Holland? You mean ''The Netherlands''

[cleargreenwater]

I genuinely appreciate that because the islands of the Carribean confuse the EVERLIVING HELL out of me. Puerto Rico is a commonwealth, Turks & Caicos are territories, Cuba is a totally independent nation, and there is such a history of colonialism blanketing the region it makes my brain sag trying to figure it out.

So the 3 Dutch regions in the Carribean are independent, self-governing full-on COUNTRIES that belong to the conglomerate of The Netherlands, and there are several cities that are outposts of Dutch nationals but not political entities, sovereign or otherwise, themselves.

OK. I can't say I'll ever have a savy handle on the Carribean islands, but would like to go there one day and personally won't go to an area I don't have a basic understanding of. That's honestly informative and nicely understandable, thank you.

[DGFone]

Just in case you were wondering, for most of the world, Holland = The Netherlands.

I can kinda understand you getting peeved about this very common misconception, but really, was it worth a whole page and a half of a new topic?

[DGFone]

Do explain. After all, last time I checked, if I simply copy down what you told me Americans are, I might get banned for using vulgar language...

Also, there's a certain comment you made about all gun supporters being murderers, all people suspicious of the US government thinking that Obama is a commie, X people are bad thing Y, the list goes on...

Just saying, I find this topic to be very high up on the "hypocritical scale".

I simply don't see why you felt like it was such an egregious error that you needed to post a whole new topic in the "World Issues" forum about a very common mistake that just about all people make, when you yourself make much worse assumptions.

[Si-Amber]

I guess this is similar to the people who think that Scotland and Wales are part of England. I've heard quite a few foreigners say "England" when they mean Britain or the UK.

I can see how that would be annoying!

[AdAstrα]

Locked on request.