The mugging was merely the pretext for heavy-duty flirting between a dishy detective and Keelin, the lovelorn physiotherapist. |
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Agamemnon only hides behind that pretext, however, as his real aim is to extend control over the Aegean region. |
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It merely serves as a pretext to whip the country into a war frenzy and to justify insertion of large numbers of troops into Mesopotamia. |
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You are told to beware of persons coming to your house under the pretext of selling or repairing things, conducting meter readings, etc. |
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It also provides a pretext for lathering government funding on promotions which can only benefit the ruling party. |
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There was also a report that Japan was dispatching its troops to Korea on the pretext of protecting its legation. |
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This is probably because we're not paranoid loons desperate for any pretext to start a fight. |
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The secret of the sacrament of reconciliation is sacred, and cannot be violated under any pretext. |
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The pretence that they have somehow achieved unity among workers gives them a pretext to speak in the name of workers every year on May Day. |
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A year ago, they came close to that goal when a general strike they organized became the pretext for a brief military coup. |
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While thus engaged he was, under pretext of union, finally and fatally subjugated by the Scot. |
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Back on the mainland, any travelling I did became a pretext for my on-going tiki bar pilgrimage. |
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In 57 Julius marched against the Belgic tribes of the north-east, once again using the pretext of an attack on a tribe allied to Rome. |
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Modern wars require a pretext, a casus belli that can be packaged to the public as a sufficient justification for the resort to arms. |
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And, unquestionably, we see how many are unbefittingly ingenious in catching at a pretext for inhumanity. |
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Khmelnytsky sought help against the Poles in a treaty with Moscow in 1654, which was used as a pretext for occupation by the Muscovites. |
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Under Stalin's tyranny, the doctrine was employed as a pretext for the persecution and silencing of nonconformist writers. |
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The pretext for the refusal was that the defendant may abscond and could threaten key witnesses yet to be called. |
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This latest scheme to concoct a pretext for war is a devastating self-exposure of the war camarilla. |
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You're beginning to see the stigmatization of any alternative proposals on the pretext of confronting terrorism. |
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Both these bills use the pretext of real traumas to circumscribe freedom of opinion. |
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To them, the law is simply a pretext for achieving desired results or an obstacle to be circumvented for the same purpose. |
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He and another phone phreaker I met shortly thereafter let me listen in as they each made pretext calls to the phone company. |
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In 1950 the US government withdrew his passport on a trumped up pretext, effectively confining him to internal exile. |
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On this pretext, the police can refuse to produce documents, give evidence, answer interrogatories or provide particulars. |
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On the pretext of a threat to their security, they invade an independent country far away from home. |
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The evidence points to a political gesture in which doctrine is only a pretext. |
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It is about fleecing people blind and taking money on any pretext without any real sense of sensibility around it whatsoever. |
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The day before he carried out the bomb attack, he left the house under the pretext he was going to visit friends. |
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The buzz is that the political agenda of the Minister's visit was merely a pretext. |
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Any sign of opposition, real or imagined, was the pretext for a massive retaliation. |
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If not, we are again using a pretext to cover intervention that is really motivated by another purpose altogether. |
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That gave the police the pretext to use provocations and attack both protesters and local youth. |
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These provocations became the pretext for police attacks on peaceful demonstrators. |
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The pretext for the Brumaire coup had been the prevention of a Jacobin plot, and in the course of it 62 left-wing deputies were excluded from the national representation. |
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The nonconformist painter's incompatibility with French colonial life provided Maugham with a pretext to explore the role of the artist in society. |
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Opposition leaders accused the government of orchestrating the 2003 coup as a pretext for purging the military and cracking down on political opponents. |
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That pretext may have come with the violence that erupted in the port city of Odessa on yesterday. |
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In 1944, on the pretext that they had collaborated with the Germans, Stalin ordered the deportation within a few days of the remaining 200,000 Crimean Tatars to Central Asia. |
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The terror attacks of September 11, 2001, in the US also provided the European governments with the pretext for a frontal assault on basic rights. |
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Yet inevitably some will remain suspicious that the present crisis will be used as a pretext for introducing legislation which will erode our civil liberties. |
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Maula Bux himself was killed in 2006, after being lured across the border by Iranian forces on the pretext of a drug deal. |
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What if he wanted a snack on the way home and accosted a woman on some pretext? |
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But he warned against using the pretext of defense to launch vast campaigns of destruction. |
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Over and above its dramatic significance, this is clearly a pretext for relocating the action to Rome, one of the stock settings of European action films. |
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Some Syrian rebel groups maintain that the Americans invented Khorasan as a pretext for the attack. |
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Several parleys were held and whenever any reasonable solution to the problem was in sight, the government backed out of it on one pretext or another. |
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He has had his heart set on launching a punitive war on whatever pretext. |
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Spotlighting their demands and various forms of activism, it also lays them open to the charge of providing a pretext for foreign intervention in their domestic affairs. |
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But this hopeful breakthrough turned out to be no more than a deviously effective pretext for his escape. |
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In a time where cars were noisy, smelly, rattling contraptions, prone to throwing tantrums and geysers of steam at the slightest pretext, this was like a chariot from heaven. |
