Tatooine Youth Suspected In Terrorist Attack 179
BeruHadItComing writes:
Imperial investigators are still trying to piece together what happened in last week's horrifying terrorist attack on our largest orbital defense station. Over a million loyal citizens, scientists, and medical staff lost their lives in the grisly attack while the station was being put through training exercises near the Yavin system. Billions more are in mourning, while a number of powerful senators have renewed calls to increase defense spending. Initial reports have confirmed Rebel involvement, and officials are making inquiries about a young insurgent from Tatooine with known ties to religious fundamentalists.
Rebel scum (Score:5, Funny)
I think that's all that needs to be said.
Re: Rebel scum (Score:2, Interesting)
When the hell did we build a orbital defence station?? No wonder I am getting taxed through the nose. Damn pollies wasting my hard earned cash!
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(or would that be a recursive whoosh?)
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Everyone knows that the Imperial Senate was dissolved already. More lies from the Imperial 1%!
damn punks (Score:5, Funny)
at least we know nobody will be making a movie of this tragedy.
Re:damn punks (Score:4, Funny)
Not make a movie? I'd be surprised if they didn't make atleast half a dozen movies glorifying the rebel scum.
And games, books, costumes, ect...
I expect callous exploitation of this senseless tragedy for A Long Time to come.
A bit too close for comfort? (Score:2, Informative)
Tatooine is a real place in Tunisia [wikipedia.org] (In the French dub, the planet is actually called "Tataouine", like the town)
It is currently a hotbed of ISIS activity.
Tunisia suffered a terrorist attack last month, with 22 dead.
The satire in this post is bound to hit some nerves.
Sigh (Score:3, Insightful)
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Yeah an April Fool's Joke is supposed to be subtle. Not that Slashdot has ever posted anything funny previously but this is seriously lame.
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Yeah an April Fool's Joke is supposed to be subtle. Not that Slashdot has ever posted anything funny previously but this is seriously lame.
Apparently, double entendre is just too subtle for some people to grasp.
Bad Nerd! (Score:2)
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I came here hoping for a least a chuckle. I honestly thought the joke was all the html/css/obfuscated javascript appearing on every page where advertisements should be.
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This is the only one of the April Fool's posts I thought was funny.
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I agree .. reads like a bad Onion story.
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder.
Is the Onion printing strictly factual stories today?
Re:Sigh (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, this [theonion.com] is the 2nd article on the homepage, so yeah, it does look like they are going with factual stories today.
No. I disagree. (Score:5, Insightful)
Read it again and replace the Star Wars references with real ones.
Now consider that the good guys - the Jedi - are portrayed as the bad guys even though they are defending a planet from invaders.
Now, think about our own news media and how our politicians portray countries and people. Now think of the movies "Red Dawn" and how American kids are doing exactly what peoples are doing overseas to coalition troops. Explain how are they different?
I think this "story" is one of the most subversive things I have ever read on Slashdot.
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Re:No. I disagree. (Score:5, Funny)
Geez, we barely read the titles most of the time, and now you want us to re-read TFS, reconsider it three different ways, and write an essay in response?
Are you an English teacher, by any chance?
Radicalization (Score:5, Insightful)
If you do it right, you don't even need to change the references:
Desert Youth Radicalized by Bearded Religious Zealot
He seemed to others like a typical teen; having fun with his friends, going into town to pick up some power converters. But the boy's foster parents were worried he would follow a local anti-social, desert-dwelling hermit on some "damn fool ideological crusade". There are reports the old man may have lied to the youth about his birth father's involvement in the religious movement in order to gain his trust. From there, the two joined up with a couple of mercenary smugglers involved in human trafficking in an attempt to sneak past coalition blockades and gain access to military facilities. The old cleric apparently martyred himself in the initial attack on the base, which only strengthened the youth's resolve to follow in his mentor's footsteps. Even the mercenaries appear to have been radicalized, abandoning their business interests to join up with the movement.
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"I use them for smuggling. I never thought I'd be smuggling myself in 'em. "
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Remember the Star Wars prequels?
