Liberated Texts
@LiberatedTexts
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Independent reviews & (re)publication of books of ongoing relevance that have been under-appreciated, suppressed or misinterpreted since their release.
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Featuring the work of so many great writers, our first collected reviews volume is published today & available to buy direct on the
@Ebb_Magazine
website. Every copy sold will help contribute to continuing our work highlighting neglected & important texts.
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Fidel Castro on reading ‘The Communist Manifesto’ for the first time:
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Nelson Mandela on reading Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin & Mao and reconciling dialectical materialism with his belief in African nationalism.
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If you’re looking for an introduction to the history of Zionism and the establishment of Israel, then Fayez Sayegh’s ‘Zionist Colonialism in Palestine’, reviewed below, is a great place to start.
In this review,
@Louis_Allday
discusses the neglected & hugely prescient work ‘Zionist Colonialism in Palestine’ written for the PLO’s Research Centre in 1965 by Fayez Sayegh, once one of the most prominent advocates for the Palestinian cause in the West.
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Mass destruction of Russian and Soviet-era books disgustingly being portrayed by US media as a bookshop’s recycling initiative and a “powerful symbol”.
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Today marks five years since Israeli forces assassinated the Palestinian intellectual and militant, Basel al-Araj.
Read this moving review of his posthumously published book “I Have Found My Answers” to get an idea of the significance of his life & work.
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Exciting news that following our review of it last year, I. F. Stone’s 1952 classic “The Hidden History of the Korean War” is being reissued by Monthly Review Press.
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Thomas Sankara speaking two years before he was murdered on this day in 1987:
“I have told myself either I’ll finish up an old man somewhere in a library reading books or I’ll meet with a violent end”.
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Liberated Texts is an independent book review website which features works of ongoing relevance that have been forgotten, underappreciated, suppressed or misinterpreted in the cultural mainstream since their release.
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In this review,
@Louis_Allday
discusses the neglected & hugely prescient work ‘Zionist Colonialism in Palestine’ written for the PLO’s Research Centre in 1965 by Fayez Sayegh, once one of the most prominent advocates for the Palestinian cause in the West.
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“When opponents of Zionism proclaim that Israel is a fascist entity they are speaking a historical truth…”
@VivaAbuJilda
and
@Louis_Allday
on Faris Yahya Glubb’s painfully relevant & sorely overlooked book, “Zionist Relations with Nazi Germany” (1978).
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"Well over a thousand books were produced, subsidized or sponsored by the CIA before the end of 1967."
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Samir Mansour bookshop in Gaza was completely destroyed last night. The barbaric destruction of culture like this is standard procedure for Israel.
تحت هذه الأنقاض أصبحت "مكتبة سمير منصور" إثر القصف الاسرائيلي لعمارة كحيل في شارع الثلاثيني، المكتبة التي كانت تبتسم للمارة والقراء ويحبها الجميع، أصبحت أثرا بعد عين؛ الحمدلله.
#مكتبة_سمير_منصور
#gazaunderattacks
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Since its launch in March 2021, Liberated Texts has so far published 21 reviews of important yet under-appreciated books on a range of topics including Soviet Pedagogy, Zionist Colonialism, Marxism in Africa, the US' defeat in Vietnam, daily life in the DPRK & the events of 9/11.
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On the CIA's control of book publishing and distribution during the Cold War:
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Che Guevara’s father, Don Ernesto, reminisces on the early life & reading habits of his son (known in the family as Tete): “He was an avid reader. I was told that even when fighting in Bolivia, pursued by the enemy and suffering from asthma, he still managed to do some reading”.
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A declassified CIA book review of 'Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism' (1965) by the then President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah. Just a few months later, Nkrumah was deposed in a CIA-orchestrated coup.
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Fidel Castro on his time in prison, 1953-55:
"I read constantly, fifteen hours a day. Although it was mostly political essays, history books, a lot of Martí - but all sorts of literature and novels, too. That, for me, was a real cultural university."
