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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Saturday, January 15, 2011

The Penumbra of insecurity

By Dave Anderson:


One of the major sources of hard currency for the Mexican economy is tourism.  Mexico has great beaches, great ruins, and an amazing array of topography.  However, the penumbra of insecurity that has been created by the accelerating pace of cartel on cartel, government on cartel and random violence is inflicting tourism revenue costs on the Mexican economy. 


First, the LA Times writes about Acapulco:


Acapulco is confronting more than the weight of history. The famed resort city has been the scene of vicious fighting among rival drug gangs that has killed more than 650 people in four years, the fifth-highest count for any Mexican city, according to government figures. The toll includes 30 men slain last weekend in and around the city. Fifteen of them were decapitated.


Most of the killing takes place outside the main tourist zone...


the violence at times penetrates the unofficial border between the two parts of the city. Two police officers were slain last week on Miguel Aleman Boulevard, the city's main thoroughfare. Now, truckloads of Mexican troops are in town...


Eagle Speaks passes along the news that the California to Mexico cruise industry is being squeezed by the threat of violence in Mexico:


Carnival Cruise Lines said Thursday it is pulling the last of its ships out of San Diego, and other cruise operators are departing Southern California because of economic woes and tourists' fears over traveling to Mexico....


In the first six months of 2010 just 187 cruises docked in Mexican ports, compared to 290 in the same period in 2008, the Times said.


Remember 2009 was at the height of the US recession so we should have expected to see a low number of cruise landings in Mexico because of low US demand, while 2010 has seen US upper middle class economic fortunes rebound, so the reduction is probably due to concerns on the Mexican end instead of economic factors in the US. 


 



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