Please try to stifle the urge to scream when you read that in just a few days the US State Department plans to resuscitate an ugly relative of the old Homeland Security color coding system to “make travel warnings and alerts clearer to the public.” If I may torture a colorful metaphoric phrase, they should not spend one red cent in giving the green light to this unexpected bolt from the blue. Details here.

You may recall that after 9/11, DHS instituted an alert system that was useless -  after an initial settling of the dust, virtually every airport, everywhere, stayed on orange alert.  As David Rowell of Travel Insider, who has a better box of crayons than mine, noted:

“I (and most others) could never work out whether yellow was better or worse than orange, and whether mauve was better or worse than taupe, and so on, but it seemed the warning level was stuck on burgundy with notes of an earthy lavender … and never ever transitioned down to sea green or ivory white or some other reassuring color.”

That was abandoned because it served no purpose.  Ever.  It eventually morphed into a simpler, but no more informational warning system consisting of “elevated” or “imminent” alerts.

Comes now the US State Department with a “better idea”:  One wonders if State and DHS have coordinated any of this.  On their web site, you will now be provided with one of four status levels for travel advisories for each country:

Level 1:            Exercise normal precautions (a blue color bar)

Level 2:            Exercise increased caution     (a yellow color bar)

Level 3:            Reconsider travel                    (an orange color bar)

Level 4:            Do not travel                           (a red color bar)

Look familiar?

You will also be provided a letter code for various “risk indicators” that contain a “clear reason for the level assigned”:

C – Crime

T – Terrorism

U – Civil unrest

H – Health

N – Natural Disaster

E -   Time-limited event

O -  Other

With all due respect and recognition for the difficulty of approaching this task rationally, I particularly note the clarity of risk for “Other”.  [memo: should you wish to memorize the code list in order to initiate immediate defensive action, the initial letters of each anagram to: Echo Nut, Chute No, or Ouch Ten].   I, for one, fail to understand the need to re-institute a thoroughly (re)fragmented and demonstrably confusing system that nobody understands.  I’d give it a red light after beating it black and blue.