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I mean, if we ignore how Palpatine got to power and look at it from the
point after he became emporer.

How exactly were the citizens oppressed? If the rebels hadn't ran round
blowing up Imperial property, wouldn't everything in the galaxy be fine and dandy?

It's just that people don't like socialism. Don't look at me, though; I'm all for the Empire.

*Salutes the Emperor*

The Empire was great from the view point of humans that obeyed the will of the Emporer. All Aliens and the humans that wouldn't obey him were in deep poodoo thugh.

The Empire will rock you, sock you, something something -ock you. IN THE FACE. But it is far from evil. The Empire whomps on the face of evil. Even Palpatine's rise to power could hardly be considered EVIL. Maybe, you know, sometimes, he MIGHT have been a little mean to an alien or two, you know, nobody's perfect. Heck, his secretary is a Rodian, and I, for one, don't think that he's nearly as anti-alien, if by "alien" you mean "non-human" as many think. He's just got a bad rap. And hey, if ushering in a new era of peace and prosperity is evil, then paint Palpatine red and call him Slim Sally, because, with that definition, your father he...I mean, evil he is.

P.S. If you've just read this, you can consider your face rocked. And don't pay attention to that stupid edited so-and-so number of times thing. Stupid snitch of a counter.

Palpy's way to power wasn't regular, but I wouldn't say it was especially evil.

And yeah, he's a Sith Lord, but if you play by his rules you won't be harmed.

There's free economy, and that is always a certain sign of personal freedom:
You can go anywhere in the galaxy you like.
You can make whatever buisiness you like.

Btw, why does everyone say the Aliens had a bad time under his rule?
Palpy being a racist is EU, and as far as the movies are concerned, he didn't seem to have a problem with non-humans.

Cpt_Frank if you remeber the Senate is still around and as for the Racist Part simply look at how many Aliens are in ANH, TESB, and ROTJ on the Imperal side

And women, How many women in command?

We see no aliens on the Imp side.
And how many aliens do we see on the Rebel side?
Apart from the moncal very few.
But why? Perhaps it's because of standardisation of military equipment.

I think it's the essential guide to vessels and such which states that the viewscreens on the brigde of a moncal cruiser are useless for beings other than the moncals because they see in another spectrum of light.
That explains why no human is seen on the bridge.

Most likely the Empire used equipment perfected for use by humans.
This also makes sense in light of the fact that humans seem to be one of the, if not the most common species: you've got a large source from which you can get fodder for the ever-hungry war machinery.

Remember also Darth Maul: he was not exactly human.

And what speaks against no women in command?

Evil because the Empire uses fear to keep control. Doesn't usually make your people love you, for one thing.

The Empire doesn't use fear for control...Palpatine and Vader uses Fear on their own officers and men.. Supposely the empire is an honorable military government.

Cyaround,
Jason

If it wasn't for the Rebellion fucking around and pissing the Empire off,
and for some damn corrupt planetary leaders to actually support them, the Empire would not need to use it's forces against its citizens and harm them.
No rule of fear if it wasn't for the Rebellion provoking it.

I can't help it; I think this topic is cool. Consider this: more people died after Palpatine's death than during his reign. The galaxy fell into a massively destructive civil war after his death, in which even Coruscant itself (far more densely populated than green Alderaan) was ravaged by war.

So ... the Rebels caused far more deaths than they prevented. Is freedom more important than life? If so, how many lives?

Just something to ponder.

Lets remember without the iron fist of the Emporer the galaxy would have fallin apart. Perhaps the reason there was no rebellion during the 20 years between Ep3 and ANH is because what he did was absolutely necessary.

I suppose one major issue in this discussion is how pure and good the Rebels were. Were they honourable fighters struggling for liberty, equality, and fraternity? Or were they the remnants of the corrupt Republic and fundamentalist Jedi using violence and terrorism to regain power? Your perception of the Rebels would shape your perception of the Empire.

If we take the movies and EU at face value, though, the Empire is a facist, military state. Women and aliens have a very hard, nearly impossible chance at getting ahead in the military and often, society in general. The Death Star was built by Wookie slave labour (and the DS blew them up for a superlaser test!) and was then used to blow up Alderaan, which was peaceful-hippieland according to the EU. There is a litany of crimes against the Empire, from Tarkin landing a starship and crushing thousands of protesters to the Imps crashing an ISD into an inhabited planet with devastating environmental effects and then covering it up. Those are just some of the wealth of "evil" Imperial "crimes" that I can remember off the top of my head. The EU portrays the quality of life as becoming considerably worse after the New Order, but one may argue that such a decline was already in motion since the fall of the Old Republic. The Empire is clearly a police state, wheras the Republic was not. A major question to ponder is : Where are these major threats to security that would justify the drastic measures of the Empire? The whole friggin Clone War crisis and the events surrounding it were _manufactured_ by Palpatine. Extragalactic threats like the Yuzzang Vong would not be such a problem with a sizeable standing Galactic army+navy or militia. The existence of a military does not automatically lead to dictatorship and decline in standard of living. The Republic was at the other extreme, with a pathetic navy.

As for the whole "The galaxy needed an iron fist," has no-body heard of political and social reform? If the corporations have too much power, then trust-bust them. If your only answer to corruption and secessionism is facism, then you have a problem. Did Lincoln crack down hard on the whole country when the Civil War started? I seem to recall American freedoms _increasing_ after the war. So what's so special about the SW galaxy?

And yes, more people probably died after Palpatine's death than during his reign. Why? Because he set up an Empire based on petty competetion between rivalrous Moffs and Grand Moffs and used a top-down, one-man, dictatorial system. There was a massive power vaccum after his death, and the scum he put in power immediately fought amongst themselves, killing billions or trillions. So I don't see how the institution of the Empire helped there. All Empires must fall, and brutal civil war is often the result. Palpatine must have known that from the beginning. He obviously did not care, and it showed. So all Palpatine did was buy a few years of incredibly costly peace (i.e. suppression and fear among the population) and then trillions of deaths from the almost-inevitable civil war. Go Empire!

