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, June 5, 2010

More Jews Misbehaving

By John Ballard



This is a small but growing movement. A significant minority of Israeli citizens are offended by conditions in Gaza and Israel's treatment of the Free Gaza Flotilla. From Jewish voices for Peace...



??Israel has more than egg on its face. Israel has blood on its hands.

According to Ma'an News Agency this group is preparing another boat-lift sometime next month.

Bethlehem - Ma'an - In a harbor in the Mediterranean a small vessel is waiting for a special mission.


She will be sailing to Gaza during the second half of July. In order to avoid sabotage, the exact date and name of the port of departure will be announced only shortly before her launch.


"Our purpose is to call an end to the siege of Gaza, to this illegal collective punishment of the whole civilian population. Our boat is small, so our donations can only be symbolic: we are taking school bags, filled with donations from German school children, musical instruments and art materials�, says Kate Leiterer, one of the organizers.


"For the medical services we are taking essential medicines and small medical equipment, and for the fishermen we are taking nets and tackle. We are liaising with the medical, educational and mental health services in Gaza," Leiterer said.


''In attacking the Freedom Flotilla, Israel has once again demonstrated to the world a heinous brutality. But I know that there are very many Israelis who compassionately and bravely campaign for a just peace. With broadcasting journalists from mainstream television programmes accompanying our boat, Israel will have a great chance to show the world that there is another way, a way of courage rather than fear, a way of hope rather than hate',' says Edith Lutz, an organizer and passenger on what is being called the "Jewish boat."


''J�e Stimme,'' or Jewish Voice for Peace, along with European Jews for a Just Peace in the Near East, and Jews for Justice For Palestinians (UK) are "sending a call to the leaders of the world: Help Israel find her way back to reason, to a sense of humanity and a life without fear."


In a statement, the group said that "Jewish Voice expects the political leaders of Israel and the world to guarantee a safe passage for the small vessel to Gaza, thus helping to form a bridge towards peace."


Launched in 2005, Ma'an News Agency (MNA) publishes news around the clock in Arabic and English, and is among the most browsed websites in the Palestinian territories, with over 3 million visits per month. Considered the main source of independent news from Palestine, MNA has become the first choice for online information for many Palestinians, and is also attracting a growing international readership and interest from prominent international news organizations and agencies.




Ma'an News Agency is an integral part of Ma'an Network, a non-profit media organization founded in 2002 to strengthen professional independent media in Palestine, build links between local, regional and international media, and consolidate freedom of expression and media pluralism as keys to promoting democracy and human rights. Ma'an Network is a partnership between independent journalists throughout Palestine, including nine local television stations and nine local radio stations. In addition to MNA, its activities include television, video, and radio production, and training courses for Palestinian journalists and media personnel.



More about MNA at this link. 



Commenter Geoff makes a salient point.


What has stunned me about this fiasco, is the remarkable similarity to Jim Crow excuses for abusing desegregationists in the 60's to Israel's, its US Congressional drones, as well as, most of the US media's, talking points. Everyone is an outside trouble maker bent on destabilizing the status quo simply outside criminals that deserve everything they get: beaten, fire-hosed, set on by dogs and shot. Our modern terms are sometimes still trouble makers but more surely now "terrorists" and they all have funny sounding names for sure to scare and baffle our poor old grannies [not mine but].


Parallels with America's Civil Rights movement are unmistakable.The outcome should be similar, but contemporary Israel and her super-power ally are not as powerless or irrelevant as dying remnants of the Old South in the Sixties. I think the outcome is as unstoppable as the birth of a baby. It is a bitter irony that Ultra-Orthodox Jews (together with our own Christian Zionists, incidentally) are not taking the moral high ground. The administration certainly understands these realities but has not yet devised a way to deliver the baby without sacrificing the mother.



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