Stranger Than Fiction

Volume 45 Issue Eight August 2026

Last Trumpet Ministries ∙ PO Box 806 ∙ Beaver Dam, WI 53916

Phone: 920-887-2626 Internet: http://www.lasttrumpetministries.org

“For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” 

I Cor. 14:8

“The way of man is froward and strange: but as for the pure, his work is right.” - Proverbs 21:8

It is sometimes said that the truth is stranger than fiction. When we consider the many extraordinary things happening in this modern age, this idiom certainly rings true. Some of the things you are about to read are going to sound unbelievable, and maybe even impossible. Yet, we live in an age when the science fiction of decades past resembles the reality of our present time. Our sources for the information provided in this newsletter will all be listed in our references section. We invite you to investigate them for yourself if you feel inclined to do so.

I recall hearing an urban legend in the 1990s claiming that Kentucky Fried Chicken, sometimes known as KFC, was growing headless chickens in a laboratory and harvesting them for meat, which was then supposedly sold to unwitting customers in their iconic buckets. To be clear, this legend was not true. Yet while the premise once seemed far-fetched, lab-grown synthetic meat has existed for years, and various companies are working to perfect cultivated meat grown from stem cells.

The first cultivated beef burger ever was prepared and consumed at an event in London, England, in 2013. (1) At the time, food critic Josh Schonwald, who was one of the first people to taste the lab-grown burger, said, “The mouthfeel is like meat. I miss the fat, there’s a leanness to it, but the general bite feels like a hamburger.” Professor Mark Post of Maastricht University in the Netherlands, the scientist who developed the lab-grown burger, commented, “It’s a very good start.” (2) About seven years later, Singapore became the first country to allow cultivated meat to be sold to consumers. (3) The United States would follow suit on June 30, 2023, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food Safety and Inspection Service issued approval to GOOD Meat and UPSIDE Foods to sell cultivated meat products in the United States. (4)

The lab-grown meat remains expensive to manufacture and is not typically available for purchase in the U.S. yet. Cultivated meat producers have also faced considerable backlash from lawmakers. According to an article published by U.S. News & World Report in December 2025, seven states – Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, and Texas – have banned the manufacture, sale, and distribution of lab-grown meat. (5) However, Elliot Swartz of the Good Food Institute in Washington, D.C., believes we may begin to see a few cultivated meat products become available in supermarkets over the next five years. “There might be local retailers that have a few products on store shelves, but there won’t be a nationwide Walmart, Costco-type of cultivated meat product within the next five years in the United States,” he estimated. (6)

As for that urban legend, it turns out it was just ahead of its time. But lab-grown meat is far from the strangest thing happening in these very strange days.

WHO brings countries together to test collective pandemic response

4 April 2025 News release Geneva 

Over the past two days, WHO convened more than 15 countries and over 20 regional health agencies, health emergency networks and other partners to test, for the first time, a new global coordination mechanism for health emergencies.

The two-day simulation, Exercise Polaris, tested WHO’s Global Health Emergency Corps (GHEC), a framework designed to strengthen countries’ emergency workforce, coordinate the deployment of surge teams and experts, and enhance collaboration between countries.

The exercise simulated an outbreak of a fictional virus spreading across the world.

Participating countries included Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ethiopia, Germany, Iraq, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Mozambique, Nepal, Pakistan, Qatar, Somalia Uganda and Ukraine, with additional countries as observers. Each country participated through its national health emergency coordination structure and worked under real-life conditions to share information, align policies and activate their response.

Regional and global health agencies and organizations, including Africa CDC, European CDC, IFRC, IOM, UNICEF and established emergency networks such as the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, the Emergency Medical Teams initiative, Stand-by partners and the International Association of National Public Health Institutes, worked together to support country-led responses. More than 350 health emergency experts connected globally through this exercise.

“This exercise proves that when countries lead and partners connect, the world is better prepared,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “No country can face the next pandemic alone. Exercise Polaris shows that global cooperation is not only possible – it is essential.”

