Since 1968, British police have infiltrated more than 1,000 political movements with undercover police officers. Many of those movements were not only peaceful, but advanced arguments we now see is politically common sense, whether it's advancing women's rights or opposition to apartheid. Seven years ago, Theresa May ordered an inquiry into the police's use of undercover officers relating to protest, and late last year, the undercover policing inquiry finally began. Expected to run until 2023 and coming in at a cost of tens of millions of pounds, it is a judge-led inquiry on a par with the Savile and Chilcot Inquiries. But will it lead to justice and change? And even if it doesn't, what are the chances that it furnishes yet further light on how the police treat and often subvert democratic dissent? Joining me now is Tom Fowler, host of the Spy Cops Info podcast. And so far, someone who is attending every session and providing as much live reporting as is possible from the inquiry. Tom, welcome to downstream. Cheers. Thanks for having me. Before we get started with the interview, I think it's going to be a really exceptionally informative interview. I want you to do two things at the end, but only if you find it useful. One is to like this video. And the other is to subscribe to the channel. But only if you find this a useful interview, which I'm almost certain you will. And if you do, please do those two things. We really appreciate it. We've got so many great interviews coming out in the next couple of weeks. Theresa May announced this was going to happen 70 years, seven years ago. It only happened late last year. Why did it take so long for this inquiry into undercover policing to actually happen? Because the goddamn cops, man. What else? So, I mean, essentially, the police used every opportunity they could to slow down the process. Partially, that's because they put in like the extra anonymity orders for each of the individual officers. The levels of secrecy, the level of anonymity these cops have had has been practically unprecedented, to be honest. Like, obviously, they've got the documents. So there's the redaction process. So they've like dragged the heels to that. I mean, they've put in a couple of judicial reviews, which we don't know what the details of those were, but that slowed up the process as well. Yeah, there's I mean, just literally every opportunity the police could possibly choose to slow things down. They've taken it. I mean, it's worth noting on the anonymity thing. They've been really like keen to like kind of impress upon the chair of the inquiry that these former undercover officers would be in danger if they weren't anonymous. I mean, like, I think you'd probably be aware there's a number of former undercover officers who infiltrated like criminal groups of criminal gangs, who have a public profile, have no no danger whatsoever. Some of them like Neil Woods, the one of the more noted former undercover drug cops has come forward and said, Well, this is ridiculous. I never expected any anonymity later in life. Why are these guys getting it? And certainly, you know, there's, yeah, it's really weird that they've got so much anonymity. But that's made not just the process for getting it started really slow, but as the inquiry takes place, makes it a really alienating and difficult process to engage with. From what I'm hearing and from what I've heard in your excellent podcasts, I really recommend our audience to go straight after this, but only after this. It sounds like the opposite of accountability and transparency. Obviously, you're there, not in the flesh, you're virtually there monitoring things. How does it feel to you? Are they trying to be transparent in this inquiry so far? Yeah, no, not at all. I mean, I have been going there in the flesh. So in order to watch the live feed of the undercover officers, give evidence, you have to go to a special viewing room, which is basically it's where the inquiry is actually taking place at the moment. As you say, a lot of it is because of COVID, but I don't expect the end of COVID will result in the beginning of any kind of transparency happening.  But it feels like they do everything possible to like kind of keep you keep as much as possible secret. So for example, the undercover officers, they've all got an enmity for their real names, and in some cases, their cover names. But they don't actually refer to them by their cover names, they refer to them by a cipher, the HN number. But then there's certain officers who've got such a level of secrecy, they haven't even got a cipher assigned to them. So there've been numerous undercover officers who've been deployed into political protest groups, who we can't even really, it's quite hard to talk about someone when you haven't even got a cipher to describe them, their evidence is put into gists, which are then like mixed together with other undercover officers who've got full enmity, so that it's really hard to like draw out where where this bit of information is coming from. Obviously, as well, I mean, like typically for any sort of inquiry, you know, as soon as somebody's giving oral evidence or the written evidence is published, so I mean, we've gone from a real like famine to feast of information when it comes to this topic. And what's the ambit of the of the of the inquiry rather? What's it trying to cover? What's the period? What organizations is it looking into? So when the inquiry, the terms of reference refer to the deployment of undercover police into protest groups from 1968, which really refers to two groups, the special demonstrate units, special demonstration squad and the national public order intelligence unit. The special demonstration squad was set up in 1968 and ran through until the 2007, I think it was. The the national public order intelligence unit was set up in 2001, run until well, run until it was discovered essentially 2011. It still exists in some form, you know, what that is, you know. These these units were deployed like I get in up to like approximately once they got going, like four to five year deployments into political protest groups. What we're discovering from the inquiry is it was almost exclusively the left. The inquiry is working in tranches and this first tranche, which was still on, is 1968 to 1982 and so far everybody has been infiltrated into the left. Like initially it was the anti-Vietnam War campaign. Once they kind of they were deep enough into that, then it became the anti-apartheid movement, then the troops out movement, anti-fascist groups, basically whatever the big noise was on the left at that time. Supposedly their their issue was public disorder and sedition, but subversion, sorry not sedition, subversion, but you get an impression that it's neither of those things really. And the thing about it not really really monitoring, covering what we would now call domestic extremism on the right, I mean just for our audience out there, we're talking that the mid to late 1970s is a real, there's a hugely emergent, powerful far right in this country both on the streets but also the national front doing pretty well in elections. So I mean that makes that look particularly strange, doesn't it? The absence of these guys going after right-wing groups too? Yeah absolutely. I mean like as you say as well as like large numbers of protests by the national front, they were like, I mean the numbers involved quite low but like for an overtly fascist party in Britain, they were doing incredibly well. They came forth in a number of elections, they looked like they might be taking over the Liberals at one point. I mean that just really successfully stole the like, you know, we see that again more recently with the conservative party just borrowing from parties further to the right to bolster their electoral whatever, you know.  I mean it was really kind of, it was quite shocking when I've been like hearing the evidence from these former undercover officers, when it's put to them, like why did you choose the international socialists, the international Marxist group or Anarchy Magazine or one of these to infiltrate when the national front were so active, they were like, oh well the national front weren't a problem. And just literally like without that context of knowing what was happening at the time, you think oh they weren't being a problem then. But it seems, I think it's really kind of relates back to something we hear a lot where like, where is like left-wing politics is considered like, you know, like unacceptable, like it may be the pay of foreign governments and like coming from like some secret evil clique. Like fascist politics is presented as like the legitimate concerns of the white working class and you get the impression that that not only comes from the top but also comes from like special branch, you know, that the police themselves clearly didn't have a problem with the national front, probably because they supported a lot of those those things. And also when you're reading their reports, the language using those reports, I'm not going to repeat it here because it's, you know, incredibly racial language. They're describing people, you know, because these are the reports they did on people were incredibly detailed. Not just, you know, kind of what they were doing politically but what was going on in their personal lives, where they worked, what they remember of a trade union, how much they earned, who they lived with, how much those people they lived with earned, what they looked like, everything about them. But you know, often would include quite like, quite nasty comments about their appearance and their race, both people of colour, Jewish people, you know, also any kind of minority was getting kind of slagged off, basically, in the in these reports. More than a thousand groups were infiltrated by undercover officers, I think more than, well you told me more than 180 officers I think or something between 150-200 officers? Yes, I mean so there's as well as the field officers, there's the handlers but then a lot some of the and the backroom staff but then some of those we've got some officers got more than one cipher because they had more than one role, which initially you got the impression this was part of what I was saying about being so alienating is kind of confusing. The numbers kind of move as you kind of go well there was this many roles but how many actual officers there were is different again. So of these thousand organisations that were were infiltrated more than a thousand, which are the ones that sort of stand out as particularly ridiculous for you? If you if you were trying to make the make the case against spy cops you're talking to somebody who says no this is good it was necessary what was just like brazenly absurd? I was a member of a of a group called Eat Out Vegan Wales where we went and reviewed takeaways and did like social gatherings in in vegan like vegan-friendly restaurants and Marco Jacobs who infiltrated my group was a part of that. I mean it's very easy I mean you could talk about all sorts of you know kind of civic groups essentially and other kind of community organisations which were infiltrated by these undercover police. I mean but I think like when it comes to that sort of thing I kind of I don't really kind of get into those kind of arguments generally because I think but because the nature of like these deployments of course they infiltrated those kind of groups because they're infiltrating the lives of people and I think it's really key to understand that these they're not just infiltrating organisations and often they're barely infiltrating the organisation they're infiltrating the lives of the people who are in those organisations so you know they're infiltrating groups like Eat Out Vegan Wales or these like you know perfectly reasonable groups the same way that they're infiltrating wedding parties and funerals and everything else that's in people's lives because the cover is that deep I mean obviously like you know quite famously they deceived a number of women into long-term sexual relationships and had children with some of them you know the fact that they infiltrated like some community groups along the way as well is well it's to be expected we know of four undercover officers who had children is that correct we know four children yeah yeah you know it wasn't just one person it was it seems like this was basically given carte blanche by management it seems yeah like this was kind of known about and wasn't really addressed yeah so I mean I think there's um when we first found like back in uh the 2010 2011 when we first discovered these undercover officers there was a there was a narrative being spun by the Met Police that this was a firstly Kennedy was a rogue officer then his unit was a rogue unit and then it kind of becomes more clear that actually this is systemic this is more than just individual actions going on um we we at first we thought that it was it dated back you know kind