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 9, 2010

Taliban Killer Monkeys Of Afghanistan!!!! (?)

By Steve Hynd


I have no idea where China's People's Daily got this or what it thinks it's doing by publishing it, but it's too weird/funny not to pass along:



Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents are training monkeys to use weapons to attack American troops, according to a recent report by a British-based media agency.

Reporters from the media agency spotted and took photos of a few "monkey soldiers" holding AK-47 rifles and Bren light machine guns in the Waziristan tribal region near the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The report and photos have been widely spread by media agencies and Web sites across the world.

According to the report, American military experts call them "monkey terrorists."


The Pakistan Defense Forum has pics of these killer monkeys. Banana Akhbar!


People's Daily continues:



Analysts believe that apart from using "monkey killers" to attack the American troops, the Taliban also sought to arouse Western animal protectionists to pressure their governments to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.

An American official responded that the Taliban forces have started training "monkey soldiers" after suffering heavy losses, implying that they have exhausted their tricks. Nevertheless, the Taliban believe that the emergence of "monkey soldiers" indicates that they have found smarter and more effective ways to cope with American troops.

Ironically, the initiators of "monkey soldiers" are the Americans. Between the 1960s and the 1970s, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) trained massive "monkey soldiers" in the Vietnam War and dispatched armed monkeys to dangerous jungles to launch assaults on Vietnamese soldiers. Today, the Taliban forces have given the American troops some of their own medicine.


I've searched (honestly!) in vain for tales of America's mercenary monkeys in the Vietnam war. Something tells me People's Daily got punked.


Update 13 July: From Stars and Stripes:



�We have absolutely nothing that leads us to believe that this tale could be even remotely based in reality,� said NATO spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale.


What a surprise!



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5 comments:

  1. BJ BjornsonJuly 9, 2010 at 12:32 PM

    Well, I have heard of animals such as dolphins and dogs used for attack purposes, usually as involuntary suicide bombers, but giving them guns to go out and launch attacks? Is there a Chinese calendar equivalent to April 1?

    ReplyDelete
  2. James BrownJuly 9, 2010 at 12:37 PM

    Are these these flying monkeys? I heard the Pentagon has plans to replace predator drones with genetically engineered flying monkeys. It's a no bid contract.

    ReplyDelete
  3. NeoJuly 9, 2010 at 2:59 PM

    Only one step away from real "gorilla warfare"
    cue "Planet of the Apes"

    ReplyDelete
  4. NeoJuly 9, 2010 at 3:02 PM

    I hate every ape I see,
    From chimpan-A to chimpanzee,
    No, you'll never make a monkey out of me!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Juergen LorenzJuly 10, 2010 at 4:22 PM

    Um, "China's ruling communist party"? You sure about that? Do they also have a communist party in opposition??

    ReplyDelete

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