Babylon 5: By Any Means Necessary

[CharlesPhipps]

The Earth Alliance's position is a lot more understandable when you take the view Babylon Five is meant to be a symbol of Earth's dominance as well as a restoration of national pride after the epic ass kicking they got from the Mimbari.

It wants the station working and mankind to be powerful as well as expansionist (we see it when the Doctor's father shows up that it's gone back to intervening in smaller planets' affairs). As such, dock workers threatening that project really will really irritate people.

Especially given the 4 previous stations failed.

[animalia]

Good luck with the tax problems Chuck. Not even the Joker was insane enough to take on the IRS.

That's the problem when governments squeeze the funds for collecting taxes. The taxman stops going after the big guys, because all of a sudden they no longer have the resources (in money to hire good solicitors and barristers, nor in their own staff to do the leg work of going through accounts and ferreting out the lies) to go after the big guys who evade away millions if not billions of unpaid taxes.

Instead to "show their worth" they go after the small guys like Chuck who can, if they're lucky, have the part time help of one small time accountant and are a lot easier to turn over. And often times get turned over even when they're trying to do the right thing and pay their fair share of taxes, because a) they don't have the expertise to actually know what they can and can't claim and b) don't have the time or money to go off and learn what they need to know.

And then it's compounded by the government then deciding to give sweetheart deals to the same companies that are bending the country over and giving it good, thus allowing them to sequester even more of the tax money they should be paying away into (even more) offshore tax-havens (I'm specifically thinking of Ireland's Apple deal where even with the extremely generous tax evasion laws here, Apple were still given a deal allowing them to hive off an extra €13bn in taxes they should have been paying in other countries through transfer pricing and intra-company "loan" fake revenues in their Irish subsidiary).

Of course it's all a product of voodoo economics, where the only two economic factors a government should be interested in are debt to gdp ratios and inflation (keeping both at artificially low levels no matter the cost).

Speaking of The IRS: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

[Nealithi]

I always thought this episode compared nicely with TNG's Ensigns of Command. Where Picard gets tired of political double talk and demands a copy of the treaty. Which he followed beautifully.

Same idea. I want things to work smoothly. You can let me work or I will work you over.

[Artabax]

The Earth Alliance's position is a lot more understandable when you take the view Babylon Five is meant to be a symbol of Earth's dominance as well as a restoration of national pride after the epic ass kicking they got from the Mimbari.

It wants the station working and mankind to be powerful as well as expansionist (we see it when the Doctor's father shows up that it's gone back to intervening in smaller planets' affairs). As such, dock workers threatening that project really will really irritate people.

Especially given the 4 previous stations failed.

EarthGov does not want the station working.

Dockers demand equipment and wages and food and sleep.
The "accident" was because dockers were pulling double-shifts and were too tired to work efficiently.

EarthGov's immediate response was to send the troops in. Excellent plan sir, you shoot half the dockers; everyone is pulling quadruple shifts; therefore they will work efficiently with useless equipment.

The resolution was through the Liberal Facade. EarthGov did not want to be openly evil and write the Law to say "Kill them all" or "Oren the Government stooge has absolute Power, mwah hah ha!" To maintain the liberal Facade, they wrote the Law is vague terms and Sinclair exploited that vagueness.

This is why Chain of Command is unsatisfying. Sheridan exploited a loophole in the Law at the very time when there are tanks on the lawn and legal niceties are gone.

[Deledrius]

The resolution was through the Liberal Facade.

Wait, what?

I don't remember this in Bablyon 5. What faction was this?

I always thought this episode compared nicely with TNG's Ensigns of Command. Where Picard gets tired of political double talk and demands a copy of the treaty. Which he followed beautifully.

Same idea. I want things to work smoothly. You can let me work or I will work you over.

I hadn't thought of that, but you're right. It's always really satisfying to see the good guys accomplish a little feat like this.

[Artabax]

The resolution was through the Liberal Facade.

Wait, what?

I don't remember this in Bablyon 5. What faction was this?

