Babylon 5 Reviews B

Years ago I did what you might call “reviews” of Star Trek episodes. I mostly just briefly noted what progressive politics were involved and sometimes used that as an excuse to talk about similar situations in reality.

Last year I finally watched all five seasons of Babylon 5, another sci-fi show, one I had thought of watching once in a while stretching back a couple decades. It isn’t as political or as progressive as ST but there’s some good stuff there- in fact, on one issue, a progressive take on the working-class and/or labor movement, B5 is better than ST. Because there is so little progressive material, I’m going to do one post for every four episodes reviewed, and only mention the episodes that have some progressive political stuff. I might ignore some of the more minor and/or less unique stuff about conflict resolution because from what I remember, it’s very common in this series. Also, although less so than is the case with Star Trek, multiculturalism is a big part of Babylon Five and I will also only be commenting on that when it is more significant than usual. Lastly, there are issues raised about telepaths- I’m going to completely ignore stuff about telepaths when reviewing these episodes.

I’ll be publishing one of these each time I get about 4 reviews done.


**Season 1 Episode 8 “And The Sky Full of Stars** See this for a plot summary

This episode briefly touches on the use of biological weapons, disapprovingly. A xenobiologist (B5's chief Doctor, Dr. Franklin) says that he refused to turn his notes over to the government because they would be used for developing such weapons for use against an alien race.


**Season 1 Episode 9 “DeathWalker”** See this for a plot summary.

This episode is about what we would call crimes against humanity. A leader of a planet roughly comparable to Nazi Germany is arrested on Babylon 5 and Sinclair reluctantly tries to send her to Earth, where the government has made her an offer for a serum she created that gives people immortality. However her primary victims, the League of Non-Aligned Worlds, learn of this, stop Sinclair, and get him to make an effort to have her tried for her crimes. When that doesn’t work, he arranges a compromise where she would do the medical work for Earth and as soon as Earth is fully educated about the serum, she would be put on trial.

Sinclair does the right thing when he is (physically and politically) blocked by the League from carrying out his orders. On the other hand, at one point he says that “she can make the deaths she caused have meaning” (among other crimes, living sentient beings were experimented on, something that contributed to the development of her serum). This sounds wrong- almost like he’s saying “maybe what she did wasn’t that bad after all.” I believe that, even IF it’s acceptable for medicine to benefit from such experimentation, that should be done without the cooperation of the criminals responsible, who should be in prison for the rest of their lives.

There are two other problems with this episode.

1. The Minbari vote against trying “DeathWalker”, ostensibly because they were not a party to the conflict she was responsible for (the real reason is that a part of their military caste sheltered her after the war). If that were really their reason, that doesn’t make any sense. If anything, neutral 3rd-party worlds/nations should be more involved with that sort of thing (so it's less likely to be seen as justice of the victor).
2. At one point “Deathwalker” says that humans will carry out atrocities as bad as hers. Nothing is said about the atrocities carried out by humans (in reality), in, for example, Native North America. I’m not sure how many peoples opinions about such matters are CHANGED by seeing them mentioned like that in a TV show or movie, but it can’t hurt.


**Season 1 Episode 10 “Believers”** See this for a plot summary.

This is about respecting different religious beliefs when those beliefs are in serious conflict with your ethics. I lean towards sticking to my ethics in at least some of the scenarios where this would come up- for example, how women are treated, including how they’re treated in many Muslim societies and communities. It’s especially about religious and ethical beliefs in connection to medicine and in the context of a relatively neutral space station dedicated to multiculturalism and dialogue between alien races as part of conflict resolution. In that specific context I believe that Sinclair was right to side with the child’s parents.

In a slightly different way, religious acceptance independent of medicine is also a theme. At one point Sinclair says “if any religion is right, then maybe they all have to be right.” I’m not sure exactly how this works when we include polytheistic religions, but I believe that Christians, Muslims, and Jewish people pray to the same God, and I would be happy to say something similar about those three plus polytheistic religions if I can figure out how to phrase it. Obviously there are still differences even if we agree that Jews, Muslims and Christians pray to the same God, but unless it’s done constructively, I don’t believe in focusing a lot on the differences between those religions. (UPDATE 4/2/17 I am not sure where Buddhism fits in this, but I believe that Buddhism deserves as much respect as the others) (I'm  not going to cover every single religion out there, but my thoughts are more or less the same about respecting all of them)


**Season 1 Episode 12 “By Any Means Necessary” See this for a plot summary.

This is a special episode. Not only is it about labor unions, it might go further than Star Trek’s Deep Space 9 episode “Bar Association” did.

