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, July 20, 2009

Mumbai Gunman Pleads Guilty

By Steve Hynd


Well, well. An attempt at martyrdom perhaps?



[Ajmal] Kasab,21, stood up before the special court hearing his case just as a prosecution witness was to take the stand and addressed the judge. "Sir, I plead guilty to my crime," he said, triggering a collective gasp in the courtroom.


...Kasab said his confession was not coerced. "There is no pressure on me. I am making the statement of my own will," he said.


Asked by judge M.L. Tahiliyani why he confessed now after consistently denying his role, Kasab said it was because the Pakistani government recently acknowledged he was a Pakistani citizen, dealing a blow to his defense.


"If Pakistan has accepted me as its citizen, then end this case and punish me for my crime," he said. "My request is that we end the trial and I be sentenced."


Tahiliyani said no immediate judgment would be issued and the trial will resume Tuesday.


Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit declined to comment on Kasab's court admission.


Apparently the admission of guilt took the prosecution and even his own defense lawyer by surprise. Capital punishmnet in India is legal but rare, however the the chief minister of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital said "the court should give the maximum punishment" to Kasab.


The immediate fallout of today's courtroom shocker, though, will be to increase pressure on Pakistan to do something more than merely cosmetic about the Lashkar-e-Taiba terror organisation, which Kasab confesses to being a member of. The peace process between India and Pakistan has been stalled by Pakistan's reluctance to act against the group's leadership and might now be derailled entirely if that reluctance continues.



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