There is in reality as much need to assert our sovereignty through an increased military and governmental presence in the north as there is in, say, Newfoundland.What is in dispute is Canada's claim that the Northwest Passage is Canadian "internal waters", a claim that almost nobody else accepts, including the United States, the European Union and Japan.
In a militarist society, guns are associated with vitality, sexuality, strength, one's ability to defend oneself, as much as to assert their dominance over another.
Wouldn't those communities now be much better off and in a much stronger position to assert their rights vis-à-vis Israel?
It was much easier simply to assert over and over again that only the "worst of the worst" were housed at Guantanamo.
It enabled Mr Cameron to claim he was not creating a press statute while allowing Mr Clegg and Mr Miliband, who favour much tougher regulation, to assert they had done precisely that.
It has become much more respectable to assert that the Muslim faith turns people violent.There are political as well as theological reasons why Western debates on the nature of Islam are so charged.
Even if the wine maven thinks the stuff is O.K., it will now be much easier for you to assert yourself and say, "I don't like it".
How much easier, then, just to assert over and over that it happened without making any attempt to justify it in the historical record and then appeal to it as a 'tradition' that must never be broken.
But, in future, the council hopes to assert much greater authority.An ambitious plan, advanced by Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish council member, is to get the coalition's soldiers out of the business of day-to-day urban administration and security, and to turn it over to Iraqis, who can interact more smoothly with the locals.
