My Inner Conspiracy Theorist!

It niggles.  Little things niggle.  The latest?

Well, yesterday in China Daily, the Chinese Communist Party Propaganda newspaper, there was a most disturbing article that ... oh, let me just take a photo for you:

It's about how North Koreans are brainwashed as children into hating the USA.

It's very disturbing - particularly how they have a famous old photograph of children killing an American on the walls on their classrooms - but what is very niggling me is that I have seen that caricature before. Recently too.  And certainly not in North Korea.

Let me see if I can find it again.

Got it.  Look in the background of this shot of Jack London in Bohemian Grove back at the turn of the last century, at that picture of an arab.  

Is that the same drawing or what?  OK, my Inner Conspiracy Theorist is currently in overdrive however my rational brain is saying "Hate looks the same no matter who does it."

So let's stick with the latter, right?  Still, isn't it very very odd indeed.

Thanks Jack!

For years in here I've been talking about how the Americans took Townsville's beaches and dumped them on Waikiki Beach back in Hawaii.

 Waikiki Beach.  

Taken from WWW

so I have no idea who the photographer is.

Of course, Australia was very pleased to do this for them because it was right in the midst of WWII and a Japanese invasion was suspected to be imminent, what with Japanese warplanes flying overhead and dropping bombs and destroying perfectly innocent palm trees, and these lovely Americans were supplying munitions to the Oz army, off-loading them in the NQ city of Townsville, so when they needed ballast for their return journey to Pearl Harbour, Townsville naturally said "Go ahead.  Take it.  Take whatever you need." and thus they took all the sand from a great many miles around.

Of course it would have been much kinder to take all the sand from beaches outside of the city, but I guess having long stretches of ugly mudflats on your doorstep is much preferable to having armed and dangerous Japanese soldiers there. Yes?

Here's what A$23 million looks like.

Townsville Beach after they replaced the sand.

Anyway, I'm sharing this with you because I'm currently reading my way through Jack London's South Pacific stories and I want to share his description of Waikiki Beach as it was back in 1906:

"The grass grows right down to the water at Waikiki Beach. The trees also grow down to the salty edge of things and one sits in their shade and looks seaward at a majestic surf thundering in on the beach to one's very feet ... One after another they come, a mile long, with smoking crests, the white battalions of the infinite army of the sea." 

 No mention of a beach in there at all, right?

Yes, I'm reading my way through Jack London at present and I really have to share something with you.  Jack London can really write. Normally I find American writers really heavy, portenious and pretentious, but not here.  He's very light and funny but rich with wisdom and insight.  Gosh, I do love him so much ... but I also wish he'd do more describing of places.

Like Fiji, right?  There he is in Fiji back in 1906 and do you think I can find any word he wrote about the place?

OK, I did find a single piece in "The Cruise of the Snark", which is his 1906 account of his adventures sailing through the Pacific - a period of history when the Pacific was practically unknown to the outside world and thus worthy of a massive fill-in-the-blanks - however this is simply a collection of short stories about sailing and hardly at all, on any level, a travel book. Most disappointing. It's like someone traveling to Mars and writing a book about it that simply talks about rocket engines, catering and refueling techniques.

So I would hardly recommend it to anyone after descriptions of the Pacific as it was a century back, and what was most annoying to me is that the only mention of Fiji is how a doctor there took a look at the gaping holes that everyone on board had developed around every cut and wound since they'd stopped off in the Solomon Islands and said they were yaws. Then, only while a short while later, a Missionary took a look and told them that yaws were something completely different and that what they had were tropical ulcers.

It's actually an inexcusable mix-up but I guess the Fiji doctor was a new arrival who hadn't seen either of these icky diseases before.  If he had, he'd never have made that diagnosis:  yaws are these really ugly yellow-crusted sores that appear on the parts of your body that bend, like on your knees and elbow and ankles, while tropical ulcers are these massive white holes that eat out your flesh and expose the bone, which get steadily bigger all the time.  They are both caused by mutations of the leprosy bacilli but are entirely different from each other and not nearly in the same league of harmful as leprosy, and the good news is that letting your body take care of them, helped along with green leafy vegetables and sea bathing, you have a lifelong immunity to both leprosy and another cousin-disease syphillis.

Anyway, it was the Missionary who turned out to be correct, so I guess Missionaries in the early 20th century saw more of the Pacific's real health issues than the doctors did.

