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, September 10, 2009

Zardari plays down Afghan poll concerns, backs Karzai victory

By Steve Hynd


Just when you thought the Afghan elections couldn't provide any worse news for Western occupiers...



Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari played down concerns on Wednesday that the Afghan election had been tainted by fraud and said he would be present if President Hamid Karzai is sworn in for a new term.


...Asked if the elections would be tainted if Karzai was confirmed as winner, Zardari indicated his support for Karzai.



"I'll be there to be with him when he is sworn in because he was here when I was sworn in, so that's my position," he said.


Zardari has also rejected the Obama administration's "Af/Pak" designation, saying that �Afghanistan and Pakistan are distinctly different countries and cannot be lumped together for any reason.�


Karzai spent his exile years in Pakistan, partly through the largesse of Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency. He has packed the electoral commission with his own people and made it clear he intends to declare victory come what may. Now Zardari is publicly backing him, at a time when Pakistani public opinion of the US occupation in Afghanistan is at an all time low.


Are we about to see a revolt of the two U.S. clients, Zardari and Karzai?



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