Throughout the simulation, countries led their own response efforts while engaging with WHO for coordination, technical guidance and emergency support. The exercise provided a rare opportunity for governments to test preparedness in a realistic environment, one where trust and mutual accountability were as critical as speed and capacity.

‘Project Hail Mary’ review: Ryan Gosling sci-fi epic celebrates sacrifice, friendship and the power of hope

By Leah MarieAnn Klett, Assistant Editor 

Tuesday, March 10, 2026

Ryan Gosling stars as Ryland Grace in "Project Hail Mary" | Amazon MGM Studios

In a cinematic landscape often dominated by dystopian futures, raunchy storylines and grim visions of the universe’s fate, “Project Hail Mary” offers something refreshingly different: hope, optimism and a belief in humanity’s willingness to sacrifice for one another.

Directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller and adapted by Drew Goddard from the bestselling novel by Andy Weir, the film, rated PG-13 for some thematic material and suggestive references, combines gorgeous celestial landscapes and sci-fi elements with a human, often funny, story about sacrifice, friendship and curiosity.

At the center of it all is Ryan Gosling, who both produced the film and delivers a heartfelt performance as Ryland Grace, a middle-school science teacher who wakes up alone on a spaceship with no memory of how he got there.

Gradually, Grace begins piecing together the truth: Earth’s sun is dying. Alien microbes known as astrophage are consuming its energy, threatening to plunge the planet into a new ice age. Humanity’s last hope is a desperate mission to a distant star system, the titular “Hail Mary.”

Star Trek: The Next Generation - S1E21 - The Arsenal of Freedom - Intro

Project Phoenix

Project Phoenix

IONTB

May 7, 2017The Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council, along with their partners from government, business, and social services communities, is developing a plan to identify and address the multitude of issues that would arise should a catastrophic event occur in the Tampa Bay area. For this plan, the Tampa Bay area is defined as the following counties: 

Citrus 

Hardee 

Hernando 

Hillsborough 

Manatee 

Pasco 

Pinellas 

Polk 

Sumter 

Hurricane Phoenix is a fictitious storm created to simulate the effects of a worst‐case scenario. With input from Tampa Bay area emergency management agencies and the local office of the National Weather Service (NWS), a simulated storm was developed with a track and intensity that would devastate the entire Tampa Bay region. The NWS generated National Hurricane Center advisories, local hurricane statements, and data files that simulate the hurricane’s location and intensity from its formation in the Caribbean Sea, through landfall in Pinellas County, to the hurricane’s exit from the east coast of Florida into the Atlantic Ocean. The maps and information presented in this packet are based upon the data files developed for this simulated storm. The simulated parameters of Hurricane Phoenix were input into HAZUS‐MH, the risk assessment tool that uses the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) standard methodology to measure the effects of real and simulated hazard events like hurricane winds and flooding. As one might expect, a storm of the size and strength of Hurricane Phoenix would create almost unthinkable damage to the area’s homes, businesses, infrastructure, overall economy, and social systems that are currently in place. The goal of this planning process is to develop strategies that will help the Tampa Bay region to recover and rebuild after such a devastating catastrophe. 

The Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council would like to acknowledge the following individuals and organizations for their time, effort, and video products that support the making of the catastrophic plan scenario video. Thank You. 

• Dr. Neil Frank - Former Director, National Hurricane Center
• Steve Jerve - Chief Meteorologist, WFLA-TV
• Dr. Steve Lyons - Tropical Weather Expert, The Weather Channel
• Daniel Noah - Warning Coordination Meteorologist, National Weather Service - Ruskin (Tampa Bay Area)
• Tammie Souza - Chief Meteorologist, WTSP-TV
• Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
• Florida Division of Emergency Management
• Hillsborough County Hazard Mitigation Division
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
• National Geographic Channel
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
• Pinellas County Communications
• Pinellas PCC-TV
• Pinellas County Emergency Management
• Sarasota County Emergency Management
• United States Coast Guard
• The Weather Channel
• WFLA-TV, Tampa
• WTSP-TV, Tampa 

This video was produced by URS Creative Services - Tampa 

• Brad Courtney - Video Production Manager Creative input provided by the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council Betti Johnson - Principal Planner and Project Lead
• Brady Smith - Senior Planner 

Copyright 2010 - Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council

A FAREWELL TO VIROLOGY (PT 1): Dr Mark Bailey / Steve Falconer

A FAREWELL TO VIROLOGY (PT 1): DR MARK BAILEY / STEVE FALCONER

First published at 00:53 UTC on August 26th, 2023.

#COVID
#VIROLOGY
#HOAX



Spacebusters

Part one of a three part series. "A Farewell to Virology" is a 29,000 word essay debunking virus theory and virology, written by Dr Mark Bailey, MBChB, PGDipMSM, MHealSc. It has yet to be contested and the purpose of this film is to explain why.

This film version walks the layperson through the paper and scientific evidence in an easy, simple and understandable way, so that they may better understand and be able to easily explain to others the great hoax of the last few centuries and certainly last three years, that fictional particles called "viruses" exist, cause illness and are reasons to lock down and destroy societies and economies and cause lifelong disease and misery through needless and useless vaccination programs. They don't.

Download the full "A Farewell to Virology" essay here: https://drsambailey.com/a-farewell-to-virology-expert-edition/

Knights to conquer New York Times

Sunday, August 31, 2014, 00:01 by
Victor Calleja




Steve Berry


Some say we all have a story to tell – something deep inside us which only needs a tap and it will magically flow out.

Steve Berry had more than one story embedded inside him and, once he managed to tap them out, they flowed on and on.

And people flocked to read his stories – he’s sold more than 18 million copies – all riveting, all page-turners, nearly all bestsellers.

Berry was on the island to write a book about the Knights of Malta. I met him at the Westin Dragonara, St Julian’s, where he was staying while he researched the knights, their history, their ways and how they have changed throughout the centuries.

The novel, which will feature Malta in a big way, will be a modern-day yarn featuring Cotton Malone.

Malone is a former Justice Department operative who can’t stay out of trouble. In various Steve Berry bestsellers Cotton Malone has criss-crossed the globe on electrifying quests.

With the smart and capable Cassiopeia Vitt by his side, Malone faces down the world’s deadliest threats – unravel-ling, along the way, some of history’s most legendary and iconic mysteries.

With his last seven suspense thrillers, Berry has managed to get into the prestigious New York Times bestsellers list.

Actually, if you ask people in the know, this is beyond prestigious –it is the bar by which publishers and anyone involved in the book trade gauge the success, or otherwise, of authors.

While working as a trial lawyer – with all its stress and tough demands – he realised he had innervoices crying out to get on with it and write thrillers.

Finally, after 85 rejections, a publisher accepted a book of his

So he researched and scribbled away in his spare time, penning suspense thrillers which he finalised and sent to publishers.

However, he kept receiving those horrid slips which no author likes to even think of ­– rejection slips. He plodded on and persisted in writing – and sending off – his manuscripts. But that wasn’t enough and he also sought office as one of the county commissioners of Camden in Georgia.

Berry was elected and held office for 14 years, one of five who ran the county which is larger than Malta, as Camden is 35 miles long (Malta is approx. 19 miles) although it only has a population of 50,000.

While all this was going on he was coming up with yarns that make you want to turn the page quicker than you can blink but which required a lot of planning, research time and writing.

Finally, after 85 rejections, a publisher accepted a book of his, The Amber Room, along with two others and success was immediate.

Top books like The Templar Legacy and The Lincoln Myth followed and Berry has had a spiralling of bigger successes.

The world had changed and suspense thrillers were then back in fashion after losing their stellar quality for publishers when the Cold War had ended.

The Da Vinci Code broke new ground and publishers realised this genre of books, which Berry was writing even before Dan Brown had made a name for himself, were hot property and millions of them could be sold.

And hugely sold they were. Berry left his law practice and now concentrates only on writing and churning out good plots.

