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The Case for the Empire
fReNeTiK writes "In this amusingly controversial article over at the weekly standard's web site, we get to hear an opinion not often heard among the hordes of Star Wars fanatics out there: The rebel alliance are actually "... an unimpressive crew of anarchic royals who wreck the galaxy so that Princess Leia can have her tiara back." An entertaining read which will surely spark flame wars of epic proportions." Reader kaypro submits an MSNBC story examining the
science of Star Wars. And
Ant notes that the
Clones DVD will be out earlier than expected.
Its clear that the rebel alliance are terrorists.
Parallel: Imagine a bunch of heavily armed British (or even French) Monarchists waging guerilla war across th US to undo the "injustice" of the American revolution and restore the House of Windsor to power.
The whole Star Wars series is responsible for promoting and glamorizing terrorism. Somebody arrest George Lucas.
...of course, he should have been arrested for Ep 1.
Pinochet was a benign dictator? This man tortured and killed thousands of people. I'd hardly call that benign..
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
This article reminds me of a series of articles found on Space.com called The Phantom Heresies, a collection of speculation on why things were in Star Wars. (Because these links are fairly old, you may have to scrounge around--use Google.)
The link above discusses the powers and the arrogance of the Jedi, and why they had it coming. The cool part for me about these articles was that they reflected my views after watching The Phantom Menace after watching how mortibund both Jedi Council and Senate were in comparison to the efficient manipulations of Darth Sidious in TFM.
Was the Empire a better system? I think that a gilded cage is a cage, no matter how informative or high-class the reading material is that covers the bottom of my cage. I would side with the Rebels, lightsaber in hand if I were a Jedi.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
Just look at the US Revolution, the people didn't really know how they were going to change the government, they just knew that they wanted (or needed) it to change. The new government was created years after the old one was overthrown, and even then people were challenging it even up to and including the Civil War (ok, yes, I know, many causes of the Civil War).
Did the old British Empire work, for the most part it did. It didn't interfere with the small farmer (like this empire), so the farmers didn't all pick a side until one came and found them. Most of the US revolution came from and began in the larger seaport cities (Philadelphia and Boston were the big ones that I can think of right away). This parallels the Empire in that the small planets, like tatoine that didn't have many cities, really wouldn't see much interferrence from the empire (unless they did something to warrent the empire getting into their buisness, as this guy is claiming).
It is very true that this Dark side is only evil when compared to the alternative (the Light side). The Dark side really doesn't do much that is 'bad'. Their main crime is trying to undermine the light side and gain power. This sounds like commercialism and capitalism (a new competitor trys to build strength while hiding from the old established corporation).
While I may not have all of my ideas straightened out, I just wanted to get some of my ideas out on the forum for dissection (and perhaps some karma in the process :) )
-CPM
---You're all I need, When the water runs deep, You're all I need, Now I cry my soul to sleep -- Collective Soul, Needs
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I'm betting he's waiting until after episode 3, to add what would be serious prequel spoilers to the second half of the "hexology", or whatever the term is ("hextet"?), since I seriously doubt it's going to be a nonology anymore.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
It's time to put my full karma load to good use....
... If you don't have the blood, you don't get the Force. Which makes the Jedi not a democratic militia, but a royalist Swiss guard."
I'm hoping that this article was written in jest, but in case it isn't, it needs to be addressed. The whole thing is asinine, but here are the most offensive errors.
The Republic is controlled by a Senate, which is, in turn, run by an elected chancellor who's in charge of procedure, but has little real power.
The Senate moves so slowly that it is powerless to stop aggression between member states.
Episode I makes it clear that it's Palpatine who is behind the bureaucratic mess that plagues the Senate. He's trying to discredit Chancellor Velorum so that he can become Chancellor. Palpatine (as Darth Sidious) admits to this.
"The Republic is not what it once was. The Senate is full of greedy, squabbling delegates. There is no interest in the common good." At one point he laments that "the bureaucrats are in charge now."
But it's obvious to everyone in the audience that Palpatine's concern is an act to gain the trust of Amidala. This is just a no-brainer.
What's more, it's not clear that they [the Jedi] should be "protecting" anyone. The Jedi are Lucas's great heroes..., but the truth, revealed in "The Phantom Menace," is that the Force isn't available to the rabble.
I don't understand the problem with this. Qui-Gon explains that they have a screening program that presumably recruits kids from no specific background to become Jedi. So membership in the Jedi order isn't hereditary at all. That one must possess special qualities to be a jedi isn't a problem either. You can't program computers if you aren't good at technical stuff, but that doesn't make us a Royal Swiss Guard.
