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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Saturday, September 26, 2009

Iran says new plant was part of dispersal of civilian program against attack threats

By Steve Hynd


If the new Iranian enrichment site near Qom was indeed a military one, then Iran's concession that the IAEA will be able to inspect and instutute safeguard protocols there has effectively defused it, and President Obama is to be congratulated on a game well played.


But Iran has another explanation that makes logical sense. The site was intended to disperse part of Iran's civilian enrichment program to safeguard against attacks by the U.S. or Israel.



"This site will be under the supervision of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and will have a maximum of five percent (uranium) enrichment capacity," Ali Akbar Salehi said on state television.


The plant, which is "not an industrial scale" unit, will be operational in two years' time, he said.


Dismissing allegations that the plant has a military purpose, Salehi said the facility is being constructed as a "precautionary measure in case of an unwanted incident against our nuclear programme." Analysis


He said Iran's nuclear installations are facing "threats every day" and so Tehran "had to take measures to disperse" the locations of its installations.


If I'd spent billions on a civilian nuclear power program and listened to the saber-rattling of the "Real Men Go To Tehran" set for all these years, I'd be inclined to do the same thing. That doesn't mean I think the site was non-military (or military) - Occam's Razor cuts both ways on this one. I'll wait for more information.



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1 comment:

  1. Egypt SteveSeptember 26, 2009 at 8:44 AM

    Occam's Razer? Please. Real men don't shave -- they've got no time as they pack up their kits for the invasion of Iran. Those few who do, pull their facial hairs out one at a time with their bare hands.

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