UnchainedTV: Free Captain Paul Watson!

0:00 Streaming network, Jane Velez Mitchell. You're about to hear a secret solution to the problems that plague our world. If you want to revolutionise your health, get truly joyful and jump to the next phase of human evolution, all it takes is one simple choice. Now, here's your host, Jane Velez Mitchell. We have breaking news for you in the battle to free Captain Paul Watson. This 73-year-old anti-whaling hero is the subject of demonstrations around the world. People who are outraged that the whale war star and founder of Sea Shepherd, Captain Paul Watson, has been imprisoned in Greenland since July.

0:47 This anti-whaling hero has applied for political asylum in France as he fights off attempts by Japan to get him extradited to that nation where he could end up behind bars for 15 years. And he just wants to stop the gruesome slaughter of whales that Japan is engaging in. Activists around the world are demanding that Watson be released immediately with protests from Los Angeles to France, outside Danish government offices. Watson was first arrested back in July when his ship docked in Greenland. And Greenland is a very, very large country, but very sparsely populated that's part of the kingdom of Denmark.

1:36 Danish authorities are still deciding whether to extradite him. And Japan is one of the few nations that is still engaging in whaling. We are so excited to have with us today a man who is the CEO of the Paul Watson Foundation, Omar Todd. Omar, thank you for joining us live from London. What is the very latest when it comes to Paul Watson? How is he doing? Well, thanks for having me on your show. How is he doing?

2:17 I think now he's getting a little fed up with the process of the slowness of the wheels of justice that aren't turning too quickly. He's resolute though, strong, determined, but at the same time, obviously he's missing his wife and two kids and his family in general. But at the same time, he's strong as I've ever seen. He's the most upbeat out of all of us, actually. He's a man of great courage, strength, but he is frustrated a little bit at the court system. I mean, we've had now six or so, or at least four or five now sort of adjournments and remands continuously.

2:58 And, you know, so it's getting a bit frustrated now from the day he was sort of arrested back in the 21st of July. Here's what I don't understand. I don't understand the story at all. Why is Denmark siding with Japan? Japan is one of the few countries left on earth that is still engaging in whaling. And from what I read, there's actually an international treaty against whaling. So I don't get why Denmark is going along with what Japan wants. I would think Denmark, who's generally considered a very progressive country, big on environmentalism, big on sustainability.

3:41 Why would they go along with this horrific plan by Japan to continue whaling? And apparently they have a brand new whaling ship that they wanna have some fun with by going out there and killing a bunch of whales. What's in it for Denmark? Well, that's a conundrum, isn't it? That's the paradox of it all. I mean, here you have an EU country. We're under EU regulations. Whaling is illegal. Backing up a extradition request of a country that's on the other side of the planet that continues to whale. And we think it comes down to a couple of factors. One, we don't know the real mystery, but we can only speculate.

4:25 We think it originated from the Faroe Islands, which is another small group of islands under the Danish rule nearby, who you may or may not have heard have had this Grindelup thing where they herd pilot whales into their little fords and kill them. And we think they are the ones that notified the Danish authorities that Paul was on his way via the Northwest Passage to go to the Pacific Ocean with the vessel, the JPD, to interfere with the Japanese whaling there in one way or another. An operation was announced called Operation Kangimaru.

5:08 And because of that, because of that, on or around in March, April, the Japanese basically reignited an old Interpol Red Notice against Paul, but only to the Danish government. Based on the information, the Faroese fed them. And when Paul landed on the JPD in Nuuk, Greenland, there was, I believe there was 14 special forces that jumped on police officers that arrested Paul and took him away. So one has to ask, why would they do this? What's in it for Denmark?

5:50 I mean, here you have a progressive prime minister. She's very pro-environment. Denmark's known to be a progressive, law-abiding society. And then you have this whaling issue. And optically, it does not do them any favours at all to continue this narrative with holding Paul on, which by the way, the charges, the alleged charges, which amount to malicious damage, looting, hooligism and assault as maltreatment, which he didn't actually do. One of the crew members who did these things, he's been labelled to be the conspiracy as part of the charges.

6:34 And this has caused all this drama when the actual allegations themselves are minor fines in both Greenland, the Denmark, and even two out of three of them in Japan. So essentially, these charges and allegations are very flimsy in themselves. And then, so you've got Denmark applying this extradition request for charges that are really flimsy. And here it gets even worse, that when we go to these court sessions to discuss the extradition, that they won't allow the evidence that clearly shows from the TV show, Wow Wars, that these particular charges, particularly the aggravated assault aspect, which is the one they're really focussing on, it shows that where the stink bomb was thrown, where it hits the ship on the, I think it's this starboard side, there was no one there, but they won't accept that evidence in court, but they have allowed the prosecution to show their video evidence, but not the defence to show the evidence.

7:35 So why are they doing it? Well, we think there must be some economic aspect to it that we don't know. Now, we believe the Japanese went to Greenland in December, 2023, and perhaps there was trade arrangements done there, obviously, and there's obviously the aspect where the Faroese are also a whaling nation under the Danish government. So it has to be that. It has to be the Faroese, and it has to be something going on in terms of trade. That's what our speculation is. So if you're upset about this, as so many people are, you can go to paulwatsonfoundation .org, and the gentleman we're speaking with live from London is the CEO of the paulwatsonfoundation .org, and you can sign the petition to demand the immediate release of Paul Watson.

8:27 I did it yesterday. It takes literally 30 seconds. More than 200,000 people have signed this petition. And as you can see on the bottom left, if you're watching, you can donate as well. And if you're just listening, you can still do all of this. Go to paulwatsonfoundation.org. Once again, that's paulwatsonfoundation.org, and with the click of a button, you can sign the petition to demand the immediate release of Paul Watson. If you feel like it, you can make a donation. And many, many famous people, including, well, James Bond, Pierce Brosnan, have taken photos of themselves with hashtag free paulwatson, so you can also do that.

9:15 We have Jane Goodall demanding, Dr. Jane Goodall, the famous primatologist, demanding the immediate release of Captain Paul Watson, saying, Captain Watson is simply taking action to try to prevent the inhumane practise of killing whales, which most countries have banned decades ago. In so doing, he's expressing the anger of thousands of people in many countries who absolutely support his moral courage in not only speaking out on behalf of the whales, but taking action. So many leaders have done this. I wanna go to Annie Abram, who has facilitated protests in Los Angeles.

9:58 Tell us about the protests that you've helped organise, Annie, in support of Captain Paul Watson. Thank you, Jane, and hi, great to see you, Omar. Samaria, Sam Marie and Michael Fujimori, who had been, Sam Marie had been doing it up north, obviously, the protests, and we've been doing it here with Michael Fujimori and my little baby. We're going on doing these protests. We've done five protests so far, and each time there was an extension. The reason we're doing this, because this is a planetary issue. It's far more than just Paul Watson. Paul Watson is the hero who had been protecting our ocean or sea life.

10:42 By protecting sea life, he also stood for the seals that have been killed, but the whales themselves, I've done research. I am shocked how amazing this man is protecting our planet by protecting the whales, which is protecting the sea. As he says, when the seas die, we all die. Absolutely, and you can see the bloody mess that it is involved in whaling from these photos provided by paulwatsonfoundation.org. It has no place in the civilised world, and you know what? Paul Watson, as we know from whale wars, yes, he is in your face, and the reason is that if you're not in their face, you can't stop whaling.

11:27 Writing a nice letter to Japan and saying, hey, you don't eat whale meat very much anymore. There's really no purpose. We don't need to whale for fuel. There's no reason for it. There's no excuse for it. There's no justification for it. Have you tried to reach Japan itself? Because I know the people of Japan are compassionate. This is the government. This is follow the money. Why is Japan so hell bent on whaling in the 21st century when obviously it's something that belongs in the dustbin of history? Omar. Well, it comes down to jobs for retiring politicians, essentially.

12:08 So less than 2% of the Japanese market that whaling whale meat is marketed to, no one eats it there anymore, particularly the young people who aren't interested. So why do they have whaling? Well, they built this $48 million Citation Death Star, the new factory ship, you know, and they have to justify it operating, you know, it's been built for long range. So we know at some stage that they probably will go down to the Southern Ocean again. And why, you know, and these, if you've actually been there, I've been there and I've been to where the actual whaling fishing villages originate from in a shimmery area and all this regional coastal area, the towns are dying there.

12:50 And essentially there's only fishing left. And then you've got older legislators that are retiring. And what do they do once they retire? Well, as you can see with the current Japanese politics, there's a lot of scandals going on. They tend to essentially prop up industries that they've got an interest in or their forefathers or they're traditionally done, which is of course in this case whaling. And they go to these, they leave their offices and then go to these particular jobs and they get subsidised by the government and it continues to keep them obviously employed in one way or another. So that's essentially why we think they do it. I mean, at long-term, I don't think it's going to be something that's sustainable for them once the younger population gets older and realises what's going on.

13:34 But for now they have vested heavily into it. And obviously once they heard Paul Watson was coming over with his vessels again, they did everything and they could to try to stop that. And that is obviously why they reignited this old warrant around the end of March, 2024. And they're going to try to keep him in remand for as long as possible. I mean, he's just hit over a hundred days now. So we've had a 15th of August, 4th of September, 2nd of October, 23rd of October, and the next one's on the 13th of November. They've run out of excuses to hold him. Under typical detention, you wouldn't even be held for these charges.

