If you had any doubt that global power dynamics are shifting, one image from the past week put paid to that.

It was Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, grasping Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hand and leading him across the floor at the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation summit to chat with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Anyone who has spent any time in India knows that China and India are not close. There is no quicker way to insult Indian hosts that to compare the world’s most populous nation, in any way, with China.

But things are changing, partly due to Trump’s chaotic tariff regime. Last week, David Armstrong brought us the news that Modi was so furious about the 50% tariff the US has slapped on Indian goods, that he was refusing to take Trump’s calls. This is quite a contrast with the rest of the world, including Australia, which lines up to receive them.

We have for some time been following the rise of India, and this week’s events in China, documented with clarity by John Queripel, add a fascinating new twist. He cited Modi when he said: “India and China both pursue strategic autonomy, and their relations should not be seen through a third-country lens.”

We live in extraordinary times. New lines are being drawn, alliances built and abandoned.

Commentary continues about the distressing scenes of racist protest in a number of Australian cities last week. Denis Muller wrote an important piece about language cloaking racist intent – with rallies called a “March for Australia”, and “anti-immigration”. Media and community all have a role to play in not repeating what is essentially propaganda.

Kosmos Samaras reminded us that it was former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard who made the huge immigration changes that expanded and shifted to a focus on skilled entrants. The change has underpinned national prosperity and has redrawn electoral realities.

Frank Brennan told readers that the Australian Government’s deal to deport 280 people to Nauru, “stinks”. He said: “It’s only a first-world country with an ongoing colonising mentality which could contemplate such an arrangement… Having stripped Nauru bare of its phosphate in previous generations, the Australian Government, in our name, is now going to engage in regular people dumping.”

Today Eugene Doyle asks should our future be as “NATO forts, armed to the teeth glaring menacingly at an ever-rising China".

Plus, Refaat Ibrahim marks 700 days of genocide in Gaza.

Until next week.