Good morning, everyone, Central Time Zone in Pacific, and good evening, England.
This is the first time I've ever done an interview with Phil Demers in person, a live interview.
I interviewed Phil.
It's three and a half years ago now, for the first time.
I went back to watch a portion of that livestream, which I did in my living room in Montreal, with short hair, those awful glasses.
It's cringe to the point of cringe watching it, but one has to look to where one came from in order to appreciate where one is and where one wants to go.
There's been a slight evolution, both in demeanor, physique, and setting.
But watching that interview for the first time was when I discovered Phil Demers, known as the Walrus Whisperer.
I'm going to put the hard H's on it.
I like the emphasis on that.
If you don't know who Phil is, go back and watch that.
Stream because it's two hours of Phil's lawfare with Marineland.
We're gonna go over a bit of your history just you know briefly for 10-15 minutes for those who don't know it and then we're gonna get into the present.
But Phil is coming through Florida for reasons which he's going to explain and we're gonna talk about a little bit of everything today but Phil.
Good to see you again in person.
Good to see you, Aviva.
I got to say, it's been a pleasure watching your evolution as well, of course, because I've been in your kitchen.
Beautiful place, by the way.
You made the excellent bagels and we had quite a time.
And then to see the studio now, dude, I'm just like, I'm still floored.
I'm like...
I'm a little nervous.
You're intimidated here.
Look at this place.
This isn't my studio.
We can come here and do whatever.
And you call it an evolution.
I'm sure there are people out there who call it a regression because they say, Viva, what happened to you?
You've gone totally crazy.
You've become alt-right.
But Phil, I mean, okay, look.
We can't take for granted everybody watching has seen our previous streams, although I think many of them have.
30,000 foot overview.
Who are you?
I used to work at a place called Marine Land in Canada.
I was a marine mammal trainer.
I swam with whales, dolphins, seals, sea lions, belugas.
I was there 12 years between 2000 and 2012.
In 2012, I quit.
I became a whistleblower of animal cruelty.
I raised issues with their treatment of animals.
In response, Marine Land elected to sue me for $1.5 million for plotting to steal a walrus.
Short backstory with that, there was a walrus while I was working that I imprinted on.
So what that means is she came to see me as her mother.
You know, it got a little bit of media attention.
Back in 2008, we were what viral was back then.
So Inside Edition, a couple of interviews, this, that, fluff pieces.
But when I quit, I think, you know, Marineland took issue with some of the things I was bringing up.
Of course, I provided some evidence and some video, of course.
And so they sued me and here we are 10 years later because by the grace of a lot of luck and a lot of support, I managed to sustain a 10-year legal battle.
Of which, when we finally did settle, Marineland conceded to move my walrus, Smushi, and her now calf, Koyuk, which are the last two walruses at Marineland.
And so they have until my birthday, March 21, so next month, to move the two walruses to an AZA-accredited facility here in the States.
AZA stands for American Zoo Association.
American Zoo Association.
Yeah, exactly.
Yes.
Something along those lines.
And here we are.
Okay, so let's unpack that just a bit because the imprinting, we talked about it, but it's very cool.
Basically like a duck, first thing it sees, it thinks it's its mother.
Whether or not it's the same, that's basically the idea.
It is the same.
She viewed you as her mother.
You had a relationship, a singularly unique relationship with a higher form primate, not primate, a mammal, animal.
Yeah, so what was anomalous about this particular situation is she came to us wild caught at 18 months of age.
And through a sort of traumatic incident, so what happens, we're drawing blood from another walrus that required us to like, you know, wrestle, and it's a smaller walrus at the time, she's only 200 pounds, but we were wrestling another walrus to draw blood from her, and Smushy was becoming defensive of that walrus and trying to protect her.
So I tried to coerce Smushy away from the scene, and in doing so, I remember the moment she took a deep breath, and I saw something in her eyes flash, and...
In that moment, she started to follow me absolutely everywhere.
So what's anomalous is generally, you know, in herd animals especially, it's really important.
So you've got walruses, let's say thousands of them on a beach.
You know, mom has to be able to communicate with its pup.
So, you know, basically the imprint is like a tattoo on your brain.
So she recognizes my smell, you know, the sound of my voice, the vision, all of this.
So it was an immediate change.
It was the craziest thing you'd ever seen.
So yeah, it changed my life entirely, that singular moment.
I was suddenly a walrus mom.
And, I mean, people might be able to appreciate this if they've ever had a dog.
The relationship that you have with an animal, a smart animal, it's not a human, and in some ways the relationships are even better because they don't talk back, they don't hurt you, and all that stuff.
You develop this relationship with a walrus, a relationship with an animal that has a personality you've bonded with for the last decade.
You've been separated from because when you quit...
Marine Land.
You then outed.
I mean, we don't need to get into the whole details of the timeline, but you outed the mistreatment of some of the animals at Marine Land.
I know, as a matter of fact, that the administration, I forget the now deceased owner's name, they were litigious to say the least.
I knew this in advance.
Well, I was well aware, yeah.
So you have this imprint with the walrus.
You quit.
Blow the whistle on the mistreatment, not just of the walrus in general, in specific, but treatment at large.
And then you immediately get sued?
No.
So basically what happened is in the last...
So the season prior to the one that I quit, there was a breakdown of water disinfection unit.
So the water went green.
It was foul.
But because MarineLine operates six months on, six months off during the winter, the owner just elected not to really address the issue and rather...
You know, put a lot more chlorine in the water, so you would probably appreciate that if you've ever been in a hyperchlorinated pool, what the effects are.
We'll try to imagine living in those conditions.
So, you know, the effects that I documented range from, like, I mean, we had a sea lion in agony bark, and because his eyes had been deteriorated so badly from the chlorine, the lens of his eyeball popped out and landed at my foot.
You know, we had dolphins that their skin was peeling off.
You know, Smushi had a chemical burn on her flipper.
The most egregious version of senseless abuse that I had witnessed in my 10 years, it was never a great place, but this was uniquely a really bad situation.
And so right in advance of them opening the season, I quit.
I can't keep doing this.
And I had to fight myself.
I'd become a vocal opposition in-house.
I'd sort of started to be recognized as a problem employee a little bit, as you can imagine, but I'd become hyper-defensive of my Walrus suddenly.
It changed the game a little bit.
I was going to say, actually, you were just about to say my baby.
I saw the mouth start.
It's beyond a pet.
It's beyond a pet.
And this is what I was going to actually touch on when you mentioned people who have dogs might be able to relate to this, but that doesn't do it justice because it isn't that.
Because a dog can bond with someone else.
That's an acclimation.
To an extent, Close, but this is an animal that we established the communication on like, I mean, she has my sense of humor.
She understands my sense of humor.
So it's to try to explain the depths of the communication, what I come to learn through this relationship.
Well, I mean, largely it explains to the extent that I fought for her, just the depth of which this had affected me.
But, you know, I don't have children.
This felt as though in an odd, strange way that I'd had.
I felt like a protective mother.
I don't know how else to explain it.
It's tough to rationalize now in retrospect.
You're 10 years removed and you're just like, what the hell did I just go through?
It's almost kind of difficult to process even now.
You're kind of like, wait a sec.
Because it's sort of coming to a conclusion.
Well, it's coming to a next chapter.
But yeah, that's the best way I can describe it for me personally.
I'm very protective.
I'm protective of my family naturally, but I became ultra protective of her.
And it deemed me a bit of a problem child or a rather problem employee.
And so I just elected, you know, am I part of the problem now by not doing more?
Is she going to die and I'm going to be quiet about it?
Or am I going to do something and conceivably save her?
And every other walrus died, as I predicted.
Smooshy lived, which in and of itself is an anomalous story because into those conditions she should not have.
But I truly believe because she was in a captive environment that she believed was sort of natural in that she had sorted.
Bonded with her new mother there.
So now she doesn't have that disassociation or that separation anxiety anymore that animals get.
And as soon as you take an animal from the wild, they're immediately compromised.
You've taken them from their family.
You've taken them from their space.
You don't ever really get a bond.
They basically accept their fate and try to play the game as best they can in accordance to your rules.
But, you know, this was an entirely different thing.
So you quit.
You didn't blow the whistle right away.
From what I recall, you had an arrangement like, let me come in and see her and make sure everything's okay.
How does it get to blowing the whistle?
And then we're going to skip over the 10 years of litigation to get to the resolution, but how did it come to be that you blew the whistle and then got sued?
So I blow the whistle, but I don't quit.
No, sorry.
Rather, I quit, but I don't quit without the agreement that I can still continue to help.
A, the animals, because, you know, the reality was there was not a lot of experience remaining when I'd quit.
A lot of people had left in advance or during this.
I wasn't sort of the only one.
No one really stays at this job for very long.
Once you're 30, you're like, well, what am I doing here, right?
So I quit, but, you know, I don't want to be in the media.
I don't want to be doing this stuff.
I don't want to get sued.
I know that's what it would become.
So I make the deal, listen, if Smooshy needs me, you call me.
Well, about a week after I quit, they call me in to feed a dolphin because, you know, she stopped eating and this and that, so I helped the dolphin out.
And I see Smooshy and, you know, Smooshy had suffered from separation anxiety for me before.
So I addressed it.
I had the trainer sort of working on it so I can sort of mitigate if ever I did leave that she could be okay.
And so I thought that we were in a good place.
And so then I'd left for about a month.
I hadn't returned.
It was the longest I'd been away from her.
And so I returned to the park.
And as I'm entering the park, you know, the security is trying to keep me out.
I can't figure this out.
And in a chance meeting, the owner's son puts his arm around.
He's like, Phil, you're like family help.
And he escorts me into the park.
And now I go straight to Smushy.
As I'm going to the back of the park, the vet intercepts me.
And she's like, listen, you're not going to like what you see.
But we weren't allowed to tell you.
And I'm like, let's go.
So I'm prepping for the worst.
And sure, as soon as I get there, she's dry, lethargic.
There's no food on her deck.
There's no water.
There's no ice.
She's lost some weight.
So, of course, she recognizes me and gets up.
Vet runs, gets meds, we pump water into fish, get her some hydration, put some ice on her deck, give her some water, do all this stuff, and I'm sort of disillusioned.
I leave, and I sleep on it that night.
Let me stop you for a second.
Do you know why she's malnourished, not being fed?
Do you know why this is going on?
Is there an incident, or is it just...
So I can't say for sure.
I wasn't there for the month.
It was really a brief trip.
I'd gone in, seen this, left, and I was just...
So I don't know.
There wasn't a lot of communication in advance of it, but something had happened.
Clearly.
Also, there was a level of just less attention as well.
Like this was an animal that I particularly paid a lot of attention to, for instance.
So that change may have been something for her.
But nonetheless, this is what became.
And so I should mention that when I quit, the media was calling me.
The Toronto Star was calling me and they wanted to know why the walrus guy had quit.