But that's it.  Our much loved nation reduced to two nasty diseases!  Would it have killed Jack London to give us a bit more? Maybe a killer description or two of Levuka or Suva or someplace else in our Vanua Loma?  Perhaps an account of what he did, saw and the people he met?  Most disappointing.


Oh, but he does have a short story called "The Whale Tooth" in his collection South Sea Tales which is an account of the real life Reverend Baker - our friend Julie's ancestor - getting himself killed and eaten up in the Central Highlands of Viti Levu.

 All that remained of Reverend Baker 

after his visit to Central Viti Levu.

Our dear friend, the late Father Bransfield, organised

a Reconciliation Ceremony between the village and

Reverend Baker's descendants. 

Only one of his extraordinary acts of kindness.

Photo taken by Renn at Fiji Museum.

It's a beautifully written tale that gets so much right about Fiji. All the atmosphere, attitudes are right and the world view is correct and I couldn't understand how an American writer could have got such a handle on the way we see the world, however "The Cruise of the Snark" reveals that he had ever so many Pacific Island crew members on board, and he'd sit around with them and listen to their stories.  Kudos Jack.


And what is really quite telling about this particular story is that in this story Jack London renames Reverend Baker as Reverend Starburst ... and when you see that in connection with his poem "The Jack London Credo" it becomes particularly poignant.


If you don't know that poem:

THE JACK LONDON CREDO

I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather that my spark should burn out

 in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in 

magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.

Poignant, yes?   Calling him Reverend Starburst surely means Jack London sees this Missionary as exactly his type of hero.

Anyway, I was so taken by this story that I asked Julie if she has a copy of South Sea Tales, but she says she unfortunately doesn't.  How shocking is that!  Personally, if I had some big name writer telling a story about one of my ancestors, I would splurge on copies for everyone even marginally related to me, and thus I'm now determined to track down an old copy, leather-bound and preferably signed, as a gift for her so she can share this wonderful ancestral portrait with her own particular brood of Reverend Baker's descendants.

DIE THOR HEYERDAHL DIE!!!

I'm so cross that they've just made a film about the Kon Tiki journey, I think we of the Pacific need to fight back.

And to this end, here's a ten minute doco on the subject.



Do watch it.  The entire story is in there.

Going Home!

Off to Fiji in a few days.  A holiday with family and friends.  Not going anywhere and not traveling much because we're landing in Nadi and going straight out to the island for a couple of weeks.

But still it's going to be very special being home even if just for a little while. I did hope Keith would join me, but the poor honey has to work.

Or so he says!

Initially this holiday plan started out as an attempt to drag Keith off to see dad's land in the deepest, darkest back-of-beyond in Vanua Levu so he can decide if this is where he wants to build his retirement home and live out his days living off the land and "off-the-grid".  He's always claimed this is what he wants us to do, the old hippy, however he wily-ly slipped out from under with this cry of "Have to earn our living!"

I confess I have to laugh because this too was mum and dad's retirement plan except that when the time came to go, mum entirely baulked, sunk in her heels and refused entirely.  She said that living alone in the wilderness with only dad for company meant that there would very soon be an unmarked grave in that beach-lined jungle.

Anyway, after the Fiji jaunt, I'm flying to Sydney to meet Keith and doing several days there before traveling to Cairns where we are hoping to meet Baby Jane and have a bit of fun for several days before traveling down to Townsville where we'll be oiling our veranda decks as we do each year.

So if you don't hear from me, you'll know what I'm up to.  I do hope I can blog the trip, but not sure about the computer situation.  Nonetheless, I will give you the best stories of what happens.

Have a great time, folks, in the interim.

It's Happening!

Just got this photo from Johnson.  Inspired by the Vakas, the squatter settlement in Suva has just built themselves a takia.

 We're BAA-AACK!

Greatest kudos EVER to those inspirational folk who put together the flotilla of vakas. And when you arrive in the Solomons, I hope that you all receive a welcome to end all welcomes.

DIE THOR HEYERDAHL DIE!!!!

"Te Vakas are coming! Te Vakas are coming."

Fiji is celebrating and everyone is down at Laucala Bay to check it out and so kindly sending photos so I can share in this joy too.

 "They're coming.  They're coming."

Fiji Museum's photo of the announcement.

Those are davuii, the traditional horn,

which traditionally are blown to announce

someone has spotted ...

