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.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Monday, August 3, 2009

Obama Administration Floats Idea Of Act Of War Against Iran...Again

By Steve Hynd


The New York Times reports that the Obama administration is discussing with allies the idea of "cutting off" Iran's "imports of gasoline and other refined oil products" if it won't agree to the West's demand to cease uranium enrichment which is guaranteed it as a right under the NPT treaty. Such an embargo would require a naval blockade of shipping into Iranian ports.


The last time this was suggested - last May when Israel's Ehud Olmert suggested the U.S. impose such an embargo and then AIPAC shills Gary Ackerman and Mike Pence introduced H. CON. RES. 362 in the U.S. House - every progressive commentator pointed out that such an embargo done without a UN resolution to back it would be an unequivocal act of aggressive and illegal warfare under international law.


You won't find much mention of that inconvenient fact from Dem-supporting writers today. The emphasis is on the slim chance that Russia and China would vote for such a blockade at the UN Security Council and therefore the US would have to put together a "coalition of the willing" to act without a UNSC resolution. Of course, now it would be an Obama administration carrying out that illegal act of war, not a Bush administration. Such are the pleasures of partisan punditry.


Too, no-one is mentioning (as they did last May) the severe repercussions of attempting such a blockade.



Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)