And again, he walked into the shop, so I walked in. Had there been operators, they'd have killed half of them people and got away. But they were admin guys, and they'd taken the wrong turn at a funeral. When they got shot, the wound wouldn't get infected with the cloth. We still stripped them from the room and taken away and returned to unit. But who's a SPS? Martin, good to see you, brother. And you, sir? Just been reading about the... I've got a big thing. Yeah. I've just been reading about the endurance course, and it brings back memories, doesn't it? Yeah. So, before we go any further, I'm just going to say some keywords, because apparently that helps us on YouTube. They hear you say a few keywords in the first sentence. Right. It helps up your ratings. So, we're talking here, former Royal Marine's Commando. Yeah. What SF were you in, Martin? It was 14-inch. 14-inch. Serving in the Northern Ireland conflict. Undercover. Yes. Can we say child abuse?  Yeah. We're going to talk all about this, aren't we, and start getting a conversation going about some of these important areas alive that a lot of people, you know, want to sweep under the carpet. Yeah. Think about the Royal Marines, which they could sweep Jimmy Savile under the carpet, don't they? Yeah. And then self-made multi-millionaire. Yep. I think this is going to be a good podcast. Okay. Okay. Lovely. So, I've got on the bottom of my notes, Talk Uncle Albert Talk. Yes. Yes. Because that's what they all called me, my kids. Yeah. What happened in the war? Yeah. So, yes, I joined up, mate, because what year did you leave mine? I left in 78. Oh, that's probably, yeah, I'm sorry, I stopped tripping over my words. I joined up for a bet. So, I was homeless and living in my Renault 12, albeit temporary homelessness, but still not nice to experience when you're 17, you know, kicked out of home for the second time at 17. Right. And that's a whole weird experience, being homeless. Okay, no. Yeah. The first time, I think I was 14, 15, homeless in your school uniform, is something ain't right there, right? Hey, Chris, Chris, read the book. Yes. I was homeless at 14 in Liverpool. Yes. I did the same, mate. Yes. I ran away for two weeks. I will just say that from a little bit, I've managed to read so far what a really well written book, folks, and there's a few duffers out there, let's say, but this certainly isn't one of them. But, yeah, so there I was homeless in the Renault 12. My mate comes up, knocks on the window, he says, I've just passed the Royal Marine's Potential Recruit Course. You could never do it, right? Yeah. You don't tell, you know, a trauma experience of what they can and cannot do because they might not be able to control everything in the past, but they can control to a degree their future. And we don't like being told what we can and can't do it. Am I right there, mine? Absolutely. Spot on. Yeah. So I ended up on a PRC, it's now called the PRMC for people who are wondering. And at one point we had to do the endurance course, but we did it in light order and we didn't do the run back, we did like a mile of it. Right. And as I was running up that Heathland, and it's up, down in it, up, down through the water tunnels, through the sheep dip, freaking out, real savage. And I started to fall back and two things there. First of all, I couldn't drop out mine. I could not, I could not fail because I didn't want my parents having the satisfaction to go, there you go, we told you when, you know, and the other thing there was the Royal Marines corporeal, I'm guessing he was a corporeal, PTI or something, dropped back and went, are you right, fella? Yeah, I'm not a corporeal. So don't you worry about that in the Royal Marines, we ain't looking for supermen, we're looking for blokes just like you, blokes that don't give up. I thought that was a real special thing, he said to me, you know. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. How did you, were you in the Navy first, did I gather? No, no, I was in the Sea Cadets, and I went to join the Navy and as I was sat in the recruitment, this big colour sergeant walked in and said, would you like to be a Marine? Commando, I said, well, I thought you had to get picked, he said, well, I'm picking you. So that was it. I was 16, I think. Yes, and what was that then, was that recruiting office, did you have to do some pull-ups and stuff? Yeah, I mean, the reason you went, you were homeless, I went to get away from my abuse from my father. I was a very, very talented artist, and I wanted to go to art school and the Royal Academy had accepted me, but I had to get away from the home, so that's why I joined. And then went to deal as a junior Marine.  Well, it ended up that I was bleeding, my back used to bleed with the fishing rod. I used to have to take my shirt off. And my mother made me wait at home in the parlour with no heating when I was eight, because I'd been caught doing something at school, something silly. And I waited in the corner from four to 11 with no heating, no food.  And then sent to bed. And my father used to ride on the motorbike, and he used to hear him wheezing up the stairs and taking his belt off. And I just prayed it was a strap and not the buckle end, but mostly it was the buckle end. And my brother used to stand in front of him, but it didn't stop. Then it went on to a fishing rod with the eyes. I used to jump in the bath, or I'm told to have a bath. And the water was literally pink with blood.  Sorry, it still gets me now. No apology needed, mate. No apology needed. And I think there'd probably be people surprised to hear this, but as I say to everybody, the 70s was, well, I mean, I was growing up in the 70s, I'm guessing you were 10 years before me, but even in the 70s, it was a really abusive time. You know, any adult back then could beat you as a kid. Any, I know it sounds weird, but I mean, I remember times walking down the street, some adult just come over, smack you around the head, right? Yeah, for spitting or something.  And I remember, you know, in school, teachers were just allowed to get physical with you. And now, if they did now, what they did to us back then, and certain kids in particular got singled out. I used to get the cane virtually every day for some silly thing. And if they were really, when I look at what kids do today, there were silly little things. Yeah. Yeah. You know, some of the things that went on, if they did it today, they'd be looking at, like, five years in prison. Absolutely. You know, they honestly would. But that's why half the profits are going to vulnerable children in any shape or form. I don't mind. Yes, good. What was the name of that charity? I'm actually keeping the money in a pot and looking, because me and trees that help people, we've helped the people all our lives, and we look at suitable candidates, if you like, and we personally look after them. Yeah. So that's, it's not going to a big charity, Chris. Okay, no, no, no, that's brilliant. Do you know a guy called Julian? Called who, sorry? Julian. Julian. Ex-Marine, he's about your age. He's living up in Scotland at the moment. Yeah, did you say, did you say Julian? Yeah, it does a lot for, there's a lot of marathons and things. We might have crossed on the old internet or something. Because we're looking after him at the moment, I make sure he's all right. Yeah, yeah, good. We can promote anything that you like, any links you want to send us. Obviously, we'll put a link for the book underneath this video.  You end up in the marines. Yeah. What was Linceston like back then? Was it, it was Linceston, right? Well, we did deal first as a junior marine. Ah, that's right, yeah, yeah.   And he stopped me, Sergeant Blackmore. And he said, you got asthma, boy? I said, no, sir, no, Sergeant, no. He said, you have, he said, now when you get an attack, put your hand up. And I'll tell the team, just hit you on the back of the, on the back with a pickaxe head, on the back of your pack, and it cleared it. And that was it, because they couldn't have thrown me out, but it was brilliant. Yeah, lucky one. Yeah, lucky one. Get a lot of youngsters approached me when they've got some health issues, and they're like, Chris, you know, what do I do? And I say, look, I can't advise you. But if it was me joining up again, I wouldn't tell them, I wouldn't tell them. I didn't, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. I wouldn't have got in if I'd been, if I'd said I have asthma, but he recognised that you see, so yeah, good luck to him. Yeah. And you were saying you, reading your bit about the endurance course. Yes. My, my old nemesis.  And I've kept in ash, ginger air, ran me right the way round, coming back, he says, you've got five minutes. I actually have 15.  I looked at him, I said, well, you've got three rounds, you're all right. Yes. Yes, and what was it, what was it? You went to 4-2 again, we went to the same first unit. 4-2, I went, and we went to Canada, because I was too young to go to Ireland. I was only just 17. And that, that was the start of two years of sexual abuse, mate, in my room. Yeah. And then he tried to pit me out in Florida. And then I chucked one of these blokes apart, and he never touched me again. Blimey. Yeah. That's the thing, isn't it? People tend to hero worship the forces, and they, they don't know the half of it, do they? No, it's just, why JB brought all this out, was he said, because from here on, you were really, and you still are, to a point, a really angry young man.  So this guy then, was he ever prosecuted? No, no. Now, I buried it for 50 years, Chris, I didn't even tell my wife. And JB brought it out. I put it right back in time. Yeah. Yeah, it was either a six-month break, when I told him about that one. This corporal didn't get punished. No. And yeah, again, it's, we were saying, when we people hero worship the forces, they don't realize that people in the forces are just human, you know, and take a broad spectrum of life, so you get some really good people, and you get some bad people, don't you? Absolutely. Yeah, but the thing is, you've got no one to talk to.  