Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Chinese Democracy will not be an instant classic ... . It’s Guns N’ Roses for the twenty-first century with all the rock you were missing but less of the sort of arrogance that led Axl Rose to release songs like the over-produced My World ...

And yet for perhaps the first time I can remember I found myself agreeing with Marie-George Buffet, the leader of the French Communist Party who said: "So we stop the match, then what? Is it going to solve the problem of these men and women who in a way are expressing that they don't feel right in our country?"

The press will run with this tomorrow; it’s sure to be the front page of all the major papers. For the moment the online editions of the newspapers are running the story on their own ‘front pages’, though most of the information seems to me to be wire copy. L’Express, a weekly newsmagazine similar to Time or Newsweek, quotes a Taliban spokesman who claims that the ambush of French soldiers was in response to air strikes that killed 5 Taliban fighters and 15 civilians. It also notes that 176 NATO soldiers have lost their lives so far this year in Afghanistan.

In little more than a month we’ll know whether the next name on the list and the next legend of the Tour is a gifted young athlete from Australia’s Top End. And the many Australians who will follow the race here in France and on SBS this year will be shouting: Allez Cadel!

The real threats to international peace and security are no longer confined to violations of state sovereignty for which the UN collective security system was created. Rather, genocide, massive violations of human rights, terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) represent immediate international security threats that are beyond the scope of any one state to solve.

"The Human Rights Council of Australia acknowledges that the research that went in to the report was paid for out of the pockets of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU). This is the same AMWU whose leader has recently branded the Australian government authoritarian. This is the same AMWU who would seem to be unhappy with any government in recent history if their claim that contemporary capitalism restricts democratic rights is to be believed." Dylan Kissane