of maybe a decade or two but the more we learn and with the inquiry we're starting because it's a linear inquiry it's starting with 68 these things seem to go back much further and further um one of the undercover officers who had a number of sexual relationships Rick Gibson who we heard about um it turned out another when another undercover officer was giving evidence about him uh it was he was asked did he know about uh you know what he'd got up to and he said oh yeah that gossip was well known throughout special branch before I joined the unit so you know it yeah that that those kind of activities were happening from very early on we heard from a former undercover officer who used the cover name Graham Coates uh who said that he that the the language being used at the banter the the um the safe house banter that was going on between the undercover officers was would have been considered extreme misogyny extreme sexism even then in the 1970s um because one of the defenses that the police keep the police lawyers keep using is we shouldn't judge the social attitudes of people at the time by today's standards and it's coming very clear that even by the standards of the day they're pretty extreme even though I reject that argument entirely anyway I see the argument you're saying about well no you know we should judge this by the people's lives they were infiltrating also a lot of these organizations have very permeable boundaries you know anybody involved in activism knows that you you're kind of just friends with one person you might go to some demos or one action once and all of a sudden you're a member of x often doesn't especially direct action related stuff but I think for our audience you know women's liberation anti-apartheid it does feel like the british state was systematically infiltrating forces for progress I mean there's no two ways about it and you know okay and people and people might have a misgiv you know the socialist workers party that's a it's a revolutionary party which ultimately wants you know political power okay fine and some people are I don't even like the idea of that fine but anti-apartheid the anti-nazi-link I mean it sounds really astonishing within the police themselves was there never a sort of political tension there or is there any suggestion at least that some people at the top were saying you know look we just we had a war with these guys in the 30s and the 40s the Nazis now we're now we're monitoring people and infiltrating people calling themselves the anti-nazi-link maybe we we shouldn't be doing that how was the politics of that all decided was it coming from the home secretary was it kind of autonomous what was it I don't certainly don't get any impression that there being any kind of political tension around this it's very clear that it went all the way to home secretary absolutely the the annual reports that were submitted were to to renew the funding you know made it very clear it went all the way to the top you but yeah I mean I think you're completely right it was you know I personally believe that the whole thing was it was about fighting social attitudes right it's it's not just about disorder it's not about anything else it's about holding back those social attitudes I mean so like one of the groups infiltrated and broken up essentially by the deployment of undercover police of the undercover officer you know was was central in the expulsion of many of the main activists um was the women's liberation front and I mean when they were formed women weren't allowed to open their own bank accounts in the UK there's this idea now particularly that anti-apartheid like these days oh everybody was against the apartheid right well no they bloody weren't and the government of the day certainly bloody wasn't and you know that we remember at the time when the anti-apartheid movement was active in the early 70s um you know boss the uh the security services from South Africa were you know planting bombs across London and you know getting involved in all sorts of really heavy duty shit and the anti-apartheid movement were getting their jumble sales infiltrated but you know what was we we might we might think that oh yeah you know the the everybody in British politics was would be against the Nazis against the apartheid well no they're not no they weren't and you know foresight's a wonderful thing and the reality is is that it served the interests of the British establishment for the rise of things like the national front as a counterbalance to left-wing ideas and left lefting populism assessing this stuff the best way to look at it is imagine what Britain would have been like if these guys hadn't infiltrated more than a thousand organizations if they hadn't deployed into this and that organization how much further along we would be in terms of social progress i think that's such a powerful argument and that it doesn't really feel like there's a pushback because you know at least with when you have when you have undercover policing with drug stings or counterterrorism you know with actual terrorist organizations who've committed you know quite serious serious things people can agree or disagree about you know civil liberties being curtail and so on and so forth but people can demonstrate say look if we don't do this this happens but i can't really see there was no there was no downside if i hadn't done this there was only upside is that a fair assessment so initially the unit is supposedly set up as a response to the anti-vietnam war demonstration i made 1968 outside the the US embassy in grovega square which the police lost control of and there's you know the initial argument is that we needed that intelligence in order to be able to meet the challenges of public order public disorder so there's this the idea that we were wasting police resources by over policing certain demonstrations and putting police at danger by under policing other demonstrations i don't buy that at all i mean largely because you could get that kind of information without infiltrating these groups that to that level but certainly once you get beyond the early days of the unit it's obvious that their their agenda is much wider than that and yeah like they're they're holding back these organizations not just by like infiltrating them and like reporting on them but by in many cases taking the roles that would have gone to like activists who are very you know competent and articulate and know what they're doing taking those roles getting elected into positions and as they bragged themselves at the inquiry didn't do much didn't do anything didn't do any of the work though i wasn't you know i wasn't wasn't working for the for those i was i was not infiltrating i just took the position and didn't do very much so if you take like for example rick gibson who infiltrated the troops out movement um i mean he actually contacted because where he was deployed there was no local branch he had to contact the national organizers and say i want to start a branch in my area he became the rep for that branch he ended up being the rep for London he ended up being on the national committee and for a while he was national co-ordinator of the troops out movement so they're taking very in some cases like the the key role inside an organization and there's there's no doubt in my mind that like that not only would the troops out movement have been more effective but perhaps you know that the the message that they were giving which was that we didn't want to have a military deployment in northern Ireland aside from any kind of concerns about what Irish probabilism means or didn't but like there shouldn't be soldiers on the streets would would have got a lot further right if there wasn't undercover cop running the organization that's making this this argument um and more than that as well i think like one of the key things which like the undercover cops used um was trauma in a number of ways they use trauma as part of their deployment a part of their legend but also they use trauma um for how they how they interacted with the group and how they've ultimately left and that use of trauma often left is mark on people many of many which you know didn't get involved in politics as much or in activism as much going forward as maybe they would have otherwise um and i think we the the use of undercover police into activist groups really like stunted not just those groups but the people involved with them from doing that kind of activism again in the future and i think to my way of thinking you know there's too many amazing amazing inspiring activists that i know like spent decades of their lives firstly trying to piece together what really happened but also dealing with the the trauma or the uh supporting somebody who's probably supposedly gone through trauma because so many of these undercover officers would would tell a story of their own personal trauma which would then make people want to look after them can you just provide one example of um of an officer and perhaps their legend and and and the kinds of ways they manipulated those around them yeah sure i mean like so i mean it was what was really common um so it says like uh andy davie um who um we know was andy coals uh he's the brother of the reverend richard coals uh he's currently a a counselor in peter bra up until not long ago he was the deputy police and crime commissioner for peter bra he was an undercover police officer in the early 1980 in the mid 1980s in animal rights groups in london uh he claimed that his parents both died that uh he was adopted that he'd been in care he was fostered he'd been in care um and he made connections with people who had had similar stories um you know during his his deployments uh you know he he he gave a lot of um a lot of do you know it's really difficult for me to talk about like this because so much of this is um about these stories is personal information which people who've been traumatized by undercover police have told to me some of it's in the public domain some of it's not so i'm always really wary of talking about a lot of this because though it might be in the public domain i could easily get it confused um but you know essentially like it's a pattern we see across these undercover officers so many of them had um the stories of trauma often they would come out for example marco jacob so infiltrated the group i was in he claimed to have been a victim of domestic violence in his previous long-term relationship um which was something which he didn't really want to tell people about because he was a proper bloke and this woman had knocked him around a lot and he it had really affected his confidence and he had problems around that um when like uh mark kennedy was discovered as being um having like a fake passport and stuff he came out with this this huge the like complex cock and bull story which involved him you know staying up on like crying in the arms of the woman he was infiltrating um telling this ridiculous story of horrible talk of horrible trauma um things which really stuck with people for a long time um there's so many examples of it yeah and so similar as well and that's one of the other things is that so many of these officers stories were so similar and it would it would appear i mean we look at something like the tradecraft manual um which you know really um like kind of set out the sort of the way in which to behave around what they called weary's um which was you know and actual activists who they found like we are weary some to deal with because they would talk politics and the stuff um that you know the the the the tips and tricks that they were being given they they obviously used and so much was redacted we don't know what's in it but we drawing from what is what we can read you get the impression of people being incredibly manipulative um of people's emotions um not just not just in a way to like kind of the like for their deployment and for their for their legend for to make their job easier but also just to kind of like twist the knife a bit basically you know particularly when we see the withdrawals because often you know often these men were in um what to the women they were in relationships with incredibly loving relationships um these men were like the perfect men for them in some way because they had so much information about their target that they could present themselves as the perfect boyfriend um and then when when they did disappear they would you know concoct this story that was you know that was so traumatic that it would kind of made sense why they disappeared but meant that after these women like wanting to search them being very worried about them for some kind of cases decades on end course i mean i mean there's no other word for i mean i find it evil um and i think also you know it's this was a job where the absolute worst elements of kind of you know top people's what toxic masculinity but kind of narcissistic lying deception maybe prone to physical violence and the state is