On the night of the 7th of November, or I think the 25th of October in the Russian calendar at the time, a Tsarist commander reported to headquarters the following. The situation in Petrograd is frightful. There are no street demonstrations or disorders, but a regulated seizure of institutions, railroad stations and also arrests is in process. The Yunca patrols are surrendering without resistance. We have no guarantee that there will not be an attempt to seize the provisional government. In fact, of course, that was precisely what was taking place at that very moment. There was the beginning of the seizure of an arrest of the provisional government. That really was the crowning of the greatest ever revolution in human history. The insurrection itself is surely one of the most audacious and fascinating acts. In other words, the insurrectionary conquest of power by and for the working class. One of the most audacious acts in world history. An act, of course, with certain parallels with some other things in history, but really unique to be honest in the history of the world, as I will attempt to explain. Lenin was able to explain the next day in the opening session of the second congress of Soviets of Russia. He said, we shall now proceed to construct the socialist order, and then there was about five minutes of applause or something after that. Now, what has to be understood is the insurrection itself is different from the revolution as a whole. In fact, it's its highest expression, its most organised and conscious expression. It must be studied in its own right, but also because I think it sheds the great deal of light on the role of leadership and of organisation, and what exactly power is and what it means to grasp power and to use it to transform society. I think it's something very understudied, not just in general, but in our own movement and our organisation. But I think we should study it in some depth. It's also a study of it, this unique event that stands apart from all the other aspects of the revolution. A study of it is also extremely useful for clarifying and overcoming, if you like, the questions and problems raised by anarchism and the likes of the anarchists. Look as you see very specifically in very detailed concrete events what really is involved in changing society, and what must be involved in it, and what you have to do to achieve that. Now, it wasn't Marx, but really so much as the French revolutionary Blanqui, who really first kind of developed and popularised the idea of the revolutionary insurrection for socialist ends, for the socialist transformation of society, although for him his grasp of what socialism meant was somewhat vague and moralistic. But really he popularised the idea and also put it into practice several times. For that Marx really respected Blanqui, despite the massive criticisms and differences, he really respected Blanqui as a genuine revolutionary, which he certainly was, having spent most of his life actually in prison. He was a genuine revolutionary despite his shortcomings, and Marx praised him, or rather not so much praised him, but praised the French working class, for having Blanqui as really there in Spira, really a true revolutionary. Someone very bold and who put the conquest of power very clearly on the map. Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and specifically the act of insurrection in October 1917, all of these were accused of being Blanquiists essentially. And why were they accused?  What did that mean? And of course, why was that wrong? To say, from a Marxist point of view, to say that you're a Blanquiist as a criticism, is effectively to criticise you as an adventurist, or a volunteerist, or a substitutionalist, which terms really mean to substitute yourself for the class, for the mass movement essentially. Blanqui's ideas really were to have a conspiracy of hardened revolutionary, a hardened, very small cader, secretive cader, who would seize government buildings and institutions in secret, on behalf of the working class, and certainly very sincerely and honestly, I don't think that they were power hungry, as I said, Blanqui spent most of his life in prison and refused to relent in order to be let free. So very honestly so, but nevertheless conspiratorial in nature, no real involvement of the working class, and not basing it on an already existing mass revolutionary movement of the working class, very moralistic in character, like we volunteer ourselves to do this because we want to do it at this moment, not because the conditions are right. So it was very adventurist in that sense. The criticism, the Marxist criticism of that is fundamentally not a moralistic one, but that it doesn't work. It's necessary to involve the working class in a mass struggle for power and to, in fact, base yourself on an already existing mass movement. Not really just for moralistic reasons, but because, of course, the social transformation of society requires the working class to be actively involved in it. First of all, to defend it successfully, and secondly, of course, to make a success of building socialism. He can't do it without that, with a passive relationship of the working class to the insurrection. And that certainly is borne out by what happened with Blonkey and his movement. For instance, in 1839 his Society of Seasons, as it was called effectively his revolutionary party, in 1839 seized several French government buildings and basically proclaimed the end of the government and the establishment of a socialist one. However, within a day or two it was crushed totally, and it was crushed obviously because of the passivity of the working class, because they were isolated, essentially. And Blonkey was thrown into jail, and as I said, ended up spending most of his life in jail. And he had one or two other opportunities to organise very similar insurrections with the exact same results. And we have other examples in history as well of such adventurous methods failing utterly, such as the Canton Commune, the Last Desperate Act of the Chinese Revolution of 1927, when the communists, realising how disastrous their policy of supporting Chiang Kai-shek had been, suddenly attempted to reverse all of that and go to the opposite extreme and just occupy the major city of Canton, or Guandro, as it's now known, without the support or involvement of the working class. I think about 300 people alone did this. And the workers were more or less just confused as to what was going on. And of course they were crushed, and thousands of them were executed. So that clearly doesn't work. You need mass participation. And nevertheless we have to say that we do, I think, owe a debt to Blonkey for putting this idea on the table. And it's not all wrong, and it's certainly in relation to this opportunist idea that you just gradually reform the bourgeois state out of existence or something. I would say that there's much to go for the idea of the seizure of power in that way. And we do need to have a seizure of power, but of course not an adventurous one, not a conspiratorial one or merely conspiratorial one. But if you read Lenin at the time in 1917, most specifically his article, which I sent around, I don't know if anyone read it, on the Marxism in Insurrection. He explains very clearly that the insurrection itself is not a mere conspiracy, that it has to be based not only on a mass party, not just a few hundred people or something, but a mass party, but not even just a mass party, but also actually the mass support of an advanced revolutionary class, an already existing revolutionary upsurge of the people. It needs that to draw strength from, to defend it, and to legitimise it, of course. And anyone who sees the seizure of power in the insurrection of October 1917 as a mere conspiracy and coup, just like Glomchay, which they were accused of doing by the Mensheviks and others, is, and even Rosa Luxemburg, I believe, accused them of that. Is ignorant of the whole history of the revolution up to that point, and especially Lenin's famous phrase, patiently explain, clearly the whole methodology of the Bolsheviks, and I think that the previous session really outlines it very well, was not adventurous, was not voluntary, just plowing on a head without reference to the mass movement. It was actually to patiently intervene consistently in the mass movement in a non-sectarian manner to support the mass movement, even in its errors, but obviously to criticise those errors and to patiently explain and to patiently win mass support for the revolutionary line of the Bolsheviks, which, of course, they successfully did. And Lenin also explains in this article that the insurrection would not have been possible to be carried out in June or July, which, as Nicholas explained, they were accused of trying to do, would not have been possible, because although in Petrogram, perhaps the conditions were sufficient, elsewhere they were not, the rest of the country was not there politically, essentially, and they would have been isolated. The peasantry was still really under the influence of the bourgeoisie and of the opportunists. Hadn't broken from them. You hadn't yet had the experience of the Cornelof coup or the attempt at the coup, which was of decisive significance, as we will discuss. And there was a lack of confidence. Also, in June and July, he points out that the enemy, the class enemy, the ruling class, the capitalists, had not lost fully confidence in themselves, were not divided, were not seen as confused and not having a way out, so clearly as they were by October. So clearly this was not a rash adventurous move. It was carefully prepared and planned for them. They waited for the right moment, the moment of mass support, essentially. Nevertheless, when the moment did come for the insurrection, when the conditions were there, Lenin was not only then in favour of it, it was urging for it quite aggressively, in fact, absolutely lacerating other members of the Bolshevik party who were prevaricating or were opposed to it for various reasons, and was urging and pushing relentlessly for the insurrection. And I think that is also something interesting to dwell upon. The brilliance of Lenin as an all-round Marxist, which is what obviously a Marxist has to be, a dialectician, not fetishising one particular position or tactic. Usually, if a political leader pushes caution and generally seems to hold things back, you become accustomed to thinking of that political leader as just always cautious, and usually that is the case. But Lenin actually was cautious when he needed to be very cautious and really urging patients and sobriety, etc. But then, when the conditions changed, grasped that and changed tack himself and pushed for the total opposite position in a sense for coming out for insurrection. In that article, which really sums up the internal debate and the problems, the political, you know, the working out of the political problems of the insurrection within the Bolshevik party before it was put into practice. In that article, Lenin quoting Marx refers to the insurrection as an art. And he says in doing so that that means you go on the offensive. When you have an insurrection, you have to take advantage of the concrete conditions that you find.  You keep on exploiting the weaknesses of the enemy, going from victory to victory, pressing home your weakness, and exploiting any confusion that there is in the enemy's ranks. And what that means to say that it is an art in that way is basically to say that the insurrection is tactical in the highest degree. In other words, that it has a logic of its own that, of course, ultimately has to be informed by the general perspectives. And obviously if the Bolsheviks didn't have a perspective of the need of the workers to take power, they wouldn't have even had the idea of an insurrection. But nevertheless, once you've accepted that idea, it has its own logic. And you have to understand the very concrete conditions, what strategic points are important to occupy, what day of the week might be better to have an insurrection because of this or that consideration, that kind of thing, how ought you to pose in argument the need for an insurrection or how that kind of thing is what I think he's getting at when he says it's an art. There's no other way about it. You can't just satisfy yourself with general considerations of whether Bolsheviks will come to power eventually because it's in the law of history or something. It's in the sort of general schema of the revolution. You need to enter into the details of the concrete circumstances and actively create an insurrectionary situation and plan for it. Now, this whole debate that existed in the Bolshevik party about whether or not to have an insurrection and the winning of that debate, of course, was absolutely vital for having an insurrection in the right way and at the right time. Why did that happen? And I think it's very interesting to dwell upon this and that's why I find I think the insurrection so fascinating is precisely this conundrum of the proletarian revolution. In a pamphlet, a very important pamphlet that Trotsky wrote called Lessons of October, he wrote that I think in 1923 after a defeat in the German revolution. In that pamphlet, he explains how the proletariat is accustomed to weakness and the revolutionaries, socialist revolutionaries, especially are accustomed to weakness. In other words, as