Word: pretexts
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...academic freedom." Their intention was rather to suggest to the University that such a blatant insult to their integrity as the proposed course would cause a breakdown in the relationship between black students and the University; to further suggest that academic freedom could not be used as a pretext for degrading the black community at Harvard or across the U.S. When 109 supposedly intelligent men can condone the perpetration of such an obvious insult, under the guise of "academic freedom," then it is time to seriously question and re-define that concept...
...Perfect Pretext. Against the backdrop of military preparedness, the Soviets began an ominous propaganda campaign that seemed aimed at crippling West Berlin's economy. The Soviet government announced that it had requested the East Germans to use whatever measures were necessary to halt what it claimed was the flow of military products from West Berlin to West Germany. That announcement was followed up by a Pravda article that listed a large number of Berlin-made products, chiefly optical and electrical equipment, that the Soviets claimed were used by the West German armed forces...
While patently contrived, the Soviet charges provided the perfect pretext for interfering with freight traffic between West Berlin and West Germany. Since the products on the Pravda list include West Berlin's major exports, a ban on their transport through East Germany would strike a severe, perhaps debilitating blow at the West Berlin economy. In another charge, the Soviets accused the West Germans of breaking four-power agreements by recruiting West Berliners for the Bundeswehr. Nor did the Western allies escape Russian blasts. In an obvious threat to the allied air rights into the city, the Soviets charged that...
West Berliners feared that his presence this time might foreshadow Warsaw Pact maneuvers in East Germany that could be used as a pretext for closing all ground routes to the city-and perhaps even for sending MIGs to buzz civilian airliners in the air corridors, as the Soviets did in 1965. Those fears were reinforced by Allied intelligence reports that the Soviets and East Germans had begun to move troops into the vicinity of West Berlin's land access routes...
Time has not only blunted the point but reversed it. While capitalism now seems surprisingly benign, the individual who decides to exterminate other people, under whatever pretext, has become distinctly ominous. As a one-madwoman salvage operation, Angela Lansbury saves her reputation if not the show. Looking like a ruefully unkempt Colette, she croons, chortles, and cavorts about The stage with a certain raffish gallantry. The Jerry Herman score is zero, and Choreographer Joe Layton, who once staged dances of tepid promise, has now ascended to scalding mediocrity...