I'll read stuff out. Yeah, or you're just going to get bullied by the rest of the... We're not, maybe not always, but it's hard, isn't it, when you're what, like 16 or 17? Yeah. Yeah. To speak out about a grown man, it's a difficult thing to do. Very much. Did you do any Norway's in there? Yeah, that's the reason I joined Special Forces, mate. I was in 4.5 after the... I went on ships, and yeah, I took the HMS Danny to Siege. For 24 hours. Tell us more. I've got a girl pregnant in Plymouth, and I went with her to get an abortion. I think I was about 18, 19, and I came back on board, and this leading seaman, I went to the heads, he's washing his hands, and he said, where have you been? He said, well, that's slop, and the red mist came tumbling down, so he wore the two taps and split his head open, and I just left him, and I went, I've got my top bonked. About half an hour later, I was woke up on the floor with the duty watch around me, saying, come on upstairs, or up top, that's how I did, and left 10 and Blackmore, big six and a half, thought he was stood there, and I said, sir, what am I doing up here? He said, you're waiting for the shore patrol to come and arrest you for serious assault.  Then I went down, I ran down to get back to the mess deck, and there's about half a dozen Marines on there, and this guy grabbed hold of me, so I pulled him, and he went down and hit the metal hatch, got in the mess deck, and they sent the salt majeure in, started to fuck off, but while I was there, I masked Marlin Spikes, tins of, you remember the old Pusher tins of jam, two pound tins of jam, them all on this fridge in the corner, and they had a really narrow gap to get into the mess deck, and of course the boys on the bunks were just pissing themselves. Come on, Tav, you can do it. So the salt majeure came in, I threw him out, the left tenant RM came in, I threw him out, then the fleet RSM, and everyone that came was getting thrown these things up, and the fleet RSM came in then, and he sat here, I'll actually let him in the mess deck, he said, right, he said, now why don't you go make a cup of coffee, and we'll talk about this.  I said to you now, matey, I've got 10 seconds to get out of my mess deck, otherwise these are getting lobbed out here.  So they had the big guns sent in the legs diamond, who was massive head of short patrol in Plymouth Dockyard, but he had to bend over to come into the mess deck, so I picked the fridge up, because he was so big, and hit him on the head, and they dragged him out with his head moving out the thing, so they dragged him out, and then they saw a major came, he said, my, 6am, dogs, gas, and lots of people, coming to get you out. I said, all right.   H.R.S. Dainey. Okay, what was that, like a destroyer or something? Frigate. Frigate, yeah, frigate, yes. Did you get any good runs ashore, Ben? Yeah, quite a few, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, went to Puerto Rico, around the West Indies. Wow. Yeah, yes. And then I got 90 days DQs. Let's take the DQs first, and we'll talk about your trips, because I was on Invince for a year. That's HMS Invincible for friends at home. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that one. We joined forces with Stan at Fortland. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, sorry, going back, so what was DQs like? Well, Captain Brian Oothway loved the Marines. So he came to me and said, look, in the prison, he said, and by the way, when they transferred me to Plymouth Prison on the dockyard, it was legs dive, and I knocked out who stood there.  He said, have you got any problems with me? Edward said, no, not at all. He said, all right, come in. We play cards and drunk beer all night. So it was great, because that was all right. And Oothway said, what you have to do is accept my punishment.  I said, okay, yeah. So he gave me 90 days. Yeah, that was good. I was the only Marine in there, Portsmouth. Yeah, what sort of stuff did you have to do? What did she sell like? Oh, it was just like a little bear painted brick cell with a dustbin, a zinc dustbin.  And they see again, I was in the dining room. I was a huge queue, so I just sat down. I got me condiments with salt, pepper, pot of tail and sat down.  I went to the queue.   He was an ex boxing champion, colour sergeant. Grabbed this Matlow, slammed him against the wall. He said, you don't touch a Royal, he's mine. That was it. I got left alone all first 90 days. God, I did one night in DQs after getting arrested on the, on the beer. That was enough. Do you have to do fitness and stuff in there, you know? Yeah, every day. I was the fittest I've ever been. And the only time I've ever given them smoking, because the ball suites were better. They either got one cigarette after your meal or three ball suites. The blue liners, you couldn't get any smoke out of them anyway. I came to leave. You're allowed, in the range, you're allowed to choose any draft you want. So I chose to go back to HMS Danny. And they said, you can't.  You tell me any draft. So around Oothway, he says, yeah, I'll be back. So I went back on the ship. Wow. Yeah, brilliant. Loved it, loved ships. Yeah. Did you get issued cigarettes back then? Yes, blue liners, which were packed like wood. We used to get the beer, we could have two cans of beer a day. I'll see it. Yeah, say. So we used to save them up. We used to hot, well, stash them underneath the, underneath the, why do you call those cushion chair things in the mess? Like sofas, but they're not really sofas are they? But we used to lift the cushions up and store our beer. We did that for us.  We poured all sorts of spirit and beer and I've got a shit-faced and we shaved our heads in a mohecan with our knives. That's what, that's the picture I saw, sorry. Yeah, well I was absolutely pissed doing that, yeah.  We've got two weeks to stop as you leave then. All right, I'll just wanted to find a picture, hang on a sec. Yeah, for our friends at home, I don't know if you can, yes. May, mid-green, Mitch and Lester Piggart, that's the boys in that picture. And yeah, we're saying about runner shores, weren't we? What ones, do you say Puerto Rico? Puerto Rico, that was brilliant because we played rugby against the US Navy Seals and after it, we had a party on the beach.  So we did and they started doing the theme of shores. And of course, when I get nervous, I giggle and I'm taking in water and we get here on the side and I say, why do you start seeing because this is called Barracuda Bay.   So we did. Yes, did you beat them at the, what was it, rugby? Yeah, we had tiger beer on the line at halftime.  Hey, that's where the Navy Seals going wrong.  So how does somebody get into 14 in then? How is that progression for you? Well, I went into four or five, didn't like the ski training and there's a note on the little tiny bit of paper on the notice board saying, if you'd like to wear your hair long, civilian clothes and work on your own, please apply it. So I put my name down, about half a dozen names went down and then I'm literally Sunday morning, towel round me waste and flip flops. So I said, somebody needs wants to see you in the guard room. I went home. She's some little bloke with a bowler hat. I went, what the fuck's that? So I went down to the guard room. He said, you marine ebbers. Yeah. He said, missionally out of DQs and HMS Danny. I said, yeah. He said, well, I'd like to chat to you about your application. So we had a long chat. He said, well, you do seem like sort of bloke we need for an undercover unit. And so I joined and 1500 applied. 80 got on the course and seven passed. Wow. But I was no super fit man. I was, I think I'm pretty much psychologically damaged to be honest. I don't know where my mind's made up.  And the biggest they are, as many as they are, doesn't mean a toss to me. So they really, and I like to keep people's morale up. So I was the joker. And my training number unfortunately was seven, seven, seven. So I didn't know I'd get picked on. Oh, the sevens. Better than six, six, six. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That probably suits me more. Yeah. And what training do you do? Because I mean, I honestly have no idea. So for friends at home, we're talking about 14 int. So I'm guessing that's the what the 14th intelligence unit. Right. It's first name was SIU. And even the name secret intelligence unit was top secret. No one was allowed to say the name of it. Nobody, no one we knew knew where we were. We weren't allowed to phone or write unless it was all censored. Yeah, they took it very seriously. And we did the the SAS selection to start with. I believe we did and talk to friends since we did. And then you were taken to a little camp where you learned all the recognition and observation post skills. And it was about five months. And, you know, one night he got used to go back into your room and beds would be empty. And all you went for was a tap on the shelf, which meant you finished. And they did it, you know, they we did million one day. And they lined us up, no gloves. Head to head, roughly the same size.  So we did. Some people gave up when the next day they said, I'll land them again. We're doing million again. And 13 blokes walked. They said, oh, sorry. No, that was yesterday. We're doing murder ball. Milt around. They said, no, you've gone go. So it was all he was he's really so psychological as well as physical. But yeah, yeah, I got through. And yeah, so friends at home. So 14 in then is the undercover guys and girls. I'm guessing that the operate. Well, I suppose around the world, but back in our day, it was the Northern Ireland conflict. Purely Northern Ireland then. Yeah. What what what sort of tasks could you expect to do? It was mainly surveillance, unless it turned into a conflict. And then you know exactly what happens then. But we would house people. We would have we had a code, a code book with all the terrorists and code code names. Now, Sam and one sorry, trout one was Jerry Adams. Alpha 11 was Martin McGinnis. And he was in charge of Derry. And he was the main man. I mean, there's there's lots of things in the book. But the one that frightens me the most or two, actually, one was to find an ID and then provides the explosive device. We should be hidden under the flyway in Derry. Fly over. And they were being used to put into shops in Belfast, incendiary on a timer when people got home, but they went. So I could find it. So I found it after a bit of looking and me and blue. I put it in my pocket, took it to a little car park, but after a mile away, open the boot, opened it and took photographs of it. Because each one is wired to a certain person. It's like a signature and then put it back.  