Introduction: James Jaeger is an award-winning filmmaker who co-founded Matrix Entertainment, which has partnered with Bill Van Alen of Cornerstone Entertainment and constitutional attorney Edwin Vieira Jr. to produce a series of feature-length political documentaries centering on the U.S. Constitution. One of the first documentaries was FIAT EMPIRE about the Federal Reserve System, featuring Congressman Ron Paul, which garnered a Telly Award and went viral as the #1 film on the Internet for six months. Matrix Productions continues to develop, produce and market cutting-edge motion pictures.
Daily Bell: How are you? Any new projects in the works?
James Jaeger: I'm fine. Been very busy with the release of MOLON LABE and a number of shorter documentaries the past year. MOLON LABE – How the Second Amendment Guarantees America's Freedom was inspired by Edwin Vieira's book, The Sword and Sovereignty and the movie we are working on is tentatively entitled, MIDNIGHT RIDE – When Rogue Politicians Call for Martial Law. MOLON LABE and MIDNIGHT RIDE are sister films. MOLON LABE explains what the Second Amendment and Militia Clauses are and MIDNIGHT RIDE explains what will happen if WE THE PEOPLE fail to apply them. The new movie is inspired by Dr. Vieira's new, Amazon-available book, By Tyranny Out of Necessity – The Bastardy of "Martial Law."
Daily Bell: Can you expand, please? Is funding an issue?
James Jaeger: Funding is always an issue; however, it seems to be getting easier with every production because, as people become familiar with our products, they become more comfortable donating because they know what they will get. All of our films are thus donor-financed and in-house funded from the proceeds of past productions. Due to suppressive and onerous security regulations, we are no longer "equity finance" our films. And we would never dream of using bank loans for anything.
Between the larger feature films, we like to produce smaller public service interstitial programs. This past year we produced and released SPIRIT OF TESLA, THE CHATTERBAND, PORCFEST 2014 and EVOLVEFEST 2014.
SPIRIT OF TESLA was shot at the New Yorker Hotel in January of 2014 for the annual event of the Tesla Science Foundation, the largest Tesla association in the U.S. The New Yorker was the last place Nikola Tesla stayed before his death on 11 January 1943. Check out the film and you may be excited about attending the next Memorial Conference at the New Yorker Hotel on 10 January 2015. Physicists, electrical engineers, technology experts, educators, authors, UN staff members and politicians from all over the U.S. and the world come to this conference every year, so it's an incredible learning and networking opportunity. The SPIRIT OF TESLA film and information on the conference are available at TeslaScienceFoundation.org.
Having been a professional musician (electric bass) for many years, I have a fondness for music and live performance. Thus, our production company films bands and concerts regularly. Our last concert was of THE CHATTERBAND, probably the largest dance band in the New Jersey-Pennsylvania area, headed up by Paul Martone. I might add that Matrix Productions is working with Paul on the development of a feature film that will be a musical. Paul has written all of the music and, in my opinion, it's every bit as good as the music in GREASE and WEST SIDE STORY. You can see our recent 8-camera shoot of The Chatterband at mecfilms.com/chatterband.
PORCFEST 2014 was shot over the course of seven days of principle photography in Lancaster, New Hampshire where over 2,000 people from almost every state in the nation, and many foreign countries, congregate to discuss the concept and practice of "freedom" every June 21st to June 29th. This immense annual festival features endless seminars on every subject imaginable, from libertarian and anarcho-capitalist politics, to bee-keeping and survival gardening, to polyamorous relationships. The PORCFEST (short for Porcupine Freedom Festival) is sponsored by the State of New Hampshire and its "Free State Project." You can see the film and find out more about this event at mecfilms.com/porcfest and you can find out about the PORCFEST at Porcfest.org.
And lastly, we just wrapped production on EVOLVEFEST 2014 which takes place every summer in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. EVOLVEFEST is less cerebral and political than PORCFEST and more yoga and musical. The Luminaries, a well-known rap band, flew out from LA to perform a song dedicated to Nikola Tesla. The song, entitled, "Free Energy," as well as the festival, can be screened at mecfilms.com/evolvefest.
Daily Bell: Please expand on your Tesla project.
James Jaeger: Good timing that you would ask this question. We just finished another draft of our screenplay, TESLA – The Poet of Electricity. Thanks to input from many researchers and Tesla experts, including Nikola Lonchar, President of the Tesla Science Foundation, many have called this screenplay the best, if not most original, depiction of Tesla's life ever. True, it does portray J.P. Morgan and Thomas Edison as the antagonists, but we are hoping this is not an impediment to one of the studio/distributors making the picture. After all, HISTORY2 and other mainstream outlets, have recently run documentaries about Tesla that acknowledge the antagonistic relationship between Tesla, Morgan and Edison. If you want to follow the project or read an excerpt from the screenplay, you can do so at PoetOfElectricity.com.
Daily Bell: How did MOLON LABE do? You received good feedback, from what we could tell.
James Jaeger: MOLON LABE has been our most successful film so far. Over 100,000 people watched it for free or purchased DVDs in the past year. Unfortunately, it did not go viral like FIAT EMPIRE because the Left is not on board with the militia issue or the right to "keep and bear." FIAT EMPIRE went viral because both the Left and the Right supported it, if not for opposite reasons. The Left views the Federal Reserve as a big bad corporation and the Right views the Federal Reserve as big bad government. Since a reasonably accurate definition of the Fed is "a quasi-private, government-sanctioned banking cartel," it can be characterized as either government or corporate. In short, Dems disdain big corporations and GOPers disdain big government.
