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Mini Assign 10: Blogical Fallacies

March 24th, 2012 by mandy

I hope I am on the right track to doing this assignment; if I am not, please correct me!

Logical fallacy

So the new Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Leung Chun-ying, just got elected.

According to this NY article, which is titled “Hong Kong Elects Pro-Beijing Chief Executive,

“Mr. Leung won on the first ballot, receiving 689 votes, after Beijing’s representatives here put heavy pressure on electors in the final week of the race to support him.”

So yes, I have heard all these rumors that Mr. Leung has personal and professional ties with the CCP, but I have never heard him supporting the CCP publicly. Instead, he has always positioned himself as politically neutral (although some of his moves have betrayed him…..)

Anyways, although Mr. Leung may be really “pro-Beijing”, this article lacks justifications for such claim.  The article should acknowledge that, Beijing’s support for Leung ≠ Leung is “pro-Beijing”.

 

Rhetorical fallacy – Oversimplification

This editorial suggests that because of Latin American abundance of natural resources and of other countries’ (mostly China’s) increasing demand for such, Latin America will “own the century”.  Not only that, the editorial claims that because of the increasing Latino population in the U.S., the latter “will be so Hispanized that the Spanish language will rival English for predominance.”

This editorial seems to me has ignored the political dimension of the issue. In particular, it does not explore the very possibility that other countries would exploit Latin American resources with unfair prices or other negative conditions. Having abundant natural resources does not necessarily translate to economic or social prosperity (If Latin America will own the century, so will Africa).

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2 responses so far ↓

  • 1 nielc Mar 24, 2012 at 11:08 pm

    I think the professor said in one class that he would upload a document with a list of fallacies. Do you recall? I’m not quite sure anymore, and also stuck on the mini-assignment for this week.

  • 2 mandy Mar 24, 2012 at 11:12 pm

    I recall I went to the bathroom when the prof. was talking about the mini assign………..

    so confused!