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, June 9, 2008

Iraq And Iran Sign Defense Pact

By Cernig



Dubya can't get the Iraqis to agree word one of anything right now - but Iran seems to have no problem.

Iran and Iraq agreed to boost defence cooperation during a visit of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to Tehran on Monday, Iran�s official IRNA news agency said, giving few details on the content of the agreement.



Iran�s Defence Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar signed a memorandum of understanding on defence cooperation with his Iraqi counterpart, Abdul Qader Jassim, IRNA said.



Mine clearance and the search for soldiers missing in action would be part of the planned cooperation, it said.



The two majority Shi�ite Muslim countries fought an eight-year war in the 1980s, in which 1 million people were killed, but ties have improved since Sunni Arab strongman Saddam Hussein was ousted in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.



�The two parties, stressing the importance of defence cooperation in the balanced expansion of ties ... called for development of this sort of cooperation with the aim of strengthening peace and stability in the region,� IRNA said.



Earlier on Monday, Iran�s supreme leader told Maliki that the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq was the biggest obstacle to its development as a united country.



Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hit out at the �occupiers� in Iraq at a time when Baghdad is negotiating with the United States on a new agreement aimed at giving a legal basis for U.S. troops to stay in Iraq after Dec. 31, when their U.N. mandate expires.

Maliki didn't contradict him, either. And note, too, that there's still no sign that Maliki "confronted" the Iranians about US allegations that they are interfering in Iraq, like all those reports said he was going to.



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1 comment:

  1. Ron BeasleyJune 9, 2008 at 5:02 AM

    Once again we have to go to Foreign News sources like FT to find out what's going on. I just checked all of the US Media and wire services and nothing.

    ReplyDelete

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