Artificial Intelligence and the World Wars: breathing new life into old photos

The last few years have seen the rise of software applications that use Artificial Intelligence for image and video processing. The world has been introduced to the results of incredibly powerful machine learning tools such as deepfake videos and advanced speech synthesis.

The use of AI to increase the resolution and fidelity of digital images is known as upscaling. Simply put, Al image upscaling involves creating new pixels of image information to add detail where there wasn’t any before, filling in the gaps to recreate a higher-resolution image, all the while using machine learning to improve the result. ‘Machine learning’ refers to the process of feeding the AI software millions of images, so that it can artificially increase resolution on a wide variety of different subjects (portraits, wildlife, landscapes, architecture, etc) and image types (DSLR, web/compressed, CGI).

Artificial Intelligence deep learning image upscaling

At the Rant Foundry we decided that many of the photographs used in our articles would be perfect candidates for a test of some of the new AI professional upscaling applications available to designers and photographers today. Many photos taken during both of the world wars suffer from low resolutions and lack of sharpness. Having some of these successfully upscaled would offer a better view of the subjects, environments and conditions experienced during those years.

As it’s roughly the 80th anniversary, let’s begin with a photograph taken during the Siege of Tobruk: the original image downloaded from the Australian War Memorial website is 640×490 pixels at 72 dpi and an 8-bit colour depth resulting in a 237kb JPEG image. After processing with Topaz Labs’ Gigapixel AI, we get an output image that is now 1280×980 pixels at 96 dpi with a 24-bit depth. As you can see, it results in a dramatic improvement of the source image.

Incidentally, the photo by Frank Hurley shows soldiers of the 2/13th Battalion on patrol along the anti-tank ditch at the El Adem Road to the south of Tobruk. A close watch was kept over this ditch night and day to counter enemy attempts to pierce the town’s defences around April, 1941.

Original source image (left) and AI-upscaled result image (right)

Comparison showing overall size and resolution increase (200%) (AWM 007505)

Next, we’ll look at a photograph from the Great War, taken at Passchendaele during the Third Battle of Ypres. Notice the increased fidelity of the mud and wood textures.

AWM E00926

And here, another confronting image showing dead and wounded Australians and Germans in the railway cutting in the Ypres sector, in Belgium, during the battle of Passchendaele, on October 12, 1917 (photographer officially listed as unknown but is most likely Frank Hurley).

AWM E03864

As you can see, many fine details and textures have been added.  In addition to increasing resolution, the algorithm used for this image also automatically removes JPEG compression artifacts, applies noise reduction, and sharpens the output in a natural way. Different kinds of texture have different characteristics. In the image above, notice the added detail and resolution on the mud, grass, and clothing.

Below is a photo taken during WWII by George Silk during actions at Gona in Papua New Guinea on 8th December 1842. While Japanese snipers hide in trees in the background, an Australian mortar crew fires shells towards the enemy. AI processing has gained fine detail in the mortar muzzle, the kunai grass and in the hair and skin of the soldier at right.

AWM 013754/22

There is great potential for AI-upscaled images in historical research. Many photos pertinent to important historical events suffer from poor digitisation and manipulation and are prime candidates for careful resizing with machine learning tools, which could then be used to provide a clearer view. As these applications create print and screen ready images, they could be used everywhere from the classroom to the lecture hall, from website to museum.

At the Rant Foundry we intend to make use of these incredible tools and look forward to including hi-resolution, upscaled photos where they are useful to telling these stories.

Treaty of Versailles: Australia Counts the Cost of WW1

More than a century has now passed since the signing of the infamous Treaty of Versailles, at the former Palace of Louis XIV outside Paris, France on 28 June 1919 – formally concluding hostilities between Germany and the allied powers and marking the end of the First World War. It was here that the full cost of the war would become clear to the nations that had just fought it.

Australia’s edition of the Treaty of Versailles 1919, including the Covenant of the League of Nations (image via Museum of Australian Democracy)

Australia had initially declared war at 12:45 p.m. on 5 August 1914, as then-Prime Minister Joseph Cook announced to a press gathering in his office that “I have received the following despatch from the Imperial government: ‘war has broken out in Germany'”. However, even before Britain had declared war the previous day, plans were already underway to send an expeditionary force of at least 20,000 men to France.

That Australia was still very much a dominion of the British Empire, coupled with the fact that she had only become a Federation in 1901 and that most Australians were of recent British heritage, created a situation in which the declaration of war was met with enthusiasm and was generally well supported.

Australians would go on to serve in the Occupation of German New Guinea, Gallipoli, Egypt and Palestine, the Western Front, Mesopotamia and the Caucasus.

From a population of fewer than five million, 416,809 men enlisted, of whom more than 60,000 were killed and 156,000 wounded, gassed, or taken prisoner. Along with New Zealand – whose soldiers joined forces with Australians as ANZACs – Australians suffered the highest per-capita rates of casualties of all the British Empire dominions.

With such a relatively small population compared to the other Allied nations, Australia was a bit-part player in the power battles at the Versailles conference. Her representatives at the Paris Peace Conference were Prime Minister Billy Hughes, the Deputy Prime Minister Sir Joseph Cook, and Lieutenant Commander J.G. Latham, Royal Australian Naval Reserve.

Yet the brash determination of Prime Minister W.M. “Billy” Hughes ensured that he made a mark on some of the debates and at the Paris peace conference of 1919. This was the first diplomatic conference on this scale (there were 32 governments represented) at which Australia had independent status. Previously, the Dominions of the British Empire had been represented internationally by London or had attended diplomatic meetings as part of a delegation of the Empire.

However, the “blood sacrifice” of the war just ended had changed the balance of imperial relationships; and after some difficult negotiations with the United States and France, Australia (like Canada, South Africa, New Zealand and India) was granted the right to attend the Paris conference.

The Australian delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919. Hughes sits front row centre. [AWM A02615]

The question of inter-allied war debts and German reparations was a deeply divisive one, and at Paris it was finally agreed that the Germans should pay for more than actual physical damage to France and Belgium, as was originally suggested by the Americans. But Hughes’s battle to get Germany to pay the full costs of Australia’s war, and for pensions and other veterans’ benefits, was lost. The compromise that was finally hammered out was so unpalatable to Hughes that it was only in the interests of the unity of the British Empire that he finally signed the peace treaty.

The story of German reparations in the 1920s is a long and complex one. Suffice to say that by 1931, when reparations payments finally ended, Australia had received only £5.571 million against a total claim of £464 million – £364 million being for actual war expenditure, and £100 million for the capitalised value of pensions, repatriation and loss to civilian property. Moreover, what Australia had received was largely made up of ships seized in Australian ports and the value of expropriated property in New Guinea.

So Hughes returned to Australia deeply disappointed with the Treaty of Versailles. As he saw it, it was “not a good peace” for Australia but it was a good one for the United States. He said bitterly, “She who did not come into the war to make anything has made thousands of millions out of it. She gets the best ships. She has a good chance of beating us for world mercantile supremacy. She prevented us getting the cost of the war.”

In some ways Hughes’ disappointment was understandable. The quantifiable “spoils of war” for Australia were few and scarcely commensurate with the scale of the losses that Australia had suffered. No one would claim that a mandate to control German New Guinea was worth more than 60,000 dead. But Hughes’s expectations of the peace settlement were unrealistic. The rise of the United States, and the relative decline of the British Empire that Hughes so lamented, could not be reversed. The growth of American industrial might, which would make it a superpower in the twentieth century, was already in train before 1914. It was simply accelerated by the war.

For all his realist attitude to world politics, Hughes struggled to understand that this was not a matter of “injustice”. Long general wars tend to exhaust those who fight them, and they often leave the international balance of power fundamentally transformed. The First World War left Britain and its empire exhausted and in debt, while also shattering three of the dynastic monarchies that had dominated Europe for centuries. The world order which the Great Powers of Europe had gone to war to preserve was over by 1919, and the Treaty of Versailles, with all its flaws, was never going to restore it.

Sands Of Time: The Geology of D-Day

The Rant Foundry Presents: A Special D-Day 75th Anniversary Edition
By JF Dowsett

The June 6, 1944 Allied invasion of France – known as D-Day – was a turning point in the European theater of the Second World War. Upon landing on a 50-mile stretch of Normandy coastline, 150,000 American, Canadian and British soldiers faced the Atlantic Wall, a complex defensive system of fortifications, bunkers, minefields and trenches. Between 1942 and 1944, Nazi Germany had reinforced her European coastal flanks, stationing thousands of troops along the way.

Tschechenigel (Czech hedgehog) at Pas de Calais (image via bunkervliegtuigarcheo.com)

Now 75 years in the past, nearly 10,000 men died that day.

In 1988, American scientists Earle F. McBride and M. Dane Picard visited the infamous Omaha Beach section of the Normandy coast and sampled the sands for microscopic analysis. As they were to write later, “there is more to the legacy than just the memorials: The sand at Omaha Beach retains remnants of the devastation.” When they returned to the lab at the University of Texas at Austin, they were to uncover the legacy that fateful day was to have on the natural environment: a study of the sands “revealed bits of shrapnel, and iron and glass beads that have been reworked by the English Channel’s waters over time, a microscopic record of the battle.”

Magnetic grains discovered in the Normandy beach sediments are the fragments of metallic shells and ammunition, in addition to glass spherules created from melted sand particles caused by the heat from explosions on the shore. Geologists believe that the particulate evidence of the battle will remain locked in the French sands for another 1,000 years.

Omaha Beach sand seen through a binocular microscope. Pastel grains are carbonate rock fragments, carbonate skeletal grains, and iron-oxide-coated quartz grains. Rust coated shrapnel grains are visible in the center of the photo. (image: McBride & Picard)

During the Second World War, the German SS (Schutzstaffel) had a special military geology unit known as the Wehrgeologen which was tasked in 1943 with supervising the construction of the coastal defences or Hindernisbau along the Normandy coast. The obstacles consisted of anti-vehicle as well as anti-personnel devices, featuring an array of concrete, steel, wire, timber and explosives.

Once the United States had been drawn into the conflict, the Allied forces also began using specialized civilian and then later military geologists. In the preparation for the June invasion, British and American geologists studied nearly one million aerial photographs of the Normandy shores, scouring the images for the ideal landing site. British divers had risked their lives in January 1944 collecting soil samples from potential sites, allowing Allied scientists and cartographers to make classified maps of the coast and beaches, displaying the various sediments, currents and other important environmental detail. These maps enabled military planners to select beaches with geological features best suited to a landing, and allowing them to consider such details as the fineness or coarseness of the sand grain, an important factor in maneuverability.

The geologists found what they had been looking for on the beaches between Le Havre and Cherbourg. The Permian-Triassic metamorphic rocks found inland at Normandy turn into the medium-grained sands the invasion planners needed to literally support the landing. The seabound cliffs erode and the rivers and currents deposit their quartz and feldspar on these beaches, delineating a 50-mile stretch of coast. This was divided into five sectors. Three Canadian divisions would land at the Gold, Juno and Sword sectors. Two American divisions would land at the sections of beach named Utah and Omaha.

Australian Foreign Policy failure: Venezuela

Filed in: Geopolitics  Author: Brendan R Hay

In February this year the Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne released a statement on the attempted coup d’état in Venezuela. The statement said, in part:

“Australia recognises and supports the President of the National Assembly, Juan Guaido, in assuming the position of interim President, in accordance with the Venezuelan constitution and until elections are held.” The statement went on to urge “all parties to work constructively toward a peaceful resolution of the situation, including respect for the rule of law.”

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro speaks at a rally in support of the government marking the one-year anniversary of his controversial re-election. (Ivan Alvarado/Reuters)

This statement surely puts to rest the perception that Australia is actually a nation that respects the so-called “rule-of-law.” Whether or not Payne sought the legal advice of her department before making this extraordinarily ignorant statement is unknown. A Freedom of Information request on that point remains unanswered at the time of writing.

Unfortunately, the statement only serves to proclaim the usual Australian obeisance to the United States, responding to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s call that nations decide whose side they are on. There is of course only one acceptable answer for the Americans to such a call. It is eerily reminiscent of George Bush and Tony Blair calling for similar compliance prior to the attack on Iraq.