While discussing plots, books, voices and super success, I ask Berry rather conspiratorially – trying hard to sound like one of his books’ characters – if there is anything wrong with Malta. He bellows a loud “Yes!” in his Georgia twang, as he laughs away.

“There’s one big problem with this country and that is that my time here is limited. I’m loving it here. The level of hospitality at the hotel and throughout Malta is really high. Malta is truly blessed with grand vistas and remarkable heritage and architecture. The story of the knights will be fun to plan and write,” Berry says.

The book is due out in 2018 and Berry tells me he would just love to see its international launch with Fort St Angelo as a backdrop. “It would be just magic,” says Berry, who is also a founder member of the 2,600-member International Thriller Writers.

Malone, the modern-day protagonist of Berry’s latest thrillers, is, however, rather destructive and will surely have a few difficult escapades in Malta and Gozo.

Some places here on the island will witness carnage and mayhem. “Thankfully,” Berry adds, “all this will happen in fiction so Malta’s palaces and art will remain intact and impressive even after the book is finalised.”

 

 

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Find Ricky Martin's first kids' book 'Among the Stars'

Lindsay Deutsch, USA TODAY 9:28 p.m. EST November 11, 2013

The Latin superstar says his 5-year-old twins, Matteo and Valentino, are his inspiration, for the first of five planned children's books.



(Photo: Omar Cruz)

Story Highlights
'Santiago the Dreamer in "Land Among the Stars"' is the first in a five-book series
"It's not just the book," Martin says %u2014 the project also includes cartoons and music
Besides writing, the singer will be singing the World Cup single and is working on a new album

Ricky Martin is a Grammy-winning singer — and the father of 5-year-old twin boys, Matteo and Valentino. Martin, who wrote the best-selling memoir Me, makes his children's book debut with Santiago the Dreamer in 'Land Among the Stars' (Celebra, illustrated by Patricia Castelao, for ages 5-9). It's about a young performer who learns to overcome rejection and follow his dreams. Martin, 41, spoke with USA TODAY's Lindsay Deutsch about his inspiration, the writing process and how fatherhood is a whole new vida loca.

Q: How are you like the book's star, Santiago?

A: To be quite honest, when I was 12 years old, I did my first audition to become a member of this music band, and I was not accepted. I had my father next to me the entire time saying, "If this is what you really want, you just have to believe it in your heart and start getting ready." He helped me a lot emotionally and spiritually, and I eventually got the part. So this is a little bit inspired by my personal life, with fantasy added to it. Now that I have my kids, I want to be constantly feeding them love and security so they can be themselves.

Q: Have you read the book to your sons?

A: They tend to be very jealous. I keep talking about Santiago, and it's funny because today, my son asked me, "So where does Santiago live? What city?" And I said Santiago lives in our hearts and he's always with us. So yes, I've read it to them, and they love it, and now I'm doing the music for Santiago, so he's really becoming a celebrity in our house. They are a very big part of his whole project, obviously.

Q: Music? What do you have planned for Santiago?

A: First, let me tell you that this is the first of a five-book series. This is the first story, and it's the introduction. Hopefully we'll be releasing one book every year for the next five years.




'Santiago the Dreamer in Land Among The Stars' by Ricky Martin, illustrated by Patricia Castelao, is for kids ages 5-9. Martin's twins are 5.(Photo: Celebra)


Q: It sounds like the books will be growing up with your kids.

A: Yes, that's the point. Santiago's best friends are going to be very important in the next couple of stories, and obviously Santiago's father — I'm creating a whole little world of Santiago. It's fascinating. And I am doing cartoons, I'm doing really interesting things — it's just not the book.

Q: What's it like to jump into the children's book genre after being so established singing and performing?

A: Music will always be my priority. I love being onstage, I love performing, I love walking into a studio and creating and surrounding myself with amazing producers and musicians. I don't see myself away from the stage at all. But when I come back home and disconnect from the madness of celebrity, I have my family (he lives with his partner, Carlos González Abella).My priority right now is to nurture make the foundation of my family very solid. (That) is the most important thing for this chapter of my life. They are everything.