Yeah. Yeah, they used to for the timers used to use all sorts of weird stuff. Didn't you? Yep. Yep. You could buy them like in bulk, this certain kind of talk. I mean, over the years, I'm guessing everything's been used from egg timers to watches to in recent times, obviously, mobile phones. And I remember when we wrote there, there was a specific time type of timer. You bought it like wholesale. You could buy thousands of them, I'm guessing. And there was a guy in Belfast, one of the IRA players called Toasty Flynn.   And he'd won a detonated in his face. And so his nickname was Toasty. I don't know if the IRA nicknamed him that or whether it was just the British forces. Probably. Yeah, serious old business. And yeah, tell us more, Mike, what, you know, did you get in any scrapes? Yeah, the one, I mean, the reason I put Ultimate Survivor on this is because I probably had more lives than the cat would have. One particular one was in the Kregen. We were told there's an arm stash in the school and the loft. So we did a recce. We came back, got MI6 involved because we were going to bug it. But we did that. And as we were going back to check what we found, we found a bunch of old shotguns in the loft and a suitcase. The suitcase was full of documents signed by McGinnis and there were 30 death warrants. Those documents came back to us. MI6 photographed one of the steps of the ladder and the stock of one of the rifles. And we went back out, photographed all the documents sent into London and heard nothing. So we went back in, but on the way in, we were like silhouetted. And to get through the window of the school, we had to have this homemade appliance which looked a little bit like a machine gun. So little lackeys carrying this and all we heard was this halt.  Where we operated, the army in that area were told, do not go in there. The boys were operating, which we were the boys. This bloke obviously thought boyos, which is the IRA. So he decided to pop an ambush on us.  He left it there. So we got through that. We had to go back. We had to pull out for a few months. But we went back in with MI6 and put the, he brought these two things up. Fantastic. And those completely bugged from then on. So we had the transcripts of the IRA and the movement of the weapons. And they actually got the movies on the tilt switch for stock. So yeah, we got a few good wins. The bloke that made the IED we caught. And that was from housing him to staking him out was my first OP. About seven days eating crackers and gold sausages. No hot drinks, nothing. Yeah, we housed him. Trapped him. Associates to a building. So it was a pork cabin and that was the bomb factory. We got 12 years. Blimey. Yeah, a lot of work. A lot of work. Yeah, I bet. Did you see much death over there? My mate unfortunately got ambushed and shot Jay. And even that is another life because we were both getting married on the same day in March. So we went to call Reign to get our suits. On the way back, he started pissing down. I said, I don't fancy this OP tonight. And Jay said, well, I'll do it because the other guy was his mate from the Paras, who was ex-Para. I was the only Marine there, or ex-Marine. And so he did it and they got they got done. And he died. Bless him. Are you able to tell us a bit more what actually happened? Well, what happened was that there were two terrorists that were living underground where they came out at night. They positioned the OP to cover this area. And they saw the two figures coming. And you've got to bear in mind that the army are told to keep out. So that it's not going to be army. But they've got camouflage suits on and rifles. Now, I personally would have just shot him. Quite simple. Unfortunately, the guy with Jay, and I won't mention his name, because he was a cally mate, actually followed the yellow book. I said, halt, halt. And on the second halt, they sprayed them with rounds. And as he went down, he sprayed Francis Hughes, caught more than the legs. But he made a call, you know, whether right or wrong, it's his call. I was the authorized call. So anyway, we found Francis Hughes in the in the bushes. And that's I'm going to sort of rose gallery of this. And he died on hunger strike. Tony Diamond got away and was never, never caught Jay. Unfortunately, they're both on the same injury. The bullets have gone through their stomach. But Jay's have gone through his pistol and taken a lot out. So either she sat with him as he died in the hospital. Yeah, because I was on control because you have one operator doing the radio to call people in. If the shit, it's a fan and the two operators. Well, unfortunately, yeah, he died, bless him. Yeah, it's a serious end of the stick, isn't it? Yeah. What time? What did you do after the detachment? I was good. I was going to go back in the Marines until I was interviewed by a sort major.  And I was going back to Derry as the Royal Marines. And I went, you have a laugh, mate. No chance. Sorry, that was before. It's about a week, a month before. Right? I said, no. So when I went back, I was all bravado. Now this is where I followed McGinnis into a shop because you get all cocky, don't you? The end of your tour. Nothing can touch me. The mate had been killed. I survived. So I'm doing a foot follow through Derry. And McGinnis, he walked into the shop. So I walked in and he wasn't there. The shop was just like a front room of a house. So I picked up a packet of chewing, I'm through 20 grunted. And I had to turn around, McGinnis in a little old cove on the phone. He said, got ya. Yeah, that's when you know adrenaline is brown and I ran. Going black. And I got picked up when we went. Yeah, that was a scary moment. Gosh. Yeah. Yeah, bless it. When we were there, it was, the buzz was that McGinnis was in charge of all important order drugs into Belfast. Yep. Because they had this thing, didn't they? The IRA would act as the local police for the anti sort of drugs trade. Yeah, absolutely. So again, for friends listening, when you hear about these knee cappings, a lot of them work with teenagers that were caught smoking a bit of dope. That I don't know if they got a warning or what. And if it's like second time, unlucky, but they take them in an alleyway. In fact, they wouldn't even take, they tell them to turn up at this certain time in an alleyway. And the youngster or whoever it was who'd wronged the IRA would just have to turn up. Some of them would wear shorts. So when they got shot, the wound wouldn't get infected with cough and cause a nightmare for the surgeon to take the top out.  And that was the IRA, you know, a big part of that was the IRA, their anti-substance use stance, can we say. At the same time as the IRA were importing all the drugs. And the cabs were their transport. Yes. They owned the cabs. Knowed about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, those cabs were up to a lot of no good, weren't they? Or some of them, let's say. Absolutely. We saw that when the signalers were shot, didn't we, that the taxis blocked their car in? Did you know anything about those guys? Was it called? Yes, the two guys that got, because we, we had a reunion just after that. Hours in tears because they were two admin guys. Had they been operators, they'd have killed half of them people and got away. But they were admin guys and they'd taken the wrong turn, their funeral. Yeah. And they were butchered. Yeah, I got, yeah, that was really sad. But, you know, rules are rules. Don't do it. Yeah, Corporal House and Corporal Wood. That was just savage, wasn't it? It was off, yeah, yeah. And that's why, you know, and some things I can't say and not in the book, what, what we did over there is quite, or quite justified, whatever happens to any of them. Well, that, that was 88. So that's the year that we went out there, right? Yeah. In fact, no, we went 89. So this was 88. So we're opening up the newspapers back here and all of them are open. And all over the mainstream media was the helicopter footage of these two guys. You saw them accidentally drive into this funeral that you just saw a car. Obviously, you didn't know, you know, they didn't know at the time. The car just shot into this funeral. Then it appeared to panic and try to reverse out that by that time, the locals or the taxi drivers had clicked summons not right about this and they drove to block them off, didn't they? And then lots of strange stuff. There's a one close-up image. You could see the magazine dropping out of one of their brown in nine mils. Because they weren't trained, Chris. Yeah, they reckon that he'd gone to take the safety catch, but hit the, you know, drop the clip. Yeah, so the pure admin, they don't do any training at all. Yeah, they just drive. They do pick us up from the airport. Of course, we would be the backup. Whenever we went on leave, they'd drive us, but they had the long hair as well, you see, but unfortunately, they weren't. Yeah, gosh, just awful. It's just just, yeah, awful, awful. So, tell us, what happened? Did you leave when they asked you to go back in the Marines then? What happened? Did you, is that when you put? Well, he basically said I'm a cowboy and what have you. But the head of, currently in Campbell, the head of the 22 SCS at the time, actually got that bloke's act. That's our major, because he was a failed operator, basically. So we went, we went back out of the stag do for, sorry, awake. Instead of a stag do for the, for Jay and a Marine, a very, very strong, big, tough Marine. We thought when running out into the compound and sort of this, that's not right. And he was going into his boot and he got his rifle out.  