Because, you know, years before, there was fluff pieces and everything else.
And I had actually said I would never quit, right?
Well, actually, let's stop there.
A year before, two years before, you won Wipeout.
It was an American show, so I think Americans probably know it.
It's having a resurgence as we speak, actually.
I love the show.
Yeah, it's fun.
But Phil won, as known as the Walrus Whisperer.
I don't remember when it was exactly, but it was when you were the employee.
It was like a marketing piece for Marineland.
Of course.
And you make it onto Wipeout, which is itself, you know.
Not easy to do, and you win.
Well, when you're a walrus mom, it's easy to get on a white boat.
Let's be honest.
That was an easy one to get on.
And you actually won it?
You won, what was it?
$50,000.
Tax-free.
Tax-free in Canada.
That's shocking that there's anything tax-free in Canada.
I'll take it.
Any income that's tax-free.
Listen, I needed every penny that I got, so basically my resolve after that was suddenly I've got this money, but the reason I was on the show was because of the walrus.
Very little to do with me, let's be honest.
What was I going to do with $50,000?
A lot of people might rationalize.
Hey, $50,000 is a lot of money.
No, it's not.
It might buy you a truck.
It might put you down payment on a house.
But there's not a whole heck of a lot you can do.
So I elected to hold on to it for a rainy day.
And that rainy day came in the form of being sued by Marineland.
And suddenly I had $50,000.
And I started retaining lawyers because I wasn't the only one sued.
There was a few whistleblowers.
I started paying all the lawsuits.
And at the time, I was ignorant to know the extent of what.
But it did buy me enough time to get my story out.
And, you know, by virtue of the lawsuit, you've got to remember, Marineland sued me for $1.5 million for plotting to steal a walrus.
So, you know, suddenly this gets the attention of the likes of, like, Joe Rogan.
And, you know, now that became the game changer.
Their first mistake was suing me.
The biggest mistake is...
Suggesting I tried to steal a walrus.
Life is short.
Steal a walrus?
Was that a tweet?
That was a tweet that eventually I did and then they sent the cops to my house.
Because there's a documentary that's out and I'll mention it's The Walrus and the Whistleblower.
It's on Discovery Plus.
It's on Amazon Prime.
Walrus and the Whistleblower.
Indeed.
The Walrus and the Whistleblower.
The Walrus and the Whistleblower.
On Amazon Plus.
Who made it again?
That's the person I met back in my show.
Natalie Bibaud, right?
Natalie Bibaud.
That's the director.
And of course that...
That video makes the clip when the cops come because of my tweets.
It's actually the highlight of the documentary.
But again, every time Marine Land would...
The blessings I had is that they kept making the most inordinate mistakes.
And you know there's a saying, when your enemies are making mistakes, you let them, right?
I capitalized every time.
When I did that tweet, I saw the attention it got.
I had a sense Marine Land was probably going to send the cops to my house because they did very often send the police to my house.
It wasn't the only time.
And one time I had tweeted, like, I'm coming from Marine Land.
I think I'd said...
I think it said, stay tuned.
They sent the police, and the police came to my house.
It's a great video, actually.
They said, you're the walrus whisperer.
I'm like, what are you doing here?
They're like, you said something.
And I'm like, well, what did I say?
They said, you said TikTok, TikTok.
I'm like, no, I didn't.
They said, but you are the walrus whisperer.
And I suddenly, I'm buckled over laughing my ass.
I got the cops in my house.
Wanting to know if I'm the walrus whisperer and did I tweet TikTok, TikTok.
This is what became of my life.
So I got a sense that they're going to send the cops.
And so I set my camera up.
But this is just what became.
The battle itself was winnable because Marine Line was just such an awful, awful battler.
They sued a number of people.
They sued you.
They sued your girlfriend.
We don't need to get into the 10 years of litigation.
We talked about it in just 10 years of litigation for anybody who doesn't know what lawfare is like.
It's motion after motion, refusal to submit to discovery, depositions.
It's not even showing up for dates and just allowing to get in trouble for it and just have it remanded for another six months.
They just didn't care.
And then when it comes to the depositions, we won't give you the person you want to depose, yada, yada, yada.
Motion after motion after motion.
You're fighting over dotted I's and cross T's.
Literally, you're arguing over one word in an entire text.
It is that refined of an awful journey.
10 years of litigation, it ultimately comes to an end.
I mean, the idea that you didn't get a trial date after 10 years.
No, no, we got the trial date.
They dropped out right in advance of the trial.
I wanted the trial.
Why did they drop out in advance of the trial?
They had no evidence.
They had the most absurd lawsuit.
They had no witnesses.
They had no evidence.
They had literally nothing.
What they had was an abusive lawsuit, a slap lawsuit, a strategic lawsuit against public participation.
They just wanted to...
Prove me to be an incredible person, like discredit me and make me seem like a psycho.
And for some reason, their buffoon lawyer named Andrew Burns out of Toronto thought it would make sense to suggest some outrageous things about me.
It was a lawsuit intended to either bankrupt you or coerce you into a silent settlement.
They very often tried to have me sign an NDA throughout the entirety of the process.
So they ultimately dropped the lawsuit.
As you're aware, when you drop a lawsuit, you become subject to the costs, of course.
Did you have a counterclaim at the time they dropped the lawsuit?
Well, and then what becomes is that counterclaim gets dropped automatically and then you've got 30 days to actually sort of revive it, if you will, to pursue it.
In discussions with my lawyer, he said, listen.
You'll be basically suing for your damages.
That's all you can do.
Which would be legal fees?
Legal fees and court.
Probably not even court fees.
I think you'd probably lose all that.
We estimated to have costs.
I remember, right, because I paid for three lawsuits.
The entirety of this thing has cost about half a million over the 10 years, but my lawsuit is in the range of about $250,000.
So this is what they were ultimately going to probably have to pay me, somewhere in that range.
And so when they dropped the lawsuit, I said, well, you can keep the money, but I want the fucking walruses.
So this is to say.
And everybody knows, there's court costs, legal fees are two separate things, like administrative costs, stenographers, depositions, etc., versus your actual lawyer fees.
In Quebec, to get lawyer fees, you have to approve, like, abusive process, unless there's some legislative provision that allows for it.
In Ontario, it's a little different, but I'm not totally familiar with that.
Just so everybody knows.
So a quarter of a million dollars in legal fees, does that, and that includes court costs, bailiffs?
No, that's my lawyers.
That's directly...
Billed from my lawyer.
That's what he would be submitting, the $250 in legal.
So it would have been more than that costs.
Give or take a quarter of a million bucks.
You say to them, I'm not going to pursue my counterclaim.
Just release, organize for the release of Smushy the Walrus like I've been asking you for a decade.
Smushy and her son because she had a baby while I was gone.
How does a captive walrus have a baby?
Well, generally they don't.
It's a very rare thing, but I have my suspicions on how this became.
Deliberate or accidental?
Deliberate and synthetic.
I don't think it came naturally.
They don't do it like that.
But they need very specific environmental conditions, certain UV lighting.
They're living in a warehouse.
It's just not conducive to a successful birth.
And walrus is really, it's a sensitive thing.
It's really difficult to breed them.
But there is a facility in Belgium that very successfully does that.
They had trainers come down and they were there.
Because just in advance, literally...
In advance of the COVID shutdown, Smushi was being shipped out to, I think it was either Belgium or Germany, but it's one of these two facilities that she was going to, and those trainers had come down.
So the reason that she had first, that she was rejected from being shipped was, and I got a DM in my Twitter at random, anonymous one saying, hey, your friends at the CFA, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Just rejected a walrus transfer because the walrus is pregnant.
So that was the first one.
They tried two days later.
So the first day they tried was on my birthday.
The second day was March 23rd.
They tried to ship her and then they couldn't get her out again.
So suddenly she was back to living at Marineland.
And then through much of the process of our negotiations, I was trying to get her to go to a very specific facility.
But the difficulty in trying to go to a specific facility is you're having to involve a third party.
So it's very difficult.
So I managed in the settlement to get...
Her moved to an AZA-accredited facility.
So there's five in the U.S. that hold walruses.
And I insisted to see her.
So I was allowed to enter the park and visit her one time.
Let me do one thing, though.
So you think that she got pregnant?
Synthetically.
I think they brought the trainers down.
Okay.
They would do that presumably?
Because they were going to that facility anyways, right?
So they go to those facilities.
Generally, they're walrus breeders.
Yeah, there was some intention.
I hate to talk about how dark this might be, but Marineland emphatically wanted to break our bond.
They did everything they could through egregious levels of abuse, which included the pregnancy.
That's interesting.
And the idea would be to break the bond that she had with you, have her own kid that she imprints on the kid or the kid imprints on her, and then she separated from you.
And what I have to say about that is, oddly, in as much as it's an awful thing, it's actually really good as well because...
Right now, she was separated immediately at birth from the baby for performance reasons, so that the walrus can continue to perform and whatnot.
And so they've not actually lived together, and that's a great source of stress for her.
Now she's going to actually live with her son, and she should have that bond.
It's unnatural for me to have that bond.
So I feel actually better now that she can have a more regular bond and be a more natural walrus, being a mother of a walrus versus the daughter of a...
I think there's a half benefit to it.
We'll see what becomes once this move finally takes place.
I'm just going to go look at the chat.
If anybody heard a slight noise, there's some drilling.
I don't know if anyone thinks it's not a glitch, and it seems to have stopped if anyone heard that noise.
Okay, so that's a very sinister potential reason for which it does make a little bit of sense, although sinister and maybe beneficial.
Breeding another animal into captivity.
When what you're fighting is this animal in captivity is perpetuating the cycle.
So you, as part of your settlement, you say, look, drop the money.
You will never be able to write me financially, but by putting Smushi and her calf or her baby in an AZ.
Is Marineland not accredited?
They were CASA, so Canadian Association of Zoosans, but no longer.
CASA dropped them.
Marineland threatened to sue them if they...
If they didn't accredit them, or rather that what they said was they controlled the message, the messaging, and said they elected not to rejoin Kazza because they were going to be in, they were going to do some development at the park, and they tried to make some excuse of it, but basically Kazza dropped them, said, yeah, not no more, no.
Okay.
And then, so as part of the settlement, it's let me have my moment of reunification with my smushy.
A couple of reasons.
A couple of reasons why.
A, I want to make a health assessment for myself.
I don't trust Marina.
I want to know whether she's healthy enough to be moved.
It might not be exactly the best in this immediate moment.
So I wanted to make the assessment myself.
And of course, I wanted my chance to see her again.
How'd that go?
I know how it went, but I'm going to ask so you can tell the world.
How did your reunification go?
This culmination of...
We're going to get on...
Because you made this public.
I mean, you can't make it more public than going on Rogan to talk about this.
This is international news.
You've made it a big story.
This is supposed to be the happy ending, although I'm blackpilled a little bit.
I don't think you can have a happy ending to a stolen decade.
