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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Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Knock-On Effects

By BJ Bjornson

While the revolution/civil war/whatever in Libya seems to be grinding down, at least conventionally, with only Sirte and Bani Walid still holding out against the now-interim government of former rebels, the first signs of possible regional instability linked to Gaddafi�s overthrow are showing up. Tuareg fighters that had fought for Gaddafi have been streaming out of the country for some time, and have now apparently started up a new rebel group in Mali.


Ethnic Tuareg fighters returning to Mali from Libya are said to have helped to launch a new rebel group.

The National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad says it is the result of a merger between two rebel groups, boosted by Tuaregs who fought for Col Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.

. . .

The BBC's Martin Vogl in the capital, Bamako, says this latest development is why Mali was such a strong supporter of the African Union position on Libya, which favoured a negotiated settlement instead of the Nato-led bombing campaign.

. . .

Our correspondent says it not clear whether this group is capable of carrying out large scale military operations or is willing to do so, but that even if it were to launch some small raids on isolated military bases it would be a huge change in the status quo.


I honestly don�t have enough knowledge to know what the full implications of this is (Seriously, I figure the greatest extent of my knowledge of this particular region in Africa comes from a Hollywood adaptation of a Clive Cussler novel, and not a particularly good one at that). Still, it�s a good reminder that mucking about in the internal affairs on one country doesn�t mean the effects of that intervention will stop at that country�s borders.  Definitely something to keep an eye on.



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