Welcome to the Davos Agenda, I'm Tanya Briar and I'm thrilled to be joined by the Crystal Award winner 2021 and the world-renowned photographer, Sebastio Salgado, for an insight and conversation into his fascinating life. Sebastio, thank you so much for joining me today. Many congratulations on winning the Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum. How does that make you feel you've won so many awards in your life? Thank you Tanya. I quite have, this award has a meaning because it's placed in the center of the decisions of the planet and I have a hope that all these dignitaries that come for this meeting, they can hear a little bit the people that are concerned with this award and our preoccupation, a way of life and the impact that in my case these pictures can made to the people that look into them. You see we are all together fighting for a better life, for a better way of life, for the respect to other the people that have no protection. I'm quite happy to receive this award in this sense. Of course you've been documenting a very fast changing planet for decades now. We're in the middle of the global pandemic, what is that like for you Sebastio? Could you ever have imagined anything like this? No, no, no, no. It's simply imagine something like that. I believe for our generation. My generation belongs to me because most probably the generation that lived the Second World War, the generation that lived before all this huge disease in 1918, the Spanish fever that came around the world yes was possible then to imagine, but for us it was impossible. We were no one who were expecting this and it's a special moment because the planet will not change. The planet has changed. We are living a different moment now. Everything in this planet has changed and I have a big hope that we will bring, this moment will bring us toward the essential in this planet and what is essential in this planet is to live a better life, to have a nice relation inside our community of humans, have a sense of solidarity and if we can reach something in that direction I believe that would be very important because we are paying a very high tribute. How has it impacted you personally and also your home country of Brazil? Me personally impact a lot because my life in the last 50 years was moving this planet. I was recording what I believe that was essential. Let's say I was navigating in the up of the wave of the history and after one year I don't navigate more. I'm here trying to protect myself because I will be completing now in February 77 years old. I'm a bigger, my age is in a big danger, the group of my age. I'm here with my wife that has 74 years old and we are paying a lot of attention. I was working hard in Amazonia. I worked hard with the Indian communities in the last seven, eight years. I prepare a big board of work. We'll be having quite large ambitions and books come out now in 2021 about the Indian communities and about the Amazonian in general. I had a big chance. I had to finish my shooting in Amazonia. I had just one store more to go that was impossible to me to do because of the COVID. I used this about one year that I stopped now to edit. My wife designed all my books. She designed the books. She designed the shows and we use our time. But you see, I had many years of split in my life with the Indian communities and all the tribes, they become very close, become very friends and they are living a danger much bigger than ours because they have no antibody. They have no protection for the diseases coming outside of the forest and was necessary to fight very hard this last year, mostly in the beginning of the disease in order to try to protect the tribes to create a kind of sanitary belt toward the Amazonian forest to protect these communities. This is a big occupation. We lose a lot of Indians in the Amazonian forest. But after a while, it seems that the things are going a little bit better. They are a little bit more isolated. That was my most important preoccupation in the disease was fighting directly protection of these communities. Because you led a global petition and wrote to the president Bolsonaro to try and help the indigenous people, why do you think that it took people like yourself to push the government? I have no power at all. I'm just a photographer. And what with my wife, we did, we create one manifest, not exactly towards only the president of Bolsonaro, towards the three powers in Brazil, the judiciary, the legislative and the executive powers in Brazil. And we arrived at the 1067 senior children, very important people around this planet, and that create a huge impact in Brazil. And we had a very nice reply from the judiciary power in Brazil. The judiciary responded to our demand and we acted together. That was very, very important. The results that we have linked together with all the indigenous association and a lot of goodwill people that had the same preoccupation, we had a very, very, very big impact inside Brazil with this. And of course, you say you're only a photographer, but you're one of the most celebrated and renowned around the world, Sebastião. Can you just take me back to your upbringing in Brazil? And when you decided that that's what you wanted to do? Because I believe you started out in a life of economics. Yes. When we leave Brazil in 1969, we fly in the decade of the ship in Brazil. My wife and myself was necessary to leave Brazil. We were very young. I was just 25 years old. My wife, 23 years old. I had a finish on master degrees in the University of São Paulo in Brazil. And I came to Paris, to France to prepare a PhD in economics. I prepared the theoretical part of this studies and I went to work as an economist in an international organization. And from there, that I discovered photography and I jumped from economics to photography. Economy gave me a fabulous base, a fabulous tool of analysis to understand my planet, to understand the society that impact of it. And in these years that I start photography, in reality, I start photography in 1972. And all these years, my photography was in coordination with our history. And I do not choose to do this was instinctively. And today, looking back, I see that I had a big chance to be linked very close to the historical moment that I live. And my photography represents a little bit of this. What sort of values did your parents instill on you growing up in the farm area in Brazil? Do you think that's come traveled with you as you've progressed in your life and how it's influenced you? We photograph with our heritage in aspects of the heritage. For example, my stethical heritage, my lines, my compositions came from these lines from the farm that I born in Brazil was in the area. My father had a big farm in Brazil. And I were in the deep high land of this farm, looking at the arrival of the rain season with this amazing clouds, this amazing tropical rent, and all these lines stays inside me. I came from the most baroque state of Brazil that the state of Minas Gerais, the Portuguese baroque in reality born there.  And this is part of my heritage. I am part of this generation that's the fifth big group that walked to the town when I born the Brazilians, leaving the fields for 92%. Today we are about 90, 92% humans. We made a reversion of the model in Brazil. And part of this first generation that abandoned the fields, went to the towns, made the studies to live in another way. And that for me was very important and leave this whole conflict in Brazil. This coup d'etat in 1964, all this new repression, being a refugee in France. And till now I'm a migrant. And all these together built my way of seeing my ideology and link with my way to see my aesthetics because photography is a completely esthetical language. And all these together made the the the the board of work that I work all my life long. And of course you talk about your wife Leylia who's been with you from the start of your career and has been a partner to you in everything you were talking about how she does your books with you. How important is that relationship? How important has that been for you from the start, Sebastia? Probably the most important thing that ever happened in my life is the day that I met Leylia. We met in 1964. We are together after this moment. And we were very young. I was saying not 20 years old yet. Leylia was just the end of the 16th. And we are together till now. We built a life together. We had many different experiences as refugees. As students I made my studies in economy Leylia is an architect. And we were to get in group of studies, especially here in the universe of Paris.  