saying to these men who are you know they're basically saying look unleash this sort of inner psychopath in you if you if you will do all these things that you could never normally do you know in your everyday life and what's more the public story for it's going to be you're keeping people safe doing it and i just i find it astonishing of course there was a there was a public campaign to to talk about getting spy cops uh or ending the whole practice um and it was raised most memorably of course by lush and there was a huge public kickback to that i mean when that campaign happened a were you surprised that the the sort of overt political nature of the campaign of course lush have been involved in these things but they really took it on and were you also surprised at the level of sort of public pushback the the fact that people are willing to defend the police having children women and effectively sexually assaulting them and then leaving their lives forever basically right we had a we had some that they kind of met with us and were like you know what can we do to help them like we should do a campaign and we're like in the window campaign come on you should do that because they give some funding some various groups they've given some funding to police spies out of lives uh around before that time and we were like that we went to a window campaign and we were like yeah great do that and then we kind of they asked us some advice and we were like yeah do this do that whatever and i'll be honest i didn't think it was anybody who's gonna fucking noticed much to be honest i mean i've been involved in other things that had like a lush window campaign and it hasn't resulted in a great deal to perfectly frank you know you kind of get a little bit of i added interest you know but like it doesn't really remount to whole hill of beans but like fucking hell that was a big deal on the day i was like i was in work and i you know i've got things to nothing work with him but i looked at on my lunch break i looked my phone and was like oh shit what's what's going on um yeah i'm i'm always surprised by people i mean i think partially it's my own background i'm from south wales i grew up in the 80s you know like the police were a uh occupational army around here at one point you know i was i was most people i know ain't got much time for the cops i'm always shocked that people like support the police um because it seems regardless of what they do you know i it's yeah it doesn't make a lot of sense to me that that whole sort of thing of like um the the push like the the push for the king looks like even the bloody home secretary had to go about it didn't he i mean like yeah we'll be tired you criticize the police on like some really serious matter um and like you know kind of hold them to account for it because apparently then you're undermining all policing i don't know man like it it really i i'm like i'm i'm never like i'm not i'm not one to like kind of have a reason to argument with people like that i mean i just like just you know fuck the police man fuck off like for me i thought it kind of reflects a certain desperation in a way because it's like it was it was just so transparently obvious that they were in the wrong and like you said there are that's there's probably 25 of society who will defend the police whatever they do you know and most of them vote Tory um and it did feel like an act of desperation but but speaking about that actually um you got to reason main all of this who of course was a Tory home secretary who is the one that's basically started this inquiry will maybe talk about that briefly in a moment about whether or not you think he'll go anywhere but it's still a judge let inquiry into the police started by a conservative home secretary who's actually she's not exactly on the you know that she was not in the center of the party on things like immigration and so on so how can we understand this how do we make sense the fact that Theresa May is the one who gave us an inquiry into a policing fuck no man to be honest with you like people always ask me what surprises you most about this process and like once you've got over the initial thing right like it's hard to be something i'm shocked but not surprised all the time but i was bloody surprised that she did that i mean i think like it shows i mean partially it was because of the infiltration of the Lawrence family um you know the Justice for Stephen Lawrence campaign um and that are the political capital that like that has in this country just about it's one of the few kind of few kind of progressive like anti-racist things that has some sort of political capital in this country for reasons i don't really understand um i think i mean i got the impression i made people who understand these things better than me might have a different view but i got the impression that like Theresa wanted to like save a few quid you know it was like for good neoliberal reasons the cops cost too much and she was trying to come down to size and there was a few things she did like a couple of inquiries at that point and like the the Daniel Morgan independent inquiry maybe a panel was that same sort of time you know so i think there was like there was other battles going on and this was just a way of like because i remember she didn't she get booed at the like police federation that year like they were she was obviously she'd like you know for whatever reason she was having a pop at the cops and like you know i'm i'm no fan whatsoever they're absolutely none at all but like fair play to her for pulling this one i don't know why she did really i'm i think it's great that she did but like i don't know why and i couldn't really explain why i mean my theory with Theresa Mays i think it's partly neoliberalism but i also think like the Tories a lot of Tories obviously pretty per tell would never do what Theresa May did but i think they think like we're the elected governments we're the ones that should be making these political choices and the reality is that the Metropolitan Police Service the police generally in this country Scotland Yard New Scotland Yard now genuinely think like they aren't answerable to anybody Jen you know Jen i mean of course the political leadership is answerable to the home secretary in regards to certain things but i think they view themselves as autonomous and the second you sort of say well hold on actually formally that's not the case they get really shirty and i think that that's where that conflict came from i think just reversing for a second i mean this is something you talked about i think in one of the podcasts as well and this blew my mind Tom which was that Peter Hain in 2003 was and maybe you can tell me who said this in the police Peter Hain of course was a member of the Labour cabinet under Blair in 2003 even up to then was still being referred to as the South African Terrorists by by the police and this is when he's in government then this is what they were calling in 40 years earlier this is somebody who's serving in Blair's government see you think Christ if if a labour and he's now in the House of Lords if a labour minister is a terrorist for these people gonna help the rest of us could you can you sort of illuminate that anecdote a bit do we have any idea who said this and why you know why they said it i mean that's a bit more explicable perhaps it was a report from Mark Kennedy who was in a deceived Kate Wilson into a sexual relationship at the time Kate Wilson's family Kate Wilson went to school with Peter Hain's kids the family were friendly with with with Peter Hain and he'd been at I think it was over Christmas it was some family get some like Christmasy gathering that he was at and it was in a Mark Kennedy's report from that that you know the noted South African terrorist was there you know um yeah i think it really just shows you like kind of how deep the hole is i mean like um that you know though you might have a different government at some time it's still the Tory state man the UK is the Tory state they own the state like don't matter if they're not the government they're still the fucking state and like you know and i'm sure sure like people like you can join the establishment if you like you know kiss enough boots and kiss enough asses and do all the right things but like you're not you're never fully you're never fully that like that you're still you know like tough like you're still scum to them really and i just i think it just illustrates that i mean we haven't found any um every every political party in the UK was infiltrated except for the conservative party and you know that's kind of says it all really that's another thing yeah i mean following up from the Peter Hain point you know that these guys infiltrated the young liberals parts of the labor but the young liberals man yeah yeah well i mean the young liberals were like opposing apartheid so obviously you know i mean like it was important for the the the British state to you know give their due support to their ally in South Africa and to stamp out the campaign against what was internal South African politics right i mean like you know i mean literally like we we can it's not a complicated answer it's it's the obvious answer they were like yeah we might think them as quite mild but like they were opposed to what was the law of the day so like they were they were a problem so final question here you know this to me sums up British politics and British public life on the one hand we've got an inquiry into undercover policing and at the exact same time we've got you know a bill proceeding through parliament both parties ostensibly were backing it that's sort of changed basically legalizing a bunch of practices you know codifying in law rather than just sort of letting things pass a lot of the practices that we've been talking about today that you'll be covering over the next couple of months and years indeed with this inquiry again how do you make sense of that tension there's a there's a there's a judge let inquiry into a set of behaviors and at the exact same time they're being legalized by the Conservative Party and almost the Labour Party got behind it ultimately became too politically costly how do we make sense of that is it it just seems so chaotic and um I don't know it's it's just going like volatile and doesn't make any sense to me can you make sense of it for me Tom can you help me understand it if you're playing the game right and you're following the rules and you're kind of like doing it in the right order whatever no it doesn't make any sense but like since when did the fucking does your the Boris Johnson's world or like the Tory party in general give a shit about that man it's like it was an ideal opportunity they won some case at the IPT it's some in my five case and there was an opportunity and they just fucking jumped right so they just did it like and actually it makes perfect sense if you think if you like looking from their point of view it's like oh well this could be embarrassing at some point once it finally reports in like 20 years time wherever the bloody along long this thing is going to take but if we just legalize it all night won't be a problem and also it means that we can carry on with all these other things that we're doing right under the noses of this inquiry which you know I mean like because because might is right and that's the only that's all the politics means yeah I think that's I think there is definitely a relationship between these two between these two things and I think ultimately yeah when the inquiry reaches conclusions well it's all legal now so no more inquiries needed Tom if our audience wants to know where to find you and to follow your work where where do they need to go you can find me on Twitter at Tom B Fowler if you want to check out the podcast or anything else I've got links to everything spycups.info it's all there if you've enjoyed this interview like I said at the start there's two things you can do don't cost you a thing we really appreciate it like this video subscribe to the channel if you want to see more content like this and I think we have to get Tom back on to talk about this important topic go to navaramea.com forward slash support help us build a new media for politics my name is Aaron Bustani been watching downstream Michael Walker is back tomorrow night with Tiske Sauer but from me from our producers and I presume from Tom too good night


This is my Bamboo Lab P1P, and this is a brand new print from Play Conveyor. So I cleaned up the brim that I used to print, and if we check this out, it printed really nice.  This is what he looks like when he's sitting out of the stocking, and then you can push him back in if you want to, and he hides in there. That's pretty cool. They did come up with a multicolor one. Let's go check that out.  It's too bad that it failed, because it could've looked really cool like this. If you want to see me retry this print, let me know in the comments.