14:19 So the law has not been applied here at all. The Japanese foreign minister about a week ago said this is all about the law, not about the issue of whaling. But that's absolute nonsense because you have the Japanese contravening the law, the International Court of Justice ruling, the Australian Federal Court of ruling. They're down there in the Southern Ocean, not even in their own waters whaling. And this is what Paul's being charged for when we shouldn't have been down there at the time. Well, at the stage of the Sea Shepherd vessels, it should have been other countries enforcing the rule of law down there, but they didn't. And Paul often says that if, well, we shouldn't be in these places, someone should be enforcing the laws that are being passed. And if they won't do it, we have to do it. And here he is having to defend himself for essentially following the law and pushing the Japanese issue into the light of day and being now arrested for something that they claim is against the law based in Japanese law on board their own vessel rather than the international law at the sea.

15:22 That is so crazy. They're siding with Japanese law over international law when Paul Watson is defending the international law against whaling. Let's hear from Paul Watson himself. If I die in a Japanese prison, how will Denmark explain that? How will they rationalise their decision if that happens? The extermination of entire families from unborn foetuses to the largest whales in the pod, entire families wiped out. There are no survivors. It has no place in the 21st century. It has no place in the civilised world. International outrage has erupted over the arrest of Captain Paul Watson, famed anti-whaling activist who faces possible extradition from Greenland to Japan, and fears are growing for his safety.

16:14 Because of people like Captain Paul Watson bringing awareness to the public about what's going on in the Faroe Islands. I'm hoping that all the people who didn't sign the petition will continue to support that cause. So are you able to talk to him? Have you, do you, how do you do it? Do you do it with FaceTime or phone? And how is he holding up? He's 73 years old being in jail in Greenland, which is a very remote place. Psychologically, physically, emotionally, this has gotta be hell for him. Yeah, look, initially when he was arrested, we had some comfort knowing that Nuuk itself is a fairly new facility.

16:57 It's a prison of about 48 or so prisoners. In fact, you can watch an episode on Netflix and see what the prison's like itself. And we thought, well, okay, it's not too bad. They were reasonably friendly to begin with. We can go and visit him. We could call him on the telephone. And when I did go and visit him, eventually, it was, you could ring up in the morning and you book an employment, you go and see him, you got a couple of hours. But they do, when I went inside and had a look around, I was like, okay, this is real jail. This is not mucking around. He's really in proper high security remand facility. He's in a wing of about nine people of which none now speak English.

17:37 So he's got no one to talk to at all. He's got, we have tried getting him a typewriter. We've tried getting him permission to get a computer that's obviously not connected to the internet just so we can type and write, but they've denied all of that. And so essentially he can get letters written and sent to him. And as time went on, what we discovered is that more and more, that became a little bit more restrictive. So we couldn't reach him anymore until about a couple of weeks ago. We now can no longer call him. Only he gets one call a week from his family and only the registered Danish lawyers can call him. So that's made it super awkward and difficult for us to have here on the outside to try to communicate with him.

18:20 And I think that's because they have been overwhelmed by the support he has. And obviously maybe there's been talk behind the scenes, making things more difficult because they don't want him to continue to operate business as usual in terms of the foundation or other operations. And I think they're just trying to make things more difficult, isolating more. But yeah, so he's getting a little frustrated. We're a little frustrated. We were assured for some time now that against, under Danish law, this is very unusual because there's not many precedents involved, but he should have been out by now. I mean, they should have made a decision. So this is sort of how it works. So you get the receipt of Japan for the formal attrition request to the Danish government.

19:03 And then the case is transferred from the Danish Ministry of Justice to the Greenlandic Police Authority. Then the police authority then investigate the provisions and the extradition request to recommend whether to exodite him or not. At this stage, we're waiting for that recommendation. And then the review from the Minister of Justice in Denmark will read the recommendation and decide or not whether to exodite Paul or not. If that happens, of course, we will immediately do an appeal. And then it goes to the Supreme Court in Denmark, and then it goes to the International Court of Human Rights, and it just continues from there. And that's gonna be a long time.

19:43 But really, we are hoping that they come to their senses and just release him and basically ignore the Japanese request for extradition because it's essentially a death sentence for Paul. And they need to understand that. And I think that the world is trying to make them understand that. So, it is our hope he will be released on the 13th of November. But based on what we've seen so far, we just don't know. Yeah, and by the way, people who are signing the petition are posting on various social media that they're watching that they have signed the petition. Nilo Farr said, I just added my name, so I'm urging everybody.

20:25 I signed last night while I was researching the story. It takes literally 10 seconds. You just go to the paulwatsonfoundation.org, Paul Watson, W-A-T-S-O-N, foundation .org, and click to add your name. You can also make a donation. And Nilo Farr is also asking, what would Japanese prison look like for Paul Watson? They have a brutal record, not on par with developing nations. And we've also heard that same theme echoed by some other activists who say that he could really be brutalised if he ends up in a Japanese prison.

