Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has returned home after a whirlwind 36-hour visit to China in which he tried to prevent rising tensions over China's military build-up from overshadowing business ties.

Imagine if a royal commission was held into a matter of national shame and, after tens of millions of dollars was spent and a five-volume report produced, the headline indicators of that shame actually went backwards.

Consider the public reaction if, 25 years on, one of the commissioners who produced the report lamented that the situation was now worse than when the report was published, and the federal minister responsible issued a statement applauding progress.

Debates over the call for a royal commission into the banking industry have brought to the fore the real battle in Australian politics – and it’s not about partisan rivalry.

GUSNEWS — GULF OF MEXICO:

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has warned his country would have been within its rights to shoot down US warplanes during what it described as a simulated attack on a Russian destroyer in the Gulf of Mexico.

"We condemn this kind of behaviour. It is reckless. It is provocative. It is dangerous," Mr Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with CNN Espanol and the Miami Herald.

In 1899, the Boer War was started. Though it was the second Boer War, it is still referred to as the Boer War. Aussie troops were invited to participate in the name of the glorious Empire. The British Empire. You can find sky-pointing war monuments in most Aussie "towns", even those bush-holes with less than half a pub and two horses, with inscriptions dedicated to the remembrance of the men who sacrificed their glorious life to this war. The Boer War.

Jose Belo (left) and Commander David Alex (right) (Photo: John Martinkus)

East Timor is mad as hell, and it's our fault

A funny image is doing the rounds of emails and Facebook. I remember my mum often telling me that rich and poor alike, we end up in the same hole when we die. Dead. I think she meant that rich or poor, we die "equal". 

The image is a neat summation of this.

Allies look to end of Assad...

With this serious title and a serious editorial about our serious Prime Minster of the time, written by a serious Dennis Shanahan, the serious political editor at The serious Australian from the serious stable of a serious Mr Murdoch, one can only believe to be seriously misled. Without giving a proper rationale, we want "Assad to go". All we get in the Shanahan article, apart from Mr Abbott wanting to destroy Daesh, is a repeated quote from the great man Abbott: "baddies versus baddies" — and look, the Assad regime is a dreadful regime... Is it? Is it worse than the Saudis?

Though prosecutors are considering charges that could potentially jail a comedian for three years for insulting Recep Tayyip Erdogan (pictured left), Merkel said Germany would continue to protect artistic freedom.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was written between 1776 and 1789 in several volumes by Edward Gibbon (1737-1794). It is very educational and controversial about the role of religion in the Roman downfall — still in our own century in which the American Empire is ruling over most of the planet. Considering that 85 per cent of US citizens believe in god, one should worry, but the theory is complex and contradictory. Gibbon studied this well.

Supporters of destabilizing regime change can't accept responsibility for the chaos they help create:

Despite the popularity of The Fierce People, Chagnon’s findings have been severely criticized by others who have extensive experience of the Yanomami. Many anthropologists, doctors and missionaries that have worked over many decades with the Yanomami simply do not recognize Chagnon’s characterizations, and profoundly disagree with his depiction of the tribe.