And niggas, niggas now they be saying they don't write. But at that time, everybody was right. And when I came, I literally was the only nigga that wasn't writing though. Like, Lil Wayne was right. JZ was right. Everybody was right. JZ too? Everybody was right. Like that time, all the niggas were right. Because when you just started. Yeah, we on boss talk, one on one, one on one. Yeah, we gon' talk. I don't know how it is in Atlanta or in Georgia, but I've heard because they say it's the worst one, bro. They got their own rules, their own laws. And that whole thing right now from what, you know, I'm on the outside looking in. They going to the internet. Nigga, the internet, they is not playing. Like, it's all kind of stuff being said about niggas coming up, going, you know, Rico stuff happening, all I'm saying is.  I would not want to be dealing with that. Yes, they liking niggas up off the internet. Now, most of them out for real, they trying to give you real time off the internet.  But why don't people be smarter about it? Why people keep putting stuff on the internet knowing that they watching it, they can use this against you? I don't know. It's not even like what you may say. What I say, what I say when you're the rest of you. Anything you say. Can you say and we'll do, you know. Okay, anything you, you, Now he know it, they didn't know it right now. I don't fold buttons right now. Anything you say. But we need to put that on social media. Anything you film and say can be used against you. Can and will be. Can and will be used against you in a court of law.  That's like a freedom of speech and speech.   On the internet with the gun. Yeah, I'm with you. I've seen it. I've seen it. I mean, we just had a case here where something happened in Big T Bizarre and it was bodies laying everywhere. They send a picture. It was in real time. Man, these niggas be on probation man and taking pictures of guns. Guns and weed and everything else. I see that. I've seen that. That's crazy.  Now these niggas ain't got real buck with it, huh?  They don't care. That's crazy, man.  And boy, them boys in the hood, you was a hood. How you come up with that?   Niggas was really not just rapping.  So it was like a whole another vibe and everybody getting money. And this was early on too cause Jesus, they had just, it was just getting started. Everybody was just getting started.   Lawyer to the game, are you trying to make a cover? But you sung that, did you write that?  No, I was not writing. You didn't write that? No.  No, you just say it. I get what you're saying. So that's how you just came up with that? Yeah. And you one time hit and you did it or you had to go over and over and over before you got it? Boys got all that. You just come up with that in your mind.   But you gotta hear the beat. You gotta hear the beat. Yeah, I'ma just vibe to the beat. And then go in. I go in and do what I do, yeah. That was a big part of my whole makeup.  They probably, they do it. But at that time, everybody was right. And when I came, I literally was the only nigga that wasn't writing though. Like LeWayne was writing. JZ was writing. Everybody was right. JZ too? Everybody was right. At that time, all the niggas were right. Because when you just starting out, cause I'm sure that they're so experiencing it that they don't really have to write no more. They just jump in and do their thing. But no, that's what I mean. But when you started, you started like that. That's what made them like, this little motherfucker coming in here. Natural. They telling me, they like, you ain't, where you need to pay, you need, no, I'm like, nah, give me a beat. That's what made impact. Where do you get that from? Like your music abilities, like, did it come down to your mama, daddy, somebody? It's just a gift, you know what I mean? I had some people in my family that had that gift too. My stepdad, he had a gift, you feel what I'm saying? But he was a preacher, so he was more of a, church, gospel, but he still knew how to control them.  So I saw a lot from there too. But at the same time, I got my own little sauce, man.  He blessed that boy, man, but.


This channel supports the Finest, a G.I. Joe costume club, and their charity campaign benefiting canines for warriors. The campaign is almost over, but there's still time to get involved. So if you're in a position to make a charitable donation, I encourage you to check it out. You can get some special perks like a calendar, a patch, a coin, or a t-shirt. I chose the all-in option so I can get one of each. This cause is important to me and I'm proud to support it. Please check the link in the description of this video. Hooded Cobra Commander 788 here, it's time for another vintage G.I. Joe toy review. Before I get started, I have to thank Watson Joe Mind for this special Watson Joe Mind edition Cobra Convergence t-shirt. Watson Joe Mind is a long-running G.I. Joe podcast. If you haven't checked it out already, you definitely should. And why not get a t-shirt like this? It's great. This week we are looking at another battlecopter. We've looked at a battlecopter before, the one piloted by the Interrogator. And this one is very similar to that one. But it included a new version of a classic G.I. Joe character, Ace. G.I. Joe's first fighter pilot. Oddly enough, this version of Ace does not include a fighter jet. Instead, they gave him a teeny tiny helicopter. I have to thank Thomas Hogan for donating this vehicle. It was in a donation box, along with some other things. Thank you very much, Thomas. The battlecopter had a special gimmick. It's really supposed to fly. Will the battlecopter get off the ground? Let's find out. HCC 788 presents Ace and the battlecopter. This is the 1992 G.I. Joe battlecopter and Ace version 2. This vehicle and figure set were introduced in 1992, and they were available in 1992 only. They were discontinued for 1993. Ace and the battlecopter were packaged together. Although Ace is a vehicle driver, the battlecopter is somewhat generic. G.I. Joe and Cobra each had a standard battlecopter design. This is the second version of Ace. There were three versions in the vintage era. Version 1 was released in 1983 and was the pilot of the Skystriker G.I. Joe's first jet. The Skystriker was magnificent. The first version of Ace looked more like a spaceman than a fighter pilot. Version 2 had more of a fighter pilot look with a flight suit, helmet, and air mask. Instead of a jet, though, they gave him a mini helicopter. Version 3, issued in 1993, used the same mold as version 2 with different colors. The accessories were also mostly the same, except for the submachine gun. He was given a new jet, the Ghost Striker. The first battlecopters were released in 1991. G.I. Joe had one piloted by major altitude, and Cobra had one piloted by the interrogator. Both the Joe and Cobra battlecopters were in a silvery gray plastic. They were zip-cored powered toys that would really fly. Sort of. In 1992, the same battlecopters were reissued in black plastic instead of silvery gray. The Joe battlecopter was piloted by Ace, and the Cobra one was piloted by the Heliviper. I still think the Heliviper is one of the ugliest action figures I have ever seen, but I'm not reviewing that one today, so we won't take a close look at it. We will test the flying feature later. I'll focus more on Ace, since he's the star of this set. The battlecopter is generic, but this is a new version of Ace. We hadn't seen this guy since the Sky Striker was discontinued after the 1985 series. Let's take a look at Ace's accessories, and he came with a few. Let's start with his submachine gun. It is in black plastic. It has a long, thin stock that is probably prone to breakage. It has a ventilated suppressor, and it has a magazine in the grip. This is probably intended to mimic an Uzi machine pistol, but it does not exactly follow that design. This submachine gun is a reissue of the submachine gun that originally came with a 1988 shockwave. Shockwave submachine gun being in blue plastic instead of black. This submachine gun was issued in black in 1989 with the night force version of shockwave. These appear to be the same accessory. Obviously, the Ace submachine gun has some damage to the grip, but they appear to be the same. If there's any difference between them, it is subtle enough that I can't spot it. I prefer pilots to not include handheld weapons. If they're going to live in a cockpit most of the time, a gun is just an extra piece to rattle around inside the vehicle. In the case of this Ace figure, he's not in a cockpit. He's flying a little personal helicopter. He probably will need this weapon since the battlecopter is not armed. Next, he has a helmet and air mask. I will remove them together. The helmet is white. It has green painted goggles. It was uncommon to get paint on G.I. Joe accessories. It's a really good realistic looking helmet. It is made of soft flexible plastic, yet it still seems to scratch the paint on the figure's head. Attached to the helmet is a black air mask with a hose. It attaches to the helmet on knobs on the sides of the helmet and it can be removed. And this is where it's a good thing. It's flexible plastic. Otherwise, I would really worry about breaking those knobs off of the helmet. The air mask is in black plastic. It is also that flexible plastic. It covers his nose and mouth and it has a hose that runs down with a peg on it that will peg onto the chest of the figure. It's easy enough to put the air mask back on the helmet. Just press on those knobs until it attaches. And then you can place the helmet on the figure. And the air hose is just the right length to connect to a hole on the figure's chest. That apparently goes to some kind of an air system. Pegs right on there. And because the hose is plastic, he can still turn his head a bit without it popping out. The same helmet and air system was reissued with ACE version 3 in different colors. I think it looks great in black and gold. But really, I like both of them. They both look great. I'm a big fan of this helmet. It's very realistic. Looks like Ace is ready to fly a fighter jet. It's too bad he didn't get one until the following year. Let's take a look at the articulation for Ace. Ace had the articulation that was standard for GI Joe figures well before 1992. So he could turn his head from left to right and look up and down. He could swing his arm up at the shoulder and swivel at the shoulder all the way around. He had a hinge at the elbow that allowed him to bend his arm at the elbow about 90 degrees. He had a swivel