I picked this up in mail off Internet from David Navas, but got bumped
and don't know how to respond via GEnie to Internet...so I thought I'd post
this here, since it may be of general interest, figuring that someone could re-
post it there.

The questions concerned B5 and the political situation on Earth at this
time. Back home, there is an Earth Senate, which is made up of elected
representatives from each nation-state; the larger and more powerful the
nation, the more reps they get. Which annoys the smaller nations no end.
(And there's quite a bit of conflict between them; the smaller nation-states,
with limited resources, keep grousing about why they should support B5
financially, as well as other space endeavors, when their economy really isn't
set up to take as much advantage of the situation as the larger nation-states.

In the 10 years (not 17 as Navas suggests) since the Earth/Minbari war,
there haven't been any major dictatorships, but we've strayed awfully close on
more than one occasion. As for the nature of B5, yes it is a (let me try this
again) there is a military component to it, but for the most part it is a
civilian operation. In the same sense that, in the early history of our
country, you sometimes had a military governor assigned to a state or
province.

jms