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, August 24, 2009

Brown Spokesman Admits Lockerbie Release Not A Terror Boost

By Steve Hynd


Despite Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill's claims to the Scottish parliament today that the descision to release Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was his alone, British prime minister Gordon Brown is being forced on to the defensive as details leak of pressure exerted on MacAskill from London to make the right decision for UK/Libyan trade.


Having already seen that a terminally ill man can no longer be rehabilitated or punished in meaningful, non-vindictive ways, Brown has been forced through a spokesman to admit that the last leg of the possible arguments for continued detention - deterrence - also has no force.



Asked about the message that the decision had sent out, Mr Brown's spokesman said: "I don't see how anyone can argue this has has given succour to terrorists."


Indeed. The only class of people for whom this release could signal a lapse in deterrant force would be those terrorists with three months or less to live. I don't think they'd be deterred by the prospect of a life sentence anyway, especially not if they're contemplating suicide bombing.


Brown's New Labour ally and former Scottish First Minister Henry McLeish had already undermined Labour's attack by describing U.S. FBI director Robert Mueller's interfering comments on the decision as "totally out of order."



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