With reference to letters Minister should ban malaysiakini and Malaysiakini 'a poison' to country, I am disturbed and distressed by the opinions penned by the writers Z and Dawud respectively.

To begin with Z has been living abroad and Dawud has been in the country for just over three years. Their shallow-mindedness and rather myopic perception of the manner in which current affairs and issues are discussed and debated over malaysiakini, are only too evident.

The 'rubbish', as Dawud chooses to call malaysiakini, is, as rightly pointed out by the same writer, an alternative news medium. The readers are no thumb-sucking babies. We know what rubbish is and what is not - there is something called personal judgment. Anyway, how do we differentiate truth from lies or even distortion when only one side of the coin is what we see?

The writers' baseless accusation against malaysiakini, only because it debates on issues which are often considered and cast aside as "sensitive" by the national newspapers, is totally immature and unacceptable.

If malaysiakini, as claimed by Dawud, lacks intellectual capacity, I think Z and Dawud are egocentric and senseless individuals, who in this age and time still think that the best place for the ordinary citizens is in a coconut shell - safe, sound and totally oblivious the outside world.

Be they what they choose to be, they should leave malaysiakini alone. I enjoy reading it and so do thousands of others out there. I wonder if the writers were ever forced at knife point to subscribe and read malaysiakini?