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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Friday, October 2, 2009

Library on a Donkey

By John Ballard



This deserves more links. Rocketboom is not all fluff pieces.





The comments thread embeds a similar video focused on the challenges of Palestinian education in the West Bank.

The line that nearly brought tears to my eyes was the child who said "It's important because when your parents ask you to read them a letter that they don't understand you can read it to them."

As he spoke I remembered elementary school children accompanying parents to job interviews and/or employment orientations to act as translators because a parent going to work as a dishwasher could not speak English. I usually had a translator, but sometimes children were my only means of communication. I cannot imagine the humiliation of a parent's having a pre-teen child discussing hourly rates of pay, work rules and schedules with an employer.



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