I always thought this episode compared nicely with TNG's Ensigns of Command. Where Picard gets tired of political double talk and demands a copy of the treaty. Which he followed beautifully.

Same idea. I want things to work smoothly. You can let me work or I will work you over.

I hadn't thought of that, but you're right. It's always really satisfying to see the good guys accomplish a little feat like this.

Sinclair wanted the xct text of the fatwah. It gave the Power to the highest ranking Military Commander. He used that Power to change the Budget and buy the equipment etc. and solve the Strike.

Senate used that form of words because they wanted to pretend they had clean hands. "Oh no, it's not us massacring the Workers, Sinclair just got over zealous."

[CharlesPhipps]

EarthGov does not want the station working.

Dockers demand equipment and wages and food and sleep.
The "accident" was because dockers were pulling double-shifts and were too tired to work efficiently.

EarthGov's immediate response was to send the troops in. Excellent plan sir, you shoot half the dockers; everyone is pulling quadruple shifts; therefore they will work efficiently with useless equipment

The resolution was through the Liberal Facade. EarthGov did not want to be openly evil and write the Law to say "Kill them all" or "Oren the Government stooge has absolute Power, mwah hah ha!" To maintain the liberal Facade, they wrote the Law is vague terms and Sinclair exploited that vagueness.

This is why Chain of Command is unsatisfying. Sheridan exploited a loophole in the Law at the very time when there are tanks on the lawn and legal niceties are gone.

We're still under President Santiago. They want Babylon Five working but they don't want any niceties working as the underpinnings of the future fascist government of the Clarke regime are still there. Any and all methods under the "Rush Act" imply that they are very much about ignoring labor problems or issues as long as military force is available.

There's no Palpatine agenda here. It's just, "crush any resistance."

[Steve]

Arguably JMS, in his attempts to avoid making Humanity squeaky clean like Trek so often tried in the TNG era,, went pretty far in the opposite direction. Far enough that objectively the Earth Alliance's claim to popular sovereignty and democratic rule of law is a bad joke; it's an oligarchy of mostly-Western megacorporations dominating the political system and using military force or the threat thereof to hold onto power, and the only reason the system survived its first century was that alien contact happened and dissenting nations joined up to give Humanity a united front against more powerful species like the Centauri.

Depending on how you view this possibility, Clark goes from the tragic result of Humanity's brush with death in the Minbari War to the inevitable consequence of a system that was already weighted to centralized authoritarianism.

[CharlesPhipps]

Arguably JMS, in his attempts to avoid making Humanity squeaky clean like Trek so often tried in the TNG era,, went pretty far in the opposite direction. Far enough that objectively the Earth Alliance's claim to popular sovereignty and democratic rule of law is a bad joke; it's an oligarchy of mostly-Western megacorporations dominating the political system and using military force or the threat thereof to hold onto power, and the only reason the system survived its first century was that alien contact happened and dissenting nations joined up to give Humanity a united front against more powerful species like the Centauri.

Depending on how you view this possibility, Clark goes from the tragic result of Humanity's brush with death in the Minbari War to the inevitable consequence of a system that was already weighted to centralized authoritarianism.

I'm pretty sure that's exactly what he went for. The whole point being "US centrism is bad, UN good."
Why the punishment for Sheridan is a joke to him. They are snootily trying to put him out to pasture and he ends up the UN Secretary General.

Earth isn't even the USA in this arrangement, either, it's Belgium.

No offense to Belgium.

[YAGWG]

Since they were already a season in, Sheridan had to come in with certain traits already in place. His relationship with General Hague showed this. I'm always bugged how the first season pretty much contradicts Sheridan's temporary Night Watch solution. Sinclair got orders from a Senator all the time, something Sheridan specifically mentioned couldn't be done in his speech to the Watch members.

When I saw that in Season 1, I was thinking one of the following:

• President Santiago had issued the order through the chain of command, but knew the Senator was going to speak to Sinclair and asked them to give him advance notice of the order.
• EarthGov under Santiago had a slightly more relaxed stance over military order protocols.
• Sinclair was supposed to be talking to President Santiago but the actor wasn't available for that episode.