at the bicep that allowed him to swivel his arm all the way around. This was an o-ring figure, meaning the figure was held together with an o-ring that looped around the inside. That allowed him to move at the torso of it. He could move his legs apart about so far. He could bend his leg at the hip about 90 degrees and bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's look at the sculpt design and color of Ace. Ace is wearing a G suit. It's a specialized flight suit with expandable bladders to control the pilot's blood flow. It helps prevent G force induced loss of consciousness. Some fans have commented that the puffy rings on Ace's version 1 figure may be part of a G suit, but a G suit looks more like the one he's wearing on his version 2 figure. Looking at his head, Ace has red hair. He has a pretty good face sculpt. Comparing with the version 1 figure, he certainly looks more distinct, but the hair color changed. The version 1 figure had brown hair. On his neck, sculpted and painted in, he has his blue-green undershirt. On his chest and back, he has a blue flight suit covered with blue-green equipment, including a vest and what looks like an inflatable ring around his neck. He has a flashlight and a couple pockets, and he has a hole that connects to the air hose. I'm calling the color of this equipment a blue-green. To my eye, it looks teal, but it's sort of in between teal and aqua blue. On his arms, he has long blue sleeves, and he has black gloves. On his waist, he has a continuation of that blue flight suit. He has a blue-green belt. Looks like he has some zipper details on them. He has a couple lines that go from the belt down to the leg covering. That is also in that blue-green color. And on his butt, he has what looks like straps for a harness that would probably go to a parachute, but the figure does not come with a parachute. On his upper legs, we have a continuation of that blue flight suit with a couple zippered pockets on his upper thighs. Then we have blue-green leg coverings, and each have zippered pockets on the thigh. On his lower legs, we have a continuation of those blue-green leg coverings. On his right shin, he has what the file card calls his emergency medical kit. On his left lower leg, we have a pistol and a holster with a couple straps that go around his calf and buckles sculpted on. All of those details unfortunately are unpainted.  Normally on pilots, I don't mind if they get a little creative with the colors. This is not a ground troop, so he doesn't have to be wearing woodland camouflage. If you want brightly colored G.I. Joe's, this is where you do it in a way that somewhat makes sense. I don't mind these colors too much. However, keep in mind Ace is flying a helicopter, not a jet. He's going to be closer to the ground. He'll be fighting with his submachine gun. And there's a high probability he will have to land to join the ground battle. His version 3 uniform is colored more appropriately for that role. His version 2 uniform would make more sense if he had an airplane wrapped around him. It seems version 2 and version 3 have their uniforms reversed. Version 2 looks great in the pilot seat of the ghost striker. Let's take a look at Ace's file card. This file card was not printed on the back of the box for the battlecopter. It was an insert inside the box, plain white backing. We have some artwork for Ace here and a numbered list of some of the features on the figure. And I did refer to this when discussing some of the sculpt design and color. I do not usually read through this list, so let's move on. We have a close up portrait of Ace here. His code name is Ace. He is the battlecopter pilot. His file name is Wendell L. Armbruster. And right now you're probably saying what? Who is Wendell L. Armbruster? We have always known Ace as Brad J. Armbruster. That was his name on his original 1983 file card. Wendell Armbruster is a prototype file name for Ace before the figure was released in 1983. Prior to release, they changed it to Brad J. Armbruster. Whoever was writing this version 2 file card was apparently referring to the prototype version 1 file card rather than the production version. Another change was the birthplace Seattle, Washington to Providence, Rhode Island. Ace kind of has three names. Wendell L and Brad J. And then on a sticker on the sky striker, he is J. Brad. So Brad is either his first name or his middle name. Primary military specialty battlecopter pilot, secondary military specialty ordinance officer, birthplace Seattle, Washington. As mentioned a moment ago, that changed from the version 1 file card. Great is 04 US Air Force Major and that is a promotion from his version 1 file card where he was an 03 captain. We have a quote presumably from Ace himself. It says, flying a modern fly by wire jet is like flying a computer with wings. Piloting a battlecopter into a fast rising thermal with the control surfaces vibrating through your sticks and harness. That's flying. Ace is the original fighter jock jet driver for the GI Joe team. So if there was any doubt whether Wendell L was the same person as Brad J, they specifically say he was their original fighter pilot. He can push a twin engine air superiority fighter to the red line, performing daring aerobatic maneuvers that other pilots would consider impossible. To Ace taking an open harness high powered craft into the heart of Cobra control territory is the ultimate challenge of his flying skills. Ace is a graduate of the combined services escape and evasion school. Considering how often he gets shot down, that's probably a good thing. This card talks a lot about flying fighter jets, but this figure does not come with a fighter jet. Let's talk about the vehicle Ace does come with, the battlecopter. Ace's battlecopter is the same as the 1991 major altitude battlecopter, but in black plastic instead of silver. Also in 1992, there was a Cobra battlecopter piloted by the heliviper. It was a black reissue of the 1991 battlecopter piloted by the interrogator. Small one man helicopters do exist, but they tend to look like miniature regular helicopters. For safety, there is usually a canopy and landing skids. The battlecopter has none of that. It doesn't have a counter rotating blade, nor does it have a tail rotor. We'll test it later, but this design should cause the body of the helicopter to spin in the opposite direction as the blades. In the real world, it would need something to counter the spin. You might think this is a gyrocopter, since gyrocopters could be about this size, but it isn't. A gyrocopter would need some kind of forward propulsion, which the battlecopter doesn't have. This toy is like the GI Joe and Cobra gliders from 1983. They're made to function with action figures, not to mimic the look and precise operation of a real world vehicle. Let's look at the parts and the features of the battlecopter. Whether it's GI Joe or Cobra, whether it's black or silver, the fundamentals of the battlecopter are all the same. It consists of three components, the battlecopter itself, the ripcord as the blueprints call it, and the launcher. The rotor blades and the ripcord are always in the same color. In 1992, it was blue for GI Joe and red for Cobra. The battlecopter has a fair amount of detail molded on. It has a couple control arms that go up and over the shoulders of the pilot, and each control arm has a grip. Those grips look a little thick, and I would be concerned about breaking the figure's thumbs if I pressed them in his hands, so I won't try that. There's a clip for holding the action figure on, and a tiny little seat. You can place ace on the battlecopter by putting the clip around his waist. That should hold him on fairly well. Usually, I'm not a fan of these clips, but in this case, I don't think a backpack would hold a figure on well enough. The rotor blades are blue. There are four wide blades and a safety ring around them. We have GI Joe and American Flag stickers in case there's any doubt about which side this battlecopter is on. We have some Cobra kill marks. It looks like this battlecopter has taken out four Cobra's. Then we have a long tail, and that is very thin plastic. Do be careful with these tails. It looks like that could break fairly easily. We have some unit stickers on the tail, advanced helicor recon. I don't know what that is, but it sounds cool. On the other side of the tail, we have another sticker, a big number two inside a star with lightning bolts, and it says vertical infantry. On its own, the battlecopter is kind of crazy. I mean, it's really small. It offers the pilot zero protection. I guess his feet are supposed to be the landing gear, but this is not just a handheld vehicle. It has a gimmick. It is supposed to really fly. So now it's time to see if that works. Before we actually test the flying feature, let me show you how the battlecopter operates. This is the launcher. It has a grip. The grip is more the size of a child's hand, but that's fine. It has a spinner at the top, and then it has a slot for the ripcord. Push the ripcord through the slot with the teeth toward the center of the launcher. Now on mine, it's really tight, which makes me wonder if I'm going to be able to get a good launch on this thing. Press the ripcord all the way in until it reaches the stopper at the handle. The ring on the launcher has a tab, and that lines up with a notch on the bottom of the battlecopter. So that shows you how to place it on. Just line up the ring and the notch, and they should connect pretty well together, and then it is ready for launch. Can it fly? I'm outdoors to test it. I am not using my Ace figure. Instead, I'm using Spider-Man. I don't have any confidence that this figure will stay on that clip if this actually takes off. And I have to say right off the bat, the ripcord on this launcher is very tight. I'm not sure I can get a good pull on it, so I have a feeling this thing is not going to launch. Okay, I'm going to try to get a good pull on this, but it doesn't want to pull very well, so we'll see if it goes. Ready? Here it goes. It did sort of fly, and Spider-Man did fall off. All right, that was actually a better flight than I expected. I'm going to test it one more time. Spider-Man is not going to stay on here, but I'm going to test it one more time to see if we can get even more height out of it. Ready? And go. I said, hold on. Reset it, reset it, and go. Whoa! Hey, and Spider-Man actually stayed on until it landed. All right, so I guess, yes, it can fly. Looking at how Ace and the Battlecopter were used in G.I. Joe media, the