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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Saturday, January 16, 2010

FBI Alters Spanish MP's Picture, Calls Him Bin Laden

By Steve Hynd


In the last few days, various media outlets around the world have carried a picture from the FBI that purports to be a digitally created image of how Osama Bin Laden might look now, at 52.


Bin laden at 50 


The US state department has posted the new photofits on its website rewardsforjustice.net.


But the end-state photo owes more to Spanish MP Gaspar Llamazares than to FBI technical wizardry (h/t Kat).



A Spanish politician has said he was shocked to find out the FBI had used his photo for a digitally-altered image showing how Osama Bin Laden might look.

Gaspar Llamazares said he would no longer feel safe travelling to the US after his hair and parts of his face appeared on a most-wanted poster.


He said the use of a real person for the mocked-up image was "shameless".


The Spanish newspaper El Mundo said an FBI spokesman had admitted the agency had taken a picture from Google Images.


...The FBI claimed to have used "cutting edge" technology, but Mr Llamazares said it showed the "low level" of US intelligence services and could cause problems if he was wrongly identified as the Saudi.


"Bin Laden's safety is not threatened by this but mine certainly is," he said, adding that he was considering taking legal action.


El Mundo quoted FBI spokesman Ken Hoffman as saying a technician "was not satisfied" with the hair features offered by the FBI's software programme and instead used part of a photo of Mr Llamazares posted on the internet.


"The technician had no idea whose image he had found and no dark motive for using it," he told the newspaper.




Bin laden NOT 


The Spanish government, which wasn't Obama's best friend in Europe already, has said it will be asking for an explanation.


What the hell are the intelligence professionals of America's many well-funded agencies up to? Allowing triple-agent suicide bombers to get near key personnel unsearched, leaking to journalists in pursuit of their own turf-fights and clownish stunts like this suggest they're not at their best, that's for sure.



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1 comment:

  1. CurmudgeonJanuary 16, 2010 at 11:05 AM

    What the hell are the intelligence professionals of America's many well-funded agencies up to?
    Most likely they're fighting turf wars with other agencies and departments. The skills needed to win internal turf wars are not the same skills needed to do useful work.

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