the (un)real thoughts of realbt

In October 16, less than 2 weeks from now, those of us that live in the city of Vancouver will be voting in a plebiscite on whether city council should be elected in the present at-large system, or as wards, like many other large cities in the country.

I was called by the pro-wards campaign asking for not only support, but money and to volunteer. I told them I was supporting, but I would not be donating any money.

Part of the problem is that I don’t feel all that confident in a wards electoral system for Vancouver. But it’s not that easy.

COPE is strongly pushing the wards system for pretty clear political reasons: they stand to dominate city council for sometime if the city were to be divided into wards. They are claiming that it will offer better representation to minority groups within the city.

Councillor Sam Sullivan of the NPA, on the other hand, is not only against wards, but supports the current at-large electoral system, claiming that a wards system would make councillors less acountability to issues that aren’t relevant to their ward.

And yet there’s more to the debate than just that. There are others that are voting ‘no’ because they don’t support wards, nor do they support at-large. They are after things like a hybrid wards and at-large system, or pro-rep (something the Green school trustee is supporting).

So there are an infinite number of options, but only 1 question (with 2 answers) being asked.

As I said, I will be voting ‘yes’ in the upcoming plebiscite. I will be voting yes because I support something other than the present at-large system. My hope is that it will elect more balanced city councils — though this is just my hope. I worry that in many ways, parts of the city will actually loose representation, the way many people feel about the wards system used provincially.

According to the proposed boundaries, I will be in the Point Grey-Kitsilano ward. My guess is that this ward would be controlled by the Point Grey, right-ist voting population, and less by the hippy/young family/student population of Kits. So for me, having an NPA councillor (or worse), would mean that I would only actually have one councillor to represent me, one councillor to ignore and disregard my issues, and only one councillor to blame.

I suppose I’ve become somewhat ambivalent on the issue. But, come October 16, I will be voting ‘yes’.

Today it was announced that Bell will be buying my co-op employer, 360networks/Group Telecom for $270-million.

Yesterday, Mandrake and HP announced an alliance to ship low-cost PCs pre-installed with Mandrake Linux 9.1. This is great news. Mandrake is a fabulous distribution — it really is (and it happens to be what I run at home).

Seeing more and more Linux distributions marketted toward the average end-user, at a realtively low-price too, makes me quite happy. I’m glad to see new competition for Microsoft. But, I have to wonder — of these distributions (Lindows, Lycoris, Mandrake and RedHat probably being the most popular pre-installed) which ones really are the easiest for the non-techy end-user to get along with?

My bet would be Lindows. They offer a service called Click-N-Run which enables Lindows users to easily download and install new software. It’s probably similar to the rpm-system that Mandrake and RedHat (and SuSE and …) use, but a little more stream-lined. After I install new software via an rpm-file on Mandrake, I have to manually figure out where the application was installed (ie., what path), and what the application executable file is called. Usually it’s pretty easy to guess from the package name. Unfortunately, from what I can tell, no changes are ever made to the menu system (be it KDE’s or Gnome’s). Not such a big deal for me, but for new users really annoying. Putting all of this in writing makes me wonder whether I’m out of my mind — because, really — why on earth wouldn’t you add it to the menu?

Back to Lindows. The problem is that there is an annual subscription fee to use Click-n-Run. While it’s still cheaper than Windows, especially since most software for Linux is free, I wonder whether end-users will appreciate that the same way more open-source-friendly people would.

Earlier this year Mandrake was in some financial trouble and filed for bankruptcy protection. Hopefully this deal will help them recover. I don’t want to lose my Mandrake distribution!

It’s interesting to compare CNN’s coverage of Iraq to CBC’s coverage.

For starters, CBC is calling the story Attack on Iraq, whereas CNN is calling it War on Iraq. I think these titles kind of sum everything up quite nicely, myself (or maybe I’m just reading into things too much). Attack suggests that the US is doing much more than just declaring war — but literally (and quite vindictively) attacking Iraq. War says something entirely different, and it’s not a surprise that CNN is calling it such.

Something I noticed the other day is that George Dubyah is no longer calling Iraq’s weapons “weapons of mass destruction” — oh no, now he’s going for something that’s going to hit home better with his American folk (especially post-911 American folk): “weapons of mass murder”.

I suppose this is quite a smart ploy, in some ways. In order for his military campaign to be successful, US citizens must remain supportive. And how does one keep the US people supportive? Ignorance, naturally. Well, okay, more than that. The biggest aspect, I think, is fear. Calling Iraq’s weapons “weapons of mass murder” doesn’t just talk about destruction of buildings and property and cities and such; it’s a very graphic reminder of the streets of New York that we all saw on (US) news less than two years ago. It’s a reminder that “homeland security” is at risk, and that Iraq and every other terrible country that George Dubyah can’t place on a map threatens the American way of life (which I often wonder is bombing other’s countries, selling weapons to terrorists, and installing dictators and fascists?).

Speaking of George Dubyah — last night on his stupid little address he looked even more cracked out then usual. His beaty little eyes were bouncing left to ride as he read the stupid teleprojector thing. I really don’t understand how on earth he managed to get unvoted-voted in like that. Stupid Florida.

Back in my homeland, Chretien and opposition leaders are arguing, and I heard on the news last night Canadians that live across the border are criticising Canada for not being involved. Big surprise there, eh?

There was a big rally supposedly last night at the US Embassy in Vancouver. And today there’s a noon hour rally at the Goddess of Democracy at UBC.

I’m really beginning to wonder what the future holds for this conflict, for George Dubyah and the pesky Americans, their short-sightedness, and their inability to understand that they created all these problems in the first place — and what role Canada does(n’t) have in all of this.