21:07 You've said it could be a death sentence. He's 73 years old. Are you just saying that because of his age or because Japan has been at war with Paul Watson for so long? I mean, I shudder to think what could happen to him. Well, essentially, if you're charged in Japan, you're guilty. It has a 99.7% chance of a conviction rate. And the reason being is if you're charged, you're guilty. Now, the process to fight those charges, whatever they are, is long and quite exhausting. You'll usually take up to two years before you see a judge to fight your case. And of course, the honour system there prevents, the prosecutor will be questioned, why is this person defending himself in the first place?

21:50 So there's that part of the Japanese rule of law. There's plenty on YouTube and Netflix about the Japanese rule of law and how brutal their justice system is. And then you have a look at, okay, he's got his age and then it's Paul himself. So the moment he gets extradited there, essentially he'll be poorly treated in much more discomfort and he won't break. He won't break. So what are they gonna do with someone who won't break? Well, they'll keep him there and they'll make it uncomfortable for him as possible. And that's what we're facing. And I know he won't, he will never capitulate. He will never do anything that will compromise his stance and his views because that's the sort of man he is.

22:31 He sticks to it. So that means there's no way out for him. And if that's no way out, then he will be suffering up to 15 years of jail, which is what this alleged charge can possibly carry up to. And as a 73-year-old man, well, you do the sums. Well, once again, if you're just joining us, Omar Todd, the head of the Paul Watson Foundation is joining us live from London. And we are so honoured to speak with him. Paul Watson has been behind bars for more than 100 days. And this is creating just a global sense of outrage.

23:12 I'm wondering if it could backfire. And in his own way, this sort of martyrdom of Paul Watson being the best thing that ever happened to the whales. I mean, it's not in the news day in and day out. Unfortunately, the news media doesn't cover these issues. Our seas are dying, as he has pointed out. The most important thing we can do is preserve our seas. When the oceans go, we go. Could this wake people up, given that so many famous people, Jane Goodall has spoken out, Rick O'Berry has spoken out, Pierce Brosnan, 007 has spoken out.

23:55 It's a lot of people. Could this have an unintended effect and backfire on the Japanese, Omar? Well, look, Paul often told me that what we do, we don't do for anyone else. We don't do it for humans. We do it for the whales. We do it for the clients. And the clients is the ocean, the seals, the dolphins, the whales. So his view would probably be along the lines of, look, I'm sitting in here and this has turned in itself a campaign. This campaign of him being inside prison now has brought more awareness back into whaling than it may have done if we had campaigned with the ship over in the Pacific Ocean, engaging Japan.

24:38 So he views this as always in a positive light. And he feels that this has brought attention to an issue which was sort of dying down the last few years. And some people said, oh, Paul is an elderly statesman now. He shouldn't be out there. And perhaps it's his twilight. Well, we discovered it's not his twilight years at all. He's bigger than ever. He's more important than ever. And as much as it could backfire, we've seen the European Parliament discuss the possible extradition of Paul and the majority are against it. We had just 21 ministers of parliament in the Australian parliament last week sign a letter to the Danish prime minister advocating for Paul's release.

25:21 The Great Escape Festival just withdrew from the Faroe Islands recently in protest and Paul's just been given the Perfect World Foundation Award for 2025. So in his view, that this has brought the issue back into the light. And we often get people to sign waivers when they join our crew. If you join with us, the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, are you prepared to die for a whale? Because that's essentially what people volunteer for. And if they're not, then they shouldn't join our crew. So Paul's leading that front and centre and saying to the world, well, look, I'm in here for a reason. I shouldn't be here.

26:01 The world should do something about it, but I'm here for a reason. So he doesn't think past that. He's there for a reason, for the position he stands for. And it's up to us as a society to do something about it and react in the right way. Now, whether we win against Japan in this case, we don't know, but it doesn't stop us trying. And we think you've got to do something anyway. You can't just sit back and compromise your views if it gets hard. Nothing worth doing is easy. And Paul will be the first to say that. And so, hat off to the guy. He's sitting there, he's doing, he's holding this entire campaign on his shoulders, everything.

26:43 So the least we can do is try to get him out. And that's what we're going to continue to do. Well, anybody who's ever seen whale wars should know that this is not the type of guy to crumble and go, oh, I give up. I mean, he is one of the fiercest activists. And again, for those who might say, well, you know, he's fighting them on the high seas. Yeah, because that's the only thing that's going to save these whales. It's not asking nicely. Everybody's asked nicely. If writing letters and asking nicely and being polite would save the whales, we wouldn't be here right now. If several people are saying that they've signed, I'm urging everybody to do what I did, sign.

27:27 It takes five seconds. Just go to the paulwatsonfoundation.org. Let us know if you've signed. And just put it on social media. paulwatsonfoundation.org, it's right there. You can't miss it. It just says, sign the petition, click. You can also donate. So people are saying, Pete, please post the link. There it is, right there. The link is paulwatsonfoundation.org. It is a website, paulwatsonfoundation.org. By the way, it has extraordinary articles and a slew of videos about this. Antonio Diaz says, I signed, Ilofar has signed. Yes, Tiffany Brunelli has signed.