 ... Vaka on the horizon.

And look at that: they are coming through

the Nukulau Passage usually only ever

used by Queen Elizabeth's ship Britannia.

And the big story that has everyone so excited? Te Vakas have arrived in Suva. An entire flotilla of them.

 Davuii sound as they make their way into

Laucala Bay.  It's a traditional welcome/warning.

Fiji Museum photo.

 Jon's stunning photograph

"Waiting for Te Vaka!"

This is pure poetry.

If you don't know what a vaka is - and yes, it is ALSO a World Music fusion band from the Pacific - it's a boat.

Yup, it's a boat but not just any boat.  It's a traditional Pacific Island catamaran.

 Fiji Museum photo!

Dennis's photo!

Every now and again, and certainly not often enough, something happens in the world that fills me with joy and this flotilla of traditional vakas from Hawaii, Samoa, Fiji, Tahiti and the Cook Islands currently sailing together across the Pacific on their way to the Solomon Islands for the Pacific Arts and Culture Festival, definitely makes my heart sing.  GO PACIFIC.

It's all being done to prove that the people of Oceania were perfectly capable of crossing thousands of miles of open ocean, and the central agenda of this journey is to make Polynesia and Melanesia regain their pride in who they were and thereby stop the Pacific's cultural disintegration. 

Hawaii, with possibly the greatest disintegration of culture and greatest disrespect for the Polynesian  heritage, was the first to build a Vaka and first to relearn how to sail them (apparently back in the 50s they still had one old man alive who had sailed Vakas and who knew the secrets and, despite the ban on Vakas, taught all to his sons, but whose grandsons didn't want to know ... and the knowledge would have been lost forever but for the judicious and fortuitious decision over a decade back to build a Vaka) ... but when they saw what Hawaii was doing all the other Pacific Island nations want to do the same, and so far FIVE nations have done so ... and thus this flotilla going around the Pacific to remind our islands of what they used to be.

And I tell you that if I were in Fiji right now, I'd be in among these women waving my traditional tapa flags too:

 A joy like no other!
Fiji Museum photos.

Since this is just HUGE for the Pacific want to see more shots of the vakas?  (We in Fiji call it a drua but in the current context are more than willing to go along with the rest of Oceania for the occasion.)  Here they are:

 Dennis's photos.

And since the sky looks so grey and grim in those shots, let's also see Stan's photos where it doesn't:

Photos by Dovi Kanaimawi, 
from Leleuvia Island

Aren't they mighty and magnificent? And it means Pacific Islanders are beginning to regain their traditional sailing skills, and I am so for that. DIE THOR HEYERDAHL DIE!!!

It's just a shame that it's been about 40 years since the death of The Last Kondi (navigator) so all that astral navigation knowledge, accumulated over millennium, has been lost, although I guess with compasses and global positioning devices, it isn't as serious an issue as it would otherwise have been.

Actually Kondi isn't really the Oceanic name for Navigator.  It's just the New Zealand Maori one. And I've always found it mighty curious that Kondi is the family name, the actual clan name, the surname, of the most famous traditional navigator family in the Cook Islands, yet NZ Maoris always claim they have no idea where they originally came from.

 Anyway I have no idea if he's the Kondi, but here's Jon's shot of one of the Tahitian crew anyway:

Really rockin' the traditional tats!

You may not know this, but when the Pacific was annexed by the European Colonial Powers back in the 19th century, the first thing they did was outlaw the vakas, with the intention of immediately restricting the movement of the people.  They were adamant on this point and Queen Victoria wouldn't even accept Fiji as a gift from King Cakobau (who gifted his islands to her in order to protect them from the Americans who he knew for a fact had the most evil of intentions regarding his people.) (It was during the American Civil War and they'd just discovered Fiji could grow cotton.) while he still had his navy ... so because he really needed to hand over Fiji in a hurry his entire flotilla of over 200 giant drua suddenly vanished.

Being a naturally curious soul, as a child I actually went on a hunt to solve this mystery and did actually meet an old man who told me what became of them, but I promised secrecy on the matter and I have never ever told anyone what I know despite finding out it is also known to Fiji Museum, which could make it OK now to talk about it openly, but nonetheless I still hold to my promise.

Anyway, all vaka were banned in the Pacific - and they are still banned in French Polynesia and French Melanesia - and gradually all this amazing and valuable knowledge died out.