But how did this how did this meeting go?
Well, so I walk in with some swagger.
I'm like Conor McGregor walking into that place.
Never mind.
And maybe that wasn't maybe to my benefit, but tense, of course.
But it wasn't what I. Ultimately, what was promised to me.
They compromised it grossly.
They kept us far too distant from each other than what was supposed to be.
As soon as she recognized me and tried to make her way over to me, they pulled her away.
So they compromised it.
I've been talking to my lawyer now for basically five months because we got to file a motion because, you know, they got to make this right.
And the problem is the courts at this point are so backed up and she needs to move in the next three weeks.
So we're in a really complicated situation now.
So the next three weeks are going to be very interesting.
Next three weeks, she's supposed to be moved with her calf.
To the U.S. somewhere.
The calf is no longer a calf.
The calf is a...
Four or five-year-old.
Okay.
Four-year-old.
And it's just terrible.
The culmination was supposed to be that...
Would it be safe just to run up and hug her?
Yeah.
For me, yeah.
They won't say so, but yeah, of course.
For me, no.
No.
You know, and because she was so protective of me, one of the situations that did happen is, you know, eventually I managed to curb it to a sort of humorous thing, and she started to understand, to appreciate the comedy of it, but, you know, if you got too close to me and she was there, she'd always get between us, and if you got really too close to me, she'd bump you out of the way.
She was very protective of me.
Alright, so that's the state of the lawsuit.
The lawsuit, the settlement, she's supposed to go to...
Did you mention the facility?
Do you know?
I can tell you where I hope she's going, but actually, I'm not going to.
There's only five facilities.
There's two SeaWorlds.
There's an Indianapolis Zoo.
There's a facility called...
It's in Tacoma, Washington.
It's clearly not that one she's going to.
Okay, I'm sorry.
Point-defined zoo, it's called.
And then there's a fifth.
I don't know exactly.
And I'm not trying to get you into trouble.
I don't want to.
Okay, if you're not allowed to say it, it doesn't matter.
No, it's not a question I'm not allowed.
I don't know.
I don't know where she's going.
They won't tell me.
In fact, I contacted my lawyer last week and said, why don't we just in advance say to them, and there's no harm, say, where is she going?
Because we're just going to file the motion now knowing they're probably going to screw that too.
So you're going to find out within the next three weeks if the settlement portion of the settlement is going to be carried through to fruition.
And I presume until then...
It's not a sort of Democles.
It's this anxiety, this stomach in knots will not be unknotted until you see her in her new home.
This war doesn't stop until she's moved, and it's said and done.
And then at that point, the war doesn't stop, frankly.
I've got other gears left.
But I should mention right now, I am starting to believe that there's a possibility that they just won't move her.
And if I were to rationalize that, it would be because this isn't about money.
This is about avoiding a trial.
And for me to try to actually get the trial to go again as a relief is a lot more complicated than just going for a cost motion.
So if they just elect not to move her, I don't know exactly what it is that I can do.
It might be just to the extent of getting my money and basically it.
I don't know yet, but I'm getting suspicions that they may compromise this.
I'll cross my fingers except to say that if there's a signed settlement and there's a default on the settlement, there's...
There are motions to file, a motion to enforce a settlement.
Fingers crossed we'll know.
Money and time, isn't it?
We've got an animal who's also lived a lot longer than any other walrus at Marineland.
So every day that this thing gets prolonged, you know ultimately the risk is that she dies.
And this is what they're risking, which is crazy to me, because if she dies, how can they possibly settle with me?
So they've actually taken this whole six months.
It's been a great risk because...
The settlement, you know, it says Koyuk and Smoosh have to be moved to an AZA facility.
If she's dead, they can't possibly actually fulfill the settlement.
So why they didn't move her already is quite baffling.
Let's see if anybody on their end is listening and making it happen.
The deadline is your birthday, 2023.
What's your birthday again?
March 21. March 21. No, what's the...
March 15th is the Ides of...
Beware.
Okay.
We'll see.
So we'll be in touch.
Of course.
You'll mention it again at the end, but where can everyone follow you to see how this chapter of your life ends?
Twitter, Walrus Whisperer.
Instagram, Walrus Whisperer.
TikTok, Urgent Seas, which we have to get into.
That's the next chapter of my endeavors.
And don't look for me on Facebook.
Walrus Whisperer.
Although there is an Urgent Seas on Facebook as well.
There is a group there too.
Oh, I get it.
Urgent Seas.
It's Urgent Seas, one word with S-E-A-S on the end.
Urgent Sees.
Urgent Sees.
And I presume that it's not Walrus Whisperer 76 because there were not 75 other Walrus Whisperers.
No, no, no.
I get lucky.
I always get the first one.
Okay, so that's chapter one, people.
How long do we do with that?
That's not so bad.
Yeah, 25 minutes on chapter one.
And it's an amazing chapter.
People should understand the lawfare about this and they should understand the hell that you've gone through.
For me to know, and I know we mentioned it the first time, but like, someone had my dog, and they're like, I'm not giving you your dog back, sue me.
What if they were compromising that dog?
Like, consciously compromising it at the time as well, and you'd be able to witness it.
It would be a source of rage that might drive a person to do bad things, and so...
Touch wood, you haven't done it.
Yes, touch wood.
Well, you know, I'm very lucky.
Oh, we're in trouble.
I'm very lucky to be surrounded by very supportive people and people that keep me in check.
Literally in check.
For those who can't see, there's a mild...
It's not a posse.
It's a posse.
It's a posse, sure.
We just had breakfast before the show and it's fantastic.
And we talked about a lot of things, which I said, remind me if I don't get to them.
Before we even get into the next chapter, an interesting thing, what do you do for...
You've crowdfunded for the legal fees because I know what you do.
Tell the world what you do.
Not everybody wants to spend their entire salary on legal fees.
But what do you do?
Because it's interesting also.
Well, when I quit Marineland, I didn't know what the hell I was going to do.
What the hell does a walrus trainer wind up doing?
Or someone that swam with Orca, what do you end up doing?
So I didn't want to work at a gas station.
So I actually got lucky and I picked up a trade.
I sort of worked with this neighbor and he taught me this thing.
I stole his business, even if only briefly, but why would I want to make $25 an hour when I can make $1,000 a day?
So I had a business for a couple summers.
It was a concrete construction business.
Did okay, but I had a lower back issue suddenly real quick.
And I live in a house, and in the basement, I have units that I rented out to subsidize my costs.
Well, I elected to change one into a short-term cottage rental, which does quite well for me, being in Niagara Falls.
You know, I live in a little waterfront property very close to Niagara Falls.
So that does quite well for me in the summer.
And then I have a part-time casual job, which still is a lot of work, being a Canada Post mail carrier.
So I'm every day walking 18 kilometers out there, delivering the mail, delivering the good and bad news, baby.
So you average 18 kilometers a day whenever you go?
Yeah, the routes are between like 17 and 22 kilometers a day.
It's crazy, man.
I always say like, if I had a job...
I used to...
I mean, I worked selling shoes at Sports Expert.
I worked at a camp shop, a bike shop.
I like that stuff.
But to have a job where you could...
Spend the entire day listening to books, listening to podcasts.
Is that what you did while you were walking?
It straightened my head out.
I got mentally a lot healthier.
My lower back got stronger.
My mental health, I don't even know how to stress how much healthier I became just by virtue of walking and having that time.
There's something about it that changes the voice in your head that's otherwise doubtful and challenging to coming up with solutions.
I discovered running.
Suddenly, I become a little bit more endeavorous in health and exercise.
I love it.
And the other thing about it that I have to mention is I'm a casual, so I'm not actually full-time.
I could have been a long time ago, but I don't like the idea of committing to anything generally in lifestyle.
But the flexibility that work at Canada Post gives me is I work when I want without a real opportunity for reprieve.
They can't be like, you're out of here, bud.
And they work quite well with me.
They're very supportive too, so it's a dream.
I work when I can and when I can't.
If it is that I have to go do something like come to Florida, I'm able to do so and sustain this thing.
Do you have any one?
Memorable moment of an experience he had while doing this?
I mean, you have to have had some pretty outrageous things, but is there one that comes to mind off the bat?
Not one that I can say.
What the heck could have happened?
Yeah, maybe not one that I could say.
After the show.
Sure.
So you're doing that part-time.
Now, what's the next chapter?
Because, look, I know you.
I've known you now for...
Close to four years.
It was never a question of once this chapter ends of you just saying, okay, well, now I'm done.
The experience you've gone through has driven you into a new path.
What are you up to now?
Well, so what's become is I got a bit of a niche skill.
So we should mention that over the course of that 10 years of that legal battle, simultaneously with the government, I was working in trying to ban...
The import, export, breeding, and the captivity of whales, dolphins, and porpoises.
We successfully did so in Canada.
So, you know, I've got a unique set of skills, if you will.
I know how to sort of destroy facilities, and I certainly am educated in, you know, health and safety of animals, etc.
And so these days, it just came natural to expand into a, start a non-for-profit organization to exactly bring a sense of urgency to the situation of whale dolphin.
Porpoise captivity, if you will.
And that's what brings me to Florida, frankly.
You've got a lone orca named Lolita, a.k.a.
Tokete.
Tokete is her real name.
Lolita, the stage name.
I've got to stop it.
They named it Lolita.
A long time ago.
It's a girl.
I'm going to say a woman.
It's a female.
Lolita.
She's been in Miami for 53 years.
So they named her Lolita before Lolita had any sort of connotation of what it is.
Right, right.
And which is actually a kind of, it's kind of an issue now because anytime I try to post a hashtag free Lolita on any social medias, I can't now.
It's actually odd.
I can't even do that.
I'm actually, at some point I'm going to have to reach out to Elon and say, listen, there's a situation where there's a Lolita where perhaps this is not, you know, like, anyways.
Well, let's do it right now.
Elon, if you're watching, the free Lolita or I love Lolita or I'm saving Lolita.
Well, I'd be confused with Lolita Express, but I don't see a way to work those.
Well, the thing of it now is because her original name was Tokite, everyone's reverted back to calling her Tokite.
So free Toki works.
How do you spell Tokite?
T-O-K-I-T-A-E.
At least Lolita's easy to remember.
Right.
Okay, so let's back it up a little bit here.
The walrus, you have your experience where you see these higher order animals.
They're intelligent animals.
They're community animals.
They're living in...
If it's not squalor, it's imprisonment.
And I'm guilty in that I say I like zoos.
We go to them.
And every time I go, I feel actually depressed.
And we went, I won't name it because I'm not trying to badmouth any particular zoo.
I'll do it.
Well, there was a black bear and we're all in there.
And I'm like, get the kids away from the bear display because this thing just looks miserable.
It looks like, I felt like Ace Ventura, like, dog's miserable.
What are you feeding him?
You put these higher order animals in these small enclosures, paint whatever flipping palm trees on the back you want.