28:09 So please sign, that's super, super important. And people are saying, well, he's 73 years old, but that's young for a vegan. I just wonder how they're dealing with that as well. I mean, just the food that he might, I've heard many stories of people who are plant-based being in prison and behind bars and basically, oh, here, you want vegan food? Here's a roll and that's it. Or here's a piece of toast and that's it. And they're not even given sustenance, as it were. I mean, on that basic physical level, is he holding up?

28:49 Yeah, so in this particular prison, which again is why we were all things considered, happy we was in that particular prison, was they get to go shopping on a Wednesday once a week in a little internal shop and he gets to pick out his own food. So he gets to cook for himself in a communal kitchen, two to three times a day, although he's just going for breakfast and dinner at the moment. And he has lost weight, but he's eating vegan food there and he's happy to prepare his own food. So that's one of the pros, I guess. But look, the place is very remote. It's like going to the moon. I mean, Newt Airport itself had its international airport status revoked recently. You know, you got to go there on a dash eight.

29:30 It's complicated. There's always weather problems. It's a very expensive place to go. So he's very isolated there. So we try to keep a revolving door of people heading his way there. You know, and also Seaship of France, which is one of the original Seaship entities that Paul is still part of here. They've been first and foremost, front and centre in the defence of Paul as well. And France has been a great advocate for that with President Macron pushing, as you said, for his release. Plus Paul's applied for political asylum and naturalisation now. So we'll see how that goes and we hope that goes in a positive direction.

30:12 So all these things add up pressure, but he is isolated, but he's fine. He is eating the food, the right food, but you know, the communication is difficult. The place is difficult and he shouldn't be there. And I think over 120 days, he then exceeds his prior detention time in the past. And after that, he'll be longer in jail than any other time in his life. So all for an allegation of a country for essentially finable offences in any other jurisdiction. I mean, this is crazy. I mean, here you've got Interpol, right? Interpol's a system that has a constitution. If you look into it, it's not supposed to be used for political detention, but quite a few people on the Interpol Red List are there for political persecution and he's one of them.

30:59 And so I think Interpol has questions to answer as well, as well as how this happened, as well as, you know, Japan answering questions, but Japan won't answer any questions, but certainly we're putting pressure on the Danish to explain themselves. So, you know, if you're a Denmark citizen, you know, write to your local ministers and ask why is he held. If you're obviously in France as well, you can also try to get hold of Interpol because Interpol's based in France. So we're following that up ourselves as well. I have to say, I was completely ignorant of Greenland until about an hour and a half ago when I started to say to myself, you know what, I should look up Greenland and see where it is and there it is. I was stunned by how big Greenland is.

31:42 I mean, look at the United States on the left and Europe on the right. So I found out that Greenland is the largest island in the world, by the way. It's a self-governing territory of Denmark, the 12th largest country in the world by size, almost four times the size of France and slightly more than three times the United States state of Texas. So three times the size of Texas. I mean, it's massive, but it's very sparsely populated. In 2015, it was just like 57,000 people or something really crazy small.

32:26 So I'm wondering if the politics of this particular region played into it. I do know that politicians sometimes use the indigenous culture as an excuse for whaling. And that does not mean the indigenous people themselves are saying, go out and do this. It means that cynical politicians turn around and they use whatever levers they can to justify and follow the money. Can you weigh in on that, Omar? Yeah, so when he was originally arrested, we had a discussion amongst ourselves on, should we focus the pressure on Greenland or the Danes?

33:10 And we decided in the end, it was the Danish government that we had to apply pressure on, mostly because the prosecutor and the 14 federal police came from Denmark. And the Greenlandic people themselves, when we arrived, were very friendly and have been continuously being friendly. So, and certainly I'll give you one little bit of story that Paul's inside and initially we were quite concerned that with the indigenous and sort of anti-whaling views Paul would have, that he might be seen as public enemy number one inside. So we were quite concerned, but as it turns out, they actually have heard of him and he's the most well-recognised person and celebrity that they've ever had in there.

33:54 And that we actually got them copies of Wild Wars and they all started watching it. And so Paul walks around inside and actually gets a lot of people shouting out that they support him. So even though they can't speak in English or anything else, they support him. So I don't think, I think Greenland's moving on. When I was there, what I didn't notice was an enormous amounts of construction work going on. They're even building a new airport. So I think, you know, with the event of climate change, which we all know is happening, I think there is possibly policies behind the scenes that we can't quite see on the front end that are mostly economic and based, perhaps with the Japanese, as I mentioned, were there with trade agreements being signed back in December, 2023.

34:40 So there's definitely something going on. And it was particularly peculiar, even though the prosecutor was from Copenhagen, the judge himself, who's making the current rules to remand Paul is a local judge. And each time Paul's been remanded longer, we have immediately appealed to the high court, which is done via email in Greenland, oddly enough. And each time they've upheld the court's decision to keep him in remand. Now that's on Greenland. So why is that judge holding Paul? Why is that judge not allowing us to look at the evidence from our side, which instantly exonerates Paul, instantly.

