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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Sunday, September 6, 2009

Chavez Ups The Ante On Possible Iran Petrol Sanctions

By Steve Hynd


The US has been considering pushing fresh sanctions on Iran that would enclude a unilateral embargo on refined petroleum products, despite the fact that to be effective such an embargo would have to include a naval blockade of Iran's ports - an illegal act of war if done without a UN security council resolution.


Venezuela's Chavez has just upped the ante on that possible course of action:



"Venezuela has agreed to export 20,000 barrels of petrol daily to Iran from October in a deal worth 800 million dollars," Chavez told reporters in the northeastern city of Mashhad, local media reported.


He gave no indication of the duration of the agreement.


"This amount will be deposited in a fund established in Iran and will be used to finance purchase of machinery and technology from Iran," Chavez added.


Now the U.S. hawks pushing this embargo notion must ask themselves whether it would be worth an illegal war with a South American nation as well as a Middle Eastern one - and whether it would be worth the risk of drawing Russia into the fray. Russia has close ties with Iran but even closer ones, especially military ties, with Venezuela.



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