Stand with Chelsea Manning

Whistleblower Chelsea Manning, currently serving a 35-year prison term for passing classified files to WikiLeaks, said on Friday that she would refuse to eat until given help for her gender dysphoria and "treated with dignity, respect and humanity" by the government.
The 28-year-old Army private, who was born male but revealed after being convicted of espionage that she identifies as a woman, tried to commit suicide in July over what her representatives said was the government's denial of appropriate treatment for those gender issues.
The Army announced later that month that it would investigate Manning for misconduct in connection with the attempt to take her own life, a probe that could lead to indefinite solitary confinement, reclassification into maximum security or additional prison time.
Some prison experts believe that Manning's recent  suicide attempt could result in a long stretch in solitary confinement, a punishment viewed as torture in international human rights conventions. Manning has already spent nine months in solitary as a form of dishonorable, illegal, shameful retaliation by the US military. She spent two months in a cage in a tent in Kuwait, and seven months at Quantico, where she was forced to sit still, on her bed, staring directly ahead of her, for hours on end .She is currently serving a grossly unfair 35 year prison sentence for simply exposing lies and injustices,a brave courageous individual who now needs our support more than ever.In January 2010, Manning sent hundreds of thousands of documents to Wikileaks about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, revealing a dramatically higher number of civilian casualties than the Pentagon publicly acknowledged. The documents also included a video of an Apache helicopter attack  that killed a dozen people, including two Reuters news staff.
After years of requesting the care she needs Chelsea has released a statement about the start of her hunger strike,saying she would not willingly consume any food or drink, except water and prescribed medications.Manning also refused to “voluntarily cut or shorten her hair in any way.” Army officials repeatedly force Manning to cut her hair to “military standards” – an appearance that she says does not reflect her gender identity.
Human rights advocates have repeatedly raised concerns about Manning’s treatment in prison. After her arrest in 2010, she was subjected to solitary confinement for extended periods and repeatedly stripped naked in her cell. Her treatment was so bad that a State Department spokesperson spoke out against the Pentagon and described it as “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.”Since her conviction, Manning has been repeatedly threatened  with indefinite solitary confinement, for charges as frivolous as keeping an expired tube of toothpaste in her cell.
She is demanding written assurances from the Army that she will receive all of the medically prescribed recommendations for her gender dysphoria and that the “high tech bullying” will stop. “High tech bullying,” is what Chelsea describes as “the constant, deliberate and overzealous administrative scrutiny by prison and military officials.”
Manning's condition is dangerous and cruel, and presents a significant suicide risk for Manning.

Here is Chelsea Manning's impassioned statement which she released on Friday :

“I need help. I am not getting any. I have asked for help time and time again for six years and through five separate confinement locations. My request has only been ignored, delayed, mocked, given trinkets and lip service by the prison, the military, and this administration.”
“I need help. I needed help earlier this year. I was driven to suicide by the lack of care for my gender dysphoria that I have been desperate for. I didn’t get any. I still haven’t gotten any.”
“I needed help. Yet, instead I am now being punished for surviving my attempt. When I was a child, my father would beat me repeatedly for simply not being masculine enough. I was told to stop crying—to “suck it up.” But, I couldn’t stop crying. The pain just got worse and worse. Until finally, I just couldn’t take the pain anymore.”
“I needed help, but no one came then. No one is coming now.”
“Today, I have decided that I am no longer going to be bullied by this prison—or by anyone within the U.S. government. I have asked for nothing but the dignity and respect—that I once actually believed would be provided for—afforded to any living human being.”
“I do not believe that this should be dependent on any arbitrary factors—whether you are cisgender or transgender; service member or civilian, citizen or non-citizen. In response to virtually every request, I have been granted limited, if any, dignity and respect—just more pain and anguish.”
“I am no longer asking. Now, I am demanding. As of 12:01 am Central Daylight Time on September 9, 2016, and until I am given minimum standards of dignity, respect, and humanity, I shall—refuse to voluntarily cut or shorten my hair in any way; consume any food or drink voluntarily, except for water and currently prescribed medications; and comply with all rules, regulations, laws, and orders that are not related to the two things I have mentioned.”
“This is a peaceful act. I intend to keep it as peaceful and non-violent, on my end, as possible. Any physical harm that should come to me at the hands of military or civilian staff will be unnecessary and vindictive. I will not physically resist or in any way harm another person. I have also submitted a “do not resuscitate” letter that is effective immediately. This shall include any attempts to forcibly cut or shorten my hair or to forcibly feed me by any medical or pseudo-medical means.”
“Until I am shown dignity and respect as a human again, I shall endure this pain before me. I am prepared for this mentally and emotionally. I expect that this ordeal will last for a long time. Quite possibly until my permanent incapacitation or death. I am ready for this.”
“I need help. Please, give me help.”

