From a certain point of view

Alright my padawans, for this post, why don’t we meme it up?

Specifically, with this meme:

But was it actually treason? Was the attempted arrest of Palpatine by the Jedi illegal and treacherous? The short answer is yeah, kinda. When you really look into the details of the confrontation between the Jedi and Palpatine before the execution of Order 66, you’ll start to wonder yourself as to what the heck Mace Windu was thinking when he burst through the doors of Palpatine’s chamber.

So, long story short, Mace Windu is informed by Anakin Skywalker that Chancellor Sheev Palpatine is actually a Sith Lord (A fact that he should have seen coming from over 12 parsecs away). Anyway, so Master Windu hears this news and decides, “Alright, I’ll just take 3 other Jedi Masters with me and arrest the Chancellor”. Uhm, what?

 

Woah Woah, hold your horses there Mace. You’re just going to walk into the Senate building… and arrest the Supreme Chancellor? You’ve got to realize that the Chancellor is a democratically elected head of state, right? What authority did Mace, or even the other Jedi have? The most of the galaxy, they were nothing more than religious monks that the government worked with for tradition’s sake. And now the Jedi are just going to walk in and arrest the Chancellor? On what grounds? The Jedi had no evidence, no warrant, and the people definitely did not suspect Palpatine of much. While it is not evident from the movie, Revenge of the SIth, Mace Windu plays judge, jury, and executioner in a literal attempt to assassinate a head of government, and no less at a time of war. In many cases, that would not only amount to treason, but high treason.

 

It’s no wonder that Palpatine was able to make the people of the galaxy believe everything he said, because as evil as the dude was, he was kind of telling the truth. The Jedi definitely did attempt to kill him solely on the fact that they believed he was a Sith, and even if he was, there was no conrete evidence of Palpatine commiting crimes against the Republic (even though he totally did). As a result, The Jedi attack on the Chancellor opened the way for Palpatine to claim that from his point of view, the Jedi were evil, and that in order to stop the war, the Republic needed to be reorganized to bring peace, freedom, security, and justice to his new empire.

Weddings and Super-Lasers

Greetings, exalted ones!

I am extremely happy to give you an update on the Star Wars committee I ran for Model UN two weeks ago- the one I was stressing out about like no one’s business. Anyway, I’d just like to say that it went really well. Like really REALLY well. way better than I thought. Apparently the delegates really loved it, so I’m very happy about that. So let’s get right into everything that happened.

To start of, I was extremely nervous walking into things, because I was afraid that I had nothing organized and my war and economics mechanics wouldn’t work. Ok, so one of my worries turned out to be true. As soon as committee started, my economics model completely fell apart. All the numbers I plugged in for values made no sense, and none of the delegates could figure out how to buy starships or troopers. I immediately started freaking out. I guess that what happens when you make a liberal arts major handle numbers. Luckily, one of my staffers who’s a straight up genius worked his STEM magic and fixed up all the values and clarified it to the delegate. After that, we were off without a hitch.

The delegates of course, were up to their usual no good. After a series of backstabbing, weapons building, and small rebellions, the Empire decided they had enough and went on to burn down an ENTIRE planet. I had hoped the delegates in the New Republic would react but they were made up of delegates that weren’t very adept, so they kind of just let that slide. The Empire definitely took a more active role in war, but played to hard and fast, and lost a lot of battles, keeping them on the back-foot for most of the committee. All the while, the members of the Independent Systems decided to ban together and formed the strongest military force in the galaxy. They could take out both the Empire and the New Republic combined- so naturally they decided to do nothing with it.

The Imperials were getting away with quite a lot, and after they made the choice to hunt down and eat… Ewoks, two of our delegates attempted to consolidate power. This was done in the most fun way you can in Model UN- they got married. Yep, they set out to work together to become Emperor and Empress of the Galactic Empire. I decided to oblige them and walked into the committee room with a great ceremony to commemorate the newlyweds. It was quite beautiful. Needless to say, the two ended up killing each other in a trial by combat the next day.

Finally, the committee came to a close by the galaxy being invaded by Grand Admiral Thrawn, who used a massive Star Destroyer with a Death Star Cannon to Destroy 2 more planets, and toss around the 3 factions like they were nothing. In the end, Thrawn was defeated by the coalition of delegates working together along with Luke Skywalker. Sadly, in the process, Skywalker was lost to the darkside and returned to take over the galaxy as a Sith Lord, killing all the delegates.

