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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Thursday, May 27, 2010

Obama's Letter to Lula Exposes White House Forked Tongue On Iran

By Steve Hynd


Via Robert Naiman, it appears that President Lula of Brazil has decided to shine some light on the Obama administration's machinations on Iran. He has finally released the full text of Obama's 20th April letter to Brazil about the proposed TTR fuel swap deal and the entire thing appears today in Brazilian Foreign Policy.


The letter reads, in part:


Obama to Lula 1


The letter also specifically mentions the compromise of using Turkey as the location for Iran's fuel to be held "in escrow".



I would urges Brazil to impress upon Iran the opportunity presented by this offer to "escrow" its uranium in Turkey while the nuclear fuel is being produced.


This letter's authenticity is not disputed by the White House. It exposes the Obama administration's forked-tongue response to the Brazil and Turkey brokered swap. The White House is now in full spin mode, but the spin has already been undercut by the release of the letter's full text. Of late, Hilary Clinton has been the main vehicle for the White House's double-talk, which is now entirely aimed at closing down opportunities to find a negotiated settlement to the Iran nuclear issue no matter what the new National Security Strategy might say. But Obama must also bear the burden of blame, his is the desk where the buck stops.


Update: Flint and Hilary Mann Leverett see things exactly the same way I do. "It saddens us to write this--but is President Obama prepared to engage Iran, Brazil, Turkey, or anybody else in good faith on this issue?"


Ummm, apparently not.



2 comments:

  1. I noticed the forked tounge phenomenon in a Newsweek article that appears designed to minimize the brewing NK crisis
    http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/declassified/2010/05/26/u-s-intelligence-sees-scant-evidence-that-north-korea-is-preparing-for-war.html
    "And although the North might be able for the most part to conceal preparations for an underground nuclear explosion, the West�s detection equipment would probably pick up signs that the North was planning a major new missile test, and according to one of the officials, no such preparations appear to be under way."
    With Iran, of course, this same "detection equipment" is simply not mentioned in most media reports and the impression created is that the Iranians can secretly develop WMD's in their evil underground lairs while the liberals, sissies and assorted Neville Chamberlains...(We're lookin' at you, Lula!), naively trust in diplomacy.
    It seems that the US wants to get into it with one nation state, and wants to avoid getting into it (for now) with another.

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  2. Well, no wonder the Turks and Brazilians were pissed off with Obama.

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