This is the third installment of our four-part Roasted Marshmallow Newspaper series about the Civic Mirror Country “Trixtown” at Turner Fenton Secondary School in Brampton, Ontario.

Mike the Situation: “The Biggest Scammer” shows his True Colors

– Written by Danyal

Today, Trixtown was put into a “state of emergency” by PM Varun and the government of Trixtown. This huge crisis has struck Trixtown because Citizen Michael Lee, who owns the apartment at D4 has evicted all residents from his apartment and has just reserved space for himself. This sparked an outcry in the nation! PM Varun already had important announcements to make but was not previously aware of this issue. It was added to the list once Queen Trix of Turner caught the forum post and shocked, immediately said, “The biggest scammer, get up!” and the proceedings were under way.

Michael Lee made this official announcement at 3am Wednesday morning on the forums which held everyone in disbelief that morning. He stated in his post that, “nobody will live in the apartment at D4 besides myself” and there was no specified reason for him taking such an action, he just stated, “I feel that this must be done and I will never change my mind. The people in my apartment right now will be evicted as soon as possible.” This decision was not taken contentedly by the six citizens who used to reside in Michael’s apartment as they are completely homeless as of now.

PM Varun addressed this issue in front of the country today and he also asked Michael publicly, “Is there anything we [the government] or any other citizen can do for you or give you”, but Michael refused with a big grin on his face. Since two out of the six people that were evicted had contracts, PM Varun proposed the possibility of them suing Michael in court and he also stated, “the government will most probably have a court case ready against Michael” (paraphrased). Even after all of that, Michael stood strong in his decision and did not give in to any of the offers made by the government.

Now it had to fall in the hands of our PM to resolve this crisis. Even PM Varun doesn’t have the most clear idea on how to solve this issue because when asked he replied, “I don’t have a solid answer for you yet, because amending the constitution is a lot of work…basically I’m attempting to force him to let these people back in and making it legal to do so.” The PM is doing all he can to amend the constitution and make it legal for him to somehow force Michael into letting these people live in the apartment, but nothing has been finalised as of yet, work is still in progress.

Why’d he do it? This is the one mysterious question that remains unanswered, but something definitely seems fishy behind that evil grin of his. Nevertheless, there are still six people who are in risk of deaths due to the fact that there residence was snatched away, but the government is doing the best it can to resolve this upheaval.

Stay tuned for the fourth and final installment of Trixtown’s Roasted Marshmallow Newspaper this Thursday, April 28th.

This is the second installment of our four-part series about the Roasted Marshmallow Newspaper that was started by Civics 10 students from the Civic Mirror Country “Trixtown” at Turner Fenton Secondary School in Brampton, Ontario.

Varunism – What Does This Mean?

Written By Anjan

Everything seems to be falling in place for our great Prime Minister. Coincidence? I think not. There is definitely something fishy in this pond of politics, and I think it is about time the public opened its eyes. Numerous events took place at the House of Commons assembly, many of which may have shown the Prime Minister’s true intentions.

Primarily, Varun Puri seems to have sweet talked the opposition into electing Isha Mistry as the House of Common’s Speaker. The opposition said that it doesn’t matter since Varun has promised to listen to them as well, but… who are we kidding – this is politics.

“I think it’s a big loss for the opposition,” says an anonymous citizen.

Turns out, she was right. When electing the judge of Trixtown, many faces turned as the PM nominated his choice. It was evident that the opposition disagreed with this choice, but they were unsuccessful in stopping it due to their minority. After all, the opposition only holds one third of the seats.

“Personally, I think that James is not as impartial,” says opposition MP Raghav, “I would have chosen someone else.”

Try as they might, the opposition is no longer able to affect the PM. He may choose to listen to them or choose not to. For example, there was apparently a dispute about income tax.

“We would have liked a lower income tax,” states Raghav. But since his impact of parliament decisions has now been limited, he simply shrugged and said, “Oh well.” To me this means defeat, and an indication that Varun has grown stronger. It may even look like an unknown master plan where “part one” is complete.