Battlecopter appeared several times in the Deke animated series. It wasn't the black 1992 version, though it was the silver 1991 version. The Battlecopter was like most G.I. Joe vehicles. The animated series wasn't too particular about who the pilot was. Sometimes major altitude was the pilot, but anyone could strap on a Battlecopter. Ace was in the animated series since the very first miniseries in 1983, but he wasn't in it very much. Occasionally he would fly the Skystriker and get shot down. To my knowledge, he never appeared in his version 2 uniform. In the G.I. Joe comic book series published by Marvel Comics, Ace first appeared in issue number 14. He had a few other appearances off and on and he had the spotlight a few times. In issue number 34, he flew the Skystriker in a harrowing dogfight against Wild Weasel in the Rattler. In issue number 41, he made a daring takeoff from a damaged USS flag to assist the Joes attacking the newly formed Cobra Island. He appeared in several issues of the special missions series. In special missions number five, he and Slipstream went up against the Cobra Night Raven. Ace executed a top gun inverted maneuver and he was later shot down. He appears in special missions number 12, flying the Skystriker alongside Slipstream in the Conquest and Maverick in the Vector. Not that Maverick. In special missions number 16, he was in another all out aerial battle against Cobra. Herb Trimpe liked to draw airplanes so he got a lot of air battles in special missions. I can't find any appearance of Ace on the Battlecopter. The Battlecopters did appear though in issue number 127 of the regular series. They are flown by several Joes, none of which is Ace. The Cobra version of the Battlecopter appeared in issue number 120, flown by Destro and the Baroness. Looking at Ace and the Battlecopter overall, I still don't really care about the Battlecopter. The vehicle is too gimmicky for my tastes. Yes, it does really fly, but to me it's kind of a rinky dink generic vehicle with a gimmick that as a kid I probably never would have used. Ace on the other hand is a really nice figure. I love the updates, I don't mind the colors. It's a middle tier figure that's approaching the top tier, doesn't quite make it though. We have Ace actually looking like a fighter pilot with a realistic looking helmet, an air mask, a flight suit. He has a submachine gun that is fine. It's a reissue of a submachine gun that I really liked with the original figure. Even though the colors are fine, I think the version three colors are better, and we have some unpainted details on this figure, that kind of takes it down a notch. What kills me about this figure is it's a good fighter pilot in search of a fighter jet. He should have come with a fighter jet, yet he came with the little helicopter. I guess you could use this figure for one of your pilotless aircraft, or you could use it as a co-pilot for the original Ace, who needed one. The file card is filled with curiosities. They used the prototype file name and place of birth, no explanation, and it talks a lot about fighter jets not included with this figure. All in all, it balances out to a middle tier figure. In 1992, it was almost the Ace action figure we always wanted. That was my review of version two of Ace and his Battlecopter. If you enjoyed it, please consider giving this video a thumbs up on YouTube, subscribing to the YouTube channel, hitting the notification bell, and sharing this video with your friends. I am on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and I have a website, hcc7aa.com. Thanks as always to my patrons. If you like these videos and you'd like to support the channel in that way, please consider checking out my Patreon. You can get some special perks, and you can find out how to decode the secret messages you see in these videos. I'll see you next week with another vintage GI Joe toy review, and remember, until then, only GI Joe is GI Joe.


What's good everybody Chris from jassescasebreaks.com doing our first of two fillers for our hit parade hockey This is 21 22 upper deco or hockey pack number three number four the last filler on the site right now We're all out of sold-up spots. So let's get this one going first. Thanks again to anyone who got a spot here from Michael L Down to Michael L will grand opening grand closing 32 spots 32 teams the top 10 at our last randomizer After the pack we'll get into that hit parade hockey Let's do it Let's roll the dice and randomize six and six twelve times for a filler because of course. Let's go. Good luck. Thanks one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve 12th and final time from Matt down to Mickey and And 12 times for our teams one two three four five six seven eight nine ten Eleven and twelve twelve and final time for our teams From the maple leaves down to the Panthers actually playing each other in this Stanley Cup point off. So it's fun Just a one-pack filler so no tree window will do a little recap Matt with the maple leaves Kevin with the Knights Matt with the Kraken Graham with the Blackhawks Robert with the Bruins Flyers and Sharks Graham with the Predators Victor with the Oilers Robert with the Islanders avalanche Canadians Kevin with the Ducks Michael with the Blues Matt with the Wild Robert with the Penguins Michael L with the hurricane Robert with the Bluejacket Michael J with the Capitals Matt with the Senators Graham with the Canucks Logan with the Lightning Graham with the Sabres Robert with the Kings Graham with the Stars Robert with the Devils Michael with the Rangers and Flames Robert with the Jets and Coyotes Matt with the Red Wings and Mickey with the Panthers All right Let's print Yeah, let's wrap much better. Let's print switch screens real quick 21-22 upper deck of lower hockey. I gotta be careful doing that Overdeck war number three Kevin with the Ducks Down to Robert and the Jets Good luck everyone Just a pack first Got a red and yellow Rhino Riley iced out red Jeremy Shwayman and a candy York working. These are both non numbered All right, there we go quick and easy just a eight card pack. Let's switch screens real quick Matt down to Mickey our fresh dice our fresh list All right top 10 get in thanks again y'all good a lot of little dice randomized one-on-one. There we go snake eyes two times one and two All of them to 32 sad times, but thanks for getting in appreciate you got one more chance I'll protect award number four on the site right now Kevin had 11 done a Robert. Let's see though. Thanks again y'all good luck Matt gets in Robert gets it was a 12 Graham gets in Robert one more time Matt gets in again Graham gets in again Graham Michael L of the last spot mojo Robert and Robert. There we go one to 10 perfect. Nice. Congrats. Y'all. Thanks again lower That name That next to your name means you got him through the filler. Thanks again y'all number four on the website right now Last filler we need to get that upper deck event that Jaspies hit parade hockey going. Thanks again. Jaspiescasebricks.com. Bye. Bye


So, first of all, thank you, everyone. Welcome to the Hyperledger BASU demo. We'll be talking today, I'll probably talk only for 10 or 15 minutes about BASU, the project, where it's at, the feature it has, and the roadmap and all that. So, but really gonna leave a lot of time for questions. So please feel free to drop questions in the Q&A box.  I won't be doing a technical demo, but we'll at least be talking about the project and giving you a sense of kind of what use cases it's used for and how you can think about it for your own project. So, very much excited to do that. Let's go to the next slide. So, before I guess I talk about the greenhouse, it's probably worth introducing myself. So I'm Grace Hartley. I'm the strategy and operations team within the protocols group at Consensus. So our group was the one who originally submitted BASU to Hyperledger almost two years ago, which is kind of crazy. It's been two years. And my role is a senior business manager. So I'm actually not a software engineer, but I do our query with the team and defining the product strategy and the BASU maintainers themselves. I've been with Consensus for almost three years now. And prior to that was a consultant at KPMG. I also within Hyperledger, I'm involved in sit on the technical steering committee and the diversity, civility and inclusion group. So you can find me definitely around the Hyperledger group. But yeah, well with that, let's talk about BASU. So here's the greenhouse. I always like to start and share this with everyone because I think it gives a little context where BASU sits in the Hyperledger ecosystem. It is one of the DLT projects in that top section. So similar to Fabric or Indy or Aroha, if you're or Satu that you're familiar with them, BASU also performs similar functions there. But now I'm able to talk about BASU in particular. So it's a little different than other projects because it's other DLTs in Hyperledger because it's an Ethereum client. All the other projects are not Ethereum based or all the other DLTs are not Ethereum based. BASU is the only one. So with BASU, it's open source just like all the other Hyperledger projects and Apache 2 license, it's written in Java. And then it also is built for public or private chain use cases which we'll talk about a little more. And that's one of its different chain features. So this is kind of what we're talking about here. We kind of think of BASU as highly unique in the ecosystem because it is the only public chain client. So instead of only being able to run in permission settings, so in a consortium setting, if you've done that or been a part of one of those projects, you could also run a Hyperledger BASU node on Ethereum mainnet and create public chain use cases on top of it, which is really very different than how you're thinking about other projects that you can only run permission networks on. You can see here that we have some of the different features that I guess I can go into. So permissioning, so in the private chain use case, you wanna set up a permission network. The permissioning for Hyperledger BASU is smart contract based and you can manage the network, the permission network by the account level or the at the node level. Next, so secure off chain privacy is the next one. So if you wanna send private transactions within your permission network or consortium, I kind of use both words interchangeably. If you wanna send a private transaction within that permission network, you can do so using the privacy group feature. So privacy groups