The eXile, the Moscow-based alternative paper founded by Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi — and which has been home these past few years to occasional TAC contributor Gary Brecher, the War Nerd — has been shut down by Russian authorities. The website is still up (note: some racy content, which goes for most of the links that follow, too), though, and is fighting to survive. Ames has been blogging the story of the crackdown for Radar. (More here.) And here’s the War Nerd’s plea for help.
As I said on my own blog, the eXile is as much samizdat for the West as it is for Russia. And funnily enough, a Kremlin lickspittle who recently debated Ames on air had nothing but good things to say about the Iraq War and the Western media’s failure to raise serious questions about the adventure before it began. As Ames blogs for Radar,
