‘WWII victory doesn’t bring Russia, Ukraine together as Kiev turned war criminals into heroes’

Published time: May 08, 2015 11:46 Ukraine as a new nation has to create a useable past, Arch Getty, Professor of Russian and Soviet history at UCLA told RT’s In the Now show. War criminals like Bandera, who killed a lot of civilians, are being praised by Kiev government now, he added.
RT: Mikhail Gorbachev said that snubbing the Victory parade is disrespect for the people who suffered enormous losses fighting Nazism. It's clearly not completely perceived this way in th, e United States. Why is that?

For Americans it was something that they read about in the newspapers or something they heard about on the radio. For the Soviet people it was in their neighborhood, it was in their face- their houses were burnt, their houses were bombed, their neighbors were slaughtered, their family was killed. It had immediacy in their lives. But I don’t think Americans can really understand very well, because for us, in the US, it was something that happened somewhere else, but not for the Soviet people.
RT: If Obama came to Moscow, would this be perceived as weakness amid the current global geopolitical climate in the world?
AG: I don’t think it would be by anybody who fought in the war, or anyone who remembered the war, because it was a joint allied effort. I don’t think it would be perceived as a weakness by anybody who knew anything about the war. In fact, you could even see it the opposite. Having had his sanctions fail to resort to this kind of blockade it seems patty; it seems juvenile, especially given the depth of the loss that the Soviet people felt. You can almost argue that he looks even weaker by not going.

RT: What's the attitude towards this victory in the West now? Is it some kind of inconvenient fact when a lot of what we’re seeing now is to paint Russia as an aggressor, to sort of commemorate what should be a joint victory?
AG: I think it is an inconvenient fact. But for a lot of Americans it is even not a fact at all because they were taught in their schools frequently, that we, Americans, won the war. The Soviet effort has always been minimized here, and that’s happened even more lately. By the time we came ashore on D-Day in June, 1944, the tide had turned on the Eastern Front against the Germans for a year and a half. The Soviets faced 10 times as many German divisions, as we did in the West. That is not a fact for a lot of Americans because they are still living in ignorance of who did what, who turned the tide and what the scale of the thing was. And the more governments on all sides try to rewrite history for their own current purposes the worse that gets.
RT: Shouldn't this victory be bringing Ukraine and Russia together?
AG: It certainly should, but it is not, and it won’t because Ukraine as a new nation, a new state more than anybody else has to create a useable past, a useable history. And they have done so in the most glaring kinds of ways that the Ukrainian Prime Minister, [Arseny] Yatsenyuk has said that WWII was about the Soviet Union invading Germany. War criminals in Ukraine, Bandera, people who killed Jews and many others are being touted as national heroes there for current political needs of the Ukrainian leadership. I’m afraid these celebrations are not going to do that simply because of the attitudes that are being taken.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
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Obama touts TPP trade deal amid Nike support

President Barack Obama has pitched a controversial trade agreement it was negotiated between the United States and 11 others at the headquarters of Nike. The footwear giant says it expects to add 10,000 domestic jobs if the deal is approved.

The president was at the shoe company’s corporate headquarters on Friday to speak in support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, a 12-nation agreement in the works that would establish new rules for tariffs with regards to trade involving the US and a host of Pacific Rim partners.

“If I didn’t think that this was the right thing to do for working families then I wouldn’t be fighting for it,”

Obama from a stage outside Nike’s main office in Beaverton, Oregon.

Earlier in the day, Nike CEO Mark Parker said approval of the TPP would “accelerate investment in advanced footwear manufacturing”

in the US.

“Footwear tariff relief would allow Nike to accelerate development of new advanced manufacturing methods and a domestic supply chain to support US-based manufacturing,"

the company said in a statement, through which it could expect the creation of up to 10,000 manufacturing and engineering jobs, as well as perhaps 40,000 gigs as an indirect result during the next decade.

“Free trade opens doors, it removes barriers, it creates jobs, it lets us invest more in the things that matter,”

Parker said. “That's innovation, that's creativity, that's people.”

