Tag Archives: Divide and Conquer
Divide and Conquer – With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies
Try and imagine a campaign by environmental NGOs to end the use of ploughs in agriculture, on the basis that it’s damaging to the biodiversity of rural regions and wrecks natural habitats. The immediate question would be what effect such a limitation would have on the availability of food. Turn it around and apply that question to demersal trawling, and nobody in authority or at any ENGO seems to equate fish with food. Fishing in Europe (and the UK, where the political climate in this respect remains much the same) has been under a wholesale assault from organisations that have little love for fishermen, yet the fishing industry itself remains at odds with itself, frequently doing the work of fishing’s opponents for them. The tactics are now familiar, pick as a target a relatively small sector over which there are already deep divisions within the industry, and go from there to deepen the divides, play on old enmities and appeal to long-held prejudices, and nurture the tall poppy syndrome. >click to read< 12:54
Divide and conquer has always been the FFAW model
“Adjacency” is a word that can bring about anxiety in a room full of fishermen/women like few other industry terms can. This unnecessary fear essentially stems from the policies forced upon them by Fish, Food and Allied Workers (FFAW) politicians speaking from both sides of their mouths, depending on which group they might be feeding bait to at that particular moment. There has been an unnecessary divide created that has helped the fishermen’s union tighten the stranglehold on members for so many years — divide then conquer. It’s been the primary tactic of many oppressive empires over time, and has been implemented with precision by the FFAW in Newfoundland and Labrador. Read the rest here 18:38
Australia: Divide and Conquer – Pew targets industrial fishing while still pushing for angler bans
The interview reveals that the environment group has made moves to shift away from the “no compromise” policies of former staffer Imogen Zethoven (who now works for Pew at its US headquarters) and is now seeking to engage with the recreational fishing community on issues of “mutual concern”, especially relating to industrial fishing operations. Read the rest here 22:01
