Dawud is being counterproductive and intolerant by suggesting the government should ban malaysiakini .

However, the fact of the matter is that the government would most probably ban publications like malaysiakini if they were making a major impact among the constituencies which mattered - just as the print edition of the PAS paper, Harakah , is restricted to two editions a month with no restrictions placed on its online edition.

At the height of the Anwar Ibrahim issue, Harakah's circulation was outstripping the mainstream papers and it was adversely affecting the Barisan Nasional government.

With Internet access limited to a privileged, English-literate or English-educated, computer- literate elite who would support the opposition anyway, no love is lost by allowing such people, myself included, access independent opinions online or in print.

Let's also not get caught up with the online thing. Print publications like Aliran , Nadi Insan , Rocket , Mimbar Sosialis and others were providing similar alternative views in the 70s and 80s as malaysiakini does today.

Back then, the word 'Internet' would be understood as an inter-Convent netball tournament.

Those print publications faced much more obstructions from the Barisan Nasional authorities than online publications like malaysiakini , which the government allows to operate by virtue of its promise not to censor the Internet to attract investors to the Multimedia Super Corridor.

While malaysiakini's servers have been detained, no malaysiakini journalist has been detained.

The interesting thing is that while radicalism in the old days took place in the estates, factories, mines and squatter areas, today it happens among the yuppie-tariat in the upper middle-class bastions of Bangsar, Sri Hartamas, Mont Kiara, etc with notebook warriors surfing the Internet in Wi-Fi hotspots while sipping pricey imported coffee or gorging on steaks in franchised Western restaurants.