Word: pretexts
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What is most striking is that Wilson's stubborn resistance uses the court's ruling as a pretext for a radical stance which is not required by the decision itself: the narrowly tailored verdict requires only that a parimutuel betting system like the one at the Golden State's racetracks be used at Native American casinos, not that all gaming be put to an abrupt stop. So as long as tribes devise a system which pits competitors against each other rather than against "the house," their activities would conform to the court's ruling...
...gold was gotten as it was: from the pockets, mouths and necks of Holocaust victims. Eizenstat insisted on Switzerland's obligation to recognize its lucrative trade relationship for what is was: a sellout. "In the unique circumstances of World War II," he said, "too often being neutral provided a pretext for avoiding moral considerations." And that went for the U.S. too, Eizenstat said. "Neither the U.S. nor the allies pressed the neutral countries hard enough to fulfill their moral obligations to help Holocaust survivors by redistributing heirless assets for their benefit." Fifty years later, restitution is slowly coming...
...bombing to happen, though, will boomerang harshly on the Palestinians. Israel immediately closed off the territories and promised retaliation; Netanyahu has always kept open the option of sending Israeli troops back into the areas now under Palestinian control. Even worse, he might decide to use the bombing as a pretext to abandon, once and for all, the talks he has always opposed...
Despite China's decade-plus economic liberalization, its critics in the U.S. still see the country as a monolith obsessed with growing ever stronger through unfair trade practices. The view goes something like this: Beijing believes it can export whatever it wants while barring imports on any pretext it chooses. It can undercut other manufacturing nations by the use of cheap labor. It can steal ideas and ignore copyrights without much risk of retaliation. And it can essentially blackmail multinational companies into transferring jobs and technology as the price of cracking open a market of 1.2 billion people. Taken together...
Like those in Kishinev, the Crown Heights riots were launched on the pretext of a wrong done by Jews to their non-Jewish neighbors. In both cases, the murderers used the excuse provided by incidents of questionable relevance to launch their attacks against defenseless individuals. In both riots, the victims were identified as targets because of their Jewishness and local governments were accused of complicity, if not active support of the murderers...