Some of your readers are right to complain that malaysiakini nowadays mostly entertain letters that agree with its anti-government line.

Readers such as myself and others I know have written in many times before, never to see our letters aired. O­nce in a while, such a letter is entertained, but most of the time they are not. The anti-government letters predominate in your letters column.

Then when o­ne of these letters gets aired, there will always be those like Josh Hong to say, "Who says malaysiakini does not allow those with a different point of view to have their say? This particular letter therefore proves what it says must be wrong, etc."

Josh Hong by the way admits that he has friends in malaysiakini. Well gosh, Josh, should all Malaysians find friends in malaysiakini before their views can be entertained? Some folks these days would call that 'nepotism'.

Many readers are also quite put off by the inanities of James Wong Wing O­n. Comfortably restful in his armchair, he spouts sly support for the coming Bush war against Iraq quite removed from the messy realities of war.

Whenever I want to read what a conservative right-wing Westerner has to say o­n these issues, I may glance at his writing. I must say though that this is not often.

Disappointed also has good reason for being disappointed by this fellow called Oon Yeoh who spouts more conservative pro-war gibberish.

His "take" o­n the war and anti-war situation is no different from any Western reactionary's. Readers who want this kind of stuff know they can get it in the more fuddy-duddy Western publications, where the conservative writers are more articulate and do the job better.

Take Mr Yeoh back a few centuries to the Malacca Empire, and we will see him cheering o­n the Portuguese invaders while scolding the local resistance for being "anti-European".

Oon Yeoh seems impressed with Singapore's TalkingCock.com , which sort of sums it up for all of us. TalkingCock's brand of college humour is no threat to the Singapore establishment, while allowing cheeky Singaporeans let off steam, being as exciting as the Straits Times' sports pages and as dramatic as the New Paper's fashion pages.

It seems to reserve its bite (or peck) for Malaysia's Dr Mahathir, ridiculing the PM as a Michael Jackson performer, rather like how Singapore's government ministers are doing themselves by name-calling.

Then there are the skits about the water dispute, putting Malaysia in a poor light, so that everything seems to suggest that TalkingCock itself could be supported discreetly by the Singaporean government.

For Oon Yeoh to say that TalkingCock is Singapore's equivalent of malaysiakini is degrading, or it shows that Mr Yeoh has lived in Singapore (or been o­n malaysiakini ) for too long. Or has malaysiakini really deteriorated so badly?

Nonetheless we have yet to see malaysiakini taking up the cudgels o­n behalf of the Malaysian government's (and people's) interests against any Singapore leader.

For the moment, though, what we do see is malaysiakini being staffed by the likes of James Wong and Oon Yeoh, the conservative and reactionary types among the Western trash.

We also find the letters' page heavy with Mahathir-bashing, being more biased than any mainstream press which malaysiakini criticizes.

This is a shame, because all that a still-struggling, cash-strapped malaysiakini has in the end is its credibility, and even that is now in short supply.

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Editor's note:

Both O­nn Yeoh and James Wong are contributors to malaysiakini . Our editorial position is against the potential war in Iraq. But that will not stop us from publishing pro-war views espoused by some of our contributors. The same goes with our letter writers.