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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Thursday, August 13, 2009

No Puppets at the G-20

By Dave Anderson:

The G-20 summit in Pittsburgh will be a massive mess.  Most everyone I know is doing their best to avoid downtown on at least the two summit days, and perhaps the day before as well.  Several hundred thousand protesters are anticipated, and the city is attempting to crack-down on them before they arrive.   One side effect of the crack-down may be a de facto ban on street theatre puppets for the protests:

The Pittsburgh City Paper reports:

Organizers of G-20 protests say a possible new law against bringing
such things as PVC pipe, locks or cement Downtown as protest tools
during the international summit misses the mark. Instead, the ban may
harm makers of less provocative forms of protest, from large signs to
colorful puppets....

Depending on what is banned, the Ravenstahl administration might
also effectively prevent protesters from constructing mammoth,
TV-friendly signs or carrying camera-friendly puppets, Bradley adds.

"There's
no constitutional right to carry around a pipe," says Vic Walczak, the
ACLU of Pennsylvania's Legal Director. "Those are tools that can be
regulated. The devil may be in the details" of the law, which is not
yet public.

Removing puppets from the streets may just force the protest organizers to start thinking about a clearer message.  Right now all I know is that they are pissed about something (not always sure what) and they like puppets.  I don't think a disjointed quasi-anarchist run protest system is politically effective, and if one of the common props is removed, maybe the messaging will improve. 



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1 comment:

  1. HootsbuddyAugust 13, 2009 at 3:09 AM

    No puppets?
    That's stupid.
    Although if they are big enough they might conceal a dangerous load of explosive material. Security concerns have gone over the top since 9/11.
    As I read this I remember the guidelines we got in 1963 from civil rights activists training us how best to protest in public. Among other guidelines (like falling into a fetal position with arms and hands protecting head and face as much as possible) we were told NOT to bring signs on sticks. The best signs were those made on cheap, light card stock, to be held high or in front with both hands. That way we would not be furnishing anything to be used against us as a makeshift whip or club.

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