 
Fight for the Future has launched a petition supporting Chelsea in her hunger strike.Which you can sign here, please stand with her :-

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/stand-with-chelsea-manning-on-hunger-strike


An earlier post of mine about Chelsea can be found here:-

https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/lets-not-forget-chelsea-manning.html

Israel indicts Palestinian Ghandi, Issa Amro

The Israeli army has laid a lengthy list of charges against Issa Amro, the longtime Palestinian activist and organizer in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.Issa  is a prominent human rights defender and founding member of many non-violent organisations in Hebron who work peacefully against Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Amongst these organisations include the the Hebron branch of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), https://palsolidarity.org/  and Youth Against Settlements, which Issa, aged 36 is a founder a group that organizes non violent demonstrations and direct actions against the violent settler encampments that are protected by heavily armed soldiers who frequently harass Palestinian residents in the city.
Every year, Youth Against Settlements organizes a week of activities calling to open Shuhada Street.
Once the city’s main commercial strip, Shuhada Street was closed off to Palestinians in 1994.Issa  inspired by the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi and that of  Martin Luther King, founded Youth Against Settlements in 2007, advocating civil disobedience and non-violent and pro-active measures to document and protest against the Israeli occupation in Hebron and the West Bank. He  also organizes nonviolent demonstrations to resist settlement expansion and the confiscation of land.
On  26 February 2016 a non-violent protest took place in Hebron, calling to re-open Hebron's Shuhada street, lift the closed military zone in Hebron and put an end to the illegal occupation of Palestine. Although the protest was totally peaceful and no stones were thrown, it was met from the outset with excessive violence from the side of the Israeli army, which  fired rounds of tear gas, stun grenades, and runner coated steel bullets against the demonstrators. Two participants, the lawyer Farid Al Atrash and journalist Mohammad Jardat got arrested. The lawyer Farid Al-Altrash was holding a sign reading ' Free Palestine' when he was arrested and beaten before being taken to the Jaabara police station in the Kiryat Arba settlement.

 Israeli soldiers and Border police attack journalists during Hebron protest 
.

