Force apt-get to ignore dependencies?

[Benjamin Scott]

Hey list,

  Anyone know of a way to have apt-get (Debian) ignore dependencies
and download the frelling package anyway?

  I've recently reinstalled Debian 5.0 "lenny" on my PC (after a
unfortunate accident involving a package manager, a liquid lunch, and
a pair of rubber bands).  However, in the meantime, Debian has
released "squeeze" as "stable".  In the progress of updating for that,
debian-multimedia.org broke their "oldstable" archive (corresponding
to lenny right now) and have taken it offline, so only their stable
archive (corresponding to squeeze) is available.  d-m.org was where I
was getting my Adobe Flash package from.  They conveniently kept a
current release packaged in a "real" Debian package, not the
download-an-executable-installer-for-you package one gets elsewhere.
Unfortunately, their package based on squeeze thinks it depends on
newer libraries than those which ship with lenny.  However, I'm almost
positive that's wrong -- Flash is statically linked.  It sure as hell
ain't built against a particular version of Debian.  I'm willing to
bet those dependencies are just in the package control file because
those were the libraries the auto-dependency-generator thing found
when the package was built.  One could argue that's a bug in the
package, and you'd be right, but one could argue Flash is inherently
broken, and you'd also be right.  This is the reality I have to deal
with, and I can't seem to clue apt-get in to it.

  (I don't want to upgrade to squeeze because (1) it just came out,
and that's always a bad idea with *ANYTHING*, and (2) squeeze has
moved to one of those overly-complicated dynamic init systems, which I
object to for religious reasons.)

  Google is full of situations that don't apply.

  Anyone got a clue they can spare?

-- Ben