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, September 28, 2009

UK Conservatives Still Moving To Left On Afghanistan

By Steve Hynd


It must have stuck in Shadow Defense Secretary Liam Fox's craw to tell the I.I.S.S. that a British Conservative government would support troop increases in Afghanistan - but only for the purpose of training Afghan security forces. Fox is a staunch neoconservative and his instincts have always been to back escalation in Af/Pak all the way. But pressure from older, wiser Tory heads coupled with setbacks like the massively fraudulent elections, the Helmland fiasco of surging in the wrong place and public approval for the war already in the Dick Cheney depths dictate a Tory policy shift away from his preferences.


Tory policy is now so nearly identical to Labour policy that the electorate will have trouble telling the difference. And given how unpopular the occupation has become we can look forward to a race between the two to get to the Left of their opposition as the General Election nears.



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