But the opinions of the sneaker king and US president aren’t exactly universal. Police in riot gear was deployed outside of the Nike campus on Friday morning, local media reported, in order to monitor demonstrations who had gathered to protest the TPP.

Elizabeth Swager, the director of the Oregon Fair Trade Campaign, told The Oregonian that she considered the TPP “a trade deal that would benefit multinational corporations, but it's at the expense of working Americans everywhere.”

Another attendee at the protest, bus driver John Hively, took aim at the Obama administration’s fast-tracking of the bill and complained "We only know a few things [about TPP] because most of it is top-secret.”

Indeed, negotiations between potential TPP partners–Australia Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the US and Vietnam–have been done entirely behind clothes door so far, with much of the few details having been disclosed by WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group. A final draft of the deal would be signed by the president and then be open for comment for a 60 day period before Congress could either approve or reject the agreement.

President Obama touted the TPP at Nike later in the day during an address in which he insisted approval would be good for the American economy and the rights of workers abroad, and disputed concerns of accountability made by the trade deal’s critics.

“Small businesses are the backbone of our economy

,” Obama said, and “business leaders came here today because they understand that these markets outside the US will help them grow and will help them hire more folks, just as all the suppliers to Nike or Boeing or GE.”

Currently, around one-third of Nike’s international manufacturing is carried out in Vietnam, and poor labor conditions there have time and time again propelled the shoe company into the sights of those who say the corporation is exploiting so-called sweatshop workers. According to the president, approval of the TPP would preserve America’s own economic interests at home while strengthening workers’ rights abroad. Under the deal, he would, countries would have to adopt new working conditions and standards, and Vietnam would even enact a minimum wage and give workers the freedom to form unions.

“That would make a difference. That helps to level the playing field and it would be good for the workers in Vietnam even as it helps make sure that they’re not undercutting competition here in the United States,”

the president said.

Later, responding to fear over the proposal’s “fast-tracking,” Obama said “There’s no fast track about this. This is a very deliberate track which will be fully subject to scrutiny.”

Friday’s event was preceded by the release of the latest jobs report in which the US Labor Department reported that the American economy added around 223,000 jobs last month.

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‘Very important to remember it was shared victory’ – top Russian diplomat ahead of WW2 anniversary

Attempts to falsify and rewrite the history of World War II are a dangerous path, a top Russian diplomat has warned, stressing that it is important to remember that the victory belongs to all the allies who fought Nazism.
As the world is celebrating the 70th anniversary of the end of the bloodiest conflict in human history this year, radical elements in some countries are trying to bring the ideologies that were fought against back to life, Russian Foreign Ministry’s representative for Human Rights and the Rule of Law, Konstantin Dolgov, told RT in an interview on Wednesday.
“Unfortunately the Neo-Nazis feel more than comfortable in Ukraine and this fact is extremely dangerous as it destabilizes the situation in the country,”
Dolgov said.

The diplomat stressed that these processes had been ongoing for a long time, adding that “extremism, terrorism and neo-Nazism as an extreme form of extremism have no national borders. And it is easy for them to trespass from one county to another. So the threat is common.”
Dolgov noted that certain forces in the West are currently attempting to diminish Russia’s role in defeating Nazi Germany in WWII, falsifying facts and heroizing the Nazis and their accomplices.
“The reasons behind this trend are simply political. It is a systematic, regular and a very dangerous path that many have chosen - to falsify the history of WWII, to diminish the conclusive role of the Soviet Union. It is very important to remember that it was a shared victory, we were all on the same side back then,”
said the official adding that it must not be forgotten that the USSR paid the highest price in the war, both in human lives and material costs.
Dolgov’s statements echo the words of President Vladimir Putin, who has repeatedly denounced attempts to ‘rewrite’ WWII history and noted that the forces behind such attempts seek to use historical speculation in geopolitical games and set entire countries and peoples against each other.