I don't blame the population supporting the empire after seeing such darkness, corruption, incompetence, and ineptitude of Republican rule in the galaxy.
They were the bad guys and it is mirroring the us senate today. Shoot! No technological innovations and economic malaise for thousands of years. Under the empire shit got done and the galaxy moved forward. The rebels were the ones killing people. Empire would leave you alone as long as you didn't destabilize or rebel the gala
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I guess you're just going to brush aside the whole Alderaan thing, right?
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Re:No. I disagree. (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember when Red Dawn came out (the first one) that we discussed the differnce between freedom fighters and terrorists. The answer was history.
No, the answer is: look at what they're actually fighting for. "Freedom fighters" who fight for the opportunity to deny women the right to go to school, or to set up a regime where people who aren't willing to claim faithfulness to one single state religion are not freedom fighters. It really is that simple. US revolutionaries fought to be free from what was essentially a military dictatorship (the monarchy) that didn't provide some rather important freedom-related features (like those we see protected in our constitution). When freedom fighters are fighting for actual freedoms, then that's what they are. When "freedom fighters" are fighting to institute totalitarian rule (like, say, Che Guevara and company did) they're not freedom fighters at all. The Taliban aren't fighting for freedom, they're fighting to set up a ruthless medieval theocracy. Doesn't matter what they call themselves, it's what they do.
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The US revolutionaries fought for freedom for rich white men while enslaivng Africans and ignoring everyone else.
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The US revolutionaries fought for freedom for rich white men while enslaivng Africans and ignoring everyone else.
You might want to actually read some history. You know, just for fun. And so you can peek under the hood and see that things are wee bit more complicated than your cartoon villain version.
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You sound like you should probably learn a little something about Che, Castro, and other latin American dissidents of the previous century, and what precisely led to their dissatisfaction and eventual rebellion. That's not to sugar-coat the man Che became and his eventual ruthlessness. But to dismiss them as simply wishing to establish totalitarianism shows total lack of knowledge of Cuba's history or the context of their revolution.
Your knowledge of the revolution and the governance of England is also rath
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just because they aren't fighting for -YOUR- concept of freedom, doesn't mean they aren't fighting for freedom
Which is exactly why I cited examples where any rational person couldn't get it wrong. Nobody who is fighting for the power to take away other people's freedoms (say, of speech, assembly, religion, etc) is fighting for freedom. It's possible to objectively look at two different fights, and see where one is actually about freedom, and the other is about gaining power to deny freedom.
Your knowledge of the revolution and the governance of England is also rather lacking.
The governance of England (not to let it off the hook there, even so) was not the same as England's governance of the colonie
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Your knowledge of the revolution and the governance of England is also rather lacking.
Bear in mind that England ceased to have a government in 1707.
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When "freedom fighters" are fighting to institute totalitarian rule (like, say, Che Guevara and company did)
Or, depending on your viewpoint, when they fought to free their country from economic imperialism and foreeign corruption, and to introduce democracy instead of military dictatorship.
It really does depend which side you're looking from.
And the point about the Taliban is not that they want a medieval theocracy, but that they want a medieval theocracy in their own country. Do I want to live in a Taliban-run Afghanistan? No, but (a) I'm not an Afghan and (b) if I was, I'd probably prefer it to a massive
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And the point about the Taliban is not that they want a medieval theocracy, but that they want a medieval theocracy in their own country.
Except, most of the Taliban are trying to set up a medieval theocracy in another country (read up on where that movement is from, who they are demographically, and where they are operating). And they're hip-deep in relations with outfits that are trying to spread the same thing throughout the middle east, and of course into and across Africa. There are distinct lines between some of these groups, but in other cases they and those they support or with whom they work make it pointless to try to separate them
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And here in the US, we are told that women are denied the chance at education
Who's "we" and who is doing the telling? There are more women in college then there are men. So, basically you're just blathering.
we are a Christian nation
They "land grabbing" revolutionaries you
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You really want to make the case that America of all countries has clean hands and a clean conscience in this dirty enterprise called war?
