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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Wednesday, February 9, 2011

More ships to go down dark alleys alone?

By Dave Anderson

USA Today reports on two large oil tankers that have been pirated in the Indian Ocean. The first pirating happened on 2/7 and the second occurred the following day on 2/8.


Pirates seized a Greek-flagged supertanker with 25 crewmembers off the coast of Oman on Wednesday, Greece's Merchant Marine Ministry said.

The Irene SL was sailing 200 nautical miles (360 kilometers) east of Oman with a cargo of 266,000 tons of crude oil and a crew of seven Greeks,

On Tuesday, Somali pirates firing small arms and rocket-propelled grenades hijacked an Italian-flagged oil tanker in the Indian Ocean. The tanker had been heading from Sudan to Malaysia.

The pirates boarded the MV Savina Caylyn...



The Greek supertanker was bound for the US and it carried about 7% of a typical day's worth of oil consumption in the US. Both ships were in the Indian Ocean as part of their original routing, however there is a decent possibility that target density will significantly increase over the next month as the Suez Canal is currently subject to a targeted labor action:


The employees of the Suez Canal Company have started a sit-in strike. The strike is starting with 6000 employees in the port cities of Suez, Port Said and Ismailia. The strikers plan on sitting down on site, after their shift is over. While their demands are typical of any organized worker, the ongoing revolution with a strike at the Suez Canal ratchets up the travel risk for any planned commercial traffic planning on using the Suez Canal going forward.

Bloomberg is reporting the strikers to be of subsidies of the Suez Company, allowing operations to continue normally during the strike.

Egypt�s Suez Canal shipping traffic is operating normally, Mohamed Motair, director of companies at the Suez Canal Authority, said by telephone today.


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