io9 
Enter your username and password.
San Francisco, 10:22 PM
Fri Dec 18
29 posts in the last 24 hours
Tip your editors:
Editor-in-Chief:
Annalee Newitz |
News Editor:
Charlie Jane Anders |
Associate Editor:
Meredith Woerner |
Assistant Editor:
Lauren Davis |
Weekend Editor:
Graeme McMillan |
Contributors:
Joshua Glenn
Stephen Goldmeier |
Ed Grabianowski |
Austin Grossman
Paul Hogan |
Lauren Davis |
Chris Hsiang |
Lynn Peril |
Ann VanderMeer
Alasdair Wilkins |
Graphic Designer:
Stephanie Fox |
Interns:
Tim Barribeau |
Julia Carusillo |
Alex Eichler |
Cyriaque Lamar |
Caitlin Petrakovitz |
Mary Ratliff |
Josh Snyder |
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
09/02/09
Very little, it was a kiddy-story.
"Why didn't the Rebel Alliance pursue a strategy of insurgency in their rebellion against the Galactic Empire?"
Perhaps because insurgencies unsupported by conventional forces hardly ever win.
On a different tangent, does the Akbar poster above indicate that he's pro- or anti- Obama? Kind of a weird mixed message.
-Kle.
09/01/09
ALL, *ALL* of the Expanded Universe novels since the mid-1990's have made it a point that the day-to-day fighting of the Galactic Civil War consisted of "The Rebel Alliance conducting starfighter raids on Imperial military convoys, to show that they CAN be defeated"
That is *CLASSIC* insurgency tactics. We only see standup fights in the movies because they're the exceptions.
The Rebels don't even "control" planets: they have hidden bases in the Afghanistan/Hindu Kush of space: desolate places like Hoth
09/01/09
09/02/09
09/01/09
Why else devote such effort and resources to building a weapon that could easily be surveilled and avoided?
09/01/09
09/01/09
09/01/09
09/01/09
*koff, koff* Does anyone else feel warm all the sudden?
09/01/09
On the other hand, part of the problem is that writers and fans can't really decide if the Old Republic was more an analogue of a UN-type supranational organization, a Roman Empire in space or a nation-state. The Trade Fed vs Naboo sort of suggests the UN comparison, but later it seems to be more of a Roman Republic becomes Roman Empire thing. Perhaps it is best described as a UN the way that transnational socialists want it to be.
09/01/09
Zelaya tried to do that and then a coup (backed by the military and the congress) was staged to depose him.
And actually, the Rebellion did use insurgent warfare, but on a planetary scale. They found allies in the Acbar-ish (don't remember the name of the species) Mon-Calamaris, Bothans, Sullusteans(?), Wookies, etc...; to undermine the power the Empire had on those specific planets. What they did with the 2 Death Stars was sabotage, pretty insurgent as well!
the open battle was just a distraction.
SIDE NOTE: Almost all my Star Wars knowledge comes from the very underrated old pc-game "Star Wars: Rebellion"
09/01/09
09/01/09
09/01/09
09/01/09
The basic facts are:
-Zelaya wanted to ask people not once, but twice, if they wanted their presidents to have more than one terms
-Because of the timing, that could not apply to him, but to the next president. I Repeat: Zelaya could not be reelected even if he succeeded
-Whether or not you like it, think that the current de facto president, Micheletti, Who has been a member of Congress since 1982, is a man who tried to be their party's presidential candidate twice before, and who hasn't expressed any intention of calling a new election anytime soon.
BTW: Did you know that Colombia also modified their constitution in 2004 so that their president could be able to extend their mandate? Have you heard about Colombia's president trying to perpetuate in power? no. Because he's an ally of the US (and, appearently, Europe's, because I don't see anybody getting warmed up about it here either)
09/01/09
09/01/09
...man, I loved that ship...
09/01/09
09/01/09
By outsourcing a great deal of labor to the clones and allowing Hothiburton to build the first Death Star, he essentially lost the war due to lowest bid contracts and shoddy labor.
While the second Death Star made up for many of the defects in the first project, Palpatine continued to rely on outside consultants and failed to heed the expertise of his Grand Moffs and other officials that warned him about continuing problems with the Death Star design.
09/01/09
I can only imagine what his credit rating looked like after the first one blew up. From what I hear, he didn't even have a chance to pay it off.
09/01/09
09/02/09
09/01/09
Or why a galactic empire build a bad ass armored space station with a planet destroying laser without any decent AA armament and given a serious exploitable weakness? That would be like making a $350 million dollar stealth fighter whose stealth capabilities degrade in high humidity... Oh right.
09/01/09
09/02/09
09/01/09
09/01/09
It's not a big deal. I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home.
09/01/09
There were rebel insurgent groups on many imperial planets. But they were usually local resistance groups, trying only to free that specific world. The Rebel Alliance proper were, as Tagge said, "too well equipped… They're more dangerous than you realize."
They did have the resources to make a handful of chosen specific, precise attacks on high value targets. If they had followed the X-Wing series they'd know that the starfighter fleet was regularly tasked with hit-and-run attacks.
And yes, I am embarrassed I took offense at those papers.
09/01/09
09/01/09
09/01/09
09/01/09
09/01/09
The Rebellion wasn't an insurgency for the same reason the Confederacy wasn't. They were one of the factions in a civil war.
Besides, we don't really know what was going on elsewhere. The scope of the viewpoint of the conflict in the original trilogy is pretty limited. We see a frontier backwater, a mining town, and military installations on two remote worlds--one of them an uninhabited icy waste. We don't see what's going on at the major population centers. Maybe there are insurgent bombings every day on Coruscant, but we never see that.
09/01/09
09/01/09