A space dock worker is killed in an accident after a long period (months or years) of the dock hands being very understaffed, over-worked, forced to break safety rules in order to work faster, and dependent on old and failing equipment (although not central to the events that take place, they are also very under-paid). It’s revealed by the fairly sympathetic command staff of B5 that the lowest-bidder contractor responsible for some of the work building the station used inferior micro-chips which contributed to the death. Sinclair has requested a bigger budget to spend more money on the dock work force and equipment, but the most recent budget didn’t do anything new to help the docks. And Sinclair says that the government that employs the dock workers treats them poorly because their contracts don’t allow them to strike.

The Earth government sends a union-busting hatchet man who stresses the claim that if the workers were more efficient they would be fine with the equipment and manpower they have. When the situation escalates to an official (and illegal) strike by the workers, he invokes the “Rush Act” which empowers the authorities to use “any means necessary” to end the strike. Initially there is a fight between the security forces and the strikers but the the former are withdrawn and Sinclair ends the strike by, using the authority given to him by the “Rush Act,” re-allocating part of B5’s military budget to hire more dock workers and get new equipment.

Overall I think this might be more pro-labor than ST’s “Bar Association.” In the latter Sisko puts some pressure on the employer (Quark), but on the other hand, after conceding the union’s demands, Quark makes the union disband. In this B5 episode, the command staff are fairly sympathetic and the union remains at the end, but only two out of three union demands are conceded.

Babylon 5 Reviews A

Years ago I did what you might call “reviews” of Star Trek episodes. I mostly just briefly noted what progressive politics were involved and sometimes used that as an excuse to talk about similar situations in reality.

In late 2015 I finally watched all five seasons of Babylon 5, another sci-fi show, one I had thought of watching once in a while stretching back a couple decades. It isn’t as political or as progressive as ST but there’s some good stuff there- in fact, on one issue, a progressive take on the working-class and/or labor movement, B5 is better than ST. Because there is so little progressive material, I’m going to do one post for every four episodes reviewed, and only mention the episodes that have some progressive political stuff. I might ignore some of the more minor and/or less unique stuff about conflict resolution because from what I remember, it’s very common in this series. Also, although less so than is the case with Star Trek, multiculturalism is a big part of Babylon Five and I will also only be commenting on that when it is more significant than usual. Lastly, there are issues raised about telepaths- I’m going to completely ignore stuff about telepaths when reviewing these episodes.


**Season 1 Episode 1: “Midnight on the Firing Line”** See this for a plot summary.


This is an episode largely about conflict resolution. A colony of the Centauri is attacked and taken over by the Narn. Decades earlier the former occupied the latter’s home world in a near-genocidal manner, and some Narn see this attack as revenge that might as well result in genocide (they’re equally hateful of each other, although apparently the centauri started it). In my study of many conflicts our world has seen in reality, I think that kind of (what might be called) mirror-image hate is fairly uncommon. The military commander of Babylon 5, Sinclair, pushes for a peaceful and multi-lateral resolution of the conflict through the Baby;on 5 Council and the League of Non-Aligned Worlds and emphasizes a blockade of Narn (but at one point he also talks about military intervention, which is disappointing even though it would be multi-lateral). This effort is defeated at one point by dishonest diplomacy by the Narn, but then Sinclair gets some dirt on the them and gets them to withdraw.

We also learn that:
1. Earth’s government is budget-cutting and isolationist and xenophobic. Sinclair seems to believe in a “Domino Theory” involving Narn aggression. Although Sinclair is mostly progressive, Earth and B5 are not utopias like the Federation in Star Trek.
2. The Minbari are known as honorable in war and also take a strong stance against the hatred between the Narn and the Centauri.


**Season 1 Episode 2: “Soul Hunter”** See this for a plot summary.

I don’t have much to say about this episode or the issue it reminded me of, but it DOES remind of an issue between American Indians and institutions of the dominant society. That is the repatriation of Indian remains and of many objects of great cultural significance back to the Indian community. I read a little about it here and here. I think I first heard of it when I heard Winona LaDuke read part of a novel she wrote at a book-reading. I think it’s one of about seven stories in the book, but it sounded very interesting. More about her book here.