But besides that everyone had fun.

My weekend in a nutshell
Eat the Ewoks… before they eat you

Crisis Arcs and Chronic Migraines

Hello, my young padawans!

Today is an extremely anxious day for me. Why, you ask? Well good question. So I’m part of the school’s Model UN club (PSIADA) and basically we run political simulations based on historical or fictional events and debate about them and try to not go to war. We’re hosting a national conference this weekend, that starts today, and I’m Crisis Director for the Star Wars committee. What that means is basically I’m the guy in the background that throws problems at the delegates’ (participants’) faces like “Hey, your planet just went bankrupt, your people are rioting” to which the delegates then have to figure out a solution to if they don’t want their governments going up in flames.

Now, this is my first time crisis directing, and I’m extremely nervous and kinda terrified. I keep thinking I’m forgetting something. I don’t know if I fully understand the economics system that we’ll be using which is kinda not good. I stayed up till 4 last night making sure I had everything ready, trying to ensure that the delegates would be able to see the map, or if I had enough copies of the different ship pricings and well yeah, its been hard. Anyways I digress. On top of all this I’ve got to talk in front of a lot of people and I’m not entirely sure what to say. If I can do at least that, I’ll be happy.

Anyway, the committee it self takes place in the final years of the Galactic Civil War, right after the battle of Endor. The New Republic and the Empire are attempting to broker a peace, but as usal, egos will get involved. The Empire wants absolute power and the New Republic wants to end tyranny once and for all. So naturally, they probably will be going to war and stuff. That’s ok, space battles are always fun.

I think I’ll be hitting the delegates with a crisis right from the start- probably a slave revolt of the Wookies against the Empire- that should be pretty fun considering there’s a lot of ways I could go from there. Too many, actually. In fact so many that I have no idea what I am going to do. Oh well this is just fantastic. The conference starts in a couple hours too! I really really hope this goes well. Send help, I’m terrified.

^My superiors if I don’t do well

Mando Meltdown

Greetings, exalted ones

Hope you’re enjoying the nice weather. You know who isn’t? The Mandalorians. You’d think they’d have their government sorted out 1000 years after the scourge of Malachor, but sadly no. Let’s look at the series of decisions that took Mandalore from a powerful planet to a seriously handicapped, war torn government.

So basically, Mandalore is a lot like Germany after WWI, after they got into a war 1000 years ago, no one really like them very much. Naturally, they sent all their warriors to their moon, Concordia. Hmm… exiling all your dissidents to essentially a prison state, giving up their homes and livelihoods. There’s NO way that would go wrong. (Ok, sure, on Earth it gave us Australia, but it doesn’t always work out). So now you have entire population in a remote area, who’s wishes you could essentially ignore. Which brings me to me second point: The governance of Mandalore. So obviously, seeing as there was an entire moon filled with disgruntled citizens, Mandalore would probably have one or two civil wars. You know what’s a bad idea to do after a civil war? Vehemently repressing the losing side and doing nothing to prevent such actions from taking place again. Which is exactly what Duchess Satine Kryze did during her reign as sovereign of Mandalore.

The Mandalorians were a proud people, who’s culture revolved around being independent warriors. Now, Mandalore is a nation-state, so I cannot stress how extremely important culture would be to them. While most warriors on Concordia wished to seek glory recognition, the Duchess was extremely undiplomatic in the handling of the situation. Don’t get me wrong, pursuing peace is way better than following a warlike culture. But taking a hardline pacifist stance in a nation where that goes against deep rooted family tradtions is one of the worst moves one could make. And to make matters worse, when terrorists (Deathwatch) demanding change began showing up, Kryze elected to ignore all signs until pushed to look into it by a third party. By that time it was too late, and Concordia revolted against Mandalore. An entire MOON went to war against its own planet.

Had Kryze given up on the hardline stance, and opened a dialogue with Deathwatch, it could have been possible to have come to a compromise- one that could have resulted in less bloodshed as well as the appeasement of the masses. Instead, the ensuing chaos allowed a despot, Darth Maul to play the two sides off each other, assassinate the Duchess, and take power for himself. Darth Maul was later forced to abdicate because he got too cocky, and attracted too much attention from Darth Sidious (Story for another time). Anyway, this created a power vaccuum, and ever since, Mandalore has pretty much been in a state of disarray.