We have a Down syndrome kid. This Down syndrome kid made a huge construction in our life. He built a lot of different ways to participate in the society, to see the society. My wife, after she abandoned architecture, she came to photography. And she designed all my books. She designed all my shows. We created an environmental project together in Brazil, Instituto Terra in Brazil is today most probably one of the biggest environmental institution in Brazil that planted trees. We planted in our space today more than 3 million trees of more than 300 different species. We are building now the end of the construction of this kind of national park that we create in the old farm of my parents that we transform it in a national park. And it's then that we plant all these trees. And now we started to plant 1 million trees again. But these trees that we're planting now is the one that we stay for 1 million years. For more than this. Because it's the trees that arrived in the end in the forest. We built a forest to wait the reception of these trees that we are planting now. And that was fabulous. We create a water program in our valley. Our valley in Brazil is about as big as Portugal. And we are rebuilding the system of water in this valley. It is next 40, 50 years. Of course, we'll be no more there. But the institution we go, we'll be planting more than 150 million trees to recuperate all the source of water of our valley. We'll rebuild the water system of our valley. And this we do together with Lele. We create a group in Brazil. It's a big group. A very nice group. And everything in the life we did together and we keep going. It's an incredible achievement what you've done with these trees. And as you say, they will last for beyond your years. But it's also the same with photographs, isn't it, Sebastião? And how that they will last too. What do you think makes a great photograph? Well, there is many different kinds of photography. I can say one of my kind of photography. That's human photography. That's environmental photography. You see, in reality, we do not really made these photographers. We receive these photographers. It's dependent of the way that we have a relation, more nice or more strong, more tight with the community that we have become to work with than that you receive the more strong photographers. You must have a very big identification with the history that we do. In photography, you can photograph only stories that will have a big identification with them to be comfortable there, to stay long time. My stories took a long time. I just finished Amazonian project that I spent about seven years in Amazonian photographing. I did before that a story called Genesis about environmental in the planet, what they spend eight years traveling all over the planet. You see, but if you are not in love with the planet, if you are not in love of the Indian communities, you cannot be there because if it's not your story, you cannot do it. But if it is your story, you are part of it. And photography is it. Photography is just a mirror of the society that you are part of. Well, you're also, of course, very well known for your striking monochrome images. How did you come to capture life in that way more in black and white, Sebastian? Well, for me, it was very difficult, always to photograph in color. I love the color photography. I have a very nice, good friends sort of that do amazing color photography, but not me. Me, when I went to photograph, when I'd be photographed something with strong colors as blue, as red, as green, and always I knew that the moment to have the photographic back, these colors, we'd be having a very important impact, visual impact in the image. And for me, it was so disturbing.  But for me, going inside this abstraction was possible to transform all colors in different kind of grays. And with this kind of grays was supposed to me to concentrate totally in the subject, in the personality, in the dignity of the people that was photographing, and was for me much more easy. You're often described as a social photographer, but how would you describe yourself? No, I'm not a social photographer. I'm not a former economist photographer. I'm not a photoreporter. Photography is my way of life.  Everything that I do is linked with photography. My wife came inside photography, and I walk in photography all day longer. Now we are preparing these Amazonian books after one year, and back there inside Amazon, just look in my picture, just editing them, that's what's in Peyton, and then preparing the shows. You see, photography is a very powerful language. Just for all these languages that we have that represent the reality, all two languages don't need any translation. That is music and photography. Photography is something very powerful.  You say, no, I am a photographer. It's a privilege to be a photographer. Photography brings you there. Photography drives you in the most important months of the life of this society that you are part of.  When we have one photography, this photography has all of this inside. It's not used to do a good photography.  How difficult is it sometimes, though, to gain the trust of the subjects, of those that you photograph, and what have been some of your biggest challenges that you can think of so far? Well, probably the biggest challenge that I have in all my life longer is when, in the 90s, I was built on a story about the migration. Because I'm a migrant, I'm a refugee, a story that took me about seven years to photograph the displaced population around the world. And the most difficult months in my life, I live in the former Yugoslavia. I live in the genocide in Rwanda when I lose the hope about my humankind, my peace. In this moment, I was 100% sure that you had, as a space, right to survive. We are so violent. I saw so dramatic moments in my life. I saw so many people die and die by the violence of the others. And that, for me, was very difficult, very, very difficult. In this moment, I was about to abandon photography because I had no more wish to photograph. I abandoned everything. I went back to Brazil. It was exactly this moment that my parents become old. They gave this land to me and to Lele, and that we transformed this land in a national park and we planted forests there. And see these trees grow, better, taking care of my health. These trees was the medicine that I get to become back, to photography, to become back to life. But as you say, you've witnessed some of the worst kinds of worst human atrocities. Did you want to be there and document it to make a difference in the world, to bring the world's attention to them? When you do these stories, you don't do alone these stories.  And when I was photographing Rwanda, I were not alone. I had a big group of my friend, Photox, a lot of cameramen and a lot of journalists.  And it's where we are till now. I am now becoming old. And just after the presentation of this big show that we're preparing about Amazonian, I'll be about 80 years old, probably, I'll be too old to go. But that is a replacement generation that is there, walking the same way that I did. And this we continue. This is a need of our society. As I said a few minutes ago, photography is the mirror of the society. And these young photographers, like me, I wear 50 years ago, they are going to do what I did 50 years ago. They will be doing it for me. Sebastian, was it ever difficult when you were photographing these atrocities? Was it sometimes hard to stand back and look through the lens at what you were witnessing? You see, it's very difficult for a photographer. Photographer walks alone. When you are there, you are with yourself, with what you have inside your mind, with your cameras, and some things you don't photograph, some things so hard, that's better to get your cameras put in the ground and cry because it's very difficult, very difficult moments. Some moments you must photograph because you must show what's happening that the things don't have no more. Sometimes people come to your camera like they were come to speak on a microphone. They come to speak to your lens, ask you to do the photograph. I was with big groups of refugees in Africa in many different spaces, many different points in photography, but always alone. In this moment, you need to have a concept, your personal concept of ethics. And what is ethics? Ethics is one for you. It's one different for me, for different for other persons. And in these moments, you must choose what to do, what not to do. It's very difficult, it's very hard for a photographer. It's because this was, I said to you a few minutes ago, I become sick. I was completely sick, it was necessary for me to abandon because I start to die in function of all these violence that they saw enough. And you did go home, as you said, and that's when you created the Instituto Terra organization. And you've told us about what, how the trees will, will make a difference. What else do you want that legacy to be from the planting and replanting? What