If Ms Payne or her advisers had actually looked at the Venezuelan constitution she purports to uphold – as does the would-be president-elect Juan Guaido – she would have seen that section 233 provides a mechanism for replacing the President. The scenarios under which a President is excluded from continuing in office are spelled out. None of them are applicable in the present circumstances. It then goes on to describe the applicable protocol should the President become unable to serve prior to his inauguration. Again this is not relevant because Mr Guaido made his bid for power 13 days after the inauguration.

Even if Mr Guaido had legitimately become acting President (and a self declaration in the middle of the street does not count) then he would have been obliged under the constitution to immediately call an election. He did not do so.

Ms Payne’s statement sought “a transition to democracy” as soon as possible although precisely what she meant by that was not specified, as Venezuela has as much right to call itself a democracy as does the United States. On May 20 of last year, Maduro received the votes of 6.2 million people, about 31 percent of the eligible voters, about the same percentage that U.S. presidents generally receive (Obama received 31 percent in 2008 and 28 percent in 2012, while Trump received 26 percent in 2016). Four different groups of international observers concluded that Maduro’s electoral victory was clean.

Payne could more validly have demanded that the United States “transition to democracy”, as it has a President elected on a minority of the popular vote by a significant margin; has the greatest degree of gerrymandering of any western political system; disenfranchises millions of citizens (especially minority groups); and has a well documented history of ballot box rigging.

There is furthermore well-documented evidence that Senator Bernie Sanders was the victim of corrupt, illegal and unethical practices to deny him the Democratic Party nomination. Ms Payne – along with the entire Australian Government – is conspicuously silent on these manifest flaws in the US electoral system.

To compound the blatant violations of not only the Venezuelan constitution, but also Article 2 of the UN Charter (non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign nations), President Trump has appointed Elliot Abrams as his ‘special envoy’ for Venezuela. Abrams is not only a convicted criminal for previous regime change and other operations on behalf of the United States, he was also involved in an earlier coup attempt against President Hugo Chavez.

Ms Payne could also have acknowledged (although Australian politicians never do) that at least part of Venezuela’s current problems are directly related to the imposition of illegal sanctions the US has applied, as well as waging a persistent campaign of hybrid warfare against Venezuela’s sovereign government. This did not begin with Mr Maduro.

Many other countries, including notably Russia and China, have warned the United States to leave Venezuela alone. They, like many other countries, recognise that the current US bullying and violations of international law have their roots in the Monroe Doctrine, first formulated in 1823. This doctrine has been used to justify America’s blatant interference in Latin America, their “backyard”, a concept wholly foreign to the UN Charter or international law.

The theft of one third of Mexico’s territory following the Mexican-American War of the 1840s, coups in Guatemala, Honduras, Chile and elsewhere since World War 2, and the support of brutal dictatorships throughout the continent hardly qualify one as an upholder of democracy and the rule of law. Australian elected officials like Marise Payne choose to ignore history at their own peril.

The rest of the world also recognises that Venezuela happens to have the world’s largest known reserves of oil, which would make American interference part of a long and dishonourable tradition of destroying countries (Iraq, Libya, Syria) whose oil assets they covet.

Venezuela has also taken recent and significant steps to detach itself from the US petrodollar. Again, together with Russia and China it is forging new relationships for its oil trade independent of the US dollar. Such a trend poses an existential threat to US geopolitical hegemony and is a major factor in the promotion of wars and regime change around the world.

The brand of sovereign independence that Venezuela is displaying is intolerable to Washington. It is however supported by the overwhelming majority of the Venezuelan people where more than 80% according to recent polls oppose foreign intervention in their affairs.

Should the Trump Administration take the military option, which according to the President is “on the table,” it will set in train a catastrophic chain of events that has the overwhelming potential to drag parts of the Latin American region into the fog of war as we have seen happen in the Middle East after two Gulf Wars.

Keeping an Eye on the Sheriff: New US Ambassador to Australia

Filed in: Geopolitics  Author: Brendan R Hay

Back in October 2003, former US President George W Bush caused something of a stir in Australia and East Asia after he described then-Prime Minister John Howard’s government as America’s “sheriff” for the region. Bush was asked whether Washington viewed the capital, Canberra, as the region’s deputy sheriff.

US Amassador to Australia Arthur Culvahouse. Photo: AP

This was a reference to similar comments made by Mr Howard three years ago. At that time, his words generated a huge row across the region. Mr Bush, apparently unaware of the sensitivity of the subject in the region, said: “We don’t see [Australia] as a deputy sheriff; we see it as a sheriff. There is nothing ‘deputy’ about this relationship.”

A government spokesman at the time said that while Australia enjoyed a good long-term relationship with the US, it could not be described as a sheriff.

“Sometimes there are some nuances in the language that get a little bit lost,” Liberal MP Fran Bailey said in 2003. “The American concept of a sheriff is a peacekeeper. We don’t actually use the term sheriff, but we do act as a peacekeeper.”

Fast forward to 2019 and Australia’s role in the East Asian/South Pacific region is increasingly coming under the international spotlight as the Trump Admninistration shoehorns a Reagan-era Republican lawyer into the role of US Ambassador to Australia.

Arthur Culvahouse Jr. wasted no time at his new diplomatic post to begin strong-arming Canberra into adopting Washington’s confrontational policy regarding Beijing.

A Reuters article published by the South China Morning Post in March 2019 points out that:

China is using “payday loan diplomacy” to exert influence in the Pacific, the new US ambassador to Australia said on Wednesday, in comments that threaten to inflame regional tensions.

The United States and its regional allies have been battling China for greater influence in the Pacific – a region that has votes at international forums like the United Nations and controls vast swathes of a resource-rich ocean.

The geopolitical competition has seen both sides increase foreign aid to the region in recent months, which the West says is needed to prevent the Pacific falling into financial distress and becoming susceptible to diplomatic pressure from Beijing.

The arrival of Culvahouse, the first US ambassador to Australia in more than two years, comes at time of bilateral tensions between Canberra and Beijing.

In 2017, then Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull accused China of meddling in domestic affairs. In 2018, Canberra banned companies linked to foreign governments from investing in its nascent 5G network, effectively blocking China’s Huawei.

The timing of the arrival of the new ambassador is a clear move to signal the US interests in Australia’s diplomatic postion in the region. It would appear to be a diplomatic mission with a specific geopolitical intent. The American people for whom Ambassador Culvahouse is supposed to be a representative, should be perplexed over his obsession with China rather than fulfilling his duties of representing the United States in Australia itself.

As the United States has done with many other allies, it has successfully turned Australia into a Washington proxy for its own confrontation with China. Washington risks dragging Australia down an usuccessful diplomatic path with it, when Australia could instead be bilaterally resolving issues with China and building constructive relations throughout Asia-Pacific, all while redefining for itself a more positive role in the region, breaking free from its historical role as an extension of Anglo-American hegemony.

Geography 101: China is Located in Asia, the United States is Not 

Interestingly enough, Reuters failed to notice that China is actually located in Asia-Pacific, while the United States is not.

Just as the US is expected to exert a certain amount of influence in North America where it is actually located, it is not unreasonable to expect China to do likewise in Asia. That US foreign policy seems formed around the notion that the US, not China, should hold primacy in Asia is both counterintuitive and fundamentally flawed.

Such a policy reflects a basic but intentional lapse in geographical awareness widespread across Western media and political circles representing the remnants of European-American imperialism of the 19th-20th centuries. It suggests that Asians lack agency to decide for themselves how “votes at international forums like the United Nations” and “vast swathes of a resource-rich ocean” should be used and that the United States should decide for them instead.

The US currently does this by attempting to surround China with client states and infecting nations across Asia with US government-funded nongovernmental organisations (NGOs). These NGOs impose upon the region US-style institutions that reflect US interests through a process the US itself calls “soft power.”

Examples of this can be seen in Myanmar where US-funded NGOs have managed to bring existing ethnic tensions toward the brink of war, in Thailand where US-backed political forces are attempting to displace the military and constitutional monarchy and roll back recent progress made between Bangkok and Beijing and in Cambodia where the entire opposition is virtually run out of Washington D.C.

The more obvious results of this US “soft power” in action are ongoing “colour revolutions,” but a more subtle attempt to overwrite Asian culture and institutions with US ideas and institutions is also constantly attempting to take root. It is the latest evolutionary step taken by centuries of European and now American imperialism and it is the tool of choice used by the special interests of today benefiting from this imperialism.

Ambassador Culvahouse’s rhetoric and the accompanying talking points touched on by Reuters brings all of this into focus, with the US openly accusing China of usurping American primacy in Asia, and admitting it is investing across the region to regain it.

Who is Ambassador Culvahouse? 

Ambassador Culvahouse had previously served President Ronald Reagan’s administration between 1987 and 1989. He has also been involved in multiple committees within the Republican Party, Australia’s ABC would report.

Ambassador Culvahouse is also listed as a Brookings Institution trustee, which may help explain why in his capacity as US Ambassador to Australia he is openly pursuing policy that serves neither the American nor Australian people but rather the corporate sponsors who control both Brookings’ activities and those of Washington.

He is also a former chairman of O’Melveny & Myers (OMM), a massive international law firm whose clients include equally massive corporations seeking to protect their existing monopolies and to find footing in emerging markets, including in China. Former OMM chairman and now Ambassador Culvahouse stepping into the middle of Australia’s bout with China over 5G and Huawei and OMM’s own role in cases specifically involving Huawei (e.g.), in turn represents equally massive conflicts of interest.

Ambassador Culvahouse is another stark example of “revolving door” politics in which representatives of special interests move in and out of government positions appointed to regulate and hold accountable these very interests.

The entire process that Ambassador Culvahouse represents is the modern manifestation of European-American imperialism, representing the modern equivalence of an elite minority, their greed and the mechanisms instituted to satisfy it, merely dressed up as representative governance serving the majority.

But just like every other empire in history, American hegemony rose on a global scale before beginning to fade. The vector sum of Chinese-Australian economic ties, despite recent setbacks (some might call sabotage), is positive, as noted by the Parliament of Australia itself. As China continues to grow economically, politically and even militarily within the region and upon the global stage, the US will have no choice but to concede its longstanding primacy in Asia-Pacific, a process already well underway.

Without an entirely new, innovative and constructive American foreign policy in the Asia-Pacific region, Ambassador Culvahouse and his rhetoric serve only to delay the continued, inevitable decline of American power and in the process, increase resentment not only from Beijing, but resentment from all the partner-proxies including Australia the US is using in the process.

The Australian government: United States neocon echo chamber

Filed in: Geopolitics  Author: Brendan R Hay

Predictably, Australia’s self-styled iron lady Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has shown her neo-conservative colours by not only siding with the warmongering Washington establishment, but has gone so far as to suggest the US has gone soft on Russia. Just as predictably, the leading Australian media outlets have supported this ‘nuanced’ line. This embarrassingly supine position is taken in front of an international community increasingly fed up with the US belligerence in relations with its ideological enemies. Every time elected officials and establishment commentators refer to issues involving these states we move past any investigation or critical analysis to assume that the prevailing group-think has actually been right.

Australia Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop, left, talks with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo after posing for photos for the 2018 Australia-U.S. Ministerial (AUSMIN) Consultations in Stanford, Calif., Monday, July 23, 2018. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

For example, Bishop has referred to the alleged involvement of Russian military forces in the shootdown of MH17, an event that, given the US intelligence community’s inability to provide concrete evidence that the aircraft was shot down by Russian forces and not by Ukrainian rebels as the evidence would actually suggest. Bishop uses the MH17 tragedy to bolster her anti-Russian position and suggest that the US “not reward Russia for their bad behaviour.”

The Canberra Times, in an uncredited opinion piece, sides with the Canberra-Washington group-think and says that Bishop is right to remind US of Russia’s misdeeds, apparently ignoring the US’ chronic impulse to intervene in just about everything. It’s difficult not to read the article that applauds Bishop putting the U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, “on notice” as “this country will not accept any signs of appeasement towards Russia by the Trump Administration ahead of the historic first meeting between the two.” Aren’t we tough, the antipodean bulldog with plenty of bark but no bite.