And I know he has got put a bit of spoil on to make it automatic. And he, he pulled it out.  And I grabbed all the barrel and Dave, Dave up. I grabbed the barrel and he put it right in the mouth, right next to the mouth. And as Dave pulled it, he fired. Straight through the dining room. Just cracked up mate, just totally lost it. So we still stripped them, put them in the room and taken away and returned to unit. But he was a, he was a SBS. Yeah, but couldn't take it. But after we found, he hadn't actually been where he said he'd been on the ground when we were looking for backup. He'd been hiding. See, you know, these big tough soldiers, but the head takes over. Yeah, I bet you were fearless, weren't you? Well, somebody died, another operator. Dave, Dave died of cancer last year, unfortunately. As you read it out in the funeral, what a hero his dad was, his mate Dave was. And they all, they all just thought, yeah, that's Dave Brewing. Dave Brewing. Yeah, he was, he did about three tours. Lovely guy. But yeah, saved me life. What comes next then, was that your bodyguard, your bodyguard instinct? I tried to go in the place and I got through. And then John Alderton, the guy with the beard, God in Manchester, because that's where I went to join, knocked me back, tried to appeal, couldn't. So then I went to Devon, I labelled on a building site for two years, lived in a caravan. Can we just, just for our friends at home, let's just highlight there. This is, this is an issue that service personnel face it. Oh yeah. We've got Martin here who's special forces operator, entrusted to, you know, carry a weapon under his jacket and have the, you know, where we've all to know, when to discharge it and, and etc, etc.  And we've, we've all been there, haven't we? Yep. Yep. Then I was, I was offered a job by an ex-commander of special forces in London, do bodyguarding. So that's what I did for a guy called Prince Banda, Ben Sultan, who was the Defence Minister for Saudi in America. Yeah, did that for a while. Any, any exciting moments there? No, no. Well, carrying his bags? No, very exciting moment when his daughter, who was seven, ran down the hotel corridor into the lift, down into the grand ballroom, a little at night here. And I gave her a slap. Oh, crikey. Yeah. I knew he lost my decent. You never touch. I said, she was thrown a funny all round the door. Yeah. That was about the only sad one, that one job. Yeah. And would you agree that working on a building site in winter is one of the hardest things a man can do? I loved it. I, I, one of the Italian guys that were there, come at me with the knife ones, because I was showing him up. I was sprinting with bags of cement. I was down to 11 and a half stone. I've still got pictures of it now. And it was, I loved every minute of it. I was super fit, super tired when I got home to get to sleep. Because I don't think I do about two, three hours now at night. And that's it. But yeah, I loved every minute of it, mate, honestly. £32 a week. I, I was a bit the same.  But we used to have to chisel them apart because the frost would stick them together. And I used to, did wonder where my life was going at that point. Well, yeah. Yeah. I was rescued. I was definitely rescued.  And then at a different point in your life, you're in a completely different place. Yeah. We went to a bedside there in London, we were living. And every time an IRA bomb went off, they had a party because it was owned by IRA sympathizers. I'm sitting in the room going, yeah. Yes. What, so how did you start making money then? Because it sounds like from being on a building site to being a multimillionaire. Well, I went to Washington as a bodyguard, threatened the black, sorry, threatened his cousin because he was beating the black housekeeper. So I got sacked from that. Then I went to Uganda as a mercenary and came out of the coup, very luckily came out of the coup, Crossland. With no weapons. Well, that's in the book. Leave for someone to read. Yeah. Then I went to the contract security base with Chris and got a lot of contacts. And the one guiding force behind all of this is my wife, Trisha. And we sat there one day and she said, you need to start on your own. I said, no, I can't. Sorry, where's the post office? That is a comedy series on its own. You were opening a post office? Yeah, I went around the post office in Devon for four and a half years. Otterton. I heard about that, yes. Bad luck having to come to Devon. Apologize about that. If I was at an owner post office, I probably would have robbed it back in my younger days. But yeah, so how did you go from a post office centre where you are now? Well, I did the contract stuff and then I borrowed £40,000 to build an extension to my bungalow. And it was when they changed the rules. You didn't have to give, usually when you borrowed money from a builder site, you had to give all the invoices from the builders and the quotes. They said, no, you don't need that anymore. You can do what you like with it. And Trisa said, start on your own, out the garage. And I did. I'd cut a long story short, 17 years later, I was turning over 80 million with 2,500 people. My gosh, sorry, doing what? Contract security on the shard, South 42, City Point. I only took big buildings. Lloyd's. So how did you feel then when Matey Boy gets up there with his parachute on and base jumps off? As long as my guards haven't let him on, that's fine. The one on the shard actually went through the railway, because the station owns a third of that perimeter. So not guilty, your honor. Okay, because I've seen a few of those videos. I'd like to get that lad on.  He gets around all the security. He gets these buildings in London and him and maybe his mate jump off. Yeah, I actually sold three, four years ago. And I gave, I got 20 million. I gave 10 away to family and staff, five million purely to the staff that helped me do it. And the accountant said, I don't know anyone else that would have done this. I wrote all a handwritten letter, because if you do that, they don't get the tax. It's a gift. I'm like, yeah, about five million pounds worth of checks. Blimey. Well, mate, they deserved it. And what can I do with 20? I can't do with 10. Yes. I'm only an ordinary guy, you know. Yeah. Of course. How, how's the book been doing? I don't know, really. They don't keep in contact with me. Welcome to the world of writing. Delicious. Yes. I've been through it all. I've told them about the book, My Carcass. Oh, well done. I cost people in the streets. Yes. Probably going to cost you more money to do that than you'll make.  Did you have help with it? Or do you? It was Jamie, Jamie Hogg. What happened was I've got a house admitted on the Dales. And across the road was a guy called Alan who used to look after it for me. And I told him a few war stories. He said, well, my son is a ghost writer. And he just finished Brian Blessing. And he said, tell me three stories. So I told him three. He said, if you've got any more, I said, loads. He said, right, I'm going to sit down with it. Two and a half years to write. Yeah, we should thank Jamie because I spoke to him on the phone to get, to get your number and very, very nice chat. He's also the one I go to when I get depressed because I, I do suffer a lot with dark places. And usually I will go and see my grandchildren and Sophia just likes me up. If I'm really bad, I'll just text Jamie and he'll know. And we'll have a chat. Yeah. But he's, yeah, he's a good boy. Yes. So to finish off, we were going to talk, weren't we, about overcoming, overcoming abuse. What I want to angle out here, and I want to be careful, Martin, because what works for one might not work for another. But we do live in a society where I believe we're purposely destroyed from birth with respect to developing what I would call a spiritual self, you know, a connection with something much, much bigger than us. What maybe some people want to call God or whatever. And I believe these psychopathic trillionaires that own and control everything are really clever are cutting us off from that. And I also think that they like to see us suffer. They don't like to see us get overstubbed.  I'm a, and, and, yeah.  If you can get to love the person you are now, you've got a great life. Like for example, you know, if you've got a beautiful family, you couldn't have this. If you hadn't gone through this life experience when it was good, when it was bad. And I'm not saying that, you know, it's right to hurt or abuse people. No, of course, that's not what I'm saying. But what I'm saying is, is if we can learn to learn by it and then leave it, leave it, leave it in the past and move on. That's basically, people say, was it therapeutic? Well, no, I'd pushed all that away. I never, I hardly ever thought about it then. But all I'll say is that me and trees have tried to give our children and I've succeeded. What we never had, which was a close, where siblings looked after siblings, we might be looking at suicide in whole prison because my father threw him out. He hugged himself and I had to go and, you know, do the body. My two cousins committed suicide. So that's inherent. And there's some in my family as well. My children have suffered. I've been to Afghanistan as a Marine and he lost a good body and he suffers, you know. So, but I will never give up on them.   But that's not what it is. And there's one thing I always, if anyone takes anything but this, a kind word can save a life. A nasty word can cost one.   That's all it takes. Don't need therapists. Just everyone looks after each other. They say they could never get up first of it. Well, yeah, it will happen. But first of all, and I'll make no apologies for saying, we've got to get rid of these psychopaths that control it. You know, they want us to be unhappy. There's a better way, you know.  But there is a better way and we will get there. This is part of the reason I started the Global Veterans Alliance is to use a military approach, discipline, but in a peaceful way to save people, to say these guys don't control the show. Everyone's born beautiful. Everyone's born perfect. Everybody's born equal. Everyone should experience, I don't say happiness, but by happiness, what I mean is when it's not going so well, you appreciate this life just as much as when it's going so well. And this is what they've done. They've done it really clever is they've got people to think when you're facing a bit of a challenge, oh, throw the baby out of the bathwater, nothing's worth.     