Do you mean that when a huge undertaking involving actual, you know, human beings taking action in opposition to a monstrously violent totalitarian regime sometimes involves some of those human beings doing assholish things ... that therefore the side that's acting to prevent oppressive totalitarianism is wrong to fight it? You'd rather allow groups like ISIS, or people like Stalin, or fun outfits like the Khmer Rouge to just carry on being brutal across the board as part of their purpose and policy than r
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Do you mean that when a huge undertaking involving actual, you know, human beings taking action in opposition to a monstrously violent totalitarian regime sometimes involves some of those human beings doing assholish things ..
The "there's always one or two rotten apples in a barrel" argument is only reasonable when they are genuine exceptions, and they are genuinely punished.
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The "there's always one or two rotten apples in a barrel" argument is only reasonable when they are genuine exceptions, and they are genuinely punished.
You mean like we send them to jail, like we do? I'm glad you agree with me.
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I mean don't you ever question why the treatment of women is always specified when describing the enemy?
It's an excellent barometer of culture. Everyone has (or had) a mother. Hey look! Something we all have in common. So it provides a common perspective from which to evaluate how various cultures treat people. And cultures which stone women to death for having been raped are, objectively, less free than cultures that don't. One trots that example out because the vast majority of people with any sort of intellectual honesty can substitute at least one woman they're likely to know (perhaps their mom?) for the
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But for the most part, they *aren't* currently going out and killing other people en masse.
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But for the most part, they *aren't* currently going out and killing other people en masse.
A cynic might say that's because they don't need to in order to get their way.
Re:No. I disagree. (Score:5, Interesting)
The difference between a terrorist and another type of combatant isn't history or what the group is fighting for. It is whether they target civilian populations or not and use terror as a tactic. The term terrorist has been rendered meaningless in recent times. Now we see "terrorist attack on army base". Targeting a military force is not terrorism, regardless of the group who does it.
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During the runup to the second Gulf War there was a story circulating about how The Empire was really the good guys and the Rebel Alliance was just a bunch of terrorists. The sad part was, in the logic of the time it was being sold by many as a serious argument. Not even a joke. Here's a link to it from 2002 in The Weekly Standard [weeklystandard.com]
So yeah, this has already happened.
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I think this "story" is one of the most subversive things I have ever read on Slashdot.
True, but that doesn't make it a good April's Fool.
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OMGPONIES!!!! is still the only good April First thing /. has ever done
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April Fools (Score:2)
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Yeah, today is the day the Internet becomes worthless for information.
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Yeah, today is the day the Internet becomes worthless for information.
Just today? Are YOU behind the times or what? And this on Slashdot...
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Yeah, today is the day the Internet becomes worthless for information.
The upside is that means a decline in the serious MISinformation as well. That's sort of a win.
Yawn (Score:1, Informative)
If you're going to do April fools, at least be funny. Every year slashdot fails so hard on being funny on April 1st.
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Just put Slashdot in your hosts file until tomorrow. Today's going to be a groan-worthy day of Dice.com trying too hard to be funny.
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OMG Ponies! was funny even if it's been a loong time.
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And that was 9 years ago. Everything before or since was 99.99% stinkers.
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And people wonder why there are so few women in tech
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Why, because it lacks ponies?
Well, look, Equestria's not known for STEM. More for liberal arts than anything.
STEM's big problem? No flying ponies.
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STEM's big problem? No flying ponies.
Ironically a problem that only STEM can solve.
But... (Score:3)
Wasn't the senate disbanded shortly before the attack?
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Journalism has really gone downhill.
Slow (Score:5, Funny)
This happened a long time ago. Typical slashdot news timing.
Re:Slow (Score:5, Funny)
It was far away, give light speed delay a chance man.
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And far, far away...
Islam apologism (Score:1, Troll)
How about a story about how Islam is a religion of peace? That would be a funny April fools joke, although I guess it's been done to death already.
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I see what you did there.
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Or how about one about how Muslims don't hate jews and aren't prone to ridiculous conspiracy theories?
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No, I think the real story is that it took 4 whole replies before someone conflated criticism of a religion with racism. Usually, it takes less than 3.
