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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Monday, May 3, 2010

The Black Prince Tape

By Steve Hynd


The ever-excellent Jeremy Scahill has yet another Blackwater exclusive, having procured a tape of an Erik Prince speech "delivered January 14 at the University of Michigan in front of an audience of entrepreneurs, ROTC commanders and cadets, businesspeople and military veterans". Prince usually demands that his speeches not be recorded in any way or reported by journalists present.


Among the many things Prince said:



  • Prince proposed that the US government deploy armed private contractors to fight �terrorists� in Nigeria, Yemen, Somalia and Saudi Arabia, specifically to target Iranian influence.

  • He described Blackwater�s secretive operations at four Forward Operating Bases he built and controls in Afghanistan, along with a 200-strong "strike force" able to call on NATO air strikes.

  • Prince spoke of Blackwater working in Pakistan, which appears to contradict the official, public Blackwater and US government line that Blackwater is not in Pakistan.

  • He expressed disdain for the Geneva Convention, saying �You know, people ask me that all the time, �Aren�t you concerned that you folks aren�t covered under the Geneva Convention in [operating] in the likes of Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan? And I say, �Absolutely not,� because these people, they crawled out of the sewer and they have a 1200 AD mentality. They�re barbarians. They don�t know where Geneva is, let alone that there was a convention there.�

  • Prince also claimed that a Blackwater operative took down the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President George W Bush in Baghdad and criticized the Secret Service for being �flat-footed� when video of the event clearly showed another Iraqi journalist, not security guards, initially pulling al-Zaidi to the floor.

  • Prince also addressed what he described as his outing as a CIA asset working on sensitive US government programs. He has previously blamed Congressional Democrats and the news media for naming him as working on the US assassination program.


Read, as they say, the whole thing.


And Jeremy, watch your back, ok? Just sayin'.



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1 comment:

  1. That Michael GuyMay 3, 2010 at 6:09 PM

    "a 200-strong "strike force" able to call on NATO air strikes". WTF! They probably targeted competing drug lords and or growers or settled disputes with the locals by 'calling on NATO air strikes' to take care of the uncomfortable situation.

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