I remember once, I think it was San Diego, just an elephant sitting there just like waving its head, waving its trunk.
I'm like, this is miserable.
Zookosis.
And so, I mean, you have your experience with the walrus and then you look around and say, Jesus, this is not just walruses, it's dolphins, it's orcas.
I mean, frankly, it's all, I don't want to point the finger at all zoos, but generally any captivity of animals is a compromise of that animal.
Animals are not natural, or wild animals.
Even by virtue of being seen and conscious of being seen are no longer anything of what it is that they should be representing in the wild.
Because you're a threat to them.
So that bear, when you say it was miserable, absolutely it was miserable.
It's being seen by a bunch of people when it should not be seen by a single solitary set of eyes, you know?
So it's every animal that I've ever seen in a zoo is compromised just at the base level.
But when you see them, you learn that they're very...
Very often starved for performance.
I mean, let's just talk about the Miami Sea Aquarium.
Recently, the USDA revealed that they'd starved 11 dolphins to the tune of losing almost 100 pounds, one of their oldest dolphins, for the purpose of wanting them to perform better, for the jump higher, etc.
So that they're more eager to do the trick for the food because they're hungry.
They put them on drugs.
People knew the truth.
And this is what I'm doing now.
I'm taking the veil off of the bullshit.
You go to a zoo, and what you're fed is lies and a convenient story, and they always want to say, you know, We help animals.
We conserve this.
We do this.
Pillars of conservation.
And then you go to the gift shop and you see what the truth of the matter is.
And do you mean that they're plushies made in China type?
No.
I'm just saying every exit is through a gift shop.
Just remember that.
I don't mind the gift shop so much, but then I go and it's a plushie made in China.
I was like, okay, well, you guys got to make your profits so you can...
When I go to the zoos, I like to rationalize it to myself, even if it's in a quasi...
Dishonest way that if it's if it's not a conservation but you know the animals are rescues they are injured animals that will die in the wild okay I can tolerate that and even support that but then you know so many of them aren't and you have these animals which I don't know how they either got there or stay there so you're people have been sounding the alarm for a long time but this is sort of now where you've turned your energies and your expertise of 10 years of litigation lawfare and animal welfare.
Well we've set we set a stage in Canada we set a precedence I mean the The work is done.
I mean, we can now replicate what we've done in Canada elsewhere.
And frankly, I'd love to see something similar happen in the state of Florida because you've got a lot of dolphins, you've got an orc in captivity, you've got these animals.
And unless something is done immediately, because remember, these animals live a very long time.
In the event of, let's for instance, just hypothetically say, Florida were to adopt a pro-whale position and say, you know, we're going to end the breeding, import, and export.
These facilities still have 30 years of having these animals regardless.
I mean, we're not saying you have to release them tomorrow, but we should end the problem and give them the chance.
And 30 years is plenty of time for them to change their business model.
And let's be honest, SeaWorld already has.
I went to visit SeaWorld the other day.
I didn't pay.
And, you know, to go and do what we do.
They've gotten away from even advertising the orcas.
They've gotten totally away from that sort of toxic branding, and yet the orcas are still there, but they just are no longer the stars, you know?
Well, people need to understand this.
Now, okay, explain to us the situation with Lolita, and I'm only saying the name because I can't remember the other name.
Tokite.
Toki, Toki.
It took me 10 years to remember my wife's family's name.
I'm going to have to stick with Lolita.
That's been imprinted now.
I have not been to the Miami Sea aquarium.
I've seen some aerial footage on your TikTok.
Urgencies.
Or your Instagram, I should say.
Urgencies.
What the heck is going on?
There's an orca whale that is not on display that is sitting there quite literally stewing in a big pool.
How big is the enclosure?
Well, so let's get to exactly that.
So the facility was built before there were standards of care.
So before the USDA came in with standards of what would be required to be able to hold these animals in captivity, but they grandfathered in the facility.
Recently, the Miami Sea Aquarium was sold, so there's a new ownership, and the city of Miami...
In granting them the business license said, but you can't use this facility.
And so the resolve was remove the facility itself from the business license.
Technically, it doesn't exist.
That lifted the USDA protections of Lolita, and she's off public display.
The stadium is crumbling.
Forget about it.
And that's why the only way to actually see her, and this is how we sort of began to sound the alarm, is when we came months ago, we flew a helicopter over there.
I had to see her with my eyes.
I thought Marineland was the most atrocious facility I'd ever lay my eyes on.
The Miami Sea Aquarium is not even a close lake.
I think they're worse.
So let's just give you some background on Lolita.
She's been there for 53 years.
Her last Orca tank mate died in 1980.
Hugo.
He committed suicide.
Smashed his head against the wall until he died.
There's awful footage of him actually being craned out of the pool.
She's been alone now.
So what does that make that?
It's 40 years.
Alone.
And so you've seen the footage.
What does she do all day?
She stares at a wall doing nothing.
When you said...
I saw one of the videos, and it didn't look like the whale was moving, except for the flipper.
The tail, you could just see it sort of stabilizing.
It looked like greenish soup, like Orbitz, the old drink.
So everybody appreciates this.
It was an inhumane practice.
So they say, okay, you have this whale.
There's a transfer of ownership of the business, whatever.
They say, okay, look, we're not going to make you get rid of the whale.
It just can't be part of the business.
That's right.
No advertising, no pictures.
It doesn't exist.
Except that the whale is still there, probably getting, I can swear, shittier treatment than she was getting when she was on display because at least the water had to be clear.
They would have put a little bit more effort in the aesthetics here.
This thing is a forgotten relic in an attic, except it's an animal.
I mean, I don't know how you qualify the intelligence.
We can't.
Walruses smarter than dogs or stupider than dogs?
I should not say stupider.
Less intelligent.
I listened to a recent, just a portion of it.
Eric Weinstein was on Rogan and he spoke of how we're always trying to study animals and beings from our being.
From a human perspective.
From our being.
Most intelligent.
So it's sort of like looking down, if you will.
When the reality is we are incapable of studying up.
They may very well and probably are significantly more intelligent, more socially complex, emotional, all of that.
To the tune that we don't even understand.
They never made an iPhone.
They can't be as smart as...
Give them thumbs, man!
We've made weapons of war that can kill people in unimaginable ways.
Yeah, but that's what orcas are.
Orcas in the ocean are weapons of war.
They have no predators.
I mean, the reality is it's a utopian world for them.
It's play, fight, breed, and that's it, and just explore.
But for humans...
I mean, look, we will not try to put on a hierarchy of intelligence, but on...
On par with the dog.
Like if we look at the dog and say they're smart animals, they have personalities, they're social.
Like a walrus is, if not, definitely no lesser, probably.
All of them are significantly more intelligent to the tune where you're baffled by it.
You're just like, well, and it becomes a little bit, it actually starts to change your, it changes the way you think about, it's what changes your perspective of captivity because suddenly you're like, oh, wait a second, there's a higher level of consciousness here.
There's thought.
And this is where like...
I forgot where I heard it.
I'm sure it was a Rogan podcast.
It might have been a Huberman podcast, which I've been getting into heavily now.
But for a human, there is no greater torture than solitary confinement.
You could rip fingernails out so long as there's a human there, so long as you have some form of interaction.
No greater punishment, no greater torture than being locked in a room alone with your own thoughts, with your own solitude.
And that's what goes on with this whale.
Every day for 40 years.
And now rationalize this.
Orcas live in their family pods with the entirety of their lives.
They have stronger bonds than we can even conceive.
And the male orca will live the entirety of its life until its mother ultimately passes away.
No greater than a whale's length from that mother.
I mean, the family bonds are things to the extent that we don't even understand.
So when we try to equate what the level of torture is, it might be to the nth degree with orcas.
And something else we've discussed before, and thank you for reminding me.
Marineland.
You walk into these facilities, SeaWorld, they play these videos and they say the orc is an amazing animal.
It can dive a mile deep.
It can swim 50 miles in a day.
And then you turn your head to a flipping, complex, intelligent entity in prison.
Can't swim more than 20 feet.
Squirting water for fun.
Squirting water for kicks.
It's absurd.
You know, they celebrate.
You know, in the wild, these male orcas have six-foot-long dorsal fins, dorsal sails.
And yet, right before you is an entirely collapsed dorsal fin on this orca.
And yet, they don't even really talk about it.
What does that mean, a collapse?
Well, imagine a fin being much like a big ear.
It's largely cartilage.
So because if in the wild, orcas are able to sustain a level of speed and depth, the water will keep that sail nice and erect.
And in captivity...
The whales are logging at the top, so there's nothing to actually support that.
So just over time, it just keels over.
Always, always.
That's interesting.
I guess it's sort of like when people lose their teeth, the jaw ends up also just sort of withering away.
And so by lack of what is required for the movement, it just shrivels up.
You know, if they're swimming fast and they're 30 feet underwater, that thing's going to be straight.
I mean, that's its function.
It helps them swim.
It steers.
It has a function.
In captivity, they're not moving.
Okay, so this Lolita now is...
Still at the SeaWorld facility, the Miami Seaquarium.
That is in Miami.
I know I haven't been there.
I just don't know if I've ever been in the vicinity.
Sitting in this tank, stewing away.
Solitary confinement.
Well, they've got a Pacific white-sided dolphin in there, but the reality is there's no bond.
It basically is a moving and adamant object.
There's nothing there.
Frankly, it's torture for both animals.
It doesn't even make any sense.
I didn't realize adding another higher order animal intelligence.
Okay.
They try to rationalize it to try to appease people that might criticize the solitary confinement and say, well, she's got this.
No, she doesn't.
It may as well throw a basketball in there.
What is going on with her?
And what are you doing about it?
What are you trying to do about it?
And what's the state of affairs?
Well, the concern is, so to appease the general public, what became is there's been like this, there's been this union of this organization called Friends of Tokite.
It's a not-for-profit that was started by a gentleman named Pridham Singh, whose real name is actually Paul LaBombard, but he's a real estate developer.
Now, he...
Stop for one second.
How does someone go from the name Paul LaBombard?
I don't know.
One is a distinctly Indian name.
The other one, LaBombard, I don't know, Brazilian, Italian?
You know, he tells his own story, so you have to get it from his mouth because no one seems to know exactly what's going on with this particular character.
Who is this individual again?
Well, he's quite a wealthy real estate developer in Miami, so it's strange that he would have interest in a whale, right?
Well, he might have interest in the stadium itself, but okay.
Ding, ding, ding.
I didn't even have anything sinister about that.
I was like, okay, it makes sense.
They'll buy the business that has the stadium on it.
Okay.
Well, it seems to be that it's sort of like a controlled opposition, if you will.
They've come in and they've said, we're going to take care of Toki.
We're going to try to improve her conditions, all this stuff.
It's a peculiar thing.
Shouldn't that be the responsibility of the zoo itself?