hope do you have for that? See, when you go to a project like this, you have nothing in mind than plant and trees. We weren't semi-not ecologists. We're just normal people that receive a slice of land, one dead land because the erosion was there also. And I said to Leila, Leila, I will abandon photography. What do you do with this land? And Leila had had the idea, she said about why you do not plant the forest that was here before. She said, why not? That's a fabulous idea. And we started to plant the forest, not just to plant a forest, but planting a forest. You discover that you are creating amazing technology because we had no technology to plant in large scale, the rainforest. We were having this, building this technology. To build this technology was necessary to build a huge nursery. We create one of the biggest nursery of native plants in Brazil. And it was necessary to have technicians in order to build this forest. We create a small school of technicians. And we start, I had a small name in photography. I started to turn in all this planet, apply for money. We are not rich. I'm just a photographer. My wife is just a designer. And we raise money. And we start, we plant it. And today, when we look, we have an amazing forest with monkeys, with jaguars, with more than 170 different pieces of birds. And we have nothing in place, but just a soil with grass for cattle. And today is a fabulous rainforest on it.  The things appear with evolution. Build one was necessary to solidificate, to build again, and build again. In a moment, we had something built around that had some sense, some meanings. We had a forest, we had a school, we have a nursery, we have a program to rehabilitation of a full valley.  That is the evolution, that is the story of humanity. What is the story of the humanity? It's the dreamers. The dreamers that materialize, and from this materialized dream, you have a dream again, and you build over a dream, and that is happening, and that keeps going like this. How proud do you think your parents would have been if they could see what it is today? That's a very special question, Tanya, because when I started photography, my father was very upset, and he said to me, Sebastian, to be a photographer was not necessary to go out from here, to make all these studies, go to bars, you stay here and work with local photography in our small town, you'd be a photographer close to us, but slowly by slowly he understand that photography was not just that of a small photography inside a small town in the interior of Brazil. And when we had the land, and we started to plant the forest, my father was also very upset, because the big farmer was supposed to have to us to have thousands of head of cattle, and we abandoned his idea, we get to this land, we created one non-governmental organization, and we gave the land for the non-governmental organization. The land is not ours, and my father was very upset, but when he was really very old, about to die, he came to Lela and me, like guys, you were right. The only thing that was supposed to grow here in this dead soil was the native trees that were here before, and he saw the trees small. I believe that now he'll be very proud to see a fabulous forest in place, what were just a cattle station. And how do you think your years of photographing what you have have changed you or shaped you as a person? You've said and you've talked about that very challenging time when you got sick and you went home, but what other instances, how have they shaped you? You see, we change nothing with what we do.  I believe that my photography is with your text, with your journalism, with the other photographers, with the other writers, with the non-governmental organizations, with all the humanitarian organizations, we participate in a movement. I don't believe that my photography is alone, change anything, but together, they added to change something, I'm sure. And what advice do you have for the next generation? Of course we have mobile phone cameras, now social media, and technology that's changed the way of photography. See, not only for photography, for any kind of things in the life, we are a Gregorian species. We are made to live in group. And the most important concept inside the group is the community, the sense of the community. We are part of a community in solidarity. In any kind of job that we do, any kind of creation that we do, these two variables are the most important side of this model of life, is community in solidarity. And with everything that you've seen so far, do you remain optimistic for our planet? Well, it's very hard to say that I remain optimistic. I saw so many degradation, I saw so many violence. That is very difficult to be optimistic. But to be coherent with all other species, that we are just one species between thousands, probably millions of different species, and that we must accommodate ourselves inside this huge community that is our planet. And if you understand this, we be possible to us to survive as a species. And I have a big hope that we go in that direction, that we can evolve in the direction that we can integrate to our planet. The contrary, the planet we push us out of it. We become just an alien. Like we become to be, we are all humans now. You humans, you live in London, we live in Paris, others live in New York. We are not living in our planet. We are living longer in Paris and New York. We don't understand our system of waters. We don't understand our mountains. We don't understand our jungles.  Not that we believe in our planet, but spiritually, we must go back to the planet and be part of it. Do you think the pandemic will help with that in a way? It'll make humans think about resetting what is important?  And essential is not to have a big account in a bank, to have a big account. Essential is to love each other, is to be close of each other, is to be part of this huge human community. And looking back now, what do you think has been your proudest achievement so far? Probably the biggest achievement that I did in all my life long was to love my wife. Loving my wife was possible to me to build anything that I wish in my life. And I believe that it is. And just finally, what would you like your legacy to be? You see, I don't believe in legacy. I don't believe in legacy. Legacy exists after that you are no more here. And legacy is not you that built. It's the people that built for you. We are not here to build a legacy.  And that's it, no more than that. The day that we disappear, we disappear. Other generations come to build other things. But my hope is that what we built, others continue to build and that we can construct a best way to live together. Sebastián Sargada, thank you so much for joining us on the Davos Agenda and many congratulations on winning the Crystal Award. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you very much and it was my pleasure to be here.


Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii and It Never Got Quiet. This is a half hour program that explores the Hawaiian connection with the Vietnam War. I'm your host, Vic Kraft. Our guest today is Tom Sterling. Tom went on active duty with the U.S. Army in 1964 as an intelligence officer. He served several positions while in country, beginning with General Westmoreland's staff at Military Assistance Command Vietnam in Saigon. He then assumed post at division level, traveling the length and breadth of the Central Highlands with the 4th Infantry Division. He had a wide variety of tasks that took in the larger picture of the war from the geopolitical aspects to confronting its results in the field. Tom left active duty and returned to Cornell University to complete his law degree. He did, however, remain in the Army Reserves retiring in 1996. Tom took up law practice in Hawaii in 1970, ultimately specializing in mediation, financial planning and premarital arrangements. He has been listed in the Best Lawyers in America and Hawaii's top lawyers for many years running. Tom belongs to several volunteer organizations, most notably the Vietnam Veteran Leadership Program, Hawaii, where he has been the acting chairman since 1986. Welcome in Aloha, Tom. Welcome. I could go on to accomplishments, but you've captivated me with some of the writings that you have sent me. One in particular, or actually two in particular, was one was called Fixes, the other one was called Snapshots. I'd like to talk about Fixes for just a second. You talk about the changes that are occurring within the personnel. In the intelligence community, I imagine that had quite an effect as far as having some kind of corporate or tribal memory in dealing with the intelligence that was being gathered. Did that affect the quality of the data that was being collected? Oh, sure. By the way, this problem was