a revolutionary or as even a worker, you spend your entire life, obviously in a sense on the back foot, obviously not having power. To one degree or another, being aware that the enemy has power, being aware that it's not up to you to decide how society is run. And as revolutionaries, that means there's a certain cautiousness in how you behave. You can't be rash like Blanqui was. You have to carefully weigh up situations. You have to wait basically for the right time. You have to patiently explain, essentially. And that, of course, is absolutely correct. But there does come a moment, of course, when that isn't the case. And those moments are indeed very rare, but it does happen in a revolution where suddenly the working class and the revolutionary party are actually not on the back foot, are actually suddenly the strongest force and they may not realise it, but they are in fact the strongest force in society and have the ability to change society or to run and lead society. But being so accustomed to caution and afraid of rash steps, et cetera, it's natural for the revolutionaries, I think, and he says this, to bulk at that final step, if you like, to not see it when it's really there, to not really understand the power that you have, to be fearful of openly coming out actually for changing society on your terms. Not just in the abstract, but actually concretely as a specific task that you're going to organise. That's obviously entirely natural. That's what Lenin also meant when he said there's no one more conservative than a revolutionary. You spend your whole life talking about it as a future event and as an abstract thing and you grow so used to that. It's actually a very alien and strange thing to you to find yourself in that situation where actually possibly you could take power and maybe you ought to. It's quite a scary and strange situation for the Bolsheviks to be in. And indeed most of the leaders, maybe not the ranks of the Bolshevik party, but most of the leaders, both regionally and nationally in the Bolshevik party, spend pretty much the entirety of 1917, including right up to the insurrection, fearful of those kinds of steps in one way or another. And you see that, for instance, up to the insurrection as Enoviev and Kaminev writing a letter basically exposing the plans for the insurrection, a complete betrayal of party, discipline and unity. Lenin referred to them as strike breakers quite correctly in doing so and wanted to have them expelled from the party. They were so terrified that they were prepared to sabotage the insurrection and the party as a whole. And there were many, many other examples of that. Stalin, of course, was opposed to it and basically just disappeared for the whole of that time as he tended to do decisive moments. But that was quite a normal mood.  It was writing them letters he was hiding at the time because of the July days and the reaction existed. Writing them letters, some of which were actually, I think one of them was burnt by the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party, so horrified and terrified, were they, by what he was saying. I would say that I don't think that attitude was necessarily repeated in the Bolshevik party as a whole and the ranks of it were probably more revolutionary. But the leaders who felt the weight of responsibility, I think, were much more cautious. Far too cautious. And that, I think, really, also Trotsky makes a connected point to this which is also fascinating, I think. Which is that he points out that because of this fact you see this very qualitative difference between the bourgeois revolution and the workers' revolution. Alan referred to this in his earlier talk saying that the bourgeois revolution doesn't really have to be that conscious of what it's doing, hence Cromwell thinking he was establishing the kingdom of God on Earth and not a capitalist society. The bourgeois revolution is more confused about itself and doesn't have such a high degree of planning and organisation because the bourgeois, even though they're an oppressed class under feudalism, have at their disposal various banking institutions such as the city played a key role in supporting Cromwell in the English revolution. They have the universities, they have general power, and also they're not aiming to abolish privilege and class society as a whole. So it's a certain extent they can even bribe sections of the old ruling class if they can make money out of a new capitalist society. Probably many of the feudal landlords are quite happy to go along with it. So it's kind of, in a sense, it's easier or rather less has to be less resolute and clear about what it's doing, I think. Because the workers' revolution does aim to abolish class in a whole class system as a whole and privilege, et cetera, in its entirety. So you can't really bribe the old ruling class into accepting it. You can't sort of muddle your way through. I suppose you could say that reformism in the welfare state would be an equivalent attempt at bribing the capitalist into accepting socialism, gradually building it up around them like the bourgeoisie put its pieces in place for running a capitalist society. Obviously it didn't work because it's not in the capitalist's interest to give up all privileges and to live as ordinary people in a socialist society. So for that reason what Trotsky says is that the workers' revolution requires a party in the place of the press, the bourgeois press and the bourgeois universities and all the other institutions that even under feudalism the capitalists have. In the place of that the workers have the party which is far more clear, far more class conscious, far more aware of what its tasks really are than the bourgeois parties were in their revolution. And that also I think sums up the kind of weightiness of this decisive step that you're taking, which is really to begin the abolition of the class system as a whole. Hence the fractiousness of this debate within the Bolshevik party and hence in almost all other revolutions the failure of the party or the so-called revolution party of course turned out not to be to take that final decisive step to organise the taking of power. And Trotsky also points out that the point of view of those in the Bolshevik party opposed to the insurrections in particular Sinoviev of course came up with a whole host of excuses for why we shouldn't take power. They refer to just how dangerous the enemy was of course this makes sense in light of what I said about the revolution being used to being on the back foot. He refers to the artillery rain outside of Petrograd pointed at it and he lists a whole series of terrifying military kind of entanglements that he faced with. And of course none of it really materialised because in the act of organising an insurrection and showing a way forward they were able to actually dissolve those military organs essentially those reactionary military organs and the rank and file of them effectively were won over to the revolution and they were not able to use that but of course you can't find that out once and for all until you actually take that step although you can be pretty sure but you can't really prove that other than by the act of actually organising the seizure of power and Trotsky points out that of course had they not seized power and they certainly wouldn't have done I think had Lenin not been in the leadership of the party had they not done that then actually what would have happened is it would have petered out basically the masses would have become disillusioned because they would have begun to see the Bolsheviks as yet basically another version of the Mensheviks all talk and no action not actually prepared to do anything weak and prevaricating etc and they would have therefore become demoralised and wouldn't have organised an insurrection spontaneously and gone home essentially and then of course afterwards the sort of Bolshevik intellectuals could write these kind of it's a basically a self-fulfilling prophecy because afterwards you would say look the workers have become passive they obviously weren't prepared to fight for the revolution so good thing that we didn't organise any kind of rash insurrection and of course the middle class intellectuals are accustomed to dismissing the workers in that way not calling the workers out not trying to use their positions to inspire the workers they demoralise the workers and then blame the workers for that demoralisation that's quite a typical state of affairs and I think also that shows the genius of Lenin and the brilliance of Lenin as a revolutionary in that he understood and certainly put into practice the ability of a leadership to transform one in the same situation I think that's really clearly the key lesson of the Bolsheviks that the very same situation the very same balance of class forces can be transformed one way or another by the presence or otherwise of a determined leadership prepared to act and action decides everything in those kinds of circumstances and some people say well maybe Lenin wasn't really a materialist then maybe Lenin wasn't really a Marxist because he denigrated the iron laws of history and in place of them put the subjective power of leadership to change history almost at will which is of course nonsense it's not at will to be patiently explained for months they had to have a mass movement in place and also to be for their patient explaining to be successful it had to connect with the real mood the real situation and what was there and also obviously having decided on an insurrection to make a success of it they needed to have the active and passive support of the mass of the class to actually have the thousands of red guards and things that you need to actually do it again how do you manage to find your disposal thousands of red guards you can't just do that out of sheer will power so of course it's not anti materialist to say such a thing however a materialist understands that an individual or a party which is itself part of the structural society can alter what goes on in society can change the course of history depending on what its own position is now on to the insurrection itself and how it was done I think that the insurrection as is known was an extremely smooth affair really especially in Petrograd which is of course the decisive place very well organised and very calm and peaceful as the quote I gave at the beginning of the talk indicated but that was possible I think because of the perspectives that the Bolsheviks had because the confidence that they had in the masses the political tactics they worked out on the basis of those perspectives were so brilliant in particular as Trotsky points out using the defensive mask of Soviet legality in order to organise technically the taking of power and again that was possible because of their perspectives and understanding of the revolution the Bolsheviks from the beginning in fact in the case of Lenin right back to 1905 understood the Soviets as for what they really in implication were which is potential organs of working class power not just talking shops or nice ways to check the bourgeois and hold them to push the bourgeois in a certain direction but actually it's a new kind of power structure according to the interests and position of the working class in society and therefore their existence alongside a bourgeois parliament in the case of the provisional government meant a situation of dual power and that meant that that situation could not last forever you can't have dual power in society for a sustained period of time you can't have two different powers resting on different classes with different interests sort of sitting side by side and sort of checking one another at one time one of them is going to have to dominate the other and dismiss it but for a period of time of course it did have to essentially get the approval of the Soviets for anything it wanted to do and that's really dual power amazingly no one else really seemed to grasp the significance of that the Mensheviks, the SRs and others didn't really see what it was I think neither did Stalin and others they saw it as a sort of check on just another kind of instrument like I don't know like having a kind of left wing newspaper might be an instrument to influence politics an instrument with which you might influence the political setup or what was happening in society rather than as an actual organ of power which it clearly was but the Bolsheviks under Lenin's leadership understood that and they therefore could pose certain demands such as all power to the Soviets which at first glance may not appear revolutionary or may not appear as sectarian which they were accused of being well it wasn't sectarian but it may appear as a sort of mild demand just saying well look that the Mensheviks should run society through the Soviets but of course they understood that the Mensheviks couldn't do that and that was because the Bolsheviks to run society that would really mean fundamentally the working class leading the revolution and pushing the bourgeoisie out so they could pose that as a demand knowing that it wouldn't be fulfilled by the opportunists and in posing it of course they would win the kudos for posing it and would be able eventually to win to take that power themselves through the Soviets so they understood that and therefore I think the whole tactics of the insurrection really