**Season 1 Episode 5: “The Parliament of Dreams”** See this for a plot summary.

This episode is about a festival-type celebration of all alien religious traditions represented on Babylon 5. It was organized by Earth and sounds like a fairly good idea in terms of promoting diversity and respect for different religious traditions. When it’s Earth’s turn the military commander in charge of Babylon 5 lines up dozens of people representing Earth’s different religions and introduces alien representatives to them. Those present and mentioned before the episode ends included: an atheist, a Catholic, a Zen Buddhist, a Muslim, an Orthodox Jew, an Oglala Sioux, Greek Orthodox, a member of the Ebo tribe, a Yupik Eskimo, a member of the Jivaro tribe, a Bantu, a Taoist, an aborigine, a Shinto, a Maori, and a Hindu.


**Season 1 Episode 7: “The War Prayer”** See this for a plot summary.

Bigotry and diversity and hate crimes are the major themes in this episodes. Although nothing that seemed worth a direct quote, there are some good statements against bigotry.

Trump's Racism

There is an issue that highlights, more so than other evidence, that Trump is a racist. But it seems to have been more or less ignored by the media, perhaps because shortly after Trump made the relevant statement, everyone's attention was consumed by the release of the tape of him more or less admitting to sexual assault. It's an important thing and a BBC article about it is here. That article links to a column by Eugene Robinson here.

Tom

UPDATE 4/23/20 Bearing in mind that criminal "justice" reform is a issue of racism, see this.

Jewish Graves Destroyed in West Belfast

On the 26th of August a group of 8 youths entered the Jewish part of a Belfast City cemetery- in a nationalist and republican area of west Belfast. They destroyed thirteen graves. Apparently there were many more youth associated with this.

After I read the two articles I found about it, first on the BBC News site and then in the Irish News newspaper, (unless you have looked at their articles recently, you should be able to read a small number of Irish News articles without a subscription) I reasonably assumed it was an anti-Semitic incident. Although this has been a little frustrating for me because it’s become really unclear, fortunately it now seems that it MIGHT not have been anti-Semitic.

In any event, Belfast Sinn Fein released the following statement:

“The individuals who destroyed Jewish graves in the City cemetery in Belfast are either nasty fascist thugs or mindless nasty thugs.

Sinn Fein in Belfast City Council will make sure these graves are restored to their original condition. Republicanism abhors sectarianism and fascism. We hope that the Jewish community in Belfast understand our abhorrence and accept our deepest sympathy.

Belfast Sinn Fein”

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UPDATE 2/19/20 I want to add something to this. After reading the two articles I link to above, I thought the SF politicians quoted were ignoring the likely anti-semitic nature of the crime. I got an email address for one from the Belfast City Council site. In his response, he included the then head of SF councilors in Belfast and the SF MP for West Belfast. I exchanged a few emails with them. One thought it was anti-semitic, one thought it was just anti-social activity (in earlier incidents, other graves were destroyed) and one thought it was both. I was going to make an attempt at being a journalist and write a fairly professional article about it. I was worried that I hadn't done things right as a journalist, I was worried about angering  SF politicians if I did something wrong by quoting them when I hadn't explicitly said I would at the very beginning, and even though a veteran journalist said I was okay, I had a lot of depression and anxiety about it, so I decided to do the very brief post you see. Why am I saying this now? These SF politicians were so concerned about the incident that they took the time to discuss it with me. In a recent post on his blog Juan Cole talks about SF and the Palestinians and says that unlike Germany with it's Nazi history, Ireland will be able to support the Palestinians without that kind of baggage. But That is not entirely true since Ireland was neutral and the IRA accepted aid from Nazi Germany. Unless SF has admitted recently that the IRA was wrong to do that, they are vulnerable to attacks. I go into more detail about that here. But multiple things indicate that SF IS VERY much against anti-Semitism (although it's not all favorable and some of it is ancient history much of this post is about SF and anti-semitism) and I wanted to make that even clearer to people who will criticize them over supporting the Palestinians. (I just did a google search for news about SF's current stance on the IRA and Nazi Germany, and subscribed to the Irish Times and searched that site and found nothing about SF changing it's stance on this (I found something from 2004 indicating that SF was still defending what the IRA did (using Google Advanced Search, I searched SF's web-site and found nothing, although several possibly relevant documents seemed to have been moved or removed (they probably can't archive everything (I also used the search function on SF's web-site and didn't find anything)))))


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(Full) Equality Denied

Although the Peace Process is probably secure for at least the next 2-3 years, there have been some spikes recently in terms of problems with equality for Catholics that are worth a post on this blog (there have been several other such times in the last 8 years that I said little or nothing about, but that’s largely because I wasn’t reading the Irish News, with more information than you get from the BBC, until Spring earlier this year). Besides the fact that the border is still there, there is still not total equality for Catholics in N. Ireland. Although this post is not an exhaustive list of that sort of thing in recent months and years, it pretty much covers all such issues in the last two weeks or so and covers a lot of stuff if you look back further than that.