Her nuanced position is that Trump is placing too much emphasis on developing some form of rapport with the Russian leader … Bishop cited the downing of MH17, the annexation of Crimea, Russia’s action in the eastern Ukraine, its indifference to Syria’s use of chemical weapons against its own people, the likely Russian involvement in the nerve toxin attacks in England and the growing evidence of state sponsored cyber attacks as key issues.

All of these points are not only questioned but actively challenged by some of the world’s leading and most respected researchers and journalists. Among them are the likes of John Pilger, the late Robert Parry, Tony Cartalucci, F William Engdahl, Gordon Duff, Ray McGovern, Joe Lauria, Jonathan Marshall, Gareth Porter and Michel Chossudovsky to name a few.

In Clinging to Collusion: Why Evidence Will Probably Never Be Produced in the Indictments of ‘Russian Agents’, Lauria reports that the indictment of 12 Russian ‘agents,’ which included no collusion with Trump’s team, is essentially a political and not legal document because it is almost certain the U.S. government will never have to present any evidence in court. Gordon Duff, Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War and senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today writes in Russiagate, the Comedy of Errors that “America has hurt Russia, over and over, though few Americans realize it. Peace could and should have broken out decades ago except America has been ruled by Russia haters for a hundred years, Russia haters that are alive and well and in control in Washington, even now.” Professor James Petras of Global Research says that, “for the greater part of a decade the US, the UK and the EU have been carrying out a campaign to undermine and overthrow the Russian government and in particular to oust President Putin. Fundamental issues are at stake including the real possibility of a nuclear war.”

We see refutation of Russian support of alleged Syrian government chemical weapons attacks in research by Chossudovsky in The Syria Chemical Weapons Saga: The Staging of a US-NATO Sponsored Humanitarian Disaster. He writes that

In the light of recent developments and accusations directed against the Syrian government, it is important once more to set the record straight: the US supported rebels possess chemical weapons. The Pentagon not only provided chemical weapons to Al Nusra, an affiliated Al Qaeda terrorist organization, but also provided training to the rebels in the use of these weapons.

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey writes in Crimea: Time for the US Administration to Read the Truth:

The approach towards the Crimea by the United States of America is as unfounded, unjust and illegal as the transfer of the Crimea by  Khrushchev from the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic to the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954, meaning that calls for the return of this part of Russian territory are based on ignorance. Isn’t it about time the United States of America ceased sticking its nose into everyone’s business? There are better claims for Lakota and Aztlan to change their status than the Crimea. Suppose someone decided to start stirring up trouble over there and see how Washington likes it?

This brings us back to The Canberra Times piece. Almost unknowingly, it hints at the true nature of what we’re observing here. It compares Trump’s Helsinki comments to former Australian Labor leader Doc Evatt’s rejections of claims the Russians were spying in Australia in the wake of the Petrov affair in the 1950s. It admits that this “gaffe” went on to destroy Evatt’s career, and played a significant role in keeping Labor out of office until the 1970s.

Keeping socialist governments out of office is exactly what this is all about.

HMAS Perth and the Battle of Crete

For the HMAS Perth and other Allied naval vessels serving in the Mediterranean in the Second World War, 1941 was a rough year. The ships that sailed under the azure skies of Crete and the surrounding Mediterranean Sea – referred to as Mare Nostrum or “Our Sea” by Benito Mussolini – were still menaced by Axis air power.

HMAS Perth brings her guns to bear during a battle in the Mediterranean, 1941

The Perth, at this time, despite only five months in the region, was already a veteran of Mediterranean Sea warfare. She had accompanied HMAS Orion and Ajax during the battle of Matapan; stood by the Illustrious during her dash to Malta; and withstood the German first fierce attack on that island. Other brushes with the seemingly indomitable Luftwaffe had followed over most of the eastern Mediterranean, with some of the heaviest fighting in the Aegean Sea occurring during the Allied evacuation from Greece in April 1941, in which Perth took part.

She had been patrolling the waters of the Aegean Sea and supporting Allied convoys to Malta since January of 1941 and was stationed at Crete when Germany launched its invasion of the Greek island on the morning of the 20th May.

No better example of the struggle the Allied fleets faced in the Mediterranean during the Battle of Crete could be taken than that of HMAS Perth. So much had air control passed to the hands of the enemy that some aerial bombing was expected. Yet no ship could ever have expected to find such a concentrated attack as Perth and her companion ships experienced north of Crete during the time of Hitler’s attack in the latter days of May.

In company with the Dido Class cruiser HMAS Naiad, and the converted six-inch cruisers Calcutta and Carlisle, Perth found herself at 8am on the 21st May standing off Candia. The entire night before had been spent sweeping through the Aegean islands with the hope of meeting the expected German sea-borne convoy. With the clear light of a Mediterranean morning came the first German warplanes.

It has been said that while the greater size of a ship helps in rough seas, the opposite is true when a ship is the biggest in a squadron under attack, and Perth’s few extra tons – judging by the number of bombs rained at her – must have made her appear far bigger than the others.

German paratroopers looking from a hill to the coastal plain during the invasion of Crete, May 1941 (Getty Images)

In this first attack, one of the first bombs fell so close that the complement of crew on the bridge were thoroughly soaked. One of the most popular men aboard was the master-at-arms Chief Petty Officer Jan Creber, and when recalling the bomb a young sailor said, “It was as big as the jaunty (Chief Creber) – and he is eighteen stone. Why, it took ten minutes for the hole in the sea to fill up!”

Being very close to their bases on Scarpanto and Rhodes, the Germans were able to keep machines constantly overhead, with devastating effect. The first raid lasted half an hour, followed by a five-minute respite, and then back came even more Axis planes – endless squadrons of Messerschmitt Bf 109s and Stuka dive-bombers – and the anxious cat-and-mouse game of weaving and turning began again.

The chase wore on throughout the day, through the Kaso Strait, known as Bomb Alley, and at 3pm yet another attack on the Allied naval squadron was launched, and the HMS Juno was hit. It is estimated that 116 crew lost their lives after 3 high-powered explosions split Juno in two, sinking her in around 97 seconds. After survivors had been rescued, the ships moved once more towards Alexandria until dusk, when the squadron turned towards Crete and again found itself north of Candia as the sun rose next day. With the sun came Goering’s envoys. Many planes that day bore the yellow noses of the “Goering’s Boys” elite Focke-Wulf Fw190 squadrons, the fabled Jagdgeschwader 26 Schlageter or JG 26.

 

HMAS Perth in her distinctive dazzle livery

Unlike the previous day, however, the course this time was northward to meet the convoy which had been-reported by air as moving amongst the Greek islands. Every turn of the screws taking Perth northwards seemed to bring more planes, and when an Italian destroyer was engaged at 1030 enemy bombers seemed to reach plague proportions, and the destroyer got away.

The constancy of the attack on top of the previous day’s ordeal took heavy toll of the ship’s store of four-inch projectiles, and by noon the situation had become desperate. As a consequence,
Perth’s station at the rear of the squadron had to be surrendered to the HMS Naiad, and the course was set for Kythera Channel. So close had the near-misses been that no instrument, such as gyroscopic compasses and the like, still worked; and to add to the difficulties, the Naiad had been damaged so that the speed of advance was only fourteen knots. When their anti-aircraft shells were finally expended, fifty men a side were served with rifles to try to drive off the persistent aerial enemy.

HMS Warspite

The most welcome sight, at 1300, was the Battle Fleet led by HMS Warspite and Valiant, with cruisers Gloucester and Fiji. By this time the German invasion of Crete was well under way, and countless huge transport planes with gliders in tow could be plainly seen making for the island. The arrival of the Battle Fleet ships made the conditions much more favorable for Perth, as the bigger ships now drew the majority of the fire. Indeed, in the very first few moments Valiant and Warspite were both hit, fortunately without being seriously damaged. HMS Carlisle also survived a bomb on her boat deck, and staggered astern for some time before continuing on in her position.

The destroyer Greyhound went to try to shoot down some of the low flying transport planes, but was pounced on and mortally hit. To protect the destroyers Kandahar and Kimberley whilst picking up survivors, Fiji and Gloucester stood by while the remainder of the force plodded slowly out of the Kythera Channel. HMAS Perth’s last sight of these two ships was belching guns; eventually both disappeared behind a wall of bomb splashes. After two hours a message from the Fiji said that Gloucester had been badly hit, and that she herself was out of shells. HMS Fiji herself made it roughly 65 kilometres (40 miles) from that spot before being sunk.

When the final attack came that day the Perth had been bombed almost incessantly for thirteen hours, and, by a miracle, survived. She would fight valiantly for another year before being sunk in action, during the Battle of Sunda Strait (between the islands of Java and Sumatra in current-day Indonesia), on the 1st March, 1942.

Memory

In Sunda Straits she fought her fight.

‘Gainst hopeless odds that fatal night.

Brave men gave all, so great their worth

and glorified the “Fighting Perth”

– Bandsman G.D Vanselow, RAN

The Good, The Bad & The Unknown: Understanding Syria (Part 1)

Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and Bashar al-Assad

Filed in: Geopolitics  Author: Brendan R Hay

Given the alarming escalation of international tensions over the Syrian conflict following the alleged chemical weapons attacks in Idlib and the United States’ subsequent missile strike on Syrian Air Force bases, it is time for a review of the situation that has now been presented to Western populations through mainstream newsmedia once again as grounds for war.

According to the narrative that we are given, it is religion – specifically, the internal divisions of Islam – that drives both pro-Assad and anti-Assad forces in Syria in what seems to be a Sunni vs Shia/Opposition vs Government ‘civil war’, and not a regional battle to get rid of an international coalition of terrorist factions decimating secular societies.

This analysis targets a narrative common to most Western media. Our Australian counterparts are similarly shallow and disaffected, and rarely research their own articles on foreign conflicts, rather importing them, for an even more homogenized mass world coverage. Because the supposed facts being paraded in this – or any – inflamed crisis imported from the Western intelligence organisations and mainstream media outlets are misleading, fallacious or wrong, any reader searching for truth or an honest interpretation based on facts regarding the conflict may find themselves more confused or, worse, completely deceived about its nature.

The leading news corporations of countries like the US, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, Australia etc are holding to the agenda that supports the “we’re fighting ISIS,” and “Assad must go” group think. It can be outlined as follows:

• The Syrian uprising was purely civilian, with terrorists groups entering the ongoing conflict later, taking advantage of the situation
• The regime started the conflict by using violence against peaceful protestors, who then started “arming themselves” to fight back
• To overthrow Assad The US and its allies fund, arm and train “moderate” Islamic rebel factions only
• With complete disregard for international law and its institutions, the Syrian “criminal regime” must be toppled by an international coalition in its “Responsibility to Protect” civilians

Let’s take a look at these claims to see where they come from and what their intentions in terms of forming public opinion are.

What started as a peaceful civilian uprising against the Syrian president, turned into a bloody, armed civil war

This statement is the most important platform in the Western narrative regarding Syria, setting the stage for endless demonization of al-Assad and the Syrian government. The reality is that an opportunity was sought by the Sunni salafist regimes of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to overthrow the secular Syrian state, which was an agenda that brought them into aligment with right-wing elements of the states of Israel and Turkey, who sought a territorial foothold in the Golan Heights and Northern Syria. This, in turn, brought the support of the US and its allies to the anti-Assad coalition, and into direct opposition to the Syrian allies of Russia and Iran.

A 2006 diplomatic report by US chargé de affaires William Roebuck shows a clear intention of State Department officials regarding the regime and its ‘vulnerabilities’:

“We believe Bashar’s weaknesses are in how he chooses to react to looming issues, both perceived and real, such as the conflict between economic reform steps (however limited) and entrenched, corrupt forces, the Kurdish question, and the potential threat to the regime from the increasing presence of transiting Islamist extremists. This cable summarizes our assessment of this vulnerabilities and suggests that there may be actions, statements, and signals that the USG can send that will improve the likelihood of such opportunities arising”.