But, you know, so this organization comes in and now everyone, including much of the activists in Miami, are holding hands with the facility itself and this organization, which is claiming to want the best interests of Lolita.
They very rarely sort of suggest that they'll release her, but they say it's a possibility.
But listen, I've been in this game a long time.
I never trust zoos or especially any spokesperson or people that generally...
When it comes to organizations, especially animal rights organizations, it's worth to look a little deeper very often to their intentions.
This is why I'm hoping to start something a little bit more unique and a little more edgy, of course.
So bring a sense of urgency to the situation because they're just talking, talking, talking.
Now, I've been doing this specifically for Miami.
We've been advocating against and visiting and providing evidence and whatnot for just shy of a year now.
And nothing has happened.
Nothing is really progressing, and yet the talk just continues.
In fact, they hosted what was a conference called A Day of Listening, where they wanted the public to come in and have a conversation.
Of course, they didn't think we were coming.
Well, we did.
They knew it.
And so, of course, we had our confrontations and whatnot.
Hold on one second.
They have a day of discussion.
Why would they not...
I mean, maybe they don't know to specifically reach out to you, but you show up, they should welcome you with open arms and hear what you have to say.
It doesn't happen.
I know what happened.
That's not what happened.
I mean, they played their best face, as we did.
But it was great.
We got an opportunity to test their credibility.
And I specifically challenged Apollo Bombard to produce the water data.
Because, listen, I've watched compromised water.
I know what compromised water looks like.
It led me to...
Blow the whistle on marine land.
It changed the entirety of my life fighting to keep those animals out of that disgusting cesspool of awful.
And here's happening before my very eyes.
They try to tell me, oh, the water's just like the ocean.
It's great.
It's actually quite wonderful.
And I say, okay, well, if this water's green, then why is that your dolphin pool's blue?
Oh, you know, we don't really know about the dolphin pool.
Oh, that's interesting.
So I challenged them.
I said, I want to see the water data.
Can you produce the actual data?
It's a question of credibility.
If I am to have any faith in you whatsoever, provide the...
Actual data.
And they say, yeah, we could do that.
That was three months ago, and we've heard absolutely nothing.
We're still flying over, and the water's just as bad as ever.
I don't know if there's any regulation here, and I presume they're not in business, so any regulation might not apply, but they don't have to, by law, provide water?
Remember, the business, she doesn't exist.
There's no protection for her.
The USDA just came out with a report that the dolphins were compromised there.
They were starved.
I mean, it's all out there.
It's available.
But nothing on Lolita, because there's no more protection because of that business license conflict.
I'm just thinking, how hard would it be?
We went to an aquarium in Nova Scotia.
It was New Brunswick or Nova Scotia where they filter in the ocean water and filter it out because it's right on the ocean.
They had a seal in there, and now I'm second-guessing my enjoyment of that display.
Why can't they do that?
I mean, is it not feasible?
Is it too far from the ocean?
Well, look, the facility's really old.
I can't say with certainty that I know where the source of the water is, whether they're using the Biscayne Bay water, which, by the way, is...
Kind of notoriously polluted.
And you know, you run into some problems if you get some algae.
And they seem to enjoy the algae and the facility itself.
They're not doing much about it.
But a lot of things can be done to improve the water.
But what I don't want is to be lied to and played for stupid.
That might work for people who don't know.
But I know better.
So I know the questions to ask.
And it's specifically what we did.
This is a question of credibility.
You're not going to bullshit me out of this.
And they swore they were going to do it.
And it's not hard to do.
In fact, we even challenged, we'll pay and have an independent water analysis go there.
In fact...
We probably should go, the next time we come, maybe we will in fact go in there and bring a water analysis person, you know, independent and pay them and whatnot.
Get those figures because it is a question of credibility.
You want me to believe you?
Prove this one thing that is, you know, it's tangible, evidence-based stuff.
And if you give me something that's fake and I wind up getting something real afterwards, they, you know, you can assume how awful that would be for them.
The only way to do this is...
Each party has their own experts, and if the results don't line up, well, then you have a problem.
But I challenge them to lie to me, because then if the truth does eventually come out, well, then that's a whole other issue for them, isn't it?
Let me ask this before I forget now.
You know, they say we're going to release Lolita, a 53-year-old orca.
What's the time?
I mean, when can a whale or dolphin or walrus, as of what point can they no longer be plausibly released into the wild?
She has to have a pod.
She has to remember what it's like to hunt.
I mean, I presume after 50 years in captivity, you lose those skills.
So when we speak of release, ultimately what we mean is releasing them to their natural environment, but in a...
In a controlled space.
So they will always remain under human care.
But that doesn't mean that you can't explore to have them reunite with other whales.
There's a lot of opportunity in there.
It's said that Lolita's family is still in the Salish Sea.
And so there's talk of maybe trying to get to see if they can reunite.
It's certainly worth trying, but not at the ultimate risk of the whale.
So you have to do it very responsibly, very expensive.
There's a lot of permitting process and all of this, none of which Friends of Tokyo have even explored.
I mean, they like taking money in and talking, but not a lot happening at that end.
So it's a complicated affair.
But it's due.
And frankly, it should be done because what risk do you have of that whale staying there?
It's just guaranteed torturous death.
What risk do you have of releasing to her sea?
If it's guaranteed torturous death with even an iota of hope, then it's better.
And I'm here to offer the perspective of the whale and to voice the interests of the whale, whereas too often I'm seeing a disproportionate benefit to the humans who are trying to talk about what's best for them.
Disproportionate benefit, being a cynical black-pilled individual, they fundraise, they pay their salaries, they go and travel the world, and they promote awareness while they have this 53-year-old orca sitting in a...
There's a project in Canada called the Whale Sanctuary Project.
They were said to be building a sanctuary out in Nova Scotia, so of course I went to go visit.
Take a look.
Nothing's happening.
Absolutely nothing.
Aside from them paying themselves in excess of 150,000 US dollars.
What do you mean nothing happening?
Nothing.
Explain what the project is supposed to be.
At this point, it's a theory.
It's a theory.
So it's just talk.
It's just talk.
It's just talk.
And so again, disproportionately beneficial to the, well, and it should be mentioned that Paula Bombard, in fact, teamed up with one of the founders, one of the co-founders of the Whale Sanctuary Project.
Odd, because while this gentleman who should be working on the Whale Sanctuary Project and bringing whales in Canada and building this thing is spending more of his time while receiving a full-time salary for what he should be doing, focusing on...
Talking about bringing a whale to the other side of the continent.
So it is a big conflict.
It's very conflicting.
But where you scratch where it sniffs, eventually you get to the root of what's going on.
And that's what we're doing.
We're just scratching.
If you scratch where it's...
I want to take a mental note of that one.
Earlier, before we started live, you mentioned there might be some very easy to understand monetary reasons for which no one wants to set the precedent by actually successfully releasing Smushy or an orca.
Elaborate on that because it's quite interesting.
If you can do it once, you can do it more than once.
So you've got a facility like the Miami Sea Aquarium saying, oh, we are fully committed to doing whatever is best for Lolita, including her release.
Well, if in fact Lolita were to be successfully released...
Would that appease the public or would they in fact say, well now we want your dolphins and next we want your manatee?
And this is the reality.
So the industry itself will talk and appease, but they cannot risk the successful release of one of their animals or a better story ending for them because then there'll be a new precedent set and now you'll have an entire industry at risk of people wanting and demanding for the rest of the animals.
I'm asking this even as someone who thinks that they might have once upon a time appreciated the industry.
Is it not an industry that should just be Ended entirely.
Yes, of course.
It's something I should never start.
We know better today.
You would not see an aquarium in North America starting today.
If we were starting orca captivity today, it would be an uproar to, you know, the world would be flipping on itself.
But instead, it's been normalized a little bit.
Now, granted, you know, in the case of a place like Miami's Aquarium and even Marineland, some of the younger kids don't even know it really exists.
It's so abhorrent and, you know, their budget.
Obviously, the advertising budget has been cut and everything else.
But kids today hate these places.
So really, the industry is already evolving.
It's just a question of, are they willing to let go yet?
But old ideas, sometimes the people with them have to die before real change happens.
And this is what ultimately became of Marineland.
The old man dies, his cuckoo ideas are gone too.
This needs to happen a little bit more elsewhere.
But I'm still trying to push the issue to try to change the laws to basically put these people on a shelf life.
And when you say the old man died, The old man literally died.
The owner of the marine land actually died in the context.
His lawyer took over.
He's now the sole controlling mind of the company.
Andrew Burns.
Lawfare doesn't just sometimes kill the target.
Sometimes it kills the individual engaging in it.
And when you talk about legislative change...
You actively took part in legislative change in Canada.
Describe that.
I think we touched on it earlier, but describe it.
One day I get an interesting message on Facebook from a lawyer in Ottawa.
And first, of course, I start shaking a bit, like, here we go again.
And then, you know, he says, listen, I'd like to have a conversation with something interesting.
And he proposes that we start a private members bill with a senator.
So it was actually a bill that was tabled in the Senate, which obviously takes a long time.
It's a little longer, more difficult to turn into law, to get a senator.
For it to get ascension.
But, you know, it's actually now the most heavily debated and the longest bill to ever pass that was with the longest debate ever because it was obviously a lot of conflict.
We had some, you know, we had some people in there trying to kill the bill, of course.
Some lobbyists and everything else.
Marieland put their best foot forward to kill it.
What ultimately went through by way of legislation?
It's a ban on the import, export, and breeding, and essentially the captivity of whales.
But because Marieland was grandfathered in...
They're able to keep theirs.
So now when that law came to pass, Marine Land had an excess of 60 whales.
They currently have 38. That's how in three years, how many animals, how many beluga whales died.
And just to offer your perspective, we always had five to seven born a season, like beluga whales born.
And so that's how Marine Land managed to keep that population sustained.
So people always assumed, oh, they've always got 60 whales.
No, every year, five were dying, five were being born.
Being born through natural reproduction?
Yeah.
I'm going to go back to the chat and locals for a bit to see if there's any specific questions that I may have forgotten.
Basically, the industry, in theory, will die with the next generation of captive orcas.
It'll evolve.
Eventually, at some point, they'll just recognize that it's a liability.
And that's our role.
That's our job.
We have to make it such that you want to incentivize the facilities to...
Discover that it's in their best interest to move the animals, and you can only do so by virtually trying to destroy them and producing the evidence and everything else to prove the atrocities that are happening.
And that's what we're doing.
We're bringing a sense of urgency to...
To the animals.
And I think the best way to do it is give the industry a shelf life.
And I think it's fair to the industry, frankly.
It gives them 30 years of still having whales in captivity to operate.
Listen, we don't eradicate this now, or at least start.
We're going to have a centuries-long old problem.
Frankly, I think we already have a 100-year-old problem.
That's just the reality.
Because by the time these laws and all these things pass throughout the entirety of the world, because as we know in Russia and China, these are actually...