I was once told the heartbreaking story of Fiji's Last Kondi who, back in the 1930s, was in a hospice in Suva but who suddenly wanted to go home to die on his own island.  The British Colonial Office obliged and put him on a small inter-island trader where, completely blind from cataracts, he sat on the deck and sniffed the air.  But then a strange mist came down and the crew were desperately worried about where they were, especially hearing the sounds of the breakers on the nearby reef but The Last Kondi kept sniffing the air and feeling and tasting the sea water till he brought them all safely through the reef to his island.

And then for over a century the Vaka traditional building and sailing and navigating knowledge was lost until finally that complete and total tosser and idiot - who I have desperately hated all my life, and even thinking about him now makes my bile rise - THOR (The Kon TikiTosser) HEYERDAHL dared to propose "Drift Theory" - that Pacific Islanders DRIFTED IN ON RAFTS - hate! hate! hate! - which made the entire world go "Oh, so that's how it happened!"

HOW DARE HE!  Honestly, nothing has ever made me more angry in my life.  The thought of these vigorous sailing people with their wealth of knowledge of the sea and of boats, who were crossing the Pacific back and forth between islands for thousands of miles for thousands of years, had been reduced to passive DRIFTERS, not in control of their own destinies, just makes me so angry ... oooh, the bile!  The anger! The hate!

And were you aware that he didn't actually do it and that entire 'drifting from South America to Tahiti' journey was based on a fraud.  In truth,  he kept being dragged up the coast by the Humbolt Current (where they've found a LOT of Polynesian DNA, btw) and thus had to get a tug to drag them 80 miles out to sea.

Oh Lordy, they've just turned it into a film.  I AM SO ANGRY ABOUT THIS. You'd think they'd be so ashamed of themselves they'd want the whole regretful insulting and injurious incident forgotten forever. 

And, adding insult to injury, did you know that Baby Jane, who went to boarding school in New Zealand, learned Drift Theory in school there?  Yes, it was taught as FACT in the New Zealand high school curriculum; and this to a country that had once been the apogee of the Vaka Tradition.  Pure evil, right?  Pure and patronising evil?

Jane even still hangs on to this idiocy.  "If it isn't true, then why did I learn it at school?" she always says, even refusing to read the National Geographics I've given her that actually tell how badly Thor Heyerdahl got it wrong and that archeological evidence shows it was actually the Easter Islanders who left their island en masse (cutting down all their trees to build their flotilla which left their Island so completely deforested) and who went to South America and became the Aztecs and NOT the other way around as The Kon Tiki Tosser claimed.

 But let's not get angry here.  Instead look at how much knowledge has been retained: like the traditional vaka greeting which was actually acted out there in Laucala Bay:

The three fiercest warriors wait to see how close the vakas will get ...

... and when it becomes obvious they intend to land ...

... swimming out to ask them what their intentions are.

But I'm glad to see that despite acknowledging the past, they aren't been stupid about using the latest technology when appropriate:

 Fiji Museum's photo of the solar panels they're using.

 I mean, this is the 21st century so why not take advantage of the good stuff.  I'm sure that if the Vaka Tradition hadn't been eradiacated for so long, today they'd all have solar panels.

So that's what's happening in Suva this week, and note how all the little kiddies are going down to Laucala Bay to learn all about the Vaka Tradition ...

... and they're being interviewed by all the Fiji media ...

... and even local artists have got into the theme:

Regaining your past, regaining your history, your mana, your dignity, and even your soul.  How mighty is that?  How magnificent?  My heart sings for this and I do hope it's just the start of something mighty and grand.

I think I've already shown you the photo Johnson sent me of the little personally owned takia (small traditional sailing boat) that someone is sailing around Suva Harbour these day.  Let's hope the Vaka Flotilla creates so much more of that sort of thinking!

GO OCEANIA!  AND DIE THOR HEYERDAHL DIE!!!!

James Joyce and New Zealand!

Gosh, hard to believe but someone has actually finished James Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake".  Certainly not me. I'm sorry but just because I have a Masters in Literature doesn't ever mean I finished the sodding thing.

I tried. Oh gosh, I tried.  It was the Irish in me and I saw it as a badge of honour and a professing of my Irishness, and, sure, I got through "The Dubliners" which was easy-breezy and quite lovely, and I managed "Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man." but ... sorry, "Finnegan's Wake" brought me to my knees and after that I didn't even dare attempt "Ulysses".