As Robert Naiman wrote in the WikiLeaks Files: The World According to US Empire, “In public, the US was opposed to Islamist ‘extremists’ everywhere; but in private it saw the “potential threat to the regime from the increasing presence of transiting Islamist extremists” as an “opportunity that the US should take action to try to increase”. Along with other advice, Roebuck suggests “playing on Sunni fears of Iranian influence… thought often exaggerated”, adding that both the “Egyptian and Saudi missions in Syria are giving increased attention to the matter and we should coordinate more closely with their governments on ways to better publicize and focus regional attention on the issue”. Fanning sectarian tensions is an old ploy, especially within strategies unconcerned by their effects on civilian societies.

Other formerly classified documents also look back into the moments before the 2011 uprising, as this heavily redacted US Defense Intelligence Agency document obtained via federal lawsuit, states: “AQI (Al-Qaeda in Iraq) supported the Syrian opposition since the beginning, both ideologically and through the media. AQI declared its opposition to the Assad’s government because it considered it sectarian regime targeting Sunnis”.

Frans Van der Lugt, killed by extremists in 2014 in Homs, suggested , in a series of formerly classified cables that the beginning of the conflict was not as simple as mainstream media states:

“I have seen from the beginning armed protesters in those demonstrations … they were the first to fire on the police. Very often the violence of the security forces comes in response to the brutal violence of the armed insurgents.” There were indeed anti-Assad protests, sometimes clashing with pro-Assad protests, but they were in many cases infiltrated or even promoted by elements with very different goals, mainly not Syrian in origin, and used for violence against civilians and peaceful protestors, policemen and soldiers. “Many opposition sympathizers started to arm themselves, first as protection and later to expel government’s forces. (The conflict) soon acquired sectarian features… this dragged into the conflict other regional forces…”

Here the article refers to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, among others. These ‘other regional forces’ became increasingly involved in a more covert fashion as the ‘uprising’ took hold.

The US and its allies fund, arm and train “moderate” Islamic rebel factions only

Earlier in the Syrian war, US officials had at least maintained the pretense that weapons were being funneled only to so-called moderate opposition groups. But in 2014, in a speech at Harvard, Vice President Joe Biden confirmed that we were arming extremists once again, although he was careful to pin the blame on America´s allies in the region, whom he denounced as “our largest problem in Syria.” In response to a student’s question, he volunteered that our allies “…were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad. Except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and Al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis (sic) coming from other parts of the world.”

Biden’s explanation was entirely reminiscent of official excuses for the arming of fundamentalists in Afghanistan during the 1980s, which maintained that the Pakistanis had total control of the distribution of US-supplied weapons and that the CIA was incapable of intervening when most of those weapons ended up with the likes of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

As an example, the “moderate” rebels from Nour al-Din al-Zenki are one of the groups supported by the CIA, who beheaded a Palestinian boy last July for the cameras and took ‘selfies’ of themselves while doing it. A few months later another incident, this time covered ‘Aleppo Media Center’, showed the world a wounded child by the name of Omran (Aylan in other reports), who then became the poster boy for the Syrian conflict by means of media exposition. The connection between this two apparently dissociated incidents goes by the name of Mahmoud Raslan, one of Omran’s rescuers and photographer, seen in the video footage of the rescue outside the ambulance holding a camera with members of the White Helmets (civilian rescuers). This individual is also in pictures with the ‘moderate’ beheaders of the Nour al-Din al-Zenki mentioned above, posing like friends on a weekend trip, blurring the already thin line between moderates, extremists and even the so-called non-partisan civilian rescuers (USAID-funded) White Helmets.

The US-led coalition in Syria claims divisions between the Sunni majority and the Alawite Shia have provoked both sides to commit atrocities that have caused not only an enormous loss in lives but the destruction of communities, strengthen positions and reduce hope on a political solution. However, the majority of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) is Sunni, and has included in the past a few Christian generals. As Kamal Alam writes for The National Interest:

The fact remains: The moderate Syrian opposition only exists in fancy suits in Western hotel lobbies. It has little military backing on the ground. If you want to ask why Assad is still the president of Syria, the answer is not simply Russia or Iran, but the fact that his army remains resilient and pluralistic, representing a Syria in which religion alone does not determine who rises to the top.
Deir-Ezzor, an entirely Sunni city which has held out against ISIS encirclement for two years—and is commanded by the Druze General Issam Zahreddine, was attacked by the US Army, who targeted an SAA base killing 62 soldiers and wounding several more, in the first direct attack from the Pentagon on a Syrian Government facility or its forces. This incident happened on September 17th and ended the ceasefire, and not the alleged Russian attack on a UN aid convoy that allegedly took place two days later.

Taking in consideration the secular character of the Syrian society and its government, all bets on sectarian originated violence should be on the rebel side, also known for establishing Sharia law courts in controlled territories.

The Syrian ‘authoritarian regime’ must be toppled by an international coalition in its ‘Responsibility to Protect’ civilians

The often-quoted Syrian Observatory of Human Rights indicates that up to September 2016, the number of deaths is 301,000. These estimates put the numbers between 250,000 and almost 500,000 victims and several millions displaced and surviving as refugees mainly in neighbor countries and Europe.

However, the sources of this information are not without an allegiance either. The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights is a one man operation located in Coventry, England. It is run by Rami Abdulrahman, a declared member of the opposition: “I came to Britain the day Hafez al-Assad died, and I’ll return when Bashar al-Assad goes,” he told Reuters in 2012. It was also revealed by the New York Times that the SOHR is funded by subsidies from the European Union and a certain European country he won’t disclose.

As geopolitical researcher and writer Tony Cartalucci notes: “…it is beyond doubt that it is the United Kingdom itself – as Abdul Rahman has direct access to the Foreign Secretary William Hague, who he has been documented meeting in person on multiple occasions at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London. The NYT in fact reveals that it was the British government that first relocated Abdul Rahman to Coventry, England after he fled Syria over a decade ago because of his anti-government activities.”

John Kerry and Samantha Power reduced themselves to advocates for terrorism by campaigning against Syria and Russia in their efforts to regain Eastern Aleppo from forces made up of 50% al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda. Who are also said to dominate any other faction fighting on that side. The phrase “rebel-held Aleppo” is a mainstream media fiction fostering support for terrorism among world public opinion.

Across Syria, rebel-held areas are dotted with Islamic courts staffed by lawyers and clerics, and by fighting brigades led by extremists. Even the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose formation the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is stocked with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian government. Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.

While honest, ethical news outlets would denounce the audacity of a government whose officials advocate for human rights and point fingers at Russia for alleged war crimes while at the same time supporting terrorism as a manner of proxy army against Syria, Western mainstream media instead acts as a sort of PR asset for power. It’s not surprising to find recent cases when high ranking diplomats and politicians are caught lying to the public, even about supposed war crimes, to be then whitewashed by media giants as the New York Times or the BBC, like the fallacy of going to war with Iraq over it’s weapons of mass destruction – a term resurrected in demonizing Syria. Sadly, this is the kind of news available to most people in the world. It is in the interests of all peaceful and reasonable people worldwide to seek a deeper understanding of the truth, when so much is at stake.

The Golden Eagles – RAAF Pathfinders

On May 30, 1942, the people of the German city of Cologne heard the wail of the air-raid sirens.  Cologne had been raided before, many times, and its people were as accustomed as anyone to the terrors of air raids – but this night was different. Above the din of the flak batteries came an awe-inspiring, terrifying engine roar. For the first time in history a thousand bombers were airborne with a single purpose: the obliteration of Cologne.

RAF Handley Page Halifax, a Pathfinder Force aircraft of No. 35 Sqn at RAF Graveley in 1943 [image via aviation-news.co.uk]

An extraordinary, unprecedented fireworks display was the first introduction the people of Cologne had to a new era in a form of war the Luftwaffe itself had developed – saturation or ‘blitz’ bombing. Brilliant white flares cascaded down, red floating in the clouds above, yellow penetrating glares from where they settled on the ground. RAF and RAAF Pathfinders were at work in strength for the first time, marking the target for the stream of heavy bombers which followed close behind.

The Pathfinding technique was one of the great Allied triumphs of the war, and many Australians took an important part in its development. During the war the Pathfinder squadrons were designated No. 8 Group RAF and their work was so secret that no member of a Pathfinder crew could be named as such. Below their aircrew badges the men wore the covetedf Golden Eagle, the sign of the Pathfinder, however it was never worn on operations. The intrepid pilot chosen to command the first Pathfinders was an Australian, Air Vice Marshal Donald Bennett, CB, CBE, DSO.

This pre-war airliner pilot, who hailed from Toowoomba, Queensland, was also famous Australian aviation pioneer. In July 1938 he piloted the Mercury part of the Short Mayo Composite flying-boat across the Atlantic and was later co-founder of the Atlantic Ferry Organization, an important wartime delivery service.

In December 1941 Bennett was made wing commander of No. 77 Squadron based at Leeming in the United Kingdom, flying Armstrong Whitleys (the first allied military aircraft to fly over Berlin) as part of the No. 4 Group RAF Bomber Command, in December 1941. Then in April 1942, No. 77 Squadron was transferred to Coastal Command where Bennett was given command of No. 10 Squadron (Handley Page Halifax) and shortly afterwards led a raid on the German battleship Tirpitz. Shot down during that raid, he evaded capture and escaped to Sweden, from where he was able to return to Britain. Bennett and his copilot were awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) in 16 June 1942.

Air Vice Marshal Donald Clifford Tyndall Bennett, CB, CBE, DSO [© IWM CH13645]

Regarded as a superb navigator  – he authored two books on air navigation – it was Bennett who first suggested that a team of expert navigators should be formed into a force that could go to Germany in any weather, pinpoint a particular target, even through unbroken cloud or fog, and mark it for the bombers with special coloured flares and markers.

A top-secret report issued by German Air Force Intelligence Operations (Luftwaffenführungsstab Ic.) in March 1944 refers to the Cologne raid and the importance of the Pathfinders. “The success of a large-scale night raid by the RAF is in increasing measure dependent on the conscientious flying of the Pathfinder crews,” the report states. It also goes on to mention Bennett by name. “This 35 year old Australian – known as one of the most resourceful officers of the RAF – had distinguished himself as long ago as 1938 by a record long-range flight to South Africa in a four-engined seaplane launched in the air from a Sunderland flying boat.”

The Pathfinder Force (PFF) used fast-flying Mosquitoes and specially equipped Lancasters and Halifaxes; Australians flew in all types. As Commander Bennett never suggested more than he would do himself, he was, therefore, the first Pathfinder to fly. The Pathfinder technique enabled the greatest possible tonnage of bombs to be dropped in the shortest possible time. With the target clearly and exactly marked in advance the swarm of heavy bombers could now fly directly to the aiming point and cascade their loads.

Pathfinders were specially chosen from the most experienced bomber crews. They were chosen chiefly for their skill in navigation, the most important requirement in successful Pathfinding, and for tenacity and determination. They would be first at the target and at exactly the time decided before takeoff. Saturation raids, in which  hundreds of heavy bombers dropped their loads in a few minutes, hinged on accurate timing and no timing must be more accurate than that of Pathfinders.

The nature of night bombing raid would be changed, as well. The Pathfinders would find a target and mark it in conditions which helped the bombers evade not only night fighters but also searchlights and anti-aircraft guns by using cloud cover. On normal nights the markers were dropped on the ground with a few flares in the sky, but when cloud obscured the target entirely the markers were hung in the cloud blanket and the target area marked just as accurately as ground flares. In this way the Pathfinders made possible the first successful attack on the vital Krupp steel works in Essen. Before this it had been impossible to make an accurate and concentrated attack on the Ruhr because of the industrial haze in the valley, but when the Pathfinders went to work no smoke could hide the targets.