The other parts of this master plan were unravelled during the remaining time in the House of Commons assembly. The government introduced and passed numerous other laws; however, to me they looked like total control. For example, it does not take long to understand that the taxes taken from rich people (a.k.a. the hardworking people), will not be returned to them. While interviewing a citizen from another country called “Yop! Mama”, I discovered a very interesting detail. “Your income tax is absurd!” stated this anonymous student, “Our income tax is only three percent, seventeen percent less than yours.” “We are being ripped off! The government is only providing to people who don’t work hard,” says this second anonymous citizen, “This will only make those lazy people lazier.”

During the House of Commons, Varun was also asked about his choice of the nationalized hexes. It was understandable to nationalize the energy hex, but there seemed to be a controversy regarding the insurance hex.  “We want to balance the protection against wildcards between the government and the public,” stated the PM, “so we took the insurance hex under our wing and allowed the public to take the security hex.” However, Varun failed to explain that since the government will also own the health hex, they will control most of the wildcard protection business.

Similarly, Varun also failed to mention that he was going to control the farms. “Each person is permitted to purchase and receive one food unit, if not followed, they will be subjected to illegal actions,” says the newly passed bill 202. The people who clearly understood what his bill meant ended up shocked. “The government is basically buying the farms,” says Himashi, a fellow citizen, “If they control the actions of the farmers, it is equivalent to controlling the farms.”Looks like the farmers no longer have any freedom. They are told whom to sell to and how much to sell it for. Even their freedom of deciding how much of their own food they can consume is taken away. They are forced to sell all their food.

The only thing the government can’t get from the farms is the income, but they don’t need it after all. Look around – in civics mirror, only certain hexes are able to produce a steady income. The government has either nationalized or restricted most of them. Moreover, they have suspended the construction of any more hexes. This results in citizen dependency on the government. Most citizens will not be able to provide for themselves and will become dependent on the government for the rest of the game. Welfare will be the only source of survival for many.

However, it seems that Varun has also out grown his party. In the hall ways, Government MP Mehreen was asked a question about a bill. She replied by saying, “Just ask Varun… I actually don’t know much since he keeps changing everything.”

So much power and control in the hands of one person, doesn’t this remind you of someone. After all, we have all studied history, certain faces must come to mind. So, the next time you see Varun making a decision for the betterment of our country, remember those images in your head. After all, no one is happy with all for this Varunism going around.

The Roasted Marshmellow’s next article covering Trixtown’s political situation will be published on the CM Trenches Blog on Monday, April 25th, 2011.

This is the first of a four-part series about a newspaper that was started in a Civic Mirror country by Grade 10 Civics students from Turner Fenton Secondary School in Brampton, Ontario. Not only did the students of this country, named Trixtown, start The Roasted Marshmallow  newspaper, but their involvement was felt throughout the Civic Mirror’s online community with over 1,200 forum posts in less than 10 weeks.

Their teacher, Kristin Greatrix, known in Civic Mirror World as “Queen Trix of Turner” introduces the series with this post. Enjoy!

Introducing The Roasted Marshmallow

The citizens of Trixtown wanted to have an online newspaper and wasted no time setting it up.  The Roasted Marshmallow was named by MP Raghav Ramola and brought to life by Anjan Puri with his scathing account of the House of Commons, which he predicted would amount to a fascist dictatorship.  Anjan was quickly accused of defamation and taken to court.  Responses from citizens abounded, most disagreed with Anjan and did not understand why he so vehemently labelled their elected Prime Minister a fascist and a wannabe dictator.

It all became clear when a housing crisis was averted with a referendum awarding Prime Minister Varun the power to amend the constitution without parliament’s involvement.  Within two days, the Constitution was reworded to make “His Saviour, Varun Puri” the sole legislator as well the judge, jury and executioner of Trixtown.  On the very last day of our simulation, His Saviour Varun Puri, nationalized all hexes (except green space) resulting in mass evictions and deaths of several Trixtown residents.

The Roasted Marshmallow played a critical role in allowing students to express their opinions.  They responded to each other in online forums and argued at school, in and out of class.  Unfortunately, reading the newspaper and developing opinions wasn’t enough.  It was only when it was too late that Trixtown residents realized how important active citizenship is, and that voter apathy literally gets you nowhere!

