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, August 21, 2011

Twilight for Another Dictator -- Libya Links

By John Ballard


As I went to bed last night my Twitter feed reminded me of one of those cable channels showing half a dozen screens in thumbnail form (sports mix, news mix).



  • This weekend's hot spot in Cairo was a demonstration at the Israeli embassy. The building was/is vacant, but the symbolism is great as a local hero apparently scaled ten stories of the building, Spiderman-style, to take down the flag of Israel and replace it with an Egyptian flag. 

  • The Israeli response to some clashes along it's Egyptian border seems to be yet another excuse to punish Gaza. Ships are reported offshore as political types are likely pleased to get a distraction from the ongoing demonstrations at home.

  • Conditions in Syria continue to deteriorate. Robert Fisk takes everyone to the cleaners but rhetoric is the best we will hear in response. The Turks may get a bit pissy but everyone else has too much on their plate to take any substantive actions.

  • The real excitement was from Lybia where "rebel forces" are closing in on Tripoli. Qaddafi got on state TV for another of his crazy rants but one twitter comment said the number of Qaddafi supporters was smaller than the line at McDonald's at lunch.


So here are your Sunday morning Libya Links>>>


==>> Juan Cole -- The Great Tripoli Uprising
Best narrative I've seen this morning, including a map of Tripoli. Very readable.
There will be a rash of opinions about what might happen next. I take them all with plenty of salt. It's hard enough to discover what's happening at the moment.


The underground network of revolutionaries in the capital, who had been violently repressed by Qaddafi�s security forces last March, appear to have planned the uprising on hearing of the fall of Zawiya and Zlitan. It is Ramadan, so people in Tripoli are fasting during the day, breaking their fast at sunset. Immediately after they ate their meal, the callers to prayer or muezzins mounted the minarets of the mosques and began calling out, �Allahu Akbar,� (God is most Great), as a signal to begin the uprising. (Interestingly, this tactic is similar to that used by the Green movement for democracy in Iran in 2009).


Working class districts in the east were the first to rise up. Apparently revolutionaries have been smuggling in weapons to the capital and finding a way to practice with them. Tajoura, a few kilometers from Tripoli to the east, mounted a successful attack on the Qaddafi forces in the working class suburb, driving them off. At one point the government troops fired rockets at the protesting crowds, killing 122 persons. But it was a futile piece of barbarity, followed by complete defeat of Qaddafi forces. Eyewitness Asil al-Tajuri told Aljazeera Arabic by telephone that the revolutionaries in Tajoura captured 6 government troops, and that they freed 500 prisoners from the Hamidiya penitentiary. The Tajoura popular forces also captured the Muitiqa military base in the suburb and stormed the residence of Mansur Daw, the head of security forces in Tripoli.


==>>  After the Jamahiriya: TNC Draft Constitution by Kal at TMND
Kal links to a pdf file of the preliminary LNC constitution. His comments are smart and insightful. Here's what Jamahiriya means.


And here's an interesting comment from Kal.


The omission of any form of ethnic or racial identity is notable; Arab, Berber or African identities receive no specific mention. It has been reported that Berber strugglers in the west of the country had drawn up a list of demands on this issue, in hopes of gaining protections for Berber culture and communities (which simply did not exist under the Qadhafi regime).


==>> Go to Twitter hashtrag #Libya for timely information. Those who read Arabic and French as well as English will have the edge.


==>> Al Jazeera is running a Libya Live Blog


==>>  For grins here are a couple of YouTube videos this morning reminiscent of Baghdad Bob's pronouncements even as the Iraqi regime crumbled around him. I'm fascinated that one of these, along with a string of similar snips appears on a channel named Trump Save America 2012.


==>> List of several reporters and journalists in Libya.


==>> The Mother Jones narrative is being kept up to date. Scroll to the bottom to find the latest. This explanation of the Trump connection helps make sense of those videos two links above...



Wasn't Qaddafi that guy who set up a giant tent on Donald Trump's spread?


Yup, he's the guy. During his 2009 trip to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Qaddafi had hoped to sleep and entertain guests inside an elaborate Bedouin-style tent in Manhattan's Central Park. That didn't work out, so instead the dictator rented land on a suburban property owned by Donald Trump. The tent was erected and then dismantled after a public outcry, and both Trump and the Secret Service announced that Qaddafi wasn't coming after all.



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Via Twitter   A fitting ending for another exciting weekend.



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1 comment:

  1. BJ BjornsonAugust 22, 2011 at 4:34 AM

    I have to admit, every time I read Juan Cole regarding Libya, it reminds how some people, once they�ve decided to support something, really go all in on it. He strikes me as nearly widely optimistic about the mission to remove Qaddafi as some of the neocons were regarding the removal of Saddam.

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