How Twitter Thuggery Works.

Fantastic medium but it has limitations. Especially that it has so few number of characters that profoundly vague statements get a run, lies get a run and some strange and misleading comments can get a very good run.

Take this for example from a well known Anti Live Export campaigner out of Tasmania. Well known but not very well regarded. Even many animal welfare groups are wary of this person known for rants & facts free jolly word trots. (Below is that person's tweet with all identifiers removed)

That statistic is ball park correct. Exact number we don't know but consider it accurate for the sake of argument. The suggested remedy to the problem? Apparently it's simple ban all live export, even between the states & make all slaughter happen close to the paddocks where live stock is grown.

There's just a few problems with that & if you're Intellectually Bankrupt and you want to win a Twitter Point at all costs you probably prefer the fact there's not enough room to provide fuller facts.

Here's some of the problems...

1. Not sure there's 60 hours of NO feed and water. I'd like that independently confirmed & verified. I can imagine prior to trucking stock are yarded & hopefully "emptied out" that's standard practice so livestock aren't overly fouling truck floors and slipping over in their own mess. I don't think livestock would be yarded at the wharf without feed & certainly without water. 
2. "There's nothing moral or ethical about that" - That's a moral claim & an ethical claim. I don't think the person quite understands the definition of both and that both mean somewhat different things. If there is an ethical claim then there is a process to alter the process in place, rather than just, as they say "hashtag crap". There is no attempt to cite exactly which code of ethics has been breached, None. Only a dominating assertion without any backing, proof or citation. It's beginning to look like an opinion that somewhere between rant and chant. But lets go to the biggy.
   The Moral Claim - You cannot make a moral claim without citing the Moral Law you regard as the authority and the standard you believe has been breached. Otherwise what you have is a stated opinion and as we know many opinions are not based on facts, they're based on feelings or pre-suppositional likes & hates. In other words unless you can cite the Moral Code you're using for the Moral Judgement you're just spreading an opinion without any foundation.
   If for some odd reason you think you possess the entire where with all to make grand moral judgements and others don't well you're either claiming to be God or the gate keeper of all moral judgements (which I'd suggest takes a form of deluded madness to accomplish) or you're deliberately embarking on a cunning pathway of deliberate deceit.
   You cannot make up a moral code or claim people who are decent know what's moral without outlining how you arrive at that statement and qualify it by explain exactly what defines a person as "decent" in your mind. And in doing so you are again only citing your OPINION not total universal truth.
   This is what's called Moral Relativism. It implodes with any sort of scrutiny so quickly thrown grenades on twitter fool the person posting and some reading. Closer inspection reveals the poster has thrown a grenade pin and is hiding in the intellectual foxhole with the grenade.
3. What's wrong with animals being transport interstate? Fact, nothing if its done properly. If the poster regards all instate live export to be immoral and requires immediate ban then the entire Tasmanian Pet Industry will have to be closed. No more pets can be transported. Its over.
   The reply may be that this is different and pets are transported humanely. I don't doubt they are, I'd argue that proves that live export can be done humanely as I always have. I'd have to ask if the issues is that slaughter is involved, is the poster a vegan activist?
   If THAT is the case then its a fair chance the poster is not about animal welfare at all, they're about animal liberation...which is a twisted philosophical cult & really is anti meat.
   But if Live Export is cruel then a ban must include ALL animals. I'd love to see that campaign crank up, about you can import pets from the mainland but they must be chilled or frozen.
4. Local slaughter & processing may well be better for the local economy, but if it's not viable, if it cannot compete then it either closes or it has to be massively subsidised by government. That's a great sentiment but its not sustainable and we do live in a Free Market Economy.
   If some customers want to buy their own livestock, ship it to the mainland, slaughter & process it then ship some of to back to Tasmania they have to do it at a profit, in fact that is the only reason they're doing it. Unless we start paying meat workers 3rd world country wages it's very unlikely most Australian abattoirs will stay open. Due to the very small margins involved the only thing that will keep them open is large turnover. Trouble is the J Curve on profitability is not based on huge margins & as such abattoirs are not known for being great investments. This is why the live trade to Asia & the Middle East is so big. It's not producers trying to sell over there to destroy a local abattoir or crush a local union, it's overseas buyers wanting live because they have a much lower processing cost than us allowing them to sell good Australian product to their domestic buyers who otherwise cannot afford to buy it.
   
   Its what happens in a free market economy. Looking through a truth prism you'll find the same decay that set into the Australian Car Industry which arguably was never able to stand on its own two feet & had massive subsidies for decades. If the Socialist Protestors want all abattoirs subsidised by the Government, go cost it out. That is an economic disaster waiting to happen.
   
   This is why there's an old phrase "If Socialists understood economics there'd be no Socialists"
   
   There are 6 meatworks in Tasmania I know of, 7 if you count one on King Island. 2 are on the skids now and if they haven't closed yet they probably soon will. Economic viability...it's a thing.

The latest truth bombs that the poster cam out with were probably unintentional but highlighted what is being dealt with. There was quite a rant on "vegan diets for dogs" how they were possible and were highly moral & ethical. Same poster said that they did not approve of any animal products.

What that means is we don't have an Animal Welfare protestor we have an Animal Liberationist. That's cult of zealots that often hide amongst the Animal Welfare people. The vegan protestors refer to "lapsed vegans" as those who need help dropping animal products properly and often use as a derogatory remark the descriptor "welfarists" those whoa re Animal Welfare supporters but not yet decent enough to be Animal Liberationist Vegans.

Still these are the facts you can hide when you thrown grenade pins on limited character number platforms like Twitter. The other trait they often use of note is baiting techniques so as to provoke a slap back comment allowing the rabids to claim an offensive attack and wave the victim card.
It wouldn't be so sad if it weren't so clumsily obvious.

I don't claim there's a mental disease or condition there, I'm not a clinical Psychologist or the like, but there is a pattern of behaviour and its rather truth free, agenda driven and quite disturbing.

Look and see for yourself and if a claim of any sort is made don't be afraid of posting "Claim noted, please cite source" or "citation please"