And I'm not criticizing the person now. I'm saying, you know, and we need to lead people into the light and to get balance and happiness in their lives and to cry. It'd be nice to one person every day, Chris. That's all people have to do. And they'll take away any power of anybody because they haven't got power. It's all nice.  That's it. Done. Yeah. And not rocket science, is it Mike? No, it's not.  There's no, there isn't a middle ground. Nope. And what we're seeing at the minute is a military crisis in mental health. The suicides are through the roof. I know.   You can get over bad experiences. You can get over what happened in Afghanistan.  And sadly, by nature of the psychological makeup of a lot of military personnel, they can be the worst for it. Not all of them. There's some beautiful military people out there, veterans. But there's also some real wankers, aren't there? I've dipped a few. Yeah.  You can have a shot, yeah. Totally. Yeah. Marty, listen, this has been brilliant. Even a revolution! Yes. Yes, it's coming, but it will be a peaceful one and it will be on our terms, not these idiots. Brother, it's been absolutely wonderful. Thank you. I can't wait to dive into your book and then we'll get you back on the show again because I'll have a load more questions for you then. All right, mate. But, Marty, just stay on the line. Well, I'll click the record button off, then I can thank you properly. Then I can, then I'm going to proposition you, but not in that, not in that respect because I know... I'll just take it with yourself. I don't want to get knocked out here. But... You're not comfortable? Oh, hang on. You disappeared. Someone's trying to call you. Low battery. Okay. All right, in that case, I'll pick up the phone to you, to our friends at home. Massive love to you all. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast. It's been an absolute... Oh, there we go. Yeah. It's been an absolute brilliant one. Martin, thank you ever so much again. My pleasure, sir. Friends, could you like and subscribe and hit the notifications bell? And could you just check, friends, that you're subscribed because YouTube just subscribes people, unsubscribes people from this channel in their droves, which is pretty unfair, but it's just one of those...  Anyway, I'm out of here. See you soon.


Aloha, and welcome to Hawaii Reimagined on Think Tech Hawaii. This show was conceived because we're living in a world of uncertainty and facing massive disruptions to our labor markets due to automation and now COVID. On Hawaii Reimagined, I feature innovators and entrepreneurs, both locally and globally, for providing workforce innovation solutions that will make a positive social impact in people's lives and in our communities. Our focus in this show will be to learn what these innovators are doing so we can have inspired conversations about what Hawaii's economy and the future of work might look like as we emerge from the effects of these disruptions. I'm Ruby Menon, your host, and as we're trying to find our way in the world of work, I help people navigate career transitions in my career, get it done, mastermind community. You can learn more at Brainsmartdesign.com. So for today, I'd like to welcome my guest, Chas Williams. He is the Executive Director of WorkNet, an innovative nonprofit that provides preparation and transition services for people who are re-entering their communities from prison. His agency trains inmates in developing cognitive behavior skills and how to do a self-directed job search. WorkNet also provides job placement services to help their clients obtain their ID documents, get a driver's license, create their resume, find employment, secure housing, and other re-entry services that they need to make a successful transition back to their communities. His agency was humming along to help many inmates transition and then COVID happened. So we'll talk about what inspired him to create WorkNet to provide services for the prison population, how he pivoted his nonprofit to continue serving clients during COVID, what community efforts are needed to help ex-offenders find jobs, and full disclosure, Chas is also my husband.  So I'd like to dive right in. And I'd like for you to tell a little bit about your background, what led you to what you're doing now, what inspired you to create WorkNet to provide these much-needed services for the prison population. Well, thank you so much for inviting me and actually getting me on Ruby. I appreciate it very much. And I can tell you it's a thrill to be here just to inform the public and inform people who are watching what we do. My own inspiration, I started as a student here at UH many, many years ago, and I have a BA from UH in a field called Urban Problems, which at the time I was there, I was able to create amalgamating material and learning from psychology, from economics and from sociology. And even at that time, my ambition was to be a social service manager, I would say. And I didn't know quite what, but that's where I vaguely felt I should be doing when I was getting my undergraduate degree. Now, in the meantime, what's happened for me, fortunately, in my career, my first job here was as the director of Hala Kepa, when Hala Kepa was inside the rectory over at the Episcopal Church on Buritania. It's certainly grown into a very large organization now, so I'm very happy to have been part of that. But I worked for the government after that in the city, and I grew actually tired of it very quickly, well, I guess not too quickly because I was there for 10 years. And after that, I started my own company to serve as a person who can write grants and to be a management consultant for nonprofits, which I did for two or three years. And then I stumbled across a grant that I wrote for a customer that didn't want to do it because it involved going into the correctional system, kind of interested me because I've been doing training with the homeless and with populations that were low income and the replacement with them for a long time. So I decided, well, I'll apply for this. If you don't mind, I did and ended up getting it. So that's what started my career in public safety was back in the early, early 1990s with the first contract that we had, which was designed to go into the prison, work with the prisoners before they were released to prepare them better for the job market. And then they helped them get into jobs once they had left the prison. So the opportunity to fall too far from the tree, I guess, is a saying about ancestry. But this is what's happened in my career. We've been doing the same type of job and same type of services over the years. But what we've done has been redefined and transformed over the years to where it's now called reentry and that refers to the process of taking a person who's incarcerated or institutionalized and providing them with a program of development that will assist them beginning before they leave and then cross that transitional barrier to continue assisting them in the community. So in doing that, we've come across a lot of different types of services and needs that our clients that we serve actually have provided to us. And we discovered that many of the services that are inside the facility that insist that inmates are most to get out involve programs that are mandated by the system for them to complete. So let me be clear about that. An inmate can reduce the time that they're serving by being a good inmate. And that's defined in several different ways. An obvious one would be if they're doing programs that improve themselves, then that usually will allow for the parole board or their case managers, the people in the prison to determine that they're doing a serious job of trying to rehabilitate on their own. So some of these programs that are mandated, of course, you would think substance abuse and that would be correct. Substance abuse is a mandated program. Sex offenders are programmed very heavily from the time they come in the facility beyond the time that they leave, that they leave at all in that case. And then we have a specialty that's called cognitive skills training. That's done with an approach called cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT. This is something that I've had the fortunate circumstance of being trained in since the mid 1990s. And I've pursued it and developed it and incorporated that particular kind of methodology into the way that we work with our prisoners right now in the prison population. And it's become what's called best practice. So this is the way that we use developmental programs to meet the needs that our inmates have both to be better as they emerge and better prepared, but also to qualify them by giving them services that will assist them in being able to get out of the prison showing that they have done something that's projected while they were in. Yes, can you tell us a little bit more about for people who don't know what CBT is, is cognitive behavioral therapy? But how does that translate to how you work with the inmates? I mean, what is the objective when you're providing that type of training for them? And how does that help them with their transition? Yeah, that's a very good question, because this is something that's been studied and pretty very consistently over the last 20 years, along with parallel methodologies. But let me make it as simple as I can. When we're talking about CBT, that those initials in the psychology world actually stand for cognitive behavioral therapy. And this is a type of therapeutic approach that's been promoted by people like Aaron Beck and others who are in the field. And it's been appropriated mostly by people who may not be trained in psychology, but are in changed therapies or in treatment facilities or in prison or in human development programs. And