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, June 14, 2010

Kyrgyzstan fighting and Manas

By Dave Anderson:

Kyrgyzstan is turning in on itself as the low-land versus mountain conflict, which is also a convenient ethnic split has boiled over into serious civil violence.  The Times of London reports:


The death toll from ethnic fighting in Kyrgyzstan jumped dramatically
today
when an Uzbek community leader said that at least 200 people had been
killed.


Government figures have put the number of dead at 117 with more than
1.500
injured after three days of clashes between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbek
groups
in the south of the country

Rioting and ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan matters much more than bloodier ethnic violence in Nigeria or elsewhere for one reason.  Manas Air Base near the nation's capital is one of the key supply hubs to the US/NATO forces in Afghanistan.  The previous government before it was deposed was willing to play the US off Russia to get a better deal on the base, while the new government quickly announced it was backing the US and its continued use of the base.  The new government has nationalized the base's fuel supply and is not as thrilled with the US as the previous government.  Additionally, the new government is friendlier with Russia than the previous government, and it is seeking Russian troops to maintain internal order and suppress rioting. 

Manas is the key to US interests in that nation.  Everything else may produce a sternly worded letter, but no other action.  If Manas is open, then the US doesn't care too much about the rioting or the body count. 



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