From the outset of the protest it was clear that the Israeli armies main target was Issa Amro. For the first time since he started his human rights activities the Israeli civil administration had given the direct order to arrest him. At first rubber bullets were shot against him, then a sniper aimed at him, he quickly left the protest in fear of being shot.
 On Monday 29 February 2016, three days after the protest, Issa passed through checkpoint 56 to meet an Israeli group from Breaking the silence, a link to their website is  here :-
http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/
However the group  was also facing problems. Although they had a special permit to access Issa's house, the army refused to let them in, so the meeting needed to be held outside. While Issa was responding to questions from the group, soldiers came to arrest him.
Arrriving at the police station the investigator accused him of Facebook incitement and organising an illegal protest. The investigator accused him of being the main organizer of the Friday 26 protest and that he had disturbed soldiers on duty and escaped when they tried to arrest him. Je denied all the accusations, but the investigator continued to show him social media pictures from 2012, 2013, and 2014, all of which showed nonviolent events, such as the Olive harvest, the Open Shudada Strret campaign, and a recent art event. One police officer even told him, that they did not legally hold anything against him, but that there were orders from above to arrest him.
The subsequent trial against him  and of Farid Al- Atrassh is clearly aimed at punishing them for their human rights activities. Their treatment as well as the accusations against them ,lack any foundation and Israel is clearly misusing its military court system to restrict  the fundamental basic rights of human rights defenders, including the right of freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.
Issa is not a criminal but a human rights defender who uses principles of non-violence that can only be commended. He and  all other  human rights defenders in the Occupied Palestinian Territories I believe should be able to carry out their legitimate human rights activities, including through the exercise of their right to free assembly, without fear of reprisals and free of all restrictions.  
 Amro is one of dozens of leaders across the West Bank and East Jerusalem who are using nonviolent tactics, civil disobedience, and direct action to challenge Israel's occupation. The work of these activists has gone nearly unrecognized, with most of the international media attention focusing on rockets launched from Gaza , but for years he and others have been working to instill the principles of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience in the hearts of Hebron's Palestinian youth, even if no one is watching.
His military trial will begin on September 25th

Read more here, the original source of much of  information contained above :-

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/israel-indicts-palestinian-gandhi

45th anniversary of Attica prison rebellion.

On September 9th, 1971 the Attica Correctional Facility in the State of New York exploded in rebellion. Less than two weeks after the killing of imprisoned black revolutionary George Jackson inmates attempted to free a fellow inmate from his cell after reports that he was being tortured. When guards realized that prisoners had successfully come to the aid of their fellow inmate they attempted to collectively punish the prisoners. Instead of being punished the prisoners revolted. Almost 1,500 inmates in Cell Block D rebelled and seized control over the Attica Correctional Facility several months after  they had formally submitted a 27-point manifesto to the prison administration and the media with a list of demands for prison reforms and an end to racism and brutality against prisoners.
At the time of the uprising, there were 2,300 inmates living in a facility built for 1,600. Though over 60 percent of inmates were Black and Latino the prison was completely run by white guards and employees, many of whom were openly racist..Prisoners were only allowed one shower per week and one roll of toilet paper each month. Their mail was heavily censored to cut out anything involving prisons and prisoners’ rights. The medical neglect within the facility was criminal. Guards often pitted inmates against each other to incite racial violence.Inmates also labored for 40 cents a day, assembling mattresses, shoes and license plates.
The level of unity that developed among prisoners was nearly unprecedented. There were four days of negotiations, until then-Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered state police to take back control of the prison by brutal force. When the uprising was over, at least 39 people were dead, hundreds were left maimed and wounded and the prisoners left were subjected to extreme brutality and torture. Those who were considered leaders, the prisoner negotiators, spokesmen and security men, were singled out for prolonged abuse. The example of the Attica prisoners uniting and standing up for their rights and dignity in the face of such intense repression inspired and electrified  people around the world.
The Attica prison uprising was by no means an isolated or spontaneous clash. It came as a revolutionary mood swept through Black and Latino communities and other progressive sectors of the population in the United States.By September 1971, the Civil Rights movement had transformed itself into a movement for national liberation among the Black, Puerto Rican and Chicano populations.Starting in 1964, rebellions swept urban areas throughout the United States. Major insurrections took place in Rochester, Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and other cities. When Martin Luther King, Jr., was murdered in 1968 more than 120 cities went up in flames as young people battled police, National Guard units and state troopers.Revolutionary organizations like the Black Panther Party and Young Lords Party were militantly organizing in urban communities. Millions of people were protesting the Vietnam War and joining the women’s and LGBT liberation movements.
This revolutionary mood in the community sank deep roots within the prisoner population too. The Attica prisoners were reading revolutionary newspapers. They were studying Marx and Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Kwame Nkrumah, and Franz Fanon and reading socialist, communist and revolutionary nationalist newspapers.Prisoners were staging uprisings all over the country, not just in Attica, New York. The rebellions were extensions of the national liberation struggles happening all over the United States.

