A little more 'Star Wars' whimsy - was the Emperor a 'scientific racist'?

Okay, I am the person who loved 'Episode I: The Phantom Menace', and I don't care what anyone else thinks.

There, I've said it.

However, something about it has occasionally puzzled me since - what made a nice middle-class boy like Palpatine, clearly the product of a good home and education, go so bad? Indeed, he came from Naboo, one of the Galaxy's most peaceful and orderly societies.

The answer may lie in the great big gaping blind spot in Naboo culture - their attitude towards the Gungans. Prior to the Trade Federation's invasion, racial hatred was an integral part of the Naboo way of life. One can imagine Naboo dinner parties buzzing with dazzling chit-chat about the Gungans' smaller crania and the quirks of their dialect.

I threw out my copies of the 'Star Wars', 'Empire Strikes Back' and 'Return of the Jedi' novels years ago but if memory serves, one of them referred to the Emperor having a deep dislike of all non-human forms of life.

So beware those who seek to accentuate racial difference while proclaiming their own enlightenment. They could be seeking Galactic domination...

If ever anyone thinks I play rough

They should read this piece of typically mean-spirited, bilious, racialistic trash from Bryanna Bevens.

Sometimes one wonders whether the idea of human dignity, of each person being a spiritual entity with a capacity for virtue, is one that's familiar to VDARE's contributors and editors.

Good taste and reason died today. RIP.

After writing this, I can't believe I read this.

Perhaps the issue is not 'the pathetic state of book criticism', but the pathetic state of book critics.

Moonbats On the Loose!

If you are not with us, you're against us, in a classic piece of demented Horowitziana

So Lew Rockwell and Michael Moore are both in it together, eh? Rockwell might not think so. Here's a piece from his website calling Moore a 'nutcase'. Also, most paleos seem so incredibly fractious that they would be incapable of agreeing with anything Moore ever said.

Pat Buchanan on why World War II wasn't worth it

Some observations on this piece, in Chronicles:

1. Pat really needs to take a good long lie down.
2. Let's see - his position is that we knew Hitler was bad, and we knew Stalin was bad. There was no difference between the conduct of FDR and Churchill at Yalta and that of Chamberlain at Munich. Everyone ended up worse off.

The most one can say about that is to mention three words which explain the difference between Yalta and Munich.

They are 'The Final Solution'. Jews were oppressed in the post-Yalta occupied East, but there was no systematic campaign to drive them off the map.

Pat's got it badly wrong this time.

Mr. Galloway Goes to Washington

to answer some serious questions.

Here are some others to which I, as a former constituent of his, from 1987 to 1996, would like answers:

1. When he represented Hillhead, why did he always seem to stop campaigning at the Broomhill Cross end of Clarence Drive?
2. What WAS the outcome of the police investigation into the fire behind the slot-machine in that Dundee social club ?
3. What are his new party's policies on international free trade?
4. Is the Respect and Unity Coalition's campaign to win control of Tower Hamlets Borough Council in two years going to be backed by Middle Eastern money?
5. Has he converted to Islam?

No VAT!

Within the semi-detached neocon, market-worshipping frame of Bruce Bartlett, there is a Buchananite screaming to get out, as evidenced here.

And it's sad to see such an intelligent economist feel that he has to make a case for another tax, a VAT in particular. In the UK, VAT makes tax-collectors of retailers and greatly increases the administrative burden on them due to the requirement of calculating 'inputs' versus 'outputs'.

The only route to fundamental tax reform is not through playing about with tax rates but through complete reform of the tax code, which would itself require a close analysis of other revenue-raising schemes - like perhaps withdrawing from the WTO and setting up a tariff.

But that isn't likely to happen. There are too many interests at stake. I mean, one can't help but wonder just how much the tax attorneys and lawyers gave in contributions last year.......

A piece of whimsy - 'Scientific Racists' as Dark (or Lightly-Tanned) Lords of the Sith

In the whole 'Star Wars' saga, there are, by my reckoning, only four Sith Lords - Vader, Sidious, Tyranus and Maul.

Of these four, Tyranus and Maul are the least credible. Tyranus is an old guy who only decided to switch sides after either realising he was never going to get to the top job in the Jedi Knights (imagine being sidelined by a little green guy - what a loser!) or else after developing a thing for shooting lightning from his hands as a result of the male menopause. To think that all that trouble could have been avoided if he'd just had his ear pierced and bought a motorbike...

Maul is a skinhead. Out of all the characters in 'Star Wars', he is the least likeable if only because he is the one most likely to be a regular reader of 'Stormfront'. You can almost hear the Cyber-Klanners' little clockwork brains whirring into action, revving up at the thought through the fog of their sword-and-sorcery fuelled fantasies:

"By Goomgroth's Jimjads, Nordic Princess! Darth Maul - like, was he really one of us?"

Yeah, dude. Whatever.

But Sidious and Vader are different beasts. Both have names that possess unpleasant connotations when you add the prefix 'in' to them.

And so, the G-Gnome presents those famous 'scientific racists', or 'race realists' as they prefer to be known, the Lightly-Tanned Lords of the Sith - Darth Coherent and Darth Ept.

Hey, this guy dislikes the journalism of Steve Sailer almost as much as I do!

Read the whole thing.

Neoconservatism slips off its democratic mask at the American Enterprise Institute

with speeches in praise of empire.

There is just too much to say here to make much further comment worthwhile. Globalisation is a concept that can only become reality not by the existence of empire but by the tearing down of borders. Concepts like 'America' and 'Britain' will cease to exist, a state of affairs that will suit those who fund thinktanks like AEI right down to the ground, as they will be able to move their production and administration to those parts of the world where costs are lowest without either criticism or interference.

And the blood of young Americans and Brits will continue to be spilled in order to keep not political but economic order; to keep its mavens at the top of the tree.

Shame on you all.

Great minds think alike

Only some think faster than others.