekend in an official capacity to explain what's going on, forced me to send the following e-mail a few hours ago to the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, the Israeli Ministry of Interior,...

In the absence of my being there in New York City to stand with the 9/11 families, first responders and survivors, I offer the following statement in support of your goal of a new investigation into the attacks of September 11th and the NYC CAN campaign to place it...

Anyone who scans my prior Huffington Posts will quickly see that the common thread in most of them, is how counterproductive the post 9-11 "war on terror" has been; how it served to increase terrorism and violent acts in the world and was quickly turned into a war on dissent...

It might not be exactly kosher to repost somebody else's opinion piece, like Ray McGovern's May 28th one, "Colin Powell: No Good Samaritan" (first posted at Consortium News) but I need to add my two cents. Specifically I can confirm that it was indeed Colin Powell's presentation to the...

Guess who got up at the crack of dawn yesterday morning to try and warn all the people heading out on White Bear Lake at Minnesota's grand "Fishing Opener" to be on the look-out for this Pirate PawLENTY who's known to have sworn in...

Ever since seeing the "Power of Song" documentary about Pete Seeger in the fall of 2007 and then getting the chance to meet his chip-off-the-old-block-grandson Tao Rodriguez-Seeger who traveled to Minnesota during the RNC in September 2008 to sing at our "Peace Island Picnic", we have been fascinated with the...

Twelve of us "Veteran Intelligence Professionals For Sanity" just signed the memorandum below to the President on torture. Our points have been echoed by numerous military and civilian intelligence agency personnel as well as by one former member of the Church Committee, former Vice President Walter Mondale, who made this...

Back in December 2007, when I wrote "Torture is Wrong, Illegal and It Doesn't Work", I mentioned that "the FBI agent who reportedly had the best chance of foiling the 9/11 plot, Ali Soufan, the only Arabic-speaking agent in New York and one of only eight in the...

My letter was published in the New York Times yesterday under the caption, "The Uproar Over the C.I.A. and Torture":

To the Editor:

The overall idea put forth on Thursday by torture apologists that the C.I.A. and other government employees were only following Department of Justice legal...

Minnesota Prosecutor Petitioned by Thousands to End Persecution

What do 17,000 members of the Duluth Central Labor Body; the "Minnesota 8" sixty-year olds whose Vietnam draft resistance experiences were commissioned into a 2008 "Peace Crimes" play; over 3000 people from all over the world (many of whom not only signed...

When I first posed these hard questions in the NY Times about the C.I.A. torture tapes, we were all under the belief that only two tapes had been destroyed. Now that we know it was ninety two tapes, all kinds of further questions emerge. But the most pressing is...