not germane just to the intelligence community. It's been said that we did not have 14 or 15 years of experience in Vietnam. We had one year of experience 15 times because there was such a turnover of personnel there. Very few of us went over as groups together as a cohesive unit. We were almost all of us replacements, and we would take over a job that somebody else had had and try to pick up the pieces and learn what he had learned, maybe without even talking to him because he may have left before you got there. There was very little opportunities for transition. I think where there were opportunities for transition, it was very helpful. I was faced with a whole bunch of written reports that I knew very little about and had to get up to speed on in a hurry. We had two, and there were new reports coming in every day. It was a mass management exercise among other things and burning and shredding and destroying stuff that we didn't need anymore and trying to isolate stuff that even though it may have been a report from six months or a year ago, may still have some value today. That was a fair amount of what I did. Who prepared these reports? Was this stuff coming from the divisions? It was coming up from lower levels of division, it was coming down from very high level operations. A lot of it in my very closed area was from CIA, NSA, DIA, all of the letter organizations. A lot of it had to do with intercepted message transmission and satellite photography and things that were very close hold, at least the results of it. As well as the product of the divisions, it was called Radio Research Company, actually it was the National Security Agency operating under a cover named it, trying to avoid attention to it. That's a lot of what we did, actually, was try to avoid our attention to ourselves. Kind of reminds me of the saying, what is the meaning of all this significance?  Well, that's what intelligence officers are for. They're supposed to cut through the wheat and the chaff and identify what's important, what's not important, identify trends, identify tendencies. In my case, I made it a private project of my own to try to assemble all the information I could about where the same enemy units we were facing had done a year ago during the rainy season, because we were just about to start another rainy season, and I thought, especially because how the rain affects the terrain up there, that it would be good for the 4th Division of Intelligence staff to know what had happened a year ago. I remember you said that you were briefing West Marlin briefly. Well, I was a glorified messenger boy. I was taking a briefcase with very high-level stuff, including personal messages from high-ranking people like the Secretary of Defense and the Chief of Staff of the Army, and some officer in our Specialized Unit had to read it, make sure the margins were correct. There were no typos. As a junior officer, that was me. So I was at risk of having a big head very soon because I was always the first guy in his office every morning for six weeks, not because I was important, of course, but because what I carried was very important. That could be helpful in career advancement, though. Yeah, as long as you didn't screw up, which as far as I know I didn't, with one noticeable exception, one morning I went in his office and I didn't notice that somebody had put a captured AK-47 against the wall, maybe as a trophy for him, and after my chores with him were done I was in such a hurry to get out that I spun out of my chair, went to the door, and kicked over the AK-47 so it was bouncing on the floor with the business end pointing right at him, and I was thinking, oh, God, it's a good thing this wasn't loaded, and I could imagine the headlines in the New York Times the next day. Westmoreland slain gunned down an own office by clumsy lieutenant, so other than that I think it was okay. Are you sure that wasn't the reason why you were sent to division level? I can't be sure of anything, Vic, but it was time for me, that was actually a training portion for me for the first six weeks to learn what the special security detachment did and how they did it so that I could apply those skills to a unit in the field. We had special security detachment had units at all the major headquarters down to division level, and at division level where I was we also supported brigade headquarters and the advisory group at Two Core in Placo city, and we had liaison with special forces intelligence people also. Just thinking, going up into the Highlands, again having this knowledge of what you were looking at from a, as you said, a 30,000 foot level, now you're coming down to a lower altitude and trying to make sense of the data that you're receiving from the field and what you're going to pass on up to McVee at that point. I mean, you're now acting as the sensor in a way. Did you feel that perhaps maybe the information that was being passed to McVee headquarters from the other units was, did it have the quality that it needed to have to make good decisions? Hard to tell. It was, there was pressure, well you're talking about I think more the operational communications than the intelligence communications. There was always pressure on those in the field to send good news up the line to the higher ups and people are human, they try to put a good face on it where they could. The officers I admire most were the ones who didn't try to do that, they tried to tell it the way it was. Westmoreland himself was not above trying to make things look better than they really were. I think it has been said that we had probably killed the entire population of Southeast Asia several times over with the amount of ordnance that we dropped on the place. Well, a lot of, yeah, we just don't know. I mean, the whole idea of body count was not the way to manage the war. We didn't know nearly enough about the culture of that country as we should have a problem repeated in Iraq and Afghanistan. Correct. Yeah. And it's, there are some who speak the language who know the culture but not nearly enough of us were. I didn't. I spoke a little French but that didn't help much in my relationship with the Vietnamese. Makes you kind of wonder in terms of objectives, you're looking at the first-hand results of what we're doing there and receiving this information from the field and the higher ups trying to make decisions as to where we're going to go next. And yet there is this political pressure to do something and the idea was we were supposed to be there to prevent the North from taking over the South. It was of course supposedly us against the communists but I think at a personal level it got a little more than that. We don't look at it that way today. It was very personal which gets us into the next essay that you did which was snapshots and I'll go into that with you after we have our break because I think it's a very poignant essay. But I'm thinking of the quality of the information that made these decisions and how much of that was just overshadowed by the political decisions. Did you see that a lot or? Well the political decisions, I saw some of the high level communications about it. There were suggestions that we should take the war into Cambodia and Laos long before we actually did and the high level was absolutely no and from a tactical point of view it would have made sense to have these cross border operations. I mean there were a number of low level not supposed to know about it cross border operations but to go there in force would have been a good tactical move but I'd leave it to smarter people than me to figure out whether it was a good strategic move. If you want to think real, real strategically one of the best things that happened in the Vietnam war is that we did not get into another war with China or the Soviet Union. We came close and if we had pushed it who knows what would have happened. I am to this day very sad that we were not able to achieve what we wanted to do in Vietnam. I feel like a lot of others do that maybe we could have been better somehow but I don't know if we could have sustained a win in Vietnam. I just don't know and I don't think anybody knows the way we were able to in Korea after that war. We'll take a break here for a minute and hear some messages and we'll be right back with Tom Sterling. Hello everyone I'm DeSoto Brown the co-host of Human Humane Architecture which is seen on Think Tech Hawaii every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. And with the show's host Martin Despeng we discuss architecture here in the Hawaiian Islands and how it not only affects the way we live but other aspects of our life not only here in Hawaii but internationally as well. So join us for Human Humane Architecture every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. But I have a story