 
Attica Blues - Archie Shepp
 

Today September 9th  on the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison rebellion, prisoners across the United States will begin a strike that will be a general work stoppage against prison slavery. In short, prisoners will refuse to work; they will refuse to keep the prisons running by their own labors. Prisoners are striking not just for better conditions or changes in parole rules, but against prison slavery. Prisoners state that under the 13th Amendment which abolished racial slavery, at the same time it allowed human beings to be worked for free or next to nothing as long as they were prisoners. Prisoners see the current system of prison slavery to thus be a continuation of racial slavery, which is a system that generates billions of dollars in profits each year for major corporations in key industries such as fossil fuels, fast food, banking, and the US military.
Due to all of these factors, at the present time round 1 in 100 American adults is locked behind bars, and many more are on probation, parole, house arrest, or in immigrant detention facilities. While African-Americans, Native, Latino, and poor whites make up the bulk of the prison population, black, brown, and red convicts make up much a higher percentage of inmates than their white counter-parts. For instance, there are currently more African-American people locked within the prison industrial complex than were held in racialized slavery prior to the American civil war in the 1860s. It is in this climate in the footsteps of their predecessors at Attica that today's prison rebels have organized themselves to carry out the strike.
45 years after Attica the cruel mass incarceration system in the USA that is still inherently merciless and immoral and  must continue to be exposed.A radical vision for change behind bars is still urgently needed, and it was powerfully captured in the Manifesto of Demands read out by LD Barkley, one of the leaders of the Attica rebellion who was killed along with 38 others when the prison was violently re-taken:

We are men! We are not beasts and do not intend to be beaten or driven as such. The entire prison populace has set forth to change forever the ruthless brutalization and disregard for the lives of the prisoners here and throughout the United States.
What has happened here is but the sound before the fury of those who are oppressed...We call upon all the conscientious citizens of America to assist us in putting an end to this situation that threatens not only our lives, but each and every citizen as well.

Raving

( a sponanteous memory release)

Too many beats per minute,

too much mdma,

too many straight white lines,

as we huddled together in some far away space,

in corners of oblivion,

getting high as the sky,

watching time burn,

as the profiteers counted their cash,

straight sunshine came to catch us ,

before we all came down,

some of us kept on spiralling,

kept on flying, free falling in escape.

carrying traces of ecstasy unbound.

Survival

 Life is short moves so fast
In moments of slumber leaps,
Everything bought together
Thoughts flying free,
Sailing the seas of time
Carrying a mighty love,
Lamps of resistance
Following free birds on earth,
Releasing defiant cries
Light found in the dark.
Laying with all the hope

We have managed to save,

Allowing impalpable imaginings

To work their magic and become real,

As our journeys continue unbroken
We leave behind traces of struggle,
Evidence of battles fought and won
Stories of endurance, pain and survival,
Moving forward unbowed, unbeaten
Keeping hopeful, steadfast and strong,

Beyond  rage and tears falling from within

Escape the torrents of life, filled to the brim, 

Let your spirits guide you forwards

Let them unlock your locks and chains,

Follow Autumn’s  shapes and hues

Don't  give in to forces of despair.  

Tax Avoidance

An act, made to escape paying taxes is known as Tax evasion. Such practices can be deliberate concealment of income, manipulation in accounts , disclosure of unreal expenses for deductions, showing personal expenditure as business expenses, overstatement of tax credit or exemptions suppression of profit and capital gains etc.This will result in the disclosure of income which is not the actual income earned by the entity. It is surely one of the biggest problems of our age.

In a  piece of research published by HMRC, people who used tax avoidance schemes were asked about why they took them up. With very few exceptions, avoiders were aware that the tax avoidance scheme introduced to them was “unusual” and “at the edge of tax law” — they followed the letter of the law if not the spirit.