Same goes for that awful Henry James.  Sure, he was never as 'challenging' as Ireland's Very Own Modernist but, gosh, trying to read through that heinous turgid prose and hating the characters and knowing that you didn't give a sod about anything they did, said or anything else in it!  Shudder!  Looking at my own row of Henry James, sitting there untouched for decades, I thought "Mmmm, so that's where antiques come from.  Stuff that's so generally unpleasant no one touches it EVER!"

And don't ever get me started on Virginia Woolf's "The Waves".

Anyway, we're meant to be talking about James Joyce!  There's an article in today's New Zealand Herald (go here) where a Kiwi writer Dean Parker challenges the long-established notion that certain passages in "Finnegan's Wake" are about The Battle of Waterloo.

Let me give you one of those passages he quotes:

"Let us propel us for the frey of the fray! Us, us, beraddy!

Ko Niutirenis hauru leish! A lala! Ko Niutirenis haururu laleish! Ala lala! The Wullingthund sturm is breaking. The sound of maormaoring The Wellingthund sturm waxes fuercilier. The whackawhacks of the sturm. Katu te ihis ihis! Katu te wana wana! The strength of the rawshorn generand is known throughout the world. Let us say if we may what a weeny wukeleen can do.

Au! Au! Aue! Ha! Heish! A lala!"

Oh yeah!  That's The Battle of Waterloo for you in a nutshell.  NOT!!!  OK, I can see the reason for that interpretation.  It's the mention of Wellington, right?  But Wellington wasn't just a general; it's also a city in New Zealand. And ... well, we from the Antipodes are all well aware that certain souls among "the maormaoring" do a certain war cry before they go into battle ... these days on the rugby field, and that there was a certain Kiwi team called The All Blacks who play rugby and who perform a certain war dance beforehand which we all know is called The Haka ...

... and although everyone now believes that the All Blacks have always done the "Ta Mate" ("You die!") Haka - although a quick whizz around youtube will inform you that this is not exactly true because they use a number of different Hakas in there, particularly during the South African World Cup - this lovely Kiwi writer-fellow, Dean Parker, has discovered that they did an entirely different Haka (The Wellington Storm Haka) during their Rugby Tour of France in 1918 ... and those are indeed the words - kinda - of the Wellington Storm Haka ... and that James Joyce was indeed at one of those games and was simply blown away.

Oh yeah, I'm so with Dean Parker here, and am simply blown away to discover that James Joyce is just one of us blown away by The All Blacks and also by the All Blacks Haka.

I told you, didn't I, about walking down Lockhart Road during the last Rugby World Cup and feeling this sudden electricity race through the street and sudden excited chatter among the Chinese passersby and everyone running for the nearest sports-bar doorway and knowing full well they were all saying "The All Blacks are about to do the Haka."  Rugby, sure, the Chinese don't care about ... but that Haka definitely excites us all.

Including, it would seem, Ireland's Very Own Modernist James Joyce.

So let's just throw a haka in here in honour of James Joyce, and to celebrate that, for the first time ever, we actually know what James Joyce is on about:



(And please note that this is NOT the "Ta Mate" Haka, so go suck all you folks who claim that the All Blacks only do that one Haka!)

So Kudos, Dean Parker.  What an amazing discovery.  And enormous kudos for being probably the only person on earth to have finished "Finnegan's Wake".

Doctor Daddy's Bedtime Story!

This is part of a conversation I'm currently having with people placed here so I don't have to tell it in person because it takes too long to tell.

When I was about four or five - back when we called him Doctor Daddy, not quite understanding why we called him Daddy while everyone else called him Doctor - my father told me a bedtime story that has stayed with me my whole life and which still remains my bedrock when making sense of any medical issue.  Also, and strangely, when I was engaged to Michael and mixing with world-leading Immunologists, thanks to this story I always knew exactly what they were talking about and was even able to hold my own in conversations with them merely by substituting the medical names for the Doctor Daddy names.  However, in my head I still use the Doctor Daddy names:


"Your body is full of soldiers that march around day and night, protecting your body from all danger and harm.  Everyone has soldiers but how many you have depends on what happens to you when you're a little child.  All those lucky little boys and girls who are allowed to play outdoors and get sick and dirty when they're young go through life with millions upon millions of soldiers, while poor sad little children who have to stay indoors and who have to stay clean and who aren't allowed to get sick because they have parents who disinfect everything, have to go through life with hardly any soldiers at all, so they don't have much to protect them and that is very, very, very sad and bad.

