I'd like to congratulate, and thank, malaysiakini for carrying the AFP report Australian opposition tells Mahathir to 'take a running jump' on Nov 25, while Malaysia's mainstream media, typically, had dared not.

The latter's cowardice is all too glaring, maintaining their kow-tow policy to their political masters.

It makes a mockery of press freedom in Malaysia, because the press voluntarily gags itself (self-censorship, it calls this).

I had a Malaysian guest visit me last week, a very dear old friend who has his nose to the ground, and whose political judgement I respect.

When he read the story in The Australian newspaper last Saturday (Nov 23), written by Greg Sheridan, the paper's foreign editor and an unabashed pro-Mahathirist, he was aghast, as I was.

But then again, most of us don't take anything that Sheridan writes terribly seriously. Most of us in academia have a good laugh, and realise that since he's an editor  never was, never will be. Just as I'm no fan of John Howard or his foreign minister, Alexander Downer, who's about a big a joke as Malaysia's foreign minister Syed Hamid Albar.

But this time I'd applaud Downer's clever refusal to engage Mahathir — because we know Mahathir's cruising for a bruising with Australia.

I also applaud the Labour opposition foreign spokesperson, Kevin Rudd, for what he said of Mahathir. And I agree: Mahathir can take a running jump. Or as Malaysians would say: "Go fly kites."