Daily Bell: What's the state of gun control in the US these days – better or worse?
James Jaeger: There are arguably five reasons WE THE PEOPLE have the inalienable right to "keep and bear" weapons: 1) target shooting, 2) hunting for food, 3) self-defense, 4) deterrent against tyranny and 5) our role in state militias per the U.S. Constitution. The NRA seems to specialize in points 1, 2 and 3. Gun Owners of America seems to specialize in 3 and 4 and Oath Keepers seems to specialize in 3, 4 and 5.
Unfortunately, the gun-control lobby seems to specialize in ignoring 1 – 5 even though over 169 million people were murdered by their governments in just the past century. This includes over 61,000,000 murdered by the Soviet State, 35,000,000 murdered by the Communist Chinese State and 21,000,000 murdered by the Nazi State.
And now we have a police state forming under the Department of Homeland Security, all "justified" by the "War on Terror" and its spawn, the PATRIOT Act. MOLON LABE, and the new movie, MIDNIGHT RIDE, will fill you in on the details as to what the Constitution says about all this, especially the Militia System and Martial Law. Follow the progress via MidnightRide.us.
Daily Bell: You interviewed Tea Party individuals for MOLON LABE. What's the state of the Tea Party these days?
James Jaeger: We interviewed Walter Reddy, one of the key founders of the Tea Party, for MOLON LABE and we just finished interviewing him again for MIDNIGHT RIDE. I don't really follow the Tea Party or the Occupy Wall Street movement any longer because both of these movements have been co-opted to a greater or lesser degree by the Republicans and Democrats, respectively. As we expressed in an earlier film entitled, SPOILER – How a Third Political Party Could Win, such produced in association with the Foundation for the Advancement of Free Market Thinking, we don't place too much faith in the DemoPublican Party. My feeling now is that the Libertarian Party offers the best hope for America. As a Libertarian since about 1985, I like this party because it blends some of the best aspects of the Dems and the GOP. I like the Dems' anti-war and anti-drug war positions and I like the GOP's anti-tax and pro-free market positions. WE THE PEOPLE can't have it all, so let's rally around a reasonable position, study and better apply the principles in the Constitution. Then we'll bring this nation back to greatness.
Daily Bell: What is the state of the militia movement in the US?
James Jaeger: Dismal, but getting better. Although the militia that assembled at the Bundy Ranch confrontation was not a constitutional militia, it did serve as a demonstration of how effective state militia could be at balancing an overly aggressive federal government. This is part of the balance of powers envisioned by the U.S. Founders. This is also the reason rogue politicians and tyrants hell-bent on attaining absolute power have eroded the Militia of the Several states over the past 100 years – they are too effective.
All Americans need to do is revitalize the state militia system – per the Constitution – and they will be able to remedy all of the other aberrant conditions we are experiencing today. A militia in every state would be able to repeal all legal tender laws, reinstate gold and silver coin as money (per Article I, Section 8 & 10) and eject or jail the Federal Reserve bankers as the opportunistic and predatory criminals that they are.
But in order for these things to happen Americans need to better understand the full import of the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment states: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." The first 13 words – "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State" – are almost always glossed over. We explain what these words mean in MOLON LABE. We also explain what the other three Militia Clauses – Article I, Section 8, Clause 15; Article I, Section 8, Clause 16 and Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 – mean.
One organization that understands the full import of the Second Amendment and the Militia Clauses is Oath Keepers. Oath Keepers is a non-partisan association of current and formerly-serving military, reserves, national guard, veterans, peace officers and fire fighters who promise to fulfill the oath they swore when they took office, such oath being to support and defend the U.S. Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Hopefully, other gun organizations like the NRA and GOA will join with Oath Keepers and realize all five reasons Americans – and citizens in every nation – have the inalienable right to keep and bear arms as part of their local militia.
Daily Bell: You mentioned freedom of the press in your last interview. Better or worse, in your opinion?
James Jaeger: Worse. I have been reading Snowden-books lately and these paint a dismal picture of the surveillance state's impingement on free-speech rights. Two must-read books are The Snowden Files by Luke Harding and No Place to Hide by Glenn Greenwald. These books lay out the nature and extent of the documents Edward Snowden released to the worldwide public. And they ARE extensive.
One of the things Greenwald highlighted in his book is the cozy relationship the mainstream media and the government have with each other. The media actually calls up the government and lets them know what they are going to report on before releasing it to the public. Government lawyers are then given the chance to invalidate and threaten the media reporter in an attempt to chill his free speech. This all happened to Greenwald and the team that released the Snowden materials. This is why they had to go to The Guardian, a non-U.S. publication, rather than the Washington Post with its "muddled, pro-government voice." Greenwald chronicles this process of bastardization of the press in great detail in his book. I am going to try to interview Glenn Greenwald for MIDNIGHT RIDE if possible.
Daily Bell: The US seems to be embroiled in even more wars these days – probably as a function of a professional, standing army. Are these serial wars ever going to stop? Is the threat of Islamic terrorism coming to the US a real one?
James Jaeger: The United States became a "national security state" when President Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947, which created the CIA. Six years later the fledgling CIA took down the government of Iran and has been destabilizing the Middle East ever since. To this end it created the Mujahideen, which morphed into al Qaeda and now ISIS. Their belief seems to be that Western Civilization cannot survive without a perpetual state of war.
