Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Monday, April 28, 2008

Greenpeace Takes Over Czech Missile Defense Site

By Cernig



I needed a cheer-up this morning.

Prague - Greenpeace activists Monday took over the site in a military zone south-west of Prague where the United States would like to place its missile-defence radar, the group said. About 20 activists scaled the hill without a permit to enter the Brdy military zone in protest of US plans to erect a radar base there, spokeswoman Lenka Borakova said. "Erecting bases for the US missile shield in central Europe will lead to instability," she said. Speaking by telephone from the spot, she said five Greenpeace climbers set up camp in treetops, hanging a 15-by-15-metre target- shaped banner there.

The military asked the protesters to leave the site by 2 pm (1200 GMT). "We do not intend to obey," the activist said. The Czech Defence Ministry declined to disclose whether it plans to have the activists removed from the site. "All options are open. It depends on the attitude of the trespassers," ministry spokesman Andrej Cirtek said. The activists committed a misdemeanour punishable by a fine by staging a political protest on military premises. Polls have repeatedly shown that more than six out of 10 Czechs oppose hosting the US facility.

In the bad old days of communism, of course, such a protest would have been impossible. Freedom cuts both ways.



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