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I lost 218 with this simple weight loss trick!
And I earned 50K from home! Ask me how!
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Role models (Score:5, Funny)
I blame the parents. Where are they in all this?
Re:Role models (Score:5, Funny)
Well, the dad was trying to stop him...
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I've heard they're spending all their time doing outdoor barbecuing these days.
That's my cue. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's my cue.
Now to stop reading for over 24 hours while all the poor April Fool's junk slams the front page over and over.
It's now an annual ritual. See you at the weekend, guys.
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Thanks for letting us know.
Re:That's my cue. (Score:5, Interesting)
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And now it's time for the annual gripes from people with low tolerance for humor.
same theme.. (Score:1)
.. same day
http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2015/04/cern-researchers-confirm-existence-force
BOTHAN LIVES MATTER! (Score:1)
Bothan lives matter!
Racists! (Score:1)
I'm tired of all this forcephobia in the news and comments. It's the religion of feeling.
35:3:20 WAS AN INSIDE JOB! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:35:3:20 WAS AN INSIDE JOB! (Score:5, Funny)
PROTON TORPEDOES CAN'T MELT SPACE STATIONS. Particularly ones the size of a small moon.
You can clearly see from the footage that the station was destroyed from the inside. CONTROLLED DEMOLITION.
Oh, and we're supposed to believe the official story that some magic proton torpedoes made it all the way from a tiny exhaust port to the reactor core? Have you seen the size of the exhaust ports on a Freedom Station? They're no bigger than a womp rat. Impossible to bulls-eye. Or are we to believe some magic force guided them in? Tell me another one.
WAKE UP DROIDS!
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I hate April Fools Day (Score:1)
It was probably funny the first time it was celebrated, maybe even the second or third. Now it's just tedious and unfunny.
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Japan announced it was cancelling Christmas today. I was so happy until I remembered what the date is. Damn you, April Fools, for getting my hopes up.
I've seen the evidence... (Score:1)
Senators? The Senate was dissolved..... (Score:1)
Conspiracy! (Score:1)
I doubt the rebel scum can pull off something like that. Proof?
1. Who the hell designs something that big with a gaping 2-meter wide flaw in it?
2. Lord Vader "conveniently" escapes any harm, "claims" he was attacked by some kind of garbage scow of a vessel.
3. The rumour mill has it that the same contractor who built the thing (in the Hutt family, IIRC) siphoned off most of the money, and then planned with the Empire to blow it up to hide that fact.
Forgetting, for the moment, of the whole "Vader was born on
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He even claimed he was thrown clear because his wingman - an experienced combat pilot - struck his fighter because of distraction by one explosion.
I hate this day (Score:2)
Because inevitably something is going to fool me and I'm going to feel stupid... I just want to go to bed and wake up tomorrow.
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Because inevitably something is going to fool me
Well, it's unlikely to be Slashdot with drivel like this.
I just want to go to bed and wake up tomorrow.
Ah, you didn't hear? They just discovered an error in the standard leap year calculation, so everyone has to skip April 2nd this year.
Not even accurate (Score:2)
Aside from being desperately not funny, an attack on a military installation to stop it from destroying you is not a terrorist attack.
Come on, Slashdot! You used to be better than this! Please show us you still are!
Try googling 'propaganda' (Score:2)
The Case for the Empire (Score:3)
The Case for the Empire [weeklystandard.com]
Are the "Rebels" in the Star Wars universe terrorists? [quora.com]
10 Reasons The Galactic Empire Wasn’t As Bad As Everyone Thinks [whatculture.com]
Who were the bad guys in Star Wars' original trilogy? [changingthetimes.net]
Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters [tvtropes.org] (Warning: TVTropes link)
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No it's April...
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"News Radio" did it better.
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The emperor dis[s]olved the Senate before the battle of Yavin, my understanding is that the regional governors now have direct control.
Fine.
"Billions more are in mourning, while a number of powerful ex-senators have renewed calls to increase defense spending."
Then again, we don't know what solvent was used....