– Kristin Greatrix, Teacher at Turner Fenton Secondary

The Government of Trophis, a Civics 10 Open class at Rick Hansen Secondary School in Mississauga (Ontario), is in some serious financial trouble. With only $26 remaining in the government’s bank account, citizens and parliament members are feeling the pressure and are in need of significant economic reform.

The solution? Nikhila, an Member of Parliament suggests a new bill that gives the government control over all the important hexes : E/I hex, Health hex, Education hex and Farm hex. However, the citizens of Trophis have mixed feelings with this idea.

Some agree:

Nadia: “Yeah, i think our government should own the important hexes because they probably know how to manage them better than the citizens of Trophis.”

Whereas others find fundamental faults with the bill:

Kyle, a MP of the Opposition states: “how can the government obtain them if they only have $26? The only way they can get them is by “stealing” them from citizens which would be illegal”

Candice: “It’s not really fair that the government can just take the important hexes, the citizens paid money for them!”

As the discussion heats up it is revealed that the lack of money was largely the fault of Simo, leader of the Opposition who spent all the government money during the hex auctions. Nadia, a citizen of Trophis claims Simo bought:

“…useless things that (we) do not need. You did it so when the Phoenix party came to take their position back , they had control over nothing.”

The Government of Trophis remains poor and split by accusations of corruption and financial mismanagement. Will the country be able to unite and escape its debt ? Will Simo be accused of crimes against the people? Will they be able to achieve law, order, and good government?

Atyantis, a nation of Mr. S. Yant’s Grade 12 students at Upper Arlington High School (www.uaschools.org/index.aspx?nid=158) in Upper Arlington, Ohio,  have a tough decision ahead of them. President Simon has announced the  Survival Bill, this  ensures that all citizens will be guaranteed resources such as electricity, food, and health to prevent any avoidable deaths. The way the government will ensure this is by taking control of any hexes deemed ‘necessary.’ So, the Survival Bill is a way of stating public ownership for certain hexes and private ownership for any ‘luxury’ resources (A&E, Technology, Insurance, etc).

Senator Richard proposed an opposing bill, the Ownership Bill. This would ensure that owners of hexes would remain owners, and that resources deemed necessary (health, food, electricity, etc.) could be bought by the government with fair compensation to the owner. Once the government has distributed the allotted resources to ensure survival, their role with the hex is finished and all control returns to the owner.

The Survival Bill has stirred up much controversy as many of the citizens, led by Senator Richard, feel as though their rights are being infringed upon. In a forum where Senator Richard proposes his ‘Ownership Bill’, the tug-of-war over public versus private ownership sparks!

President Simon states, “The government is an extension of the people. Its first and foremost job is to keep them safe and provide them with necessities.”

However, as Senator Richard stated outside of the forums in a private interview, “…it was wrong to just take control of businesses where individuals had spent much of their in-game money on.”

The citizens are responding positively toward the Senator, as Chris states, “…[Senator Richard] is the only one thinking of the people right now.”

So, where does this leave the country of Atyantis? The next vote will decide if they either pass the Survival Bill (private ownership) or vote to pass the Ownership Bill (public ownership)!

It was a dramatic day in court for the grade 8 Civics class at Brentwood Academy in Brentwood, Tennessee. Their country Atlantis was suing their former President Kyle for the attempted robbery of government funds.

The Ex-President Kyle was accused of trying to hack into the account in order to take government money as revenge for being impeached the year before. Kyle claimed, however, that there was no evidence. Unfortunately, for Kyle, the Prosecuting team had four witnesses that saw him try to hack the account.

End Result: Kyle was found guilty and owed the Government $1500 and the prosecuting team $200.

But was that punishment fair? Citizens of Atlantis did not believe it was:

Vance: “I think that Kyle should have been in jail for a season…Kyle was trying to ruin the government and make the nation weaker. Kyle needs to be kicked out of Atlantis.”

Marissa: “I think that Kyle should have gotten sentenced to more time, and that he should have had a greater fine. If he doesn’t get jail time, then he might try to steal the government’s money again.”

And Kyle’s reaction to the sentence :

Kyle: “Uhhum.  if u look at the Government standings I am still president sorry for getting into my own account. And never really getting into it. Yea, sue me for typing. woops! forgot that it was a crime to type.”

Now Atlantis is moving on to its third President in a year, and Kyle remains a poor- but jail-free man.