flowed from that understanding quite brilliantly and the situation of dual power had developed quite dramatically towards clearly was developing towards a sort of a finale if you like by the time of the certainly by the time of the Cornelof Cw which again the others didn't really understand the significance of but if you did understand it as a situation of dual power the Cornelof Cw was obviously deeply significant in what it meant the Cornelof Cw or attempted Cw was obviously an attempt first of all by the provisional government to crush the Soviets because the Cornelof Cw happened because the provisional government under Kerenski's leadership called in Cornelof Cw who was the head of the army to move out to move into Petrograd various troops that were not going to be as loyal to the Soviets as the troops in Petrograd were who'd been effectively won over to the Bolsheviks and to the Soviet power structure he called in new troops or wanted to be called in new troops by Cornelof Cw in order to sort of undermine the revolutionary troops that were in Petrograd so that in itself the mere doing of that in itself already indicated an attempt to end dual power by the provisional government Cornelof then obviously to get a step further by actually saying why not why don't I take power and clear out all of the revolutionaries that are also in the provisional government the Menshaviks and others that are sitting in the provisional government that wanted to take power as a military dictator and then of course Kerenski fearing being supplanted himself had no one to turn to but the Soviets themselves and basically the Bolsheviks who he then organised a committee of defence or proposed a committee of defence to the Bolsheviks and others to defend the revolution against the counter-revolution of Cornelof they think they hill the Bolsheviks were really sectarian and wouldn't agree to work with them but actually the Bolsheviks of course understanding the significance of this event that it meant the decisive struggle for power between the Soviets and the bourgeoisie agreed to it and seeing this instrument as a potential instrument for insurrection and they agreed to it and basically then took it over and the Cornelof coup of course armed the working class or rather the reaction against the Cornelof coup armed the working class effectively under the leadership of the Bolsheviks and it created a red guard of 25,000 armed workers essentially to defend the city from Cornelof and in this way I think you can see that the Cornelof coup is all important political lesson it gave the working class creating that final push I think of the working class into the arms of the Bolsheviks by making the workers see the danger of counter-revolution but it also as well as that quite specifically organised the working class into armed detachments in order to defend the revolution and therefore also laid the technical basis for the seizure of power and this committee of defence that was created that gradually morphed into the military revolutionary committee was then used and pushed by the Bolsheviks as a means then there to defend the Soviets and specifically the second congress of Soviets which was coming up under their initiative to defend that to defend that against the counter-revolution and of course that wasn't a manufactured excuse really for using this military revolutionary committee of course it was a very real threat as the Cornelof coup showed but they posed it always in those defensive terms we need to develop and establish this military structure of the Soviets essentially to defend them from the threat of counter-revolution they always posed things very cleverly to really make the workers realise I think that we need to take power because you can't have dual power forever you can't have this situation we have to either carry out a revolution under our leadership or just give up to a counter-revolution they wanted to pose it in that way and in doing so of course they made it clear that the Bolsheviks weren't trying to take power for themselves before the revolution and that it should be the very revolution's own power structures in other words the Soviets which were all party institutions they weren't just Bolshevik institutions that it should be done through the Soviets in other words through Soviet legality and it therefore flowed from the general demand of all power to the Soviets it was an extension of that and of course as you may know Lenin actually generally disagreed with this not as a matter of principle but he found it to be another instance of prevaricating he thought that the time was right and he was really anxious at any looking for an excuse to delay the insurrection essentially which is what I think he saw this posing of it as something to defend the upcoming Congress of Soviets that meant a delay of the insurrection until the upcoming Congress of Soviets he saw that as a delay that it was dangerous and he thought once the time is ripe the situation is on such a knife edge and is so tense he sees that opportunity he can't afford to just delay and he saw the delaying as perhaps an excuse to do nothing actually now he was wrong in doing so and he effectively lost that argument to Trotsky and others but ultimately played a brilliant role and was absolutely decisive in pushing for the insurrection wouldn't have happened full stop I think if it weren't for him pushing and pushing it in that way and as Lenin was wanting to do I think he was bending the stick one way perhaps a bit too far but bending it against being pushed in the other direction in other words in an opportunist direction or in a reformist direction and perhaps bent it too far but nevertheless played an absolutely brilliant and decisive role in urging for this insurrection to take place so the committee offence then becomes the actual military revolutionary committee on the 16th of October as an all party institution of the Soviets i.e. not as strictly speaking a Bolshevik institution however the Mensheviks boycotted it by this point even though they originally proposed it in fact to make this point clear to the workers that it was not the Bolsheviks just seizing power because they wanted it but actually this was a legitimate organ of the workers own organisations the Soviets Nazimir was appointed the head of this of the military revolutionary committee and he was a left social revolutionary he was not a Bolshevik and in fact under Trotsky's proposal the way that the military revolutionary committee was formed was by taking in delegates from the Soviets from the soldiers Soviet delegates from the fleet that is the navy the railway union representatives from the factory committees as well which were slightly separate organisations to the Soviets and also from the Red Guards that had been created in the defence of Petrograd from Cornelof so you can see how it was quite clearly formed not as a party organisation but as an all party organisation of the Soviets although clearly under the Bolsheviks impetus and leadership and Nazimir then passed the resolution against the removal of troops and I'll explain this in a second from Petrograd in the soldiers section of the Petrograd Soviets by 281 to 1 and really from that point onward all of the decisive sections of the garrison of Petrograd of the soldiers in Petrograd really come under the organisational leadership of the military revolutionary committee and regarding regarding that I haven't explained this yet but this was really a decisive turning point in the struggle for power is it kind of like a sequel if you like or a much less dramatic sequel of the Cornelof attempt on power which was that after having called in Cornelof to bring in troops that were perhaps hostile to the revolution or loyal to the provisional government into Petrograd the provisional government attempted on the 11th of October to move the troops that were in Petrograd that were loyal to the revolution outside of Petrograd these troops had generally come under the leadership of the Soviet and were sympathetic to the Bolsheviks etc they issued an order they should be sent to the front to fight in the war and everyone immediately understood the significance of this and the danger of it hence Nazimir moving this resolution in the soldiers section of the Petrograd Soviet against that and when they did that, when they effectively nullified that order they had created not just political dual power but they had really stepped up into military dual power if you like now there was a situation where the military was obeying really the orders and the authority of the Soviet power structure and not that of the provisional government and Trotsky says that really that point onwards that was actually the beginning of the insurrection although it was maybe not fully understood at that time the day before that on the 10th of October a resolution had passed in the Bolshevik Central Committee by ten votes to two in favour of organising the insurrection so by this time Lenin has won over the leadership of the Bolshevik party to the idea of insurrection and then of course this decisive thing kind of falls into the lap really of the Bolsheviks where the the Petrograd Garrison was attempted to be moved out but then wasn't and that really put the ball in their court it gave them control of the situation and from this point onwards the military revolutionary committee really goes forward and organises quite smoothly and brilliantly the dissolving of the power structures and the apparatus of coercion of the old state apparatus and absorbs them into the chain of command if you like of the military revolutionary committee and the Soviets the main one being the Petrograd Garrison that I've just mentioned but once that happened many other military organisations in and around Petrograd announced that they will really only follow orders of the Soviets also you have a much initiative being taken from below by the workers such as for instance orders for arms to be sent to the front and really being intercepted and by the workers in those arms factories basically saying no we're not going to do that actually we'll send those arms and ammunition to the red guards in order to arm the insurrection essentially there are many many examples along these lines another really good example is that of the bicycle men who were kind of an elite of the of the military who were not seen as loyal to the revolution because they were more elite essentially more privileged and obviously being on bikes kind of like a modern version of the cavalry I suppose slightly comical image that it creates but anyway they were ordered I can't remember the details but they were ordered I think to go in and to move into Petrograd in order to defend Petrograd and then coming insurrection which the provisional government was vaguely anticipating but I think what happened is that the bicycle men their leader wanted to check the order wasn't quite sure of the order or something so then kind of telephoned to someone in the army or something along those lines and that conversation was intercepted by troops that were loyal to the Soviets and to the military revolutionary committee and they informed the military revolutionary committee who then basically sent a message to these bicycle men to have a meeting with them which they then did and they basically won them over to the revolution to the insurrection or at the very least pacified them so they couldn't be used they couldn't be relied upon from that point on was to attack the insurrection or to attack the seizure of power and there were a great many events such as that in the seizure of power and you see at that time really that the military revolutionary committee was not all seeing eye because the workers have become so organized so interconnected with each other and so class conscious and determined under the bold and confident leadership of the Bolsheviks that they begin to take initiatives on their own behalf and they intercept things on their own initiative they hear things such as in this example and they relay it to the military revolutionary committee in general the military revolutionary committee is in touch with everything and the current commissars to sort of represent it in every military organization in and around Petrograd kept in touch with everything on the days of the insurrection revolutionary workers would go to to Smolny which was the building that housed the military revolutionary committee headquarters throughout the nights to get updates on what was going on because that was the epicenter that knew everything and in that way the working class of Petrograd became organized and self-aware to an unprecedented degree and able to go forward with extreme confidence and carry out the smooth seizure of power and I think that really proved correct Trotsky's point that the workers revolution is much more planned much more organized and conscious than is a bourgeois revolution which is somewhat of a more chaotic and incomplete affair as we know but the decisive step is still not taken here and this is something I would like to emphasize a lesson that we need to take from the insurrection the concreteness of it because it's not enough at this point just to have developed all of this interconnectedness of the workers even to arm the workers the decisive step is still not here taken that is to say the banks the post office the telegraph agency the