By James Strong

Rarely does disappointment ignite in us the desire to be born of another race. But when it does, it can lead to the worse kinds of tragedy, from sleep apnea to an almost insatiable hunger to commit suicide. Yet, President Barack Obama’s persistent intent on supporting the current neo-Nazi regime in the Ukraine has forced some Blacks to moan “I wish I were white.”
White not because they hate being Black, but because they think they’re safer being white. In at least one sense, they may be right.
Without wearing the slippers of Martin Luther King’s cautions and the bracelet of Malcolm X’s omens, Obama has sprinted toward support for the current government of the Ukraine instead of jogging at a contemplative, thoughtfully considered pace. He has ignored all the lessons and warnings taught by that venerable scholar of time, history, and chosen to strengthen the arm of Nazism, neo-Nazism and racism – along with their skull-crushing brand of white supremacy.
And because of a personal vendetta against Russian President Vladimir Putin, he has slipped into a coma of wrong decisions, sidestepping the valid fears of Russian-speaking and non-Russian-speaking Ukrainians concerning neo-Nazi reprisals and terrorism.
Has he forgotten the promises of the Third Reich, which guaranteed Germans Aryan superiority over all of Europe? Has he ceased to remember how Hitler’s goose-stepping forces ransacked the European continent with bayonets of hatred, devastation and murder?
And how can he consign to a skid row of benign neglect those right-wing military governments, the puppies of Nazi ideology, which left brains and blood splattered alongside dusty roads and on the cold stone streets of Spain, Portugal, Chile, Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador and Brazil from the 1950s to the 1990s?
So when Obama speaks about the need to help the current neo-Nazi regime in the Ukraine, the tongue seeks truth, the ears yearn for sense and the eyes crave for facts. We don’t see a need to help, but we do sense the need to fight.
In fact, as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry continues to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to resolve the crisis in the Ukraine, the options don’t seem promising.
Asking the Russians to return Crimea to the Ukraine is not feasible, since 97 percent of Crimeans voted in a March referendum to be re-annexed by Russia.
Waiting until after the new Ukrainian presidential elections on May 25 to decide the fate of the Ukraine doesn’t make sense either, as Crimea is no longer a part of the Ukraine and many Russian-speaking and non-Russian-speaking Ukrainians in East Ukraine are threatening to boycott the elections, depriving the country of millions of anti-fascist votes and guaranteeing a neo-Nazi victory.
Neither does implementing the Russian suggestion of converting the Ukraine to a federation have solid gears to ensure a safe landing for that type of government. The neo-Nazis would rule western Ukraine and the anti-fascists would rule eastern Ukraine, each with their own political and economic models.
Furthermore, to neo-Nazis, the notion of human kindness is nothing more than a breezy silhouette. And like all tyrannical political groups, neo-Nazis gain a greater satisfaction from the terror and torture of the people than the people gain from the hanging and burial of neo-Nazis.
Hence, as orange juice, and not vodka, is the recommended nutrient for the common cold, so war, and not negotiation, is the proper remedy for neo-Nazism. This solution is urgent, because like the good sons and daughters of Nazism, the neo-Nazi Svoboda party and the Right Sector have already begun attacking and beating and terrorizing non-fascist Ukrainians.
On March 19, for example, Svoboda member of parliament Igor Miroshnynchenko and party ideologist Andriy Ilyenko stormed into the office of the acting CEO of the National Television Company of Ukraine, Aleksandr Panteleymonov. Accompanied by a mafia of bullies, goons and enforcers, they assaulted Panteleymonov and forced him to resign. And perhaps I shouldn’t mention that about a week earlier, neo-Nazis wearing masks charged into a city council meeting armed with bats and hammers, threatening and terrorizing those in attendance.
Because Obama and Kerry support Nazi, neo-Nazi and racist terror in the Ukraine – because England, France, Germany and the rest of the European Union are sending money to help Ukrainian fascists – what is the only fair and just way to fight the fascist and racist forces in the Ukraine?
As we noted previously, it can’t be to urge the Russians to return Crimea to the Ukraine, because that’s not feasible. It can’t be to delay a decision until after the Ukrainian presidential elections, because that’s not practical. It can’t be to convert the Ukraine to a federation, because that’s not viable. And it can’t be to feed the neo-Nazi lust to kill and maim, because that’s not plausible.
War, civil war, is the only emblem we should stitch to the sleeve of reasonable actions. And that war should aim not just to liberate East Ukraine, but to drive the fascist forces out of the Ukraine altogether and push them into the mountains and mud and huts of Poland, Lithuania and Moldova.
Ukrainian anarchists and freedom fighters should seek Russian arms and training, collaborate with Russian army units and special forces, request Russian economic aid and materiel. Moreover, they should be as ruthless toward the neo-Nazis, as the Nazis were toward Europeans during World War II.
Some non-fascist Ukrainians, however, do not like allying with the Russians, and so they are caught between a rock and a hard place. They wonder whether they should help the neo-Nazis and hope for the best. If they are torn between helping neo-Nazis and helping Russians, the dilemma is not difficult to solve. They will help the Russians less, if they hurt the neo-Nazis more.
Civil war, then, is the only civil cure for neo-Nazism in the Ukraine. It is that avenging broom which sweeps away the trash of neo-Nazis terrorism. And given that the Black president of the United States supports the white supremacist government of the Ukraine, we should all agree to “Shoot the Nazis and hug the Russians.”