Group portrait of the Blind Marker crew of 35 Squadron, RAF, No 8 Pathfinder Group, based near Graveley, England. [AWM P08504.001]

The use of flares as markers was by no means new, but the way the Pathfinders used them was unique. Pyrotechnic experts provided a remarkable variety of markers and, by continually changing the colours and the patterns of the flares which mark the targets, they were able to confuse enemy defences. British scientists also provided markers which could be dropped accurately, had exceptional ballistic qualities and exact fusings.

Soon after D-day, June 6th, 1944, when night bombers were turned into day bombers, Pathfinders were ready with a method for marking targets by day just as successfully as by night. Weather made no difference to the accuracy of the technique and when targets began to burn, obscuring the aiming points with heavy smoke, the Pathfinders sent down more indicators and kept the target accurately marked throughout the attack.

Strong criticism from British Air Force heirarchy and from amongst their own units was at first levelled against the Pathfinder Force operations, but they were able to prevail because of the successes achieved during the years 1943 and 1944. The efforts of the PFF crews increasingly helped to sharpen the edge of Allied air supremacy in the skies above Europe as the tide of the war turned.

Dancing With The Devil: Australian Uranium in Ukraine

Filed in: Geopolitics Author: Brendan R Hay

In November 2016, a group of Australian federal politicians gathered quietly to take a very quick look at an issue with very long consequences. The outcome was an agreement that has now seen Australia sign a deal to sell uranium to a nation at war with Russia.

Zaporizhia, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, is in southeast Ukraine on the banks of the Dnieper River. © Wikicommons

There has been a lack of detailed information to support the safety and safeguards assumptions underpinning the proposed treaty action, and according to some sources the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s (DFAT) National Interest Analysis of the plan is deeply deficient, especially in relation to key safeguards and security concerns and the implications of the Russian conflict. The NIA’s under-stated noting that ‘political tensions currently exist between Ukraine and Russia‘ completely fails to recognise or reflect the gravity of the situation.

Any plan to supply Australian uranium to such a fraught region deserves the highest level of scrutiny.
Instead, we have tick-a-box paperwork and cut-and-paste assurances.

Just over thirty years ago, the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster spread fallout over vast areas of eastern and western Europe and five million people still live in contaminated areas in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. Serious containment and waste management issues remain at Chernobyl with a massive concrete shield now under construction in an attempt to enclose the stricken reactor complex and reduce the chances of further radioactive releases.

Against this ominous backdrop there are deep concerns over those parts of the Ukrainian nuclear sector that are not yet infamous names, including very real security concerns about nuclear facilities being targeted in the current conflict with Russia.

The Zaporizhia nuclear facility is Europe’s largest and is only 200 kilometres from the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine. Some commentators have described the nuclear plants in the region as pre-deployed nuclear weapons, and there have already been armed incursions during the recent conflict period. Acts of apparent sabotage have already seen the dangerous practise of emergency power unloading at nuclear power plants in Ukraine– including the Zaporozhskaya and South Ukrainian reactors.

Australia has already suspended uranium sales to Russia and it makes an interesting political point to start selling uranium to the Poroshenko regime in Ukraine now. Along with security concerns there are serious and unresolved safety and governance issues with the proposed sales plan. President Petro Poroshenko still refuses to combat the endemic corruption that infuriates Ukrainians and strangles their economy.

Ukraine has 15 nuclear reactors, four of which are currently running beyond their design lifetime while a further six will reach this state by 2020.  That means two thirds of Ukraine’s nuclear reactors will be past their use-by date within five years. The currently contested series of license renewals and the related European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) financing of a program to upgrade safety features at Ukrainian nuclear facilities has highlighted serious deficiencies in governance, operations and compliance with contemporary international standards.

On top of that, there is growing regional concern over the risks associated with the Poroshenko administration focus on keeping the reactors running. In rushing to extend operating licences Ukraine is cutting process and safety corners and not complying with its obligations under the Espoo Convention – an international framework agreement around transboundary environmental impact assessment. In April 2013 the UN Espoo monitoring group found that license renewals at the Rivne nuclear facility were not compliant with Espoo procedures.

New life for Ukraine’s aging nuclear power plants?

In 2013 the Eastern Partnership, a leading East European civil society forum, declared that the absence of environmental impact assessment for nuclear projects posed ‘a severe threat to people both in Ukraine and in neighbouring states, including EU member states’. Nearby nations including the governments or Slovakia, Romania and Hungary have formally and unsuccessfully called for Ukraine to provide further detail on its nuclear projects and to facilitate increased regional dialogue on this unresolved issue of concern.

The Ukrainian government’s response to continuing domestic and international disquiet over the operations of its nuclear sector was a 2015 government decree preventing the national nuclear energy regulator from carrying out facility inspections on its own initiative. This coupled with increased pressure on industry whistle-blowers and critics has done nothing to address the real risks facing the nations aging nuclear fleet.

Apart from any other reason, the Ukraine sales deal should not be advanced in the continued absence of any meaningful Australian government, agency and uranium company response to the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident, which was directly fueled by Australian uranium.

None of these issues have been meaningfully identified, let alone addressed, in Australian treaty action or analysis to date. The Australian government and the rest of the West must recognize this danger, drop its charade of portraying Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko as a paladin of democracy, and start forcing him to enact visible, tangible reforms. Anemic recommendations, such as the  US State Department’s vague wish for ‘a new cabinet that is committed to implementing needed reforms,’ aren’t going to cut it. The overturned states of Syria and Libya are straining Europe to the breaking point – consider what a failed state of 45 million people in the middle of Central Europe could do.

Lost to the Night: The Lancaster Crew

Lancaster Crew by Stella Bowen

Filed in: War History  –  Author: JF Dowsett

At the Binbrook RAF flying base in Lincolnshire, Britain during April 1944, the crew of a Lancaster bomber were posing – in their spare time – for Australian War artist Stella Bowen.

One of the first women artists to be appointed, Esther Gwendolyn “Stella” Bowen (b. 1893) was an Australian artist and writer. In 1944, she had been appointed an official war artist by the Australian War Memorial. Bowen’s brief as a war artist was to depict the activities of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) stationed in England. She also painted portraits of military commanders and Australian prisoners of war who had recently been repatriated from Europe.

Lancaster bomber maintenance at RAF Binbrook Bomber Command

For the Lancaster painting, and as opportunity offered, the six Australians and one Englishman would don their flying kits and look “business-like” for an hour or so while the artist worked on a painting intended to portray the typical crew of the giant bombers which were so successfully pounding targets in Europe, paving the way for an Allied invasion.

It  was a slow job though, with not much more than an outline completed by 27th April.

Shortly after nine o’clock on the night of the 27th the bomb-laden planes of 460 Squadron waddled down the dimly lit runway and roared away  into the darkness. The target was Friedrichshafen – a vital industrial centre on the shores of Lake Constance. There was nothing to make the operation any more exciting or spectacular for the crews: it was just another night raid.

But, by morning, the subjects in the unfinished painting had been reported missing.  Nothing more was known. Hope of the aircraft limping home gradually waned… then disappeared.

Bowen continued work on her picture and eventually completed it, with the aid of a few photographs of the airmen and an artist’s faculty for remembering detail.

Later, in September of that same year, came the  first news of the fate of the crew. The parents of Flight-Officer T. J. Lynch of  Queensland – the tail gunner – received a small postcard from Dulag Luft camp in Germany.

It was in the unmistakable handwriting of  their son – he was alive and a prisoner of war.  He was subsequently repatriated in the fifth exchange of prisoners arranged between the Allies and Germany, and arrived in England at Liverpool on 5 February 1945.

Their aircraft, he said, was shot down in  the vicinity of Lahr near the Swiss border that night in April. Lynch was unable to remember whether or not he had jumped from the plane. In fact, he remained unconscious until the 4th of May, when he awoke as a patient in a German Luftwaffe (air force) hospital at Baden-Baden.

Stalag IX-C, German POW camp

A German doctor answered his anxious  inquiries concerning the fate of his comrades  and told him that all had been killed.

Lynch himself was badly injured and spent  many weary weeks in various hospitals. Following the amputation of his right leg, he was then sent to another large hospital at Nemmingen near Frankfurt, after which he was posted to Stalag IXC to await repatriation.

Information regarding the other crew members was vague and sketchy; but even before the war had ended it was evident that  Flying-Officer Lynch was the sole survivor. The crew, in addition to Lynch, was:

Squadron-Leader E. D. Jarman, DFC
Flight-Officer M. W. Carroll, D.F.C.
Flight-Officer R. L. Neal
Flight-Officer H. R.  Harrison
Flight-Officer F. G. Jackson, D.F.C.
Sergeant D. G. Champkin (RAF  MHS)

Lest we forget.

Making Maps Under Fire: Surveying New Guinea in World War II

Filed in: War History  –  Author: JF Dowsett

HMAS Whyalla in camouflage in New Guinea

On January 2nd 1943, the Australian Navy corvette HMAS Whyalla was anchored deep in the Maclaren Harbour inlet on the Cape Nelson Peninsula in New Guinea. She had been brought in close to the shoreline and camouflaged with a bewildering array of branches, vines and bushes that were doing their best to hide 730 tons of steel ship from the Imperial Japanese Air Service, who at that stage still menaced Allied naval operations in the area.

Like a lightning storm a force of 18 Japanese dive bombers approached undetected and attacked in a terrifyingly determined manner. The Whyalla had field survey parties out on duty and her two tenders, the requisitioned trawlers HMAS Stella and Polaris, were sounding off the harbour entrance. Several bombs narrowly missed the Whyalla, which suffered damage from debris and two casualties – members of the bridge Oerlikon gun crew who were seriously wounded.

The splashes from these near-misses raised several tons of water which deluged the bridge and washed the commanding officer’s map sheets overboard. They were found floating on the surface sometime later and, although legible, the accuracy of the drawings was ruined and the work had to be replotted – an intolerable labour which evidently was only remedied by violent expletives against all Japanese and a torrent of oaths that promised the inflicting of epic reprisals.

The Royal Australian Navy Hydrographic Survey Service

RAN Hydrographic Branch Dept. September 1944 [Image courtesy Dowsett Memorial Library]

In September 1942 when the operations to evict the Japanese from their foothold at Buna were being planned, it was found that to reach Buna was no simple task. It was not possible to carry heavy equipment over the difficult Kokoda Trail, and seaborne transport was considered the only practical method for carrying sufficient men and equipment to the fighting area. Two sea routes were open to use by Allied shipping, one to the east and north of the Trobriand Islands was a deep-sea route, fairly clear of navigational dangers, but could not be used at that stage without exposing Allied forces to disastrous attacks from enemy aircraft and submarines. In addition, it was necessary to wait until sufficient amphibious craft were available in the area, as an attack to the north of Buna could only be made in force.

HMAS Stella (later Warreen)

The duty of surveying the northeastern New Guinea coastline in preparation for the future campaigns was undertaken in November by two small vessels, HMAS Polaris and Stella, under the command of Lt-Commander G. D. Tancred and Lieutenant J. Cody, RAN. These two ships were joined shortly after by HMAS Whyalla, under the command of Lt-Commander K. E. Oom, RAN. On the personnel of these three vessels fell the arduous duties, during the following six months, of fulfilling the requirements of this surveying program, during which the surveyors and men worked hard for long hours, fixing and running lines of soundings, erecting beacons, and observing under hostile conditions.

As operations advanced northwards, the strength of the surveying service was augmented by the addition of HMAS Shepparton, and later in June 1942 by HMAS Benalla. In addition, a number of requisitioned tenders was assigned to the group and at the end of 1943 HMAS Moresby was commissioned for surveying duties. Thus, as time went on, the force increased considerably in numbers, with the consequent increase in the scope of the service’s abilities.

Cape Ward Hunt, Papua. 1944-05-20. Mitre Rock north of Cape Ward Hunt. The survey vessel HMAS Moresby was later despatched to repair the navigation light that had recently been placed on top of Mitre Rock. A party from the Moresby repaired the light and the vessel remained at anchor overnight to ensure the light was operating.