Q: The book is coming out simultaneously in both Spanish and English. Can you talk about that?

A: The first book that I wrote, Me, which I'm very proud of, was translated into nine languages. I'm from Puerto Rico and we live in the U.S., so there's that duality, and we speak Spanish in the house, so my kids are bilingual — well, trilingual because they go to a French school — so the way I see it is that the message needs to be out there in the world. It's a message of self-esteem and security, and thank God for music, because I've been able to travel literally around the world, and this book will also hopefully translated into many other languages.

Q: What was it like when you saw the finished book come together?

A: You know, it's the same feeling as when you hold the CD cover in front of you, the same thing when you see a video. It's the same thing when you sit down and open the book and see the whole year's work go by. How can I explain it? I feel empowered. It's like it's a new beginning. The children's world is very powerful.

Q: Were there any books you read to your kids or other places where you got inspiration?

A: A lot of cartoons, because obviously, for the first five years of your kids' lives, you don't get to watch TV anymore because they own the television.

Q: As for your other projects, you're singing the official World Cup song and recording another album. What are you excited about?

A: Right now, Sony is creating a compilation of songs for the World Cup, and I'll be singing the single, which we have a competition out to be written by my fans. The writer could be from anywhere — the U.S. or maybe Japan or Indonesia. I will produce it and will co-write the song, and we're giving a great opportunity for a star to be born! Then I am taking the songwriter to Brazil for the World Cup. I'm also in the studio working on the album, and I'm working on some acting stuff, too, but that's another conversation for another day.

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“The Hunger Games”: A Glimpse at the Future?

By VC | April 5th, 2012

The hit movie “The Hunger Games” takes place in a dystopian future where the poor and wretched masses live under the high tech tyranny of a wealthy elite. Is the movie depicting the kind of society the elite is trying to establish for the New World Order? We’ll look at characteristics of the world presented in “The Hunger Games” and how they relate to plans for a New World Order.

Pushed by a gigantic marketing campaign, The Hunger Games did not take long to become a world-wide sensation, especially among teenagers and young adults. Sometimes referred to as the new Twilight, The Hunger Games has similar components to the previous book-to-movie craze (i.e. a young girl torn between two guys) but takes place in a very different context.

Set in a dystopian future (why is the future always “dystopian”?), The Hunger Games paints a rather grim picture of the world of tomorrow, whether it be from a social, economical or political point of view. In short, it is a big-brotherish nightmare where a rich elite thrives on the backs of a starving population. Meanwhile, the perversity and voyeurism of mass media is taken to absurd levels and is used by the government as a glue to keep its unjust social order intact. Is The Hunger Games giving teenagers a glimpse of a not-too-distant future? It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see the elite are trying to take the world in that direction. Is the author Suzanne Collins communicating a strong anti-NWO message to the youth by showing its dangers or is it getting the youth used to the idea? Let’s look at the fictional, yet possible, future world of The Hunger Games.

Note: This article is about the movie and not the book series. The movie has been formatted in a different way and conveys a slightly different message.

The NWO for Teenagers

The Hunger Games takes place in a context that is strikingly on-par with descriptions of the New World Order as planned by today’s global elite. One of the main characteristics of the New World Order is the dissolving of regular nation-states to form a single world government to be ruled by a central power. In The Hunger Games, this concept is fully represented as the action takes place in Panem, a totalitarian nation that encompasses the entire North-American territory. The United States and Canada have therefore merged into a single entity, a step that many predict that will happen before the full-on creation of the NWO.

The President of Panem addressing the Nation.

In Panem, the concepts of democracy and freedom have disappeared from America to be replaced by a high-tech dictatorship based on surveillance, monitoring, mass-media indoctrination, police oppression and a radical division of social classes. The vast majority of the citizens of Panem live in third-world country conditions and are constantly subjected poverty, famine and sickness. These difficult living conditions are apparently the result of a devastating event that engendered the complete economic collapse of North America. In District 12, home of the hero Katniss Everdeen, the locals live in conditions similar to the pre-industrial era where families of coal miners lived makeshift in shacks and eat rodents as meals.

