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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Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Great Losers

By Dave Anderson:


The Security Crank points out claims that a significant portion of the entire Chechan population is supposedly in Warizistan:



At some point, this kind of thing moves beyond parody.



According to the reports Haji Akbar Ali Mehsud, a 55-year-old resident of Zinda village in District Sararogha received, there are over 60,000 foreign fighters of Uzbek and Chechen origin.


60,000 Chechens and Uzbeks in South Waziristan? That�s extraordinary, nearly a tenth of the entire population.


For years now, Chechens, and, increasingly, Uzbeks, have been the targets of some rather extraordinary claims: they are peerless, near-invincible fighters, out to destroy everyone and everything you hold dear.


That there remains almost no evidence for their existence beyond scattered small groups here and there is, apparently, immaterial to the discussion.


Modern industrial societies can mobilize for short time periods 20% of their population to carry arms.  Even in extreme situations such as the last few months of Nazi Germany, or Imperial Japan preparing for Downfall, there are only so many quasi-able body men and boys over the age of 12 and under 65 much less the work force to support the military. 


If the Chechans were able to mobilize such numbers of high quailty guerrillas, then why are they not in Chechyna instead of having engaged in an epic mass migration that could rival the Trail of Tears or the Communist Long March.... [/snark] 



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