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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Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Iranian Interior Ministry IT Chief reported killed in "suspicious car accident"

by anderson

Unconfirmed reports are circulating that Iran's Interior Ministry network security chief, Mohammad Asgari, was killed in a "suspicious car accident." Asgari is believed to have been the source of leaks from the Interior Ministry that exposed severe election rigging in rural provinces by the Ahmedinejad faction.

Mohammad Asgari, who was responsible for the security of the IT network in Iran's interior ministry, was killed yesterday in Tehran.



Asgari had reportedly leaked results that showed the elections were rigged by government use of new software to alter the votes from the provinces.



Asgari was said to have leaked information that showed Mousavi had won almost 19 million votes, and should therefore be president.

Beware, this is unconfirmed, and given this chaotic and panicked state of the country right now, highly doubtful.  Not because no one can believe the Revolutionary Guard, or Ahmedinejad, or even Hamas,* incapable of committing such an assassination, but because the situation is, shall we say, fluid.

Nonetheless, shades of the death of another dead, potentially whistle-blowing IT guru, Mike Connell, are swirling before my eyes.  Such tales have been told many times.

Stay tuned for this and more.


* does anyone have any news of this, other than JPost?  I don't have doubts believing that Hamas has been recruited to help suppress Iranian protestors, but have these reports appeared anywhere else?  


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4 comments:

  1. JohnJune 17, 2009 at 11:16 PM

    I think there's several things to add into the mix here...
    1. Traffic in Tehran is terrible at the best of times. There's a very high number of road deaths there every year.
    2. Are there trustworthy confirmations that he's even been killed? Two students from Tehran University who were supposedly killed popped up on TV today.
    3. Why would Iran use foreign agents to kill someone? Historically, they've had no qualms about killing people themselves -- see the Iranian chain murders of intellectuals, the "suicide" of the "mastermind" of those murders, etc.
    4. The Iranian state has enough Basij and Ansar-e Hezbollah members at their disposal who, again, have showed no hesitation to beat, maim, stab and murder demonstrators.
    This rumour about Hamas or Hizbollah being flown in to crack skulls in Iran is, I think, paranoia. It's a common (and much satirised) theme in Iranian culture -- British, Russian, Zionist, etc. conspiracies.

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  2. geoffJune 17, 2009 at 11:18 PM

    Please, can you guys avoid becoming part of the "excited delirium" swiping the West.

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  3. andersonJune 18, 2009 at 1:50 AM

    Well, I put as many caveats in the short post as seemed reasonable. But, yes, this "report" was that at all; just some blurb supposedly from an Iranian on the spot.
    As far as the "Hamas in Iran" story goes, that too, seems narrowed. There was no evidence, just a couple of witnesses who claim that some of the goons are Hamas. The JPost appears to have gone out of its way to find the most virulent responses they could find, all in a effort to fit the Israeli narrative of Hamas and Palestinians in general.

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  4. festerJune 18, 2009 at 10:18 AM

    I'm taking this report with several boulders of salt --- it makes no sense for either the Iranian government or Palestinian Hamas or Lebanese Hezbollah to do this....

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