While the masses look as if they are living in the 1800s, they are nevertheless subjugated to the high-tech rule of the Capitol, which uses technology to monitor, control and indoctrinate the masses. Surveillance cameras, RFID chips and 3D holograms are abundantly used by the government to manipulate the will of a weak and uneducated population (although there are signs of solidarity and rebelliousness among the peasants). To preserve the fragile social order, the Capitol relies on a massive police force that is always ready repress any kind of uprising. The workers are often rounded up in civilian camps where they are shown state-sponsored propaganda videos. Panem is therefore a high-tech police state ruled by a powerful elite that seeks to keep the masses in poverty and subjugation. As we’ve seen in previous articles on this site, all of these concepts are also thoroughly represented in other forms of media as there appears to be a conscious effort to normalize the ideas of a high-tech police state as the only normal evolution of the current political system.

Living in sharp contrast to the proletariat, the elite in The Hunger Games inhabits the glistening Capitol city and indulges in all sorts of extravagances and fashion trends. This upper-echelon of society perceives the rest of the population as an inferior race to be ridiculed, tamed and controlled. All valuable resources have been vacuumed from the people living in the districts to profit the Capitol, creating a clear and insurmountable divide between Regular People and The Elite. The concept of an opulent elite ruling over the dumbed-down and impoverished masses (thus making them easily manageable) is an important aspect of the New World Order and it is clearly depicted in The Hunger Games. The government’s reliance on high-tech surveillance and mass media to keep the population in check is something we are already seeing and, if we keep going in that direction, the world of The Hunger Games will soon become reality. There is another concept important to the occult elite that is at the heart of The Hunger Games, however: Blood sacrifices to strike fear and gain power.

Blood Sacrifices for the Elite

Katniss is selected as tribute of her district.

The government of Panem created the Hunger Games in order to remind the masses of the “great treason” they have committed by engaging in a rebellion. As punishment for their insubordination, the twelve districts of Panem must offer to the Capitol one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18 to be part of The Hunger Games. The teenagers must fight to the death in an outdoor arena in a Roman Gladiator-like event that is televised across the nation. The rules of the Games reflect the elite’s contempt and total lack of respect for the masses. The name of the Games itself is a reminder of the state of perpetual starvation the lower class is purposely kept in by the rulers in order to better control it.

The boys and girls that are selected to take part in The Hunger Games are called “tributes”, a term that usually describes a payment rendered by a vassal to his lord and thus even reflects the servitude of the mass to its rulers. Since time immemorial, blood sacrifices were considered to be the highest form of “tribute” to gods and, on an occult level, were said to wield the most potent power to be tapped by rulers and sorcerers. The same way ancient Carthaginians sacrificed infants to the god Moloch, inhabitants of Panem sacrifice their children to the Capitol. The Hunger Games are therefore a modern version of these ancient rituals that the masses had to participate in to avoid the wrath of their superiors. The entire nation of Panem is forced to watch the sacrificial ritual that takes place in the Capitol, stirring up fear, anger and blood lust within them, amplifying the power of the ritual. We’ve seen in previous articles that the deaths of specific people (Whitney Houston, Heath Ledger, Amy Winehouse) become such a media event that they are, in fact, mega-rituals that entire nations participate in. The Hunger Games reflect this concept of highly publicized mega-rituals.

"Tributes" for The Hunger Games become the property of the state and are revoked of all their rights.

In The Hunger Games, the ritualistic death of young people chosen from the mass is sold as a sporting event, a nation-wide celebration that is packaged as a reality show. Not only do the poor people participate in these demeaning events, they even cheer for their favorites. Why do they accept all of this? One of the reasons is that mass media can get people to accept anything … if it is entertaining.

