Protest demonstration, Wednesday August 29, 19:00, Syntagma square, and on every central square all over the country. Wearing black.

Συγκέντρωση διαμαρτυρίας, Τετάρτη 29 Αυγούστου, στις 7 το απόγευμα, στην πλατεία Συντάγματος και σε κάθε κεντρική πλατεία, σε ολόκληρη τη χώρα. Φορώντας μαύρα.

Fires rage across southern Greece, klling 60+ and we find ourselves consuming the ultimate reality show, a gory game show where the score is measured in lives lost and acres burnt. Three days later and not much besides the mercy of the winds have changed. Cries of terrorism, Greece’s Sept11, Greek flags on TV screen top left corners. Then, more Bushisms, PM Karamanlis , standing in front of a Canadair firefighting plane, borrows some tactics from Bush, speaking to troops and firefighters, “the coalition of the willing”, Firefighters coming from across the EU, Russia and others. One thing missing : The “mission accomplished” sign abve his head. I ask myself what the mission is, helping those poor people or getting re-elected. I’m confused but will not allow myself to be terrorised. Not again.
16 days to Elections: Watch the circus.

In this flat world we live in, you would think that Amazon.com would get it.

What I mean is that if Amazon knows where I live (and they do), they can keep all my profile info and credit card details across all sites (and they do), why can’t they  put my orders via the  closest  location  geographically?  I buy a lot of books based on recommendations from other sites who earn  commissions via Amazon Associates. These sites are mainly in the US. It makes no sense for me to buy from the US site because shipping is really high so I prefer to buy via Amazon.co.uk. It would probably make even more sense to buy from the French or German sites. What I’d love to see is when I place an order for a book or other item from Amazon.com, they process my order via the closest geographic location, thereby charging me less shipping but still giving the poor devil that recommended the book to me his commission.

Heres an interesting comparison:

Purchasing The World is Flat by Thomas Freidman from Amazon.de will cost €6.00 in shipping while buying the same book from Amazon.co.uk will cost €7.36 in shipping (£4.98 @ 1 GBP = 1.47764 EUR)

Makes sense since Germany is a little closer to Greece so why can’t Amazon ship from Germany when I order from the English or American site?