Sealand, founded in 1967 by the late patriarch of Britain's eccentric Bates family on a WWII-era fortification off the United Kingdom coast has managed to assert its independence in British courts, thanks to its location beyond English territorial waters.
It also gave a new sense of how many people may have been at the facility when the militants seized it on Wednesday, asserting that nearly 650 had managed to leave the site since then, including 573 Algerians and nearly half of the 132 foreigners it said had been abducted.
Mr. Tourre referred to himself as "the fabulous Fab" and asserted at one point on a trip to Belgium that he had "managed to sell a few Abacus bonds to widows and orphans that I ran into at the airport".
It has helped that Palestinian militants, whether by choice or because the Palestinian Authority (PA) has belatedly managed to assert some authority in Gaza, have suspended their periodic mortar and rocket fire on the settlements.Soon, then, the focus will shift to the settlers' new living conditions.
What is more, it has not intervened in the democratic process.The national police, meanwhile, have indeed managed to assert themselves as the country's enforcers of law, including taking the initiative against Indonesia's home-grown Islamist extremists.
"In this police state," he asserts, "I've managed to gain freedom of thought by pretending to be dead.
But Richard M. Copland, a travel agent in New York who is the president of the American Society of Travel Agents, asserts that agents have managed to survive by selling more lucrative trips -- for instance, with tour companies that still pay healthy commissions.
In telling us to Dress Normal to assert our true selves, The Gap has managed to create what the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard called "immanent reversal" where things become their opposite (Enlightenment become control, culture becomes the culture industry).