power stations all of these key institutions of running society have not been seized and interconnected nor has the old government been arrested and publicly proclaimed and shown to be powerless nor has a new power been publicly announced and proven to be the only power that can run society that's really if you're going to run and create a new society on completely different lines on socialist lines that's obviously what you need to do you can't do what they did in the Spanish revolution where you kind of from below seized all of the factories the anarchist workers that's what they did they seized all of the factories and then being anarchists who don't like centralism and power thought that that was enough and they said we've created what they call a new social economy that's it we've taken the factories and that's it we've done it but of course they hadn't touched the old government they hadn't broken their link with the army they hadn't done all of those things they hadn't proclaimed to the world and that vagueness allowed the old state to kind of recover its nerve to re-establish some military organisation and to go on the offensive and to shut down workers control etc but of course in Russia they didn't do that they actually did go forward and organise the taking of power so on that fateful night before the calling of the second congress of Soviets they seized power throughout the night all of these key places including especially of course the winter palace but also the post offices, the telegraph agency the telephone exchange the power stations, the water supply all of these were seized which was very easy to do because the workers in many of these places of course already supported the revolution but they were seized and then of course the government ministers were arrested in the winter palace bloodlessly all of it very bloodless very smooth in fact when this took place there were many examples of attempts at looting by perhaps of people on the street or maybe more rank and file elements of the insurrection who thought they could really take advantage of the situation and responsible red guards would stop them and would say don't stain the proletarian victory and even despite this there were still rumours circulated that it was all just chaos and they were looting and raping and pillaging which was false as the quote I gave at the beginning shows quotes from counter-revolutionaries astonishing they almost can't believe it's an insurrection an insurrection can't be surely this smooth and organised and open surely but it was and obviously many people concluded therefore it was a coup and it was a sort of conspiratorial seizure of power actually that proves precisely the opposite it proves that it was so popular and as I've described it was so well organised and it could be so well organised because of just how organised the working class had become that it could do it in such a smooth manner they also seized and this is of a special significance the state bank showing that they had learnt quite consciously learnt the lesson of the Paris commune where of course in a more spontaneous manner they seized Paris but didn't take the state bank and basically left that in the hands of the counter-revolution to finance and organise the counter-revolution which they did didn't do that in Russia obviously having learnt that lesson now at the final point then I just want to make is that in relation to this the anarchist conception of revolution the anarchist idea that you can you don't need a party in fact that a party is the biggest enemy of a revolution you don't need any kind of central apparatus to imagine that this degree this overturn of such tremendous significance that it doesn't just overwhelm the old power but put something in its place to imagine that that can be done that such a concrete act can be done without organisation and planning without making sure that you have loyal troops in all of the key strategic places of the city so that you can't be destroyed by the counter-revolution or starved into submission to imagine that just spontaneously emerges I think is frankly absurd and when you pose it in this clear and concrete way rather than talking in the vague abstraction as to whether or not leaderships are inherently bad or something when you pose it in that clear way I think it becomes so obvious that you couldn't do it in any other way you can I think organise a revolution spontaneously but you can't organise a socialist insurrection which you do need to have and we've seen in the February revolution that was effectively entirely spontaneous and without leadership also Tahris Square in Egypt a few years ago pretty much entirely spontaneous and without leadership and both of them did succeed in toppling the old regime or rather the figurehead of the old regime they did succeed in that but a socialist revolution isn't just the undermining of the old power and the sort of decapitating of the old power so that the new privileged and powerful can rush in and fill the vacuum which of course is what they did in February it's not just that it's a fundamental reorganisation of society that requires challenges and destroys even the old privileges and power of the old ruling class at every level so you can't just leave it to chance in that way you can't just satisfy yourself with removing the czar or some other figurehead you've got to if you're really serious about a socialist transformation of society you've got to grasp that it's not acceptable to the bourgeoisie the bourgeoisie can reconcile itself to losing Mubarak or the czar and then can take advantage of that new situation they cannot reconcile themselves using their banks their factories and all the rest of it which is really what a socialist transformation of society needs so you've got to be serious about this you've got a planet and also the workers need to know workers may be entirely revolutionary then all of the workers which is a bit over the top but let's just say all of the workers are in favour of a socialist revolution which you'll never have, you'll never have 100% of the workers but even if you did that still is not enough they need to know that it's being planned otherwise how is it going to happen is one random worker just going to put their hand up and say I propose that on the 15th of so and so we arrest the government and how are they going to make sure that all the other workers have understood that and are with them in it you need a universally recognised and legitimate instrument in other words a party that everybody knows the name of and supports to propose as Trotsky said to set a date for the insurrection and to actually concretely organise it not undemocratically of course to do it when you have the mass support and to canvass for that support and to make sure that and in doing so of course you actually give the workers more confidence not less it's not true what the anarchists say that somehow all leaderships just pacify and depress the workers actually they can raise them up to a higher level if they're a good leadership I think it's frankly ridiculous to imagine that can happen without such an instrument anyway I'll finish there


Happy Friday, trade hackers. Welcome to today's day trading recap. Today's Friday, February 12th. I'm going to recap today's trades and then go over our summary for the week. So starting with today, another green day, small green day, $99 was our profit. So, but green nonetheless, keeping our streak, 14 of the last 15 days have been green. So that is fantastic. So small green day to end the week. Starting with the mighty 90s, just did one trade in MU for minus 250. No pairs trades today.  So let's go over these, then I'll come back and talk about our week. So starting with MU mighty 90. Let's take a look here. So had this had this push up, we got short right here, or actually, I think it was right here on this push up volume pop, started to roll over, and it was coming down to the unchanged mark. I was hoping to squeeze another red bar out of here before it bounced, it didn't it went ahead and bounced, we ended up adding up here. And finally got a couple red bars. And I was looking at, you know, if it came down to this pivot, I'd bail. So on this bar, I just closed it out, ended up taking a loss of 250, which ended up being a good choice, because this thing did rip higher. I was also talking in the room about this being a good upside runner. I didn't take it. I already had too many other long positions on.  On to the runners. So first one was Airbnb, took a loss in Airbnb of minus 460.  I had this big massive volume spike here. And on this bounce, we were getting short, I got short about right here, pushed against, I didn't add to this one. You know, this is a symbol that I keep my position size pretty small. But this thing kind of chopped around, tried to go lower, tried to go lower, tried to go lower, could not break through this pivot, tried again. And finally when it bounced and kind of broke above this consolidation area, I just closed it out in this area here. And so took a loss of 460 in Airbnb. Boeing was a winner. Boeing was a winner for 360, excuse me, 329. Big massive volume spike right out of the gate. So on this pullback, got long here, we added some here, and then it just fired up. We scaled out. I got out of all my positions, all my contracts right here near the top. And when it pulled back, I reloaded, pushed against me some and then fired back up kind of scaled out of those. And I think I got, I think I may have gotten out of my last contracts there. I can't remember exactly, but plus 329 on Boeing.  I don't trade eBay a whole lot, just because it's not the greatest trading vehicle, but had it on my charts due to another position in it, more of a swing trade. Anyway, I had this big volume spike here, got long on this pullback for an upside runner. I tried to push a couple times, push, and then it fell apart. I ended up getting out right here, which obviously in hindsight, looking at what just happened, I would have booked a winner, but I was at a point of being done for the day. And when I start to feel that urge to get antsy or do stupid things, I just got to close my trades out. So I closed it out. It took a small loss of minus 180. Peton. Peton was a nice winner for plus 334. So in Peton, big volume spike here, waited for a pullback above yesterday's high, which is a great, great key support level, got long right here, sat through a bunch of chop popped up a couple times. And I think I got out of half right here, sat through some more chop, sat through all this, I was waiting for this thing to bust out. And when it finally did right here, again, I was done for the day. So I just closed it out and booked all my contracts there for plus 334. Shopify.  Let's take a look at shop. So I'm going to blame Dan C for this one. Had this big volume bar here got short on this bounce. We were looking for a rollover continuation lower and this thing just chopped sideways forever, forever. And finally, when it started to again, this was a point where I was done for the day, when I said, okay, I think I'm going to give it one more chance. If it rolls over here, I'll keep it. If it pushes back up, I'm going to close it. So I closed it and just took a loss. Now, obviously see again, what happened. But again, I don't trade in hindsight. And once I start getting that feeling of being done, I just need to be done. So all good, took a loss there on that one. And then biggest winner was Twitter. Twitter's been pretty good to us. Twitter firing up with some massive volume spikes got long on this pullback here. And I held my last contracts all the way up to this pivot and closed the last remaining ones up here at this pivot. And so booked 676 on that one. This thing chopped around quite a bit more ended up pushing up a little bit more later in the morning, but I was I was out right here.  And so that's a that's quite a time. So I'm really happy with this, even though there's more more upside to gain. So those are all the trades plus 99 for the day. Let's take a look at our week had a nice week overall. You can see on the runners positive green and runners on Monday, nice big day in the runners on Tuesday, a nice big day Wednesday, small day on Thursday, and then a decent day today plus 349. So for the week on the runners plus over $4400, nice win rate as well 67.9. The volume runner setup that we've added has certainly added some profit as well as some higher probability trades to our runners. So on 28 trades 67.9% win rate. The Paris trades have been tricky lately. I just took three of them this week.  So minus 661 on the week for runners or excuse me for Paris trades. And then mighty 90s a little in the red as well had one big red day on Wednesday. And so minus 1193 lower win rate in the mighty 90s this week for whatever reason. I think we traded them really well just didn't didn't do well this week. So minus 1193 on the mighty 90 minus 661 on the Paris trades, but a monster week on the runners, putting us at a total profit for the week of 2006 37 total profit since the end of August since we've been tracking these over 45,000 now. So good stuff there. Don't forget market is closed on Monday. So no live streaming no trading markets are closed. So we'll be back live streaming for the day trading on Tuesday. Take care everyone. Have a great long weekend and we'll see you on Tuesday. Cheers.