35:21 Like you just can't go, okay, well, he didn't throw it. And even his crew member who threw it didn't hit anybody. So that's the allegation. There's not enough evidence. What's the bottom line allegation that he threw? The bottom line allegation is that he threw some kind of firebomb or somebody threw a - So another crew member called Pete Bethune, who had his ship rammed and sunk called the Yardigill in one of the first encounters back in 2010, wanted to present an invoice essentially to the Japanese vessel, that captain, for his $2 million vessel that had been rammed and sunk by the Japanese whaling vessel at the time.

36:03 They were out of, the Yardigill was out of fuel. It was just sitting idle. And the Japanese vessel came from the bow and came up and just basically ran straight through it and cut it in half and then just drove off. And there was no repercussions for the Japanese at all. Incidentally, a New Zealand investigation later released that the Japanese were at fault, but that aside. So that was the reason why Pete Bethune wanted to jump on board on the whaling vessel to present an invoice to the captain and say, hey, look, you've damaged my vessel. Paul famously said on a Whale Wars episode that he recommended you don't do that. And you should go back to Australia to do media about his vessel being run over because that would probably garner more attention.

36:45 But Pete Bethune decided to go anyway. So in this particular moment, so there's a number of moments that matter. So in this particular case, he went over there, they cut, he cut the net, which is the property damage allegation, jumped on board. Yeah, jumped on board. Which was the trespass allegation. And then he presented the invoice to the captain. Of course, they took him back to Japan. And that's when he was held for a number of months before he eventually, so under the Japanese justice system, he was interrogated daily. He was basically, you know- And this is not Watson. This is somebody else.

37:26 This is, that's right. This is one of the, you know, the Pete Bethune who was, well, he was a captain of his own vessel. So he worked with us at the time, but he was a captain of his own vessel that was run over by the Japanese. He wanted to present the Japanese with an invoice. He did so. And then he got hauled back to Japan to face these charges. Now, what they made him do after some months is they got him to sign a affidavit blaming Paul Frodell. Then that's where you have the conspiracy aspect. And he signed that to get out of there. Now he since signed an affidavit after he got out saying that he was forced to sign that inside so he can get out because he, you know, he wasn't, he was just going to be stuck there forever.

38:08 And so that's part of it. And that's where the trespass, the property damage, and those particular allegations, which are by the way, all just finable offences under Japanese, Greenlandic, and Danish law. Okay. Then on another time, just before Pete jumped on board the vessel, he was harassing the whalers with a potato spud gun, which essentially shot out some stink bombs. And the stink bomb hit the side of the vessel one time, broke apart, and the Japanese were saying, well, that's what caused an injury to one of the crew members. And they got a little bit of a rash under their eye.

38:49 And that's what they regarded as the more serious allegation of assault. Now, here's the thing. We've got footage, and they've got footage of that incident. And what we see is the Japanese who had pepper spray guns at the time, spraying into the wind, which then backfired and went into their face, which is what caused the damage, if any. And then when Pete Bethune launched his spud gun, it hit a part of the vessel that there was no one at. And that's the crunch of the allegation that they say someone was there, they got injured. That's years ago, years ago. Yeah, yeah. And we say that- How long ago did all this happen? Well, this is all back in 2010.

39:31 2010? I mean, this is- Yeah, 14 years. This is so crazy, so crazy. Michael Fujimori says, as a Japanese American, I'm disgusted and ashamed by Japan's attempts to destroy Paul Watson. Wanna go back to Annie Abram. Annie, you're very, very moved by what's happening to Captain Paul Watson. If you could speak to him and say anything, what exactly would you say to Captain Paul Watson? Oh, that's hard.

40:12 There's so much I would love to say. I would say, thank you so much for dedicating 50 years of your life. When you've had your journalism career and you saw the urgency in our ocean life, what's happening, which in return will destroy our planet survivor, the survival ability. So thank you for being our hero. Thank you for dedicating your life, 50 years of your life. You need to be honoured. And I appreciate you endlessly. We owe you our life, our oxygen. 55% of our oxygen comes from the ocean.

40:55 He's been protecting this by protecting the whales. And I'm ashamed to say, I recently learned about the whales, that each whale contains 1 ,500 mature tree carbon, each one whale. This is a forest. We're talking about Amazon, that people break hell for it. We're talking about each whale, 1,500 mature tree carbon sequester. And their poo and pee is food for the phytoplankton, sea moss and seaweed. Phytoplankton is what we need for the oxygen, comes from the ocean. And it's amazing, amazing how much he's been doing.

41:37 Can't thank him enough. Thank you. Thank you. And let me ask you, Omar, to that point, how important are the whales to our survivability? Now, I personally believe whales are entitled to their lives, and it doesn't matter what they provide in terms of carbon capture or whatever. These are sentient beings who have a right to live in our ocean. And we have, as a species, declared war on them. And thank God, most countries have stopped killing the whales. But to Annie's point, for those who may not be motivated by compassion, why should we care?