As John Quincy Adams once said, and we like to think, "America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all." Actually, the U.S. has been built on constant wars, aggression and imperial expansion from 1609 Jamestown to the 2014 Middle East war being waged by Obama and previously by Bush. War is the American Way and the idea that we live in a democracy is foolhardy. The elite that dominates the financial and military complex has been using ideology and propaganda to trump up and exaggerate foreign threats for centuries. Citizens have but the merest voice and this is due in part to the endless money that floods into politics. The current ISIS "threat" is little more than a continuous chain of undeclared wars, oil profiteering and support for the military-industrial complex.
Look at history, like when the CIA recruited 50,000 Muslims, trained and supplied them with weapons produced by America's military-industrial complex and then designated them "freedom fighters" against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Today the very same U.S. Government calls them "Taliban terrorists." In short, the U.S. military-industrial complex has a vested interest in a permanent state of tension and war. The present and growing "national security state" requires enemies and functions to manufacture them just as it manufactures weapons. In short, the "terrorists" are not in the Middle East, they're in Washington, DC.
Our new movie, MIDNIGHT RIDE, will discuss the DC terrorists and what to do about them when they call for martial law after their fiat currency system melts down.
Daily Bell: The Pentagon has promised a sustained bombing campaign in the Middle East to smash ISIS. What is ISIS and will a bombing campaign help?
James Jaeger: The bombing campaign will help the military-industrial complex's stocks on Wall Street and the City of London's financial district. It will also help the Intelligence community preserve a demand for their "services." I am reminded of something Ron Paul said long ago:
If we stuck to the Constitution as written, we would have: no federal meddling in our schools; no Federal Reserve; no U.S. membership in the UN; no gun control; and no foreign aid. We would have no welfare for big corporations, or the "poor"; no American troops in 100 foreign countries; no NAFTA, GATT, or "fast-track"; no arrogant federal judges usurping states rights; no attacks on private property; no income tax. We could get rid of most of the cabinet departments, most of the agencies, and most of the budget. The government would be small, frugal and limited. – Ron Paul, 1998.
We seem to have replaced the Constitution with one simple policy: When discussions fail, bomb them. That's the U.S. foreign policy and even the American Way. That's what the U.S. does best. And now it doesn't even use humans to do the actual bombing – the humans are too busy drinking beer and popping pharmaceuticals – it uses robots. So folks, let's face it: Technology is being weaponized to ridiculous, and even cowardly, extents.
WE THE PEOPLE of Earth have allowed a relatively small group of people to commandeer the world's technologies and, under the rubric of "national security," use them to build weapons and wage perpetual war. The basic "justification" for more weapons and war is security, the idea that the world is a dangerous place. But consider this: Would you agree that negative news is more easily passed than positive news? Possibly because, over the eons of human development, it was always more important that the tribe be informed of any potential threats coming their way than it was to be informed about other matters. So nature has, in essence, designed us all to pass negative news much more readily than positive news. If you agree with this, further consider this: Since most of the news that the worldwide news organizations pass is the negative news, most of us hardly hear about the positive news out there. Thus, I posit that there is more positive news out there than negative news and the reason there is more positive news is because civilization is still here. If there were more negative things happening in the world, civilization would no longer be here. So, if positive events exceed, or greatly exceed, negative events, then for every negative story you see in the news – on CNN, FOX or MSNBC, for instance – there must have been two, or even three, positive stories that were NOT reported.
Thus, if FOX tells us that ISIS must be bombed, you can be sure that FOX failed to tell us that scientists have recently discovered an "on-off switch for aging cells" or an "environmentally friendly hydrogen generator" is being created or "a long-lasting, water-based nuclear-energy-powered battery" is on the horizon – all actual positive news stories that you probably didn't hear about.
So here's what people probably need to do. Adopt the position that governments do NOT need secrecy and there should be NO "top secret" documents. Only individuals should have secrets, not governments. Governments should not have secrets because if they have secrets then the people they serve cannot keep them under control. If they cannot be kept under control, it does not matter what wars they may have won or lost as a result of the secrets. This also means central governments should have little or nothing to do with security. All security is really local, as militia systems of the past have demonstrated and the reason the Militia System established by the Founders works. It's a local system. Where was the multi-trillion dollar, central government on September 11th when our disgruntled oil-partners from Saudi Arabia were flying jets into our buildings? Probably out having a beer. And no matter how many trillions such beer-drinking, pharma-popping politicians waste on national security, their promise is as hollow as the promise of virgins for brainwashed Muslims in the afterlife.
Daily Bell: What happened to the peace in Iraq?
James Jaeger: There never was supposed to BE any peace. Why do you think the Iraq Army was disbanded by the Bush Administration? It generated TOO MUCH peace. Why do you think strongman Saddam Hussein was removed from power? He kept TOO MUCH peace. Why do you think Israel – the Jewish State – was established right in the middle of what's shaping up to be the Islamic State? The powers-that-be – terrified of TOO MUCH PEACE in the post-World War II era – hatched a "genius" plan. Seeing how much money could be generated by war-related bank loans and manufacturing, they wanted to assure future business through future wars. So, what better way to keep the global war machine buzzing than to dump 14 million Jews right into a hornet's nest of 1.4 billion Muslims in the Middle East? And then, as if to prove that they were more brilliant than the human imagination can comprehend, they made the entire WORLD dependent on the OIL that comes from the Middle East hornet's nest.
So folks, this is where we are on what Carl Sagan called the "pale blue dot."
