[Admiral Archer]

Originally Posted by martok2112

As Papa Palptatine once said to young Anakin:

"Good is a point of view."

Contrast this with Obi-Wan's lines to Luke in Ep. 6:

"What I told you was true, from a certain point of view. You're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."

[vuedoc]

There are many people who don't wake up in the morning and decide to do something evil. They believe they are acting for a good cause, they just lack the proper reference point. In order for someone to be construed universally as bad, a universal acceptance of what is good has to exist. I think the human race has some notion of what it is, but things like self-interest and politics tend to get in the way.

[horatio]

Originally Posted by vuedoc

I agree that the issues within the Old Republic were not so chaotic as they were annoying and that Palpatine used the excuse of the war to justify the assumption of his greater power, much thhe way one of the leaders of my country used a foreign issue as an excuse to assert military power. My analogy with my current leader was simply implied to show how one can take existing discontent and make the population believe that anything else has to be better.

Horatio, you make very good points. The only thing I'll add is that many radical movements that gain power are often dismissed as fanacitism by the complacent majority within a country. The Nazis were deemed fanatics by the majority of Germans in the 1930s just as the radical militant Muslims today are dismissed as fanatics by the silent majority within Islam. Sometimes, it is the silent majority that has to be dismissed if fanatic extremism is to be quelled.

OK, no more politics. Just Star Wars from now on. Anyone else think that Anakin's padawan Ahsoka has a cute ass?

Sorry for having gone a bit loco, now I get your point and I completely agree. Believing that a political person is the messiah makes the very people who think so susceptible for deception.
In Western nations, about 5-10% harbour extreme and undemocratic political thoughts. This isn't a problem per se as they have virtually no influence upon the political process ... but what about the other 10-40% who are only slightly xenophobic, racist, antisemitic, fascist, whatever, what about them? They can be influenced by radicals and that's why, as you have pointed out, complacency is indeed the wrong attitude.

But to fight against radical movements, you first have to understand them and their fears. For example we Europeans have what you could call home-bred terrorism, second generation muslim immigrants feel lost between two cultures and turn to extremists (not intending to imply that there don't exist plenty of Jewish or Christian extremists). On the one hand we gotta try to help these lost people abd on the other hand, as you have said, their own community does have to draw a clear line between the decent majority and the radical minority.

Careful with Ahsoka, that might get you in jail.

[martok2112]

Originally Posted by vuedoc

OK, no more politics. Just Star Wars from now on. Anyone else think that Anakin's padawan Ahsoka has a cute ass?

I think Ahsoka is just cute as a button.....period.

Now what I did like is how they managed to translate Padme's cute *** from big screen to small screen. (In fact, I remember in Attack of the Clones, when they were moving Anakin and Padme out to the execution arena on Geonosis, I though....Gee....she's got a cute little butt.)

Originally Posted by Horatio

Careful with Ahsoka, that might get you in jail.

Age may be a different point of view in a galaxy far, far away.

(runs....hides....)

[vuedoc]

For the record, I have a total crush on Natalie Portman. In my mind, she just exudes sex. I've heard her curse in Hebrew and it is so sensual.

[Saquist]

Originally Posted by vuedoc

There are many people who don't wake up in the morning and decide to do something evil. They believe they are acting for a good cause, they just lack the proper reference point. In order for someone to be construed universally as bad, a universal acceptance of what is good has to exist. I think the human race has some notion of what it is, but things like self-interest and politics tend to get in the way.

Yeah but it's hard to buy Anakin as the kind of friend that OBI Wan respects as he lies in exile on Tatoinne because his whole order was brought down by the fluctuating emotions of pissy teenager. Kinda sucks to spend 40 years hiding from him and his master.

[Buckman]

20 years and he wasnt hiding he was in training

[Tiberius1964]

Originally Posted by horatio

...but there have been questionable actions like the support of authoritarian regimes (e.g. Papadopoulos in Greece or Pinochet in Chile) in the Cold War. Fighting fire with fire is not the wisest path.

Yep...but the problem with democracy is that the voters sometimes get it wrong (from the imperial democracy's point of view). The end result is something like Iran in the 50s - a democratically elected government chose to nationalise its oil industry, and because that wasn't in the interests of the USA, the CIA overthrew this democractic government and replaced it with the authoritarian Shah. Which culminated in the Shah's overthrow in 1979 by an Islamic fundamentalist movement. Which just goes to show that you never know what will happen; but hindsight in this case would say that it would have been easier and cheaper in the long run to come to a negotiated deal with the elected government of Iran.

Originally Posted by Saquist

Yeah but it's hard to buy Anakin as the kind of friend that OBI Wan respects as he lies in exile on Tatoinne because his whole order was brought down by the fluctuating emotions of pissy teenager. Kinda sucks to spend 40 years hiding from him and his master.

Or maybe more likely Obi-wan was just heartbroken...all his friends dead, and all because his best friend betrayed them...

There's an interesting reconstruction of Star Wars between the end of Episode III and the beginning of Episode IV. It can be found at http://www.morningstar.nildram.co.uk/A_New_Sith.html

I think it's really cool, as it ties everything together, violates (so far as I know) no canon, and makes the stories deeper and more subtle than even George Lucas might have imagined.

[kevin]

Originally Posted by Saquist

Yeah but it's hard to buy Anakin as the kind of friend that OBI Wan respects as he lies in exile on Tatoinne because his whole order was brought down by the fluctuating emotions of pissy teenager. Kinda sucks to spend 40 years hiding from him and his master.

Actually his order was also brought down because said teenager was very powerful and very important to Palpatine's plans and because Palpatine had been engineering their destruction for decades.

In terms of the Force and the power he held within the prophecy he was, as well as being a prissy teenager, the incarnation of said prophecy and was manipulated by Sidious to his own ends.

Once the order was destroyed and there was only Yoda and Obi-Wan left surviving they had little option but to go into hiding - they could not possibly mount any kind of challenge to the Empire just the two of them. Plus Obi-Wan had a job to do there, which was watch over Luke and ensure his safety.

[jla1987]

I'm so glad we have people here that don't start the whole Star Wars is better than Trek or vice versa...

We could have this dork: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/p...35872#11472671

Originally Posted by vuedoc

For the record, I have a total crush on Natalie Portman. In my mind, she just exudes sex. I've heard her curse in Hebrew and it is so sensual.

For me, she doesn't quite exude sex, but she's definitely a hottie. I remember the first time I ever saw her in Mars Attacks. There's an interesting movie to have on your resume