AMERICAN BUS WILL BE FLAG-FREE
With the 2006 soccer World Cup only three weeks away (kick off June 9, in Germany, after a four year wait), many in the world's media are focusing on each and every detail of preparation for the eagerly-awaited tournament. I attach several articles on this.
The official bus for the U.S. soccer team will be the only team-bus not to bear a flag due to security concerns.
In a highly insensitive move, ticketless English soccer fans have been invited to watch the World Cup on giant TVs inside a former Nazi jail. Live games will be beamed to 1,500 fans in the 19th Century Tauberbischofsheim jail used by the Nazis to imprison rounded-up Jews before they were sent to Dachau concentration camp where they were murdered.
If Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attends the World Cup, as he has said he might, perhaps he could join the English fans in the former Nazi jail to dispel his own doubts about the Holocaust.
Dr. Jurgen Ruttgers, the minister-president of North Rhine-Westphalia, has stressed that Ahmadinejad won't be a welcome guest: "We don't want anybody to create trouble. We want to have a nice and pleasant World Cup." The official motto of the 2006 World Cup is "A Time To Make Friends."