that CBT normally means cognitive behavioral training. So it's a slightly different application of the idea. The idea being that people change when they have a motivation to change. And you can develop that motivation within the person by letting the person come to a realization of the things that work best for them. Now, that's a fancy way of saying that what we do is kind of hold up a mirror to the individual. And when that mirror is held up and you can see yourself, then we're asking or we're expecting for two things to happen. By seeing yourself, you're going to see the things that you have been doing in your life. And you'll see both the things that you may have made mistakes in doing. And you'll see the things that may have helped you in the past. Well, what we want to do is we want to make that mirror reveal to the person the things that they can do to access that parts of them that have been successful. Acknowledge the parts that need to have work and that work can be remedial work to fix things. It can be redemptive work to understand that the things I've done have harmed people and I have to address that also. It can be developmental work where rather than looking back and acting out of guilt as an example, we take that information and we turn it around and we look forward and we put together plans that allow us to take advantage of the particular strengths that we have and at the same time address any of those. I won't call them weaknesses. I would call them obstacles or barriers that we have to actually conquer. So when we identify those things and we know what they are, whoa. Well, there goes the neighborhood. OK. The doors of Zoom and being at home. Anything can happen around here. Look at 2020. That's what I expected. 2020, anything can happen. That's right. Yeah, so I wanted to also focus and make sure that we have enough time to talk about some of the local incarceration issues that we have. You know, we have a fairly large native Hawaiian population that is incarcerated here. I believe the statistics are like around 30%. Oh, it's higher than that. Oh, it's higher than that? Yeah, it's higher than that. That may be when we're looking at people who are not totally identifying as a line with mixed Polynesian or something. In our experience, just over 40, it's around there. So it's pretty high. Whatever way you want to slice it, it's shocking and really unacceptable. So something that we have to do something about. We're going to need to take a short break. I'm Ruby Menon, and this is Hawaii Reimagine on the Think Tech Live streaming network series. And we're talking with Chas Williams from Worknet about the services that his nonprofit provides for people transitioning from prison to the community to help them with the successful reentry process. We'll be back in a minute, so stay tuned for more of our story with Chas Williams. I'm Ruby Menon, and this is Hawaii Reimagined on the Think Tech Live streaming network series. I'm talking with Chas Williams, the executive director of Worknet, and he runs an innovative nonprofit that provides preparation and transition services for people who are reentering their communities from prison. So we had left off about some of the programs that you were providing to the inmates. And I believe that you were doing the training inside the prisons during this time. You were providing the services inside the prisons as you were saying. But now we know with COVID, a lot of people have had to pivot. And so tell us a little bit about your pivot story, like what happened and how did you, how are you continuing to provide the services for the clients during this time? It's strange how things happen. And when COVID hit, around the first week of March, it really began to be a problem inside the correctional facilities, knowing that this may be a threat. The 20th of March, we were banned. All programs pretty much were closed. And at that time, we were operating under a grant from the city and county. And we had to produce. We were paid only if we were training people and then producing people who were actually entering the community. And without being able to go in, we couldn't do that. So we were panicked. What happened was really, it was so funny and inspirational because I had applied for a PPP loan, one of the government loans that was so controversial. Small businesses couldn't get. We're about the smallest you could possibly be. But we were able to get one of those loans. But the loan required that we bring people off of unemployment. And all of our staff was totally laid off because we had no work. So I had to bring people back to actually qualify or else that grant, the PPP money, would turn from a loan to a grant. I'm sorry, from a grant to a loan. So we called people back from unemployment and we had no work inside the facility. So we decided, listen, we've got to find some way to get in contact with these inmates. So we wrote them and asked them if they would be interested in finishing the course. We had about 27 inmates, men and women, that were being trained when COVID hit. So we were right in the middle of a training course when this happened to us. Well, the inmates that we wrote to responded and said, yes, yeah, go ahead, send this stuff to us and then we'll work on it and we'll see what would work out. Well, that inspired us and what we did. We have a 48 hour, 24 course training program for the cognitive behavioral training called Lifestyles. And our Lifestyles program at that time was allowing inmates to progress through the prison system and get trained and then move through the parole, which requires that they have this kind of training before being released. In doing that, we reconstructed our entire curriculum into correspondence workbooks. And we made our entire 48 hour curriculum into six workbooks that we send out to the inmates directly that have answer sheets and other correspondence embedded in them. And then they send those back to us and they get credit for achieving that particular lesson. As long as they do it correctly and do it right, if they don't, then we will send the lesson back to them so that they can reconstruct it and then get the next lesson to proceed. So we've been working with the parole board and also with the case management teams at the women's facility and at the halal facility to do this. And we're now, I can very proudly say we're in looking at COVID realizing that this is nothing that is anywhere near any of our control. And we really have, we must begin to realize that this situation that we're in may be semi-permanent. And what I mean by that, it's already lasted months, six months, and look at where we are. We're still in the shutdown after six months. Other economists are not allowing us to be in the back. So we have now decided this may be something that we are doing as a matter of routine. So I think, so what it sounds like to me is that you kind of went back to old school corresponding style type of workbooks. And I was wondering if we could put up some photos because one of the things that I think is so unique about these workbooks is also that you have a resident artist who was formerly incarcerated, was one of your clients. And now is doing a lot of the artwork for these workbooks. You want to tell us a little bit more about that? I do. And let me give a shout out to Mo Calakai who is our staff artist and to Sharon Thompson who is our all around women specialist and our editor and researcher on the workbooks. All three of us have worked very hard on this. And I must give them the credit for it because they're the ones doing home and work. I'm just doing the writing and the editing and the publishing and that sort of stuff. But in coming together, actually I can say this was the perfect trio, then the perfect blend of our talents to be able to create something that is meaningful and our best attestation is coming from the people we have in our classes right now who are saying that they're enjoying of all things, the material because at this point, we're the only people that can train because the lockout is still in effect for people who are training inside the correct facilities. So the innovation I think here is the fact that as you were mentioning, we've gone backward in order to go forward. We have taken something that's from 100 years ago in correspondence and we've amalgamated that with distance learning through Zoom. So at Halawa, we're sending out this material by mail. The inmates are receiving it and working on it and sending the material back to us. But we meet with them twice weekly on Zoom and we go over not just the lessons because they're reading the lessons already, we're going over some of the concepts that are behind the lessons and we're querying them about how they're using the material and how it's affecting their daily life and if it's being incorporated into what they do. So this is a great vehicle for us to continue to work with them and to actually make this the kind of effort that has to be done within the amalgamation of people who are not just our field and the private sector and the community, but we had a lot of cooperation within public safety and parole to do this and to pull it off. So I have to commend the case management staff at Halawa and also at the women's facility for the work that they do and how they have really helped and supported us. The learning centers also because our Zoom class is happening inside the learning center at Halawa. It's a really wonderful experience to be able to do this and then to see the change that continues to happen because we are touching these people in an effective way. Yeah, I just find that so fascinating that, you know, everyone is having to go through this technology and it's leaving no one... There's no stone that's not turned, right? I mean, everyone from school children now to inmates are having to do this virtual learning experience and it's pretty fascinating that you've been able to do this. I was wondering if we could put some more photos up because some of the artwork is really quite striking on the... Yeah, that's the cover of our assessment that we do vocational and risk and