Ending wars is very simple if you surrender.
China has become a ticking time bomb, facing many wars within, triggered by a number of internal ticking economic and demographic tinderboxes that threaten to bring on that which the Chinese people fear most – ‘chaos’ or ‘luan.’
I don’t have sophisticated tastes. I have average tastes. If you looked in my collection of DVDs, you’d see ‘Jaws’ and ‘Star Wars.’ In the book library, you’d see John Grisham and Sidney Sheldon. And if you look in my fridge, it’s, like, children’s food – chips, milkshakes, yogurt.
Too often, stories about Afghanistan center around the various wars, the opium trade, the war on terrorism. Precious little is said about the Afghan people themselves – their culture, their traditions, how they lived in their country and how they manage abroad as exiles.
I was never interested in writing novelizations. I’m still not. Especially not for ‘Star Wars.’
My dad and I used to shoot little one-stop animations on an old 8mm film camera when I was no more than 7 or 8, and when he was away at work, I would keep shooting nonsensical, short animated films using ‘Star Wars’ figures or Smurfs – depended what the narrative was.
I think you can become a ‘Star Wars’ fan at any point in time in your life.
I am the jongleur. I leap and pirouette, and make you laugh. I make fun of those in power, and I show you how puffed up and conceited are the big shots who go around making wars in which we are the ones who get slaughtered. I reveal them for what they are. I pull out the plug, and… pssss… they deflate.
And, you see, we are living in a world in which all wars are wars of defense.
Wars break things; they break stories.
Al Qaeda is alive and well in Libya, Iraq, Syria and the wars are not receding.
Wars are not acts of God. They are caused by man, by man-made institutions, by the way in which man has organized his society. What man has made, man can change.
Maybe I should have taken a few chances. That’s not to say I want to go make ‘Star Wars’, but I need to shift my career into the studio world. That’s where my head was at when I thought of the original plot.
Indeed, Russia and the U.S. were allies during the two tragic conflicts of the Second and the First World Wars, which allows us to think there’s something objectively bringing us together in difficult times, and I think – I believe – it has to do with geopolitical interests and also has a moral component.
I would like – either as an actor, or producer or even director – to do something sci-fi or action-related. I like sci-fi, always have, ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Star Wars’ and all that stuff.
I have covered wars, before the epidemic began and since. They are all ugly and painful and unjust, but for me, nothing has matched the dread I felt while walking through the Castro, the Village, or Dupont Circle at the height of the AIDS epidemic.
Social struggles have been taking place throughout millennia, since human beings, by resorting to wars, were able to take hold of a surplus production to satisfy the essential needs of life.
All the Midkemia stories are part of a ‘history of an imaginary place,’ so I’ve always known the cycle covered five rift wars. I just got to the end after 30 books. So there was no particular inspiration, save it was time to finish the whole shebang.
Instead of the international police action we had hoped for during the war in Kosovo, there are wars again – conducted with state-of-the-art technology, but still in the old style.
We are unnecessarily wasting our precious resources in wars… if we must wage war, we have to do it on unemployment, disease, poverty, and backwardness.
Everyone’s a pacifist between wars. It’s like being a vegetarian between meals.
Wars will remain while human nature remains. I believe in my soul in cooperation, in arbitration; but the soldier’s occupation we cannot say is gone until human nature is gone.
I’m not so interested any more in how a great deal of science fiction goes. It goes into things like Star Wars and Star Trek which all go excellent in their own way.
Middle Eastern wars rarely end with outright victory and permanent stability, so the word ‘settlement’ may promise too much. At best, for many years, it may simply mean stable ceasefire lines, reduced bloodshed, fewer refugees, and less terrorism.
Most of the robots being developed for home use are functional in design – Gecko’s homecare robot looks rather like the Star Wars robot R2-D2. Honda and Sony are designing robots that look more like the same movie’s ‘android’ C-3PO.