Daily Bell: What's going on in Ukraine? Is the US going to end up in a new Cold War with Russia?
James Jaeger: If the U.S. Empire has any say it will. But consider this: The U.S. has never bombed anyone that could bomb it back. The only countries the U.S. bullies are countries that have no means of bombing us back. Even Germany and Japan were incapable of bombing U.S. cities back during World War II. Since then, the U.S. Empire has bombed endless cities and nations that had no possibility of bombing us back. Places like Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo, Pyongyang, Hanoi, Haiphong, Cambodia, Laos, Belgrade, Baghdad, Fallujah and all over Iraq and Afghanistan come easily to mind. And let's not forget places where Washington's clients were given advanced military weapons and tacit permission to bomb, kill and maim people in Indonesia, Chile, Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Congo, Angola, Lebanon and Palestine. For a nation of people that is outraged by the bombing and murder of OUR citizens on September 11th, we sure are morally anesthetized when it comes to acknowledging the crimes that OUR actions, votes and taxes have made possible.
Since Russia has the means of bombing us with not only their drone robots but also nuclear weapons, you can be sure the Nazis in DC will think twice about bullying them like they have bullied all manner of smaller nations. And this is, of course, why all the nations that have nukes don't want any other nations to get nukes. Nukes, for a nation, are no different in principle than a militia in each of the several states. So the same anti local-defense mentality runs like vomit at all levels of central government-think.
But there is a method to all the bombing madness. The strategy is always to stir up a pretext for more "national security" so the government has an excuse to expand forever. And every government does the exact same thing. In essence, they are all partners in the same scam, no matter what their transient "enemy status" is with each other.
The Department of Homeland Security and the NSA want to "justify" their jobs – not get blown up, as they would if the U.S. went up against any nation like Russia. But, as we saw on 9/11, the Pentagon is an easy place to blow up, even if trillions of dollars were supposedly spent defending it. What DID they really spend the money on? Seems they would have spent some of it on more than one camera focused on the wall where the jet supposedly crashed into the building on 9/11.
The U.S. should stop trying to pick a fight with Putin. The Russians are good people and Putin is just trying to keep his job. And how bad could Putin be if he gave a new home to Edward Snowden?
Pat Buchanan has been saying for years (in books that too few Americans have read thanks to the ADL-infested mainstream media) that after the Cold War ended we should have stopped NATO from pointing weapons at the Russians. This, if nothing else, would have been a polite gesture, a gesture that any country that claims to be about freedom and liberty would have done by now. But no, the beer-drinking, porn-watching, pharma-popping Baby Boomers that ooze out of Washington DC were too insensitive to have any common Christian decency. So it seem that the Dems and atheists are right, the United States is definitely NOT a Christian nation.
Daily Bell: Are we entering a new phase in the West of prolonged serial warfare in the Middle East and Africa?
James Jaeger: Yes, but even worse, Western governments are now profiling their own citizens with the aim of making war on their own people, as we see clearly by the activity of DHS in America. The police are being militarized and equipped for combat within our own cities and towns. DHS is hoarding millions of hollow-point bullets for government agencies and departments. Fusion Centers interface local law enforcement with DHS, which also can command a good deal of the U.S. military's domestic "peace-keeping" operations, as we see with troop training at Ft. Stewart for assignment to NorthCom in Colorado. Conflict in the forms of culture wars, ethnic hatred, class warfare, religious clashes, dissent and objections to the loss of freedoms fan the flames of DHS's burning desire to monitor every American via the NSA and the military/police use of drones over our back yards. It's a never-ending, choreographed system of conflict on which the sharks of the military-industrial complex and the Federal Reserve feed.
So the perpetual war for perpetual peace will entail not only the Middle East and Africa; it will entail governments everywhere devouring their own citizenry, like a serpent eating its own tail. Not a very happy vision, but the only chance I see for avoiding that scenario is if and when the Internet awakens enough citizens around the world.
And if they awaken, hopefully they will see that until and unless the trillions of dollars that are being spent on the Global Empire's War Machine are curtailed, the Lindsay Grahams and John McCains of the world will prolong serial warfare in the Middle East, Africa and anywhere possible. But here are some things we can do to stop this:
1) Enact term limits so war mongering congressman can be thrown out irrespective of military-industrial campaign financing.
2) Finance the development of solar and fusion energy technology. If the world stops using oil, the Middle East will go back to a desert. The Global Military will thus have no reason to fight wars to protect oil fields.
3) Get the U.S. to stop any and all aid and all conversations to and with both Israel and the Arab world. It is the U.S. that has been "third-partying" and thus enabling the conflict between Israel and Palestine. If this conflict stops, one more "reason" the Global Military uses to be in the Middle East will cease to be.
4) Educate people in general about the true sources and motivations of conflict and war so they will stop supporting conflict and war through ignorance.
Daily Bell: There are some politicians in the US speaking out against this trend, including Rand Paul. Your impressions of Rand? Will he run for president?
James Jaeger: Rand Paul has been doing a better and better job and I anticipate he will not only run, but also be the next U.S. President. I think the GOP and Establishment secretly realize this as well. Of course, if Jesse Ventura runs, all bets are off. I am not really worried about Hillary getting in, but if she does, that's fine with me: I would love to see the comedy show that might ensue with Bill roaming around the basement of the White House singing opera and seducing Monica-type groupies. That said, keep your eye on pot-state convert Governor Hickenlooper. Since he is supported by some Romney machinery, like Ben Ginsberg, I see no reason why he may not take a shot at the White House. If this happened, he would probably give the Dems another surprise candidate to offer up just like they suddenly offered up Barack Obama, who no one had heard of until Oprah announced him to the world.
