Red, orange, yellow alert. posted by Richard Seymour

Yes, you can have any colour you like as long as it is red, orange or yellow.



What is the meaning of this? Seriously, what are you supposed to do with this information? How many Americans are urgently consulting this chart every day to actually find out what manner of hell is winging its way to their homes? Does anyone actually know what colour it is today? Orange? Red? For sure, it will never descend to blue or green. The sole purpose of this 'advisory' appears to be to maintain people in a state of perpetual fear, and also rage at their impotence. The terrorists are coming, but can you do shit about it? Maintain that sort of atmosphere, and any country you want to bomb is fair game. Cathartically, all of the dread and fury that has been building up will explode into patriotic support for the latest killing spree.

Noticeably, the alert level has gone up every time the President has been in some kind of trouble. Thanks to Direland , we now know why:

"More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it," Ridge told reporters. "Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don't necessarily put the country on (alert). ... There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?' "

"The level is raised if a majority on the President's Homeland Security Advisory Council favors it and President Bush concurs. Among those on the council with Ridge were Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI chief Robert Mueller, CIA director George Tenet, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell. Ridge and Ashcroft publicly clashed over how to communicate threat information to the public. But Ridge has never before discussed internal dissention over the threat level."

The alert goes up or down on the say so of the President and his apointed council of advisors.

Don't mistake me, I am not just accusing them of lying about the level of terrorist threat. I'm saying that even the truth would be a lie, because this chart is meaningless. It conveys no information other than how scared the government thinks you ought to be at this particular juncture, therefore allowing the government to calibrate the national mood with more precision than is usual.

Wonder what colour it will be when Galloway visits the good Senators next week?