In January, Putin said in a public speech that the people attempting to rewrite history and hide the crimes of Nazism are often attempting to deflect attention from their nations’ collaboration with Hitler.
“Direct attempts to silence history, to distort and rewrite history are inadmissible and immoral. Behind these attempts often lies the desire to hide one’s own disgrace, the disgrace of cowardice, hypocrisy and treachery, the intent to justify the direct or indirect collaboration with Nazism,”
the Russian president stated at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow at an event dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
Ahead of the 70th anniversary of the end of the World War II, Russia’s Foreign Ministry has published a report: “Neo-Nazism – a dangerous threat to human rights, democracy and the rule of law.”

Dolgov stressed that one of the aims of the report is to raise awareness of the rise of neo-Nazi ideology and call for other countries to find ways to battle the trend.
“This report is just a milestone in the overall work that is being done, and not only by Russia but by other bodies including human rights groups and other public organizations. We hope that the report will be an additional factor in changing people’s perception of what’s going on,”
he concluded.


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Meme's the word: US lawmakers want to 'blow ISIS out of the water' with...the internet

While the US is fighting ISIS intensively on the ground, some lawmakers also want Washington to take the battle online. One even proposed using internet memes, noting that the terrorist group has successfully used them to further its mission.
During a 'Jihad 2.0' hearing on social media and terrorism, the Senate Homeland Securities and Government Affairs Committee discovered that the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) has managed to attract the interest of 62 people in the US through social media.
The interested online parties either tried to join IS (some successfully) or supported others in doing so. Of the 62 people, 53 were very active on social media, downloading jihadist propaganda. Some of them directly communicated with IS.
But Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) had just the answer to the problem – and it didn't involve deadly weapons or military troops.
READ MORE: US begins training anti-ISIS fighters in Jordan - report
“Let’s face it: We invented the Internet. We invented the social network sites. We’ve got Hollywood. We’ve got the capabilities…to blow these guys out of the water from the standpoint of communications,”
he said.
He was supported by Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who had an unconventional trick up his sleeve: internet memes.
“Look at their fancy memes compared to what we’re not doing,”
Booker said while clutching print-outs of ISIS memes.
He said the Islamic State is busying making “slick, fancy and attractive”
videos, while the US is spending “millions and millions on old school forms of media.”
READ MORE: ISIS threatens to 'slaughter' controversial blogger Geller, warns of more attacks to come
A prolific user of Twitter, Booker said he knows “something about memes.”
He became a viral sensation himself after rescuing his neighbor from a burning building in 2012.
The heroic move inspired his own Twitter hashtag, with social media users sharing their own (false) superhero encounters with Booker. One user tweeted that when he needed a kidney, Booker “instantly ripped out his own, handed it to me & flew away.”
The hearing, titled 'Jihad 2.0: Social Media in the Next Evolution of Terrorist Recruitment,' is part of an ongoing attempt by Congress to identify ways to thwart efforts by overseas terrorists to lure foreign fighters or incite jihadists to commit attacks inside the US.

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Closer than they seem: Check key WW2 Eastern Front battles in 3D