Appealing to the Basest Instincts

The games are broadcast to the nation in the form of a reality-show, complete with TV hosts who analyze the action, interview the tributes and judge their performance. The tributes are so indoctrinated in this culture that they readily accept the rules of the game and turn are fully willing to start killing to win the Games. The masses also actively participate in the event, cheering for their district’s representatives, even though the entire event celebrates the sacrifice of their own. This reflects a sad but true fact concerning mass media: Any kind of message can reach people if it manages to capture their attention. There are two things that automatically, almost irresistibly, grab our attention: Blood and sex, the remnants of our primal instincts. The sheer violence of the event grabs the attention of the masses, who forget that the Games serve as a reminder of the people’s servitude to its elite. This concept is already well-known and fully exploited in today’s mass media, as elite-sponsored messages are constantly sold to consumers as being “entertainment”. The Hunger Games therefore aptly portray the role of media in the manipulation of public opinion. Will the movie help young people realize this fact?

At one point in The Hunger Games, the death of a little girl shocked the people to a point that it brought a brief moment of lucidity and solidarity as the kill highlighted the atrocity of the Games. The live broadcasting of the death lead to a violent uprising in her district as the locals realized that they were willing participants in something terrible. The uprising was quickly quelled however, by the ever-present police force of the state. Furthermore, in order to prevent further social trouble, the producers of the show introduced a new element to the show: Love between Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark, the girl and the boy from District 12. By introducing love (and, by extension, sex) into the show, the producers managed to quell the masses and brought them back to their usual state of silent stupor. This part of the movie reflects how mass media is used by the powers that be today. The worldwide reach of The Hunger Games series itself proves that stories that cleverly feature the ingredients of sex and violence are bound to get people hooked. And, even though The Hunger Games seems to be denouncing the perversity of violence in mass media, it sure brings more of it into movie theatres.

Desensitizing to a New Type of Violence

While there is no shortage of violence in Hollywood, The Hunger Games movie crosses a boundary that is rarely seen in movies: Violence by minors and towards minors. In this PG-13 movie we see kids aged between 12 and 18 violently stabbing, slashing, strangling, shooting and breaking the necks of other children – scenes that are seldom seen in Hollywood movies. While it is surely a way for the movie the grab the attention of the movie’s target audience (which happens to be teenagers aged 12 to 18) The Hunger Games brings to the forefront a new form of violence that was previously deemed too disturbing to portray in movies. But in the particular kill-or-be-killed scenario of The Hunger Games, the viewers easily go beyond this psychological barrier and find themselves yelling stuff at the movie like “Come on, Katniss, take your bow and shoot that vicious little f**cker in the head!”.

In Conclusion

The Hunger Games is set in world that is exactly what is described to be the New World Order: A rich and powerful elite, an exploited and dumbed-down mass of people, the dissolving of democracies into a police state entities, high-tech surveillance, mass media used for propaganda and a whole lot of blood rituals. There is indeed nothing optimistic in the dystopian future described in The Hunger Games. Even human dignity is revoked as the masses are forced to watch their own children killing each others as if they were caged animals. That being said, there is little to no difference between movie goers who watch the movie The Hunger Games and the masses in the movie that witness the cruelty of the Games. Both are willing participants in an event that portrays the sacrifice of their own under the amused eye of the elite. Furthermore, one can argue that the movie accomplishes the same functions as the Games in the movie: Distracting the masses with blood and sex while reminding it of the elite’s power.

Is The Hunger Games attempting to warn an apathetic youth of the danger of allowing the current system to devolve into a totalitarian nightmare? Or is it simply programming it to perceive the coming of a New World Order as an inevitability? That question is up for debate. But reading what is being said in the mass media about The Hunger Games, it seems there is an even more important question up for debate: Are you Team Peeta or Team Gale?

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Titan and Titanic

Michael Patrao, April 13, 2012, DHNS


April 15 marks the 100th year of the sinking of the Titanic. Here’s an incredible story about two ships




RMS Titanic was a passenger liner that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912, after colliding with an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City.

