Irony alert: 'Exiled' editor, Yasha Levine, who emigrated to the U.S. from Soviet Russia as a political refugee, was arrested on Tuesday night during the LAPD raid on Occupy LA.

Via:

Yasha Levine emigrated from Soviet Russia to the United States just over two decades ago with his parents and siblings–they came here as political refugees from the Soviet Union police state, where political dissent and critical journalism were not tolerated. And now he’s sitting in a Los Angeles prison for the same crime he’d have been imprisoned for back in the Soviet Union.

In 2008, Yasha was forced to flee a second time from Russia, following the Kremlin attack on our Moscow newspaper, The eXile. We were investigated for alleged “extremism”–that is, for regularly publishing articles critical of the Kremlin, satirical and aggressive, and for regularly publishing columns in The eXile by one of the leaders of the democratic opposition to Putin’s rule, Edward Limonov.

...

Latest word is that Yasha is going to have to spend another night in the Los Angeles County jail, and will be brought before a judge tomorrow (Thursday) and hopefully released, as bail is currently set at an incredible $5,000. The National Lawyer’s Guild is calling this illegal and a violation of state law.

Has anyone checked for new cracks in the old Liberty Bell lately?