Dear Lew,
Last Sunday we drove from Austria to Prague and the route took us through Germany. This is what we saw a lot of:
These are solar panels. It almost looks like some solar farms. We saw many of them. I guess this is Germany’s way toward energy independence. I hear that they recently closed two of their nuclear plants. It all sounds very logical to the Greens: Why would we need nuclear plants when we can install all these solar panels? The only problem is that Germany does not have all that much sun (the picture was taken near Regensburg in Bavaria some 100 km north of Munich). Greta Thunberg must be very proud, but it does not look like the panels are helping very much, since the Germans are still importing a lot of fuel and gas from Russia, which is why the EU did not want to sanction that part of Russian exports.
This afternoon I went to the bookstore at Wenceslas Square in Prague because I wanted to read some passages from the Brothers Karamazov, and I don’t have a copy of it here. When I came out there was a demonstration afoot in support of Ukraine.
There were thousands of people there. The demonstration was concurrent with a number of similar events in other European cities. We listened to Zelensky talk in real time and there were a number of speeches. As you can imagine, it was completely one sided. Putin was trashed and none of Russia’s concerns were even mentioned. It is so sad and painful to see this tragedy unfold. What is exasperating is that those who maneuvered us into this situation by their arrogance and incompetence are sitting in their houses in Washington, New York, Brussels, London, etc blowing hot air and pontificating. But that’s how this world is these days.