Daily Bell: Paul is also worried about the expanding security state. Your thoughts on the NSA etc.? Now that so many aspects of the security state have been exposed will public pressure force a retreat of such government activism?
James Jaeger: The goal of the U.S. surveillance state is the total elimination of privacy worldwide. In the words of Glenn Greenwald, it's to "collect, store, monitor, and analyze all electronic communications by all people around the world."
Rand Paul is worried about this. Mika Brzezinski, of MORNING JOE is not. Of course, Brzezinski, like so many in the mainstream media, is an apologist for big government. Others, like the more independent thinking Nick Gillespie of REASON TV (who I interviewed for my PORCFEST documentary) are willing to openly acknowledge we are a surveillance state but measured in acknowledging that we are a police state. Our new movie, MIDNIGHT RIDE – inspired by Edwin Vieira's new book – By Tyranny Out of Necessity – will clear up any doubts as to where we are at this time and what the U.S. Constitution says about our situation. On another level, we are at a historic crossroads. Will the Internet Reformation be seen to have ushered in unprecedented individual and political freedoms or will it be used as a system of global monitoring and control?
I think it's time WE THE PEOPLE have to acknowledge that we better choose LIBERTY over SECURITY. Choosing liberty has a better chance of causing us all to grow stronger as a species. On the other hand, choosing security will most assuredly cause us all to grow weaker as a species, for an overly-paranoid civilization will inevitably lead to a global, totalitarian state. Thus, the Rand Pauls of the world represent the prudent long-term view and the Mika Brzezinskis of the world represent the frivolous short-term view.
Daily Bell: Is the 21st century a century of increased globalism or is it one of devolution? Were you surprised by the outcome of the Scottish secession vote?
James Jaeger: I was surprised at the outcome of Scotland. I thought they would opt to be independent rather than co-opted by a socialist corps. But isn't this representative of the major question of our time: Will the world unify or Balkanize? There are advantages to both, depending on how one defines the term "globalization." If globalization is defined as a centrally-planned, top-down worldwide management system, this could be a problem, for it violates one of the universe's prime tenets, that of redundancy. On the other hand, if globalization is defined as the global sharing of information and culture over increasingly cost-effective networks, then I would think the universe would embrace this. These considerations also beg one of the oldest dichotomies, that of cooperation vs. competition. I have resolved in my mind that cooperation and competition are good or bad depending on how and when they are used. A politically globalized world could be seen as a world that seeks total cooperation (peace) whereas a politically independent world could be seen as a world that seeks total competition (war). I have resolved this issue by theorizing that cooperation better serves the smaller group whereas competition better serves the larger group. In other words, families and companies should cooperate whereas states and nations should compete. Applied to Scotland and the UK, the two nations should be competing, ergo, Scotland made a mistake by not going independent.
Daily Bell: Next up is Spain. Your thoughts?
James Jaeger: I have a lot of thoughts about Spain, but not necessarily present-day Spain. It is unfortunate that we celebrate Columbus Day in the U.S., for Christopher Columbus and the Spanish conquistadors were barbarians. Their atrocities were so horrendous they are comparable to the Nazis. The Spanish not only looted and destroyed everything they found; they tortured and murdered native people from Jamaica, Cuba and Puerto Rico. Spanish soldiers made wagers as to how many sword strokes it would take to cut a "Carib" in two. Columbus's men challenged each other to see who could best toss infants into the air and catch them at sword-point. Rape was universal and used to humiliate the "Indian" men who could not defend their women. Wolfhounds and mastiffs were set loose to devour natives for sport.
These are some of my thoughts about Spain and other governments that send out missions to colonize and exploit the resources of others. Of course, today, the U.S. Empire is far worse than the Spanish Empire in many ways, for we use high technology to destroy indigenous people of other countries with distant and cowardly air-strikes and then we enslave them with debt and seize their resources when they default.
Daily Bell: Europe generally seems an unhappy place these days, even for the Germans. How long can the EU or euro last in their present forms?
James Jaeger: Europe, what I call the OLD WORLD ORDER, is and will continue to be hopeless until its people throw off the shackles of fiat currency-financed socialism and welfare taxation. In short, the world, led by Europe, is stagnating, just as rocket scientist Robert Zubrin predicted in Entering Space, the book that explains why Homo sapiens should become a space-faring civilization with multiple branches of Humanity. Until and unless we stop allocating the resources of Earth – human, financial, energy, intellectual, etc. – to the activity of war, we are doomed to universal stagnation. In other words, we will die a cold death. That civilizations do this – squander their resources before setting up alternative civilizations on other worlds – may be the primary cause of the Fermi Paradox.
Yes, Europe is a generally unhappy place, especially for the Germans – the only group of people that seem to grasp the idea that production is the basis of morale. The only reason for the EU, or any other political union like this, is so the less productive members of civilization can use the police powers of the state to mooch off the more productive members of civilization. It's all going to crash into a giant pile of molten rubber sooner or later and this is why the powers that be will inevitably call for martial law, the subject of our new documentary, MIDNIGHT RIDE. Again, see MidnightRide.us for details.
Daily Bell: Let's talk about money. Central banks around the world are continually inflating but it really doesn't seem to be doing much good. How do you see this ending? Will Japan achieve success under Abenomics? How about Draghi's stimulus program in the EU – any progress there?