resilience for inmates who are entering the job market. So that's one of the most creations there that he's made for us. That's an illustration that we have in one of our lessons where we're giving the idea that when people are down and out they're in a survival mode, they may be living on the street or close to it, they would be tempted to actually choose things like drugs over food and we get our inmate population to examine that idea because some have been in that situation where they've had to choose. Some of those have been in the situation where they've been the drug dealer and they still had to take responsibility for the things they're doing in society. So that's part of the structure that we have. We have lively discussions about the material itself so it isn't just reading the material and responding by doing the answer sheet. It's how your life is being affected by the issues and the concepts that we're discussing and how you can take control of your life and then understand that you're not a victim as long as you take responsibility for what it is you're doing. Now you came up with a very interesting acronym for this program. You want to tell us a little bit more about that and what is it and what does it stand for? Yeah. And then we can also show some of the graphics that illustrate that. Yes, the program is called PCHAM but it's definitely an acronym and it actually came from the impetus for this program itself. That stands for pre-COVID help and mentoring program. Pre-COVID, I'm sorry, post-COVID. I'm going to be the opposite of whatever. It started pre-COVID because that's what it initiated. Post-COVID means that we're operating in a method that will allow us to continue to operate in spite of COVID being there. The help that we're providing is in the form of the training and the development that we do. The mentoring happens in two different directions. The mentoring that we're talking about, we're encouraging that this is really something that is new. So when we send our material out, we're encouraging the people in the institution that gets it to hook up with the other people who are in the class with you. Now we don't call it a class. We don't refer to it that way. We refer to it as a team and we refer to the person that is actually working with that team as a coach. And the material that's being sent back from the prison from each of the maybe 12 to 15 people in that class is going to one person and that person is their coach who scores, communicates, advises, and mentors that person. And they stick with them all the way from the time that we meet them in prison at the time that that person is in the community and we're working with them. Now the other way that mentoring works in addition to our professional people that are helping them meet in the community, they mentor themselves inside the institution by getting together and discussing among themselves the lessons that we're sending in, the concepts behind the lessons so that as a team they can work together so that people who we may usually have to coach a little bit more because there may be some underlying issues that they have that they're working with and by that I mean it may be a language barrier or it could be an educational barrier, it could be a cultural barrier, it could be things that they're dealing with where the reading of the material itself could be a challenge for them. Yeah, I'm sorry but we're coming to the end and I really wanted to talk about helping inmates transition and find jobs but it looks like we're going to have to end here. But thank you so much Chaz for telling us about the PCHAM program and I just want to remind everyone that I'm Ruby Menin, this is Hawaii Reimagined on the ThinkTech live streaming show and you can get a hold of WorkNet if you'd like to learn more at www.worknetinc.org and you can check out their website and we've been talking with Chaz Williams, the Executive Director of WorkNet and I'd like to thank everyone for being here and hopefully you'll tune back in next Wednesday or actually Wednesday, October 21st in two weeks at 3 p.m. We'll be talking to Alec Wagner, the Director of the Purple Prize Innovation Incubator and Accelerator and that should be a very interesting discussion about some of the awesome things that they're doing in the community. So until then please be safe, be healthy and be kind to one another. Aloha. www.worknetinc.org


What's going on everyone got a brand new movie or view for you guys today for mortal slumbers. Oh, sorry. I meant mortal engines All right Let's just get this out of the way. I didn't like this film. I'll be straight up honest with you I didn't like this film. There are some aspects of it that I loved But a majority of them I did not like So let me talk about the things that I really liked about this film first first the visuals. They're beautiful They're amazing the action set pieces are fantastic. I was really invested when they were going it down or eye-popping me I would look at everything and be like, that's cool. That's cool That's cool and the whole mythology in the world of this post apocalyptic world really built me in and I was like I want more of this would have been better as a TV show and Yeah, I know this is based off of books So maybe I might actually pick up a book for once post apocalyptic stuff I love diving into these different worlds seeing how these worlds have been torn apart and maybe what could happen in the future to Us but these moving cities on these wheels and just destroy stuff It's pretty much Mad Max times 10 just With none of the same energy as Mad Max. I did like the visuals in here And I thought the action was great the score from junkie XL actually wasn't too bad I actually was kind of jamming out to it and it was really one of the few things keeping me from not slumbering in This film it comes to this movie in a sense I thought the director had a really creative and imaginative eye to everything that was going on in the screen I think a lot of my issues fall within the screenplay. I feel like there was no emotion no soul to this film And when I go to a movie, I Sometimes I can forgive the story and just really be wowed and have fun and turn off my brain and enjoy the film But you set up so many things in this film for me to care about and When you want me to care about it, and I just can't care about it. There's an issue Fast and Furious knows what it is It's fun.  I can watch some cars get destroyed and everything in that But again when you set up things that I need to care about and I don't care about it There's some issues there. I care about the world But not our main characters besides one named strike played by Stephen Lang who was absolutely awesome in this the Best person in here the best character in here Strikes a robot and he is filled with the most emotion in the whole film well for them I I didn't understand them like it just The script was a mess it didn't feel like an act one act two act three structure It felt like a chapter one chapter two chapter three chapter four chapter five chapter six Let me just keep going on really don't want to rip this film the shreds because I do know that it takes a lot to make a film Like this and I understand that there was so much hard work that went into this film So again, I don't want to trash on it completely But it just didn't work for me it lacked in a lot of departments and by the end of the movie I was just ready to leave. Yeah, the score is beautiful and yeah, it's visually appealing But there's nothing more to it before I get down to my final thoughts guys Make sure to comment down below and tell me is your guys's thoughts are did you like this film? Did you not let's talk about it? Subscribe to me if you guys are new here and plus check out see how much on films also because that's where you Guys can get into advanced movies scenes even check out some movies and movie reviews, but really mortal engines The worst crime this film did was it didn't let me nap it was too loud sometimes and yeah Again, the visuals are jaw-dropping the CGI is beautiful The action scenes pretty cool and the mythology in the world building was great But I wanted more from it. I wanted more from the story I wanted more from this and I just found myself not caring at all. I didn't care about the film I didn't care about the characters and it's hard for me to be and recommend the film I will say this though of HBO and Netflix or Hulu or some streaming service picks up this film later on to Reboot it and make it into a series the interest of the watch it because I like the concept, but again It's it's not good and it sucks saying I was hoping this would be a big surprise But it's it's not no emotion or salt to it So I'm gonna give mortal engines a D plus and maybe you didn't enjoy this film and sorry if I'm Trashing on it. I don't mean to the film just did not work out for me But let's talk about it down below in the comments. Did you love it? Did you hate it? Thank you guys so much for being here and until next time stay classy


