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 25, 2010

Not corruption if everyone pays

By Dave Anderson:


The New York Times publishes some very unsurprising information, the Karzai government is corrupt as hell and is willing to take money/shake down anyone who has any interest in Afghanistan:


President Hamid Karzai admitted on Monday that his chief of staff had taken money from the Iranian government, confirming a report in The New York Times. He said the cash was used to pay for presidential expenses...


Umar Daudzai, the president�s chief of staff, received up to $1 million to $2 million every other month from Iran and that the money, effectively a slush fund, was distributed to Afghan lawmaker, tribal elders and even Taliban commanders to secure their loyalty....


He added that the United States, just like Iran, gave him cash.


�They do give us bags of money. Yes, yes they do. It�s all the same. So let�s not make this an issue.�


Hey, at least this time, one of the major factions that we support in country are not heavily composed of Iranian pensioneers. 


Iran has clear interests in Afghanistan, and in collaboration with India, it is doing its best to stabilize its eastern border with port construction at Chahabar, and a rail-road link to Herat.  Throwing a couple of million bucks at the Karzai shake-down system is a cheap price for the Iranians to pay for a quiet border. 



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