Babylon 5: By Any Means Necessary

[Deledrius]

Are you referring to the Disney struggle?

This sounds like a very oddly-named dance craze.

[Beastro]

Are you referring to the Disney struggle?

This sounds like a very oddly-named dance craze.

To me it brings to mind Disney "Disnefiying" Mein Kampf.

[Mindworm]

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).

[FaxModem1]

I think those who are saying the EA is too much like a violent banana republic are doing a disservice to JMS, as the whole point is that this could happen in any government, if the conditions are right.

From his chats regarding the episode "Point of No Return"

Here's something to consider in this.
It's easy -- safe and reassuring -- to dismiss Nightwatch and the whole political climate on Earth at this time as referring to Nazi germany...SS, Stormtroopers, informers...but if we know our history, it shows that this is not so isolated as we might think. If we say it was just the Nazis, then it's a non-repeatable phenomenon, we needn't worry about it again.

But, of course, it does happen again...it did, and it will, to varying degrees. Go back to the Inquisition, and forward to Joe McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) which destroyed lives and reputations based on association, past history, social contacts and party affiliations (the items specified by Musante to the EA folks in Nightwatch). Stalin and to a lesser extent Lenin would have been right at home in Nightwatch. Several of the leaders speaking for parties in the ruins of what was once Yugoslavia would also fit.

It's easy, and safe, for us to say, "Oh, we would never do that, only THEY did that." But the "they" in this ARE the we on the other side...and "we" have done it, are doing it now, and will continue to do it. Only when we *know* the history of such things, when we recognize the rhetoric of control, when we oppose blacklisting and scapegoating and dead-catting do we help to assure that they *won't* arise again. Remember the quote: "Those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it."

There's a great deal of generalized historical and political metaphor in the show, never one-to-one because that's too easy, but disguised in one form or another, transumted. The Centauri Republic isn't a real republic by any stretch of the imagination...any more than the Roman Republic from which it draws some of its political structure, particularly the Centarum, the ruling body. There's a great deal of Japanese political and social structure to the Minbari, in their culture and art and some of their philosophy. You can find parallels to the story in World War II, and the bible, among a few dozen others.

Too little of TV these days is *about* anything...it's all context, no subtext. This show is about a lot of things...but never in the mode of telling you what to think. We'll ask *that* you think, that you consider the world around you, and your place in it...but defining that is your business, not ours.

JMS is showing something like many nations in the past, and now, wherein the conditions became right for them to go down this road, and institute such awful conditions on their populace, due to one justification or another.

For the Earth Alliance, it was the Earth-Minbari war that warped their view on civilization and made them a bit more totalitarian. It became acceptable, because they had been on the brink of destruction, and never want to be again. Under that lens, what isn't acceptable?

[Beastro]

The Centauri Republic isn't a real republic by any stretch of the imagination...any more than the Roman Republic from which it draws some of its political structure, particularly the Centarum, the ruling body.

?

Republic doesn't equal a democracy and Rome was one just as much as the suceeding Italian city-states were.

[animalia]

The Centauri Republic isn't a real republic by any stretch of the imagination...any more than the Roman Republic from which it draws some of its political structure, particularly the Centarum, the ruling body.

?

Republic doesn't equal a democracy and Rome was one just as much as the suceeding Italian city-states were.

And the Democracy found in Ancient Greece often had mob rule and would ostracize people it didn't like like. Look at what happend to Socrates.
Here's a quote by Benjamin Franklin that you should keep in mind "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner, liberty is a well armed lamb." Many people think the two are inherently the same thing but they aren't. And there's a real danger that comes when people forget that.

[Beastro]

The Centauri Republic isn't a real republic by any stretch of the imagination...any more than the Roman Republic from which it draws some of its political structure, particularly the Centarum, the ruling body.

?

Republic doesn't equal a democracy and Rome was one just as much as the suceeding Italian city-states were.

And the Democracy found in Ancient Greece often had mob rule and would ostracize people it didn't like like. Look at what happend to Socrates.
Here's a quote by Benjamin Franklin that you should keep in mind "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner, liberty is a well armed lamb." Many people think the two are inherently the same thing but they aren't. And there's a real danger that comes when people forget that.