What's going on, everyone? Sam here with late in sports cards. We've been 21, 22. Penini Mosaic, basketball hobby, four box break, number 60. Pick your team style. Read off the list of our names in our teams. We've got Ben S with the Hawks, Kana H with the Raptors. Daniel C's got the Bucks, Nick, Sixers, and Sons. Thank you, Daniel. Derek N with the Blazers. Herman G with the Mabs. James F, Cabs Magic. Jason A, Celtics. Celtics, Pacers, Grizzlies. That's Justin C with the Pistons. Matthew S, Heat. Maurice E, Clippers. Morty Jazz, Nelson S, Nuggets. Nicole N with the Bulls. Richard G, The Hornets, or no. Yeah, Richard G with the Hornets and the Spurs. Robert V with the Thunder and the Nets. Starbuff V, Wizards. Thomas C with the Warriors. So we've got Vaughn V with the Rockets and Pelicans. Vaughn goes, someone please break Donnie's backyard against Lunchbox. Oh, my. Wang S with the Lakers. And order number 198-299 with the Timberwolves and Kings. Good luck, everybody. Here we go. I know, let's go, Herman. Who do you have, Herman? You have somebody, right? Oh, with the Mabs. Let's go, dude. Paulio Luca, Luca Otto real quick. How is this? Let me double check really quick. Jalen Suggs, Red. Giddy. Jamal Murray, Moment in Time. Joker, Thrones, and Cam Thomas. Gary Trent, Jr. Mosaic. Red Tyler, Hero. The Heat. Zion Williamson, Stairmasters. Kominga, debut. Kawhi, Luca. We think of Kominga with a big role next season if Dremon doesn't come back. Wouldn't be crazy. Silver, Revan Mobley. Blue, Corey Kispert, 299. There's Alec Berks, Silver. Taylor Horton, Talkers. Overdrive, Trey Young. Scotty Barnes, debut. CP3, and Josh Giddy. Need some shirts. Hey, got my shirts on the table. Oh, sure.  Hey, guys, need some shirts. Sallie Peele, Red Bones Island. They're all freshly worn. Redsman's Leap. Jared Butler. Zyre Williams, LaMellable. Nazir Little. Kyrie Irving, Red. Jalen Green. Kominga, Steph Curry, Trey Murphy. Auto, Amari Stottemeier for the Knicks. Nice stat, that's awesome. Oh, I'm jealous of that. I am jealous of that, everybody. Let's go, man. Gorgeous stat going to the next. Silver Igadala, Donald Benton. Straight Fire, Evan Mobley. Bones, Evan Mobley, debut. That's cool, dude, I like the stat. I'm in on the stat. Kai Jones. Red, Danny Green, that's a Vaughn card right there. Devin Booker. Mosaic. Isaiah Jackson. The stat is for sure a Vaughn card. Silver or Buddy Heald. Got a Red, Denny of Dia, there you go Vaughn. Show about the Wizards Vaughn. Scotty Barnes. Davion Mitchell and Yanis. Yeah, so put that in perspective. Denny of Dia is the longest tenured wizard and he got drafted in 2020. That's a Stinger. Yeah, Prussian Wood, oh yeah. Kelly Ubre, Red. Cade Rising Star. Benton, Aldema, and Jalen Sugg is national pride. All right, that'll do it for box one. Again, just one to go, an impeccable tiered 2020 Bowman. That's what we're looking to fill up next, guys. Only one to go on that. Again, that breaks at the end of the night. Four Boxer, Tventy, Tventy, Bowman. Wizards selling new box seats for like 120k here to watch a D-League team, honestly, dude. I mean, there you can tell they're going out in full-on tank mode, full-on tank mode. Ooh, okay, so the rookies are on top here. That's gonna be Scotty Barnes. There's a decent amount, Seth Curry. Red, Isaiah Stewart, Steve Stew. Larry Bird moments in time. It's gonna be like the autos in the rookie color, so it's gonna be like Cade, Mobley, Scotty Barnes. Josh Giddy, Franz Wagner, Jalen Suggs, Kominga. I feel like I'm leaving. Jalen Green, Gain Springer, Mobley National Pride, and a Giddy rookie. Auto, Alfred Schengun, nice one there for the Rockets. That's on that Houston. Schengun, Matisse Thiebel, starting five of the maps. Ant-Man, Devon Vissell, is that Vaughn? Vaughn, did you have the Rockets? Yeah, there's a good amount. There is a pretty good overall class right here. There's no super star yet, but there's a lot of really solid good guys. Hey, let's go Vaughn. Franz Rookie, Cam Thomas. Silver Roy Hachimora, there's a red Kawhi for the Spurs. Tyrus Maxi, Levine, Vaughn, and Vasey. Yeah, the way this one's set up, for him more than Green, let's go. Perfect, well that worked out then. Let's go Vaughn. Presses on Chua, Devon Vissell. Rigo Baer, Stair Masters. Yes, Pian is behind, dude. Celtic's working to acquire Porzingis, that's happened. We're like six hours removed from that now. Josh Giddy, good lord. Joe Harris, Devon Booker. No, I agree, I think Schengun's got more upside too. Rising Stars, Jalen Suggs. Jalen Green Rookie, speaking of. Evan Mobley Rookie. Silver Steph, Blue, Brandon Mollison Jr. in a 99. Rookie for the Clippers. Yannis Saul NBA, Mosaic. Red Moses Moody, Chris Middleton, there's a John Morant. Rijay Zubak, Christopher. Silver, Chris Duarte. Got a pink, Nikhil Alexander Walker for the Jazz, the 49. I go Utah, NAW. Cade, introductions. I'm just gonna be always three base cards in the back. Gonna be rookies, then base, then inserts, and base again in this box. Zaire, Lamello. Mosaic, Alfred Schengun. Turkish Tim Duncan, campaign red. Montage, Demontus, Sabonis. Dylan Brooks. Silver, Kemba. Red, Joe Harris. There's Overdrive, Jonathan Camingo Rookie, and base. Another mixer spot came in. There's your link again to 2020 Bowman. It's a four box break, random team style.  Vulpie, Dominguez, Peña, Witt. Pulled a true red Witt out of 2020 Bowman recently. That was pretty cool. Definitely in on that. Van Vliet, red, Luca Garza Rookie, the Pistons. Aylin Green, Josh Giddy. Scotty Barnes Rookie in a book night. Silver, Jordan Poole. Moses Moody on the variation. Red, Zair Williams. Silver, KP. The new Celtic, Taylor Horton Tucker. Montage was Joellen B. Davionne, Primo, Kai Jones on your rookies. I'll also live over on LSE too. Kyle and Donnie, Ripon Personals. Lamello Ball. Red Clay. James Hardin. Rising stars, Zion. Norman Powell. Red, Demarcus Cousins. Magic Johnson, Moments in Time. Sondro, Mamma Coliccivilli. Surgeon needs some shirts here in the market. Silver, Bam Adubile. J-mon Green, right? Jalen Green. Evan Mobley. I'm gonna check. Steamer. Silver, Io Dussunmu. There's gonna be a White, Deandre Aitin for the Suns. Two of 25. That's on that Phoenix. Clay Thompson, Swagger. And Herbert Jones. Two of Herbert Jones in that pack. Roy Hachimara. Red, Jalen Johnson. Anthony Edwards, John Morant. Stair Masters. Io Dussunmu, Keon Johnson. Rudy Gobert. There's Joshua Primo. A Red, Evan Mobley. Josh Giddy, Moments in Time. Zion. Jaden Springer. Evan Mobley Rookie. And a Josh Giddy base rookie. Or a debut. Auto, Meta World Peace for the Lakers. Let's go. Ron Artes, friend of Pandas. Bunch of different monikers for him. Silver, Davion. Blue, Evan Fournier for the next two at 99. Harry's Halliburton. There's a starting five for the Denver Nuggets. Greg Brown, Isaiah Todd, James Book Knight. All right, guys, we're going into our last box, y'all. Thank you all again. We got 2020 Bowman. That is a