It highlighted the reassuring language used by those marketing the schemes that was “designed to make the tax avoidance schemes appear appealing and acceptable”. For example, tax avoidance schemes were described as: being smart with your taxes; a technical exploitation of the law; a form of tax relief; well within the [tax] guidelines; and an opportunity to exploit tax efficiencies.
Anonymous shell corporations and secret bank accounts are vital resources for those engaged in tax evasion and money laundering. But this web of secrecy has started to crumble in recent years due in part to revelations from whistle-blowers embedded in this complex web of tax havens and fake corporations. The Panama Papers, revealed that a single law firm, Mossack Fonseca, facilitated the creation of more than 200,000 offshore entities.The Tories and the right-wing press love to point the finger at those at the bottom of society like people on benefits, the disabled and immigrants. But the truth is tax avoidance by large corporations and the super rich is a far bigger drain on society, with some estimates saying that it costs the UK over £120 billion a year.

Companies that make use of our infrastructure and services while avoiding tax are freeloaders and parasites! Simple as!

John Cage ( 5/9/1912 – 12/8/1992) - Anarchist Poem

 

Avant-garde composer John Cage was born today in Los Angeles,1912. Cage moved in the 1940'S TO New York, where he quickly became known as not just a composer but as a radical aesthetician who profoundly influenced people in several domains. 

Though his achievements as a composer and a theater artist remain well known, he was also a brilliant and original writer, especially at the intersection of poetry and politics. He died in 1992, but his influence continues to echo.

Whenever John Cage performed, he insisted that the auditorium have accessible exits: A spectator who didn't want to stay, he said, should be able to leave easily. Cage—most famous for his 1952 composition 4'33", in which musicians sit in perfect silence for four minutes and 33 seconds—was a gut anarchist.

John Cage - 4'33 performed by David Tudor

 His  music relied on mathematical patterns, randomness, improvisation and chance to create unique sounds and rhythms. He could be said to be one of the developers of modern dance. Cage's pieces are controversial because they are vastly different from mainstream music. All of his compositions were difficult to reproduce and perform, which was an embodiment of his anarchist views. He believed that difficulty would ensure that "a performance would show that the impossible is not impossible" -this being Cage's answer to the notion that solving the world's political and social problems is impossible. Cage considered himself to be an anarchist, and was inspired by the work of Henry David Thoreau.whose texts he used in various ways, most brilliantly in his Song Books, where the performers repeat, " The best government / Is no government at all." In an interview in 1985 John Cage said, "I'm an anarchist. I don't know whether the adjective is pure and simple, or philosophical, or what, but I don't like government! And I don't like institutions! And I don't have any confidence in even good institutions."

Asked about the word ecology, the composer replied that whenever he heard that seductiv word he knew he'd soon hear the word planning and " When I hear that word, I run in the other direction." He also boasted that he never voted.
Some have said his philosophy was more important than his music. He became a Zen Buddhist which impacted enormously on his music. According to Cage music was " purposeful play" however " this play is an affirmation of life - not an attempt to bring order out of chaos , nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we are living, which is so excellent a once one gets one's mind and desires out of the way and lets it act upon its own accord"
Such an approach that set him so apart from other composers. For him it was the Eastern virtues of " Simplicity , disorder and chance." that he built his ideas and music upon..Cage's unequivocal questioning of the status quo  remain an inspiration for todays artists who are struggling to forge a career. Ever the anarchist, Cage stated :! I think my activity in the arts is analoqous to political activity. It gives an instance on how to change things radically. " I will end with this poem from his visionary hand.

Anarchist Poem

We don't need government
We need utilities. 

Air, water, energy
Travel and communication means
Food and shelter. 

We have no need for imaginary mountain ranges
Between separate nations. 

We can make tunnels through the real ones. 

Nor do we have any need for the continuing division of people
Into those who have what they need
And those who don't. 

Both Fuller and Marshal McLuhan
Knew, furthermore
That work is now obsolete. 

We have invented machines to do it for us.
Now that we have no need to do anything
What shall we do?