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There is the critical difference that in this case the U.S. administration is not looking for a pretext to go to war. |
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I snuck out on the pretext of using my phone to grab a crafty chip buttie. |
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However many parts of the land were appropriated by the government on one pretext or the other and no compensation, though promised, was paid to the dargah. |
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Conspiracy theorists muttered about a Gulf of Tonkin situation where a naval incident could be a pretext for wider hostilities. |
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On the pretext that the statue was about to be attacked, the army erected a barbed wire fence around the area on May 25 and posted soldiers to guard the edifice. |
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These can be slipped into your luggage quite innocently on the pretext that they're darned useful for keeping camera film dry on canoeing expeditions. |
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Whether the theory truly tipped non-violent musers into killers, or whether it merely gave a pretext to psychopaths, simpletons and romantics to commit murders, is unclear. |
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The parodist must both imitate and create incongruity in relation to the pretext, and parody has, contrary to pastiche, traditionally had a comic dimension. |
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They use tax preparation as a pretext to sell other costly products and services, such as high-interest refund anticipation loans, payday loans and furniture rentals. |
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The government, moreover, rarely misses an opportunity to call for expanded state powers and restrictions on democratic rights on the pretext of combating the neo-Nazis. |
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Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, its former ally, on the pretext, never proven, that Kuwait was pilfering oil from Iraq. |
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On this pretext, Neill ordered all villages beside the Grand Trunk Road to be burned and their inhabitants to be killed by hanging. |
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Cat's wandered down the garden on the pretext of using the pool so she takes her towel and cozzie. |
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Indeed, the apparent unanswerability of the question is a pretext for testing out a series of responses to it. |
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Now, the conflict between the Arabs using sectarianism and confessionalism as a pretext. |
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Although commitment to the nonintervention principle is often characterized as pretext or mere contrarianism, it has deep roots. |
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But now everything was a good pretext to vent the rebellious mood. |
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In March 1152, Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine had their marriage annulled under the pretext of consanguinity at the council of Beaugency. |
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The dynastic question, which arose due to an interruption of the direct male line of the Capetians, was the official pretext. |
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She was warned, however, that the summons was a pretext on which to capture her and thereby facilitate Lady Jane's accession to the throne. |
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On 26 April 1718, on the pretext of failing powers, he was dismissed in favour of William Benson. |
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Though the text remains unclear as to the precise pretext, Clovis had Ragnachar executed. |
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For the lower classes, however, the anniversary was a chance to pit disorder against order, a pretext for violence and uncontrolled revelry. |
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Both of George's parents committed adultery, and in 1694 their marriage was dissolved on the pretext that Sophia had abandoned her husband. |
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In September 1931, a section of the railway was lightly damaged by the Japanese Kwantung Army as a pretext for an invasion of Manchuria. |
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The Serb political leadership used the referenda as a pretext to set up roadblocks in protest. |
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This was on the pretext of restoring Edward Balliol, son of John Balliol, to the Scottish throne, thus starting the Second War of Independence. |
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In Nicosia, Glafkos Clerides assumed the presidency and constitutional order was restored, removing the pretext for the Turkish invasion. |
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Arminius then left under the pretext of drumming up Germanic forces to support the Roman campaign. |
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After Maurice's murder by Phocas, Khosrau used the pretext to reconquer the Roman province of Mesopotamia. |
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His plan to leave on the pretext of taking another hajj was stymied by the Sultan. |
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The reporter called the company on the pretext of trying to resolve a consumer complaint. |
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In October, he left Spain for New York, where he refused to leave Mary's apartment on the pretext that he was being watched. |
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Madness, even under the pretext of despair, is never a force that can regenerate the world. That is why today we are all Americans. |
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He added without his country's firm stance, the Middle Easterners could suspect the agreement as vague and could use it as a pretext to start a military nuclear program. |
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In response to British requests for direct negotiations to avoid war, Germany made demands on Poland, which only served as a pretext to worsen relations. |
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On the pretext of restoring order, the Russians occupied northern Iran in 1911, and maintained a military presence in the region for years to come. |
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A fellmonger was arrested, and under the pretext of attending a play, a group of his fellow fellmongers gathered in order to free him from Marshalsea Prison. |
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The Roman proconsul and general Julius Caesar pushed his army into Gaul in 58 BC, on the pretext of assisting Rome's Gaullish allies against the migrating Helvetii. |
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The Manor of Northstead was first used as a pretext for resignation on 6 April 1842, by Patrick Chalmers, Member for the Montrose District of Burghs. |
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Hundreds of peasant families from the community of Nueva Esperanza were removed from the park in summer 2011 on the pretext that they were involved with narcotrafficking. |
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The play provides a pretext for Henry and Maria to flirt in public. |
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Left with only the Marcomanni and Herminius' uncle, who had defected, Maroboduus appealed to Drusus, now governor of Illyricum, and was given only a pretext of aid. |
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On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland under the false pretext that the Poles had carried out a series of sabotage operations against German targets near the border. |
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Through much of his short reign Caracalla was known for unpredictable and arbitrary operations launched by surprise after a pretext of peace negotiations. |
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The ideals of the French Revolution found a receptive audience in Vaud, and when Vaud declared itself a republic the French had a pretext to invade the confederation. |
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A host of other interests, in part very worldly, attached themselves to the conflict and were concealed in it, so that it assumes the aspect of a merely hypocritical pretext. |
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