These facilities are, it's a burgeoning industry over there.
They're actually building new ones and bringing more animals into captivity.
So we've got a big problem, but the best place to start is set a precedence.
We've done so in Canada, spread it through North America, hit Mexico, and let's just keep going, you know?
What was I going to say?
You were going to say, friends don't let friends go to Marineland.
I mean, I was literally going to ask you, like, what do you tell people who want to take a stand against this?
There is no justification for it.
Is there a...
An industry of potentially rescuing injured whales, and those can be kept in captivity.
But then when you create that market, you just open it up to injured whales that have been injured for the purposes of being brought in.
In my experience, just about every time when the US or Canadian government steps in and says that the animals are deemed unreleasable, that's a big favorite of the industry.
Because I personally have seen animals that could have absolutely been re-released.
In fact, as we speak, there are two...
Off public display, Pacific Whiteside dolphins that are at the Miami Sea Aquarium.
And that's the exact issue.
They were deemed unreleasable.
So they've got them in this awful cesspool.
Again, go to my social media.
You'll see the pools.
It's called the Pompano's Pools.
And you've got a Pacific Whiteside mom and her son.
And they're just swimming in circles.
In fact, I'll produce a video later, possibly today or tomorrow.
And it's in one of the most atrocious conditions.
But this is your version of a rescue.
When you deem these animals unreleasable, what you've done is you've gifted the industry 25 years to 30 years of compromising an animal for profit.
I just picture someone going out and saying, oh look, there's a dolphin with a rope wrapped around it and lo and behold, I put that rope in the water 10 minutes ago and now I'm saving an animal.
Totally conceivable.
How did you get your eyes on Lolita as, I don't say a target, but as a subject?
How did you discover her and are there other...
Yeah.
Similar stories across America that people should know about.
So basically, the worst thing you can do to orca, or a whale for that matter, is put them in isolation.
So we've got situations.
Kiska at Marineland is a lone surviving orca.
And you witness her torture, it's awful.
Then we come to learn that there were more.
Lolita's one.
There's another one named Chamank in, I believe it's Argentina as well.
He's a big, bull, male, beautiful orca.
And if you look at him now, entirely compromised.
His story is awful.
In some places, it's very difficult to create an opposition because even the government himself, sometimes protesting is an illegal thing or sometimes it can be very conflicting.
We're getting to Canada.
We're going to get to the broader Canada.
Well, that too, man.
So you've got Kiska in Canada.
And for anybody who doesn't know, by the way, Kiska...
Is the tool that you use to decorate an Easter egg.
You melt a little wax in it, and then you put the wax on the egg.
Yeah, and then you put the ink on the egg, and then you rub off the wax.
It's a Kiska.
I know, because my mother-in-law...
How cool is that?
I didn't know that.
Easter eggs.
K-I-S-K-A.
Okay, cool.
That might mean other things as well.
Kiska in Canada.
Lolita in America.
What's the bull one?
Chamank.
It's a K-S-H-A-M-E-N-K.
In Argentina.
So you say, damn it.
To hell, I'm going to come down here and raise hell.
I remember the last time we saw each other, we had burgers on, I forget what the street was, Atlantic Avenue.
We had burgers, and you said, yeah, we just got a helicopter.
What do they call it?
When you charter a helicopter to fly over the frickin' stadium, explain that.
The airspace is difficult.
You could go over it in theory.
You rent a helicopter so you can catch footage of this whale in captivity, blast it to social media, and let the world and Florida, and potentially, you know...
There's a journalist who covered this.
We'll get to that in a second.
But you do that.
How do you get onto it?
And when are you going to stop?
So what becomes is...
So aquariums and zoos want to control the narrative.
But what's become is we've taken it.
And so now they're playing catch-up all the time.
And the one thing I've always learned is when they're playing catch-up, you definitely want to be playing relish.
And that's what's happening here.
So we got a hold of the microphone.
And we've got a big one.
So the goal is make the microphone bigger, bigger, and bigger.
Spread the word of this thing.
Let people know, and control the narrative, essentially.
Because everything is about narrative control.
I mean, that's just the bottom line.
So you have to be able to provide some, you know, the opposition.
And at this point now, we've become, we probably have a louder voice than the Seaquarium themselves.
They're always playing catch-up with us.
I don't know how many followers Seaquarium has on social media, and it's true.
That day of conference...
Day of Listening conference was done specifically as a PR damage control because of the damage we were causing them.
Absolutely.
In fact, we've watched every one of their moves.
I suspect there'll be one soon as well, probably because of this interview and because of the materials we produced.
They'll be coming out with a statement saying that the water parameters are great and her health is stable and she's strong and we love her.
We love her.
We love her.
Right?
Well, there's the old lyric of the song, if you love me, let me go.
Who was the journalist?
There was a journalist, a local journalist in Florida who covered the story in some detail.
Do you remember the name?
That's Louis...
I don't want to not get his last name, guys.
Louis...
Louis Aguilera.
He's great.
Actually, Louis is great.
So we had, you know, we wound up getting a...
Getting a little bit of a friendship together.
But we were able to, while we were there, we had a great interview and we got a great rapport.
And we actually were able to provide for them some video footage because they, at the time, they weren't able to get their helicopter.
So, hey, man, can you give us some footage?
We got you.
So, yeah, we work with governments and I've worked with politicians, lobbyists, this and that.
We've got, over the last 10 years, I've managed to befriend quite...
Powerful people.
I mean, even being on this show is a huge, it's a power move.
You don't see the Seaquarium sitting in the seat.
Next time I go on Rogan, I assure you the next time we promote a demo at the Miami Seaquarium, we'll have 200 people out there.
And a demo, you mean a demonstration?
Demonstration.
And by the way, anyone from Seaquarium, I mean, I'd love to have them.
I wouldn't be rude or disrespectful.
I'll give you the context.
Bring Paula Bombard out here.
Have a chat with them.
It's a question of...
If anyone were to see the footage, and I've seen it, it's out there to see.
This is an animal which, at the very least, is as smart as, I just say smart, but it's an animal that is clearly in distress.
There's thoughts.
She's thinking.
Thinking that there's been looking at a freaking glass in stewy warm...
She very subtly on occasion dips herself down to the bottom of the pool which is like 22 feet.
It's actually shorter than she is long to cool off for that one degree difference in that thermal client and then you see her pop back up.
That's the extent of her living right now.
So the bottom line is friends don't let friends go to these institutions.
And they suggest to throw eggs at them, sure.
No assaults, no violence people.
We're going to get criminal records.
Blame it on...
I'm here to take it.
Let's go.
Have you gone to Argentina to try to...
Not yet.
We're weighing that.
So the other thing is that I'm trying to stress is I want to help bolster other campaigns.
So if there's campaigns on the ground, and many of them have them, but they're very grassroots and small, we want to sort of come in and help boost.
And that's the object of trying to...
On TikTok, we've amassed over 100,000 followers this month alone.
So we're...
If we can help an animal or another campaign that's already out there, that's what we want to do.
So generally, we get guidance from activists if that's the case, if they want to work with us.
If they don't, well, we're coming anyway.
So we'll see.
We'll certainly be going to Argentina in time.
The first time I met you, you didn't have a crew.
You seem to have an actual...
I mean, I say a crew.
You have a group that you're working with now.
What are you doing?
I know you're trying to establish a 501c3.
We were joking around, be careful how you structure it.
We saw what just happened with Project Veritas and James O 'Keefe.
So you are...
Trying to make this a more formalized entity institution so that you're in this for the long haul.
I want everyone wearing urgency shirts.
I want stickers on every car.
I want everyone to know where to go when they need the source for all information to try to wage war against them.
I call us, we do evil to the evildoers.
Now, you haven't gone to Argentina, are you not?
I think I know of your composition a little bit.
Are you not scared of some governments?
I operate on the basis that...
All government is fundamentally thoroughly corrupt, but are you more apprehensive about potentially pissing off Argentinian authorities versus American versus Canadian?
Right, so yes, I'm always weary, but what's changed today is you can actually have just as impactful a campaign having no boots on the ground whatsoever.
You know, via social media and etc.
And it can actually be more viable than standing there with signs.
So, you know, you can still have a pretty effective assault.
So, you know, we do whatever we can do that's most effective.
But ultimately, if we do have to go there, you know, again, with working with locals, it might be best to have them there.
And, you know, bottom line is I want to be able to come back to the countries I need to go to.
So, you know, I have to be conscious of this.
But yeah, it comes with it.
Well, it is the beautiful thing of not an unregulated internet, but an open and free internet is someone can be down in Argentina, send you a video, and you can post it on a TikTok account or your Instagram where millions of people will see it.
And this is what's become, actually.
We've got whistleblowers coming out and they're sending us because we'll take it on the chin.
We're willing.
I mean, this is what's sort of become because in that 10 years, I wasn't the only one doing the damage to Marineland, but I was the one putting my face forward.
So if anyone wanted to help, they can stand behind me, give me the info.
I'll publish it.
And the thought is, if you don't want to take the risk, we will.
We'll take it for you.
We have to.
That's the idea.
So we're actually encouraging people.
If it's in your interest to give us and have evidence published of animal abuse, we'll do it for you.
And we'll protect the whistleblowers.
I had nowhere to go when I was a whistleblower.
I didn't.
I had to learn the hard way that there really wasn't a place.
I want to provide a landing space for them.
And I say this tongue-in-cheek almost, but DM via social media, email address, anyone in particular?
Not yet.
Okay, cool.
What are you down here for this time?
And what do you have left on the menu before you head back to what has been called Kanatistan?
And we're going to get to that after this question.
But what do you have left for this trip?
What's the purpose?
And what's your next plan?
This trip, we may very well go back and get some more evidence today.
But then basically we're wrapping it up.
We're leaving tomorrow.
So we'll be heading back to Cocoa Beach tonight.
And then just walking up and down the beach like beach bums.
Maybe a beer in hand.
Celebrate good work.
You know, something.
But yeah, we'll be winding this one down now.
What have you...
What have you gotten this trip around?
Evidence.
Great videos.
I mean, we produced one yesterday.
We'll do another today.
We've got...
Stay tuned is what I always say.
We're here to keep things current.
Because these facilities won't, we will.
All right.
And then you're going back to Canada.
Your crew is from everywhere a little bit.
What's going on in Canada?
What's it like now being in Canada?
Did that summarize it?
Can we leave it at that?
Can I just make a face and a sound?
It's tense, man.
It's tense.
I start to wonder where I might have been regarded as someone that Canada was celebrating for a while.
It's now very quickly become like that protesting is bad.
And suddenly am I at the risk of getting into bigger trouble?
I'll tell you something.
That whole truckers rally and everything that you were at, I was very tempted.
We were communicating at the time.
I was coming and...
Dude, I was full of inspiration, let's say, to go.
I wonder just how much trouble I would have suddenly found myself in.
It wouldn't have occurred to me the depth of which that the government was going to come after these protests and the way that they would go about it.