Looking at Fuller's geodesic world map
We see that the Earth is a single island, Oahu.
We must give all the people all they need to live
In any way they wish. 

Our present laws protect the rich from the poor.
If there are to be laws, we need ones that
Begin with the acceptance of poverty as a way of life.
We must make the world safe for poverty Without dependence on government." 

Noam Chomsky - The Essentials

For the past 50 years Noam Chomsky’s writings on politics and language have established him as a preeminent public intellectual and as one of the most original and wide-ranging political and social critics of our time. Among the seminal figures in linguistic theory over the past century, as a dedicated opponent of war and injustice for more than half a century Chomsky has also secured a place as perhaps the leading dissident voice in the United States. His dozens of books and writings for innumerable journals have made him one of the best-known radical voices in the U.S. and around the world, responsible for contributing to the commitment and shaping the thinking of countless people.Here is a compilation of 50 years of ideas and analyses condensed into 2 hours 43 minutes.  Riveting and essential. His words still carry the immense power that criticism and analysis at its best can exemplify: the power of people to understand the world in order to better understand how to change it.

LOWKEY FT. MAI KHALIL - CHILDREN OF DIASPORA (OFFICIAL VIDEO)

Official video for - Lowkey ft. Mai Khalil - Ahmed
Produced by Agent of Change - http://bit.ly/subscribe2GlobalFaction

https://www.facebook.com/carlosmartinez1
https://twitter.com/agent_of_change
Scratches by DJ Face
Mixed by Lavar at Fifth Elementz Studios
Specific photo's used courtesy of Ahmed Twaij.

Every  single person on earth has their own story, as rich as any book or film, you've seen or read.
Lowkey's voice, a necessary powerful one. .'

Saunders Lewis ( 15/10/93 - 1/9/85) - A tainted legacy

Welsh poet, dramatist, historian, dramatist literary critic, and political activist.Saunders Lewis is considered one of Wales' leading literary and political icons, and is considered by some a nationalist hero.was born John Saunders Lewis, into a Welsh-speaking family in Wallasey, Cheshire on the 15th October 1893, and grew up among the Welsh community in Merseyside. 

He was a prominent Welsh nationalist and a founder of the Welsh National Party (later known as Plaid Cymru). Lewis is usually acknowledged to have been among the most prominent figures of twentieth-century Welsh-language literature. Lewis was a 1970 Nobel nominee for literature, and in 2005 was voted 10th as Wales' 'greatest-ever person' in a BBC Wales poll.. 