1) July 12th is a major unionist holiday in N. Ireland and the night before most unionist areas have giant bonfires. In recent years and, I think, long before that Irish flags, effigies and election posters of both SF and SDLP politicians are often placed on the bonfire material before it’s lit. Recently attention has been drawn to the approving attitudes towards this of senior DUP members. (see this (as far as I can tell, the only response from anyone in the DUP has been defiance from former health minister Edwin Poots)). Although anti-sectarianism doesn’t demand this of them, SF is so committed to good community relations and the Peace Process that it has been opposed to burning Union Jacks for at least two years if not much longer.

2) A march in commemoration of the 1971 introduction of internment, something that was leveled brutally and almost exclusively at the Catholic population, took place Sunday Aug. 7th. It was organized by dissident republicans in Belfast but when they were banned by the Parades Commission from the city center, a SF MP, Paul Maskey said that it should be allowed into the city center (where according to the Irish News loyalists have marched in recent months).

3) Although there has been very little conflict (in terms of nationalist rioting or large-scale nationalist protests) around this in recent years, there is still the problem of loyal orders (especially the Orange Order) wanting to parade more or less through Catholic areas. To a small degree they (contentious marches allowed to go ahead) still happen here and there (at least 3-4 times in the last two years), and there is potential for it to become a serious problem next year. As far as why it’s wrong for such parades to go more or less through Catholic areas, see this.

4) In recent years Catholics have been about 50% more likely to be unemployed than Protestants. That’s much better than it was during and before the conflict, but still leaves something to be desired in terms of equality.


The Police Service of N. Ireland

A huge chunk of what I’m talking about is about the police. In general, I should say that although the 2011 census found that 45% of N. Ireland’s population had a Catholic ”background” (whether or not they believe in God, they are part of the Catholic community (they’re regarded as “culturally Catholic”)), in recent years only about 31% of police officers come from that part of the population (and only about 20% of police staff come from that community). That gap for police officers is narrower than it was during and before the conflict, but it’s still pretty large and I think one likely partial explanation for it is that there are likely still a lot of times that PSNI officers engage in “political policing” when dealing with Catholics, nationalists and republicans. That's partly based on some anecdotal evidence I've read in the recent past and partly based on a 06 June, 2016 article in the Irish News that reported on something probably relevant to this. In recent years average PSNI strength was about 7,500 officers and the Irish News said:

"In December The Irish News revealed Police Ombudsman had recommended disciplinary action or sanctions against an average of around 300 police officers in every year since 2010.

At the time the PSNI described the figure as "concerning", but added that it was working to reduce the number of Ombudsman complaints, which have averaged at around nine every day since 2010."

I don't know how many of these complaints are about hostility towards Catholics, nationalists, or republicans, but in any case it's fairly alarming.

(If you want some more of my thoughts about the police there, see this)

With that background in mind, there have been some fairly serious crises involving the police recently.

First, recently two offensive banners were put up in County Tyrone celebrating a deceased loyalist paramilitary leader- Billy Wright. One of the initial two banners referred to the killing by the UVF of three IRA members and one civilian in 1991. Despite a complaint about these banners by a member of the public, the police decided they were legal and said that some people wouldn’t be offended by them. This prompted outrage and an unheard of (in recent years) refusal by a senior SDLP politician to meet with a senior police officer (the one who had made the statement about offending people). The response of the police to these banners has also been compared with the removal by police in 2013 of a large sign in Enniskillen that was a derogatory statement about Margaret Thatcher around the time of her death.

