The US brand Budweiser (bah!) will be the only beer available. As if that wasn't enough, no bratwurst or other typically German sausages will be sold, as McDonald's have the exclusive rights to sausage sales.
The Germans could no doubt live with the mcsausages, but not with American beer only being served. The only consolation is that most of the beer will still be purchased outside the stadiums, where the local brands will no doubt dominate.
I am as much a capitalism as it gets, but it's impossible to argue this is anything but the victory of money over taste.
The Saudi security headquarters in the capital Riyadh was hit by two suicide car bombs this morning, killing as many as ten people and wounding "dozens".
Only a few days ago, Saudi police seized three booby-trapped SUVs filled with four tons explosives, after a shootout with militants.
Last week, the US evacuated all non-essential government staff and their families from the kingdom, amid urgent terror warnings.
If you are looking for an example demonstrating that paying off and trying to appease terrorists for years doesn't work, look no further than Saudi Arabia.
The relative calm in British-controlled Basra was broken when several car bomb explosions killed at least 68 Iraqis and wounded about 100 others. Four police facilities were targeted.
A school bus was caught in one of the explosions, and according to some sources 20 children were among the killed.
Reportedly, these were coordinated suicide car bomb attacks, known to be the hallmark of al-Qaeda and related Islamist militants.
Is it that unlikely that with their backs against the wall, former enemies in the Baath party, Islamic fighters, al-Qaeda, Iranian mullahs and Shiite extremists have all joined forces?
Volokh conspirator Stuart Benjamin makes a strong case that the puritans in the US FCC are probably shooting themselves in the foot with the current crackdown on broadcast "indencency," at least in the long term.
Earlier, fines from the FCC were managable, and broadcasters didn't find it worthwhile to fight them in court. Now, after Janet Jackson's "costume malfunction", the FCC fines are huge, and it may make sense to fight them to the Supreme Court as a free speech issue.
This is significant, because the Supreme Court probably would – and in my view should – find these indecency regulations unconstitutional. With respect to newspapers and magazines, telephones, and cable television, the Supreme Court has held that the government may not reduce the adult population to viewing only what is fit for children. As the Supreme Court noted in the 2000 Playboy case on cable indecency, a core principle of the First Amendment is that “The citizen is entitled to seek out or reject certain ideas or influences without Government influence or control.”
Broadcast has been the glaring exception in the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence, but its special status is no longer tenable.
He also speculates that some in the FCC and/or Congress are actually bringing this confrontation about because they secretly want to see broadcast puritanism broken.
At any rate, so-called social conservatives who support this crackdown and at the same time whine about "big government" intervention in people's lives deserve to be tarred and feathered.
