Sounds like a good idea: Israel is in sore need of allies in the region, so maybe if they became allies of the Kurds it could work to their mutual benefit.

I see, this makes perfect sense now. IMO, it'd be better if all these break-away regions broke away and became new countries. That's why they're in the EU, after all: the union facilitates free trade and a strong shared currency (in theory at least), so things would be better if all these regions broke away and then joined the EU as new member states, instead of their people constantly being angry that they're in an involuntary union with some other country they don't like so much.

BTW, which regions in Italy want to break away? I hadn't heard about that, though I'm familiar with Catalan and the Basque region wanting to break away from Spain.

Of course China would be against any self-determination; they're all about forcing people into a single union under an authoritarian government which only benefits one group.

Is there a difference between knowledge and belief

Yes. Always.

Knowledge is based, either directly or through a proxy, upon known facts that are some combination of repeatable, consensually experiential, and testable. Sound travels at a particular speed in our atmosphere. This is knowledge.

Beliefs are based upon faith, and cannot be proven, although they can be described and so passed along. Animals cross the rainbow bridge when they die. This is belief.

Either one can be mischaracterized as the other, but examining the issue at hand for the required elements of knowledge will very quickly determine just what it is you're dealing with. Likewise, conviction isn't the issue.

The thing to remember is that just because you have an idea in your head, that doesn't qualify it as knowledge.

So what's the problem with that?

My palm TX sees your blackberry and drops the bar several inches all at once. :)

Did they enable nested folders yet? The current single level folders are limiting and create unnecessary clutter.

For instance, it'd be nice to have one games folder, inside which might be a folder for board games, one for shooters, one for tower defense, etc.

One that would be of interest to me would be arranged around photography. One main folder, then one for editors, one for astrophoto conditions and apps, one for auroral conditions and apps, one for IR work, one for special effects, etc., one for a DB of my lenses and cameras, one with my portfolio, one with links to photography websites, etc.

Folders within folders is a very natural way to arrange things in a hierarchy; I have never understood Apple's resistance to giving its customers tools they can use to make using IOS easier. In the case of nested folders, you don't *have* to use the feature if you don't want to, anyway... but if you need it, you probably *really* need it.

So here's hoping.

To me, it feels more like North Dakota splitting from South Dakota while staying within the US, which a lot of people would consider mostly a non-issue.

Huh? It's nothing like that at all. North Dakota and South Dakota are already split, and have been for a very long time. They're entirely separate states with no more relationship with each other than they have with Minnesota or Montana. They just happen to share part of their name.

Perhaps you meant "it feels more like Upstate New York splitting from NYC while staying within the US." (Which would actually be a great idea IMO.) We've actually done this before, sorta: during the Civil War, West Virginia broke away from Virginia and formed a new state so it could remain in the Union. We've also had many other states form by seceding from other states: Tennessee, for instance, used to be part of North Carolina, and Kentucky used to be part of Virginia. At one time early on, the 13 Colonies annexed everything to their west, all the way to the Mississippi River, drawing borders at the north and south mostly along latitude lines (or rivers, in the case of the Ohio river); later, these territories broke away and formed new states.

I'm sure they would want to sell. I'm saying sanctions would probably prevent US companies from buying.

Yes, just remove "Scotland, " from the name.

Of course, Scotland can never secede from Great Britain, unless they dig a big canal on the border and turn their country into a separate island.

There's nothing silly about such debates.

I'd like to see the US and Canada both break apart and reform into new, smaller nations. I think, for the residents in many of the new nations, life would be better than the current state. I think perhaps 6 new nations would be a good number; one nation would include the pacific northwest areas of NorCal, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and maybe Yukon and Alaska. The American southeast would be a single nation, and maybe the southwest too. The US New England states plus the Canadian Maritime provinces would be a single nation. With these regions separated from each other, we wouldn't have all the infighting we have now between clashing cultures (e.g. highly religious values in the Bible Belt versus socially liberal values in the northeast and northwest).

Americans might look on with bemusement; I can understand that. I guess it's a bit like Florida choosing to break away from the US, having a pro-Florida political party endlessly demonizing "them" (the rest of the US) as causing pretty much every economic and political woe Florida has going for it.

As an American, I'd be happy to see Florida secede from the US. We'd be better off without them. Let them deal with their own problems.

Am I missing something? Why would an independent Scotland be spurned by the EU? I thought this issue was about them separating from the UK; they should be able to then join the EU as a full member, and switch to the Euro currency if they wish (since right now they're still on the GBP just like the rest of the UK). An independent Scotland should in theory be a good thing for the EU, as a confederation works better with its members smaller and more equal to each other, rather than having a mix of small and large/powerful members, as the powerful members will be seen as bullies by the smaller members. An independent Scotland will reduce the size/power of the UK in the EU and add a new member that's on par with countries like Denmark, and maybe get more people on board with the Euro.

Is arming locals really that bad an idea though? Our problem in the past was that we picked religious zealots as our allies and armed them, while ignoring the not-so-religious ones we could have supported. Here with ISIS, we could arm the Kurds and support them; the Kurds are not terribly religious (not too different from your typical Sunday Christians here in the US), and are willing to fight ISIS, but we don't want to support them too much because we don't want them demanding their own state, because that works against our interest in keeping the region destabilized. If we stopped working towards keeping the region unstable, and instead helped out groups like the Kurds who want independence, which would make the whole region far more stable, groups like ISIS would die out.

They won't destroy the population, they'll just subjugate it. That's what authoritarian regimes do. Stalin killed millions of people in his great purge during and after WWII, but it's not like the Soviet Union suddenly collapsed due to lack of people. And the Soviet Union lasted for many decades.

What works in dealing with these things is to wall them off and ignore them, and arming neighboring regions to create a buffer zone.

I do, I absolutely do. But what's the US going to do? Re-invade Iraq?

At least maybe this time it would be easier to get a "coalition of the willing." Maybe an international effort that included other Arab nations would make for a more stable country. But seriously, we go in, invade, innocent people die anyway, and a power vacuum is left for even worse motherfuckers to rise up.

It doesn't seem like you can win peace with bombs.