As for the Jedi being blinded with arrogance, yeah I guess that's true. But if they hadn't fucked up somehow, you wouldn't have had Vader, or the Emporer, and Episodes IV-VI would just be about the Jedi council sitting around picking their noses.
If anything, since Leia is a high-ranking member of the rebellion and the princess of Alderaan, it would be reasonable to suspect that Alderaan is a front for Rebel activity or at least home to many more spies and insurgents like Leia.
Assuming that this is true, and Alderaan is armed to the teeth and crawling with terrorists, the indiscriminate slaughter of every man, woman, and child on an entire planet would be an act of evil greater than anything we've ever seen. Much worse than Nazi Germany, Maoist China, and Stalin combined. Of course, there's no reason whatsoever to believe that his claims about Alderaan are true.
Oh yeah, and that remark about Pinochet being a benign dictator. Saying that Pinochet's rule in Chile was acceptable is like saying that a little bit of murder is OK, just not too much. How many innocent people is it OK to murder? 100? 1000? 10,000?
I'm sorry for ranting about something that isn't even a big deal, but this article is so badly written that it's offensive. This conservative fuckhead should go back to the trailer park where he belongs.
Steve
So your argument goes like this,
Pinocchet was a monster. He terrorized the people he was asked to protect. He had no respect for their fundamental rights. You are correct that his crimes did not match those of Stalin, Hitler, or Vlad the Impaler for that matter. Last time I heard, you don't have to commit genocide to be considered a criminal.Finally, the ends do not justify the means.
Believe nothing -- Buddha
You know, you think about it, Leia and her "rebel friends" look like a bunch of terrorists, depending on your perspective. "Striking from a hidden base", and all that.
Sure, the empire is evil. Sound familiar? Striking out against the great evil that has enveloped the galaxy in its wicked grasp, this small band of freedom fighters struggles against the overwhelming might of an unjust and corrupt empire.
But, from the other side of the "war on terror":
"Our top story tonight, imperial security sources tell us that a radical terrorist group, calling themselves "the alliance", has struck once again at key imperial military and economic interests in the outer rim of the galaxy."
"Our source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that terrorists, using small, lightly armed attack fighters, carried out a cowardly surprise attack against a major imperial space station. The source reports that the terrorists were beaten back and that the space station sustained only minor damage."
"However, we at ENN have received unconfirmed reports that the space station was, in fact, destroyed by the terrorist attack. Only one imperial commander reportedly managed to escape from the space station, and is now leading a manhunt to track down and destroy the terrorists responsible for this attack."
No, I'm not equating the star wars empire to any particular country on earth, just making the observation that what differentiates a rebel hero from a terrorist is your perspective.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
"First they came for the Droids but I was not a Droid so I did not speak out;
Then they came for the Wookies and the Naboo but I was not one of them, so I did not speak out;
Then they came for the Jedi but I was not a Jedi so I did not speak out.
And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me."
No, no, no. Pinochet wasn't a relatively benign anything. Thousands killed, tens of thousands tortured. Pinochet was one of the really top-level international criminals of the last century, not perhaps in the same bracket as Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot, but certainly at the top of the second rank.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
I don't think this was meant to be ironic at all. Remember that the Weekly Standard is a far-right publication and Pinochet was a far-right dictator (crack down on those communists etc). Not to throw around the term "facist" lightly, but it wouldn't surprise me if they had some real sympathy for him.
AFAIK, Chile was ruled by a Socialist named Salvador Allende,
who was elected and was determined to reform the admittantly crumbling economy with structural changes.
Those structural changes included the nationalising of of the industrial sector (including U.S.-owned copper mines). This lead to strong oppositon of the expropriated U.S. companies, (esp. copper mining and ITT) and the US goverment.
To quote Henry Kissinger:
In the two first years of Allende's rule "Unemployment declined as the economy expanded, inflation was kept under control, and workers' incomes rose by fifty percent[...]"(John Foran, Allende's Chile, 1972)
The expatriation of US companies led to countermeasurements from the US goverment.
The U.S. ambassador to Chile probably words his goverment's stance best:
For some reason, the Chilenian economy was declining.
Despite heavy support from the US goverment for the conservative party and the economical decline, Allende's party increased its share of the votes at the next election.
The CIA was heavily involved in supporting the conservative and right-wing groups with money, weapons and training. In 1971 to 1972 several coups were attempted, when Pinochet finally succeded.