and I don't know where to start. I feel alone in a crowd. I can't sleep. I feel overwhelmed. I don't even know who I am anymore. I still have nightmares. I can't live like this anymore. I'm really not so good but are you ready to listen? Thank you for joining us. We were talking about some of the essays that our guest Tom Sterling has written. The other more poignant essays, snapshots deals with a more serious and personal struggle I'd like to read from that essay. It had been raining earlier. Random puddles littered the fire base. Soon to be replenished by the dark clouds off to the west. The rainy season had come to the central Highlands. I'd been with the 4th Infantry Division in the Highlands for several months and had made scores of helicopter flights around its area of operation. The sounds were now so commonplace as to be hardly noticeable. I thought I'd heard all the variations. But a new sound suddenly registered, different, off the scale. I could swear I actually felt it before I heard it. A deep rumble, urgent, demanding. I looked for the source but I didn't see it. The approaching noise seemed louder than necessary. The Huey that soon appeared came in faster than any I had ever seen. The pilot was really driving the bird, foot to the floor. He banked it hard, his rotor's almost perpendicular to the ground, then straightened out, flared like a cowboy on a horse, and eased down into some open space, engines still roaring. A few men ran toward it, but what I noticed more were those who weren't. They were briskly but unexcitedly getting ready for tasks at hand. I found myself moving toward the roaring helicopter. I knew instinctively what its cargo was. I felt I had to do something, but I didn't know what. The memories of what followed didn't return until about 19 years later. Never completely out of mind, just unfocused, hidden, put away in the attic. Then one day the unexpectedly came tumbling out. July 4th, 1986 was an exceptionally bright, warm summer day. I was alone in a cottage in Honolulu, drinking coffee and watching today on NBC. Bryant Gumbel and Jane Polly were broadcasting from an outside location, somewhere looking out on New York Harbor, chatting amably about the rededication of the recently restored Statue of Liberty. The harbor was full of anchored warships and parade of tall sailing ships from many nations. After a station break, they cut to Willard Scott, who was standing by at the Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C. The U.S. Marine Corps silent drill team was performing an impossibly precise manual of arms with shining rifles, fairly bursting with pride and professionalism. I watched with rapt approval, marveling at their skill, and savoring the surge of patriotic feelings. But then I began to notice a counter surge and unexpected emotional cross-current. There was something about watching these parading young warriors that was bothering me. Something felt dimly wrong here as if had forgotten the real reason why such young men are put in uniform and given weapons, not for parades. That's not it. My stomach was going tight on me, maybe it was the coffee, and some long-stored stuff was starting to stir in my attic. I went to the bathroom, sat down, closed my eyes, and unexpectedly clicked into a long-impacted, suddenly vivid memory. I started crying, not just soft-weaving, but spring-loaded, unhinged, free-fall sobbing. I was suddenly back in a faraway, unsunny place. A helicopter was roaring. I was with a different group of young troops, without any bright weapons or colorful uniforms. They wore muddy, tattered, gray-green jungle fatigues. There was nothing precise about them as they came off that helicopter. Some were on stretchers, several were carried individually. None could walk, most were barely conscious. All of them had recently been punctured by one or more pieces of high-velocity metal. They each had tags attached as if they were on consignment. The tags would have been filled out by the field medics, alerting the triagers to the not always obvious wounds and doses of morphines already applied. Every of them were laid out on stretchers, just above the mud, while their helpers tried to shield them from the stuff being blown by the helicopter's propwash. One had a chaplain for a shield giving him last rights. I instinctively started taking pictures, just for snapshots before a wave of shame hit me. What was I doing being a recorder instead of a participant? I was stunned, frozen. I was there but not there, with them but unconnected. What could I do? There's got to be something I could do, but there wasn't really. The medics and the docs had evidently done this before and were efficiently doing all they could be done for these young men. I remember going to one of the wounded who was sitting silently against the surgeon's bunker. He had taken a single round through his leg, dazed and medicated. He'd been triaged and left to wait while the more seriously wounded were treated. I tried to converse with him, seeking elusive words of comfort and support. Whatever it was, came out lame and useless. He didn't seem to want any of it. He just slumped there, holding his head in his hand, trying to wish away the pain and be somewhere else. Tom, I want to thank you for sharing that with us. That had to have been a deeply emotional piece of writing and it's not very easy in our society to share those kinds of feelings. But it's, I don't know, we all have those feelings. One of the things that you pointed out at the tail end of this essay was you felt the responsibility or possibly a responsibility for supplying information that got these guys into this jam. All I could offer you is that you were doing your job just like the rest of us. So, I don't know really what to say other than thank you for your job, but these guys, we don't know what happened to them, and I know we don't. There are times that I read that again and I still cry. And there's no explaining it, it just is. And I thank you for your comment that I was doing my job, just doing my job, I know. But there's, it may have been no connection at all with them. But one of the things about the Vietnam experience, there's a lot of things we don't know and we just have to hang out with the not knowing. And that's not always easy. And, yeah, I don't know what happened to those guys. They were, they had gotten to the age station. The guys there knew what they were doing. The chances are very good they survived, but not certain. We'll never know. So, yeah, that's.  Do you feel that your sense of compassion kind of led you into mediation or? Maybe, that's in lawyer terms, objection. Assuming fact, not in evidence that I have compassion. I like to think so, but it's, as a practicing lawyer, toward the end of my trial career, more and more my cases went to mediation. And I really enjoyed resolving cases that way better than going to trial. And so I became a mediator myself.  There's never any guarantee that we can help people solve their problems, but there's a high rate of success at it. And even if there's no resolution or only a partial resolution, people who are in the process, frequently say how glad they were that they simply had to go at the process. And that maybe their relationship with one or more adversaries has gotten better, even though they still don't agree on everything. So yeah, mediation is something I've been very blessed to be a part of for the last nine years. That's great. That's great. Given your experience, especially the one that we just related, is there any advice that you would give to the returning vets? Yeah, keep in touch with each other. Be open to talking with people, whether they're vets or not, who are good listeners, who are willing to hear you out. I think one of the things I remember after I came back was a lot of people asked me, how are you, how was it? But somehow they weren't, by nature, put together to really stick around for the answer that might be longer than they had anticipated. And so other veterans may not be trained mediators or even trained listeners, but they're the ones that they should all keep in touch with. And veterans, I can't speak for all of them, of course, but by nature are inclined to listen to other veterans. And especially, as we've talked about, there are vet centers here that are made up of veteran counselors or counselors who are veterans or counselors who understand veterans. These are amazing resources for anybody that's come back from a war and has any thought at all that maybe something isn't quite right here or I can't put my finger on it. And it's not required that you be articulate about it. All it's required is you be willing to give it a go, give it a share, find somebody who will listen. That's all I can think of for other veterans. Well, I want to thank you for what