What the majority of us today has seen of World War II horrors are faded monochrome pictures, echoes from a distance past. RT cuts across the 75 years that separate the bloodiest war in the world from these days with 3D battle reenactments.
Some of the deadliest and fiercest battles of the Great Patriotic War – the Eastern Front of WW2 as it is known in Russia – also decided the fate of the whole global conflict between the Axis and the Allies. Check if you know them all.
They were doomed from the outset but never surrendered: The 10,000 defenders of the Brest Fortress were encircled and cut off in the very beginning of Hitler’s June 1941 Blietzkrieg – but held out under heavy shelling for more than a week. The tragic fate and courageous resistance of the Soviet fortress in Belarus became legendary.
READ MORE: ‘Dying, but won’t surrender’: Brest Fortress resists the Blitzkrieg
Fought between October 1941 and early 1942, the Battle of Moscow became the first time when the seemingly unstoppable Nazi war machine was defeated on the battlefield. It cost the Soviet defenders just under 2 million lives, while the German army lost half a million men, injured or killed.
READ MORE: Moscow’s last stand: How Soviet troops defeated Nazis for first time in WW2
The largest and one of the bloodiest confrontations in the history of mankind, the six-month Battle of Stalingrad of 1942-43 turned the tide of World War 2 – and a whole city into rubble. It is said that the average life expectancy of a soldier in the horrific meat grinder was at one point only 24 hours.
Multinational Soviet troops lost more than 1.1 million soldiers in casualties, while Nazi German troops and their European collaborators lost some 1.5 million. Despite the bitter price, Hitler ruled out that the encircled German army could surrender, and it was only due to a German field marshal disobeying the order that the remains of Wehrmacht forces were captured alive.
READ MORE: Halting Hitler's push: Bloodiest WWII battle in RT's 3D reconstruction
The Battle of Kursk is known as the biggest tank clash in history: over 8,000 armored vehicles, 5,000 planes and 3 million soldiers fought from both sides near the city some 500 kilometers southwest of Moscow.
While Stalingrad spelt the first major triumph of the anti-Nazi forces in the war, sending waves of hope across the world, it was in the 49 battles starting from Kursk that the Soviet army gained a platform to start a counter-offensive against Hitler.
READ MORE: Turning the tide of WWII: Biggest-ever tank battle in RT's 3D graphics
The Battle for Berlin — the final major WWII offensive that involved 3.5 million troops and lasted two weeks. From his bunker, Adolf Hitler was sending out orders to fight, even as more than 1 million Soviet and Allied troops surrounded the German capital. Only after Hitler’s suicide, his generals capitulated. The German Instrument of Surrender took effect on May 8 at 23:01 CET. As this came after midnight Moscow time, May 9 was proclaimed Victory Day in the USSR.

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Cradle of alien life? Ocean on Saturn moon resembles habitable lakes on Earth

Enceladus, shown in this recent image captured by the Cassini spacecraft, one of Saturn's moons (Reuters / NASA)

The newly-discovered subsurface ocean on Saturn’s icy moon of Enceladus is similar in makeup to some of the life-bearing salt lakes on Earth, a new US study suggested.

Astrobiologists believe this small moon is the best place to search for alien life in the Solar System.

The 505-kilometer-wide satellite is geologically active, with powerful geysers blasting through its ice shell. 

Those geysers contain water which researchers suggest comes from an ocean located beneath the moon’s icy surface.

A new paper entitled ‘The pH of Enceladus,’ published on Wednesday in the journal ?Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, looks into the chemical reactions that occur as Enceladus' ocean water comes into contact with its rocky mantle.

The authors based their research on data gathered by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn since 2004.

They used mass-spectrometry measurements of the gases and ice grains in Enceladus’ plume to develop a model that estimates the saltiness and pH of the water in the moon’s inner ocean.

According to the US team’s findings, the ocean on Enceladus is likely salty and has a basic pH of 11 or 12, neutral pH being 7.

The same pH levels are found in ammonia-based glass-cleaning solutions, but some organisms on Earth are still capable of living in such conditions.

The high concentration of sodium chloride (NaCl) makes Enceladus’ ocean resemble terrestrial ‘soda lakes,’ such as ?Mono Lake in California.

READ MORE: NASA promises 'definitive evidence' of alien life by 2025

It’s good news for the those hunting alien life as a the fauna of Mono Lake includes brine shrimp and many different microbes.

The team’s model suggests that the ocean’s high pH is explained by serpentization, a process where metallic rocks from Enceladus' upper surface are transformed into minerals due to contact with water.

Serpentization also leads to the production of molecular hydrogen (H2), which is a potential source of chemical energy for any life form in the ocean’s water, the paper said. ?

"Molecular hydrogen can both drive the formation of organic compounds like amino acids that may lead to the origin of life, and serve as food for microbial life such as methane-producing organisms,"

the study’s lead-author Christopher Glein, from the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, said in a statement.

Glein described serpentinization as a link between geological processes and biological processes on the moon.

"The discovery of serpentinization makes Enceladus an even more promising candidate for a separate genesis of life,"

he stressed.

The hidden ocean was discovered on Enceladus earlier this year by Italian scientists from Sapienza University in Rome, who also analyzed Cassini data.

They said that active hydrothermal vents are likely to exist on Enceladus’ seafloor, providing conditions similar to those that gave rise to some of the first life forms on Earth.

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