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, February 9, 2010

Bad boys, bad boys, what you going to do when they come for you

By Dave Anderson:



The Afghan Army and the Afghan police are supposed to stand up so the US, NATO and ISAF can stand down.  It's somewhat hard to stand up when you're enjoying some high quality heroin or hash.



Reuters reports:


When British trainers administered random drugs tests to 25 Afghan police recruits at a base in southern Helmand province, most of them failed.

One recruit was kicked out of the force. The others were given warnings.


Heroin shouldn't be tolerated, but there is no point kicking out the ones who smoke hashish: there would be too few left, their Afghan commander said.
Yes, the Afghan police just have to be better than the Pashtun tribal fighters, Taliban insurgents and AQ affiliated fighters; most of whom are also coming from a cultural-economic context of hash consumption, but this is the force that is supposed to hold and build as the Western troops 'clear' areas in the next twelve months. 

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1 comment:

  1. LexFebruary 10, 2010 at 12:27 AM

    My best guess is that it isn't hashish consumption that is the problem. I know a respected heart surgeon who smokes dope every chance he gets. Our allies in Afghanistan's police and military seem to be the bottom of the barrel. Not smoking hash probably wouldn't help them much.
    In these discussions it would also be wise to keep in mind that most South Asians smoke heroin rather than inject as we're used to seeing portrayed in the movies. It's still junkiedom, but not quite the same. Further, there's plenty of historical evidence that people can be regular opiate users and function in physically difficult tasks.
    Laying our puritanical social conventions over a foreign culture is dangerous business.

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