you've done as far as our celebration of Christmas Eve, because it's the only date that we really have to celebrate, because we all remember where we were in Vietnam on our own New Year's Eve. You're talking about the 23 December event? Yes. Let me say a few things about that. This year will be the 23rd year that we've had a very informal gathering of Vietnam veterans and their families. On the capital lawn by the Korea Vietnam Memorial starts at 2,300 on the 23rd. That's 11 o'clock at night. That's a teaching aid for those of us who can't remember things. And the reason we do it on the night of the 23rd is because Vietnam veterans don't have any date that associates with our war. There's no December 7 or November 11. But all of us, as you suggested, that we're served over there, remember where we were on Christmas Eve and who we were with and where we were. And on 23rd, here in Hawaii, across the dateline in Vietnam, it's already Christmas Eve. So it's literally and figuratively going back there. Those of us who associate together are in some ways stand-ins for those that we serve with. Yes. And nothing is required of anybody who comes. Just show up and be respectful to others. Thanks, Tom. I promised I wouldn't make any lawyer jokes during this show, but I have to leave with this idea as far as military intelligence either being oxymoronic or mutually exclusive. We would love to have some feedback. We are also looking for people to interview. If you have some comments or would like to appear on the program, please send us an email at 808-VietnamVets at gmail.com. I would like to thank the staff here at Think Tech of Hawaii and for all their support and assistance. Truly without them, this program would not be possible. Please come back again next week for another issue of It Never Got Quiet. Mahalo.


This channel supports The Finest, a GI Joe costume club in their charity campaign benefiting canines for warriors. They have an Indiegogo page for it that is active right now. You can get some perks like a calendar, a t-shirt, and more. You can also have the satisfaction of helping veterans and rescue dogs. Let's help them reach their goal. If you can make a charitable donation, go to the link in the description of this video and contribute. Hello everybody, HoodedCobraCommander788 here. It's time for another vintage GI Joe Toy review.  Eric Amon has added his support on Patreon. You may not know this, but I have a brother named Eric. This guy. Look at that, yes. Whenever I hear the name Eric, I think of my bro. So Eric, your code name is EbroHeman. Thank you for your support. You have the power. Drug Elimination Force is a peculiar subset of GI Joe. The concept is kind of crazy and a bit of a departure from GI Joe's primary mission. They didn't fight Cobra. They fought against evil drug dealers. It was an attempt to tackle a real world problem. Now that's not a bad thing. I'm sure Nancy Reagan would have approved. But it is a relic of the 90s. The message doesn't resonate the same way with modern audiences. DEF had some good figures though. This week we're going to look at one and we're going straight to the top. Last time we looked at DEF, we looked at the head bad guy. This time we're going to look at the DEF leader. I'm reviewing two versions of Bulletproof 1992 and 1993. In 1993 Hasbro reissued the same Bulletproof figure with very slight differences. Since they are so similar, I wanted to look at both of them in one video. Let's say no to drugs and yes to a figure that brought the power of GI Joe against the evil forces of Headman. HCC788 presents Bulletproof. This is Bulletproof. We have two versions of Bulletproof here. Version 1 from 1992 was part of the Drug Elimination Force subset and he was the DEF leader. Version 2 from 1993 was in the Battlecore series and he was the Urban Commander. Version 2 was intended to be part of the second wave of DEF for 1993, but Hasbro decided to discontinue DEF and roll the figures into the Battlecore series instead. Or was the main line of GI Joe figures that year. These two versions of Bulletproof were the only versions in the vintage era. The Drug Elimination Force was Hasbro's attempt to add a social consciousness to the GI Joe line. I don't have a problem with that in principle. I don't even have a problem with the execution part of the time. We got some good figures out of DEF. The public discourse about drugs and the law enforcement issues surrounding them has changed since 1992. That's the biggest problem with DEF, not that they tried to tackle a real social problem, but that it now seems very dated and antiquated. DEF consisted of four Joes and two bad guys. The Joes didn't fight Cobra, instead they fought against Headman and his headhunters. Bulletproof is the only original character on the Joes side. The other Joes were new versions of older characters, Mut, Cutter and Shockwave. We've already looked at Headman in a full review. I have not done a full review on the headhunters yet. As the leader of the evil drug dealers, Headman is DEF's equivalent to Cobra Commander. Headman is a little comical, but his minions, the headhunters, are awesome figures. Even though DEF did not continue as a team to 1993, Gristle from 1993 would have been a new DEF villain and there was a new version of Headhunters. Contrasting the drug elimination force with the Ecowarriors, the subset that debuted in 1991, I much prefer DEF. Even though the environmental message of the Ecowarriors appeals to me more, I dislike most of the toys. DEF still has its absurd elements, but I like the toys more than Ecowarriors. Bulletproof apparently takes his name from a character from the toy line, Cops. That was another Hasbro toy line that ran from 1988 to 1989. There was an animated series by the same name. Cops and G.I. Joe shared a lot of code names. It's not surprising since Larry Hama wrote the Cops ID cards. Baldwin Bulletproof Vess looks a lot like G.I. Joe's Bulletproof with a similar hairstyle but with a curl in the front. The Cops version of Bulletproof wore sunglasses and had a robotic torso. Other than the code name and superficially similar appearance, there is no other relation between the characters. It seems Hasbro was just borrowing a code name to use in a different toy line, which they did all the time. G.I. Joe characters share names with Transformers, for example. In a previous video, I made the case that the 1992 and 1993 Fireflies should be considered variants, not different versions. For Bulletproof, the case for them being new versions is a little stronger. The differences between the figures are minimal, which would normally suggest they are variants, but they were released on separate cards. Their file cards had different specialties. They had different numbers in the series. The 1993 figure was originally intended to be in the second wave of DEF. If it had been released that way, would I still think they were separate versions? Maybe, but I can't judge a figure based on what the manufacturer didn't do. They didn't release the 1993 figure on the same 1992 DEF card, and they did change the colors, accessories, and file card. In the G.I. Joe Collector's book published by Hasbro in 1993, the 1992 Bulletproof is listed as Federal Marshall, and the 1993 Bulletproof is listed as DEF Commander in parentheses New Colors. This works against the conclusion that he is a new version. Just like they were just reissuing the same figure in different colors. It's a close call, but I'm still going to call these versions not just variations. Let's take a look at our card backs. I have the 1992 DEF card back with the big DEF badge on it. Looks like this was sold at Walmart for $4.97. That's more than the average figure. We have the G.I. Joe logo up here. We have some purple laser lines in the background. Then we have our card art, and this is acceptable. It's pretty typical 1990s card art. Codename is Bulletproof with a hyphen. He is the DEF leader, and in the DEF series, he is number one, as he should be. In the section behind where the figure was packaged, we have some instructions on how to use the battle stand and the missile launcher. Electronic battle flash missile launcher. We will check that out later in this video. Flipping the card around, we have a lot. There's just a ton on the back of this card here. We have the other figures in the DEF series up here. Then we have some more G.I. Joe figures that were available at the time in the cross-sell. This does note G.I. Joe is a member of the partnership for a drug-free America. Watch the new adventures of G.I. Joe on TV. That would be the Deke animated series. This is one flag point, and then we have our file card with two segments there. I don't want to dive into it too much. We will take a closer look at the file card later in this video. Now we have