James Jaeger: The world's Keynesian-indoctrinated central banks are in a race to the bottom. As each country inflates its money supply in order to amortize its debts, every other country must follow suit. No matter how many games or new words are dreamt up to explain or "deal" with the situation, it all comes down to this: banking politicians cannot violate the laws of thermodynamics and get away with it any more than anyone else. Money is a tally of human effort (as embodied in products and services) that can ALSO be used as a medium of exchange or a store of value. As a tally of human effort, money is a form of energy; thus, it is subject to the laws of physics. There are basically four laws of thermodynamics. The best known is the law that says that energy cannot be created or destroyed. Applied to money: Money cannot be created out of paper. Printing money does not make that which is printed money. The world's central banks are thus attempting to create energy out of thin air. This is why nothing ever works and economies are stagnating. The only thing that will work is to stop the foolish thinking and the destruction of what we have all built and start allocating our energy (money) into science, especially the science of energy development. When SOLAR and FUSION are fully developed, the energy-cost component will be dropped out of the cost of all or most products and services. After this happens, we should also try to drop out the debt-cost component of production. Debt, no matter what "advantage" it gives in the present, is always a tax on the future.
Daily Bell: Is the Fed really serious about tightening?
James Jaeger: To the degree the Fed plays its silly game of "elastic currency" it will slap the world economy all over the map just like a starving dog ravaging a bowl of kibble. A table-full of men in the Open Market Committee have no idea what the cost or price of money is. These monetary charlatans should be regarded as nothing more than actors on a movie set that are flubbing their lines. What really matters is how much production Artificial Intelligence and slave labor from places like China is going to influence the world's output. And how much of this output are the central banks going to attempt to steal through their process of currency inflation? As bitcoin gains momentum, it may replace fiat currencies because the supply of bitcoin will eventually asymptote by design. When central banks like the Fed realize that they will not be able to co-opt this sort of alien technology, they will of course attempt to outlaw it by buying up the police powers of the state. But what if bitcoin is then in a position to outbid them? This is when the world will see the real color of money and of the central banksters.
Daily Bell: We see only one result of all these programs – they're promoting a worldwide financial fiesta. Stock markets around the world are going hard and fast. Can this last? If so, for how long?
James Jaeger: The money being pumped into global stock markets is coming from the monetization of debt. Think QEs. Even though Title II of the JOBS Act has helped the Wall Street fiesta by opening up new possibilities for start-ups to generally solicit, such start-ups are required to verify their "accredited investors" and this entails more endless paperwork and filing with the SEC and broker-dealers. So, nothing much has really changed since the suppressive Securities Act of 1933. But here's what's funny, if not pathetic, about the current global financial system. In 1933 Congress enacted the Truth in Securities Act in the wake of the stock market crash of 1929. In essence this Act allowed the nanny state to expand its role to "protect" investors from the "big bad" entrepreneurs. In other words, in its simplest form, the Act is designed to protect the rich from the poor, the rich investors from the poor start-up folks. This socialist act – part of the Raw Deal – and the extant so-called Blue Sky Laws have done more to destroy free markets and capitalism than Marx ever dreamt of. On paper the Federal Act and the State Laws look good: They require issuers of stock to fully disclose all information that an investor would require in order to decide whether or not to invest money in some new or existing business.
The flaw in the whole exercise is this: It violates one of the basic tenets of free-market capitalism, "Let the buyer beware." This tenet means it is the INVESTOR'S job to make sure he has all the relevant information about a business before buying its stock, NOT the entrepreneur. If the investor does not have the brainpower to analyze his own investments, then what right does that investor really have to control the power of his money? It's like putting a guy on a bulldozer who has no idea how to drive a bulldozer. Money is like a bulldozer. The people that have it should know how to allocate and control it. This is NOT the responsibility of the government or even fiduciaries. The securities regulations have produced a nation of people that are total morons with respect to the control of money. Today's investors are basically morons. They invest in those things they should NOT invest in and they fail to spot investments that they SHOULD invest in. Is it any surprise the world is so screwed-up and stagnant?
When the government inserted itself into the market in 1933 all it did was make it almost impossible for new businesses to raise money. But that's not the funny thing. The funny thing is it was the relatively new Federal Reserve System that actually crashed the market in 1929, not the equity traders. The government and the banks simply seized upon the debacle as a "justification" for the creation of impossible securities regulations so that competition could be stamped out and the large corporations and banks could prosper. Thus, we now have the system we have today: Big, Fed-member banks endlessly servicing consolidated, multinational corporations owned by moron stockholders that have no idea how to handle money and the rest of the American middle class businesses are in the toilet. This is why any and all securities regulations at the local, state, federal and global levels must be irradiated. Those that can't handle money must be stripped of their money by the savage market so that they cannot bulldoze any more of society.
Daily Bell: We think one of the only investments with staying power involves the cannabis industry. What are your thoughts on the growing movement to legalize cannabis?