next break with a lot of spots. Only one to go. Again, that breaks at the end of the night. Let's get that filled up. Breaking after select and our total mixers. Jason Allen, Auto. Jonathan Kaminga. Nice one there. Silver, Denny Aviva. Red, Levine for the Bulls. Starting five, Heat. Scotty Barnes. Davion, Mitchell. Indiana's. Good smart. Red, Roy Achimura. Yeah, it's pretty solid autos for sure. Shea Gilgis Alexander. Jared Butler. Zaire and Lamella Ball. Ah, man, we got Wahoos in here now, oh boy. Oh, man. Here we go. Oh, man. Jay Sean Tate. Red, Jaren Jackson Jr. Wahoo. Jalen Suggs. Wahoos, I'm assuming Franz Wagner. You were over on Kyle's channel when it was over on channel two, but the last case we just ripped, like two cases ago, a Bowman Sapphire, a full case. Drew Jones Purple, base to 25. Drew Jones, green auto to 50 and a Drew Jones Purple auto to 10, all in the same case. Unbelievable. Terence Ross. Davion Obain. Jalen Suggs. The lovely and harassed. Oh, yeah. Aint none of us. What's up? I said, ain't none of us. Oh, no. We destroyed each other enough. I know. We can do anything. Chris Milton. Red, Evan Mobley, I know, forget it, dude. Rising stars, Ja. Oh, yeah, it was nuts, dude. Kominga Rookie. Nuts, absolutely nuts. Kyle with Poisonals. Poisonals. Snail, what up? Snelly, what up? Oh, it was unbelievable. There's a blue Gary Trent Jr. in 99 for the Raptors. Russ Tatum. Squawky Barnes. Squawky. Josh Giddy Rookie. What's up, James? James. I would assume you, Mosaic. Red, Clint Capella. Swiss Bank. Chris Paul. Manga, yeah, what up, dude? How you doing?  Are you losing it, too? Yeah, everybody out of here. We need to restart the chat here. Silver Cure Luster. There's a pink Anthony Davis. Nice one there, 18 of 49. Evan Mobley, Jalen Suggs and Franz Wagner. Probably a good amount of rookies of each of them. Like, there you go. This is the guy for the cabs right here. And then Franz and Suggs for the Magic. Lost it a long time ago. Fair. I did lose it. Heard that. Really long time ago. Silver, KD. The Nets, Red, Rudy Gobero, NBA. Kristaps Porzingis, Overdrive, Josh Giddy. I lose it every Tuesday and Wednesday night. Yep, and next week is gonna be Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday night. Oh my God. Oh, I'll be here for the unveiling of the trash list, then. Next week, oh man. Jalen Johnson. Kevin Porter, Jr. Variation. Stairmasters, Rudy Gobero. Damien Millard. Jalen Suggs, Rookie. And Joshua Primo. Do a quick recap, just the autos here, guys. We had Kaminga for the Warriors. Metal World Peace for the Lakers. Rookie Auto Alpha and Shengun for the Rockets. And Amaris Thadamire for the Knicks, stacked. I'll do it for the break, guys. Thanks again for getting that filled up. Up next is Pas...


Yeah, I thought he was really good, um, you know, probably even could have got through that six, you know, felt like it maybe maybe tiring a little bit, but I thought he was strong. I thought he was efficient. I thought he I thought his command overall was was good. I thought he did kind of all the things he wanted to do. Um, you know, a couple hits that kind of roll in there that anything to set up there, anything to go take the lead on him. But uh, but I thought overall, I thought he was really good. Meredith, some defensive blunders in this one. Do you attribute that to just being early in the season? Or do you look at those as mistakes that that can't necessarily? Yeah, you know, I think the first one Luke trying to do a little too much on a on a play where he makes a good play. Um, the one DJ makes a DJ played great today defensively and made a great play. I got to look at the hop and see it great over the first. But you know, not being able to complete that. Um, and then the on the double steal, I've, Gary was originally going to third base there, but I think he saw the big jump off a second. Um, but I still think the runner shut it down a little bit. So maybe he still had an opportunity to go to third there.  And what do you thought of Gary hitting so far? And how important do you think it is for him to get off the good start just in light of last year? Yeah, I mean, the thing I always talked about have good at bats and the results will be there for him. So, um, feel like he said he's done a pretty good job of that. Um, a little bit of tough luck almost, almost has a couple homers to show for, but, um, to scratch a two strike hit off off a tough guy there and givens, um, at the end. So he's coming. I feel like he's close. Um, and as long as he really focuses on just quality of it bat, the results will follow for him. Who else? Coley to the right? Obviously the ninth and in the week. I was wondering, but to Lewicki starting it off, what was the reaction to dug out to that home run? Let's go.  And, and rightfully so. So Tullo riding one out of here the other way off the lefty to start things. He felt like, okay, um, let's go. We got an opportunity and then DJ gets a going with the double. Um, Guardi had the guy playing back and I think, you know, probably left the zone a little bit on the bunt because he knew if he got it down, he's got a free hit there. I love the idea and I love the attempt at putting it down and then he, it's a left on left rocket. So I thought really good at bats overall, even, you know, all the way. Giancarlo's a bat, probably got a pitch he could do something with, but I thought the bat overall really good. He just didn't finish it off and ultimately it comes. That's the story of our, our game today. You know, we had opportunities. We had them on the ropes there in the first and, you know, to Carn's credit, he makes a pretty good play on that ball that Maggie hits pretty hard back, back up the middle and turns two. So, uh, we just, we just couldn't cash in enough today, but we had the, we had opportunities. Meredith. You mentioned the opportunities in it throughout the end, opportunities throughout, but going back to that first inning with a young team on the other side in particular, do you look at that and say that's where we really could have. Yeah. Yeah.  And then, um, you know, I thought they pitched us tough overall after that. We gave ourselves some chances, but again, just couldn't get the big one to, to, to crawl back in. Dan to the left. Aaron, the, uh, the last of that by Endu Hart, do you think he was thrown off at all by that, that first called strike or the, the way he checked his weight? I don't think so. No, I don't think so. You know, I thought a pretty good matchup for us there, um, with Miggy and that spot. Um, no, I mean, that's, that's part of hitting and, and Miggy's such a good hitter that, you know, one little call one way or the other, especially early in the bat, I don't think had a, had a little effect. I think he was probably a little bit amped up, maybe wanting a little dude too much there in the middle of that bat at bat, but no, I don't, I don't think it had a huge effect on him.


