Fallacies go global

The linguistic skills of public officials and their abilities to talk important or pressing events while saying relatively nothing about them is a common and frustrating experience. Our recent chapters on fallacies equip us with a language to identify these departures and better understand the discourse at work.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is on a tour of multiple Middle Eastern States right now, recently said the following:

Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State: "It’s a pleasure, once again, for me to welcome my colleague and counterpart, the foreign minister of Bahrain. He’s been here in consultations with many officials of our government, members of Congress, others who care deeply about Bahrain and our important relationship. And I’m looking forward to a wide-ranging, comprehensive discussion of our full agenda."

As this statement read, one can infer that US-Bahraini relations remain warm. Despite this, Bahrain is involved, as have been other Middle Eastern states in the news, in suppressing a resurgence in popular dissent that has by some press sources become deadly. Also in the background is a proposed $53 million dollar arms deal with the country that another State Department spokesperson said would help Bahrain improve its “external defenses” ( http://www.democracynow.org/2011/10/27/headlines#16 ).

I see the following fallacies in this diplomats language: Appeal to the People – Conscious of the curiosity of the international community regarding the crackdown and arms deal, this is a direct appeal to the people by the State Department in their attempt to portray the Bahraini government in favorable terms by describing close, “important relationship” and multi-level “consultations” with members of our own government. They may be a twinge of vanity here as well by placing the foreign minister in league with our elected leadership, who enjoy at least a bit of esteem, credibility, and character by coming to their powerful positions by generally valued, socially legitimate process. The reference to a “wide-ranging, comprehensive discussion of our full agenda” strikes me as a bit of a red herring as well, where while one aware if the specific current problems in Bahrain may infer that these could be part of the discussion, it obscures the perception of the country by brining now attention to what could be generally agreed on as an ongoing international concern.

Phase Four - Feedback welcomed

P1 - The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act is vague

P2 – It allows for excessive penalization

P3 – Its use of the work “terrorism” is inconsistent with legal and political norms

C1 – The AETA is delegitimized by its excesses and may be unconstitutional

P1 –The AETA is vague – Vagueness or broad constructions of legal language can be an asset when interpreting intent in a variety of contexts, but the ability of dissidents to understand the limitations of their constitutionally protected speech and the consequences when civil disobedience is employed is not one of them. The classification of non-violent physical obstruction or actions that may result in the loss of revenue without an injury to property or person could foreseeably be adapted to virtually all forms of traditional and non-traditional political protest. This would unjustly suppress protected forms of speech.

P2 – Excessive penalization – The 2006 law duplicates the 1992 Animal Enterprise Protection Act, whose provisions were enough to arrest, for example, activists on “animal enterprise terrorism” charges for running a website. The 1992 bill was, despite obvious effectiveness such as the arrest just mentioned, was claimed to be ineffectual – but the crimes enumerated in the 2006 legislation are already illegal acts, which could potentially lead to a compounding of charges under multiple statues.

P3 – Inconsistent use of term “terrorism” – The vast spectrum of expression and tactics that the language allows for prosecution and the choice of the term “terrorism” in the title of the bill provides for a diverse application of specific, but more relevantly politically and emotively charged word that sets a confusing and inappropriate standard. Even in its most “radical” manifestation, animal and environmental activism has ceased to go beyond politically motivated property destruction, in which great care is taken to ensure that no human and animal lives are harmed. This clearly evident principle sets these activists distinctly apart tactically, technically, and ideologically from the more general accepted domestic and international norms defining terrorism.

George Wallace blushes and other amazing feats

I found are discussion of cognitive and emotive language very fruitful. Becoming familiar with some methods and tools to deconstruct what language says and what it hides strikes me as infinitely useful. Although it would be tough to give Wallace a run for his money columnist and author Robert Spencer manages. His online blog http://www.jihadwatch.org/ is confoundingly popular. I didn’t paste the whole thing…just a little taste of his rhetoric. How many emotive and manipulative terms can YOU find? *

*anyone who endures long enough to find more than five such terms (and mine don’t count) gets a cigarette

Cheers fellow scholars

“ Muslims and their enablers, fans and dedicated propagandists around the world never tire of spreading the same lies, over and over again, about Islam. Sometimes the lies are baldly blatant, and other times the lies are conveyed via convenient and strategic omission of inconvenient facts. Hence we must never tire or flag in our own efforts to shine the harsh light of truth on Islam and the lies ceaselessly circulated by Islam's snake oil salesmen.

Today's bundle of media-vectored taqiyya comes courtesy of the Malaysian daily 'The Sun' and its piece entitled 'Humanistic Islam' (!). The unintentionally ironically-named article features the musings of a Singaporean-based Muslim author named Isa Kamari, who would probably pass for a 'moderate Muslim' in the mainstream media. Much of the aforementioned article centers on Kamari's thoughts on Malay-language literature, but it is Kamari's thoughts on Islam that deserve a thorough 'Islamophobic' debunking here…”

(you can find the rest and more at: http://www.jihadwatch.org/)

Abstraction attraction

As you all are assuredly painfully aware by now our introduction into logic has involved putting what we perceive as arguments into standardized or otherwise simplified forms to more readily determine their truthfulness and other meaningful qualities. I was profoundly struck this week by the notion that was illustrated to me via counter example method that a further abstraction from the content of something can better able one to determine its innate qualities (truthfulness, accuracy ect.). I propose for general musing: what are the implications of this seeming contradiction? While it seems quite reasonably to follow that this is an effective method it runs counter to me intuition that the effort of pursued familiarity with a subject and its content is the best approach to assessing its qualities of truthfulness ect. Does this register with anyone else?