Related:
youtu.be/_TCasd16gHQ

[TheLibrarian]

This episode really makes me wish O'Hare had been able to continue in the role, this was a great episode for him. I think that it would have made the the B5 break from Earth later in the series all the more dramatic if it had. Sinclair choosing to break from Earth would have been far more a dramatic moment than Sheridan's break. Not that Boxleitner was a bad actor, just that Sheridan played things a little more fast and loose than Sinclair did, so it was an easier process for him to go through. For Sinclair to have to say that he'd done everything he could within the rules as his character was based in, and he had nothing, that breaking with Earth was the only way to go; that would have been a big thing. Ah, what could have been. You know, I bet Sinclair and Picard would have got on great in a B5/TNG xover; someone get IDW working on that one.

Agreed. I have nothing against a well-written "cowboy"-type leader like Sheridan, but they're so prevalent in genre fiction post-Kirk/Han Solo I like to see a good cerebral type in charge once in a while. One who combines intellect and thinking things through with a solid moral compass.

I'm always perplexed how willing Earth Government seems to take violence as a solution for their problems.

Yes, considering this is still Santiago's administration, not Clark's. Guess Santiago was not that nice a guy.

My read: Santiago is like a neoliberal internationalist--he's open to relations with aliens, because an interdependent galactic economy has more potential to generate wealth for the already rich, and opens up established corporations to bigger markets and cheaper labour pools. Clarke is a xenophobic isolationist, who sees alien influence as a threat to the "purity" of human civilization. This might be cynical populist rhetoric where he exploits the fear and anger of similar-minded humans just to bolster his own power, but he did live through the near genocide of the human race at Minbari hands so he could easily be a true believer. But neither stance is necessarily beneficial to the "little guy", even if they claim otherwise.

Though the Senate appears to be making all the decisions. For that matter, why is a legislative body making executive branch decisions? Sinclair shoud be getting his orders from the equivalent of the State or Defense Secretaries

In some parliamentary systems, the cabinet heads are also sitting legislators. So maybe EarthGov is similar. Earth Alliance institutions are in general pretty weird, they superficially resemble late 20th century American ones, until they don't. Like EarthForce's rank structure, which seems to be a blend of traditional Anglo-American army and navy ranks: There are Commanders (Lt. and full) who outrank Lieutenants but are outranked by Captains, who are themselves outranked by Generals. And both the brown-clad ground forces and blue-clad ship&station-based forces seem to use the same ranking structure. I remember a review of "The Quality of Mercy" by a British reviewer who noted that Franklin runs a free, unlicensed clinic in Downbelow because many Lurkers can't afford proper medical care, and commented "care in Medlab requires fees instead of being paid for by taxes. This is parochialism at its worst: the American medical system taken to the stars."

[Beastro]

IIRC the background history is the Earth Alliance was formed by the US, Britain, the rest of the Anglosphere and many similar nations, like the Netherlands and Japan after the UN crumbled.

What I find amusing though is the idea that it would require the dissolution of the UN for nations to begin colonizing space. ATM treaties around that idea are fine because no one can. If it ever does become feasible you'll suddenly find nations making excuses for why they are, or that they're really not colonizing at all as those unable to bitch and moan about the treaty being ignored.

That is the usually the way such things go, like weapons limitation or banning treaties that are often pushed by nations that cannot afford the ability to build or maintain certain kinds of weapons and are seeking ways to limit others and their advantages.

[Steve]

The EA was formed after WWIII apparently, as a means to try and prevent another war. The first of the Psi Corps trilogy implies the EA might have collapsed within a decade of the Centauri contact if not for said contact (among a number of points of dissension was the telepath issue, as some nations vehemently disagreed with the Crawford-Tokash Act and the establishment of the Metasensory Regulatory Authority, the predecessors to Psi Corps). Instead realizing there were aliens around that could overrun Humanity gave impetus for the nations of Earth to rally together, and the Earth Alliance benefited.