You can never have enough twins

When you’re a twin.

A twin city like Berlin, I mean. Take Moscow. Moscow is one of Berlin’s 18 twins. OK, it was. Berlin had to give it Evil Twin status recently and now its twin city status has been “frozen,” whatever that means.

Maybe that’s why Kyiv will now become Berlin’s next twin. Only the Good Twin. Kyiv is a one of a kind, Good One kind of twin. And needless to say, its twinship with Berlin is Vitali important.

Kyiv, Berlin strike twin town deal as Mayor Klitschko visits – The German and Ukrainian capitals marked their new partnership in Berlin, where Mayors Vitali Klitschko and Kai Wegner met at the Brandenburg Gate. “Together we are much stronger than alone,” said Klitschko.

We May Be Outraged (as usual) But We Ain’t Stupid

Grant political asylum to a Straftäter (criminal offender)? Not even Germany can pull that one off. Angie & Co. just said nein to this indistinct possibility.

Snowden

It was nice for leading figures in the German Outrage Industry to pretend like they could for fifteen minutes or so, I guess, but sooner or later even the best/worst of them have to come back down to Planet Earth again.

Die Voraussetzungen für eine Aufnahme des Whistleblowers lägen nicht vor, sagte Regierungssprecher Steffen Seibert.

PS: But it ain’t over till it’s over, Amerika. Vice President of German Parliament (one of six – nice work if you can get it) Claudia Roth HERSELF is still planning to press criminal charges or something. Someone is suspected of having actually listened once to what she said on her little green cellphone – eavesdropping-wise, I mean. And I pity the fool who gets in her way (thanks A.K.).

Claudia Roth

German Left Rep Clearly Aroused During Snowden Visit

Green politician Hans-Christian Ströebele had the time of his long left life yesterday when he got the breathtaking opportunity to meet with prized US whistleblower (consipirator, betrayer, informer, defector, spy, etc.) Edward Snowden HIMSELF, up close and personal in Moscow ITSELF, to discuss the possibility of Snowden’s two-timing help in a German parliamentary investigation into sneaky US spy activities.

Snowden

Luckly, a German TV news team just happened to be in the vicinity at the time and was able to document this historic meeting for history ITSELF. The team had their hands full, however, just trying to keep a clearly erregt (aroused) Ströebele from stammering all over himself, so impressed was he with the snitchy Snowden. Snowden being Edward Snowden, after all.

After intensive three-hour questioning, Ströebele and Co. where finally able to determine that the American turncoat poster boy “clearly knows a lot” and that the only way Ströebele could possibly get more excited than he already was would be if Snowden could somehow be convinced to come to Germany to squeal some more there. I mean here. Please do oh pretty please do please!

“Er hat klar zu erkennen gegeben, dass er viel weiß.”

We Looted The Loot First

The grand opening of a joint German-Russian art exhibition in St Petersburg was spoiled on Friday when Moscow objected to Angela Merkel’s plan to use her speech to refer to hundreds of looted German works of art looted by Red Army soldiers after the war.

Art

The Germans claim that some 1 million looted objects are still missing, including the Treasure of Priamos, objects looted by the Germans in Troy under the direction of Heinrich Schliemann way back in 1873.

Moscow appears to be open to compromise, but only when the Russian artworks destroyed by German troops during World War II – estimated to be more than 110m books and publications following the plundering of 427 Soviet museums and 4,000 libraries – be returned, as well.

“This is a very touchy question for the societies of both countries. We need to look for solutions, rather than inflating the problem.”