Chicago-based historian and activist Paul Street cuts through the fog of fantasy and wish-fulfillment that makes up much of political discourse in the U.S. left for a sober assessment of the Obama administration in the real world of power and empire.  The Empire's New Clothes uniquely measures Obama's record against the expectations many of his supporters hoped he would live up to.  Taken together, it is a startling indictment not just of the current president and his people-proof, reform-proof but an indictment of what passes for the U.S. left.

African scholar Mahmood Mamdani challenges the fabricated stats and fraudelent history popularized by the Save Darfur Coalition and the advocates of robust U.S. military intervention in Sudan.  The Save Darfur Coalition, he argues is not a peace movement but a war dance, blocking a peaceful settlement by spreading falsified casualty figures, groundless charges of genocide, and offering the U.S. public an appealing but misleading case for military intervention.