All right guys welcome back to calm again. I'm Shannon and today I'm gonna be reviewing on our Funko pop review Sailor Mars from the Sailor Moon TV show This is pop animation number 92 from Sailor Moon As you can see here Sailor Mars vinyl figure Get a nice image over on the corner here Nice window packaging Sailor Mars number 92 On the top pop animation and the standard stuff on the bottom So we have in the line Number 89 is Sailor Moon and Luna Number 90 is Sailor Moon with a moon stick and Luna 91 is Sailor Mercury 92 is Sailor Mars 93 is Sailor Jupiter 94 Sailor Venus with Artemis and number 95 is Tuxedo mask This is from TOEI animation So let's go ahead and open this girl up and take a look inside So first things first unlike some of the other female Funko pops Her little stand base is Bagged separately Most of them have it right in here This one's actually bagged separately. So let's go ahead and take it out the bag So that we can use her use it for her to stand And like with most Funko pops Little clamshell type style here just plugs in to her foot just like that. I think though Yeah, you you would be best served if you Put her on the stand just like that nice black hair her little tiari here She's got the black eyes red star earrings Got the purple or violet Tie there with the red skirt and Sailor top This was read around the Top of the gloves and she's got the shoes One thing I never really cared for about some of these Sailor scouts was that some of them had war regular shoes and Others wore boots. I think they would have all looked good if they all wore the boots But that's just me It's been a very long time since I've watched the English dubbed TV series of Sailor Moon. I was introduced to it from the Deke TV show in the late 90s or a mid-light mid to late 90s So I don't really know much about the Japanese version because since It's the version that introduced me to it just like with Voltron. I Prefer the English dub Her head does move slightly I wouldn't risk moving it too much though Because as you can see her neck Unlike with some of the other Funko pops. She actually does have a neck That It looks like it could Or it feels like it could snap off at any point if you move it around too much So she does have the black hair. It looks like the bangs Were added separately You can see a little seam there Very nice paint job Very happy with this figure So my wife my wife went to One of the haircare places here in town a few days ago And I gave her 20 bucks and asked her to stop by another store for me and pick up a couple of Funko pops for me because I had already Reviewed all all the Funko pops in my collection. I asked John and Billy To film some reviews of their collections so we can have it ready for Tuesdays and they haven't done that yet, so I I Decided go ahead and have her pick up a couple Funko's for me Told me the ones they were over the phone and I actually mistakenly Mixed up sailor Mars and sailor Mercury Because she said they had both sailor Mercury and sailor Mars originally I had hoped they had tuxedo masks because he was always my favorite They didn't have tuxedo masks and I thought sailor Mars was actually sailor Mercury So I told her sailor Mars thinking I was getting gonna be getting sailor Mercury Honest mistake, you know, I haven't watched Sailor Moon in Years, but I remember liking the show so next time Hopefully I can get either tuxedo mask or sailor Mercury or both For those of you, you don't know I'm not like I said I'm not sure about the Japanese version, but in the American dubbed version Sailor Venus or sailor V as she was known as originally was the first of the sailor scouts to Receive her powers And she was kind of a lone superhero at the time she was a very popular superhero and then Serena as I know her as I came along and found Luna and Became Sailor Moon and then followed by Sailor Mercury Sailor Mars Sailor Jupiter and then eventually Sailor Venus joined the other sailor scouts And you've got a whole slew of other sailor scouts that I Don't know. I was I didn't get to watch it that long I don't think they went into all the other sailor scouts though. I remember tuxedo mask was Darian Or Daria I it was a Darius or Darian in the English dub. I can't remember But in season two of the English dub he was Two different people You had tuxedo mask which was a Villain and then you had the moonlight night which was a good Helping helper to the sailor scouts Which I kind of hope they end up Coming out with Funko of moonlight night. Yeah, I always liked him so There you have it guys. That's my review Sailor Mars from pop animation towi animations Sailor Moon number 92 final figure Next time I will be reviewing From pop heroes number 91 Firestorm I'll see you then take care guys


You know, for most of us in the modern world, what we deal with a lot is chronic illness. It's not necessarily dying of tuberculosis or dying of cholera somewhere, but if you're in the developed world, we struggle a lot with long term low grade or moderate grade illness that really saps the quality of life. Now, one thing I've seen in my patients and even in my own healing journey was that there are two fundamental questions that are very important to recognize and acknowledge if you want to feel well again, really permanently. So in this video, let's talk about what those two questions are and why they are so important. What's up guys? Dr. Alex Hein, author of the health book, Master of the Day, and doctor of Chinese medicine and licensed acupuncturist. So before we jump in, two very important links right below the video. The first is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, the contact info for my private practice in clinic is right below this video. And the second is that there's a free download, which is 40 of the rituals that could potentially help you add years to your life with Chinese medicine. So question number one fundamentally is why did I get sick, right? Why did I get sick in the first place? I've seen many, many people come to see me and they all have a variation on this question.  So why did I get sick? Me of all people. My friend over there eats Taco Bell every damn day and his digestion is fine. And I'm over here eating kale salads and I have severe gut problems that I'm coming to see you for. And I think the answer is almost always the same. It's nature and nurture to some degree, right? It is our genetics and our environment. It is our inborn constitution and our personal decisions, choices, and things that happen to us, experiences that happen to us. So this idea of why did I get sick is very important because one, there is such a thing as a weak constitution. There are people who are just genetically more sickly than others. And that's just the luck of the draw, right? That's just a roll of the dice. Every parent here watching this video knows that there are some kids when they eat food they never complain about their stomach and there are some kids they eat the same exact food as their brother or their sister and they're always complaining about their stomach being weird or stomach aches or before school they're, you know, they're more emotional and more sensitive. That's just genetics. Most of the time, you know, in addition to there can be childhood trauma and experiences with parents or the kids mirror the parents' emotional psychological state, but humans are not a tabla rasa. We are not a blank slate, right? We come into this world with predispositions and those are the things that are really genetics in the constitution. Now the second most important question is why am I still sick? I see this all the time. People who take such good care of themselves and yet they are still sick and still with the same low grade symptoms that bother them and there are people who don't take good care of themselves and are also still sick. So it seems a bit futile to take such good care of yourself and still be sick in the long run, but this is so many of the people that I see and I fall into this category as well. As a kid, raised in a very healthy environment, never took medications, never took antibiotics, always had lifelong digestive problems and that just runs in my maternal line. Everyone has GI problems. That's just a genetic rule of the dice thing. But why do people stay sick? Very important question. The three things that I see first are just this idea of a weak constitution. You know, Chinese medicine acknowledges and recognizes that some people through no fault of their own or nothing they have done will have more illness. Eating the same foods, doing a good lifestyle, bad lifestyle, whatever, doing the same thing they see everyone else doing will be more sick than the others. And that's just weak constitution. It's more prone to illness and that person is just going to have to be extra careful whatever it is that is their susceptibility. Maybe it's dietary, maybe what they struggle with is migraines, maybe they're more prone to insomnia or light sleep or anxiety or depression and they are going to have to come up with better coping mechanisms in the future to offset what's really a genetic short changing for lack of a better word. That's just going to be the chink in your armor. And just like I have to be extra careful about my gut because that is a genetic thing I inherited that it's not about fairness, it just is. And so I have to be extra cognizant and extra aware of that. The second thing that I see is what I call damage to young. So it's very common in our field to see people, the sequela, the follow up after long-term illness, the damage after repeated rounds of antibiotics. Sometimes people post steroids develop severe reactions. I've seen this many times, you know, edema all over the body, the face, I've seen this most often from repeated antibiotic usage or sometimes just one round of antibiotics and people are never treated seriously. They're never taken seriously when they go back to the prescribing physician who then says there's no link between your antibiotics and your now anxiety or depression. Seen this probably 15% of my initial patients, first hundred patients in my office were post antibiotics on set of a new illness. Chinese medicine visualizes this as damage to young. So essential vital resources were damaged that have to be replenished because these people are often pushed immediately into a chronic illness pattern for years. They often come to me after two, three years of that initial event, post steroids, prednisone, post antibiotics, and then they're never the same since that's damaged to a vital resource in Chinese medicine that we have to then replenish using formulas. The third thing that I see is obviously our personal decisions, right? Our personal decisions obviously determine the chronicity of illness, not every illness, but many of them.  Right. So these three things are really essential to know, in my opinion, that why we get sick is just one question, but why we stay sick is another very, very important question. And not everything is your fault, not everything is in our control, but understanding these three factors can often be very helpful in the healing journey. All right. So that's what I have for today for you guys. Otherwise, catch you in these other related videos over there.