42:21 Well, if you'd like to breathe air, you should care. Essentially, it's the ocean that provides the oxygen we breathe, more than anything else. A healthy ocean and the biodiversity that goes with it, which includes whales, which are the farmers of the sea. They poop out a lot of poo that goes down with a lot of iron content, the phytoplanktons and the krill, everything eats all that, and then it goes in a circular fashion and creates the oxygen we breathe. In fact, more or less more recently, if we didn't have whaling as an issue, which Paul wants to finish in his lifetime, wants to make sure it goes away in his lifetime, the next sort of things we're gonna be looking at is making sure krill and phytoplankton are protected in the oceans, because that is really the lifeline to our species.

43:10 I mean, you can like whales or not like whales, but we all like air to breathe. So essentially, it's part of our lungs. The whales are the farmers of the sea that protect and farm oxygen for us to live as a species. Now, if you can't find that important enough, well, we're doomed. So essentially, that's my argument that we need to make sure that we have oxygen to breathe, and they are the ones that filter it out. Plus, as you mentioned earlier on, they're carbon sequesters as well. How are the whales doing? Obviously, they were hunted for centuries, used for fuel, used for... At one point, humans ate them.

43:52 That's no longer the case, almost entirely eliminated, which makes this Japanese whaling campaign so idiotic, let's just say. But how are the whales doing? Are they on the verge of extinction? Does it depend on which species of whale? Can you give us the, yeah, the update on that? Yeah, the indication is that whale populations have recovered somewhat, somewhat. They're certainly not at their all-time highs before whaling started, but they've recovered. I mean, certainly, yeah, there's more fin whales up north now. There's more whales in the Antarctica, which of course is going to be the Japanese argument if they do go down there.

44:36 There's plenty more whales down there. So they're recovering, but at the same time, we've got so many other mixtures of complexities adding to this now, you know, plastics in the ocean. And what they're discovering is, is whales have digested more plastics than ever. And that has an effect that we're not sure about. It's probably like the equivalency of, you know, people starting to figure out in the 60s and 70s that maybe smoking is not bad for you. But then later on, we discover it was catastrophic for cancer problems. While we think that plastics in the oceans affecting a growing whale population, you know, maybe down the road going to cause us problems we can't even foresee yet. So there's, you know, and there's also the fact that, you know, the fish stocks are still being depleted.

45:18 So the imbalance of things is the problem. So whale populations might be on the recovery in comparison to before whaling started. But when you add plastics and you add whale stocks, are being depleted still, which means the whales have less to eat, which means the whale population will hit a ceiling quicker on population levels than they would have say, a couple of hundred years ago. These other mitigating circumstances that may stop whale populations recovering totally. So while there's signs of positivity, there's also a lot of red flags ahead, I think that we have to keep an eye on. So again, for those joining us, we're talking to Omar Todd, the head of the Paul Watson Foundation, who's joining us live from London while we're here in Los Angeles about the imprisonment of Captain Paul Watson.

46:10 Now he has asked France for asylum. He wrote a letter directly to President Macron. What's happening with that? I know there's protests in France. There's also protests in Belgium. Is there any chance that President Macron of France will grant that asylum? Well, one of the ministers on television a couple of days ago, I think it was a minister of immigration. I think it was that. He actually said he wouldn't be positive if Paul got naturalisation. So we think it's a strong possibility. We hope that's the case. We don't know the answer yet.

46:53 Lamia Somali, the president of the ship of France, has been heading that up. They've pulled out all the stops in France to get Paul released. They've used diplomats. They had the former diplomat to Denmark involved on the highest level. They've been petitioning Denmark continuously from all the different departments. So the pressure is very high from France. And Macron's also made positive statements about Paul's situation. So fingers crossed. His family's currently resigning in France as well. So that'd be a perfect place for him to return to. And in France, Paul's very well respected.

47:36 I mean, he's well known. He's done a lot of TV appearances there. And the French have got the second largest jurisdiction of ocean management in the world. So there's some big positives, Paul going to France. But of course, he's obviously a US and Canadian citizen too. So we hope it will lead to something, but we don't know yet. And we are eagerly, eagerly waiting for an answer on that. Here's what James Cameron, the famed film director, has to say. The people who defend our life support system should be celebrated, not arrested. The legendary activist, Captain Paul Watson, has stood up for the oceans for decades.

48:17 He goes where no one else will to enforce international conservation law and protect the sea life that holds our planet in balance. Captain Watson was arrested by Danish authorities. This was posted a while ago in Greenland, where he waits a decision on whether he is extradited to Japan for sentencing. I'm joining the international community and calling on Denmark to issue his immediate release. So what is Denmark doing about the overwhelming international disgust over their situation? There's been protests in LA. There's been protests in Paris.