Lewis studied English and French at Liverpool University until the breakout of World War One, after which he served in the South Wales Borderers. After the end of the war Lewis returned to university and graduated in English.In 1922 Lewis joined the University of Wales, Swansea as a lecturer in Welsh. Lewis' nationalism was heightened by his wartime experiences, and fighting with Irish soldiers in particular seemed to shape his ideas on the importance of Welsh identity.In 1925 he joined other nationalists at a 1925 National Eisteddfod meeting with an aim to establishing a national party for Wales. Plaid [Genedlaethol] Cymru was established, of which Lewis was President from 1926 to 1939.
In 1936 in protest to a bombing school being established at Penyberth on the Llŷn Peninsula, Lewis along with along with Rev. Lewis Edward Valentine, pastor of the Llandudno Welsh Baptist Church and David John Williams, senior schoolmaster at Fishguard County School had in protest set fire to a structure on a RAF base at Pwllheli, Caernarfonshire, Wales. They felt the recently built RAF base "was an immoral violation of the sure and natural rights of the Welsh people", Lewis saying that “the UK government was intent upon turning one of the ‘essential homes of Welsh culture, idiom, and literature’ into a place for promoting a barbaric method of warfare”. After setting the blaze, the trio informed the police what they had done and turned themselves in and claimed responsibility for the act of arson.Lewis was dismissed from his post at Swansea University following the crime. The Penyberth Three were jailed for nine months at Wormwood Scrubs for the act, an event which had major repercussions in the run-up to the Second World War and provoked a backlash against Wales and the Welsh in England. However after being released from prison the men were given a hero's welcome by 15,000 people in Caernarfon.They had won the hearts of the Welsh people when they opposed the building of a bombing school in Wales .Sympathy for this case will depend upon feelings for the nationalist cause. However, what is striking is that the government’s lack of willingness to engage and compromise with the protestors led to a few people taking an extreme form of action. It may not have worked as far as the Llyn Peninsula was concerned but it probably helped galvanise nationalist feeling in Wales for many years to come.
After being released from prison in autumn 1937, Lewis moved to Llanfarian on the outskirts of Aberystwyth, and spent the following fifteen years earning an uncertain living between teaching, farming and journalism. In 1939 he resigned from the presidency of the National Party. 1941 saw the publication of the slim volume of poetry, Byd a Betws, in which the opening poem, ‘Y Dilyw 1939’ (‘The Deluge 1939’), refers to unemployed miners of the industrial south as ‘y demos dimai’ (‘the halfpenny demos’) and to Wall Street financiers ‘[a]'u ffroenau Hebreig yn ystadegau'r chwarter’ (‘with their Hebrew nostrils in the quarter's statistics’). It was repeatedly quoted from then on by left-wing critics attacking his snobbery and his anti-semitism. His column ‘Cwrs y Byd’ (‘The Course of the World’) in Y Faner was more substantial. Between 1939 and 1951 he contributed more than 560 weekly articles on life in Wales, Europe and the world as it faced the inevitability of war, the conflict itself, and the new world which emerged from the subsequent peace. These columns show Lewis at his best and his worst. Prophesying doom and convinced that no good would come of victory for either side, he said that Wales should remain above the fray. His column was withheld more than once and often cut by the censor's blue pencil.
His  half-halo came to be cancelled out by one diabolical horn. Lewis’s support for the dictatorships inaugurated first by Portugal’s Salazar and then Spain’s Franco became a subject of concern to Plaid members and voters. Possibly influenced by his embrace of Catholicism – in whose pre Vatican 2 reading of the Christ story and certainly influenced by Maurice Barres, the market-leader in what has been called ‘the first wave of French Fascism’ and a high priest of French anti-semitism (of whom Lewis once wrote, acknowledging his debt, that ‘it was through him that I discovered Wales’), Lewis was certainly a political and literary anti-semite.

