Every person hurt by the Lyme Denial needs to understand something called the Stratfor Strategy, and how it is being used against us. I'm not alleging that the company Stratfor itself is being used against us (though it's possible). The point is, the strategy itself is being employed, regardless of whether or not Stratfor is. Stratfor is an intelligence analysis firm which is regularly hired by some of the most powerful entities on earth - giant corporations, governments, etc.. It has its roots in a philosophy laid down by a US military intelligence officer called Rafael Pagan. Pagan's company underwent various name changes over the years , later becoming MBD, and today it’s called Stratfor. The Stratfor strategy is used to destroy grass-roots campaigns. For example, Stratfor was hired by Dow Chemical to destroy the protests over the Bhopal Disaster, where corporate negligence led to a massive leak of toxic gases that killed an estimated 15 000 people. Stratfor has a network of spies internationally who join grassroots campaigns and try to subvert them. The Stratfor Strategy, which has often proved so successful in destroying grassroots movements that clients shell out 6 -figure sums for Stratfor's services consists of the following: First, using espionage and hacking techniques, Stratfor tries to find out as much as possible about the most people involved in the campaign. Next, the campaigners are divided up into 4 groups. The first 3 groups are courted and manipulated until their campaigning no longer poses any threat to the Client. The fourth group aren't susceptible to this, so Stratfor tries to isolate them and stop anyone from listening to them. Group 1 consists of people who can be persuaded that the Client is simply too powerful to be beaten. Of course history shows us that no one is invincible, but once a person has accepted that the Client is invincible, the only thing to hope for is that the Client can somehow be begged for a compromise of some type. So under the Stratfor strategy, Group 1 people - who are considered the most vital to court and promote - are conned into believing that if they only drop their hostility to the client and join in a “partnership” with the Client, great changes will result. In fact, the Client does not have the slightest intention of making any real changes, but the new “partnership” serves to pull the rug from under the feet of the rest of the campaigners. A perfect example of Group 1 thinking is those who say : “Well, we are stuck with [fill in the name of any Denialist official or agency here], so the best we can do is to partner with them, invite them to address our conferences, hold events and produce pamphlets jointly with them, and perhaps one day they will learn something from some of our doctors.” This is naivete at its worse, is hopeless and actively harmful to patients. Group 1 people are then encouraged to go out and convince everyone else of the validity of their philosophy, and to suppress or persecute anyone who thinks differently. So for example, Lyme Disease Action in UK boasts of the great progress that has come about due to its new-found “partnership” with Dr. Tim Brooks and Public Health England’s Lyme department. In fact, no progress has occurred, and some things have got worse. The official PHE position remains as it always has been – a complete denial of chronic Lyme. There is no longer a single LLMD in the whole of Britain’s National Health Service. Even the tiny handful of private doctors who used to treat chronic Lyme, following a wave of persecution totally unopposed by the LDA -UK, have dwindled to almost nil. Group 2 people, according to Stratfor, may not believe the Client is invincible, but they are individuals who can be tricked into believing that the campaign is somehow hurting those it is supposed to help. So for example, campaigners against a corporation whose unethical methods have caused the deaths of people in Africa could be conned into believing that the bad publicity they are giving the Client will force it to withdraw altogether, hurting the economy and creating unemployment. In fact the Client has no intention of withdrawing, but the Group 2 people are tricked and stop their activities for fear of harming Africans even more. A Lyme equivalent would be the often-heard assertion that those who oppose a “coming together” with Denialists like CDC or Tim Brooks are harming the credibility of the patients’ campaign. Group 3 people are the easiest to deal with, according to the Stratfor Strategy. These are people who only joined the campaign for their own selfish reasons, and don’t really care if it succeeds or not. An example would be a politician who speaks out passionately for Lyme patients during an election, then, once elected, does an immediate about-face. Finally, Group 4 are the people that pose the most threat to the Client. These are people (in the Stratfor’s philosophers’ own words) who are committed to social justice(!) They cannot be bought, conned or manipulated into doing the bidding of the Client. The Stratfor Strategy calls for them to be isolated and “eliminated” – by harassment, character assassination, or, if necessary, something worse. John Stauber, who investigated Stratfor, and is author of the book “Trust Us, We’re Experts!”, has written: “The Pagan/MBD/Stratfor operatives are much more sophisticated about social change than the activists they oppose, they have limitless resources at their disposal, and their goal is relatively simple: make sure that ultimately the activists fail to win fundamental reforms...Duchin and Mongoven were ruthless, and I think they were often amused by the naiveté, egotism, antics and failures of activists they routinely fooled and defeated. Ultimately, this is war, and the best warriors will win.” An example of a Group 4 person is Dr Alan MacDonald. He is committed to justice for Lyme patients, and cannot be bought. His research poses a huge threat to the Denialists, as it is in incontrovertible proof that Lyme is a persistent infection capable of causing a range of serious and/or fatal diseases from MS to stillbirth to Alzheimer’s. Therefore the Denialists attempt to isolate him not only by using their EIS network to stop the major medical journals from publishing his findings, but crucially, by trying to use their newly-converted Group 1 puppets to denounce him. Thus Stella Huyshe-Shires, head of Lyme Disease Action, publicly insulted Dr MacDonald, accusing his work of not being “evidence-based”, a charge so absurd that she ended up with a near-mutiny on her hands, with dozens of British Lyme patients dissociating themselves from her statement. She had to publicly retract and apologise to Dr MacDonald. So the essence of the Stratfor strategy is to court people who can be either tricked or bought, and then use them to either transform the existing campaign into a weak and toothless “partnership” with the Client, or to start a new puppet campaign with the Client pulling the strings. It’s absolutely essential to understand that this IS the strategy being used against us. Once you understand what is going on, you can prevent yourself from being conned in this way. There is no reason whatsoever to see the Denialists as invincible. Public health officials who harm the public can be fired; policies that maim and kill patients can be removed. But the first step is to recognise that NO gains will ever come of the supposed partnership. It’s a “deal” with only one winner – the Denialists.