Once during late 1942, HMAS Cape Leeuwin had been assigned the duty of erecting the light on Mitre Rock, a notorious landmark on the northeast coast of New Guinea. This imposing rock, which is forty feet high, is practically inaccessible and only by erecting special ladders could the upper portion of the stone cliff be reached. A midshipman was sent to get up through the undergrowth and secure a rope to the summit by which access could be achieved. He had not penetrated far before he became aware of the million or so local inhabitants – a particularly vicious type of ant rare to the coast region which set upon him with carnivorous enthusiasm, being the first meat they had encountered on that barren rock in aeons. In order to get down he had first to secure the rope, and thus was forced to carry on to the top. When this excruciating task was done, the watchers below were startled to see the midshipman fling himself out of the undergrowth, shoot down the rope in a skin-burning slide and then, without pause, dive headlong into the sea. It was quickly discovered that no man could work on the top, and that even the locals, who were requisitioned to cut down the undergrowth, went on a sit-down strike and refused to do “work belong bloody Navy”. Finally the ants were only culled by burning off the rock’s top with the assistance of fuel oil, petrol and cordite.

The survey of the extraordinarily deep gulf of Milne Bay was also undertaken by the Whyalla and the other vessels. Some parts of Milne Bay had been surveyed by the surveyors of HMS Dart as far back as 1885, but much of it required re-examination by modern methods. This was especially emphasized by the most recent survey of the Killerton Anchorage, which had previously been examined by Lieutenants Dawson and Messum of the Dart in 1886. In the southern entrance, right on the leading line, a rock with only eight feet of water covering it was discovered.

HMAS Shepparton (J248)

On weighing anchor next morning and proceeding out through the eastern entrance in the first light of dawn, the Whyalla discovered an extensive reef by running aground on it. Where the previous surveyors had marked thirteen fathoms, was indeed a reef a hundred yards in width with less than three feet of water covering it. During the next forty-eight hours, until the Whyalla floated itself off the reef unaided and undamaged, the surveyors had time to ruminate on the problem: “…did the coral grow out of over seventy feet of water in that time, or were the oysters on the reef so good that the earlier surveyors wished to keep the news hidden from other hungry seamen?” In honour of this unique event the two discoveries were called Messum Rock and Dawson Reef, which – although contravening accepted principles in nomenclature and awarding honour to whom it was least due – gave a subtle feeling of satisfaction, if not an answer to the conundrum in question.

The part played by the Surveying Services of the Royal Australian Navy was acknowledged by the Allied leaders of the Southwest Pacific Area as an integral factor contributing to the success of their campaigns in New Guinea. These surveys were later published in a set of charts that would also become vital to the safe navigation of ships in that area, both during the period of amphibious naval operations and equally important in guiding merchant ships supplying the varied units in forward areas.

The survey group continued to work between the New Guinea mainland and the D’Entrecastaux Islands where they were within 11 miles of Japanese forces and under frequent air attack, taking shelter in the mangroves. HMAS Stella and Polaris also went on to survey the landing routes at Salamaua and Finschhaven under covering fire from the corvettes Shepparton and Benalla.

The group was much decorated for these ventures; receiving the battle honours Pacific 1942–45, New Guinea 1942–44, and Okinawa 1945.

 

“Stand by, I’m coming round!” – The HMAS Nepal

Filed in: War History  –  Author: JF Dowsett

‘HMAS Nepal in Colombo’ by Roy Hodgkinson

This thrilling first-hand account of a high-seas rescue takes place aboard the HMAS Nepal (G25), an N-class destroyer of the Royal Australian Navy.

Originally built as the Norseman at the John I. Thorneycroft shipyard at Woolston near Southampton in the UK, the 1,760 ton destroyer was one of two initially destined for the Royal Netherlands Navy, but when almost complete was she was virtually blown in half on the slipway by a direct bomb hit during a German air raid in December 1940. As a result, the ship was finally commissioned as HMAS NEPAL by Commander R.B. Morris RAN on May 1, 1942 – the last of the RAN ‘N’ Class to come into service.

In this account, we meet the Nepal in the Indian Ocean sometime in mid 1943, conducting operations with the Eastern Fleet out of Trincomalee in Sri Lanka.

The seaman telling the story is known only to us as ‘Maintop.’

HMAS Nepal (G25)

“The Navy always has, and still does, rate seamanship well above gunnery. Our captain’s steward can thank his stars for that. Destroyer Nepal in the Indian Ocean during the war was running before a sea that looked like an immense waterfall: one enormous roaring mass of foam. Occasionally, from out of this cataract, a Himalayan sea would gain on her and dash itself against her sides in a smother of green and flung white.

Down aft the captain’s steward was trying to get for’ard. He waited for a lull, found it, stepped from shelter and ran into a liquid wall that crushed him through the port rails and over the side. The lifebuoy sentry saw him go.

In such a sea the Old Man was, of course, on the bridge. Through speakers he ordered the first lieutenant to prepare lines and a buoy; the engine-room to be ready with full power. Then, conversationally, he said: “Stand by, I’m coming round.”

Five degrees at a time the destroyer edged round to meet the frenzied seas. She rolled and shuddered as her propellers raced. Then over again, until the torn seas raced level with her rails. A final hammer blow against her bows and she was round, slicing confidently into the troughs. Such was the skipper’s judgment that no line was needed; the steward reached out and grabbed the lowered scrambling net.

Half an hour later the Surgeon Lieutenant, one hand braced against the swaying bulkhead, was operating on a compound fracture of the rescued man’s right leg.”

HMAS Ballarat (J184)

Naval records indicate the ‘Old Man’ in question was Commander Franklyn Bryce Morris, RAN from Wycherproof in Victoria, Australia. He commanded the Nepal from May 11, 1942 to March 30, 1944. Little is known of Commander Morris apart from his next commission which was the HMAS Ballarat (J 184), which was his charge from December 1, 1944 to June 18, 1945.

At the end of February 1945, Nepal was assigned to the British Pacific Fleet until after the end of World War II. She earned four battle honours for her wartime service:

Indian Ocean 1942–44  / Burma 1944–45 / Pacific 1945 / Okinawa 1945

ANZAC Day Edition: Dowsett’s War, Part 7 – The Lighthorseman

Anzac Day, 25^th April 2016 – Lest We Forget

“At a mile distant their thousand hooves were stuttering thunder, coming at a rate that frightened a man – they were an awe inspiring sight, galloping through the red haze – knee to knee and horse to horse – the dying sun glinting on bayonet points…” Trooper Ion Idriess, 5th Light Horse Regiment AIF

For the other chapters of Dowsetts War, click here.

As mentioned in Dowsett’s War – Part 3, discovering family service records from the First World War – beginning with the Gallipoli records – opened up not only a whole new area of family history but also offered a new perspective on the war itself, especially as the research that I was doing coincided with the 100^th anniversary of the ANZAC landings at Gallipoli. In fact, 2015 was celebrated as ‘100 Years of Anzac’ throughout Australia with many related events throughout the year. The knowledge of my grandfather’s service had already been a source of immense pride, but finding out about the World War I stories took me on an amazing journey of historical discovery.

While doing genealogical research last Christmas I was fortunate enough to receive a copy of Anzac Treasures – The Gallipoli Collection of the Australian War Memorial and as I was already looking into the service records of the family’s WWI veterans, it was a scintillating read. More of a photographic tome showcasing the War Memorial’s Gallipoli collection, it served to encapsulate the campaign as it was seen and experienced by the Australians that were there in a way that showed me exactly what was missing from my own understanding of the AIF in WW1.

In addition, the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s (ABC) website features a Gallipoli – The First Day 3D interactive experience which I viewed along with the Gallipoli miniseries aired on the Nine Network in April 2015 as the 100th anniversary of the ill-fated beach landings grew closer. Saturating myself in this high quality historical research and entertainment which has been on offer this year while simultaneously following my own family’s path through the Great War increased my interest and changed my perspective on the war and on that period of history in general.

So it was with renewed clarity and insight into the Great War period that I began to look at the story of Jack Arthur Dowsett, a Lieutenant with the 7th Light Horse Regiment.

Enlistment

Born to James Francis Dowsett and Eliza Hannah Dowsett of Oxford Street, Paddington, New South Wales (NSW) in Australia on the 15th of December 1895, Jack Arthur Dowsett was already a military man when war was declared. A carpenter by trade at age 19, he had already served 18 months with the NSW 11th (Australian Horse) Australian Light Horse Regiment and 3 months with the NSW Light Horse Militia. The Australian Light Horse brigades were mounted troops capable of fighting both as cavalry and mounted infantry, who served in the Second Boer War and World War I. During the inter-war years, a number of regiments such as the ones of which young Jack Dowsett was a member were raised as part of Australia’s reserve military forces.

The light horse troops were like mounted infantry in that they usually fought dismounted, using their horses as transport to the battlefield and as a means of swift disengagement when retreating or retiring. A famous exception to this rule though was the charge of the 4th and 12th Light Horse Regiments at Beersheba on 31 October 1917. In 1918, some light horse regiments were equipped with sabres, enabling them to fight in a conventional cavalry role in the advance on Damascus. However, unlike mounted infantry, the light horse also performed certain cavalry roles, such as scouting and screening, while mounted.

Jack was immediately assigned to the newly formed 7th Light Horse Regiment which was officially raised at Sydney in October 1914 with personnel drawn predominantly from the Light Horse Militia of the state of New South Wales. The 7th was made up of 25 officers and 497 other ranks serving in three squadrons, each of six troops. Each troop was divided into eight sections of four men each. During battle, a trooper from each section was nominated as horse handler, which ultimately reduced the regiments’ active rifle strength. Once established, the regiment was assigned to the 2nd Light Horse Brigade, serving alongside the 5th and 6th Light Horse Regiments.

HMAT A33 Ayrshire, in dazzle camouflage livery

On 21 December 1914 7th Light Horse Regiment departed Sydney on the HMAT Ayrshire, a 7,750 ton cargo steamship leased by the Commonwealth of Australia from the The Scottish Shire Line Ltd. The A and B Squadrons of the 7th sailed on the Ayrshire to Egypt and disembarked on 1 February 1915. Jack Dowsett was with the B Squadron.

Gallipoli

Members of the 7th Light Horse Regiment on the front line at Anzac in August 1915. [AWM J06251]

The light horse were considered unsuitable for the initial operations at Gallipoli, but were subsequently deployed without their horses to reinforce the infantry. The 2nd Light Horse Brigade landed in late May 1915 and was attached to the 1st Australian Division. The 7th Light Horse became responsible for a sector on the far right of the ANZAC line, and played a defensive role (until it finally left the peninsula on 20 December 1915).

 

 

Disembarking from HMT Lutzow on May 15th 1915 Jack Dowsett became part of the Australian Middle Eastern Forces. According to his AIF records, he was severely reprimanded at Anzac Cove for disobeying an order from a senior non-commissioned officer on June 30th. However, his skills as a soldier must have outshone his belligerence and he was made made Sergeant in August 1915. Like many at Gallipoli, Jack would succumb to dysentry the following month.

 

Egypt and Sinai

After the return to Egypt, the 7th Light Horse Regiment reformed and re-equipped. The reorganisation of the Light Horse led to the formation of the ANZAC Mounted Division to which the 7th Light Horse Regiment became a founding contingent. On 28 February 1916, the 7th moved to join its parent brigade, the 2nd Light Horse Brigade, which was taking part in the defence of the Suez Canal. The work was extremely hot and monotonous. They remained here until later being transferred to the Romani region to bolster the defence of that area. According to Lieutenant-General Harry Chauvel, Commander of the ANZAC Mounted Division, “it was largely due to (the 7th Light Horse Regiment’s) stubborn defence and spirited counterattack, under the Leadership of Lieutenant-Colonel G. Macarthur Onslow, that the victory was so complete.”

They fought at the battle of Romani on 4 August, at Katia the following day, and were also involved in the advance that followed the Turks’ retreat back across the desert.