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Copyright © 2014 by James Strong. All rights reserved. Reproduction or translation of this column, or any part of this column, without permission of the copyright owner is unlawful.

Despite months of promising a pay raise for educators, it turns out all the governor’s talk was just that: more election year rhetoric.
After four years of constant assaults on our public schools, this budget and the governor’s empty promises for a pay raise are just one more attack on education from the Republican Supermajority in Montgomery.
Gov. Bentley made a commitment to educators. Not only did he promise a raise in his State of the State address, he and his staff continued to publicly make that promise throughout the legislative session.
In a March 5th article from the Birmingham News titled “Gov. Robert Bentley won’t sign education budget without 2 percent raise, health insurance funding increase,” the governor’s spokeswoman, Rebekah Mason, told the press that the governor would send the budget back to the legislature if it did not include a raise and health insurance increase.
After the session ended, the governor took over a week to decide if he would sign the budget. Now he has not only backed out of his promise to educators, but he is trying to rewrite history and claim he never made the promise to begin with.
By playing games about vetoing the budget and calling a special session of the legislature, the governor is abusing the power of his office for political gain.
The governor has led educators on for months about a pay raise, and this week he continued to do the same thing by saying he might call a special session in the summer or fall to pass a pay raise.
There is no reason to delay calling a special session other than to allow
Republican legislators time to campaign in their primaries and then come back this summer to try and win back educators’ votes before the general election.
The governor is trying to protect anti-education Republican legislators in the primary elections. Because there are so many pro-education Republicans running this year, the governor did not want to force sitting representatives and senators to vote against a pay raise right before an election.
 The truth is that if the governor and Republican legislators won’t stand up for educators in an election year, then there is no reason to believe that they will stand up for educators during the next four years if re-elected. And that is why, in his speech explaining why he went back on his word, the governor only recognized three Republican senators for the one time in four years that they stood up for education instead of recognizing all the legislators—Republican and Democrat—who have supported educators over the past four years.
 Our children spend a third of their day at school. That time is spent with educators who are responsible for guiding them and preparing them for college and their career. Other than parents and preachers, no one has a greater impact on our children’s upbringing. If we want to recruit and keep the best and brightest educators then we have to offer competitive pay and benefits. But over the past four years, we have cut school budgets and taken resources and thousands of educators out of the classroom.
The legislature cut 2.5 percent out of their pay checks and then gave 2 percent back, leaving educators making less today than they did four years ago. But worst of all, the Republican Supermajority has cut educators out of the conversation about school reform. We are passing radical laws, like the Accountability Act, that take millions of dollars out of our schools and not a single educator—not even the state’s Superintendent of Education—was included in the conversation.
We cannot expect our schools to be successful and our educators to keep up morale if we constantly shut them out, cut their pay and deceive them with broken promises of pay raises. It is time for the governor and Republican legislators to be honest with educators and taxpayers, and stop playing political games with peoples’ income.
Rep. Craig Ford is a Democrat from Gadsden and the Minority Leader in the Alabama House of Representatives.