are basically, I like to think of them as small groups within the permission network where you can send and designate private transactions within a certain group of the network. So instead of, let's say if there are, I don't know, four people in a permission network and there are only two of you who wanna send private transactions and you don't want the other institution know, you would use privacy groups to then send those private transactions. It's similar concept to private channels if you're familiar with that with Fabric. What is kind of cool about privacy groups and privacy generally is that you can add and remove members and still keep the history of the network, of that group itself, which kind of gives a lot of flexibility in different use cases when you don't wanna be constantly creating new privacy groups but you do wanna add new members as the consortium shrinks and grows as needed. Next, so stable and fast finality. So there are a couple of different consensus mechanisms you can use in Hyperledger Basu, of course, proof of work because it is on the Ethereum mainnet but then you can also use different proof of authority consensus mechanisms for the permission network. So for example, IBFT2 is the one that the Basu team developed themselves and led the leadership on developing it with the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance specification and that is known for its stability and finality of transactions. So what's interesting is I actually, one small anecdote is I was talking to Adam Clark yesterday from finality on his use case using Hyperledger Basu and the recordings available was here at the global forum and he said that was really that consensus mechanism, IBFT2 is the one they use on their network and really meets those needs for kind of, it doesn't need a high throughput. So having, but it needs for a settlement risk use case stability and finality and transactions which is what IBFT2 does. The other one is the other consensus mechanism, proof of authority consensus mechanism that Basu has is also CLEAK which is more known for its aliveness rather than stability. But you have lots of choices at the point. You can kind of configure Basu for whatever your requirements are, whether private chain or public chain. And then finally, just deployment. So we are constantly thinking of ways to improve and have different templates for our, for deployment, whether it's on your cloud provider, there are integrations with Prometheus and Grafana and different monitoring tools. And we understand, it's not just about building cool features but making it easy to run integrating with enterprise system. So that's something we really focus on in our development as well. So here are just a few example use cases. When I say I have my first Q and A, so I'll get to you at the end. So then a few example use cases. So it's worth saying that Basu is industry use case agnostic. Think of it, so Basu actually means base or foundation in Japanese. And when you're thinking about it, like building it or using it, that's just what it is. It's a foundation that you can build on top of, but with like all the Ethereum standards and features that go on with that. So it gives you lots of flexibility and choice when you wanna think about your use case and you can build it kind of right on top of it. So here are just a few examples. They're really not complete. They're about I'd say dozens of use cases across different industries including financial services. So here you'll see we have all funds, which is it's a multi-party payment use case. And so they are using Basu for fund management and disbursement use case. Post-Italiana, it has a customer loyalty program and they're a large infrastructure company in Italy. And they have a customer loyalty program where they're using blockchain technology to create kind of a consortium loyalty partner program, which is pretty cool. Blackchain is another one. So they're the Latin American and Caribbean consortium and they've been using Basu actually for years and essentially their alliance is basically creating this Latin American ecosystem all built on including governments and banks and I guess nonprofits are kind of building on top of the blackchain network to use. And the blackchain network is built on Basu, which is pretty cool. Finality as I mentioned already actually, so that's a consortium of financial institutions and they're using blockchain to tokenize assets and also manage settlement risk and wholesale payments issues. So kind of a cool array, there are a few others are also probably worth talking about but kind of giving you some sense of there's a lots of options when you're thinking about and different ways to make Basu fit for your use case. And if anyone has questions on particular industries, I'd be happy to answer that. So just looking at the roadmap, I always like to show, we're constantly building, constantly developing, you have a quarterly release schedule at this point and just wanted to show you kind of what are some of our priorities over the next couple of months, probably through the end of the year. One of course is high availability and disaster recovery. So that will be available in Q3, which is pretty exciting. We're actually working on interledger integration and different ways of creating basic APIs to manage transactions between different DLTs, including fabric, and that's targeted now from the end of this year. And then finally, because we're a main net client, we're always thinking about how do we, or we always have to continuously keep up with the Ethereum main net and the specification and the hard forks that go on with that. So particularly one highly anticipated hard fork is the London hard fork, which is coming up in July, and that will include E1559, which the team is really excited about. But kind of the next phase is then, because we are in Ethereum, we also have worked towards the Ethereum to merge and ensuring that base is compatible with that process as it kind of continues to evolve over the next couple of years, which is pretty cool and pretty exciting. So how can you get started? So here are a couple of really easy ways, and if one of you did any of these three, I would be very excited, but you can go to the documentation site. Our documentation is, I'm told very, very good, and our docs team takes a lot of pride in the work that they do. So that covers tutorials, concepts, how to run a network really kind of across the board, and it's very comprehensive. Second is there's a, and if you go to the documentation site, so you can go to Quick Starts and then set up your private network under the Quick Starts there as one way to get started. And we think that's pretty cool that you don't need to spend a lot of time getting your network configured and start playing with Basu. These three steps really take under 30 minutes, which is pretty cool. Where to find us? So we are on the hashtag Basu channel on Rocket Chat. Would love for any of you all to come introduce yourself, ask more questions, and see kind of the community that we're fostering there. There's also, if you're ready to get started working on Basu, and you're curious kind of about making your own contribution, we have the list of good first issues on JIRA, and also you can look on the documentation site, basu.hyperledger.org, and it gets started that way. And then my final plug, which is really exciting, is that we actually just launched a new Hyperledger Basu's training course, and just this past week as a part of the Global Forum. So really if you want that kind of detailed walkthrough of Basu and how to get started, and video tutorials, and more details around the consensus mechanisms I was talking about earlier, you can find that there, and I'll actually drop the link in the chat. But yeah, and then just wanted to say thank you, and I'll answer the questions now. I'll go look in the Q&A and do the best I can there. And I'll stop sharing my screen and let's see. So the first question looks like it's from Bob, what's different or added in Quorum compared to Basu? Basu is the upstream version of Quorum, if I got it right. Actually no, so both are Ethereum clients, so go Quorum and Hyperledger Basu are Ethereum clients and have features and meet the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance's specification, which defines what is an Ethereum client. But Basu, it's a completely separate code base than Go Quorum. What I will say is that both of them are currently worked on at Consensus, which is where I work, and a big focus is on interoperability of the different features, but there are some kind of key differences between Basu and Go Quorum. Basu, as I mentioned, is Apache 2 licensed, written in Java, runs on Mainnet.  So when you're thinking about kind of your requirements, some folks have different requirements there. One thing that you said Basu is upstream version of Quorum, so actually Go, Geth is actually the upstream version of Go Quorum, not Basu, just to be clear. So they do have some differences, but both are Ethereum clients, both have privacy permissioning, have different BFT Consensus Mechanism implementations, and a lot of the work that is in the Ethereum space right now is working on interoperability, but they are actually different, particularly the three things I mentioned before. I hope Bob, let me know if that answered your question. I know we have a few, I'll plan on saying on at least five more minutes. Arnab, how can one get started deploying Basu on Kubernetes, clusters, cross-work setups? I am not our DevOps engineer, so I can't, I'm not the right person to give you detailed steps on how that can work. I can see, I'm gonna just double check if there's, we do have a deploying Hyperledger Basu with Kubernetes reference implementations that I'll drop in the chat right now that I think will probably help get you started at least, but I'm not, there you go. Oh, Bob, great, I'm glad that answered your question. Arnab, let me know if that link is what you're looking for too. Oh, great, thanks for sharing that too, yeah. Any, what other questions are there? I know I moved very quickly. Okay, Bob, we went just a minute. Looks like, okay, if there are no more questions, that's great. I'm dropping in the chat right now the Basu Essentials training course, as well as my email. Feel free to find me via email, LinkedIn, rocket chat, I'm there too. Happy to answer any questions or if you're curious more about getting involved with the Basu team, we'd love to have you and I really appreciate you all joining.


