Free Republic

Thousands of Public Service Company of New Mexico customers have been without power Wednesday, affected by hundreds of outages. The numbers of customers affected and the number of outages is being updated online through the utility’s outage tracker. Affected areas include parts of Santa Fe, Corrales, Albuquerque, Los Lunas and Valencia, as far down as Silver City, Deming and Alamogordo. The outages come as a storm system brings high winds to the region. PNM is investigating the causes of the outages...

The Public Service Co. of New Mexico filed a request June 1 with the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission to raise electric rates by 21.2 percent. If approved, the rate hike would take place in two phases. Average customers would pay 15.3 percent more starting in April 2011, and another 5.8 percent starting Jan. 1, 2012. The rate hike would help PNM pay for $575 million in investments in its electric system, such as the expansion of substations and power lines, and upgrades to five power plants, said PNM Resources President and CEO Pat Vincent-Collawn in a news release. “PNM...

The piece in question is Robert Kaplan's "How We Would Fight China" in the June issue of The Atlantic Monthly. "Sell out" isn't too strong a term for what Kaplan does in this piece. As someone who's worked for the Navy for a decade and a half, I don't think I've ever seen analysis that whores itself more for the most over-the-top strategic fantasies of naval leaders who feel embittered and betrayed by the end of the Cold War. This is U.S. Navy and Pacific Command propaganda at its best. Kaplan buys into everything he's told by PACOM and especially...

In 1492 Christopher Columbus set sail for India, going west. He had the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. He never did find India, but he called the people he met ''Indians'' and came home and reported to his king and queen: ''The world is round.'' I set off for India 512 years later. I knew just which direction I was going. I went east. I had Lufthansa business class, and I came home and reported only to my wife and only in a whisper: ''The world is flat.'' And therein lies a tale of technology and geoeconomics that...

Thomas Friedman wants the wired world to let in the other half of humanity In working on his third book about global trends, Thomas Friedman discovered that the world has become smaller. In fact, so small it's "flat." A columnist for The New York Times, Mr. Friedman loves to travel our round planet like a photon in a fiber optic cable, picking up this hot new trend and that advice from a notable achiever, then collating it all into a globe- spanning metaphor of mega-meaning. In "The World Is Flat," this modern Magellan even admits, "I'm exhausted just writing about...

The Pentagon is primarily in the business of preparing for war, not waging it. War is waged by commanders in the field. What the Pentagon does is think long and hard about what the future of war should be like. It then directs vast R&D and acquisition programs to generate a force capable of waging war successfully in that domain. Its demands for intelligence tend to be future-oriented. Right now, there is a debate raging within the Pentagon and the military as a whole about what the war in Iraq and the subsequent (and ongoing) occupation tell us about the...

In a Frontpage Exclusive, Dr. Thomas Barnett discusses why globalization is America's greatest gift to history.Frontpage Interview's guest today is Dr. Thomas Barnett, senior strategic researcher and professor at the U.S. Naval War College. He served as assistant for strategic futures in the Defense Department's Office of Force Transformation (Oct. 2001-June 2003). He is the author of the new book The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century. FP: Dr. Barnett, welcome to Frontpage Interview, it is a pleasure to have you here. Barnett: Thanks for the opportunity. FP: What inspired you to write this book?Barnett: I...

IN HIS CLASSIC description of globalization The Lexus and the Olive Tree, columnist Thomas L. Friedman quotes an Egyptian professor asking, "Does globalization mean we all have to become Americans?" This simple question contains the current great myth of globalization, within which we can locate much of the world's anxiety regarding America's global war on terrorism. In short, the world's current anti-Americanism is based on the notion that globalization is an American plot to enslave the planet in an economic and military empire of unprecedented historical scope, with the war being nothing more than propaganda to hide our true intentions....

"Let no child be left behind"; ... "It takes a village to raise a child"; ... "Quality time"; ... "Crime Stoppers." Each of the foregoing, unfortunate phrases is supposed by many to be an expression of progress, is as American as Enron and now is at home in - the West Indian Republic of Trinidad and Tobago? During our just-concluded annual visit to my wife's folks in Trinidad, my family was bombarded with warmed-over Americanisms on television. (While prosperous, tiny Tobago with its beautiful beaches is the preferred destination of tourists, 93 percent of the 1.3 million largely hardworking, hard-luck...