Darth Wong wrote:I can't help it; I think this topic is cool. Consider this: more people died after Palpatine's death than during his reign. The galaxy fell into a massively destructive civil war after his death, in which even Coruscant itself (far more densely populated than green Alderaan) was ravaged by war.

So ... the Rebels caused far more deaths than they prevented. Is freedom more important than life? If so, how many lives?

Just something to ponder.

Why not? The NR screwed it up though, it should have been a mix of the Empire and it's authoritan warmachine that gave more indiviual freedom, and one that put the Holonet back in place, to a degree atleast.

Personal freedom is important, it whats made the western world the place it is today, and freedom and sharing of information through the holonet as a sort of galactic internet would also help science, the economy and so on.

I think Palpatine held to hard a grip and restricted too much information, but he probably had no choice though.

I wouldn't say the Empire was good, it wasn't, the rebels tried to be good atleast.

David wrote:Lets remember without the iron fist of the Emporer the galaxy would have fallin apart. Perhaps the reason there was no rebellion during the 20 years between Ep3 and ANH is because what he did was absolutely necessary.

The Rebels were present during that time. There were 3 major resistance groups which united 2 years before a new hope, with the contract of correlia, and formed the Rebel Alliance.
The Rebel groups formed 18 years before ANH, immediately after the foundation of the Empire.
But they really had no reason to do so. Palp had saved the Galaxy, there was still the Senate, and with the newly comissioned ISDs to support the VSDs, there was a large enough fleet to protect all the galactic cititzens from harm.
I think the Rebels were founded by some Jedi-Friends or Senators who feared for their power.

Let me rephrase- There was no active resistence. Many members did not join until the destruction of Alderan. I knew about the Corellian group led by Bel Ibis and the other led by Mon Mothma, what was the other?

Oh the rebel alliance was getting pretty strong by ANH, only got worse with the destruction of Alderaan.

Darth Wong wrote:I can't help it; I think this topic is cool. Consider this: more people died after Palpatine's death than during his reign. The galaxy fell into a massively destructive civil war after his death, in which even Coruscant itself (far more densely populated than green Alderaan) was ravaged by war.

So ... the Rebels caused far more deaths than they prevented. Is freedom more important than life? If so, how many lives?

Just something to ponder.

Yes, but this assumes that one who considers the Empire evil will also consider the Rebellion good. As far as I'm concerned, they're both screwed up, just on opposite sides.

Please elaborate.

A government, like a person, is defined as good or evil by their actions. I mean, yes the Empire took care of its loyal citizens, but it you weren't up to their standards of loyalty, BAM! Grand Moff Tarkin blew away Alderaan, a completely defenseless and weaponless planet, to get information! Wookiees and Mon Cals were turned into slaves. Admiral Ackbar was a slave and he's almost Thrawn's equal!

In war, the Empire was far from honorable. Base Delta Zero on pacifistic Caamas. The Ghorman Massacre. Alderaan. The Krytos Virus. Construction of superweapons: Death Star I and II, Galaxy Gun, Suncrusher, the Tarkin, the World Devastators. This lack of concern about collateral damage shows the Empire's true colors.

And then there's COMPNOR: the Committee for the Preservation of the New Order. COMPNOR's mission, as stated by bounty hunter Dengar: "round up these pacifists and turn them into a war machine. If they refuse, fry their planet until even the worms choke on the ashes."

Admiral Ackbar was a slave and he's almost Thrawn's equal!

*snort*

*Applauds Doomriser's brilliant post.*
I agree fully. Except people seem to overlook that only women and aliens are excluded from the Empire. Haven't you noticed that only white people are in the Empire as well? And the reason why there weren't any aliens and women and different colored skin people in the first two movies was because:
a. The Rebel Alliance was still struggling to gain worlds to support them, thus limiting them to mostly humans.
b. Probably all of the Imperial Academy students were the only pilots available to the Rebellion in the beginning (ANH). My observation of no women or different colored skin people or aliens in the Empire means that they wouldn't have been in the Academy in the first place. Considering pilots in the Academy probably have the best training available anywhere for starfighter pilots, the Rebel Alliance had those on their Yavin IV base (Wedge, Biggs, and Leia must have had some strings pulled for Luke, lol). The best of the Academy pilots later on were most likely selected to be in Rogue Squadron on Hoth. As stated, there would only be white, male humans in the Academy, thus the only ones in Rogue Squadron at the time. Later on, Rogue Squadron and other Academy graduates must have trained their own new pilots outside the Academy, so that meant more people with different skin color, women, and aliens would be trained to fly Rebel starfighters. I hope that makes sense, lol.

IG-88E wrote:A government, like a person, is defined as good or evil by their actions. I mean, yes the Empire took care of its loyal citizens, but it you weren't up to their standards of loyalty, BAM! Grand Moff Tarkin blew away Alderaan, a completely defenseless and weaponless planet, to get information! Wookiees and Mon Cals were turned into slaves. Admiral Ackbar was a slave and he's almost Thrawn's equal!

<Snip>

Just a point of interest, I understand that there are evidence pointing to Alderaan being a world which harbour rebel activities and condones it, is it not?

Yes, Alderaan was a rebel supporter. And according to the canon ANH radio dramas, just before the events of ANH, Princess Leia and Bail Organa killed an Imperial official who was visiting Alderaan. He was a would-be suitor to the Princess, and his line of questioning as to how much the Organas knew about the rebellion got a little too detailed for their liking. They covered it up by staging a hunting accident.