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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Friday, July 16, 2010

Military Suicides Averaged One a Day Last Month

By John Ballard








This is relevant to Steve's earlier post.

Here's the link to Ron Capps' essay in Health Affairs.

The pistol felt good in my hand. I felt surprisingly deft with it. The selector switch had two painted dots, one red and one white. White is safe; red is not. With my thumb, I put the pistol back on safe white and laid it on the seat. While I talked to my wife for a few minutes, I stared out through the windshield and watched the sun setting over the rocky brown desert of Darfur.



"I�ll be careful; don�t worry. I�ll be home in a few weeks."




I started the truck�s engine and drove back to the United Nations guesthouse where I was staying, and returned the pistol to the peacekeeper sergeant I�d borrowed it from. We�d served together for five months. The sergeant had loaned me the pistol, no questions asked, because he knew me and because I was a senior officer with more than twenty years of field experience whom he believed to be competent and trustworthy. I�d given him no reason to think otherwise.



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