Everyone’s favorite Mandalorian

The Spark of the Rebellion

In my last post, I touched upon how the Rebellion was started when multiple rebel cells came together in order to form the Alliance to Restore the Republic during the Galactic Civil War, so lets dive into this subject more to figure out how exactly they came together and who these cells were.

In the beginning, there wasn’t much in the way of armed opposition to the Empire. When the Republic was taken over and reorganized by Palpatine, the only ones in opposition at first were a group of politicians known as the Delegation of 2,000. The Delegation of 2,000 were a group of 2,000 Republic Senators who had opposed the Chancellor’s acquisition of emergency powers during the Clone Wars. After the Clone Wars ended, however, and Palpatine gained even more power, this same group of Senators decided to continue to work at the Imperial Senate, voicing their disapproval whenever they could, whilst arming and funding their own rebel cells to combat the Empire. In order to figure out who could be trusted, those Senators that supported the Delegation of 2,000 wore special rings, which, when opened, revealed the insignia of the Rebel Alliance. These Senators helped lay out the groundwork for the political functioning of the Rebellion, and afterwards, that of the New Republic.

A cell that was funded by such a politician was Phoenix Squadron. It was formed by Senator Bail Organa of Alderaan and led by Commander Sato. This squadron also contained a group of fighters known as “The Specters”, who were made up of 5 individuals, two of which were Jedi, who went on special missions for Phoenix Squadron, ranging from sabotage to open combat. Another notable member of Phoenix Squadron was Ahsoka Tano, who served as Spymaster and was formerly apprentice to Anakin Skywalker.

An interesting cell would be that of Iron Squadron, which was literally just a group of 5 teenagers operating a single ship outside of the planet of Correllia. However, they were resourceful enough to take down entire Star Destroyers on their own.

A more radical version of the rebel cells included the Partisans, who were led by Saw Gerrera (his name sounds like Che Guevara for a reason). Gerrera used rather harsh tactics on Imperials and crossed lines that most rebel cells weren’t willing to cross. The Partisans didn’t shy away at the thought of innocent blood beings spilled, to them, it was just a means to an end. To most other Rebels though, that made them no better than the Empire.

So there you have it, these cells were usually formed out of a necessity to fight the Empire, and through manipulation of the Senators in the Delagation of 2,000, they were able to come together to form the Alliance to Restore the Republic.

Wow, I guess he really was the Senate

Greetings, exalted ones!

It’s been quite a while since my last post, there is so much to talk about. While I do want to write a post about The Last Jedi- which is a solid movie and anyone that say otherwise is wrong- I’ve spoken about it too much for the past few weeks, so maybe I’ll save that post for another time. How about instead we take a look into the political landscape of the star wars galaxy as a whole and see how its changed overtime. Now to do that we’ll have to start with the prequel trilogy (ew).

So, in the beginning we had the Republic, which was the main force in the Galaxy. It operated much like a democracy, with Senators representing each planet or system in the Republic’s jurisdiction to represent their constituents in the Republic Senate. However, one Senator, Sheev Palpatine, managed to be elected to the executive position of Supreme Chancellor. This allowed him, at the height of the Clone Wars, to persuade the Senate to bestow upon him emergency powers, which gave him control of the entire Republic Army, which he then used to take over the Republic indefinitely, turning it into his Empire. If you take an even closer look at this hostile takeover, you can see many similarities between this and Hitler’s rise to power (good idea for another post).

After over a decade of tyrannical rule under Emperor Palpatine, rebel cells began to form within the galaxy in opposition to him. Soon enough, these cells conglomerated into the Rebel Alliance, or, the Alliance to Restore the Republic. The Rebel Scum were able to topple the Empire and establish a New Republic. But they weren’t out of the woods yet. Not long after the rise of the New Republic came the First Order from the ashes of the Empire. In the midst of all this, a private militant group, known as the Resistance, also rose to battle the First Order.