Welcome to Think Tech on Spectrum OC16, Hawaii's weekly newscast on things that matter to tech and Hawaii. I'm Jay Fidel. And I'm Nicole Horry. In our show this time we'll take a trip to Maui and see some of the energy facilities there. We'll visit the Oahi Wind Farm at Ulu Palakua, a Pacific biodiesel sunflower field in central Maui and the Maui Electric Control Center that monitors power throughout the island. Fred Riddell, Energy Commissioner of Maui, organized the itinerary. Thanks Fred. We were also joined by Todd Kanja of Hawaiian Electric Companies and Chris Reynolds of Maui Electric. They were all great and all were very knowledgeable and experienced in the generation and distribution of electrical energy and renewables on Maui. After an early flight and of course a stop at Krispy Kreme Donuts, we drove to the Oahi Wind Farm on the Ulu Palakua Ranch near the southeast corner of Maui. The area is remote and spectacular. The wind turbines were beautiful to watch in design, function and in their harmony with the landscape. Right here we have a large wind farm supplying energy to Maui Electric and then to the citizens of Maui County. It's about 21 megawatts of wind currently operated by CEMPRA. A significant portion of the renewable portfolio standards met by wind on Maui. Let's talk about the RFP that the Hawaiian Electric has, 400 megawatts and that's not limited to Oahu, that's all over the state. The RFP is really designed to take advantage of the available federal tax credits and try to take what renewables we can on our grid. The technologies have continued to get more and more cost effective and we continue to see more lower prices. The thing that we're also seeing now is really a piece that is going to be a part of our energy future which is energy storage and we're encouraged by how the prices have come down very rapidly in the near term. Part of what we're doing with this RFP is to ask developers to look into storage and give us pricing for storage. Hawaii Island is already, I think they're over 56 percent if I'm not mistaken as of today. Maui's well over 30 percent, I think closer to about 35 percent. Oahu's just over 20 percent. We do have a goal. We want to start and put a little emphasis on Molokai. We think there's a great opportunity. Batteries can do multiple functions, one of which is to smooth the output of the wind farm. The other thing it can do is, for example, it can store energy in periods when there may be an excess and discharge those batteries when there's peak demand. How do you pick your moment to get the technology that fits you without having anxiety about it being replaced in the near term? What we try to do in our part supply improvement plan is to come up plans where we're not betting the farm all at one time. We develop plans that and actions where if we take these actions that we're going to have very low regrets and that's what we're trying to do. The one thing that we know for sure at least at this point is that federal tax credits are available and that's certainly what we're interested in and trying to take advantage of and if they do not get renewed it's something that is going to disappear. Wind turbines have gotten larger and can actually produce more you know out of a larger wind turbine. These wind turbines here are three megawatts but they do go up as much as for example seven megawatts per wind turbine. Solar is pretty predictable but like anything too much of one thing makes it challenging. For example, if a portfolio were entirely solar you can only use so much energy that as solar is being produced which means you end up with a lot of energy storage. Wind on the other hand is something that could be available around the clock so the amount of storage that you actually need would win is going to be less. I'm the technical manager for Sempra and we support the Hawaii wind farm out here. As it connects up to the grid it connects with a battery. What's the purpose of that battery and how does that help the grid? Because the wind is as you know it comes and goes as it likes right there's no control over them. If the wind comes in then we can control how fast power is getting to the grid but if the wind goes away then there's really no way to mitigate for it. So you lot the loss of power or intermittency generated from loss of wind can wreak havoc on the grid. So the purpose of the battery is to so when the wind dies down we can actually control how fast the power actually falls. So we have a ramp rate limitation approximately one megawatt per minute and so that way Maui Electric can actually bring up their generators fast enough to catch it to minimize the impact on the grid. How does the interconnection work from here to where you get it? So basically the power is generated here. They have a transmission line that goes up over the mountains. It connects into a substation where the energy is stepped up in voltage connected to our 69 kV transmission system and distributed to Maui. If you feed this in with all the other sources is this above or below the other sources? The other sources are conventionally the fossil fuel generation. It's in a constant flux based on fuel pricing. What this really offers is is a price stabilization. So we're on a fixed contract with with fixed pricing. That's tremendous benefit in that because you know exactly what it's going to be for a period of years. Yes, exactly. Have you had to curtail them in recent years? Unfortunately, yes. We are an island system so there's no way to export this excess energy. So we need to meet our customers needs at any given time. So right now if there's really no demand for electricity and there's excess generation, there is curtailment. If I had more batteries, if I were them and I had more batteries, I could just pump it all into the batteries during that period of time and not lose anything. That is an option. Batteries still are quite expensive and they're a big capital investment. Looks like a booth up there with windows. Can a person be there? Is there a control room there or something? Not so much as the control room is there is an access for maintenance to be done. There's a couple of landings that you go up to the top certain a couple of you know probably I think there's two landings on the way up and that's where you can rest if you need to. I'm sure I would have to. They're very spacious inside. Some of the other turbines like that has gearboxes in them is very cramped space. There's actually a wind vane up top and through the wind vane measures where the predominant wind direction is or the average wind direction is and actually there's what they call yaw motors that kicks in and actually turns the whole turbine to face the wind at all times. It constantly adjusts itself as the wind direction changes to constantly trying to face the wind to maximize the power from the wind. So we're standing here on this point of land right under the turbines and it's blowing up a storm and it's consistent when it's strong wind. I hope it doesn't affect our sound too much actually. Is it like this all the time? Yes sir that's why we're here. From there we drove back to Central Maui to see one of the Pacific biodiesel sunflower fields in that area at the Maui Tropical Plantation Center and we caught up with Bob King of Pacific Biodiesel. So what can you tell me about this field here? It looks like a young field of sunflowers. Can you tell us a little bit more about what Pacific Biodiesel has going on here? Well here at Maui Tropical Plantation we wanted to do a little small planting for people to just come and enjoy and see what's going on at the bigger fields which are across the street and down the road a little ways. So this is the kind of sunflower, the same variety that we're planting in our big fields but it's a little field. How is this sunflower any different than say another one? Is this one specific for creating fuel, creating other products? What can you make out of this and how would it be perhaps different than the sunflower seeds that I might get from the grocery store? There's two main types of sunflower seed or sunflower plants. One grows the large confectionary sunflowers and that's what we use for the package you buy in the store. It's also the preferred one for bird feed and things like that. It's the large seed.  So they're smaller they do make bird feed out of it as well but most of it is made for the oil industry for cooking oil and biofuel. What other products can you use say the stock other things how much of it is actually going towards that and are there derivative products something extra that you can make out of it? It's interesting every part of the sunflower is edible so you can actually talk to some folks that as kids on the mainland would peel the the stalks apart and chew on the kind of foamy inside core like popcorn. Not for me but it's it is edible every part of the plant is edible. I've done chips out of the leaves kind of like kale chips you can make sunflower chips and then of course the the seed once we once we crush the oil out of the seed the what's left over the meal sunflower meal is a very high quality animal feed. Tell me a little bit about the water use and how you actually you know farm sunflowers is it much different than other farming on Maui? Irrigation has been is is little is quite a bit different. So they for this small field Grant put it in with drip because it's manageable and you don't have to have water spraying around when people are walking around. For our fields we don't use drip and and it's mainly there's enough drip tape in the ground out there we have you'd have to peel it up for me you have to take it out every time you use it. We go with above ground sprinkler irrigation in the summertime but our real what we're really finding is that to use the weather so some of our we're going in with a lot of acres in the winter time here when as soon as we get rain and we'll call what's what we call dryland cropping which is where most crops are grown in the world it doesn't mean it's dry it just means you're not adding irrigation. How about for you know the county and for the for jobs and resiliency it seems like there's a lot of benefit to actually growing a product whether it results in a fuel or another product a chip or or a cosmetic who knows what it might you know ultimately be it really seems like there's a lot of benefit to having smart agriculture in the county. When you make products from ag it's basically labor there's not that many inputs into it's the sun it's the earth so it really does create jobs and and payroll so and it goes on and on you know you quit quit hiring people you quit farming so it's there's no end to it and we think they're good jobs when you get to I mean the parts that we're trying to do are big mechanized farms and that means that rather than you know bending over and pulling stuff out of the ground the hard way which is I gotta thank people for doing that because I love my lattice and things but we're doing it with big equipment that's got air conditioning and biodiesel engines and so they're good jobs they're technical jobs and I think there's thousands of jobs that can be created and and dawn down the line so the cosmetics the food grade oils the the co-products and and not all of these are going to be oil bearing they're going to be other similarly farmed food products you're selling sunflower products what do you sell and to whom well we on the sunflower product side we're developing a few few different things right now we're we're really thinking that the food grade oil for you know for salad oil or cooking is is going to be up was going to be our big product but then we realize that the cosmetic industry is really likes it so right now we're selling everything into the cosmetic market to close out our visit to Maui we went to the Maui Electric Control Center it's in the Miko yard in Kahului it monitors the sources and distribution points on the Maui grid the display design is modular so when the grid changes it's easy to change the wall sized real time display you start in energy and then you find something out and you use that for some other completely unrelated purpose and and the whole thing is a kind of continuum it's whatever you can innovate you innovate absolutely I think farmers are the original innovators I really like the idea of locally sourced products ag continuing the ag business on and in Maui so it just seems like a win-win solution where we can keep the agricultural business going and and still can support our energy needs here on Maui I think just the innovation aspect is just fantastic you know and just to see people willing to try to innovate and and try to create value out of agriculture that's that's that's very creative and very innovative to make it you know work out the economics have to pan out in the end and you know the more derivative products and the more value that you can extract out of that the better off you are this is our dispatch room for Maui Electric so basically this is offices man 24 hours a day seven days a week holidays weekends all the time we usually have at least three persons on staff at all time we have the supervisor we have a dispatcher and we have the system generation operator so basically this half of the room primarily looks after the transmission distribution