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, October 11, 2010

"A Child Is Dead"

By John Ballard


Via Lisa Goldman.



Almost exactly 10 years ago, on the second day of the Second Intifada, a 12 year-old Palestinian boy named Muhammad al-Durrah was shot and killed during an exchange of gunfire between Israeli and Palestinian forces in Gaza. Several other Palestinian children were killed by gunfire that day, and hundreds more in the months and years since, but only the name and image of Muhammad al-Durrah have become iconic, because only he died in front of a television camera, in his father�s arms. Today, there are streets and monuments named for him around the Arab world.



Aldurrah1[1] Charles Enderlin, the French journalist who reported the event, has published a book about that event and conflicting narratives that continue to this day. Enderlin is French, employed by France 2, but was not present when the child was killed. The documenting footage was filmed by Talal Abu Rhama, a Palestinian freelance cameraman. Lisa Goldman notes the publication of this book and links to a thoughtful interview with the author. As the excellent journalist she is, she raises a few questions stil unresolved.



How can a journalist vouch for the authenticity of footage that was shot when he was not present? How did the controversy affect Enderlin�s career? Does he think that his being Jewish made the controversy worse? Did he or does he ever think of leaving Israel as a result of the fallout following the al-Durrah incident? And what role did bloggers play in creating or publicizing the controversy?




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