Now a lot of people tend to ask, why did everything go downhill so fast and why are there so many factions after the Empire falls? Well, that’s a good question, I say. The Empire didn’t have this issue because it transferred power, becoming the Empire. Many of the same senators and politicians kept their power and the transformation was pretty seamless. The Rebellion, however, toppled the Empire, forcing many of the Governors in power to give up their positions or flee to escape war crime allegations. This, in turn left a power vacuum, one that allowed many different factions to gain prominence. In turn, this made for a fractured Galaxy, with multiple forces vying for power. You can see a similar situation in the Middle East, where while rebels did try to topple the government of Syria, both parties inability to force real policy lead to a power vacuum, allowing many other cells to gain power, turning it into a war torn region.

Why are all the bad guys British?

Hello, my young padawans!

You know a question that’s always baffled me? Why do all the Imperial officers have British accents? Well the short answer is because the Empire is quite literally the British.

Now, a lot of people will draw parallels between the Empire and Nazis, and sure, the imagery for that exists. But what about the conflict itself? The Galactic Civil War between the Empire and the Alliance to Restore the Republic (the Rebellion) is very much a revolution. The Nazis did not have to fight too many revolutions, but you know who did? The British, who fought against the Revolutions of oh… just about everyone.

So keeping with the parallel of the British Empire, the British accents of the imperial officers were supposed to represent an elite, privileged class who bore down on their inferior subjects, here, one can draw a parallel between this and the British subjugation of its colonies in Asia and Africa, whose natives they treated extremely poorly due to them being a different race. These subjects ended up comprising large parts of the Rebellion, as you can see that the Rebellion consists of the most amount of aliens, while there are almost none in the Empire.

The humans who do happen to be in the Rebellion, like Biggs Darklighter, Luke Skywalker or Han Solo all have American accents, differentiating them from the Imperial elite. Due to this one can draw a parallel between the Galactic Civil War and the American Revolution. This similarity is evident in the fact that the Americans in the American Revolution and the Rebellion in the Galactic Civil War are both essentially a rag-tag militia put together with barely any resources somehow toppling a superpower.

Of course, you can say the Rebellion coming together to fight a ruling elite class is reminiscent of the French Revolution, but thats the beauty of Star Wars. The intertextuality is endless.

News and The new Movies!

Hello my young padawans!

Boy oh boy have I got some news for you! Lucasfilm and Disney have just announced that we are getting a new Star Wars trilogy and live action tv show. Now, I was a little sceptical about the movie at first, but it turns out, it’s going to be about something completely new and unrelated to the Skywalker Saga. Anyone else hoping for Knights of the Old Republic? I know I am. And it turns out that Rian Johnson is going to be directing all 3 of the new films. They must have really loved his work to do that. Which means that The Last Jedi is going to be FREAKING awesome.

I can’t wait. Speaking of The Last Jedi, I really wish I could find out more information about the state of the galaxy immediately after the events of Return of the Jedi. It is such an amazing time period. It’s the closing of the Galactic Civil War, and I want to really dive into the history of that to see how things changed from the Rebellion and the Empire to the New Republic and the First Order. I know there are books and stories on the subject, but how cool would a tv show be? Think about it: from the point of view of an Imperial officer, who watches his EMpire burn and slowly collapse.

Here’s what I know of what happened after the destruction of the Second Death Star:

With the Emperor gone, the head officers of the Empire retreated to their stronghold within the galaxy with their remaining fleet as the Rebellion liberated planet after planet. They soon realized it was extremely difficult to completely eradicate an Empire that held such a strong foothold in the Galaxy. Much like the Dark Side, the Empire’s shadow clouded everything. The Rebellion began to set up a government and tried to root out empirical remnant wherever it remained.

But the Empire was still powerful, in fact, many ex-imperial officers and sympathizers were allowed to join the New Republic government, which made it all the more harder to defeat them. However, slowly, but surely, the Republic had severely weakened the Empire. Mustering the last of their fleet, the Empire made a last stand over the planet of Jakku, where they were soundly defeated. However, they made a treaty with the New Republic that allowed them to exist in the far reaches of the Galaxy. Bet you didn’t see that coming. The Empire wasn’t destroyed, but allowed to live, which then turned into the First Order. More on why and how this happened next time.

