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.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Foreign Policy's Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2011

By John Ballard


This year's Top 100 Global Thinkers selected by the writers and editors of Foreign Policy is a good test of how well one has been keeping up with world events. I'm afraid there were too many names with which I am not familiar. In this case, I don't think scanning the list and reading thumbnail sketches is cheating but catching up. It was with no small measure of satisfaction that I saw the name of Alaa Al Aswany at the top of the list. And it was via Twitter that Nouriel Roubini modestly alerted his followers that he had made #30, which is how I was informed. 


Johanna Sigurdardottir, #87, is new to me but apparently not to the people of Iceland who elected her Prime Miinister. When I saw the film Inside Job my prior ignorance of Iceland moved from complete to somewhat and is still not much better. But every time I see a reference to Iceland I remember the beautiful opening scenes featuring a picture-book image of that little country which was selected to illustrate what can happen when a true national banking system is privatized, especially without close regulatory oversight.  Iceland's response to the global collapse of 2008 was swift and logical: they re-nationalized the banking system and took legal actions against the bastards responsible. I have sometimes wondered what would have happened if a few other countries had followed suit. 


Happy scanning...



5 comments:

  1. Rather than waste your time on FPs Global Stinkers - meant thinkers I know I have to show respect, so I apologize for the childish typo [but have you actually looked at the collections of nimrods they've picked this year], this be better list to honour:
    http://j.mp/uYCEJn

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey while I'm on drumming a short watch, eh:
    http://j.mp/sVl19R

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for that informative, if dismal, link about Iceland. I haven't kept up so it makes me feel terrible for them.

    ReplyDelete
  4. geoff, I know what you mean about the list. I'm not informed enough to come up with a more appropriate hundred names but one glance tells me their metric had more to do with selling magazines (or more precisely, advertising space) than global thinking. (Cheney and Rice? Gimme a break...) As I said, I was especially pleased to see Al Aswany's picture and name, and somewhat knocked off balance by his being Number One.

    ReplyDelete