Saudis ban 'offensive' USA license plates

Ok, here's today’s odd story via our friends at the BBC. It seems that Saudi Arabia has banned what they’re calling “offensive” words on automobile license plates. The Saudis recently changed the way they do their license plates, so that they can now include three Arabic characters along with their Latin alphabet equivalents.

So wiseguys in Saudi have taken to requesting personalized license plates that apparently are random letters in Arabic, but spell out on the Latin alphabet side three-letter words, usually in English, like “ass” and “sex” (this all reminds me a little too much of The Simpsons episode where Homer goes bowling - his buddies ask him what wacky name he’d like on the overhead scoreboard and Homer asks: “are ass and poo taken?”)

Back to the license plates - the Saudi government, in reply has now put out a list of banned three-letter words. And what tops the list of offensive license plate words?

“USA”

No explanation yet from the Saudis on why they find “USA” so offensive.