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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Friday, April 25, 2008

Shooting At Shadows?

By Cernig



News is breaking that a merchant vessel under contract to the U.S. military has fired warning shots at a small boat in the Gulf. The military claims that the boat belonged to Iran, which has denied any involvement.

The crew of the Westward Venture, which was under contract to the U.S. government, reported that it radioed a warning and fired flares before resorting to warning shots Thursday, the officials said.



The cargo vessel was en route to Kuwait and about 50 miles from the Iranian coast, according the reports.



The Revolutionary Guard, part of Iran's military, says no such incident took place, according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency.



Tensions in the Persian Gulf have been high this year. The United States and Iran, which have no diplomatic relations and blame each other for problems in Iraq, have had at least two other tense incidents in the Gulf since January.

Pretty much all the mainstream outlets are making mention of those two previous incidents - one which Iran also says didn't happen and one where the U.S. mounted a full-court PR campaign only to have it fall flat on its face.



But what no-one is mentioning, when the connection is obvious, is another recent shooting incident involving a military-contracted vesel. At the end of March, the merchant vessel Global Patriot opened fire on some small Egyptian boats at the mouth of the Suez Canal, killing one hapless Egyptian bum-boat merchant.



Questions about who aboard did the shooting - U.S. military personnel, ship's crew or security contractors - went unanswered. The identity of the shooters isn't being mentioned this time either.



Is this one consequence of the dripping tap of war hype against Iran - that those aboard such vessels are shooting at shadows? Fifty miles seems like an awfully long way out from Iran, after all. If so, it's highly dangerous, with a very real prospect of someone - maybe a Blackwater guard or civilian crewman rather than a U.S. serviceman - starting a shooting war with Iran.



Update According the BBC World News a few minutes ago on PBS, there was a "US military security team" on board the Westward Venture because it was carrying a military cargo. Presumable that means there was a similiar team aboard the Global Patriot.



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