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“From its inception… the Zionist movement has been reactionary and has aligned itself with capitalist, imperialist, anti-semitic, right-wing, and fascist forces. It is through its relations with such forces that Zionism has sustained itself.”
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In our first review of 2022,
@Alexander_Avina
re-visits Bishara Bahbah’s detailed – and still pertinent – study of the destructive role that Israeli arms and “expertise” played throughout Latin America during the Cold War.
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The Church Committee, 1976: the CIA is “now using several hundred American academics, who in addition to providing leads & on occasion, making introductions for intelligence purposes, occasionally write books and other material to be used for propaganda purposes abroad”.
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On Palestinian Prisoners’ Day
@ghinaa_a
reviews martyr Walid Daqqa’s “Searing Consciousness (Or on Redefining Torture)” his study of Israel’s psychological war on Palestinian prisoners as a microcosm of its war against the Palestinian people as a whole.
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At the time of his murder in 1971 George Jackson had 99 books in his prison cell.
They included works by Marx, Engels, Fanon, Stalin, Lenin, Du Bois, Nkrumah, Ho Chi Minh, Mao, CLR James, Gramsci, Castro & Malcolm X, as well his own book, Soledad Brother.
Here's the full list:
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We are excited to say that the inaugural volume of Liberated Texts collected reviews will be published on February 21st this year. It will feature all of the pieces that were published on our website throughout 2021.
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Prabhat Patnaik: “Brecht said, hungry man reach for the book. Why? Because to get rid of hunger, you have to get rid of the system that produces hunger, & to get rid of that system you must understand it & you can only do that by reaching for the book.”
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A fascinating interview with Thomas Sankara in February 1986 about his books and reading habits.
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Hazem Jamjoum reviews ‘I Have Found My Answers’, the as of yet untranslated collected works of the Palestinian militant-scholar, Basel al-Araj — published posthumously in 2018 after his assassination by Israeli forces the previous year.
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"[A]n intimate study of a national community without any pretense of objectivity..."
@stevesalaita
reflects on the continued importance of Rosemary Sayigh's classic work from 1979 "Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries".
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“Kim presents her readers with an opportunity to engage the origins of the DPRK on its own terms.”
@hermit_hwarang
writes on the importance of Suzy Kim’s 2013 work “Everyday life in the North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950”.
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On Malaysia Day,
@FadiahNadwa
writes about the 2003 autobiography of Chin Peng, former head of the Communist Party of Malaya, who led anti-colonial resistance against both Japan & Britain before spending decades in exile in Thailand, where he died in 2013.
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An incredible thread of digitised texts, many published by the Palestine Research Center, which was looted and bombed by Zionist forces during Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982.
Palestine In Focus
By Sami Hadawi. Palestine Essays
#7
. Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center, Beirut, 1969. 128 pages
PDF:
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An appropriate read on Nakba day,
@stevesalaita
’s review of Rosemary Sayigh’s 1979 book ‘Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries’ a book he describes as “an intimate study of a national community without any pretense of objectivity”.
#NakbaDay
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Five years after his overthrow by the USA in 1963, President Juan Bosch of the Dominican Republic went on to write a hugely overlooked and thought-provoking book about US imperialism that he believed had by then morphed into what he termed “Pentagonism.
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'The US pursued a scorched earth policy in Korea, as ground troops routinely burned villages and warplanes rained down death and destruction ... "one of the problems which began to trouble the [US] Air Force... was that there was nothing left to destroy"'
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Fayez Sayegh writing in 1965: whereas “the Afrikaner apostles of apartheid… brazenly proclaim their sin, the Zionist practitioners of apartheid in Palestine beguilingly protest their innocence”.