Second, an independent (ex-SF) local councilor, Padraig McShane, was violently arrested at an Orange parade July 12th after getting into a confrontation with orange bandsmen who verbally attacked him in connection with an arson attack on his home in 2014. I haven’t heard anything about it in about 3 weeks, but the article I read said an SF assembly member was complaining to the police about the provocative behavior of the bandsmen who verbally attacked McShane.

if you want to go much deeper into this subject see the following:
https://www.policeombudsman.org/Investigation-Reports/Historical-Reports
https://www.policeombudsman.org/Investigation-Reports/Case-Studies
https://www.policeombudsman.org/Statistics-and-Research



So, the Statelet retains an Orange tinge here and there. I still believe it’s unlikely that Catholics will experience total, sustainable equality with Protestants in the British-occupied part of Ireland. Uniting Ireland should definitely still be towards the top of the agendas of progressives, republicans, and nationalists. I talk more in a post here about how Catholics have been treated and how a United Ireland would very likely not see the “tables turned” on Protestants and more generally about the argument in favor of uniting Ireland. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Black Lives Matter Is Not A Hate Group

There is an important article about the Black Lives Matter movement here. It's by Richard Cohen, President of the Southern Poverty Law Center, at least one of the top two organizations monitoring the radical right, hate groups in general and some other extremists in America. This article should hopefully convince people skeptical of or hostile towards BLM that the movement is not anti-white. The thing is, the SPLC are saying this because the issues being raised by BLM are legitimate issues of racial injustice and inequality, and I believe that motivation triumphs over the positive relationship that the SPLC has with lots of police departments- that is, the SPLC cannot be written off as anti-cop, because, for better or worse, they overwhelmingly AREN'T anti-cop. But they are very much against hate and inequality.

UPDATE 3/1/20 The Anti-Defamation League also says fairly or very positive things about BLM.

Tom

UPDATE 7/19/16 I almost forgot to include something. There's an article about support in Ireland for BLM. It's here. Although I'm not half as familiar with it as I should be, Irishcentral seems pretty mainstream in Irish-america, which makes the part of the article about the protests in Ireland a pleasant surprise.

Westminster Constituecnies

(SOMETHING WENT WIERD WITH MY BLOG. PLEASE CLICK ON "OLDER POSTS" BELOW THE MAP, THERE'S HUNDREDS MORE POSTS ON MY BLOG)

This post is slightly about easing anxiety I have about some mistakes I make, and also would make more sense if I had published it least 8 years ago when this blog was started. But it's also something that I would like to share with the world, even at such a late date as this. It's about drawing the boundaries of Westminster constituencies in N. Ireland. About 14 years ago I learned that the commission responsible for that was in the process of re-drawing them (first consulting with the local communities and then re-drawing them, etc.). They use wards kind of like Americans use precincts and I used the figures for ward population that they were using, and maps at a great site for N. Ireland elections and I re-drew them based on criteria that I felt were important.

(The map I drew is a little further below)

The embarrassing thing I want to get out of the way- I named one that I THOUGHT had a large Unionist majority "South and East Londonderry." I thought that with those demographics it was slightly appropriate and a harmless concession to them. In hindsight I think I was wrong about the demographics (and maybe using the word "South" as well) and am kind of embarrassed by it.

The criteria I used were:

1) Constituencies had to be within 5% of the electoral quota (what you might call the average size of a constituency). In the UK they're frequently well beyond 5% off and I think that's a problem.
2) With the exception of the three County Antrim constituencies that were pretty much brand new, if a constituency was above quota before, it was under in my map, and vice versa.
3) I thought the semi-urban area called South-East Antrim in the map below should be in one constituency instead of two bigger ones containing suburban and rural areas.
4) On a map of the old Dungannon local government district it looks like Coalisland is what MIGHT be called something like an immediate high-density suburb of Dungannon. Since I did this re-drawing I looked at a Google map of the area and it seems like maybe there's enough open space between Dungannon and Coalisland that it doesn't matter, but at the time I felt they should be together. Fermanagh and South Tyrone, right after Derry, was the second one I did and was earlier OVER quota, so kicking out Dungannon made a lot of sense, even though there may have been some housing on the outskirts of mid- and southern Dungannon on the wrong side of the boundary in my map.

Some other notes:
1) I think that the East Belfast and North Down constituencies are high-demsity enough that it's okay I split Newtownards in two.
2) I wish I had included all the wards immediately around Armagh, Ballymena, and Antrim, but those situations were less compelling than was the case with Dungannon and Coalisland (the surrounding wards were MUCH bigger than the town/city wards were).
 3) In Newry and Armagh I improved it in that sense since I added Derryleckagh to the the high-density city wards of Newry.

I think that's about it. I might be doing this sort of thing in the next several weeks as they're doing another re-drawing of the boundaries.

Tom

The map below is a heavily altered version based on one found here.