side and in this seat over here is the system generation operator so basically he handles the the coordination of the power plant generators at Kallui Malaya along with the wind farms and the PV facilities on Maui there's constant this isn't being made about making sure that we're maintaining frequency and voltage across the system making sure there's power and we're delivering it safely to our customers so meanwhile you know there's big roles in trying to coordinate as available generation so when the wind's up and blowing and the sun is out shining we're making sure that we can accept as much as that energy as we can by regulating our our diesel generators down and that board tells the whole story for frequency of 60 hertz and right there we're at 60.00 hertz so right now we are we are perfectly balanced between generation and customer usage when anything changes on here the lights start flashing we get audible alarms so we know we can address that situation as quickly as possible so where is Ula Palakua where we just visited where is that on the board that's right down it says awahi right there and there's a digital readout is minus 16.8 that means they're feeding into the system 16 megawatts close to 17 megawatts so basically we actually have visibility over all three islands we're responsible for so we have SCADA control and visibility for Maui Molokai Lenai this is much more complex than I would have imagined actually it gets easier after 20 years doesn't it but it looks like to me is a whole bunch of micro grids waiting to happen micro grids that's certainly possibility but again it all comes down to ensuring that we're able to provide reliable cost-effective service to our customers whether or not a micro grid is able to achieve that is probably the biggest questions yeah looking out in that direction there it looks like it's almost its own micro grid or could be islanded on the island currently we do have ability to actually service HANA through transmission or sub transmission lines it's one of those things that if we were to convert it to micro grid in doing so what benefits are we able to provide the customer I think in certain cases and there are some cases that we're looking at not actually on Maui right now that we do have older transmission infrastructure that needs to be replaced and then the question then becomes is it cheaper to replace transmission type equipment or is it cheaper to do a micro grid we're looking towards the electrification of transportation a lot of electric vehicles it would seem to me that given the power demand of a lot of those vehicles let's just say that we're talking about the charging aspect not maybe other values that might bring that you're going to need quite an expansion of that or other technology what do you see is the best way to bring more electric vehicles into onto the island what we want to do is basically avoid the peak usage periods so what we don't want to do is have charging of EVs at a time where customers are using electricity for other uses whether it be for business purposes or when you first get home when our when our peaks usually occur so I think in terms of charging we want to do it when there's excess energy available typically that happens in the midday when there's a lot of solar generation or perhaps in the early morning where we have our units turned down to minimum and there could be instances where we have excess wind energy available so what we want to do is take advantage of those time frames and basically charge those vehicles then perhaps workplace charging then or something where where you had the ability or I could come with my phone and my car and I could say I'm going to leave by five o'clock let the utility charge my car sometime between nine and five exactly right so I think what we want to do is be smart about the times that we're charging the vehicles and have the ability to actually in programs that will incent customers to charge when energy is abundant and especially from renewable resources. We talked with Fred Riddell by Skype later on one of our talk shows for a retrospective on the trip. From an electrical generation standpoint and from the RPS which is relates to sales by the utility you know Maui County is about you know average in that field I believe the big island is ahead on that and producing more renewable energy in other areas you know where we're really trying to look for is is changing the economy in general right it's not not having such a reliance on fossil fuel and that big portion of that actually is in the transportation sector and this is where Maui is actually a little head of the other islands you know with the JumpSmart Maui program that happened with the Japanese government and Hitachi that brought a lot of electric vehicles on to the island which is now an opportunity right for for the county to continue moving those those ideas forward so so you know I think we're all working towards the same goal yeah coordinate with the other counties we come up with other ideas and at the moment we're all going to get together at the end of November to work on our climate adaptation plan and see where we should go what practices we should do and make sure that we're all looking at it in the same way so it's it's perfectly clear I think it's great that you're having that program and it's it's an opportunity not only discuss climate and sustainability vis-a-vis climate but also to compare notes on what what each of the islands is doing which each of the utility facilities is doing on those islands so that you can learn from each other and raise all the boats pretty much hopefully at the same time so how how will that how will that play I mean who will be there and will they have opportunity for that discussion and what discussion do you contemplate all the counties will be there and so many of the stakeholders throughout out to Hawaii will also be there and it'll be facilitated and what we're trying to get to are some goals of defining our climate action plan to come up with what are the things that we're doing with respect to the state's commitment to portions of the climate of the Paris climate agreement and you know how are we all moving in that direction clearly renewables are alive and well on Maui as we march forward to our 100% renewables goal in our trip to Maui we also visited Molokai we'll show you what we learned in Molokai next time so stay tuned for more about neighbor island energy on think tech we love to cover the neighbor islands we've also recently visited kawai and the big island and videos of those trips are also in spectrum oc 16 and think tech kawaii.com and now let's check out our think tech schedule of events going forward think tech broadcasts its talk shows live on the internet from 11 a.m to 5 p.m on weekdays then we broadcast our earlier shows all night long and on the weekends and some people listen to them all night long and on the weekends if you missed a show or if you want to replay or share any of our shows they're all archived on demand on think tech kawaii.com and youtube for our 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Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to 31 Days of Halloween. It is Classics Week. This is the last review of the week. Tomorrow we will be doing my top five favorite classic horror novels where I'm going to have to break my own rules. I believe I stated in the Frankenstein review that I consider anything over 60 years of classic. I have not read that many books, but I plan to for next the next next year's 31 Days of Halloween. I've realized when I've got to the end of this week how little classic horror literature I have read. So I've looked up the Mysteries of Udolfo, The Monk, several different ones that I'm going to be reading, and I'm probably going to get a lot of flak for tomorrow with the top five because it's only going to be the ones that I've read, but we'll see how it goes. Today, however, we are talking about the Strange Case. Don't look at my sale sticker. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Anyways, these are on sale at BAM for like five bucks for the paperbacks, eight dollars for the hard covers. So I got a couple of them. I got a Dracula, I got a Frankenstein, I got a whole bunch of different ones. But anyways, we're talking about the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde today. This is one of those classics. This is one of those stories that has always stayed with me. I don't remember watching any films based on this. I can't remember if the Mary Riley movie with Julia Roberts is about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But anyways, I can't remember if I've even seen a movie version of this, but we all know the story. You have Dr. Jekyll who starts experimenting in his laboratory or laboratory, and he concocts a concoction. He makes a concoction that changes him into a horrible, brutal persona called Mr. Hyde. The book, this minor spoilers here, these are classics, but I'll let you know anyways. It's minor spoilers. You come to find out that they're the same person throughout the entire book. I mean, it's kind of a twist at the end when you find out in Jekyll's own words how he's been leading this double life. Now, what I enjoyed the most about this book is, like Frankenstein, I enjoyed the characters. I enjoyed the message. I didn't really enjoy how it was written. I'm just not a huge fan of this. I don't know if it's Victorian. I don't know what you call it. I'm not a fan of this type of writing. It's full of superfluous details. It's full of stuff that I don't enjoy, but I did enjoy the characters. I enjoyed the two, Maine Utterson and Enfield, I think, which it was, I believe his first name was R. So R. Enfield, it starts with an R. So Renfield, I'm not sure. I didn't do too much looking into this, whether or not Dracula came first. I didn't know if it was a common name back then or what, or if it is an ode to one or the other. I'm not sure. Whichever came first, you know, did they name Enfield because of that or did they name Renfield because of that? Who knows? Probably neither one of those. It's probably just a popular name. But my favorite part of this book is the message and that is the duality of man. I've long known, and I'm sure you guys know too, good people can be horrible at times and horrible people can do good deeds. It's the duality of man, or mankind, humanity, whatever. Definitely not leaving the women and they, thems out of this. But it's funny that, I don't know, this idea of these two separate personalities living in everybody, I really enjoy that on a personal level. So maybe I'm a little biased here because I have so many, I have a bit of a reputation because I review, honestly, people have called me bully, people have called me all different kinds of things, and it's whatever to me. But I find it funny that you can be seen as a villain to some and not really a hero, but someone that people trust on the other hand. It just depends. And being that to those people, are you really the good person? Not the good people. The people who think you're good? Are you that good person? Are you that bad person?  It's a very interesting concept to me. It reminded me a lot, well, not a lot, only slightly. Luigi Prandello's one, one thousand, one hundred thousand, no, one no one in one hundred thousand, I believe is the title of it. I've got a review up on the channel if you want to check that out. But I'm going a little bit longer for this one because this is my favorite out of what I have read so far. As far as the message, I did enjoy the reading of Frankenstein more, but I enjoyed this story and message, the the the back stuff, the stuff that is implied and alluded to.  I'm going to give both of them five stars. And the reasoning for that is because with Frankenstein, I had a blast reading it and seeing all the different characters, especially the character development with Victor. With this one, there wasn't much character development as far as that's going. The pacing is all over the place. But the reason why I'm giving it that five stars is because it is a perfect allegory for the duality of man and I really can't fault it other than the the way it's written. But that's that's my own personal bias. So if I'm looking at it objectively, I love the story. I love the idea, the message behind it. Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of the writing, but it gets the story told. I'm not a big fan of the pacing. But we find out, you know, it's a twist ending, not really an unreliable narrator, but it's a it's a twist, you know, and I enjoy a good twist. And even though I knew this one was coming because everybody knows the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And if you don't, I highly suggest that you pick it up. But I mean, I've already spoiled it for you. So it's whatever there. Anyways, have you read the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Lewis Stevenson? Please write. Yeah, Robert Lewis. Yeah. I think this is the first time I said his name this entire time. But if you read it, let me know what you thought of it down there in the doobly-doo. But until next time, I have been E, you have been U. This has been another episode of 31 Days of Halloween. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye.