SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Beat the Prosecution, presented by Northern Virginia Criminal Defense and DUI lawyer, Jonathan Katz, where we are here to regularly present you information and ideas for beating your prosecution as best as possible. Nothing on any of our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or for individuals who have paid for a consultation. And now for your host, John Katz.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Hello, everybody. This is John Katz of Beat the Prosecution. I'm a criminal defense and DUI defense lawyer here in Fairfax, Northern Virginia. I tell it to you all the time, and I'm really telling it to you today. I don't know how I did it, but I did it. I convinced Captain Paul Watson, a co-founder of Greenpeace, previously with the Sea Shepherd organization, and still involved with him internationally. And the uh head of the Captain Paul Watson Foundation here today. He got released just a few weeks ago, being held for too many months. Well, even a day was too much in Greenland on an extradition warrant to Japan, and he got released. Uh uh Greenland or Denmark or both decided they weren't going to extradite him. Paul Watson, please introduce yourself.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Oh, my name's uh Paul Watson, and uh yes, I was uh co-founder of Greenpeace 1972, and I founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in 1977, but in 2022 I was dismissed from the uh U.S. board and the global board and uh set up the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, although I continue to work with Sea Shepherd France and Brazil and the UK.

SPEAKER_02 1:48

Now we're gonna start by uh giving a few plugs for Paul and his organizations early on. Uh your URL is uh Paul Watson Foundation.org, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Yes, that's right.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

And uh his podcast is called the Captain Paul Watson Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

That's right, yes.

SPEAKER_02 2:07

And uh I read his book in uh the book that was recommended by some of his organization and preparation. It's called Hitman for the Kindness Club. I recommend it to everybody. Paul, uh one of the biggest reasons why I wanted to interview you uh was this is uh more than a variation on the theme. I've had one guest before named Mark Colville, who's a plowshares activist on the program, uh, and he willingly uh engages in actions that might get him imprisoned. Uh you may or may not know that I represented the late uh Father Phil Berrigan and his three friends who were hammering on warplanes in 1999 in opposition to the depleted uranium missiles that they fire, uh, viewing them as a type of nuclear weapons. And I joined with Ramsey Clark in their defense. And uh I think uh uh a key uh difference between you and the plowshares activists is whereas the plowshares activists are looking to what they call disarm armaments, even if their actual physical actions don't do much uh to do any uh impact on uh on what they're uh what they're hammering on. Uh with you, uh my understanding is a lot of what you're doing, at least with the whaling, uh the anti-whaling work you're doing, is actually to enforce international law, international treaties, and uh and and there's uh this big impact that you have a lot of people uh rallying around you. So uh can you please talk about what is the focus of your work? How much is it about whaling, uh seals, and uh to what extent do you uh draw a distinction about there being more uh importance or not uh to protecting whales, for instance, than cows?

SPEAKER_01 4:01

In 1977, I set up uh uh a strategy called uh aggressive nonviolence. What that means is to aggressively intervene but without causing any injury. And over the last 50 years, uh we've never caused a single injury, and also I've never been convicted of a crime, although I've been arrested uh many, many times. But I set up uh the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and now carrying on with the Captain Paul Watson Foundation uh to protect uh diversity and interdependence uh in the ocean. And one of our primary uh uh objectives, of course, is to stop whaling. Now, the one thing about what we do is that we don't protest. We um uh we intervene against illegal activities. Everything we do is against an unlawful activity. Uh Japanese whaling in the southern oceans is a criminal enterprise. It's a violation of the International Whaling Commission's global moratorium on commercial whaling, and that was upheld by the International Court of Justice in The Hague in 2014. So they continue to do this in viol uh you know in complete uh contempt of the International Court of Justice. They're also in contempt of the Australian Federal Court for killing whales in Australian Antarctic territory. They were uh ordered to go into court on this, they refused. They were charged with contempt of the Australian Federal Court. They were fined a million dollars, they refused to pay the fine, and that's one of the reasons Japanese whaling ships are not allowed into Australian ports. So, you know, they they not only are criminal, they they appear to in nations like Australia and New Zealand to be a criminal operation.

SPEAKER_02 5:31

Okay, so your focus is on illegal activities, and is that how you draw the line between uh advocating for whales versus cows? And uh then with your action about uh uh the rabbits in uh with uh alpha activists, animal liberation front activists, was that because that was uh illegal activities with rabbits involving scientific study?

SPEAKER_01 5:55

No, my you know, philosophically, I'm opposed to the killing of animals. I'm opposed to all whaling and all sealing. But what what we did was to uh you know come up with a strategy that would be workable, and that is intervening against illegal activities. And we can do that within the boundaries of the law and within the boundaries of practicality. Now, what is the difference between a whale and a cow? Well, there's a lot of difference ecologically, of course. Uh cows are not essential for uh a viable ecosystem, although I I'm opposed to the slaughter of cows, but whales are essential for uh an ecologize a healthy ecological system. You know, since 1950 we've seen uh uh a 40% diminishment in phytoplankton in the sea. And phytoplankton provides uh up to uh 70% of the oxygen in the air we breathe and sequesters enormous amounts of CO2. And the reason for this diminishment is because of the diminishment of whales and dolphins, seabirds, and other uh species in the ocean, which provide the nutrient base for the phytoplankton, which requires uh primarily iron, magnesium, and and uh nitrogen. And that comes from the feces of these animals. So when you lower the numbers of those animals, it of course lowers the availability of the nutrients to the phytoplankton. And the reality is this if phytoplankton disappears from the sea, we all die. We don't live on this planet without phytoplankton. Uh we just couldn't exist. So it is a very foundation of uh of life as we know it. And so protecting whales is in fact protecting the ocean.

SPEAKER_02 7:29

So, Paul, in 1999, which is my second and last time in Japan, uh I was staying overnight for uh two or three nights in Tokyo uh with a family that um follows the uh Buddhist tradition of uh Niponzan Yohoji. You'll see the uh uh the calligraphy in the background uh by my uh Buddhist peace teacher Junyasuda from the same small order. And uh I joined our host child, uh teenage son, to uh, I guess the main or one of the main fish markets over in uh Tokyo. I was already eating strict vegetarian at that time, and I saw it was probably a few at least a hundred to two hundred pounds, this huge piece of whale flesh on the ground. And I winced. And uh my host said uh said to me, John, John, it's okay. It's part of our culture. Now, Paul, please address that. And and and more than that, uh, because since uh whaling clearly is not essential for the Japanese economy, do you make any exceptions uh for native uh for native communities uh that do rely heavily on uh killing whales, dolphins, or seals uh for their livelihood or for their food?

SPEAKER_01 8:49

Well, first of all, we shouldn't confuse uh indigenous culture with the culture of Japan or Norway or Iceland or those countries that kill whales. Uh you know, there's just no comparison at all. They these countries don't do it for survival. Japan has less than 1% of its population actually uh consumes whale meat. Right now they have about 8,000 tons of whale meat in refrigerated uh warehouses that they they can't utilize. Uh they do this for a very complex complicated reason. Meaning that the the whaling company is a Japanese government-owned company, and its board of directors, those directors that sit on that are all former politicians who get six-figure salaries. Uh and whaling, they lose their jobs. Now, the the crews that are provided for these ships are uh from unions controlled by the Yakuza, and uh, you know, the there's a lot of political pressure on the Japanese government to keep that this industry only exists through massive subsidies. No, so you can't compare that to say uh the uh killing of whales or seals in say Greenland or Alaska. Now the the thing is is that uh the whaling in uh Alaska and Greenland is is legal under International Whaling Commission regulations. Now, I philosophically oppose that, but I don't directly intervene because of it that it's legal. Now, when the Macaw tribe on Washington coast in 1998 decided they were gonna go whaling, it was basically they were put up to it by the Japanese, because the Japanese and the Norwegians set up a thing called the uh uh the this whaling institute on Vancouver Island, which they funded in order to uh support so-called indigenous whaling. Well, the Macaw, what they were doing was outside of the International Whaling Commission regulations. It was illegal, and that's why we opposed. And the other thing is we were invited into uh Nia Bay, the Macaw community by elders of the Macaw Nation who asked us to come in and intervene because they said this is not traditional. It was part of our tradition to learn our language and to weave baskets and everything, but it wasn't ever part of our our tradition to go out and kill a whale with an anti-tank gun with uh from high from uh modern vessels. And uh so again, this tradition thing, there really tradition can never be excused an excuse for cruelty and for for for slaughter. Uh so this uh like I mean if we had if that was if we abided by that argument that tradition justifies everything, then the bullfight and fox hunting, uh bear baiting, cock fighting, all of these things should be allowed on the basis of of tradition. We have to evolve uh ethically, and uh we have and come a long way over the last couple of centuries. I mean, it was only a few hundred years ago that slavery was legal, and uh it was less just about a hundred years ago that women got the right to vote. So we've made a lot of progress here. Now we've got to push that forward and not only protect rights for uh for animals, but also rights for uh for ecosystems and habitats.

SPEAKER_02 11:39

Okay, so fox hunting. I think that in your book, Hitman for the Kindness Club uh talked about an action you took against fox hunting. Does that fit within the within any uh illegality?

SPEAKER_01 11:52

Yes, now fox hunting is illegal in the United Kingdom.

SPEAKER_02 11:56

What are the main tactics you're now using uh in in your work for these animals? I understand one of them uh sometimes includes ramming uh whaling ships, another involves uh putting dye on uh on seals so that there'll be uh their pelts or skins will be unwearable or or won't be desired to be wearable. I understand you use stink bombs. Are are are there any other taxi tactics that you're currently using?

SPEAKER_01 12:28

Well, aggressive nonviolent tactics are meaning that you can uh intervene, but you can also damage equipment if that equipment is being used uh for illegal purposes. If a poacher is about to shoot an elephant and you knock the rifle out of his hand and destroy the rifle, that is an act of nonviolence. You saved a life by destroying a non-senti object. One of the reasons I had to leave Greenpeace in 1977 is because uh a Newfoundland sealer was about to kill a seal pup, and I raced forward, grabbed the club from his hand, and threw it into the into the ocean. And the directors and the board of Greenpeace said, Well, that you know that's an act of uh violence. You committed um you stole the man's property and you vandalized his property. And I said, It's a seal club, but I saved a seal pup's life. To me, that's uh much more important than a piece of wood that's used to murder. And uh so you know there's a lot of confusion about what non-violence is. You cannot commit an act of violence against a non-sentient object, it's just as simple as that.

SPEAKER_02 13:28

Okay, so are those your three main tactics in addition, I guess, to to releasing animals from their cages?

SPEAKER_01 13:35

I think uh though all of those uh tactics by Animal Liberation Front and everything are are are are based on ethical and moral grounds. And uh so I certainly don't have any criticism for people who do that.

SPEAKER_02 13:47

Oh well, I don't have I don't have any criticism that I make of that. I was just wondering if there are any tactics you you're currently using other than uh the ones I've listed, if you're willing to say.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

Well, we design our tactics uh according to the situation, what will work. When it comes to stopping whaling in the south uh southern ocean, there's only one tactic. Well, there's two tactics, really, but the first one is to block the ability of them to load dead whales onto the uh factory ship, so we block their entrance. The other one is to interfere with their refueling operations and get between the refueling ships and that. And those that's what actually works. But we throw the stink bombs and we have the water cannon fights and everything because we were doing a television show and we had to actually, you know, to get our message across, we had to actually use drama and entertainment. And so we had these that's why we called it the Whale Wars and everything. But you have to remember that the most powerful weapon on the planet is the camera, and uh so that's what we use, and you have to use all sorts of different tactics in order to get your point across. You know, there's actually only four elements to any media story, and I learned this a long time ago when I took Bridget Bardot to the ice flows in 1977, and her posing cheek to cheek with a baby seal guarantees us the cover of almost every major magazine in the world. And what I realized is that news stories have four elements to make them a news story. Um you have to have one of those elements. If you have all four elements, you've got a really super story. And those elements are sex, scandal, violence, and celebrity. And uh with the seal hunt, we had the violence of them killing the seals, uh, we had the uh scandal of uh the fact that there's uh huge subsidies and uh a lot of uh corruption within the government on that, and then we had Bridget provided the celebrity and the sex appeal, and uh so that became a huge story. So over the years I've always looked at everything we do is how can we incorporate an elements in there? Now the violence thing is easy because our opposition was you always using violence, so you know almost everything we do involves violence, and but we make these stories, we dramatize these stories by risking our lives and our ships and everything to focus attention on that.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

Paul, when you're involved in having your ship ram a whaling ship, what do you do to avoid injury to the people on the ship that you're ramming?

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Well, first of all, when you have 700 tons of steel slamming into 700 tons of steel or more, the uh the volume of the metal actually absorbs the impact of the blow. It's not like two cars hitting each other, and uh it doesn't even knock anybody off of their feet. I think I've probably rammed more ships than anybody else that I know of. Uh and uh I've never caused injury. Of course, you have to uh decide which point on the ship you hit and uh make sure there's no cabins below, and so we always aim for a point in uh with the cargo capacity area. Uh when I rammed Sierra in 1979, I split it open to the water line, but I knew that there was no people, no people actually behind the bulkheads when I when I did that. Uh on the other hand, they were actually shooting at me as I did it. So, you know, the uh they were they were much more violent than I was.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

Okay, so to what extent do your views on immigration into the United States and your native Canada overlap with Cesar Chavez's view uh and differ?

SPEAKER_01 17:04

No, uh could you say that again? What what do you mean?

SPEAKER_02 17:07

My understanding is that uh you want to limit immigration at least into the industrialized nations, at least in the United States and to Canada. What are those views? I mean, I understand that Cesar Chavez wanted to limit it, but but I wanted to know more about that. I can't find enough online about it.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

My uh position on immigration is exactly what Cesar Chavez was saying. I was a supporter of Caesar Caesar Chavez back in the 60s, early 70s. Uh, and uh so I agree with him completely. The problem that we have with immigration in the United States is that we have a lot of people who are forced to work in very absolute low wages. For instance, a maid in a hotel in Phoenix, for example, who works in the same place without a raise for 15 years because she's so easily replaced by an illegal immigrant. I think that uh we need a complete uh restructuring. I don't agree with Donald Trump's position on this, but I believe that we have to take into account the rights of people in the United States in low-paying jobs, uh especially in the agricultural industry in California, on that, that uh we can't allow this excess labor pool of people who are willing to work for less than we're actually paying the lowest paying people in the country. That's that's my my position uh on that. And uh so what we really have in the agricultural industry is a form of modern-day slavery, really, forcing the people to work in conditions uh which are unacceptable to most American citizens, uh and yet uh and paying them very little, and uh they have no rights. Uh so that's what that's my position on that.

SPEAKER_02 18:41

Okay, so um Paul, I read an article attributed to you uh from the early 2000s, where I don't know if you intentionally said it or if it was your uh someone who helped you write it. Uh I saw the word illegals being used, and I was wondering if you uh believe in using that word, intended to use it, because I I I I'd hope to convince you not to use that word.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

In what context was that?

SPEAKER_02 19:07

You you were writing about immigration. Uh I prefer the word uh undocumented person, for instance, or undocumented person.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

Oh, you're probably you're probably right on that, uh, undocumented. Uh a resolution uh when I was a national director of the Sierra Club in 2003, 2006, one of the resolutions I passed through is for the uh the Sierra Club to condemn modern-day slavery, that is uh the treatment of agricultural workers uh in the United States, uh, because uh they were, you know, the farms and the industries are basically exploiting uh the illegal the immigration issue in order to keep uh making profits at the expense of people.

SPEAKER_02 19:44

Okay, so Paul, you have uh uh two of the ships of your organization you work with have been named Steve Irwin and Bob Barker. Now there is also the Bridget Bardot, and is there a fourth one? Uh that's one of your main ships.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Well, those are not my ships. They were taken over when uh my my organization, there was a hostile takeover of Sea Shepherd, and they seized all the the assets and uh and the ships and everything. I had to start all over in 2022. So uh the ships I have right now are the John Paul de Juria, which is uh now presently in Bermuda, uh the uh and the Bandero, which is uh presently in Southern Australia, and working with Sea Shepherd France, we have uh the Walrus, and uh so we're you know, we're building up our fleet again, and uh so those are our vessels now.

SPEAKER_02 20:33

Okay, so to what extent were you involved in naming the the uh ships the Bob Barker and Steve Irwin? And what hit what was your relationship with the two of those gentlemen?

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Well, I was a friend with Steve Irwin, and uh I named the ship uh you know, I asked her Terry Irwin if I could name the ship after Steve. Uh this was just after he died. And uh so it was me, it was the ship was named in honor of Steve Irwin. Uh Bob Barker gave us a contribution of $5.2 million. Uh he said he wanted to buy a ship. Now he didn't want the ship named after him. Uh I said, you know, Bob, I think we should name after the ship. It'll give uh you know people uh lun you know ideas to do the same thing, and that actually works. So Sam Simon then sponsored sponsored a ship too. And uh I also named a vessel the Martin Sheen because of Martin Sheen's uh you know 30-year support of everything I've been doing. So though that's the reason for it. But usually what we have is people will sponsor a ship, and uh that's the easiest way to raise money for the purchase of the ship. We can raise money from the general support base for operations, but actually the capital investment to buy a ship is pretty high. So therefore, we look for specific sponsors.

SPEAKER_02 21:41

So to what extent was Steve uh Irwin supportive of uh your tactics in uh in helping out animals?

SPEAKER_01 21:49

Well, he was an outspoken supporter of that, and then uh you know, also did uh fundraisers. Terry Irwin did fundraisers for us too. So there was uh we had a good relationship.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

Uh in your book, uh Hitman for the Kindness Club, you mentioned Dennis Banks, and uh you may not have known actually for that calligraphy behind me by Junia Asuda, she was a very close friend of Dennis. I met him two or three times. Uh she was with him in sanctuary in California, and then uh she uh advocated in New York for him to get sanctuary there after he lost sanctuary in California when Governor Duke Medjian took over. Did you have much or any relationship with Dennis, or was it just that you uh uh heard his uh slogan, A Good Day to Die?

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Well, I don't think he actually made that originally. It was a long, it's a very old Lokoda s saying. But uh I worked with uh Dennis Banks and Russell Means uh during the occupation of Wounded. I was a medic during the occupation of Wounded, and uh that's uh I I I actually spent more time talking with Russell Means than with Dennis, uh, but I had uh utmost respect for for both of them. And uh one of the things that Russell Means uh taught me, and uh this is uh you know, because I I approached him one day and I said, you know, we're surrounded by all these FBI agents and U.S. Marshals, and uh they're all well armed and they're shooting at us every night, and we don't have a chance. I mean, what are we doing here? I mean, we we uh the odds are against us, and we can't possibly win. And he told me something that stayed with me for the rest of my life and which really guides me today. And he said, Well, we're not concerned about the odds against us, and we're not concerned about winning or losing. We're here because this is the right thing to do, the right place to be, and the right time to do it, and to not worry about the future. You can't control the future, you can only control the present, but what you do in the present will define what the future will be. And so that's been a long-lasting philosophy for me, and that came directly from Russell Means.

SPEAKER_02 23:43

Did you deal at all with uh Leonard uh Pelty or were you there at Wounded Knee when he was still there?

SPEAKER_01 23:49

I don't believe Leonard Pelcher was in wounded knee. And I I think if you look into it, he was there. The the the actions that he was involved in, in fact, he was not involved, I think he was falsely accused, happened uh after that. Uh, but I did uh uh attend his trial, uh his extradition trial in Vancouver back in the mid-70s. I can't remember exactly the year. But uh so but I I've never actually talked with him directly.

SPEAKER_02 24:15

Okay, I I may have I stand correct then if he wasn't it uh it wounded me. Now I also uh read in your book about uh being in in South Africa, and I I really think that's something that uh there were people who uh if you looked a scancy, was that you correct about your support for Nelson Mandele. Soon after the um the the majority uh you know the the majority in the population took over the government in South Africa, you met their first um their first ambassador, Franklin C. I don't know if you ever met him. What a wonderful man. He was over at the uh MCA2. He didn't even pay for the VIP membership, he was in just the regular logical room, and I met him right in the sawney. What a nice man. And uh about a month or two before I saw him near the Lincoln Memorial. I was driving my car to wherever, and he was in the back of the car being driven, and I said hello to him, and he reaches his hand out and he shook his hand across cars with me and said, How are you? Uh so to what extent uh did uh Nelson Mandela's actions and the other actions of the people working to overcome apartheid, influence, and inspire the work you do?

SPEAKER_01 25:39

In 1969, I was in South Africa. I was working on Norwegian uh vessels, merchant vessels at the time. So I had a firsthand experience of the apartheid system when I was there. And it was also uh when I was in South Africa that I became aware of Nelson Mendela's uh you know situation being in prison. I came back and I wrote some articles, which I, and this is a lesson I learned. I couldn't get those articles published in the mainstream press uh because, well, Nelson Mendela was a terrorist, and that was a reasoning. I did get it published in the alternative press, the Georgia Strait and the Berkeley Barb and those newspapers. But what I learned from there, you know, the very idea that Nelson Mendela in 1972 would one day become president of South Africa was impossible. It was unthinkable. And yet the impossible became possible, and that has also been a guiding uh uh you know light for me over the years as the impossible can become possible, and Nelson Mandela is a living proof of that.

SPEAKER_02 26:39

Okay, now how long were you uh in jail in Greenland? And uh what led to the decision for you to be released?

SPEAKER_01 26:49

I was in uh jail for uh five and a half months. Uh, and I have to say it wasn't a bad prison if uh as prisons go. Had a beautiful view of the fiore of the mountains. I could even see Wales from where I was. And uh everybody was very supportive. The prisoners were very supportive, the guards were the people of Greenland were very supportive, so uh it wasn't an unpleasant uh experience. Uh the but it put the Danish and Greenlandic governments into a bit of a quandary. What are they gonna do? Uh, because they were coming under immense pressure from uh, well, President uh Macron of France uh uh intervened on my behalf, President Lula de Silva from Brazil intervened on my per behalf, President of French Polynesia, uh people like Jane Goodall and James Cameron and uh Sylvia Earl, and so many people came to my defense. There was petitions of hundreds of thousands of people. And so uh at the beginning, Denmark wasn't had no problem. They're gonna extradite me. Japan wanted me, they're gonna get get me. And uh the actual decision by the Greenland Court was to extradite. But after that decision was made, uh the Minister of U Justice, the Attorney General in Denmark, made the political decision to release me. So then I was released.

SPEAKER_02 27:58

Uh and how much did that really have to do your release that uh that Denmark didn't have assurances from Japan that uh Japan would give you credit for time served uh while awaiting possible extradition over in Greenland?

SPEAKER_01 28:14

Denmark uh produced a 65-page uh document to justify the decision they made. And it was a really a bit of a diplomatic problem for them because they know that Japan has a very medieval justice system. They got a 99% conviction rate. And basically what happens, and some of my crew have experienced this, you don't even get to go before a judge until you uh confess, and you don't, and and that confession could take weeks or months. They take you daily interrogations until you confess. And once you confess, then you get your time to stand before a judge. So that's not the kind of justice system that anybody wants to go. But of course, Denmark isn't going to come out and criticize that, but they knew that that would have been unacceptable. Uh so they use things like, well, Japan wouldn't really uh guarantee that the time served would be part of that time. Um and also the here's the problem. The I when I went into court the first time, I went there were six court appearances, and I said, it's a very simple case, look at the evidence. The evidence, which we documented everything, everything's on camera, will show I was not there, I wasn't present at the time, I wasn't involved in it. In fact, uh the person who was originally arrested, Pete Bethune, I'm on camera advising him to not to board the Japanese vessel. But although I think he had every right to do do that because the Japanese had destroyed his $2 million vessel and injured his crew, and he wanted to confront the captain. So he had every right to do it, but I urged him not to do it because uh I think you're not an Australian citizen, and uh in Australian waters we can't use diplomacy to get you out. Anyway, what happened is he got arrested. But he made a deal with the uh the prosecutor in Japan that if he said that I ordered him to board the vessel, that uh they would give him a suspended sentence, so which is what he did. And then after he was released, he actually signed an affidavit saying he lied in order to get that suspended sentence. That affidavit was delivered to Secretary of State John Kerry, which is one of the reasons I was allowed to return back to the United States because uh John Kerry looked at it and said, Well, this is pretty bogus. So all of the evidence uh demonstrated that uh this the Japan did not have a case. But for two and a half months, the Greenland court refused to even look at the evidence. They absolutely refused to look at the evidence. And um and the and the host uh the prosecutor on the case, uh she was extremely hostile. She uh seemed to have a personal bias, and I found out why. I found out that she had uh signed a statement in support of the killing of the pilot whales and the and the dolphins in the Faroe Islands and was a big supporter of that so-called tradition. So she had a personal bias on that. So that probably led to the reason that I was the decision was to extradite me. But right from the very beginning, I was very confident that I would not be extradited because Denmark is a signatory to the European Committee on Human Rights, and this is um, and I'm basically what I did was being a whistleblower. Our real crime was uh a television show that exposed Japan's uh illegal activities to the to the eyes of the world. And Japan was severely embarrassed and humiliated. They wanted their revenge. They still do. I'm still uh there's still a red notice against me. So that means that my next, our next move is to, we're going after Interpol uh with lawyers, and I'm also gonna go to Lyon and confront them directly. I said, if you want to arrest me, here I am, arrest me. But uh the fact is is Interpol is being used by many countries to go after dissidents uh for political reasons, and they're weaponizing Interpol to do it. Uh my case has been cited as an example by since 2017 by a European Commission investigating the political the use of Interpol for political abuse. And uh so we're gonna carry on with that. I think we can get the Interpol toss out, but this is not just for me. There's actually a lot of people, a lot of people that are being uh persecuted through by using Interpol as a means to do so. Um and so we we want to blow this thing right open. So we're talking to a lot of media and we got a lot of good lawyers who are working on this. So uh Interpol will be one of our targets for this year.

SPEAKER_02 32:12

Was your understanding that you were not facing more than six months incarceration if extradited to Japan and convicted there?

SPEAKER_01 32:20

Well, Japan wanted to give me 15 years.

SPEAKER_02 32:24

Okay, I thought I heard when you were on the your your uh organization's podcast from the jail in Greenland that you mentioned something about six months. Am I uh missing something there?

SPEAKER_01 32:35

Oh yeah. If the if this was a similar crime proportionality, uh in Denmark, the maximum would have been six months, but according to my lawyers, it would probably have been a small fine.

SPEAKER_02 32:46

Okay, now please tell us about your team of lawyers. What countries were they from? And I was particularly interested to see that King and Spaulding, uh certainly not a lefty seeming uh law firm, uh, was uh was uh your your American law firm. And how did King and Spaulding, for instance, get involved?

SPEAKER_01 33:06

Well, actually, it was uh they're not my American law firm. Uh John Tamilat, uh who is the the French office of the King and Spaulding, uh he's been a lawyer for us for a long time. Uh but we'll break it down. We had three lawyers in Denmark, uh one of whom which is in Greenland, uh Jonas uh Christoffeson and Julia Stage and uh and and Ben Maydal, and they were our my lawyers, uh the Danish crew, and they were extremely good. Um Jonas is actually a very well-known human rights lawyer. Uh I had Oliver Wallach in Germany, I had a whole team of lawyers uh in France, and uh Greg Craig in the United States was my American lawyer.

SPEAKER_02 33:47

And were all of them doing this work pro bono? And when they don't have work to do for you, although maybe they always do, uh, what other um uh public interest causes are they helping out with?

SPEAKER_01 33:59

Uh they were all pro bono, although I should say that in Denmark all lawyers are pro bono. Not really, uh the government pays them. So, you know, there's no question of me paying the lawyers in Denmark. Uh so uh that was covered. Uh Jean Tomalet, who works for King and Spalding, uh, aside from uh you know supporting us in Sea Shepherd France, uh he actually supports an orphanage in school in uh in Uganda. Uh so he's very involved with a lot of social causes.

SPEAKER_02 34:27

How many times have you been incarcerated?

SPEAKER_01 34:32

Many times. I've never been convicted, but uh I spent uh 120 days in uh the in the Illisad prison in the Netherlands in '97 because Norway tried to extradite me, and then uh the Netherlands ruled that I would not to be extradited. Um I spent a little time being arrested in Canadian prisons for opposing the uh the seal hunt, but I won all those cases. And uh I think probably the the strangest case is I spent uh a week in prison in uh in Iran in 1972 for espionage because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the camera. But uh, you know, and and and the problem is that my Canadian passport at the time said I was a British subject and Iran and England were having a problem. So uh but that was only a week, but it was sort of interesting to be actually charged with espionage, even though there's no grounds for it.

SPEAKER_02 35:21

How many times have you actually gone to trial? Because uh, as you're saying, you never got convicted, so that means a not guilty verdict each time or a dismissal.

SPEAKER_01 35:30

Yeah, I had a big trial in '94 for chasing the Cuban and uh Russian drag uh Cuban and Spanish drag trawlers off the coast of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. I was charged with three counts of uh criminal mischief, uh, two counts endangering life and two counts endangering property, although I didn't damage any property and nobody was hurt, but the possibility I could have, according to the Canadian government. Uh that was a great case. I I I I found the the best lawyer in Newfoundland, and uh he opened the case by saying, Look, we're not saying we didn't do this, we're gonna say we did precisely what we're charged with. We're proud to have done it, and we're gonna do it again. And I was acquitted by the jury.

SPEAKER_02 36:05

Okay, so have all your acquittals been by jury?

SPEAKER_01 36:10

Two have been by by jury, and the the others uh yeah, the well uh let me see. The Dutch court would uh would that'd be a panel of uh of Supreme Court justices. I s I guess that made the decision there. Uh in the in the Greenland this thing, it was uh well, it was the attorney general that uh made the decision uh there. So yeah, two jury trials. I was also uh we were charged with uh 21 counts of contempt of a federal injunction in 2013 because in 2012 uh the Japanese applied for an injunction against us uh in the Southern Ocean, which I thought was very strange. I mean, how could the U.S. court intervene against uh Dutch registered ships leaving Australian ports to intervene against Japanese vessels, but they they got involved. And uh we went to court, it was a week in court, and the judge Judge Peter Shaw acquitted us. But uh what happened uh a year later is the Ninth Circuit Court, which uh Judge Alex Kaczynski was extremely um hostile, and he overturned the whole thing. I never even saw this guy, he never saw any saw any evidence or anything. He just overturned it and said, You're guilty, you're gonna have to pay pay damages to uh to Japan. Now the Japanese were surprised at that because they didn't want damages, and there were very good reason for that. For us to pay damages, they would have to open up their books, and that's the last thing they wanted to do, especially to expose the fact that $30 million from the tsunami relief fund was channeled into the whaling industry. They certainly didn't want that out there. So they said, no, no, no, we we don't want damages, just pay our illegal costs. Uh so we came we paid them two and a half million dollars in legal costs, but uh then what happened is uh the next day we charged them with piracy for uh destroying the uh Audi Gill and said, Oh, you got to go to court. Now they had to open up their books. They didn't want to do that, so we went into mediation and we made a settlement. So that meant the settlement was that the injunction would only apply to the Sea Shiver group in the United States, but would not apply to Australia or any of the European countries, and therefore we can continue to go down to the Southern Ocean. And uh they also had to um make a significant uh uh financial. I'm not allowed to say how much money they gave us, but it was pretty uh adequate. Uh they had to return to us.

SPEAKER_02 38:19

The name of this show is Beat the Prosecution. To what extent did you choose your lawyers for your trials based on their trial experience, record of trial ability, and what did you do in interaction with your lawyers to make sure you would win these cases, or were you just convinced that uh a win was a shoe-in for all of these acquittals?

SPEAKER_01 38:42

Well, I always said to everybody if they get charged with anything, is you gotta get the best gun in town. You know, you gotta get a good lawyer. So in this case, uh uh John Tamilot in France and um our French lawyers, they were the ones who recommended the Danish lawyers. Uh in the case uh when I was on trial in Canada, I asked a friend of mine who's a lawyer in Vancouver, I said, Who's the best damn lawyer in Newfoundland? He said, Well, Brian Casey. So I said, Well, he's my guy, and he was an artist. Uh so um, yeah, I think lawyers, if you're gonna get a lawyer, make sure you get a damn good one. And uh I've learned that from experience.

SPEAKER_02 39:17

So, did you testify in each of these trials? And what did you do for preparing your testimony? Did you do uh any uh mock trials, uh role reversal, uh just really, really lengthy uh practice sessions of uh what to do with directing cross-examination?

SPEAKER_01 39:37

Uh all I ever did was tell the truth. We didn't do any mock trials or anything. And uh one of the things I you just tell the truth and also never lose your cool. Answer every question calmly and without allowing the uh prosecutor to uh make you angry, which in Newfoundland the guy tried to do. He was really frustrated because he kept trying to make me, you know, he's trying to try to may humiliate me and make unfair comparisons, all these things like that. I I just said yes, no, yes, no. I didn't let him get a rise out of me. So I think that's really the the best way to approach it. The truth and don't lose your temper. Just remain calm and answer the questions calmly.

SPEAKER_02 40:11

Well, Paul, it's one thing to say don't lose your temper, but it's an amazing skill not to. So, what is it about your makeup andor preparation for life andor this trial that uh helped you with the non-anger? To what extent did any of that have to do with uh you're dealing with uh a challenging upbringing, include uh upbringing, including your challenges dealing with your father?

SPEAKER_01 40:34

Well, I you know, I I never actually get angry with anybody for anything. Uh and uh that's been really all my life. Uh I'm just sort of naturally stoic uh in that way. I've never raised my temper, I've never I've never actually I've never hit anybody. Uh so and in a confrontation situation, which I've been in plenty of them, I feel you just have to be objective. And the only way to be objective is to be calm, not worry about the consequences, uh, not worry about the dangers that are around you, and uh just focus on uh the your strategies and your objectives. That's all you can all you can really do.

SPEAKER_02 41:12

Well, this is amazing. I know almost nobody, uh Paul, who's been non-angry since birth. Uh you've got uh five siblings, are they the same?

SPEAKER_01 41:23

I would I would say so, yeah. Uh you know, it's really amazing because uh we had an abusive father, uh, and I think every single one of us uh you know has never mistreated their their children or their spouses. Uh you know, we've never had any drug or alcohol problems or anything, all my entire family. Uh so I I think the only criticism we might get is that people think that, well, you know, you guys aren't very emotional. And that. But uh I remember I was with a girlfriend one time when I went to meet my brothers. I haven't seen them for uh two of them for two, and I said, Oh, hi, how are you doing, Brian? And my girlfriend says, Is that what you say to your brother after Yeah?

SPEAKER_02 42:07

Well, none of this was faith-based. I mean, this was just uh natural. You you were just born into non-anger.

SPEAKER_01 42:15

I think uh being exposed to it, uh, you know, my father was angry, my father was violent. Uh so I think it's a natural revulsion to that behavior to not be what he was. Uh so uh if there was any lesson taught to me by my father, it was uh that one. And it wasn't probably the one that he meant to tell me. Uh so I do express my anger in writing, but not verbally. But I I can be very angry when it comes to writing.

SPEAKER_02 42:46

Yes, I I have read some uh pointed words by including about uh how do you pronounce this guy's name? Uh can you tell us about uh Dudka or Dudka? And I think you referred to him as a Nazi, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 42:58

Oh, that's way back. That's uh he was a Canadian fisheries officer, yes.

SPEAKER_02 43:04

And uh what were your interactions with him?

SPEAKER_01 43:08

Well, he uh what happened? We were interfering with a seal hunt, and uh everything we were doing was legal until midnight when uh Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau passed a special order and council law making what we were doing is illegal. So we didn't even know that we were breaking the law until the next morning when the fisheries officers came to arrest us for breaking the law that we didn't know existed. And uh Stanley Dutka was the um the chief fisheries officer on there. He started just screaming at me and everything. He just completely lost it. And um I was on a piece of ice in the middle of a pool of water, and he kept trying to push me off in a pole, and I had to sort of use the pole to you know defend myself by blocking his stick and everything. And uh and then he beat me up on that. So yeah, he was an extremely violent person.

SPEAKER_02 43:54

Did he ever face any penalties for his mistreatment of you, no, no, actually they tried.

SPEAKER_01 44:01

They charge me with assaulting an officer because he hit me. Um but I got acquitted on that.

SPEAKER_02 44:12

And how did you get acquitted on that? Just by telling the truth in court?

SPEAKER_01 44:16

Yeah, the evidence.

SPEAKER_02 44:22

The camera was there too then.

SPEAKER_01 44:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:24

The the footage.

SPEAKER_01 44:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:28

You never go into any situation without a camera. There are exceptions, right? Like with the rabbits, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 44:34

Well, yeah, but you know, that wasn't one of my projects. I was just participating in something that somebody else is doing. And uh no, you know, there are there are exceptions, but that was a long time ago. You know, right. And I did a lot of things. I did a lot of things when I was a child, uh, you know, and in my teens, which uh, you know, was part of my I guess my education really, which uh this is before I learned, you know, I I majored in communications, and one of the things that the most valuable lesson I learned is one day in the early 70s, uh we had a guest lecturer, uh Marshall McLuhan, and he had a profound impact on the way I saw the world. And uh he was uh the author of the Gutenberg Galaxy and the uh the media is a massage and laws of media. So uh that was when I realized that uh, you know, in order to change the world, you have to have a good, clear understanding of how media works and how to use it, how to manipulate it, how to make it work for you. And when people say, Oh, you're nothing but a media manipulator, I say, Yeah, like if you're running for president or selling Coca-Cola, it's all the same thing.

SPEAKER_02 45:37

Okay, you say you've never hit anybody. So how do you distinguish that from uh you're uh you were very young, but shooting those one or two uh boys with a BB gun when they were uh mistreating an animal or animals, I think it was.

SPEAKER_01 45:51

I didn't hit him, I shot him in the ass with a BB gun. Um I I know that um what was it, uh Dixie Lee Ray in her book Trashing the Planet, she was criticizing me, and she actually said evidence of Watson's insanity can be found that he shot a boy in the rear end with a BB gun who was about to shoot a bird. Any boy who would shoot a bird, a boy to protect a bird has to be crazy. And I said, Look, Dixie, in my con in my hometown, every boy shot every other boy with a BB gun. I just happen to have a real, you know, a justified reason to do what I did.

SPEAKER_02 46:21

All right. Now, are you still vegan? And to what extent have the jails you've been in accommodated your uh your eating lifestyle?

SPEAKER_01 46:30

Actually, Greenland Jail was quite interesting. They don't have meals. Uh what they do is every Wednesday they give you $1,350 crone or about uh $200. And they have a ship's uh they have a prison uh supermarket. So you go in and you buy your own food, and there's a common kitchen, so you cook your own meals. So I was in complete control of what I I ate while I was in prison in Greenland.

SPEAKER_02 46:51

Okay. Are you still uh vegan in the way you eat? And how about the other jails? Would they accommodate your eating lifestyle?

SPEAKER_01 46:59

Yeah, you can always find a way around that. Uh so no, that was never been a problem. Yes, still vegan. Uh, and I think that uh to me, I'm a vegan for uh ecological reasons. I just I think that factory farming, especially, has uh caused major significant ecological damage. It's also become a vector for the transmission, the xenomic transmission of of uh viral diseases. And uh I don't think it's a it's a very healthy thing to have. We kill something like 80 billion animals every year, and in doing that, we're wiping out fish because 40% of all of the fish is caught from the sea is turned in turned into fish meal, which is fed to chickens and to pigs. I mean, we have we feed more fish to chickens and pigs than all the seals in the Atlantic Ocean eat. It's a it's a world out of balance. And so in order to restore us restore that, we have to make some you know decisions on how to do so. This uh this planet was never meant for eight billion meat-eating, fish-eating primates. It just simply wasn't. And uh so we can no longer have a so-called hunting-gathering sort of uh approach because there's just not enough resources to support that. There are three basic laws of ecology. The first is the law of diversity, that the strength of an ecosystem is dependent upon diversity within it. The second is the law of interdependence, that all species within an ecosystem are interdependent with each other. And the third is the law of finite resources, there's a limit to growth because there's a limit to carrying capacity. And when you uh diminish uh species and interdependence, you do that that causes a diminishment of the of ecological systems, which leads to ecological collapse. So it's all linked to uh I'm guided by the laws of ecology, is uh I guess the best way to uh explain why I would choose a vegan diet.

SPEAKER_02 48:42

Okay, so uh was it a little over four months that you were in the jail in Greenland? And even though uh your um jail situation was a lot nicer than here in America, I understand you you could have a refrigerator in your cell and and and and a TV, for instance, and uh, like you said, be able to prepare your own meals. Uh, did it become boring? Did it become dull? What did you do for your routine? And to what extent did you include interacting with other inmates? Or you were you mainly keeping yourself in the jail?

SPEAKER_01 49:14

Well, I was there for five and a half months. I was the only non-indigenous person in my cell block of 10. There were 95 in the prison, but I was only with 10 people. Uh it was, you know, we got along really good fine. I I'm I had to sign autographs for everybody because they all watched whale wars when it was on the air. Um, I they were all actually very much against Japanese whaling. Even the people who supported whaling in Greenland, indigenous whaling, they were against Japanese whaling, they were against the killing of pilot whales and dolphins in the Faroe Islands, which they thought was barbaric. And uh so we got along just fine. And um so you know, we we worked on different things together, you know, just cleaning up and whatever. Um, but the uh the cells, uh the the prison cell, I mean, it was like a hotel room, really. I mean, you have your refrigerator, you got uh your TV, you got your separate bathroom and shower, uh, and my window, I had a beautiful view of uh the fjord and the mountains, and I could even see whales out there. So there's certainly no complaints uh uh about the condition. But actually, I was kept very busy. I I received about 4,500 letters while I was there and tried to answer as many as I could. And uh also uh time to catch up on a lot of reading. Uh my daughter sent me quite a few books, other people sent me books, and so a combination of writing, reading, and uh you know, watching uh movies got me through no problem.

SPEAKER_02 50:32

Did you have an exercise practice, a mindfulness or yoga practice or any spiritual practice over at the jail?

SPEAKER_01 50:42

No, there was no no religious issues there. Uh uh and uh there was uh it wasn't much exercise because you know the conditions that are there outside and everything. But uh, you know, we did walk around and uh I did have a yoga mat, which a friend of mine brought me. But other than that, uh, you know, there was not, you know, it was it was uh overall, it was not a bad situation. It was a comfortable situation. And I wouldn't have I could have stayed there for years. Uh but here's the one thing uh I have two little boys, and that that that was the hard part, uh being and I was only allowed a 10-minute call once a week uh to speak with them. So if it was not for that, I would have absolutely zero complaints about the conditions uh in the in the prison. Uh but also at the time that uh these charges came into being in 2010, uh these two little boys weren't born. So I never uh at that time I wouldn't have had that uh that concern. So they are my only real concern about what I do.

SPEAKER_02 51:42

Okay, I want to talk to you briefly about your boys. I was almost 43 when my uh one child was born. He's 18 now. How old were you when you had your first child? And uh this boat you're on right now on the Sin, is that where you live? And are your boys living on there with you?

SPEAKER_01 51:59

My well, my first child was in 1980, and that's my daughter, and she's in her 40s now. Uh, and uh so that was my first child. Uh my boys were born in one uh was born in 20 um 16, and uh Murtaug was born in 2021. So they're eight and they're three. And how old was I? That would have been in I would have been 66 on the first one, and uh well uh like 70 on my on the on the on the second one, and uh so uh so what was it the other part of the question?

SPEAKER_02 52:34

You live on this boat that you're sitting in uh on right now in the Seine River, and where are your boys right now?

SPEAKER_01 52:40

We have an apartment uh in Marseille, uh, because my son is a chess champion, so he's going to chess school there. And uh I this is my really my office on the Seine. So I'm here during the week and then I'm go I go down to uh Marseille on the weekends, or they come up here.

SPEAKER_02 52:56

Okay, now getting back to the jail. Do you have any recommendations for how inmates in the United States can uh deal with jail? Because the jails here tend not to be nice for the toilets, for instance. I take it you had a nice toilet, the toilets here are best made are made of metal. They typically don't have a seat because if they have a seat, you can grab the seat off of there and do all sorts of uh use it as a weapon, uh, pretty much.

SPEAKER_01 53:24

Dane sure. Well, Scandinavian prison systems are certainly uh well very, very different than that. I mean, you have of course you have a normal toilet nor toilet seat and that. Uh I mean you have everything you really need. Here's the interesting thing about uh the Greenland prison, which I found absolutely stunning. Uh, you know, uh they allow the inmates to go hunting, uh, which is amazing. You know, uh certainly I'm opposed to that, but uh, they do do that. So uh they give them a rifle, they go out and hunt muskox or reindeer. And I'm going, well, you'd give you give prisoners a rifle and uh and and you just let them go off on their own. And and their their answer to that was, well, where are they gonna go? There's no escape from Greenland. And I said, Then why then why am I here? You know, there's no escape from Greenland. But uh that was one of the things I found absolutely I don't know of any other place in the world that they would allow that to happen. Uh, here's and I said, Well, what's the maximum sentence for anything? Well, you know, if you kid murder six years, but after six years you come up for review, and then you might get eight years if you've and then but the maximum probably 12 years at the most. Um, now the one of the guys that I was in there with, uh, he was Faroese actually in the beginning, early part. He was there for a hundred days when I arrived, and he was really happy because he got to go to trial where he confessed, uh, he pleaded guilty. Uh, had to wait a hundred days to plead guilty. And I said, Well, why are you so happy about that? He says, Well, now I get to go home uh during the day and I can work, and I just have to come to prison back at night. So that's generally the thing. You're convicted and you're allowed to come back to uh you're allowed to go out into the community as long as you report back at night.