And what happens is that these soldiers constantly march through your body and stop everything that comes into it.  If it's something they haven't seen before, they surround it and hold it still and special soldiers measure it and draw up blueprints for what looks just like an Egyptian sarcophagus and those plans are kept back in their factories for the rest of your life.  And after the plans are finished, they let it go and then watch and wait to see what this new thing does.  

So after watching it pass through your body if they decide this new thing does no harm they say "Welcome back, friend" the next time they meet it and always let it go on its way.  But if they decide this new thing does do harm, all the soldiers race up to surround it and hold it while back at the factories they make a sarcophagi for each of these bad things and when they're made they capture the bad thing and throw it into the sarcophagi so it does no more harm as they race it through the body and throw it into the nearest drainage system.  Those drainage systems are pee or poo or mucus or sneezes or vomit or sweat or pus, which is why you must never never touch any of these things and why you must wash your hands after you even come anywhere near them.

However sometimes very very bad things come into your body; things which are so mean and aggressive they won't even let the soldiers stop them to measure them.  And that's when the battles begin.  Oh yes, all those soldiers go in to fight for you to the death and they force the bad thing to hold still while they take measurements for the sarcophagi so they can safely get it out of your body.

And when the battles are going on you can feel it because the site of the battle becomes all red and swollen and hot.  And quite often that site turns into a boil because your body tries to push the bad thing out as quickly as it can so picks the closest drainage system which is through the pores in your skin.

And that's what pus is: dead soldiers; soldiers who have given their life protecting you, so you must always treat pus respectfully and never touch it, but put it in a tissue and immediately flush it down the toilet.  Then you must wash your hands in case you have bad sarcophagi on them.

But then there are some very bad things come into your body that are very intelligent, and immediately they enter they quickly hide so the soldiers can't find them and while they're hidden they breed up into enormous armies, and when the bad army is enormous that's when they come out of hiding and your entire body goes into battle for you.  And when that war is happening, you always know it because you feel sick and feverish and hot and red, and the best thing you can do then is go to sleep so you stay out of the way while your soldiers do their work.

And that's why you have vaccinations:  when bad things are so very very bad that they're too much for your body to handle, what doctors do is they give you a scratch of a weakened form of this bad bad thing. They always make sure that your body only gets it with just enough life so your body knows that it's a dangerous bad thing but not so much life that the soldiers can't stop it and hold it and so get to make the measurements. And that way, when they meet the bad thing again, the factories go immediately into production for the sarcophagi and the soldiers don't have to battle so hard to get rid of it.

Now about those very important factories:  they're in a part of your body called "the bone marrow" and it is in this bone marrow that your body makes the soldiers which is why you must always eat lots of green leafy vegetables because that's how you can keep your factories strong.  But those factories are also very important because it's where they store the blueprints to make the sarcophagi, and once they have those blueprints they keep them safely for the rest of your life so they are always ready to make those coffins to throw the bad things into every time they turn up.

So now you know how brave and heroic your body is, you must treat it with a great deal of reverence and respect. And you also have to do your part by eating your vegetables because that's the food that feeds your factories and keeps them running at optimum capacity."


And that is Doctor Daddy's bedtime story.  Amazing, huh, AND the most useful story I've ever heard in my life. It's stood the test of time and the only new information I've had to add to it over the years is:

 1) Michael's co-discovery of T-cells ... which goes like this in my head "Lucky little boys and girls who are allowed to take a sickness from start to finish without idiot parents forcing them to take anti-biotics - meaning that the body isn't allowed to do the whole battle itself  - go through life with factories that are ready at any moment to churn out a special Commando Unit of special SAS type soldiers with extra special fighting skills every time they're needed to get rid of truly bad things.

2) Chemotherapy destroys the factories.  WTF is that about?  Right when you need those factories the most, western medicine destroys 'em.  I've often asked doctors what that's about and I've not yet ever got a satisfactory explanation.

3)  Other recent discoveries go like this in my head: your body also has oxy-torch-weilding soldiers that march around checking out your cells and any they don't like the look of they blast with their oxy-torches to melt them ...  and then a slug-looking-thing that follows them around then sucks up all that melted cell matter.