Two authors about to get shut down by the Russians...?
Looks like Mark Ames and Gary Brecher might not have a forum any more.
The august Foreign Policy weighs in:
Though I sometimes found its descriptions of ordinary Russians condescending, bording on racist, the eXile was undoubtedly one of the great guilty pleasures of living in Moscow -- a rare breath of politically incorrect air in an otherwise muzzled media climate. Its cultural coverage sometimes felt like the last vestige of the wilder, pre-Putin Moscow scene of the early '90s. It's also had some international influence, with Gary Brecher's War Nerd column gaining an loyal Internet readership [and a Soft Skull book!] and former editor Matt Taibbi going on to cover U.S. politics for Rolling Stone.
Mark himself (author of Going Postal, an ongoing sleeper for us) gets nostalgic, in today's editorial:
Our survival for the past 11 years is a testament not just to what Nietzsche might call “The Will To Failure” (if Nietzsche was an Exile editor, that is), but more importantly, it speaks volumes about the human will to survive and endure against all odds—either that, or it means that The eXile is some kind of printed herpes virus that you can treat, but never cure.