I’m a big fan of ‘Star Wars.’ Some of the most iconic characters of ‘Star Wars,’ we didn’t see their faces but to this day you can say Jabba the Hutt or Darth Vader and people know what you mean around the world.
I never got into ‘Star Wars.’ Maybe because they made no attempt to portray real physics. At all.
‘Star Wars’ is my favorite movie series ever. I like the old ones better than the new ones, but I like all of them.
Bullfights are a very cultural thing. I know many people think it’s cruel, but so many things are cruel. Hunting, the electric chair, wars. These are all cruel things as well.
For years, I was compared to Wookiees, especially after I did the ‘Star Wars Holiday Special.’ I have some photos of me with a few of the Wookiees on the set, and it’s hard to tell us apart.
The first ‘Star Wars’ movie had come out in 1977 and had become this huge phenomenon with all the toys and everything – it just kind of swept America. But internationally, it was also a big deal.
Every ‘Star Wars’ film was about pushing what was possible in terms of effects, puppets, matte paintings, stop motion and, now, digitally.
It’s an amazing thing to hear they’re finally giving out a Medal of Honor to a soldier from the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan.
War is no picnic. Wars should be prevented, and if you can’t prevent them, you have to put them off.
The tragedy of America is that it entered all the wars with a consensus in favor of them, but within a defined period, the legitimacy of the war became a major domestic issue, with some people arguing that withdrawal was the only legitimate objective.
Politics is never about the people. It’s about money. And wars. And how many heads you can step on and bodies you can step over. And I’m just not that kind of person.
The house was big enough for my brother and me to have firecracker wars at one end and leave Mom and Dad undisturbed at the other. When firecrackers weren’t available, we attacked each other with pennies and marbles and clumps of Crisco, which made brilliant greasy asterisks when you missed and hit the wall.
I believe that this idea of story or myth or this thing that Joseph Campbell writes about is sort of an inter-connective spiritual force – like The Force in ‘Star Wars’ – where it doesn’t matter where you were raised, or what your background is, there are certain elements of story that totally appeal to you.
White House operatives went to great lengths to show Obama shifting focus from wars abroad to domestic issues at home.
Mubarak came to power as a hero who fought bravely in Egypt’s wars and headed the nation’s air force.
Trump, despite his divorces and ‘worldly lifestyle’, appeals to evangelicals because he is wealthy, powerful, and pays them lip service. They support him because they are tired of losing the culture wars and are addicted to the perks of power.
Like any other actor, my agent called me with an opportunity. It just so happens that the opportunity was the lead in ‘Star Wars.’
In calling someone a bad guy, I reassure myself that I’m good. I elevate myself. I call it the ‘Star Wars morality’. And unfortunately, it underpins most of the stories we tell.
I still tell people, ‘I’m pretty sure I’m the only ‘Star Wars’ fan in history to ever break into Skywalker Ranch by writing a movie about breaking into Skywalker Ranch.’
Several hard-core Star Wars fans who had tickets for the first showing actually said that when the movie finally began, they started crying. Mainly because they realized that it’s 22 years later, and they still haven’t lost their virginity.
These wars appear also to have given its death blow to colonialism and to imperialism in its colonial form, under which weaker peoples were treated as possessions to be economically exploited. At least we hope that such colonialism is on the way out.
I believe in mysticism, with an interior goal, and you are your own temple and your own priest. I don’t believe anymore in religions, because you see today there are religious wars, prejudice, false morals, and the woman is despised. Religion is too old now; it’s from another century, it’s not for today.
History offers no evidence for the proposition that the assignment of women to military combat jobs is the way to win wars, improve combat readiness, or promote national security.
And it says something about our level of disassociation, that we can provoke these wars abroad but we’re not allowed to see people get killed as a result.
In the last five or six thousand years, empires one after another have arisen, waxed powerful by wars of conquest, and fallen by internal revolution or attack from without.
Republicans should oppose the D.C. Swamp / Deep State’s blood thirsty desire for endless wars.