SPEAKER_02 55:04

We need that in the United States.

SPEAKER_01 55:07

What's that?

SPEAKER_02 55:08

We need that type of system.

SPEAKER_01 55:11

Uh the the thing is uh the I think the Scandinavian prison systems are this that the uh the objective is rehabilitation and education. And uh the American system is punishment. Yes, that's a big difference.

SPEAKER_02 55:26

Okay, now uh I told uh your arranger that we'd be on the uh show for an hour. We have about uh three minutes left. I can go over time from that. So I have time.

SPEAKER_01 55:38

I have time if you like.

SPEAKER_02 55:40

Thank you. I want this time to be an opportunity for you, Paul, to talk about anything you haven't discussed already, whether it be Iceland, a promotion for donating to your organizations, anything at all that you haven't spoken about yet.

SPEAKER_01 55:54

Well, for this year, our priorities are to stop Iceland from killing whales. Uh they we stopped them last year, we stopped them the year before. Uh now the the one man who's uh Christian Lofsen, he's the one guy who wants to insist on killing whales. He's a modern-day Captain Ahab. The majority of people in Iceland are opposed to whaling, but he has a lot of uh political power and he's the wealthiest man in Iceland, so he wants to continue doing that. And uh probably will until he dies. He's in his 80s now. But uh so we intend to stop uh his operations uh this summer. And it's an easy thing to do because all we have to do is uh go with the vessels, film what he's doing. He's he said that he'll never kill a whale in front of a camera, so we'll put him up to that test. And uh well, also we have our other ship based in Australia, and it's basically on guard duty right now to guard the Southern Ocean. If the Japanese whaling fleet returns to the Southern Ocean, we will be ready to intervene if they do so. And I think that is their intention. You don't build a massive factory ship with a long-range capability like the kanji Maru, unless you're going to the Southern Ocean to kill whales. You don't do it for coastal whaling. So that was their objective. I think they'd probably be down there, but they did us an incredible favor this year. By arrest having me arrested in Greenland, our objective for Operation Kanji Maru is to focus international attention on illegal Japanese whaling. And they did that for us. The the intention that was focused on this because of my arrest in Greenland was greater than anything that we could have envisioned. So it was a very successful campaign. I just actually renamed the prison uh the Nook, the Good Ship Nook, I called it, because uh it was our command base for the for the operation. So that all worked out uh quite well. So those are our major projects for for the for the coming year, uh in addition to taking on Interpol.

SPEAKER_02 57:44

Uh, I do want to ask about clubbing. Now, how uh in one of the at least one of the films about your work, I see the clubbing of seals. Uh it it is startling. Uh what how why do you think that anyone would want to wear seal uh seal fur with clubbing? And is the reason for clubbing just so that uh they stop the animal right there or just don't uh cause any break in the fur?

SPEAKER_01 58:12

Well, yeah, they club baby seals, which are pretty helpless. So the easiest way to kill them is with a club or a hackapick, which is uh a club with a spike on it, which is driven into the head. Uh you know, if you use bullets, then you're going to cause you're gonna damage the the fur or the pelts on that. But you know, the seal hunt in Canada only exists because of massive government subsidies, about $20 million a year. Uh there is no market for seal pelts outside of places like Greenland and northern Canada. Europe has banned seal pelts uh since 2008, uh all seal pelts, not just from Canada, but also from Namibia and other places. And uh so there's really no market for it. Even China has uh stopped buying uh seal pelts. So that that was the the key to ending it, really wasn't the economic uh pressure that was put to stop it. Uh but it's uh you know, uh killing a baby seal, if you're capable of walking up to the this beautiful little creature on the ice who just looks at you uh, you know, and uh there's just no anger, there's no uh fear or anything. And uh and then they just club it over the head and skin it. I've seen them skinned alive in front of me. Um uh it's a completely barbaric thing. A sealer actually wrote an incredibly good book called Over the Side Mickey, uh Mickey uh Dyson's name, and he uh he in one of his chapters he said, you know, the animal rights people say we're barbarians, and you know what? They're right. You have to be a barbarian to do what we do out there.

SPEAKER_02 59:39

Uh Paul, how how can people support uh your work uh financially in any other in other ways, including uh making verbal noise and written noise?

SPEAKER_01 59:51

We can find you can look us up uh the Captain Paul Watson Foundation website or on the social networks. And uh so that we're pretty easy to find in that in in that respect. We are a tax-deductible organization for for um donations. Uh the foundation is registered in the US and Germany, Australia, the Great Brit Great Britain, uh, Ireland, and other countries. So it is it is international. So uh so if and also people can uh um you know volunteer to be crew members on the ships too, and uh because we we operate with volunteer crews. And one of the reasons I like volunteer crews is you can't pay people to take the risks that these people take when we go out there to you know to to protect life on the sea. Uh professionals don't they they won't do it, you know. You just can't pay people to do it. So these people uh work long, hard hours in risky conditions and they do it for free because they're passionate about it. So the things that I look for in a crew member are three virtues courage, passion, and imagination. And I've always felt that those three virtues are what it takes to change the world. Anyone can make a difference just by the application of courage, passion, and imagination. And when you look at it, what what causes social change throughout history? The courage, passion, imagination of individuals. You know, it wasn't Abraham Lincoln that ended slavery, it was the work of Wilberforce and and uh Douglas and those people. It wasn't it wasn't uh Woodrow Wilson who ended who got women the vote in the United States. In fact, he was the one who opposed them up until the day he had to sign it. It was you know individual suffragettes who did all that work. So whether it be the civil rights movement or any any movement, it's always challenged championed by passionate, imaginative, courageous individuals.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:33

Courage, passion, and imagination. Great final words, Paul. Thank you so much. You've heard from Captain Paul Watson. Please support his organization financially. Paul Watson Organization.org. Read his book, watch his films. This has been John Katz at Beat the Prosecution. I'm a criminal defense and DUI defense, Laura, in Fairfax, Virginia. And also, Paul told me how you can help out, also, which is to volunteer on his ships. Thank you so much, Paul.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:10

Thank you for listening to this week's episode from Beat the Prosecution. This is a regular podcast giving people a leg up against police investigations and prosecutions. Nothing discussed on our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Catz only provides legal advice to current clients or to individuals who have paid for a consultation. We welcome you contacting us via email and info at be the prosecution.com by calling our office at 703 383 1100 or texting us at 571 406 7268.