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In advance of the release of the English language translation of Ghassan Kanafani’s 1967 work “On Zionist Literature” next week to mark the 50th anniversary of his killing by Israel,
@stevesalaita
’s introduction to the book is now available to read here:
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شكرا جزيلا لرفاقنا في
@AlakhbarNews
لترجمة مقال
@Alexander_Avina
حول دور إسرائيل القذر في أمريكا اللاتينية.
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In this review,
@MullinCorinna
considers the ongoing relevance of 'The Political Economy of Imperialism', published by the Ugandan Marxist-Leninist, Pan-Africanist, anti-imperialist scholar, freedom fighter, lawyer and politician, Dani Nabudere in 1977.
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Here
@ilchinealach
reviews “one of the finest works of Irish and anti-imperialist historiography written to date” – Robbie McVeigh and Bill Rolston’s ‘Ireland, Colonialism and the Unfinished Revolution’.
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"Contrary to the liberal-Zionist myth that Zionism began as a noble cause, but has been corrupted and dragged rightwards since 1967, Sayegh explains how Zionism was a colonialist and racist enterprise from its inception."
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جورج حبش: "و عليّ أن أشكر سجّاني… الذي حشرني في زنزانة منفردة تسعة أو عشرة أشهر، و من يظن أنه يقضي عليّ. لكنني أمضيت هذه الفترة كلها في القراءة. قرأت إنغلز و ماركس و لينين."
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In this review,
@LeoZeilig
writes about a lesser known book by the Guyanese revolutionary and historian, Walter Rodney, compiled and published in 1984, four years after his assassination.
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@MarlonEttinger
on Richard Boyle’s 1972 account of the near-collapse of the US army in Vietnam & how that intersected with anti-war protests in the US, resistance to the US puppet government in South Vietnam & the military strategy of North Vietnam itself.
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Life Magazine, April 1957: “Literature from Moscow is inexpensive in Damascus bookstores which carry everything from Soviet picture magazines to ‘Das Kapital’.
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“The CIA’s interest in the literary scene extended to book reviews”
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It is one year today since Liberated Texts was launched. In our first year we have published 24 reviews of under-appreciated and important books with anti-imperialist and anti-colonial themes – and there are many more to come!
Liberated Texts is an independent book review website which features works of ongoing relevance that have been forgotten, underappreciated, suppressed or misinterpreted in the cultural mainstream since their release.
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Here
@FadiahNadwa
discusses the significance of the Political Testament of the Malayan API movement (1946) and how it has been intentionally ‘forgotten’ in Malaysian national discourse.
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Joseph Mullen of
@thecadrejournal
discusses Che Guevara’s “The African Dream”, the diary of his incursion in Congo-Kinshasa during the Simba Rebellion of 1963-65 that after it was written “remained under lock and key in Havana for more than thirty years”.
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Tim Beal and Gregory Elich consider the enduring importance and contemporary relevance of I.F. Stone’s iconoclastic 1952 work “The Hidden History of the Korean War”.
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'In America, the CIA produced and distributed publications specifically to counter the “sympathetic view of the emerging China as presented by Edgar Snow”...'
@lewishodder_
on 'Red Star Over China', Edgar Snow's classic account of Chinese Communism.
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In this review,
@ImReadinHere
considers the importance & impressive foresight of the pedagogical vision of the Soviet educationist, Vasily Sukhomlinsky & how in a recent English translation his legacy has been subject to familiar anti-Communist distortion.
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Here
@OwenSchalk
discusses the contemporary relevance of Howard Adams’ seminal 1975 work “Prison of Grass: Canada from a Native Point of View” & explains how it analyses the capitalist roots of anti-indigenous racism in Canada.
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“The three defining characteristics of the Zionist settler-state as defined by Sayegh are (1) its racial complexion and conduct; (2) its addiction to violence; and (3) its expansionist stance.”
In this review,
@Louis_Allday
discusses the neglected & hugely prescient work ‘Zionist Colonialism in Palestine’ written for the PLO’s Research Centre in 1965 by Fayez Sayegh, once one of the most prominent advocates for the Palestinian cause in the West.
