What this article makes clear is that the thuggery is made possible by the Russian failure to properly identify and protect rights. The next quote is evidence of this failure:

“My point is that the eXile betrayed democracy by setting itself up as an easy target for the Kremlin…”No man acting within his rights can betray those rights. The betrayal is the claim a man must *not* act within his rights for fear that thugs will attack him and others *for* acting rightfully. In other words, the man who is acting within his rights is not the one enabling the thugs. The man who demands other men not act within their rights out of fear of the thugs is the man who is enabling the thugs. His is the very nature of appeasement.

Me:”Zigfeld buttresses her (his? I wouldn’t know)..”,

You: “While trying to supress the immediate suspicion that you are one of Kim Zigfeld’s own minions …”

That’s all we need to confirm your powers of deduction and to assign your rantings the attention they deserve. I mean, jeez, before you can claim minion status you have to at least know the gender of your miniee. If you hadn’t been so busy thumping your chest you could have figured that out on your own.

While trying to supress the immediate suspicion that you are one of Kim Zigfeld’s own minions if not Kim herself, let me attempt to address the causes of your dumbstruck awe.
Zigfeld maintains that the Moscow Times has buried its op-ed content. It has not. How do I know this? Because, unlike her, I pick up the newspaper daily and see perfectly well that it has done no thing. I can do that because I actually live in Moscow. She bases her flimsy argument exclusively on the piss-poor quality of the MT’s site, on which we are principally in some area of agreement.
Zigfeld also relates with wince-inducing glee that a small and scurrilous tabloid magazine in Moscow has been shut down. I say that she does so only out of personal animus for the eXile. She claims ridiculously that the eXile’s outrageous style is conducive to censorship and that it’s existence was therefore regrettable. If you are convinced by that logic, by all means stick to your line. You have to do so at the cost of any credibility, of course, but that’s a choice you seem to have made already on several fronts.
More generally, Zigfeld not living in Russia is by no means a cardinal sin, but it does mean that her understanding of contemporary developments in the country are grievously deficient. My point, one that I could illustrate fully only in an encyclopaedic post, is that she is anyway interested not in reporting reality but further persuading herself of her horrendously jingoistic and offensive views. I have no interest in your views on Iraq, but if they as preconceived and ill-informed as Zigfeld’s are about Russia, then you are quite welcome to them.

A little bit of anarchy is good for the soul.

When you read the stories of Russian refugees on the borders of Finland, Poland, and Hungary, then you’ll now the end has come, and the 21st century has truly begun.

I stand struck dumb in admiration and adulation of your immense logic and overpowering intellect. Why indeed should anyone who doesn’t live in Moscow write about journalism in Moscow? The last time I heard anyone who even remotely approached your grasp of logic, that person was telling me that I was a hypocrit for supporting the Iraqi war unless I was willing to go fight there. What insight!

Right.

I’m someone who speaks Russian, who has lived in Russia, still travels to Russia, and has relatives in Russia. On that basis, I’m here to tell you that Kim Zigfeld runs intellectul rings around you and everything that you wrote in this thread. You haven’t addressed the issues she raised- it’s not that you brought a knife to a gunfight, it’s that you jumped into a gunfight and started flicking boogers.

Zigfeld buttresses her (his? I wouldn’t know) statements with links and quotes. Your response is to insult her on every point, while bringing up a single fact about Owen Matthews. Otherwise, your barrage is remarkably content free.

Didn’t we see you on YouTube recently- the teenage would-be beauty queen who made a fool of herself blathering about US education? The resemblance between her logic and yours is striking.

The reason Owen Matthews (you call him by his first name – he must be another of your intimate friends) wrote about the eXile is that he was instrumental in setting it up and the subject is of interest to people who actually live in Moscow – which of course excludes you. His article bears no import on the issue of the relative importance of the magazine. Just to clarify, since I have not expressed my view on this, the magazine was crude and often offensively banal, but it could be witty and surprising in its ability to produce interesting and incisive journalism. And it is a shame for plurality that the Moscow Times, as good as it is, now remains the only proper English-language publication in the Russian capital. Just so the reader can understand, the single reason you are happy that it has shut down is that you didn’t much like it and that they called you some rude names. That you cackle contendedly at their demise serves only as proof of the fact that you typify the mean, authoritarian, vindictive, crude and petty strain of attraction to despotism that you claim to despise and fight against.
As you for you suggesting that I have ducked your withering logic, the very suggestion is laughable. Your mode of argument is simply to direct bile and senseless invective on anybody that doesn’t share your personal grudges and bugbears. Even if one wanted to engage with you on some sort of rational level, it would be an exercise in futility.
My point in commenting initially was to say that you are thoroughly unqualified to contribute useful insight on Russia and that no disinterested reader should take any notice of you, because you are unbalanced (in every sense) and use your platform to shovel out spiteful personal attacks. Your don’t live in Russia, have a poor to non-existent grasp of the language, and lack any sense of perspective, context and analytical skills. The process of trawling through news and selectively picking and often skewing publicly published material on Russia is a feat any child could perform. It does a disservice to Russians, Russia-watchers and anybody that genuinely wants the good of the country.
Pajamas Media may be attracted to a hysterical polemicists’s ability to draw attention and readership by screeching like clapperboard prophet on a street corner, but Kim Zigfeld ultimately impoverishes the site and hollows out all proper understanding of a complex, fascinating, powerful but often self-destructive country like Russia.

I quite clearly say in my article that when seen as a stepping stone towards encroachment on publications like the Moscow Times, the move on the eXile is abhorrent and I condemn it.

My point is that the eXile betrayed democracy by setting itself up as an easy target for the Kremlin, helping it set a precedent for future such moves, and because of that I condemn the eXile as well. Anyone who knows me knows that it would be quite convenient for me to praise the eXile and use that praise as a lever to attack Putin, but in the interest of truth I decline to do so.

I hope you will spend some of your energy working to help save Russia’s remaining worthwhile publications by encouraging our leaders to take aggressive steps to stand up to Putin, and I applaud your concern for a free press. Without it, I’d be out of a job!