Worth A Look: Strategic Studies Institute

Worth A Look
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There is only one “think tank” we pay constant attention to, only one that consistently produces worthwhile relevant information tailored to the needs of those of us concerned about national security writ whole.

Here ar just a few of their recent publications, click on the logo to browse their formidable collection of contributing authors and faculty.

The bottom line: Governments and standing armies are now severely vulnerable to self-organizing private, non-governmental, and criminal (both white collar and organized crime) endeavors that refuse to accept the legitimacy–or the efficacy–of government per se.  In intelligence terms, this means that neither force nor money nor any other instrument of national power is sufficent of itself.  Instead, governments must become a trusted service of common concern in the arena of multinational multifunctional information-sharing and sense-making.  Governments must ride the wave as both Harrison Owen and Steve Arnod suggest; the wave cannot be controlled by top-down unilateral endeavors with short-term selfish goals.  See the image below the SSI short list of publications.

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Journal: Spinning Afghanistan

05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Military, Peace Intelligence
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Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius Recommends:

Karzai Aides, Tribal Leaders Say Surge Is Wrong Strategy

KABUL — Some powerful Afghan politicians and tribal leaders have expressed doubts that more U.S. troops can turn the tide of the war, as President Barack Obama prepares to unveil a new Afghanistan strategy Tuesday.

Army Researchers Warn Against Tribal War in Afghanistan

U.S. Army’s own specialists in Afghanistan’s culture and society are warning that relying on the tribes there may be a waste of time. “Most of Afghanistan has not been ‘tribal’ in the last few centuries,” notes a recent report from the Army’s Human Terrain System at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. “In fact, many scholars are reluctant to use the word ‘tribe’ at all for describing groups in Afghanistan.”

Clear, Hold And Duct Tape

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Search: QDR “four forces after next”

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Quotes don't seem to add anything to the Word Press search engine, but even without quotes this does not come up.  Separating QDR from four forces does produce partial results.  Below is the core orignal graphic.

Four Forces After Next

Today, with the deflation of the dollar by 50% in the past ten years, these numbers would be doubled, but the bottom line is clear: we have to apply the  Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS) to the Whole of Government, and we have to use unclassified shared information to enable voluntary harmonization of effort across the eight tribes of intelligence (multinational engagement, not just military engagement, but Whole of Government engagement with the military as the C4I “hub” for two way reachback among national aggregations).

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Search: why is the earth resilient to global war

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Earth is resilient to Global War because only humans can wage global war, and done right, global war wipes out the human species.  Earth could care less.  It's only our ego that places “us” at the center of the Earth.  To truly be the center of the Earth, and of the Cosmos, we must achieve Conscious Evolution or Integral Consciousness, and we must do so in time to stave off the total collapse of human-nurturing Earth systems circa 2050.  Below is the poem by Philip Levine that opened our second book  2002 THE NEW CRAFT OF INTELLIGENCE: Personal, Public, & Political.  Other references follow the poem.

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Journal: Whaling Intercept Boat

03 Environmental Degradation, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement, Methods & Process, Peace Intelligence, Real Time
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Whaling Intercept Boat
Whaling Intercept Boat

Los Angeles, CA- At a fundraising event in Los Angeles on Saturday, October 17th, 2009, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society unveiled their newest ocean defense vessel: the Ady Gil. The vessel, previously known as the Earthrace, is a fast, futuristic looking trimaran that recently set the world record for global circumnavigation. The vessel renaming reflects the ship’s benefactor, Ady Gil, who helped acquire the vessel.

Sea Shepherd is currently preparing for it’s 6th Whale Defense Campaign Operation Waltzing Matilda. The campaign will launch from Australia in early December with Sea Shepherd’s flagship Steve Irwin, which will be accompanied to the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary by the new Ady Gil. Together, the ships and the volunteer crew will intervene in illegal Japanese whaling in Antarctica.

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Commentator of Note: Victor Davis Hanson

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Victor Davis Hanson
Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services. He is also the Wayne & Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College, where he teaches each fall semester courses in military history and classical culture.

Commentaries
Commentaries

He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 and the Bradley Prize in 2008.

To read his full biography, click on on the photo.

We draw from him very selectively, but often enough to merit his own explicatory page here.

Journal: Public Search of Cell and Radio

Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Methods & Process, Mobile, Real Time
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Public Access to Cell & Radio
Public Access to Cell & Radio

We anticipate all text messages being available for public search in the near term, joining our observation that Twitter is now a crowd-sourcing as well as a point of presence intelligence tool.

Click on the collage to search text messages from 9-11–the scope is believed to be limited (e.g. NYC only) but this is a harbinger of things to come.

The Hacktivists are working on running all radio communications among the fire and police in NYC into the CISCO digitzer, and then making that searchable.  Unlike the result in seaching for bomb or bombs in text messages, we anticipate that the radio traffic will blow people's mind, especially when visualized.

Thus does the public recapture its power–by paying attention.  Thomas Jefferson and James Madison would be proud….and this might be a good point at which to observe that Thomas Jefferson was himself one of the first American counter-culture icons, see  Counterculture Through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House.

2001-09-11 10:04:09 Metrocall [1261437] ALPHA Anotherbomb/explosion under the world trade h
2001-09-11 10:04:54 Skytel [003927743] ALPHA litha.Chittapragada@gs.com|RE:Please call me. I am in my office| NYSE is also bombed. I am leaving the building. I am with HARI. Pray me.