The sinking of Titanic caused the deaths of 1,517 people in one of the worst maritime disasters in history. She was the largest ship afloat at the time of her maiden voyage. Although it is a hundred years since the ship sank and all the people associated with it have long gone, it has remained in the collective memory of people. By a strange co-incidence the tragedy of Titanic was described in detail 17 years before it occurred. It was a work of pure fiction!

In 1898, retired merchant navy officer Morgan Robertson wrote a novel ‘The Wreck of the Titan’, which uncannily predicted the Titanic disaster 17 years later.

Apart from the similarity in the names of the two ships, Robertson’s ‘Titan’ was also a huge, supposedly unsinkable British liner making its maiden voyage from the Southampton to New York with 3,000 passengers on board. It too struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank, with many people losing their lives because of the shortage of lifeboats.

The Titan and its sinking have been noted to be very similar to the real-life passenger ship RMS Titanic. The first half of the novella introduces the hero, John Rowland. Rowland is a disgraced former Royal Navy lieutenant, who is now a drunkard and has fallen to the lowest levels of society. Dismissed from the Navy, he is working as a deckhand on the Titan. The ship hits the iceberg, capsizing and sinking, somewhat before the halfway point of the novel.

The second half follows Rowland, as he saves the young daughter of a former friend by jumping onto the iceberg with her. After a number of adventures, in which he fights a polar bear and finds a lifeboat washed up on the iceberg, he is eventually rescued by a passing ship and, over several years, works his way up to a lucrative Government job, restoring his former income and position in society.

In the closing lines of the story he receives a message from his former friend, inviting him to visit her and her daughter.

Although the novel was written before the Olympic-class Titanic had even been designed, there are some remarkable similarities between the fictional and real-life counterparts.
Like the Titanic, the fictional ship sank in April in the North Atlantic, and there were not enough lifeboats for the passengers. There are also similarities between the size: 800 ft long (Titan) versus 882 ft 9 inches (Titanic), speed (25 knots for Titan, 21 knots for Titanic) and lack of life-saving equipment aboard both the ships.

The Titanic struck an iceberg on the starboard side on the night of April in the North Atlantic 400 miles away from Newfoundland. On an April night, in the North Atlantic 400 miles from Newfoundland (Terranova), the Titan hit an iceberg while traveling at 25 knots, also on the starboard side!

The unsinkable Titanic sank, and more than half of her 2,200 passengers died. The indestructible Titan also sank, more than half of her 2,500 passengers drowning!

Reel drama


‘Titanic’, the 1997 movie directed by James Cameron, is the most popular movie on the Titanic tragedy. However, it is not the first movie on the subject.

- ‘Saved from the Titanic’ was a 1912 silent motion picture short starring Dorothy Gibson, an actual survivor of the sinking of the RMS Titanic. She co-wrote the script and played a fictionalised version of herself recounting the story of her rescue to her (fictional) parents. To add to the film’s authenticity she wore the same clothes in which she had left Titanic, aboard the first lifeboat launched from the ship. It was the first film to be made about the disaster and opened in the United States just 29 days after the ship sank.

- ‘Titanic’ (1953): An American drama film directed by Jean Negulesco, its plot centres around an estranged couple sailing on the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic.

- ‘A Night to Remember’ is a 1958 docudrama film adaptation of Walter Lord’s book ‘A Night to Remember’ (1955), recounting the final night of the RMS Titanic. The Titanic disaster is depicted in straightforward fashion. A DVD of this black-and-white movie is available for borrowing from the British Library in Bangalore.

- ‘The Legend of the Titanic’ is a 1999 animation film, directed by Orlando Corradi and Kim J Ok.

- The 2010 film ‘Titanic II’ takes place in 2012. A hundred years since the sinking of the Titanic, a new luxury cruise liner, Titanic II, is soon to embark on her maiden voyage, on the same route the Titanic took 100 years before. During the voyage, an iceberg comes onto her path and her crew must prevent her from suffering the fate of her predecessor.


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