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In a collaboration with
@Ebb_Magazine
, from 2022 onwards, Liberated Texts is launching a series dedicated to (re)publishing books relevant to the present moment that have been neglected, overlooked or never before translated into English since their release.
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Malcolm X: "I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive."
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We are very happy to see that our and
@Ebb_Magazine
’s English translation of Ghassan Kanafani’s “On Zionist Literature” is now on sale in Palestine itself at the Educational Bookshop in Jerusalem.
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"The alliance of convenience and mutual need, binding British Imperialism and Zionist Colonialism, was complete."
Fayez Sayegh on the historical context and significance of the Balfour Declaration, issued on this day in 1917.
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All extracts above are from pages 193-194 of this report:
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“Antidotes to… coerced amnesia are sorely needed, and for a genealogy of 9/11… few books are as important as Peter Dale Scott’s much-neglected The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America”
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“Israel, in its maiming, is attempting to destroy the morale of the Palestinian people and render them too debilitated to fight back.”
Lynsay Hodges on the genocide & mass debilitation Israel is inflicting on Gaza using Jasbir Puar’s “The Right to Maim”
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Some Palestine-related reviews for
#readpalestineweek
:
1) Fayez Sayegh’s “Zionist Colonialism in Palestine”. A vital and prescient analysis of Zionism that was published by the Palestine Research Center in 1965.
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The inaugural Liberated Texts Collected Reviews volume is out tomorrow, February 21st, and available to pre-order now on the
@Ebb_Magazine
website.
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On Jose Martí: “in his room there was nothing but books, piled on the chairs and on his night-table”.
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"Here's something to read, both for Americans and for serious people"
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Here
@maryturfah
explores the meaning & lasting significance of two different but complementary memoirs written by Soha Bechara & Nawal Baidoun, both of whom were held simultaneously at the infamous Khiam Prison during Israel's occupation of South Lebanon.
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The three defining characteristics of the Zionist settler-state as defined by Fayez Sayegh in 1965 were: (1) its racial complexion & conduct; (2) its addiction to violence; & (3) its expansionist stance.
How prescient and accurate Sayegh's analysis was.
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Fascism
A book event organised by the Palestine Festival of Literature and Amnesty International in London was ordered to be shut down by the Metropolitan Police.
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A pertinent extract from Rosemary Sayigh’s study “The Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries”:
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“This is the underlying message of the novella. It is through armed struggle that the colonized find power and therefore hope in a world beyond the colonial walls.”
Christian Noakes on Ghassan Kanafani’s 1966 “All That’s Left To You”.
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“All war utilizes deception but American imperialism positions it at the epicenter. Duplicity is America’s very essence, if for no other reason that it denies its imperialism.”
Tim Beal and Gregory Elich consider the enduring importance and contemporary relevance of I.F. Stone’s iconoclastic 1952 work “The Hidden History of the Korean War”.
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"Martí transcended the individual categories of poet, writer or revolutionary and he was instead elevated to an altogether different status."
@ImReadinHere
explores José Martí's grand pedagogical vision as contained in the 1979 compilation 'On Education'
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In 2005, acclaimed Black American novelist Gloria Naylor, published “1996”, a part-fictionalised memoir. It was ignored or belittled by the same media & literary world that had showered her with honours before. In this review, Brandon Wilner explores why:
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“From Indian-occupied Kashmir to the US-Mexico borderlands, Israel sells its settler border model of walls, drones and surveillance technology, which kills migrants in arid borderland deserts and maims occupied populations.”
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The CIA's "study on French theory points to the structural role universities, publishing houses and the media play in the formation and consolidation of a collective political ethos."
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Here Owen Schalk reviews Theodore MacDonald's 1985 study of education in revolutionary Cuba, a pedagogical model, that although - like virtually all aspects of Cuban society - suffers from the impact of the US blockade, remains inspirational & effective.