And to think that if I were there and the way that I generally respond to things, I could have found myself in a lot of trouble.
So these days it's weird.
You walk on eggshells in a place that declares itself the freest place.
It's conflicting.
Yeah, I mean, everybody watching now knows what happened.
Trudeau violently suppressed a peaceful protest, a protest to effect government change, policy change, froze the bank accounts, ratified, exonerated by Commissioner Rouleau, who is not related to Pierre Rouleau, who is Justin Trudeau's aunt's brother, politically connected.
And you look at this machine and you say this machine was set up to reward government, empower government, empower...
Big business?
What's the word I'm looking for?
Immunize big business?
You imagine in the context of this protest, they authorized banks to freeze bank accounts and immunized them to do it.
And you're sitting here saying, well, next time I go protest outside of Marineland, am I going to get arrested?
Am I going to have my bank accounts frozen?
Am I going to be...
Look, let's be honest.
The government acted like Marineland did.
Marineland sued me basically to try to make me broke.
They tried to ruin my life for being there and vocalizing my opposition to policy or whatever else.
I was watching the government act like Marine Land, and it was infuriating me.
And to see them calling everyone racists and extremists and that, it's like, my uncle was there.
My uncle's a great dude.
What are you talking about?
I have friends and family.
That was a beautiful protest.
What I was seeing there was actually quite beautiful.
I was proud.
Frankly, I liked the branding.
I liked the way Canada was rebranded.
I liked the flags flying in Canada or in the US.
I liked that the US was like, Canada's doing it, baby.
Basically, I thought at the time.
It was empowering.
It felt as though the world was almost leaning on the truckers to get something done, you know?
You know what?
I'm not going to put anyone on blast by name, but yes, the world rallied behind Canada.
People were taking an interest in the protest.
The flag had a new meaning.
And everyone's like, Canada's getting it done, and now Canada has had the government boot on their throat and has been asphyxiated.
And no one's covering the fact that the asphyxiation has been ratified, and I think that that is bigger news than the protest itself.
The protest invigorated the world, and now the world doesn't even, some people in the state don't even know that the Commissioner Rulo at this six-week hearing ratified, exonerated Trudeau and said he met the threshold to invoke the Emergencies Act.
That should be raising hell everywhere.
And I said, I'm going to try to make a market.
For that rage, because there should be rage about what happened, and I don't even think a lot of people who cover the protest know that it went out with a sad, sad cry of freedom dying in darkness.
How long did they...
Everybody who's interested in it, when you were interested in the protest and it was invigorating the world, Canada was getting it done, Trudeau got it done, and people should know what just happened up there, and it doesn't stop once it gets its tentacles into the West.
What starts north trickles south.
How long did they keep Tamara Leach in prison for?
She was in prison, in jail, for an aggregate 56 days, I think two months, on non-violent mischief charges.
It was the first couple of weeks.
Says it all.
And then on alleged breach of her bail conditions, which were not to post to social media because a third party posted a picture of Tamara Leach on social media.
That's called having a boot on your neck.
And she attended the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms Gala Award, which she was...
If not explicitly, tacitly authorized to attend.
But she sat at a table with someone who she wasn't supposed to have communications with.
It's not a Canada that I thought I grew up in.
She was in jail for two weeks.
I've just got to give the proper credit to Pat King.
Was in jail for, I think, close to five months.
Jeremy McKenzie.
These are serious sentences.
What would be required for that level of sentence is what I'm saying.
What would be required to actually get a sentence of that sort?
I know some great crimes that don't get that.
Non-violent mischief charges.
And Pat King.
He was in jail for five months.
Jeremy McKenzie went, you know, solitary for...
He was accused of more serious charges not related to the protest.
Whereas, that dude who ran over people at the protest in Winnipeg, out on bail.
He posted a quarter of a million dollars bail.
Out.
Violent attack.
It's a world gone backwards, but it's like it's deliberately done to scare people, suppress people.
And it's why you're finding now people are making their worlds a lot smaller in Canada.
What's happening is a little more isolation from people.
Everyone's sort of like making things smaller because it's almost as if no one wants to risk getting on the radar.
I publicly announced that I had donated to the convoy.
I donated to the GoFundMe.
And then when they shut that down and reimbursed...
You were one of those radical overseas foreign funders.
My grandmother was...
It's either Russia or Ukraine.
My family is from a country that changed hands.
But there was some foreign influence, a second-generation Canadian.
No, I gave to the GoFundMe.
When they shut it down and refunded me, I gave 10 times more to the Give, Send, Go.
I publicly announced it before they doxed everybody, and I got doxed on that list.
I was afraid they were going to...
That was CBC that doxed you?
It was...
I'm not even mentioning the name of the individual who doxed.
Because the government works for the CBC now, weren't they?
Remember they were taking all their evidence from journalism?
They're a branch of the government.
It's the definition of fascism.
The marriage between government, media, and big tech, big corporations.
What's the latest coming out of Canada?
CTV News posted an article yesterday, not enough data to justify, to support annual boosters.
And I'm like, you effing idiots.
You just spent the last year promoting it, boosters.
I said, I don't want to blackpill you, and I don't want to depress you.
When you go back from Florida, you cross the border, you sit down there, you go through customs, how does it feel to go back into the country?
Do you have the slightest bit of optimism for the long-term prospects of Canada?
I want to move to Florida.
I won't lie.
So I go home.
I try to make as much money as I can to come back.
So my focus right now is on my work.
And because I'm just based in Canada and financially, that ain't going to change for a long time.
This is just what it is.
Keep my nose clean as best I can while simultaneously getting it dirty.
I'll probably wind up getting in trouble one day.
I wonder if this continues.
But, you know, my long hope is that ultimately this thing changes.
The pendulum's always swing and briefly always too far.
So it'll come back.
I don't know when.
But, you know, you hope.
Yeah, well, the question is, it's going to come back under...
Not that we want to discuss the politics, but the pendulum's going to swing back.
It requires a momentum from the other side.
And now, the momentum that was Pierre Poilievre looks like he's just joined the momentum of Justin Trudeau.
For everybody who doesn't know, Pierre Poilievre, the conservative leader, was elected or replaced Aaron O'Toole.
And he talked a good game, supported the protest when it was politically popular.
He got me.
He was out there having breakfast with the organizers.
Freedom, freedom, freedom.
Inspiring the world.
Commissioner Rouleau comes out, exonerates Justin Trudeau.
Pierre Poilier backtracks and says, I was supporting the protesters because they were fighting just inflation.
And I'm like, that was two weeks ago on Friday.
You know who Christine Anderson is?
Yes.
Well, for those who don't know, Christine Anderson, European MP.
I had her on the channel for a brief 30-minute interview.
I won't say she's a nationalist.
I think a populist wants to support a country's autonomy, a country's identity.
Which, by the way, used to be a very celebrated thing for countries.
Patriotism used to not be a four-letter word, but now they've substituted patriotism with fascism, or sorry, not fascism, nationalism, which has the Nazi.
So she comes to Canada because she was, you know, vocally criticizing Trudeau abroad, humiliating him in front of the European Parliament.
She comes to Canada.
And the Canadian media dubs her as a racist extremist.
And Pierre Poilier says vile, hateful things she's ever said.
She should never have come to Canada.
Which I see.
Telling a foreigner to go home is not the best look for anybody.
Where do you go politically?
I don't even want to ask you that.
It's never fair to ask someone who they vote for.
But what are you going to do?
It's an impossible.
Yeah, I think I'll do my best to participate in the process as best I can when it does, but I imagine whatever options I have are ultimately still not going to be the answers for some time.
I'm going to focus on my work, basically.
Again, I'm going to just make my world smaller.
You're in, I don't want to ask specifically where you live, but you're in the Ontario region?
I'm in Niagara Falls.
Niagara Falls.
So that would be, politically speaking, I sort of, almost like my riding in Westmount where I ran for office, a liberal.
Do you not...
I mean, I don't even want to ask the question to put the juju out in the universe.
You work for the government.
Are you unionized?
Yep.
Okay, so they can't...
No, yeah, we're unionized quite powerfully.
It's good news.
Have there been any political reprisals?
Well, I should mention there was a lot of postees that ultimately had to lose their job.
And there's a group out there, and they're sort of trying to fight to get...
Whatever relief they're looking for.
I had some conversations with them, but it's not something I necessarily want to weigh in.
I'm going to lean on this job as it best serves me, but there's a fight taking place there too.
I'm going to get to something that I know we discussed earlier that I want to...
It was the post and ghost advice from Joe Rogan, but let me get there.
Are you going to go back on Joe and talk about...
Are you going to go back on Rogan after March 21st?
Last conversation I had with him, he said...
Once the walrus has moved, come see me.
So that's just essentially what we're waiting.
Well, ultimately, whatever it becomes is when I'll go back, but that's the plan, yeah.
And as for the conversation, Joe and I, I've been lucky to become friends with Joe.
We've gone to dinner a few times, and so we're having dinner, and I'm lamenting about this.
I read the comments.
And he says to me, listen, post and ghost, post and ghost, and okay, right?
So dinner's over.
And at the time, I think he was actually going to take a look.
He was going to look at some comedy clubs at the time.
He only just recently opened it up.
I cannot wait to go see that place.
But nonetheless, so I'm on the comments.
It's like 1 a.m.
I'm going like this, and I get a text from Joe.
Stop commenting!
I love you, Joe, man.
Thank you, sir.
I put the phone down.
Okay, thank you, dude.
Post and ghost means you post and then you don't go read the comments where people berate you and say terrible things about you because it causes distress.
I mean, I imagine it's 99% supportive or do people accuse you of being controlled by this issue?
Because I am...
You know, they deem me an activist, an animal rights activist, if you'll give me that name.
But, you know, I eat a lot of meat.
I go fishing.
So I'm not in a perfect mold to a lot.
So I'm a very controversial figure in those areas.
But to be honest, I'm not here to play with the echo chamber anymore.
I'm looking to break out.
I mean, look, we had safe smooshy signs on the side of trucks up in the Mac, you know, working on the oil rigs.
I got guys with hard hats with safe smooshy.
I mean, we got hunters advocating for the release of orcas and stuff.
And this is the way, that's how you...
That's how you win a fight.
You've got to break out of the echo chamber.
The echo chambers don't like me.
Some sides don't like me.
But largely, it all comes back to the work.
And it's supportive.
First of all, I am not one to post and ghost.
I'm one to post, read, obsess, pull my hair out, get very upset.
I mean, get upset.
Let it disturb you.
Let it ruin your morning.
Partially because the interaction is, on the one hand, part of what we want, what we like.
Also, if you get insulted by critique, it's either because it's Partially true.
You feel it to be true.
Or the totally useless getting upset.
It's just stupid talk that only...
I like to get upset at people that have sacrificed exactly nothing in life.
Okay?
I'm literally a walking sacrifice for this thing.