Palestine

The regiment spent late 1916 and early 1917 engaged on patrol work until the British advance into Palestine stalled before the Turkish bastion of Gaza. During this period Jack Dowsett was enlisted at Cavalry School of Instruction at Mazar in January and later with the 2nd Light Horse Training Regiment El Fukhari. In March 1917, the 7th Light Horse Regiment found itself taking the lead role during the First Battle of Gaza. It was the 7th that led the ANZAC Mounted Division through the night to its position in the rear of the city, and which captured the Commander of Gaza Defence. While involved in the encirclement of the city as a prelude to its capture, the 7th Light Horse Regiment received the order to withdraw and return to the starting line. Grudgingly they did so, realising that the order had given the Turks a chance to snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat.

The 7th Light Horse took part in the Second Battle of Gaza on 19 April 1917 and consequently suffered its heaviest losses since leaving Australia. Although the 2nd Light Horse Brigade was to be prepared for such a mounted attack, the 5th and 7th Light Horse held a wide stretch of the front line south of the Wadi Imleih. Here they were attacked by a squadron of Ottoman cavalry, supported by another cavalry regiment and a force of Bedouin. With their rifles on their backs the light horsemen were defenceless in mounted attack and they were forced back under cover of their machine gun detachments before eventually halting the Ottoman advance. Near dark, a threatened counterattack by infantry from Beersheba on the extreme right of the line failed to develop. The Anzac Mounted Division retired to water in the Wadi Ghuzzee at Heseia where they were shelled, causing many casualties.

Group portrait of men of the 7th Australian Light Horse Regiment, resting in the sand near Asluj before the charge at Beersheba. [AWM P11464.047.003]

With the fall of Gaza on 7 November 1917, the Turkish position in southern Palestine collapsed. The 7th Light Horse Regiment also took part in the famous Battle of Beersheba, sustaining its “tradition for dash and gallantry” and then was involved in the follow up actions that lasted until early January 1918. After the fall of Jerusalem the 7th moved to the Jordan Valley and took parts in operations in this region. This included the taking of Jericho, the attack on Amman during 27 March – 2 April 1918 and the Es Salt Raid of 30 April – 4 May 1918.

Commendation

It was during the Es Salt Raid of 30 April – 4 May 1918 that Jack Dowsett received his commendation for devotion to duty.

Jack Dowsett’s commendation record

2nd Light Horse – A. & N.Z. Mounted – Desert Mounted

6th May 1918
7th A.L.H. Regiment

2nd Lieutenant Jack DOWSETT
Operations 29th April to 4th May 1918.

Devotion to duty, in that he was in charge of one of the troops detailed to carry out the assault on KABR SAID on the night of 29/30th April 1918. Owing to his careful reconnaissance of the position he was able to get his troop to within 300 yards of the enemy’s position and at the appointed time rushed the position together with Lieut. C.E.tanley’s troop, driving out the enemy and occupying the ridge.
On the night of the 3/4tth May 1918 the Regiment was ordered to leave the firing line at 2000 and take up a position forming a road head to cover the withdrawal of troops by No. 7 road from ES SALT. The Regiment moved up a track from the ES SALT-SHUNET NIMRIN Road and encountered a very difficult and bad patch of road about 30 feet long, which looked almost impossible to get the horses up, especially as the night was very dark.
Realising the urgency of getting everyone through, Lieut. Dowsett stayed at this place and by his personal exertions and disregard to the great danger to himself led every horse which gave trouble over the dangerous portion of the road. Some 15 to 20 horses slipped in their first attempt to get over and fell down a cliff of rock some 12 to 15 feet to the bottom. These Lieut. Dowsett got up again and got them safely over the bad portion of the road. In one case a horse fell three times. He was so exhausted at the end of three and a quarter hours that he was unable to walk up the road to rejoin his unit.

The 7th also helped defeat a joint Turkish-German attack launched on the Jordan bridgehead around Musallabeh on 14 July.

The next major British offensive was launched along the coast in September 1918, and the 7th took part in a subsidiary effort east of the Jordan. It was part of the force that captured Amman on 25 September, which proved to be its last major engagement of the war; Turkey surrendered on 30 October 1918.

Return to Australia

After the conclusion of hostilities, the 7th Light Horse Regiment was selected for to return to Australia. However, before they were able to depart one of the saddest events took place for the Australian Lighthorsemen: they had to farewell their best trusted steeds, the Australian Waler warhorses. All the Regiment’s horses had to have their health checked carefully with only the fittest horses being transferred to the Indian Cavalry while those in poor condition were all destroyed by the AIF Veterinary units.

On 13 March 1919 the 7th Light Horse Regiment was deployed as infantry to assist in suppressing a revolt during the Egyptian Uprising. This was to be their final assignment. After the revolt collapsed, the Regiment left Egypt on 28th June 1919 for the long voyage back to Australia.

Jack Dowsett was one of those who came home.

Dowsett’s War, Part 6 – Changi Prisoner

Three Australian prisoners at Shimo Songkurai in 1943. The effects of malnutrition can be seen in their skeletal frames and the stomach of the man on the right, distended by beri beri. The photograph was one of the last to be taken by George Aspinall on the camera he smuggled up to the Thai–Burma railway from Changi. [Photo by G. Aspinall]

“The place earned the title of Hellfire Pass, for it looked, and was, like a living image of hell itself.”
Jack Chalker, Burma Railway: Images of War, London, Mercer Books, 2007, 59

For the other chapters of Dowsetts War, click here.

Douglas France Dowsett, a driver with the 22nd Infantry Brigade Australian Army Service Corps Supply (AASC) Section was held along with roughly 15,000 other servicemen of the Australian Army’s 8th Division in the British Army’s Selarang Barracks, Changi. It was a prisoner of war camp holding some 50,000 Allied – predominantly British and Australian – soldiers captured after the Fall of Singapore in February 1942. From 1943 the prison also included Dutch civilians brought over by the Japanese from the islands from what is now Indonesia, then part of the Dutch East Indies. The name Changi has become synonymous in the UK, Australia, The Netherlands, and elsewhere with the horrific treatment suffered at the hands of the Japanese in the POW camps.

Extract from NX58454 D F Dowsett’s war service records. [© Dowsett Memorial Library]

Doug’s army war records are notable in that the pages are bare of much detail, essentially just a few lines recording his status as “missing” and then POW. It’s as if the silence of his service record speaks loudly of the suffering in the prison camps, such a long way from home and long way from the protection of his own unit. What we now know as the history that occurred between the dates recorded on those cards haunts the unknown time in between.

Newspaper clipping from The Australian Women’s Weekly society pages, Saturday 29 June 1946 reporting the wedding of Doug Dowsett to Milicent Sutton in Randwick, New South Wales. The officiating minister was former army chaplain George Polain, who was a POW alongside Dowsett in Shimo Songkurai and would later go on to give evidence against the Japanese war crimes in the labour camps. [© Dowsett Memorial Library]

The conditions experienced in the Changi camps by Australian soldiers have been memorialised in poetry, books and film by the number. The very name Changi immediately conjures emtions of dread amongst all who know anything of the horrors lived by the wretched souls sent to build the notorious Thai-Burma Railway. In his 1980 book One Man’s War, Stan Arneil quotes from his diaries: “If ever I see home again …I want nothing more … than to forget these awful days—swollen bodies, bloated from beri beri, walking skeletons from dysentery, eyesight becoming universally bad, malaria rampant. Surely this cannot last..?”

The Thai–Burma railway was built in 1942–43 to supply the Japanese forces in Burma, bypassing the sea routes that were made vulnerable when Japanese naval strength was reduced in the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway in May and June 1942. Once the railway was completed the Japanese planned to attack the British in India and the road and airfields used by the Allies to supply China. Begun in October 1942 and completed on 16 October 1943, the railway stretched 415 kilometres between Nong Pladuk in Thailand and Thanbyuzayat in Burma. It wound not only through gentle plains but also jagged limestone hills, interspersed with streams and gullies. During the monsoon season, the land became waterlogged and unstable. Where the railway met unavoidable hills, cuttings were dug to allow the line to proceed. Often the line emerged from a deep cutting onto a series of embankments, and bridges. In all, 688 bridges were built along the railway system.

In order to complete the works in record time, more than 60 000 Allied prisoners of war were employed in the construction of the Thai–Burma railway, including British Empire troops, Dutch and colonial troops from the Netherlands East Indies and a smaller number of US troops. About 13,000 of the prisoners were Australian. Over 12 000 Allied prisoners would die during the construction of the railway, including more than 2700 Australians.

The isolation hospital area for cholera sufferers, Shimo Songkurai. The patients were housed under canvas to the left of the photo. In the centre is the operating table used for amputations, ulcer treatment and post-mortems. [Photo by George Aspinall, by courtesy Tim Bowden]

The required POW labour force was systematically transferred from the Changi barracks camps to various labour camps outside Singapore, including the Burma Railway and the Sandakan airfield. ‘D Force’, consisting of over 2220 Australians and some 2800 British, was sent from Singapore to Thailand in mid to late March 1943. ‘F Force’ was 7,000 strong; there were 3,338 British and 3,662 Australians and the first train left Singapore on the 18 April, 1943.

Doug Dowsett was transferred to Changi with ‘H’ Force in May 1943. This group consisted of nearly 3300 men including 600 Australians commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel R.F. Oakes. Arriving at Ban Pong from Singapore in mid-May 1943, ‘H’ Force then had to walk to various work sites along a twenty-kilometre stretch of the railway between Tonchan and Hintok. Given the heat and the fact they were carrying too much equipment, men arrived at their destination in the last stage of exhaustion, staggering and swaying like drunks.

The bulk of the workforce arrived utterly exhausted in mid-May at Shimo Ni Thea, which became the local headquarters. Most of the Australians under Lieutenant-Colonel C.H. Kappe were then put to work at Shimo (Lower) Songkurai and Kami (Upper) Songkurai. In these remote and primitive camps, the acute supply problems were aggravated by the fact that F Force was under the administration of the Imperial Japanese Army Malay Command rather than the Thailand administration that controlled most other POWs in the region. The arrangements for these forces were inferior and the two administrations competed rather than cooperated in managing the workers under their control. Profoundly malnourished, overworked and ravaged by diseases, including cholera, F Force suffered one of the highest death rates on the railway: some 1060 Australians and 2036 British.

Working on a Thailand Railway Cutting, July 1943 by the official war artist Murray Griffin. This has become one of the most famous images of the hellish conditions experienced when constructing the Thai–Burma railway, though Griffin painted this from accounts by other POWs. He spent the whole of his captivity in Changi. [AWM ART25081]

What is now known as ‘Hellfire Pass’ is a dramatic cutting some 75 metres long and 25 metres deep. It was the deepest and longest cutting along the entire length of the Thai–Burma railway which over the years came to symbolise the suffering and maltreatment of Australian prisoners of the Japanese across the Asia–Pacific region. The name ‘Hellfire Pass’ came from the appalling working conditions at and around this site, some 150 kilometres from the start of the railway at Nong Pladuk. In mid-1943, when the Japanese introduced impossibly fast work schedules to meet tight deadlines for completing the railway, prisoners were forced to work long hours into the night. Their work site was lit by oil lamps and bamboo fires. This flickering light, the noise from the drilling of the rock and the shuffling of hundreds of poorly fed prisoners seemed the very image of hell.

“Our emaciated, cadaverous bodies were covered in rags, we were all barefooted with bandages covering our ulcers and we were almost all rotten with malaria and beri beri. … our own Black Jack Galleghan, the Iron Commander of the A.I.F. at Changi … was shocked to the point of silence and tears.” – Stan Arneil, describing the return of F Force to Changi in December 1943, One Man’s War, Sydney, Alterative Publishing 1980

Hellfire Pass was lost to the jungle in the years after the war when the railway was demolished. But it was rediscovered in the 1980s. It is now the site of Anzac Day ceremonies and the location of the Australian government’s Hellfire Pass Memorial Museum and a walking trail for visitors.

 

US Media is Losing Its Mind Over Trump-Putin Summit

The media’s mania over Trump’s Helsinki performance and the so-called Russia-gate scandal reached new depths on Monday, says Joe Lauria

By Joe Lauria
Originally published by Consortium News – reprinted here with permission

The reaction of the U.S. establishment media and several political leaders to President Donald Trump’s press conference after his summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday has been stunning.

