Helter Skelter

Look out, helter skelter - She's coming down fast

I don't know what hurts more, my heart or my head.

How is it that one of America's great cities ceased to exist this week, but I can still watch Letterman tonight?

What do I do with this knowledge: there are more than a million internal refugees and estimates of 100,000 dead, and yet the Pentagon is "hurt" that the media is siding more with victims than federal authorities?

Maybe things could be worse: apparently Dick Cheney is still on vacation. When asked about his projected return to Washington, a spokeswoman replied "He will certainly be coming back. I'm not able to tell you the day right now. I don't have that handy." All Americans know with certainty is Wednesday's announcement that the Vice President will be hosting a fundraising event in St Louis on Sept 19...for Republican Senator Jim Talent.

The song I can't get out of my head these days is Leonard Cohen's: "There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn't." Even this week. The withholding of aid is spun by those who can't conceive of such a deliberate horror in America as more incompetence from bumbling "Shrub" and company, only this time there's nothing funny about it. Tell me again how incompetent they are, to have stolen two general elections and a midterm, looted billions from the Treasury, executed their New Pearl Harbour, restored Afghanistan's heroin economy and waged a war of aggression on lies without consequence. (The deaths of soldiers and mercenaries are considered of no more consequence than their lives, especially since it's the resistance itself which now provides the rationale to "stay the course.")

International aid refused, no water drops for four days, and rescue efforts suspended until Iraq-hardened troops with a shoot-to-kill license restore order: what does this suggest to you? "Restoring order" sounds like another promise of light at the end of a long, dark tunnel that leads to the grave. If you can't say it's war yet, could you call this basic training?

Order doesn't hate chaos, because chaos nourishes it. And whether this disaster was made to happen, allowed to happen, or just happened, Order must be eating this up.

Remember what Charlie wanted? "According to Vince Bugliosi," writes Adam Gorightly (who adds an interesting sidebar on Manson's fascination with Freemasonry), his "main motive behind the murders was to provoke a race war that would later be blamed on black militants." Helter Skelter.

Manson borrowed from The Book of Revelations the image of the "bottomless pit," but his pit was a sanctuary, in which he and his family would await the end of a racial armageddon. The Blacks, he said, would rise and slaughter the Whites, turning America's cities into...well, something resembling New Orleans. The Family would emerge to rule the world, because the Blacks would find they still needed a White master. Since Helter Skelter was slow in coming, he sent Tex Watson and friends to perpetrate a false flag operation.

I can't see the faces of New Orleans without recognizing their colour. I can't hear a voice like Michael Medved's, who said only criminals were left behind, and not recall his own. I can't think of George Bush without thinking of Charles Manson, nor one family without the other.

There is a war between the rich and poor,
a war between the man and the woman.
There is a war between the left and right,
a war between the black and white,
a war between the odd and the even.

There are the wars they want fought, because they don't fight them, and there are the enemies of their choice (Blacks at home, Browns abroad). And then there is the real war that has yet to be engaged in more than fits and starts. It's the war between Life and Death. And which side are you on, boys - which side are you on?