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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Sunday, November 21, 2010

Cost of toner bombs: $4,200. Effects: priceless

By Steve Hynd


Reuetrs has a report in which it quotes AQAP, the Al Qaeda branch operating in Yemen, admitting it is following Bin Laden's strategy of bleeding America and the West financially at minimal cost to itself.



Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said it had spent just $4,200 on two parcel bombs mailed from Yemen to the United States last month. The bombs were intercepted in Britain and Dubai, sparking a worldwide security alert.


It singled out the aviation industry as its main target.


"It is such a good bargain for us to spread fear amongst the enemy and keep him on his toes in exchange of a few months of work and a few thousand bucks," AQAP said in its online Inspire magazine, posted overnight on militant websites.


"We are laying out for our enemies our plan in advance because as we stated earlier our objective is not maximum kill but to cause (damage) in the aviation industry, an industry that is so vital for trade and transportation between the U.S. and Europe."


..."We will continue with similar operations and we do not mind at all in this stage if they are intercepted."



Which is what I suggested was the plan at the time. As Paul Woodward writes: "Al Qaeda no longer needs its bombs to detonate. It merely needs to toy with those who have allowed themselves to be governed by fear."


Next time you're in the queue to be groped by the TSA, or watching the US spend another half trillion dollars over the next five years in Afghanistan and many billion more in Yemen and elsewhere, remember Bin Laden's words:



"We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy...All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations...Every dollar of al Qaeda defeated a million dollars, by the permission of Allah."



Two toner bombs - $4,200. Making the U.S. dance to your tune - priceless.



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