48:57 There's been protests in Belgium. Famous people like James Cameron and Dr. Jane Goodall and Piers Brosnan and the leaders of rock bands, the lead singers, I mean, people are outraged. I don't understand why Denmark, which I think values its reputation. I mean, just, I've been to Denmark and their recycling will blow your mind. I wanted to take photos of how incredible their recycling process was to bring back here and tell people, let's get with it, people on the recycling. It seems like Denmark is so progressive.

49:38 It strikes me as bizarre that they are taking this stance. I don't, I still don't quite get it. Omar, is there something I'm missing? No, we've had countless discussions amongst ourselves on the optics of this. The optics is very bad for Denmark. The longer they hold him, the worse it looks for them. And the repercussions on their reputation is going to catch up to them if they continue to hold him. If they extradite him, that'll even be worse. The best thing they can do to make this problem go away is to release him. And I am stunned that they haven't yet. I think it's, whoever's in charge, I think it's a poor decision.

50:18 I mean, I watch, I see the President Met's Instagram account and you have a look at it, right? It's progressive, you know, she supports minority groups. She's very environmental and conscious. What are they thinking? And in Paul's essentially, in the hands of this young 30s plus year old minister of justice, his hands at the moment, who for whatever reason can't make his mind up, which should be a very, very easy decision to make. You know, they don't have to follow this extradition request. It is a request. It's not a demand. So why are they doing it? Good question. I wish I knew. And again, they're siding with Japanese law against international treaties that say that whaling is a big no-no.

51:06 So that strikes me as really bizarre. And I keep seeing the phrase Faroe Islands pop up. I want to confess, I'm not exactly sure where it fits in with this story. Can you give me the 30 second elevator on that? Well, the Faroe Islands are northwest of England. There are small group islands, one of the highest GDPs in Europe. They're a protectorate again, under the Danish government. So if you look on that map there, you can see England there. And there's this tiny little dot up north of England on the sort of northwest, just between Iceland and England. And that's the Faroe Islands.

51:48 Beautiful islands, amazing territory in terms of views and, you know, cruises stop by there. Very modern society. But what they do all year round is they have this effectively a blood sport. They would argue it's for sussicence, you know, like an Indigenous sussicence for food, which is ridiculous. But they hear about some whales coming in, you know, to the area. And then they get these little boats and herd these, you know, 100 to 60, 70, 100, 200 whales into their ford. And then they basically all run down there and slaughter them with these corkscrew devices, knives, and they get the kids to come down.

52:30 They all turn up in their brand new Mercedes and BMWs. And it's illegal to intervene. Now, Sea Shepherd UK, Sea Shepherd France, and now obviously the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, we've been in opposition for that for years. And this is another really peculiar little country. And the Faroe Islands are controlled by Denmark? They are part of Denmark? It's an independent, autonomous country again. But if you go there with your... Yes, if you go there to defend the whales though, it's the Danish Navy that will turn up. Okay, so that's why Denmark is doing it.

53:12 Correct. So you've got a Danish Navy defending whale killers that under Danish law is illegal. And yet the Faroese get all the benefits of an EU country that's in the EU, but not in the EU. So they get all the subsidies to build all their tunnels and infrastructure and stuff. It's a complete disaster. And it's optically looks very bad for Denmark. And I don't know why Denmark doesn't do something about it, all to keep a few people in their blood sport happy. And it's very few people. We can't point the finger at another country when here in the United States, you're in England. I know there's been a big reduction in hunting, but still there are fox hunts. And I see the news all the time on people, they're called hunt saboteurs.

53:55 They try to stop the hunting. And here we have, people love to use guns and say, well, we don't want to kill people. And we certainly don't, but it's okay to kill animals. And I don't believe that for a second. So before we point fingers at another country, we would have to look in the mirror and say, what's our country doing? And unfortunately, blood sport is part of the human condition at this point. Let's hope we evolve past it. This has been such a fascinating conversation. I want to say, Omar, I know you're a very busy man and you are working around the clock to free Captain Paul Watson.

54:40 And I want to thank you for taking the time to tell our American audience, bring us up to date on this horror show and tell people what to do. Please, if you are listening or watching, or both, go to the Paul Watson Foundation. It's paulwatsonfoundation.org. The easiest to remember, paulwatsonfoundation.org and sign the petition to demand the immediate release of Paul Watson. I did it last night. It takes literally 45 seconds. And I also want to thank Annie Abram, who has organised several protests here in Los Angeles to speak up for Paul Watson outside Danish government offices here in Los Angeles.

55:29 And that's happening around the world. So I very much appreciate all of your efforts. Everybody together, I think we can free Captain Paul Watson. And as far as what we do here at Unchained TV, I really urge you to download our app. We are the only vegan animal rights streaming television network with free content. You can download us on your phone, on any TV with streaming devices, and you can also go to unchainedtv.com. So it's a vegan Netflix. Okay, that's the craziest thing I've ever heard.

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