Civic Mirror: Articles that Connect to the Real World
Mr. Kemp asked us to find articles from newspapers or online and then relate them to what happened in Zugzwang. These are the articles and issues I found that I thought related back to Zugzwang.
Misuse of Government FundsThis article outlines how Canadian Senator Mike Duffy steals government funds to pay for travel and living expenses. Mike Duffy has stolen over 90,000.
This is similar to Zugzwang because when Prime Minister Nathan was kicked out of office he drained the government funds of 20,000. Rather than paying for a new home or travel, Nathan distributed funds between his party members, as well as himself. Although Mike Duffy is in the pursuit of paying the money back to Canadian Citizens, Nathan will face no repercussions, as he was never tried in court, and the game has ended. AlliancesThis article outlines how the NDP agreed to support the Liberal party in the passing of their new budget bill. This is similar to Zugzwang because in the year 2000, the Z party and El Movemento de les Pueblos decided to form an alliance that would ensure the alignment of their votes. Unfortunately, this did not go as well in Zugzwang as it seems to have gone within Canada, since the two parties votes or ideas rarely aligned. Another alliance in Zugzwang is the 5 people who were meant to make all decisions in the new communist version of Zugzwang, Nathan Christopher, Laurel Autsin, Dylan Hoang, Connor Watson, Jake Ricketts. Even though the communism bill was voted down, these 5 did stay in a tight alliance until the end of the game.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/05/11/onta-m11.html |
Communism?In Zugzwang, communism was introduced in 2002 by the National Unity Party which was headed by Nathan. Although communism was never fully approved, Zugzwang had a house of commons with many people leaning towards communism. This is similar to many countries, who aren’t officially communist, but are headed by “communist-leaning strong men”. Venezuela and Zimbabwe are two examples of these kinds of countries, with their leaders running their countries similar to one under communist control
. http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/inordinate_fear.html
This article details how the newly elected Liberal party head Justin Trudeau and NDP leader Thomas Mulcair have a low key, less than public rivalry. They each have taken turns glaring at each other in the house of commons on Trudeau’s first meeting in the House of Commons. In Zugzwang I think that there were many rivalries between classmates, even if they weren’t as well hidden as the one between Mulcair and Trudeau. Dylan Hoang made it his mission (or so it seems) to make anyone and everyone in the HOC his enemy, even me, when I was supposed to be his ally. As well, several people seemed to have Elijah Small as a rival, since he was quite the con man during the game. http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/04/20/trudeaus-other-opponent/ |