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The first book to be published in the series will be an English language translation of Ghassan Kanafani’s 1967 study “On Zionist Literature”. It will be released summer 2022 to mark 50 years since Kanafani’s killing by Israel in 1972.
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“One of the most astonishing books that Walter Rodney – the Guyanese revolutionary and historian – ever wrote was published several years after he was assassinated on 13 June 1980.”
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For a more detailed look at the plight of the Palestinians during the Nakba and afterwards, Rosemary Sayigh’s ‘Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries’, reviewed here, is a superb text to read.
"[A]n intimate study of a national community without any pretense of objectivity..."
@stevesalaita
reflects on the continued importance of Rosemary Sayigh's classic work from 1979 "Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries".
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Noosim Naimasiah on the contemporary relevance of Makhan Singh's History of Kenya’s Trade Union Movement to 1952 – “an important historical source for inspiration and organization for workers against capitalism and imperialism."
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“Because of the geopolitical forces invested in the Zionist entity’s existence, Palestinian nationalism is necessarily a revolutionary project.”
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To understand Israel’s latest onslaught of violence & why it’s an unavoidable & permanent feature of the ‘violence-addicted’ Zionist state there are few better works to read than Fayez Sayegh’s concise & prescient 1965 “Zionist Colonialism in Palestine”
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Extract above is from Dan Hind’s ‘The Threat to Reason’.
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Published in collaboration with
@Ebb_Magazine
, any proceeds from the book will be used to contribute towards the running costs of the website and funding other publishing projects like our forthcoming English translation of Ghassan Kanafani’s “On Zionist Literature”.
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“There is considerable value in revisiting Kwame Nkrumah’s Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism to understand the neocolonial components of algorithmic capitalism (informational or cybernetic capitalism).”
More than half a century after Kwame Nkrumah first articulated his magisterial critique of neocolonialism, Scott Timcke argues his critique remains just as relevant in the analysis of present-day developments of capitalism in Africa.
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"The British, he writes, “didn’t want us to read the words like ‘imperialists’ or ‘imperialism’, ‘aggression’ or ‘invasion’”. “Sometimes whole pages were ripped from the textbooks”."
On Malaysia Day,
@FadiahNadwa
writes about the 2003 autobiography of Chin Peng, former head of the Communist Party of Malaya, who led anti-colonial resistance against both Japan & Britain before spending decades in exile in Thailand, where he died in 2013.
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“We must hold onto the kind of outrage that Alleg’s first French readers felt. We cannot become numb in the face of torture, no matter how difficult or inconvenient it is to confront.”
@MatthewJSeidel
on the enduring power of Henri Alleg’s ‘La Question’.
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They continue to know and fear the power of books.
I take it as an honor that *The Many-Headed Hydra*, by Peter Linebaugh and myself, is one of 10,000 books banned in Texas prisons, off limits to 150,000 prisoners. Keeping good company with Alice Walker, Huey P. Newton, Mumia Abu-Jamal, James Baldwin.
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“a revolution against the arrogance and individualism that so characterises capitalist ideology.”
@ImReadinHere
on the pedagogical work of the Soviet educator, Anton Makarenko, and its influence on revolutionary educational movements in Latin America.
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“From the age of 17, Guevara kept bibliographical notebooks, listing and commenting on the books he read and adding indexes to these notes…”
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“The Books in Fred Hampton’s Apartment” an extract from the book of the same name by Richard Stern.
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“a model of committed scholarship written by a passionate and selfless young mind under conditions hardly conducive to such an endeavor”
@blanienattar
on a vital book written by the Marxist Jew Abram Leon, shortly before his murder in Auschwitz aged 26.
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“An American who reads one of these books which purportedly is authored by a Chinese defector would not know that his thoughts and opinions about China are possibly being shaped by an agency of the United States Government”.
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