His position during the Second World War was also controversial as he felt that Wales should take a completely neutral position and supported the campaign for the Welsh to become conscientious objectors. He argued with the left of the Welsh nationalist movement and was seen by some as having an elitist approach. Perhaps his most controversial statement, though, was when he appeared to show admiration for Adolf Hitler – as late as 1936, the year of the arson attack, when he wrote: “At once he fulfilled his promise — a promise which was greatly mocked by the London papers months before that — to completely abolish the financial strength of the Jews in the economic life of Germany.” Though he is considered one of the leading Welsh political figures of the Twentieth Century, Lewis reputation should now be forever held into question like his comtempraries T.S Eliot and Ezra Pound whose work is still marred by the same stain that lingers over Saunder Lewis.It would be a dereliction if I whitewashed this thorny issue from Lewis's story.
Saunders Lewis was a complex, tortured individual, a poet and dramatist, described by  historian Gwyn A Williams as “deeply conservative, a monarchist, a believer in leadership by a responsible elite”. Under him, Plaid called for “a nation of ‘small capitalists’, cooperation, the deindustrialisation of South Wales and the restoration of agriculture as the basic industry”. Lewis also called for the annihilation of English as a national language: “It must be deleted from the land called Wales”. He served as president of Plaid for 13 years and became its public face.
During the Second World War the party moved rightwards, and its toleration of anti-Semitism and refusal to oppose Hitler, Mussolini or Franco alienated many who believed they had joined a liberal, even left wing, nationalist party. By the end of the Second World War Lewis was disillusioned by the ‘communal socialist’ and pacifist tendency of Plaid Cymru (as it was called by then), by its lack of emphasis on the language, and later by what he regarded as the half-hearted stance of its liberal pacifist president, Gwynfor Evans, on plans by Liverpool Corporation to drown the village of Cwm Celyn in order to create the Tryweryn reservoir. https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/cofiwch-dryweryn-remember-tryweryn.html Over the next 15 years the party moved from being a right wing nationalist movement to being a party in favour of trade unions and social reform. Nationalist sentiment was heightened in the late 1950s and 1960s with the case of the Tryweryn Valley, where, despite nationwide Welsh protests, the village of Capel Celyn was flooded to build a reservoir for Liverpool. Plaid’s share of the vote went up from 0.7 percent in 1951 to 3.1 percent in 1955 and 5.2 percent in 1959.
Lewis will probably be best today remembered for his literary legacy. His first play, "Blodeuwedd" ("The woman of flowers") opened in 1923. His play "Buchedd Garmon" ("The life of Germanus") was broadcast on the BBC in 1937. Later plays like "Siwan" (1956), "Brad" ("Treachery") (1958) and "Esther "(1960) would establish his reputation as a poet and a philosopher. Lewis wrote two novels, "Monica" in 1930 and "Merch Gwern Hywel" ("The daughter of Gwern Hywel") in 1964. These works along with many others garnished him a nomination for the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature.
He returned to lecturing in 1952 at Cardiff and remained there until his retirement five years later.
In 1962 Lewis gave a lecture on BBC radio entitled Tynged Yr Iaith (The Fate of the Language). In this speech Lewis predicted the extinction of the Welsh language and declared that the language would die unless revolutionary methods were used to defend it. It was a clear defiant rallying cry.A result of the lecture led to the foundation of the Welsh Language Society/ Cymdeithas Y Iaith – a protest organisation which subsequently forced the adoption of equal legal validity for the Welsh-language in official communications and road signs –  and forced a Government U-turn leading to the establishment of S4C – the Welsh Fourth Channel and saw a revival in the use of spoken Welsh. Here is a link to full transcript of this historical lecture;-
https://morris.cymru/testun/saunders-lewis-fate-of-the-language.html
It would have an impact, and the language movement went through an important shift, ceasing to be just a conservative concern and beginning to draw in many students and young people. The action focused on campaigning for the use of Welsh in official documents, in the media and on road signs. Many members of Cymdeithas were involved in a high-visibility campaign of direct action in 1969, in which English road signs were vandalised and painted out. This period saw numerous hunger strikes, prison sentences and occupations of TV studios. The campaign against the Investiture of the Prince of Wales at Caernarfon, also in 1969, saw a separate bombing campaign, in which two young men died after bombs went off prematurely.This speech also ironically made the old man into an idol for a new generation bred on the ideals of the civil rights movements in the southern United States and South Africa. The arch-conservative had become a symbol of revolution.
Saunders Lewis died on September 1st 1985 at the age of 91.Yes he stood up for the Welsh language but despite efforts to sanitise his story by members of the Welsh establishment, it would be wrong to airbrush the ugly whiff of fascism that stays attached to him today.We should not forget either the fact, he was attacked in Wales during the Thirties in article after article in the Welsh language by those people who drew attention to his support for the Fascist cause in Europe. This is a man who polluted the public life of Wales for  generations because of his unpalpable points of view, and because of this his work will always remain contentious.Lewis remains a controversial figure, and the extent to which he harboured anti-Semitic attitudes and a sympathy for European fascists remains a subject of intense debate. Plaid Cymru doesn’t like to mention or discuss, let alone condemn its own murky past. Indeed, former party President, Lord Dafydd Wigley, who will have known Lewis personally, called for the ‘character assassination’ of him to end during a 2015 interview, as though Lewis’s abhorrent views were some kind of minor character flaw.https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/dafydd-wigley-calls-character-assassination-10468439 and  by the time of his death in 1985 he  remained one of  the most celebrated of Welsh writers.