The National Security Archive of the GWU has some of the partially disclosed CIA documents.
Lastly, about the economical developement in Chile.
Between 1972 nd 1987, the GNP per capita fell 6.4 percent.
Maybe have a look at "Analysis of Chilean economic and socioeconomic policy: 1975-1989 by Sherman Souther".
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
I call Godwin's law. The conversation is over, please go home everyone there is nothing to see here.
http://www.godwinslaw.com/
Horseshit.
Terrorists attack civilian populations for the PRIME reason of sowing (duh) terror. This is why George Washington wasn't a terrorist, but he was a freedom fighter. I'm not aware of any mass executions of British loyalists during the Revolutionary War (yes, many were driven out of their homes and into Canada. But that's what happens when you support the losing side in ANY war.)
Since the rebels attacked a MILITARY base (the Death Star), it wouldn't have been an act of terrorism. If they had killed Grand Moff Tarkin's Momma, that would have been terror.
Moral relativism is the sign of a lazy, spoiled mind.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
This author characterizes some events from this movie in a, um, novel way. First, the destruction of Alderaan as the rightful putting down of a probable nest of violent rebels. From one perspective what he says is true. However, the people of Alderaan were not given a chance to declare or denounce their loyalty to the Emperor. On a planet of millions, it is reasonable to assume that their were a wide variety of opinions. Certainly some people supported the Emperor, just as others obviously denounced him. His supporters were executed as traitors for a crime they did not commit.
Second, if Darth Vader and the Emperor really wanted order, then they would not summarily execute millions of people. All governments that are worthy of the name provide their constituents with something called due process. Now, due process is not always as rigorous as it is in the United States. But in any fair government, there is always a set of rules that govern how the authorities can proceed to the decision to incarcerate or execute. Again, there was no process given to the denizens of Alderaan. Those people were executed as traitors for a crime they either did not commit or were not proven to have committed. That is something, but it is not order. Wearing the veil of government does not automatically make the Emperor's actions legal. For example, Hitler lawfully took power in Germany. In everything he did, he made sure that there was legislation, the imprimatur of legality, to support the action. However, his government lacked legitimacy. Nothing that the Nazis did should have been considered binding legal authority, because the Nazis did not have a legitimate claim to govern. Legitimacy comes from support of the governed (by, for, and of the people, remember?), not from standing up and declaring one's self emperor and thus the sole source of all legal authority. Legitimacy also comes from a certain moral authority. A government that executes its citizens like playthings, in a back room judgment about the greater good, lacks the moral authority to govern.
Third, the author characterizes Piett's promotion as a laudable example of merit rising into its own right. But we can assume then that his superior, Admiral Ozzel I think, did not rise to his lofty position through incompetence. No, Darth Vader executed Ozzel, because Vader had, to put it lightly, an anger management problem. If you ask any soldier worth his salt whether he would want to rise in rank based on his own merit, that soldier would enthusiastically say yes. But if you ask that soldier if he would like to serve in a force where field promotions were conducted by the commander-in-chief after he executed a top-rank officer for a minor mistake, that same soldier would give a resounding no. Meritocracy does not mean rewarding incompetence with execution. Nor does meritocracy mean that the rewards of life are available on the whim of one's superiors. Darth Vader's system of promotion is about as far from meritocracy as one can go.
Fourth, the author characterizes the Republic as eager to quash the separatists. Actually, the senators that we have come to associate with peace and justice (Amidala and Organa) are the main opponents of forming an army to counter the separatists. The only members of the Republic that are eager to quash the separatists are the ones under the direct influence of the guy that is funding both the separatists and the clone army in a brazen attempt (at least to the audience) to engineer a crisis that will allow him to seize total power. It's the burning of the Reichstag. First, Darth Sidious engineers the separation movement. Then, he secretly orders the construction of a clone army. Then, as Palpatine, he engineers the discovery of the separatist army. This discovery turns the separatists into something other than a bunch of systems that want small government--they become a force that is ready to attack the Replublic. Then, Palpatine is able to manipulate a weak-minded senator into pushing him into power in service of the cause of defending against the separatists. Palpatine is then able to call on the thing that he wanted all along: his army of efficient, obedient killing machines. The separatists are not earnest capitalists seeking the freedom of a laissez-faire government to bring themselves prosperity, they are dupes of a man with designs on nothing less than absolute power. By the time Palpatine is done he will have destroyed those separatists right along with the Republic.