James Jaeger: Pot, like many drugs, is fun but it should be left up to the user – in consultation with educators, doctors, opinion leaders, mothers and scientists – not the government. Just as security regulators have no business telling investors what stocks to put into their portfolios, the state has no business telling people what drugs to put into their bodies. The only thing that is worse than the state bowing OUT of substance use is its participation as a revenue partner IN substance use. Dumb and ignorant people always think that if the state taxes drugs, that will act as a deterrent to drug use. This is foolish horse-crap thinking, for all it does is ensure that the drug use will NEVER go away. When the state is involved in the nicotine, alcohol, gambling and pot industries, one can be sure that all of these industries are here to stay. Thus, the taxing state is not only a profit-participant; it's an abettor of a drugged and stupefied citizenry. And as the citizenry becomes more drugged and stupefied, it is easier and easier for the state to get more and more insane, anti-Constitutional "laws" passed. The bottom line for me is this: If the free market wants to PROFIT from the sale of cannabis or any other drug or product, it should be free to do so. But if the government wants to PROFIT from same, it should be reminded that its supposed to be a GOVERNMENT not a PIMP.
Daily Bell: How about gold and silver? Both are under price pressure. Good time to buy – or sell?
James Jaeger: I say it's an excellent time to buy silver and gold. If bitcoin fails, or is destroyed the Global Fiat Elite, gold and silver will continue to be unrivaled for another thousand years.
Daily Bell: Let's talk about the entertainment industry. Hollywood is having a wretched year – why?
James Jaeger: Maybe so, but the global box office hit an all-time summer record for movie admissions AND revenues. But while this is happening, top executives in Hollywood are being fired and laid off in the biggest shakeup in years. Some say this is being caused by skyrocketing costs and radical changes as to how people consume entertainment, but it is also being caused by the fact that the big-budget pictures – tent pole productions – aren't paying off as much. People don't want to see IRON MAN 13 or SUPERMAN 28.
Also, the number of films being released by each studio has steadily decreased over the past 5 years. For instance, Sony went from 21 releases in 2009 to just 16 releases in 2013. Warner went from 28 releases in 2009 to just 19 in 2013 and Disney went from 18 in 2009 to just 10 releases in 2013.
As far as the executive upheaval, a lot of this is due to the analog to digital transition. Over the past 20 years, executives familiar with conventional, analog filmmaking (35mm film, chemicals, standard release print distribution and pull-down projection, etc.) have slowly been losing ground to a new breed of executive more familiar with the digital landscape (high-def origination, CGI and satellite distribution of digital release prints, etc.).
All of these things are factors, but I say there is one factor that no one in Hollywood is talking about. This is the growing and universal "no solicitation policy." What does this mean? It means – in a sentence – the major studios are no longer interested in ORIGINALITY; they are only interested in INCEST. Specifically, this means that the studios "only develop material that our producers on the lot originate" – as an executive at one of the major studios told me the other day. Anyone else in the entire world of 5 billion, experience-laden adults that may have an original story or unique screenplay is barred from Hollywood. If such a person approaches a Hollywood studio, the studio brands their letter, phone call, submission or creative work "unsolicited" – meaning, don't call us; we will NEVER call you. And the Hollywood control group never does call anyone outside its small, incestuous tribe, known as "insiders." Thus, like DNA that never experienced any mutant permutations leading to new and exciting organisms, Hollywood remains the stagnant dinosaur it has become, never leading to any new and exciting movies.
Moron Hollywood stockholders in New York can fire and musical-chair all the executives they want, but until they, and management, realize that the best ideas for movies will ALWAYS come from the larger pool of 5 billion people OUTSIDE the studio walls rather than the 5,000 people INSIDE the studio walls, Hollywood will continue to stagnate. The word "unsolicited" must thus be relegated to the same stature as the word "anti-Semitic" before Hollywood's wretched years will end.
Daily Bell: Are we seeing more independent directors and producers such as yourself? Is this a trend?
James Jaeger: An "independent" (whether producer and/or director) is defined as "one who is NOT employed or contracted by an MPAA studio/distributor." It's as simple as that. If you are a "producer on the lot" at WARNER BROS. and the studio in any way finances or picks up your product ("negative pickup deals"), then you are NOT an independent. So, given what I just said about "no unsolicited material," it's easy to see why we are seeing more independent directors and producers. To put it another way, the Hollywood "control group" has gone insane. It has gone insane because too many tribe members have had too much artistic incest with each other and their creative brains are now fused into dysfunction. A battery that's had all its terminals crossed is the same way.
But the universe does not care. The digital revolution and the global distribution network, known as the Internet, have made the studio / distributors, their movie theaters, cable bills, outrageously expensive silver-based movie film and Rivas splicers obsolete. As Matrix Productions and other independents have been showing for years, we are able to make feature films and documentaries without Hollywood. It does not take millions of dollars to tell an original story; it takes originality. And it does not take $50 million marketing budgets to ram the same old crap down moviegoers' throats. It takes original and innovative stories with thoughtful talent packages, well-executed production management and tasteful post-production to interest moviegoers.
So, as computer technology improves, independent productions will become indistinguishable from studio productions. It's only a matter of time AND a matter of keeping the MPAA studios from lobbying Congress to pass suppressive Internet laws like CISPA, PIPPA and SOPA.
Daily Bell: How's the copyright situation in Hollywood? Given the PR disaster concerning Kim Dotcom are there any thoughts about relaxing the copyright battle?
James Jaeger: Even though I don't support monopolies in general, I think some monopolies can be good. A monogamous relationship is a monopoly, thus many feel marriage is good. Corporations that generate high margins from well-performing patents, if not excessively greedy, can be much more innovative and beneficial to society than corporations performing in a perfectly competitive "free" market with no maneuvering room. This said, copyrights on screenplays and movies should not be placed in the same camp as patents on life-saving drugs and health care technologies.
