Stone the crows and starve the lizards! Monkeys sure have been taking a pounding in Malaysia lately.

Umno Youth deputy head Khairy kicked it off by characterising bloggers as monkeys. Then Wee Meng Cheng, a Malaysian mass-communications student at Taiwan's Ming Chuan University created total uproar by monkeying-around with the national anthem in a satirical rap video he created and displayed on YouTube.

And now the natural resources and environment ministry has announced a lifting of a 23-year ban on the export of wild monkeys, a move that in itself smacks of the customary behind-the-scenes monkey business.