An in depth analysis of how the Sanctions the Galactic Republic placed on the Trade Federation Culminated in the Clone Wars

Alright, can we just take a break from politics for a second to talk about the new Star Wars trailer?

OH MY GOD. It was AWESOME.

I just loved everything about the trailer. Ok, maybe not everything, some of it seemed a little spoilery, but I hope not. I love the direction Rian Johnson seems to be taking the series. Not only does it look fresh, but it’s extremely aesthetically appealing. I haven’t seen a lot of Johnson’s movies, but if I had to say he had a style, it would probably be one with heavy visual themes. I say this is because one of the things that stood out to me the most was the tease of a battle scene between AT-ATs and the Resistance. It takes place on a planet’s white surface, and looks extremely Battle of Hoth-esque. However, just under the surface is a red core. This makes a cloud of red smoke to go up wherever a ship crashes or an explosion goes off. Essentially it looks like it creates a lot of interplay between white and red, which is just an awesome color combination.

But enough about that, I know what you guys wanna hear about. Its ya boi LUKE. How amazing was it to see him actually have dialogue? I really have a lot of respect for Mark Hamill, even after 30 years, from playing villains like the Firelord and The Joker, he absolutely nails Luke Skywalker. You can tell when he says that “I’ve seen this raw power before, I wasn’t scared enough then… I am now” he’s definitely been through a lot of stuff. I wonder who’s raw power he’s referring to when talking to Rey (or at least, I assume he’s talking to Rey), is it Kylo Ren, Snoke, or Vader? Finn facing off against Captain Phasma looked so epic, and Rey being trained by Luke looks like an amazing parallel to Yoda’s training on Dagobah.

And then there’s my favorite line from the trailer that comes from my boy Poe Dameron:

“We are the spark that will light the fire that will burn down the First Order”

Yes. That is and always will be one of the core themes of Star Wars. Fighting tyranny. It references how the Wars in Star Wars has always been about the underdog fighting for their rights. It has paralleled the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the fight against the Nazis. Can’t wait to see what other parallels we get in this new movie.

Ho Chi Minh and the Ewoks

Hello, my young padawans!

Hope you’re doing well. Me? I’m tired, sleepy, and out of toilet paper. So, I suppose I’ve been better. I’m guessing most of you are in the same boat, so hang in there.

This blog gives me some kind of stress relief so that’s pretty nice, or so I thought. That was until I realized I had no idea what to write about for my first actual post about politics in Star Wars. Not that I was out of ideas but more so, where do you start when you’ve got an entire franchise that’s literally an allegory for politics? The logical answer is probably with the Rebellion and Empire right? Screw that. I’m writing about freaking Ewoks. Everyone loves Ewoks.

Even if you don’t love Ewoks (heathen), you’re gonna be at least somewhat interested in how they came into being conceptually, and the political themes they represent. Ok, sure, does the whole notion that the Ewoks beat back armored Imperial troopers with sticks, stones, and logs really work from a logical standpoint? Well… No, not really- but that’s not the point. What not a lot of people know is that these cuddly teddy bears actually are actually the North Vietnamese.

That caught you off guard, didn’t it? Yeah no, probably not, it’s in the title. Anyway, the sticks and stones wielded by the Ewoks represent how absolutely outgunned the Vietnamese were against the behemoth of the American War Machine during the Vietnam War (Oh yeah, I guess that means America was the Empire), but somehow, the North Vietnamese beat the Americans through the use of intense guerrilla warfare.

From making hospitals and intricate passageways from rat tunnels and booby trapping the jungle with feces-laced wooden spikes, the North Vietnamese soldiers were so in tune with the environment that they were able to use it to defeat a country with airplanes, firebombs, grenade launchers and even tanks.

In the same way, Ewoks used a variety of traps, including trip wires, wooden gliders, and logs that crushed an AT-ST like a plastic bottle. They even had wooden spikes too, although, not covered in feces (unless I haven’t noticed that till now). Lucas was very clearly inspired by the ingenuity and the resilience of the North Vietnamese, and wanted to incorporate that idea of David defeating Goliath in the form of Ewoks.

That, and ‘cause Ewoks sell a buttload of toys. But lucky for me, that’s not politics, and this blog isn’t about the Economics of Star Wars. I wouldn’t touch that topic with a ten foot pole.