Hey everyone, before we get into today's video, I want to remind you to enter our Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition giveaway to enter all you need to do is like this video, comment down below, subscribe to the channel and hit that bell icon, it's your one entry and we will announce the winner through a community post at the end of the month. Today is it folks, today is the day that I have been waiting for anxiously for months and that is because Nintendo has released their financial results for the full fiscal year, including obviously this last quarter. And that means we have some animal crossing sales data. Now we have two different numbers. There is the number that they're officially listing on their website, their sales data website, which is the 11 day total through the fiscal year. Then they also published a six week total as well, however, these aren't considered finalized numbers because they basically didn't fully tabulate everything, it's probably a little bit higher and we won't get a full update again for another three months. But here's the crazy thing, the 11 day total was 11.77 million, that is the official total through the end of the fiscal year for animal crossing New Horizons. Now there is also a total, you will also get on this chart for the first six weeks and that shows 13.41 million units sold. And the interesting thing here is this now makes Animal Crossing New Horizons the most popular game in Animal Crossing history, it has sold more than any game before it. And as you're seeing with the six week totals, it is skyrocketed past the six week totals for the two previous most popular entries in the series, both on the DS and 3DS. So crazy numbers for Animal Crossing, I think we all knew the numbers were going to be absolutely insane. It's already one of the best selling games on Switch, easily in the top 10, firmly in the top 10, and who knows where it's going to stop. Now we have a whole bunch of numbers beyond that to look at, and including Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which is still the top selling game on Switch at 24.77 million units. Maybe that doesn't surprise anyone, but this does make Mario Kart 8 Deluxe the second best selling Mario Kart game of all time, this officially passes the numbers it did on DS. So yeah, the only one that's behind now is Wii, and who knows if it'll catch up to that. Beyond that we have Smash Bros, Super Smash Bros Ultimate at 18.84 million, Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey are both at 17.41 million, kind of interesting the numbers are that close that they're exactly the same. Pokemon Sword and Shield for those wanting an update on that is now at 17.37 million, and that means it has officially passed Diamond and Pearl, it's on pace to actually be the second best selling Pokemon game of all time behind obviously the Gen 1 games. Let's go Pikachu and let's go Eevee is right behind that with 11.97 million, probably will hit 12 million at some point here. Splatoon 2 is at 10.13 million, it is now officially a 10 million seller, there is no doubt how popular that IP is now. Super Mario Party as well is another 10 million seller at 10.10, and that might be shocking to some people, you haven't seen a Mario Party game sell like this maybe ever, I think it's the best selling Mario Party game we've ever seen. So crazy and rounding out their top 10 software right now is New Super Mario Bros. You Deluxe at 6.6 million. So even that's doing really well, especially compared to the Wii U one considering it's just a port. And what's interesting about all this is that makes nine titles. That's right, nine titles on Switch have passed 10 million in sales. To put this in perspective, and this is just crazy, I had to look this up, zero games on Wii U sold over 10 million, not even one, only seven games sold over 10 million on 3DS, only nine games on Wii. So it's right there with Wii and 11 games on the DS did this feed. So it could potentially pass Wii and DS before it's all said and done. And I keep thinking, what else could they release? It's going to sell over 10 million. Well, another Zelda game, perhaps, you know, the sequel The Breath of the Wild could possibly, I mean, it sold the original, sold 17. Is it that hard to think that the sequel is going to sell over 10, which would be the second best selling Zelda game of all time? Is it crazy to think another Mario game could do that? I don't think so. And this is before we consider what if they release a Mario Kart 9? What's that going to do? So there's possibilities out there for Nintendo to get past it. And this is assuming they can't somehow hit the jackpot with another new IP or something, you know, like a Splatoon and just dominate. Who really knows what's going to happen? Nintendo has so many big selling franchises that it's insane to me to think that these are the numbers we're seeing out there and that Switch is essentially right now the most popular platform since the DS. Yes, I'm saying since the DS. I'm not even going Wii. I'm going I want to Nintendo's most popular system they have ever released. And why is that? Well, we have updated sales numbers for the Switch itself. The OG Switch or the original model, the the fat one that sits on your TV and can do TV mode or portable. That one with the joy cons is sold 2.27 million units as last fiscal quarter, whereas the light version has sold 1.02 million, giving you a total of 3.29 million for the fiscal quarter. And that puts us up to 21.03 million units sold in the past fiscal year for Nintendo. That moves the total number of switches up to 55.77 million. Or in other words, if you take the Nintendo GameCube and the Nintendo 64 and add the sales of those two systems together, Switch has surpassed the combined sales of both. What's interesting here is that their current projections for this fiscal year are lower than last year. They had 20 million last year this year. They're at nineteen point five million projected, could surpass that, could fall under. I guess it's hard to predict everything with the worldwide pandemic. Right now they have 140 million software projected as well for this upcoming year. Again, these are really hard projections to make right now based on anything other than data from the prior years when we weren't having issues. Nintendo is in an interesting place here with Switch, because as you're seeing on a couple of charts here, which, you know, credit to reset arrow where I got these from, Nintendo Switch's momentum is unlike their most popular platforms in the past. Nintendo Switch's momentum is peaking later than it did with other platforms and doesn't appear like it's going to have the big fall off that other platforms have had as well, whereas if this was the peak year of 21 million, nineteen point five million is not a huge fall off in comparison to the fall off years of we DS, 3ds, etc. So Switch is actually doing quite well in terms of its sales momentum and potentially could become Nintendo's second best selling. I don't know if I quite want to go all the way to say it's going to sell 150 million units because that's 100 million units more than it sold now. But I think it easily could surpass the we totals at this point. You can maintain this momentum for at least another couple of years. So it could surpass we potentially surpassed PlayStation four, but that past PlayStation three for sure. Maybe PS one as well. I think PS two and DS are going to be like those untouchable numbers that nothing's ever going to get back up to as far as I'm concerned. But you never know. Clearly, Nintendo has a hit year. And it's not just to me that it's like this mega system seller. Like it's just selling little units. It's the amount of software moving as well. It's moving in an insane amount of software that Nintendo's never seen, honestly, if we're looking at the history of the company. And speaking of things we've never seen, there was this data analysis researcher on Twitter that came out and said that Nintendo has increased their spending into research and development to 33 billion yen to put this in perspective. That is the most Nintendo has invested in the research and development in the history of the company. So clearly, Nintendo isn't just resting on their laurels. They are working on something. I don't know what we don't know. Research and development is a really wide net for Nintendo. Yes, that covers new hardware, but that also covers movies. That also covers theme park development that covers basically anything Nintendo is doing that is not out yet. And in terms of not in terms of software, but in terms of hardware or new initiatives in the other fields. And Nintendo is investing a ton. So does this mean they're preparing for that next generation switch? Does this mean they're preparing for, you know, an upgrade plan, an upgrade scheme where they're going to search pros, which to it's going to be more like an iPhone upgrade plan where not every single thing is a new generation of leap. It'll be interesting to see what they're doing with that. And obviously, for those that are hoping for news on new hardware, this is probably the closest you're going to get to official news that Nintendo is working on something because they're putting more money than they've ever put in the history of the company and the research and development. They wouldn't be doing that if there's not something being planned. You would figure, you know, if they're investing that much or they're trying to rush something in the market. I don't know if they're trying to rush anything because of the new generation systems coming out. I certainly don't think we're seeing a new switch at this point this year. I think any shot at the Switch Pro this year is gone due to the pandemic and Nintendo's inability to even keep up with current demand, let alone making a new system. But I do think that doesn't mean that next year is enough potential here for a new gen switch or an upgraded switch of some type. And Nintendo might know, hey, look, once we get past this year and those next gen systems are catching up to their supply and demand, we need to have something land, whether it's in the spring, the summer, the fall, whatever. We need to get people excited in talking about Switch hardware again. And so hopefully they have something in the works of that. Of course, Nintendo could be doing something crazy and nothing ever comes of this because just because Nintendo's spending a lot of money in their research and development doesn't mean that we're going to get anything out of it or anything that seems like they spent a lot of money because a lot of ideas, a lot of things get made and scrapped. There's a billion patents out there for Nintendo that never became products. So we'll just have to hold on to our but cheeks and see what happens. But what I do know is this is a lot of data, a lot of information. And I'm really excited. Nintendo is in a good place. Nintendo is healthier as a company than they've pretty much ever been beyond the Wien DS era. We can't ignore the Wien DS era because when I talked about, you know, the number of 10 million selling games, Nintendo was having all those 10 million selling games like the seven on we, the 11 on the S. I'm sorry, the nine on we and the 11. So the 20 plus 10 million titles that they had had happened at the same time. So Nintendo was clearly more successful as a company during the Wien DS era where they sold 250 million units of hardware. Switch can't compete with that. So no doubt that even though Switch is skyrocketing right now, it can't compete at Nintendo's absolute best. But is it better than what they were doing with 3DS and Wii U? Absolutely. Is it better than they were doing with NES and Game Boy? No, I don't know. The current pace right now has an on pace with with combining NES and Game Boy together. So it's going to be interesting to see what happens along all here. But Nintendo is in a very, very good place right now. And this is while they're opening or will be opening up a theme park. I'm sure there's some delays with that now in Japan and then eventually down in the Universal Studios in Florida. This is while Nintendo is Mario movie in the works, which should be pretty decent to be made by at least a team that has successful movies, you know, basically a lot of moviegoers going out there. Obviously, the Sonic movie ended up being better than people expected. So maybe that sets the Mario movie up for better expectations and bigger crowds. Who knows Mario should get bigger crowds bigger than than Sonic. I think we all know that. So yeah, it's going to be interesting to see what happens. I'm pretty stoked in general for the future of Nintendo. And that's saying something because today, literally, like probably minutes after this video goes up is a new inside Xbox, which I hope to be live streaming. We shall see. There's a lot going on today. If not, I'll at least react to the news after the fact on that inside Xbox is going to be showing up a bunch of a bunch of games, all of which that will be on the Xbox Series X. So we're going to see some next gen stuff today, even though that stuff is going to be games that are still going to come to current gen, but going to be enhanced on Xbox Series X. We at least get to see enhanced gameplay beyond years of war five. So it's going to be nice. We have a big day of news today and it starts with Nintendo just crushing it in terms of sales. So thank you guys so much for tuning in. I am Nathan Robles from Nintendo Prime. Sure to enter our Xenoblade Chronicles definitive edition giveaway by liking this video, commenting down below, subscribing to the channel, hitting that bell icon. I got to get out of this video, guys, because we have that inside Xbox. I got to cover, if not live, at least after the fact. So see you guys in another video later today.