by Steve Flowers

When Alabama was being settled in the early 1800s our first settlers were diverse in their origins. Our river regions were the most desirable lands. Indeed this is where the Indians lived. They realized the importance of water and the abundant fishing for their sustenance besides the natural advantage offered by these waters. The river basins also offered the most fertile soil for cultivation.
Among these river basins is a swath of land across the middle of the state that extends from Georgia to Mississippi. This area is known as the Black Belt. This region of our state is called the Black Belt because of the rich, black, luminous soil found there. This rich black soil is perfect for growing cotton. The people who settled the Black Belt were looking for new cotton lands. They had burned up their soil in the east coast of Virginia by planting the cash crop cotton continuously year after year. The soil they found in the Black Belt was much better than their worn out soil in the tidelands. Therefore, the people who settled in the Black Belt were primarily planters from Virginia and Georgia.
These settlers were well educated and many had been leaders in their governments in those states. They were well-heeled slave owners and became the cotton growing plantation owners of the Black Belt. They also usurped and wielded inordinate power in state political affairs for the next century, despite the fact that they were a distinct minority population wise.
In contrast, the people who settled North Alabama were small farmers who migrated to the Tennessee Valley of North Alabama from North Carolina or simply moved down from the hill country of Tennessee. The land they settled on was not conducive to growing cotton. It was hilly and less fertile. These folks were not interested in being cotton farmers anyway. They were yeomen hill farmers who were happy to have 40 acres and a mule. They were fiercely independent and very religious. They did not need slaves like their neighbors to the south. Therefore, when the winds of division between the North and South began to blow in the 1850s an obvious political difference between North and South Alabama arose.
With the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, along with the Emancipation Proclamation abolishing slavery, the crucible decision of secession arose. Contrary to what most present day Alabamians think, it was not an easy unified decision that we should leave the Union. The obvious political cleavage between North and South Alabama was stark and measured. The folks in North Alabama did not own slaves and they figured they did not have a dog in that fight.
A secession convention was held on January 7, 1861 in Montgomery. The vote was extremely close. There were 100 delegates. The vote was 54 to secede and 46 against secession. The vote fell along regional lines. The Black Belters from South Alabama were for creating a confederacy of southern states to protect their slave ownership and way of life. The hill farmers from North Alabama preferred to wait and see what their cousins from Tennessee were going to do because they had more in common with them. These North Alabamians voted against secession from the Union at this time.
It was shortly after the secession convention that the majority of the good citizens of the northwest Alabama county of Winston met at Looney’s Tavern to determine their course of action regarding the advent of the war between the North and the South. These yeomen farmers of the hills were obviously reluctant to leave the Union for the cause of the planter and his slaves. In 1800 there were only 14 slave owners in Winston County.
The legend of Winston County is that on July 4, 1861 at their meeting at Looney’s Tavern the good people of Winston County decided to secede from Alabama and remain in the Union. Thus, they basically ignored the Civil War the best they could. In their minds they never left the Union and remained free and independent from Alabama and the War Between the States. That is why they are known in Alabama political history and folklore as the “Free State of Winston.”

See you next week.

Steve Flowers is Alabama’s leading political columnist. His column appears weekly in 72 Alabama newspapers. Steve served 16 years in the state legislature. He may be reached at www.steveflowers.us.