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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Sunday, January 3, 2010

<i>Qat Madness</i> in Yemen

By John Ballard


Via The Lounsbury's link to a short Financial Times piece we learn a bit about Yemen.




Reading articles like this from FT.com, on Yemen "Social pressures weigh on poorest Arab state" frankly are depressing even for a MENA optimist. The "good news" is Yemen is building a LNG [Liquid Natural Gas]  facility. Wonderful. It will give the state the money to buy more weapons to pretend to assert control over the pseudo state. That does not change the deadly death cycle of Yemani society, with rapidly declining water yields (from non-renewable water resources), the dead weight of the Qat production (itself water intensive), and a birth rate that is of Sub Saharan African levels.


I didn't remember about Qat but it's worth mentioning. My post title is a riff on Reefer Madness, the now classic cult film of our generation.





This is what you need to know about Qat. Seems like it is the cultural equivalent of Colombian Gold.


Qat (pronounced cot), also referred to as khat, quatt, kat, and tchat (in Ethiopia), is a leafy narcotic popular in certain areas of Africa and, more recently, Britain. Qat, from the Catha Edulis tree, originated in Ethiopia and spread to Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Tanzania, Arabia, the Congo, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Madagascar, South Africa and Yemen. Yemeni qat is the most often discussed, and reportedly of greater quality than that from other places. When chewed, qat leaves produce feelings of euphoria and stimulation. Qat has become a major cultural phenomenon for Yemeni and Somali societies and has ben the cause of conflict over production and distribution in these countries.

...Prior to the expansion of qat trade, coffee was the biggest crop in Yemen. However, Yemeni coffee trade peaked in the 17th and 18th centuries and then began to decline from competition with coffee production in Indonesia, South America, and East Africa. Now, as a result of national and regional demand, qat is replacing coffee crops. Currently, in Yemen, estimates suggest one-half to two-thirds of arable land has been cultivated for qat, largely because farmers earn five times as much for qat as for other crops, including coffee.


Lots more at the link. More than you ever wanted to know.


Poppies in Afghanistan.
Qat in Yemen.
Hmm...



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