I could go on, but you get the point. The author has taken the Star Wars story and used it in an attempt to weave his own little tale about how big government is bad. But by glossing over atrocities such as the wholesale murder of millions of people, he reveals that what he really thinks is that he ought to be the government because he knows better than all us stupid, little people. We should all do as he says, and if we don't like it, he won't mind killing us in the name of the greater good (of which he is sole arbiter). Frankly, I'll take freedom.
...to use the World Trade Center to destroy innocent planets with it's massive planet-destroying deathray. I'm an American but I cannot defend my own government in these genocidal actions and I understand your point of view.
Clearly the World Trade Center was a military installation, armed to the teeth with laser turrets and weapons of mass destruction and thus was a legitimate target for the loveable ragtag group of muslim rebels.
The Vietnam comparisons are also striking, though the 1,000,000 vietnamese who died in that war may disagree about how much "creaming" went on. Also those of you who have seen the Jedi DVD extras know there is that one deleted scene where the Ewoks capture a storm trooper, starve him and pierce his eardrum with a sharpened stick of bamboo in order to get him to talk about troop movements. Clearly a parallel there.
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
"We will continue to fight these terrorists, and the rogue governments who harbor them, until the universe is safe, once and for all, and the security of the Neo-New Cosmik Order ensured."
It was one year ago today that the Death Star, perhaps the greatest symbol of the Empire's might, was destroyed in an attack by fanatic Rebels, who used small, single-person crafts to infiltrate seemingly impenetrable defenses. Thousands of mourners were on hand to remember and pay tribute to the victims and their families.
"We lost our innocence that day," reflected one mourner. "I guess we thought we were immune from the kind of violence that happens in other galaxies. We were wrong." "I lost hundreds of buddies that day," said one teary-eyed Stormtrooper. "Guys whose only crime was trying make the Universe a safer place."
Although the day was colored by sadness, the mourners found some relief in the news of a decisive victory over the Rebels. In an attack led by Darth Vader, Empire forces were able to rout hundreds of Rebels from a network of caves underneath the surface of the planet Hoth. "We're not sure we got them all," says a Vader spokesman. "There are a lot of places to hide in those caves. But we've delivered a powerful blow to the terrorist's infrastructure, that's for sure. Today, the Empire has struck back."
Initial reports are unclear as to the fate of Luke Skywalker, a hero among the Rebels, who is rumored to have delivered the fatal blow to the Death Star. Skywalker, a former desert-dweller from the planet Tattooine, became a part of the Rebellion after family members were killed. Skywalker was trained by a militant wing of the Rebels, known as "Jedi Knights." Fanatical in their religious beliefs, the Jedi Knights claim to derive their power from the mystical "Force."
It's believed that Skywalker was specifically trained by infamous terrorist O bin Wankanobi. Wankanobi, occasionally called "Ben" and easily recognized by his bearded visage and long, flowing robes, achieved near-martyr status among the Rebels after his death last year during a spy mission. His more fervent followers believe that Wan Kenobi lives on within them today, some even claiming to hear his voice during times of duress.
The attack on the Death Star came shortly after the Empire's destruction of Alderstaan, a planet whose government was known to harbor terrorists. Responding to criticism over the total annihilation of the planet, Vader stated, "There is no middle ground in the War on Terror. Those who harbor terrorists are terrorists themselves. Alderaan was issued ample warning. The fight for continuing Freedom is often burdened by terrible cost."
The cost of this war can still be seen today in the continuing efforts to build a coalition government on Tattooine. Longstanding animosities among the planets various ethnic groups, including the Jawas, Tusken Raiders and scattered human settlers, have been an impediment to the peace process. The Empire continues to maintain a small peace keeping force until a provisional government is finally in place.
Much of the difficulty in fighting the Rebel forces stems from their lack of a central organizing structure. "They don't play by the traditional rules of war," complained one spokesman. "They come in all shapes and sizes, united only by their single-minded desire to destroy the Empire before it destroys them."
The Emperor closed his comments today by stating that "the cowardly attack on the Death Star left a deep scar on the Empire. However, we will not stop fighting until every last evildoer has been brought to justice." He paused for several moments, wiping away a tear and then added with determination, "We will never forget."
"I wish we could all just get along," said one of the mourners. "But it's hard to offer an olive branch to a cult of religious fanatics whose main tool is violence and who insist on calling us the Dark Side."
(I posted this once before, but it seemed appropriate to post it again :-)
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?