Unfortunately, many in the "open source" movement have little or no experience in the real world. Sure, the "copyright cartel" is everything Max Keiser says it is; however, the source of the problem is NOT copyrights – it's contracts of adhesion, predatory, unethical and illegal business practices, nepotism, cronyism, discrimination, creative accounting and cross collateralization. If you don't know what I mean, I direct you to four books that will clear everything up: The Feature Film Distribution Deal, An Empire of their Own, Fatal Subtraction and Indecent Exposure. Anyone that has not read all four of these books is verging on clueless about Hollywood and its modus operandi.
Daily Bell: Where does Hollywood go from here?
James Jaeger: Hollywood is not a place; it's an idea. As such, it will continue to evolve subject to technology. Hollywood was born from technology – Edison's invention of the motion picture camera – and it will follow technology. This question, where Hollywood goes from here, is really a very complex question, one I and my colleagues attempted to answer in a lengthy paper entitled "TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTIONS – How the Motion Picture Industry Has Advanced." Given we put extensive work and research into the paper, I hope you don't mind if I direct your readers to it. It can be found at jaegerresearchinstitute.org/articles/tech_revs.htm. To whet your appetite for this paper, here is an excerpt from the first two paragraphs:
People that speak of THE technology revolution – especially in the motion picture industry – may be surprised to realize that we have at least ten technology revolutions going on in the entertainment industry alone. This paper will attempt to identify each revolution and discuss the problems and challenges we face every time we push a button or click a mouse.
In rough order of appearance, the technology revolutions that have been impinging on cameras, computers, software, transfer equipment and various devices, making them easy, confusing or impossible to use are as follows:
It could be argued that some of these revolutions are subsets of existing revolutions, if not wars or battles in their own right, but for now we will break them down into these categories.
If one has a grasp of these technologies, they will also have a grasp of where Hollywood is going.
Daily Bell: Any other thoughts or comments? How are you feeling these days generally? Are you optimistic or pessimistic and why?
James Jaeger: I have been fortunate to be able to originate and work on six feature-length documentaries with some incredible people. These documentaries are FIAT EMPIRE, ORIGINAL INTENT, CULTURAL MARXISM, CORPORATE FASCISM, SPOILER and MOLON LABE. The people are Ron Paul, G. Edward Griffin, Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ted Baehr, Pat Buchanan, Chuck Baldwin, Nelson Hultberg, Peter Lillback, John McManus, Jack Rooney, John Williams, Alex Jones, Larry Pratt, Walter Reddy, Stewart Rhodes, David R. Gillie and Larken Rose.
Hopefully, the new film in production, MIDNIGHT RIDE, will round out the series I refer to as my Constitutional Series. After this I would like to embark on some films that fall into different categories. These films are all up at MatrixxProductions.net but some of the projects are:
I don't know if any of these films are of interest to anyone or any organization other than myself, but if they are, let me hear from you at jjaeger@mecfilms.com. The problem for a filmmaker is always balancing one's interests with the interests of others because films need financing to become accomplishments.
MOLON LABE, our last film, was presented and supported by Oath Keepers and Braeburn Entertainment, for which I and everyone at Matrix Entertainment are very grateful. I'm sure you all know about Oath Keepers, the organization of courageous men and woman who constantly attract praise and ire from the media for staunchly following the Constitution. And if you read the Oath Keeper publications and website – found at OathKeepers.org – you will encounter the many fine articles and insights of Elias Alias, the publisher, a true patriot and one of the powers behind Oath Keeper's success. But many of you may not be familiar with Richard Iott of Braeburn Entertainment, another true patriot and executive producer behind not only MOLON LABE, but 25 additional feature films, including BEAUTIFUL BOY, CARJACKED, NEVER CRY WOLF and DEAL.
If you want to help get MIDNIGHT RIDE made, go to MidnightRide.us/donate and donate what you can afford. We will acknowledge you with a producer, executive producer, associate producer or production associate screen credit as a way of saying thanks. If you want to get a DVD of any of our movies, go to MoviePubs.net/dvds. Donations and purchases of the movies are how we continue the productions. All of the movies are put up on the Internet for free as a public service after a short holdback window.
Daily Bell: Thanks for your time.
James Jaeger: You are welcome. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to visit with you at The Daily Bell.
We were happy to catch up to James Jaeger and to hear about some of his upcoming projects. The Tesla project sounded most interesting, especially since he's just finished another draft of his screenplay, TESLA –The Poet of Electricity – some of which can be read here: PoetOfElectricity.com.
Tesla's many inventions and cutting-edge explorations in such areas as lasers, wireless communications and potentially limitless "universal" energy continue to fascinate the world some 70 years after his death.
Part of the interest in Tesla stems from the Internet itself and the increasing availability of information about his interests and inventions. And this is part of a larger intellectual realignment that has occurred in the past several decades. The Internet Reformation is increasingly making available information that reshapes people's perception of society. It is also starting to change some fundamental legal options.
Chief among these is the expanding movement to legalize cannabis and perhaps other drugs as well. Regarding this, Jaeger tells us that cannabis, like many drugs, "should be left up to the user … Just as security regulators have no business telling investors what stocks to put into their portfolios, the state has no business telling people what drugs to put into their bodies."
This perspective is now increasingly recognized, even within international circles, and information such as that provided by James Jaeger has helped make a difference. His productions may not yet have reached millions but over time their circulation will doubtless continue and expand. If you're not already aware of James and his work at Matrix Entertainment, please take a look.