the 1993 card, and we are no longer in DEF. Now we are in Battle Core, which was just the main line of G.I. Joe figures starting in 1993. His codename is the same, but now he is the urban commander, and he is number 34 in the Battle Core series. Looks like this was sold at Toys R Us for $3.29, much more reasonable price. We have the same instructions in this area behind where the figure was packaged. This block here is normally where this small parts warning would go. I'm not sure exactly why this is printed down here instead of this spot that's made for it. The card art is exactly the same. Even though the colors on the figure were updated, the colors on the card art were not. Bullet gun shoots. Is that what they're calling the missile launcher now? A bullet gun? Flip this card around to the back, and we have a much more reasonable card back with a cross-sell that included a lot of the other Battle Core figures that were available at the time. An advertisement for a couple of the sub teams here. One flag point, and no more partnership for a drug-free America. So now America, if you want your drugs, have at it. And then of course the file card, and we will take a look at that later. Both of these file cards have lists of the features on the figure and some of the accessories with numbered arrows that point to the features. I don't usually read through those, but I will refer to these lists when I talk about the accessories. Let's talk about those accessories. The accessories between 1992 and 1993 are mostly the same, but there are some differences. And let's start with one thing that I'm missing, which explains why my 1992 figure is not wearing his hat. The first accessory to look at is the helmet. The helmet is green. It kind of looks like a baseball batter's helmet. It is made of soft, flexible plastic, which I think is great. It's easier to fit the helmet on the figure's heads this way. There's a hole on one side of the helmet, and that's because there should be a microphone there. I did have the microphone, but it kind of disappeared on me. It is very tiny and green, and it's very easy to lose. The 1993 figure came with exactly the same helmet and exactly the same microphone. So that shows you exactly what the microphone would have looked like. The difference between these two is that the microphone on the 1993 helmet is glued in. That I think is a fantastic idea. I think they should have glued in all of these microphones. This one cannot fall out and get lost. The next accessory is what the file card refers to as a fully automatic GP-88 field rifle. Both the 1992 and 1993 figure come with exactly the same rifle in exactly the same color. The holds of the 1992 and 1993 submachine guns appear to be the same color at first glance. There might be a slight difference. This is the 1993 submachine gun, and this is the one from 1992. And held together there is maybe a very subtle color difference. I'm not even sure that's coming out well on camera. This looks a lot like a Sterling submachine gun, but the Sterling had the magazine on the side. This is a good accessory. I like it. You might find a real world reference to a GP-88 field rifle. There is a Type 88 rifle, but it is totally different. The next accessory is also exactly the same on the 1992 and 1993 figure, and that is the backpack. The backpack is green, the same color green as the rifle and the helmet. The file card calls this a combat ready backpack with chemical warfare mask. This is a small backpack, maybe too small, but it has some great details.  It's nice to have some details on a GI Joe backpack other than grenades. Again, both the 1992 and 1993 figure have exactly the same backpack. The next accessory shared by both the 1992 and 1993 figure is the figure stand. They both came with a black figure stand, and this is one of the great innovations of the 90s. I will always praise these figure stands. We didn't get nearly enough of them in the 80s. The final accessory is the missile launcher and the missile. Both the 1992 and 93 figure came with a missile launcher and a missile, but they were different, and they were not only different in the color and the type of plastic used. The 1992 missile launcher had a feature the 93 missile launcher did not. It would light up when fired. You don't even need to fire a missile out of it. If you just press down on this trigger, this top barrel will light up. Both the 1992 and 1993 missile launchers share exactly the same mold. They have all the same details. It looks like they are supposed to be held this way with the grip side up and with this arm guard directly behind the grip. I have a hard time getting that to work. I feel if I force it, I will break the action figure's thumbs, so I'm just not going to try it. The 1992 missile launcher is made of this green translucent plastic that so you can see the light up feature. The 1993 missile launcher is made of green opaque plastic and it does not have the light up feature. The electronics are not in there. Both versions came with a single green missile and there seems to be a very slight color difference between 1992 and 1993. This is the 1992 missile and this is the 1993 missile and the 93 missile seems to be very slightly darker. Let's demonstrate firing the missile launcher using the 1992 launcher. They both fire the same way. Press the missile into the lower barrel with the notch side up. Keep pressing until it clicks. Let's test the missile launcher by aiming at our favorite target, Dr. Mindbender. I will test my aim by attempting to hit Dr. Mindbender without hitting bulletproof. The trigger is in the back.  So let's take aim and fire. We did it. Dr. Mindbender is down, but bulletproof is still standing. Let's take a look at the articulation on bulletproof both the 92 and 93 figures have exactly the same articulation. It was standard well before 1992. He could turn his head from left to right and look up and down, swing his arm up at the shoulder and swivel at the shoulder all the way around. He had a hinge at the elbow that allowed him to bend his arm at the elbow about 90 degrees. He had a swivel at the bicep that allowed him to swivel his arm all the way around. This was an O-ring figure, so he had a rubber O-ring that looped around the inside. That allowed him to move it at the torso a bit. He could move his legs apart about so far. He could bend his leg at the hip about 90 degrees and bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's look at the sculpt, design and color of bulletproof. Both the 92 and 93 figures use exactly the same mold. The 1993 figure even still has the 1992 date stamp. There's only one difference I can identify. The 1993 figure uses yellow paint for all of the paint applications on the body. The 1992 figure uses light brown or this might be light enough to call tan. The paint masks on the two figures are the same. They literally just put a different color paint in the sprayer. They are otherwise the same figure. Looking at bulletproof's head, he is an African-American character with black hair and a flat top. It's a good head sculpt, actually like it a lot. That hair is for serious though. Duke and Hawke are sometimes depicted as having flat top hair, but bulletproof really has a tall flat top. It's not quite kid and play tall, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't think there was an influence there. Maybe he's in competition with Grunt for the flattest flat top. Hang on, hang on, oh maybe, maybe, maybe, now it doesn't work but I still had to try. On his chest he has a green uniform with a tan color bandolier that runs over his right shoulder and under his left arm that continues around to the back. On the bandolier he has a pouch and two pineapple grenades. He also has a tan belt that goes around his midsection on his front and lower back. It has minimal detail. Usually belts are sculpted on the waist piece, but I think this looks fine. The file card calls this belt an official Air Force Officer's uniform belt. So is he in the Air Force? Or did he steal it from an Air Force Officer? He also has a digital breakup camouflage pattern all over the chest and back in that same tan color. I'm always happy to see camouflage on a G.I. Joe action figure. His arms feature long green sleeves that same green color is on the chest and that same digital camouflage pattern in that same tan color. And then he has tan gloves with a little extra sculpt detail on them look really great. The waist piece is a little plain in comparison because it doesn't have the belt, but it does have part of the shirt sculpted on with a couple pockets in front and that camouflage pattern in tan. The legs feature that same green uniform color and that same tan camouflage pattern were pretty consistent top to bottom on this figure. He has a tan pocket on the right leg. On