And I'm being criticized by people who have...
I mean, I don't know.
I don't know how old they are and who's...
Which parent they're living with, but like, I just don't need to hear from them.
So I'm lucky and blessed in life that I've partnered with, you know, her name is Marketa Shustarova, wonderful photographer.
Marketa Shustarova.
Shustarova.
Yes.
And so she's like my better half in all this.
So she's the post and ghost tap on my shoulder every day and delete that comment, Phil.
So I'm lucky that I sort of, again, I don't want to say we're a perfect circle, but we're jagged.
Someone comes in and fills the gaps and we've got a well-rounded thing going.
I'm always best managed and so I've got the world's best manager right now.
So we're in good shape.
I have a theory, by the way.
This is one of my operating theories which allows me to not disregard, critique, but I genuinely believe there are people who are on the other side deliberately going into the post negative comments to distract you, to take you away from your objective, to get your eyes.
And so if you have a buffer...
It will be more productive, but you're still going to go read the comments.
You know who you are.
You know, you're wasting energy, essentially, and that energy should be conserved and used for better use, and you can't be effective if your net energy is depleted, so it is about focus, and I've got to keep it, but I'm like you, man.
I can't stay out of those comments, and I'm particularly vulgar.
I swore yesterday at CTV, I called the methane criminals, because in response to that not enough data on the boosters, which we've been posting...
Pressuring you and supporting you.
Some people have four and five boosts at this point.
And I've known people who have had serious problems after whatever, and if there's any blood on anybody's hands, so yes, I lost my temper CTV.
I'm not sorry.
Wonderful.
But interesting, we talked about this last time.
The dynamic of how, I don't know if you hunt, but I think you're not averse to hunting.
I know you eat meat because I think we were having a burger the last time.
I don't think these things are mutually incompatible.
What you're doing with that, but I don't want to put the words in your mouth.
Someone says, Hypocrite.
You want to save Smushi, but you want to go eat Bambi.
How do you reconcile that?
Yeah, watch me.
Watch me be a hypocrite.
Fine.
Listen, there's hypocrisy in everything.
I don't give a shit.
Watch my work.
Enjoy.
What I give them is I give them the popcorn emoji or a bird or something and it's just like, yeah.
I say enjoy the show.
Let me steal, man, the response.
The response is that, first of all, eating for sustenance.
I had this argument about...
When did I just talk about this last?
I studied philosophy.
Andrea Dworkin, one of these philosophers who said the act of sex is an act of consensual, heterosexual, natural sex is an act of male domination over women.
I said there can't be morality in that which is fundamentally natural.
Eating meat, we're designed to eat meat.
The idea of killing an animal as quickly and painlessly as possible, consuming its flesh for the sustenance that is needed, it's not immoral, it's natural.
If you were to breed those deer or those pigs in some horrible captivity, that becomes immoral.
Well, when it comes to population and whatnot, nature has its way of fixing it anyways, and in many ways, it's pretty awful.
I mean, you can watch deer, I mean, overpopulated deer, the situation, and, you know, they wind up in the streets and stuff as well.
It becomes a real problem.
New Jersey, the black bear infestation because they stop the hunt, they stop the cull of certain animals, and it leads to other problems.
Now, granted, I've always found that more problems come when humans try to manage things.
And wildlife management seems to be one that's often very juggled.
So I don't want to be the spokesperson for culling herds or hunting and this and that.
But yeah, listen, hunters themselves in many ways are providing the funding to keep these populations healthy.
And it's in their interest.
The one thing I don't do is I don't try to...
And very often I do the same with even visitors to these parks.
You don't want to demonize them necessarily for it because it could be a question of ignorance, just outright.
So you want to...
Provide them with the best education possible.
And thereafter, if they continue to do something stupid, then you get to call them stupid.
But I try to exercise patience generally when speaking.
I don't want to get very often in debate, especially with vegans and stuff, because that's why I don't care to get into the explaining and rationalizing, because very often you could be debating against someone that they could be uttering absolute bullshit and you just don't know.
And I could be doing the same.
And then where are we actually getting?
So I don't delve into it.
I just put the popcorn emblem and watch me do it.
Just watch me do it.
My wife has...
She's a neuroscientist.
There is just scientific benefit to eating meat.
Do it ethically.
It's why we have big brains today.
Well, there's a way to do it ethically without taking pleasure in the death of the animal.
They say hunters enjoy it.
I think everybody should have to hunt their own meat.
If you want to eat meat, you should have to hunt it.
I mean, it's fair.
So no judgment on my behalf.
It might be a lot less meat eaters, frankly.
I mean, it just would probably.
I don't know that I could take the shot.
I mean, probably.
Okay, let's say definitely.
Definitely I could.
But I don't want to.
My issue with taking the shot would be missing it.
Yeah, all of that, yes.
All of that, yes.
I want to make sure that it's...
Okay, now what else?
There was something else that I had to ask you.
I'm going to forget what it was.
Phil, okay.
Remind me, was there anything else that you want to absolutely specifically mention before I forget?
Well, I'd like to give a shout out to a situation that just recently occurred that a few people might know.
But, you know, there's an organization out there called Sea Shepherd.
And its founder, Paul...
Hey, why am I forgetting his name?
Jesus.
Paul Watson.
It's absurd.
That's a brain glitch and nothing more.
I remember the name because it's not Paul Joseph Watson, everybody.
It's another Paul Watson.
Well, Paul Watson got ousted.
He is the founder.
He actually physically made the...
He has a hand in making his own logo.
All of a sudden, the same guy, this Paul LeBombard, who's got interest in the Miami Sea Aquarium and pretending to be saving Toki, he has taken over.
It was a very strategic, slow process, but he basically deceived Paul and ousted him from his own organization.
He's now suing him using the very funds from the organization that he's stolen from, using donors' funds.
So people who were supporting Paul, that money is now actually going to sue Paul.
Paul, to keep him from being able to speak of Sea Shepherd, to keep him from using and wearing the logo that he himself designed and basically made famous.
I mean, he's the reason that the thing is successful.
And there's this ousting.
So we talk about 501c3s and some of the issues that come, and this is the thing I'm having to come to learn eventually as I want to develop this thing.
But here's an example of what can become when you get too big.
But I just want to stress that this Paula Bombard, a.k.a.
Pritam Singh, there are environmentalists out there, and there are people who buy their way into talking about.
Well, there is, by the way, that was the one thing we discussed earlier because that had started with the discussion about Project Veritas, which you're following as well, and we've talked about it at length on the channel.
You need to grow in order to maximize efficiency, maximize reach, but then sometimes you grow too big, you lose control, you can't count on everyone.
The board gets too big, and there's always conflict in the back.
There's always something going on somewhere.
If you're always having a look over your shoulder, you've already gotten too big.
There's drama on the one hand, but then there's overt corruption.
Anywhere there's opportunities, there's going to be predators.
Predators come in and pray.
That's what they do.
There's one more thing I do want to...
I do want to touch on it.
On the Shepard...
Sea Shepherd.
Sea Shepherd.
And that was the actual...
That was the whaling...
Yeah, Whale Wars.
Whale Wars.
They would go there and prevent...
They got the boats.
They're on the seas.
They're the one basically policing the illegal fishing, whereas no other government is.
So they're doing the work.
They're the heroes of the sea out there, right?
I hope no one freezes their bank accounts for...
Well, essentially what Paula Bombard did is that's precisely what he did.
He took the monies and now he's melting down the boats.
He doesn't want nothing to do with this.
So he's changing the entirety of the organization.
So the good news is Paul has started a new one.
So look out for the new Paul Watson Foundation.
But what I did want to touch on, and generally it's a plea.
When it comes to animal rights issues and laws, generally it's a liberal platform that seems to be pro-animal.
But I do get a strong sense that a lot of people on the Republican side feel equally strong for such an issue like whale captivity.
And I really believe that if the Republican Party were to sort of endorse a pro-animal policy and a position...
I really think that they can do a lot of good work, right?
And I do believe that that's just something that I believe the right doesn't touch on enough, and I would like to see that maybe discussed a little bit more on that side.
Now that you say it out loud, I'm seeing branding, and I'm not saying this to be glib or funny at all, but the pro-life movement of the right, it's only different in degree of not supporting capture of animals.
Precisely.
I'm not going to use any hyperbolic comparisons.
It's a form of torture.
It's a form of isolation.
It's a form of ending a life.
It's inexcusable.
But funny thing you mentioned about what Paula Bombard or what's the first name?
Pridham.
Pridham Singh.
He changed his name.
I don't know how and why.
What he's done with the Sea Shepherd Institution, melted down into a useless entity.
My theory, that's exactly what the board of directors in Project Veritas decided they're going to do with Project Veritas.
Maybe he pissed off the wrong Pfizer, the wrong company at one time.
The good people do.
Let's be honest, the good people do.
If you're not ruffling feathers, then you're not going to be effective in your work anyways.
Sure, he's a controversial figure, but good.
That's how you get shit done.
I never found him controversial.
I mean, I know Wikipedia describes him as...
Oh, I'm not talking about James.
I'm actually talking about Paul.
Well, there I know they were engaging in activity that was overtly, objectively dangerous.
It's the nature of what they were doing.
You know, it's not a situation I would ever find myself in on one end or the other because I'm not going to be on a whaling boat.
I'm a neurotic person who has a morbid fear of death.
I ain't going to be on the Sea Shepherd either.
It'd be fun though, wouldn't it?
It could be interesting.
I don't know, man.
You want to go?
Let's do it.
What do you think?
I'll go on it to go fishing.
Okay.
To eat the fish that we catch.
That might be a little conflicting, just saying.
I think they run hand in hand.
They're just...
But no, I think that's exactly what they're trying to do with Project Veritas.
Eradicate the entity of any use, any purpose, because it went one step too far by pissing off one powerful person.
Too many hands involved.
Okay.
Watch The Walrus and the Whistleblower.
Follow me on the social medias.
Thank you, Viva Frey.
Hold on.
Before we do this, I'm just going to at least...
Do we end it...
Can we end it on Rumble and we're going to go to Locals for a few minutes?
Okay, we're going to end this on Rumble.
Go to locals, vivabarneslaw.locals.com.
Dude, I'm getting you started on locals as well.
Yes, let's go.
I need all the advice I can.
TikTok is good for reaching the masses that you would otherwise never reach.
Locals is good for building a community.
Expect it.
So we're going to go there now and I'm going to read through some of the chat because I saw someone said, Viva, you idiot.
Everyone should kill their own meat.
That's ridiculous.
I think there's a bit of humor in this.
I'm not putting anyone on blast.
I'm just going to read the comment.
It says, everyone should hunt their own meat.
Absurd concept.
What would New York City dwellers do?
Eat rats.
First of all, I have no aversion to any type of meat.
They're almost as big as deer over there.
They're bigger than chihuahuas, and you probably have a lot more meat on there.