Writing in The Atlantic, James Fallows said:

“There are exactly two possible explanations for the shameful performance the world witnessed on Monday, from a serving American president.

Either Donald Trump is flat-out an agent of Russian interests—maybe witting, maybe unwitting, from fear of blackmail, in hope of future deals, out of manly respect for Vladimir Putin, out of gratitude for Russia’s help during the election, out of pathetic inability to see beyond his 306 electoral votes. Whatever the exact mixture of motives might be, it doesn’t really matter.

Or he is so profoundly ignorant, insecure, and narcissistic that he did not  realize that, at every step, he was advancing the line that Putin hoped he would advance, and the line that the American intelligence, defense, and law-enforcement agencies most dreaded.

Conscious tool. Useful idiot. Those are the choices, though both are possibly true, so that the main question is the proportions … never before have I seen an American president consistently, repeatedly, publicly, and shockingly advance the interests of another country over those of his own government and people.”

As soon as the press conference ended CNN cut to its panel with these words from TV personality Anderson Cooper: “You have been watching perhaps one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president at a summit in front of a Russian leader, surely, that I’ve ever seen.”

David Gergen, who for years has gotten away with portraying himself on TV as an impartial political sage, then told CNN viewers:

“I’ve never heard an American President talk that way but I think it is especially true that when he’s with someone like Putin, who is a thug, a world-class thug, that he sides with him again and again against his own country’s interests of his own institutions that he runs, that he’s in charge of the federal government, he’s in charge of these intelligence agencies, and he basically dismisses them and retreats into this, we’ve heard it before, but on the international stage to talk about Hillary Clinton’s computer server …”

“It’s embarrassing,” interjected Cooper.
“It’s embarrassing,” agreed Gergen.

White House correspondent Jim Acosta, ostensibly an objective reporter, then gave his opinion: “I think that sums it up nicely. This is the president of the United States essentially taking the word of the Russian president…over his own intelligence community. It was astonishing, just astonishing to be in the room with the U.S. president and the Russian president on this critical question of election interference, and to retreat back to these talking points about DNC servers and Hillary Clinton’s emails when he had a chance right there in front of the world to tell Vladimir Putin to stay the HELL out of American democracy, and he didn’t do it.”

In other words Trump should just shut up and not question a questionable indictment, which Acosta, like nearly all the media, treat as a conviction.

The Media’s Handlers

The media’s handlers were even worse than their assets. Former CIA director John Brennan tweeted: “Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors,.’ It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???”

Here’s where the Republican Patriots are, Brennan: “That’s how a press conference sounds when an Asset stands next to his Handler,” former RNC Chairman Michael Steele tweeted.

Representative Liz Cheney, the daughter of the former vice president, said on Twitter: “As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, I am deeply troubled by President Trump’s defense of Putin against the intelligence agencies of the U.S. & his suggestion of moral equivalence between the U.S. and Russia. Russia poses a grave threat to our national security.”

All these were reactions to Trump expressing skepticism about the U.S. indictment on Friday of 12 Russian intelligence agents for allegedly interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election while he was standing next to Russian President Vladimir Putin at the press conference following their summit meeting in Helsinki.

“I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be” Russia, Trump said. “I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.”

The indictments, which are only unproven accusations, formally accused 12 members of the GRU, Russian military intelligence, of stealing Democratic Party emails in a hacking operation and giving the materials to WikiLeaks to publish in order to damage the candidacy of Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton. The indictments were announced on Friday, three days before the summit, with the clear intention of getting Trump to cancel it. He ignored cries from the media and Congress to do so.

Over the weekend Michael Smerconish on CNN actually said the indictments proved that Russia had committed a “terrorist attack” against the United States. This is in line with many pundits who are comparing this indictment, that will most likely never produce any evidence, to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. The danger inherent in that thinking is clear.

Putin said the allegations are “utter nonsense, just like [Trump] recently mentioned.” He added: “The final conclusion in this kind of dispute can only be delivered by a trial, by the court. Not by the executive, by the law enforcement.” He could have added not by the media.

Trump reasonably questioned why the FBI never examined the computer servers of the Democratic National Committee to see whether there was a hack and who may have done it. Instead a private company, CrowdStrike, hired by the Democratic Party studied the server and within a day blamed Russia on very dubious grounds.

“Why haven’t they taken the server?” Trump asked. “Why was the FBI told to leave the office of the Democratic National Committee? I’ve been wondering that. I’ve been asking that for months and months and I’ve been tweeting it out and calling it out on social media. Where is the server? I want to know, where is the server and what is the server saying?”

But being a poor communicator, Trump then mentioned Clinton’s missing emails, allowing the media to conflate the two different servers, and be easily dismissed as Gergen did.

At the press conference, Putin offered to allow American investigators from the team of special counsel Robert Mueller, who put the indictment together, to travel to Russia and take part in interviews with the 12 accused Russian agents. He also offered to set up a joint cyber-security group to examine the evidence and asked that in return Russia be allowed to question persons of interest to Moscow in the United States.

“Let’s discuss the specific issues and not use the Russia and U.S. relationship as a loose change for this internal political struggle,” Putin said.

On CNN, Christiane Amanpour called Putin’s clear offer “obfuscation.”

Even if Trump agreed to this reasonable proposal it seems highly unlikely that his Justice Department will go along with it. Examination of whatever evidence they have to back up the indictment is not what the DOJ is after. As I wrote about the indictments in detail on Friday:

“The extremely remote possibility of convictions were not what Mueller was apparently after, but rather the public perception of Russia’s guilt resulting from fevered media coverage of what are after all only accusations, presented as though it is established fact. Once that impression is settled into the public consciousness, Mueller’s mission would appear to be accomplished.”

Still No ‘Collusion’

The indictments did not include any members of Trump’s campaign team for “colluding” with the alleged Russian hacking effort, which has been a core allegation throughout the two years of the so-called Russia-gate scandal. Those allegations are routinely reported in U.S. media as established fact, though there is still no evidence of collusion.

Trump emphasised that point in the press conference. “There was no collusion at all,” he said forcefully. “Everybody knows it.”

On this point corporate media has been more deluded than normal as they clutch for straws to prove the collusion theory. As one example of many across the media with the same theme, a New York Times story on Friday, headlined, “Trump Invited the Russians to Hack Clinton. Were They Listening?,” said Russia may have absurdly responded to Trump’s call at 10:30 a.m. on July 27, 2016 to hack Clinton’s private email server because it was “on or about” that day that Russia allegedly first made an attempt to hack Clinton’s personal emails, according to the indictment, which makes no connection between the two events.

If Russia is indeed guilty of remotely hacking the emails it would have had no evident need of assistance from anyone on the Trump team, let alone a public call from Trump on national TV to commence the operation.

More importantly, as Twitter handle “Representative Press” pointed out: “Trump’s July 27, 2016 call to find the missing 30,000 emails could not be a ‘call to hack Clinton’s server’ because at that point it was no longer online. Long before Trump’s statement, Clinton had already turned over her email server to the U.S. Department of Justice.” Either the indictment was talking about different servers or it is being intentionally misleading when it says “on or about July 27, 2016, the Conspirators attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts at a domain hosted by a third party provider and used by Clinton’s personal office.”

This crucial fact alone, that Clinton had turned over the server in 2015 so that no hack was possible, makes it impossible that Trump’s TV call could be seen as collusion. Only a desperate person would see it otherwise.

But there is a simple explanation why establishment journalists are in unison in their dominant Russian narrative: it is career suicide to question it.

As Samuel Johnson said as far back as 1745: “The greatest part of mankind have no other reason for their opinions than that they are in fashion …since vanity and credulity cooperate in its favour.”

Importance of US-Russia Relations

Trump said the unproven allegation of collusion “has had a negative impact upon the relationship of the two largest nuclear powers in the world. We have 90 percent of nuclear power between the two countries. It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous what’s going on with the probe.”

The American president said the U.S. has been “foolish” not to attempt dialogue with Russia before, to cooperate on a range of issues.

“As president, I cannot make decisions on foreign policy in a futile effort to appease partisan critics or the media or Democrats who want to do nothing but resist and obstruct,” Trump said. “Constructive dialogue between the United States and Russia forwards the opportunity to open new pathways toward peace and stability in our world. I would rather take a political risk in pursuit of peace than to risk peace in pursuit of politics.”

This main reason for summits between Russian and American leaders was also ignored: to use diplomacy to reduce dangerous tensions. “I really think the world wants to see us get along,” Trump said. “We are the two great nuclear powers. We have 90 percent of the nuclear. And that’s not a good thing, it’s a bad thing.”

Preventing good relations between the two countries appears to be the heart of the matter for U.S. intelligence and their media assets. So Trump was vilified for even trying.

Ignoring the Rest of the Story

Obsessed as they are with the “interference” story, the media virtually ignored the other crucial issues that came up at the summit, such as the Middle East.

Trump sort of thanked Russia for its efforts to defeat ISIS. “When you look at all of the progress that’s been made in certain sections with the eradication of ISIS, about 98 percent, 99 percent there, and other things that have taken place that we have done and that, frankly, Russia has helped us with in certain respects,” he said.

Trump here is falsely taking credit, as he has before, for defeating ISIS with only some “help” from Russia. In Iraq the U.S. led the way against ISIS coordinating the Iraqi and Kurdish security forces. But in the separate war against ISIS in Syria, Russia, the Syrian Arab Army, Kurdish forces, Iranian troops and Hizbullah militias were almost entirely responsible for ISIS’ defeat.

Also on Syria, Trump appeared to endorse what is being reported as a deal between Russia and Israel in which Israel would accept Bashar al-Assad remaining as Syrian president, while Russia would work on Iran to get it to remove its forces away from the northern Golan Heights, which Israel illegally considers its border with Syria.

After a meeting in Moscow last week with Putin, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he accepted Assad remaining in power.

“President Putin also is helping Israel,” Trump said at the press conference. “We both spoke with Bibi Netanyahu. They would like to do certain things with respect to Syria, having to do with the safety of Israel. In that respect, we absolutely would like to work in order to help Israel. Israel will be working with us. So both countries would work jointly.”

Trump also said that the U.S. and Russian militaries were coordinating in Syria, but he did not go as far as saying that they had agreed to fight together there, which has been a longstanding proposal of Putin’s dating back to September 2015, just before Moscow intervened militarily in the country.

“Our militaries have gotten along probably better than our political leaders for years,” Trump said. “Our militaries do get along very well. They do coordinate in Syria and other places.”

Trump said Russia and the U.S. should cooperate in humanitarian assistance in Syria.

“If we can do something to help the people of Syria get back into some form of shelter and on a humanitarian basis…that’s what the word was, a humanitarian basis,” he said. “I think both of us would be very interested in doing that.”

Putin said he had agreed on Sunday with French President Emmanuel Macron on a joint effort with Europe to deliver humanitarian aid. “On our behalf, we will provide military cargo aircraft to deliver humanitarian cargo. Today, I brought up this issue with President Trump. I think there’s plenty of things to look into,” Putin said.

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Sunday Times of London and numerous other newspapers. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe .

We’re Back

After a 12-month hiatus from publishing, we are excited to announce the return of The Rant Foundry to our readers and the world at large.

We return armed with new skills – lead journalist Brendan Hay has both completed Diplomas in Journalism, Data Journalism & Media Standards, and editor JF Dowsett has recently completed a course in Digital Network Security.

We didn’t, however, take a break from writing and research. Many events of a geopolitical nature have taken place in the last year, and reporting on these events and the impact they have on the lives of ordinary people around the world remains as imperative as ever.

As more important political and social events take place in and arond the world of cyberspace, we believe it is critical to cut through corporate, technical, and political spin to examine as best we can the reality.

As Russia, Iran, China and other rising threats to the Western global hegemon come under further political, economic and even digital sanctions and attacks, we find ourselves in a new Cold War, with the spectre of nuclear war and global internet hacking that could both spell disaster for much of the world’s population, it is clear we in the West have a responsibility to stand for the truth, and place ourselves on the right side of history.