the left leg he has a weapon and a holster and there's a strap that goes around his left leg. The file card calls this a 9mm sidearm with tear proof holster. That's pretty hefty for a 9mm. The legs have some fine detail in the sculpting of the seams on the trousers. It's just exceptional attention to detail and we finish with some pretty realistic looking tan boots. This figure looks great. Hasbro definitely cuts some corners and cuts some costs with it. It's mostly made of one color plastic and his accessories are mostly the same color. It only has one paint color on the body, not counting the head. It's quite simple in comparison to 80s figures, but they made the most of their color choices. They made those paint applications count. They chose colors that worked well and made sense. Then there was the 1993 version. All the tan paint is now bright yellow. Why? Even with the yellow it doesn't look terrible, I mean I've seen worse. But it doesn't look as good as the 1992 figure. Let's look at the file cards going in order and starting with the 1992 file card. And this 1992 file card is in two segments. We have a traditional file card here and then we have this lower section. It looks like it's supposed to be cut out separately and this is dedicated to DEF. They are both printed on a purple background, which is the color they chose to distinguish DEF. It's not great, but again I've seen worse. This DEF section has an anti-drug message, real Americans don't do drugs and so on. I don't think most kids kept this section and I don't think most collectors consider it to be part of the file card. Getting to the actual file card we have a copy of the card art from the front with a list of the features. We have a closer portrait of bulletproof here. His codename is bulletproof with a hyphen. He is the DEF leader. His codename is Earl S. Morris. Primary military specialty is DEF leader, okay. Secondary military specialty is federal marshal, so he is a law enforcement officer. Birthplace is Chicago, Illinois. Grade is 04. Vehicle specialty GI Joe AH-74 Desert Apache Pilot. Okay, this is weird. The Desert Apache was released in 1992, the same year as this figure, but it wasn't a DEF vehicle. It wasn't even a mainline GI Joe vehicle. It was part of the Sonic Fighters series. Why was this chosen as his vehicle specialty? There's not even an indication he's a helicopter pilot. This just seems random. We have a quote here presumably from bulletproof himself. It says, I don't believe in any magic charms, I'm just really careful and I practice shooting every day. This paragraph says, bulletproof served in Central America, the Golden Triangle, and the Caribbean as a field officer of the Drug Enforcement Agency before drawing the assignment to head GI Joe's DEF attachment. The Golden Triangle refers to an area where the borders of three Southeast Asian countries converge, Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar. His codename wasn't picked out of a hat. It was given to him by the very people he tracked down, the world's drug dealers and their private armies of Uzi-wielding thugs. In countless raids and all-out firefights, they saw him leading his men into the thick of the action and he never took a single hit. They said, he must be bulletproof, or they might have said he must be crazy, but crazy doesn't make us good at codenames. The 1993 card is mostly the same as the 92 card, but it has some interesting differences. The list of features is slightly different. We no longer have the official Air Force Officer's uniform belt. His codename is still the same, but now he is the Urban Commander. File name is the same, secondary military specialty is the same, birthplace and grade all the same, but now his primary military specialty is Battlecore Leader. The leader of all of Battlecore? They removed his vehicle specialty and that is fine, that was just weird. The quote is the same, the paragraph is mostly the same, but slightly different. His first sentence is worded slightly differently, where the old file card said, bulletproof served in Central America and so on as a field officer. On this file card it says, bulletproof served as a field officer in Central America and those other places. Where on the first file card it says, before drawing the assignment to head GI Joe's DEF attachment, here it says, before drawing the assignment to head GI Joe's Urban Battle Core Detachment. So he doesn't lead all of Battlecore, just the Urban Detachment. Also he is no longer fighting the world's drug dealers and their private armies. He is now fighting Cobra criminals and private armies. They used to say he must be bulletproof. Now in amazement they said he must be bulletproof. Obviously the second file card had to change to remove the references to DEF and drug dealers because he had a new role in Battlecore, but the file card also changed in ways that were utterly meaningless. Looking at how bulletproof was used in GI Joe media, he made a few animated appearances in the Deke animated series. His biggest spotlight was in the two-parter, The Greatest Evil Parts 1 and 2. Those episodes focused on DEF, sort of. When was the villain of those episodes? He was selling a drug called Spark to which Falcon and the sister of a Crimson Guard Immortal became addicted. GI Joe and Cobra joined forces to fight the drug dealers. Despite those episodes focusing on DEF and bulletproof being the DEF leader, he was not the main focus of those episodes. His most important moment was convincing Falcon he needed help for his drug addiction. He was a voice of reason when Duke lost his mind over his half-brother's drug habit. In the GI Joe comic book series published by Marvel Comics, he made only three appearances in issues number 124, 125, and 127. In those issues, DEF fights drug dealers in the Cobra-occupied New Jersey town of Broca Beach. Bulletproof was a prominent part of that storyline, but the DEF story was interweaved in a confusing way with separate eco-warriors and ninja force stories. Despite the card claiming bulletproof doesn't get hit, he does get hit with bullets in the comic book, but he's wearing a bulletproof vest. Looking at bulletproof overall, I like the first version of the figure. I like it a lot. It's a mostly realistic military-looking figure from the 1990s, and we didn't get enough of those. The concept of DEF doesn't resonate like it did in 1992, but I can separate the figure from the sub-team and enjoy it for what it is. I like the figure, despite the fact that they cut a lot of corners to make it cheaper. The paint colors are minimal. They used one color of paint on the entire body, and that's it. No color variety at all. I have to knock the figure for lack of effort. It is below the standard of even an average figure in the 80s. I can give the designers credit for how they used the minimal paint sprays that were in the budget. Yes, they used only one color, but they chose a color that would work for all the details that needed to be painted. The accessories are fine, though I can live without the missile launcher. I like the backpack and the helmet is okay and the submachine gun is great. But again, they cut costs by making everything mostly the same color plastic. A different colored weapon would have added some color interest to the whole figure.  For these reasons, the 1992 Bulletproof will squeeze into the top tier, just barely. With more effort, more paint colors, more detail, it could have been great. Instead, it's just really good. The 1993 figure is a different story. Everything is the same, except he has yellow paint instead of tan. Why? How does that make sense? They took away the light up feature on the missile launcher, but since I don't care about the missile launcher anyway, that doesn't matter to me. The 1993 figure stays in the middle tier on the strength of the sculpting and most of the accessories, but the color change is disappointing. That was my review of Bulletproof. I hope you enjoyed it. Don't forget to help out the finest in their charity campaign benefiting canines for warriors. Link is in the description of this video. Check it out. Thanks again to Ebro He-Man for your support. I am on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and I have a website, hcc788.com. Thanks as always to my patrons. These videos would not be possible without their help. If you like these videos and you like G.I. Joe, and you'd like to help me make more of these videos, please consider checking out my Patreon. You can get some special perks, you can find out how to decode the secret messages you see in these videos, and you might even get a special codename, like Ebro He-Man. What have we got next week? We are staying in the 90s, but it's not as nice as this week's figure. I'll see you then and always remember, only G.I. Joe is G.I. Joe.