Saturday, April 5, 2008

Cauldron of Death

FAT MAN
I saw a film in the 80's called Koyaanisquatsi. The film itself is a "cauldron"...as it "contains" ideas and images about technology versus nature...it "stirs, and cooks" those ideas up for us to view and listen to. The word Koyaanisquatsi is a Hope Indian prophesy that has several different components in the definitions. The part that infers cauldron is "inside" one of several of the definitions... "A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky which could burn the land and boil the oceans".TThe featured photo is Fat Man dropped "thrown" at 11:02 am August 9, 1945 on Nagasaki Japan. This is just one example of "cauldron" used in warfare that challenges the standard definition of cauldron. There is other historical precidents for using the word cauldron in conjunction with warfare, and they will undoubtedly come up later. Perhaps my favorite ancient biological warfare connection to cauldrons is the General Hannibal (247-183 BC), where he threw "clay pots" that "contained" venomous snakes upon the Roman enemy ship decks. They retreated. This guy "Hannibal" was bad news to any of his enemy's. He might just be the ancestor of The Godfathers of Italy...really! His strategies were legion and using cauldrons came to play several times in his history of warfare. Throughout these weeks in my blogs I may honor General Hannibal in his various strategic deceptions...usually involving a cauldron. In the meantime...you should look him up...he was ruthless!

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