Truth be said, the fact that they survived 11 years to now, is rather impressive. They might not be banned in western democracies (and they're not being so much banned as intimidated in Russia if I understand the situation correctly), but they'd be sued out of existence in many, in no time. Taibbi's (admittedly childish) Pope editorial in the NY Press, landed both him and the editor out of a job - and that was par for the eXile's standards. In fact the exile provided ample opportunities for all sorts of litigation. If I'm not mistaken, libel laws in quite a few western democracies would have shut them down much earlier.

And gangster action.

(Remember Saviano?)The eXile's articles on what seem like very scary people, always left me impressed with the fact that Ames was around to write a follow-up about them and didn't change residence every two days. Either the Russian Mob does not give a damn about the English language press, or they're very charitable about being mocked, or they didn't want to make much noise with Moscow's Americans. I don't know.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake