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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Tuesday, November 3, 2009

The ayatollah and the math student

By Gregg Carlstrom


John wrote last night about the courage of the pro-democracy protesters in Iran, who are gearing up for another day of demonstrations tomorrow.


Along those lines: Here's a slightly amazing story forwarded to me over the weekend by a contact on Twitter.


Mahmoud-vahnidia

The young man in this photo is Mahmoud Vahnidia, a math student from Tehran's prestigious Sharif University of Technology. Vahnidia attended a speech delivered by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. When Khamenei finished, he asked if the audience had any questions; Vahnidia stood up and said, "Yes, I have some words with you."


He then spent the next 20 minutes criticizing Khamenei -- to his face, remember. He critiqued the "untruthful" state media, called Khamenei an "idol," and asked why nobody in Iran is allowed to criticize him.


Vahnidia was interrupted several times by members of the Basij, Iran's paramilitary force. (The Basij were frequently deployed to break up protests during Iran's period of post-election unrest). When he finished, Khamenei responded, though he didn't really address Vahnidia's questions; instead, he called Vahnidia's charges dishonest.


Vahidnia was reportedly detained shortly after the event.


Khamenei, interestingly, is making no effort to hide what happened. The incident was reported in Iranian media, and the photo we used above comes from Khamenei's official Web site.


Update: The Los Angeles Times reports that Vahnidia was not, in fact, detained.



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