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When I was at school, I was infected by the idea that writing was a genteel art. Set to read The Prince for its political insights, I was captivated by a single image: Machiavelli coming in from the fields of an evening, washing the sweat from his body, slipping on his silken robe, seating himself at his desk – and writing. That picture leapt straight from the page into what passes for my soul. I knew that was where I wanted to fetch up: at that desk, in my silken robe, writing. The glorious lucidity of Machiavelli’s prose also confirmed my suspicion that books were magical extrusions into the muddy mundane from a calm, blessed place where people could think important thoughts even talk about them, without being told to please, please shut up and feed the cat.

Despite predictions that globalisation would homogenise cultures, ethnicity continues to split states asunder. Democratic theorists fear that consensus, equality and social capital are retreating before competition, materialism and resentment. The 2004 federal election campaign became a festival of individualism as alternative governments courted voters not with visions of a richer community but with promises of greater disposable household income after health and education costs.

What the hell is Bob Ellis? Discuss. Ellis might put it like this himself. Chances are he’s asked the question of a street window once or twice in wonderment and mock self-mockery. He’s earned it. From the back-cover blurbs down the years, one has got, by way of label, ‘l’enfant terrible of Australian culture’ (The Inessential Ellis, 1992), ‘a kind of dusty national icon’ (Goodbye Babylon, 2002) and now, in a disappointing regression to understatement, ‘a political backroomer’. We can assume, I think, that these are self-descriptions. Another, from the text of Goodbye Babylon, puts it this way:

Stories of children in the maelstrom: the horror of mandatory detention; the appalling cruelty of how some orphans are treated by those responsible for them; and youngsters caught in the heartbreak and dislocation of family breakdown – such is the stuff of these three important novels for young people. No coy sensibilities are spared in these reflections of modem life. Here are ordinary adults and children caught up in extraordinary events. All three books show how life can be hard, but that one must meet its sorrows and afflictions with courage, good humour and good friends. Each story is about what happens when a child becomes a victim to events beyond his or her control, be they personal or political, dramatic or mundane.

‘Wildflowering’, a term coined by Judith Wright, describes the activity of searching for wildflowers in the bush. In letters between the poet and her friend, wildflower artist, writer and activist Kathleen McArthur (1915-2001), ‘the language of flowers’ becomes part of the mutual exchange of their friendship and epitomises the interactive and intimate relationship they maintained with landscape. Over the years, these women took the knowledge and love of their places into political campaigns to preserve the fragile ecology of an ancient coastland against the ravages of development and commercial exploitation.

Vote ‘No’, some republicans said at the 1999 republican referendum, and then we will work towards a republic that is a better one than the one being put forward. When the referendum failed, many of those republicans disappeared, and the movement lost momentum. Others who campaigned hard for a Yes vote have continued to push the republican agenda along. A similar group of tenacious Australians is undeterred by the federal government’s sidelining of the reconciliation process. Since joining Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation or their local reconciliation groups, they have maintained the commitment to social justice for indigenous people that they demonstrated when they walked across the bridge or signed the ‘Sorry books’.

After nine books, Nick Earls is renowned for his slacker-male novels and his short stories of twenty-somethings in various stage of arrested development. Like his English equivalent Nick Homby, Earls specialises in a particular emotional state of the male psyche: a post-adolescent, pre-adult period usually spent chasing unobtainable women, getting drunk on green alcoholic beverages and behaving badly in amusing ways. Written with self-deprecating wit and dollops of humour, Earls’s previous books are the equivalent of a fizzy soft drink, easily ingested and with a sugary residue.

One of the most outlandish Hollywood action films, relatively speaking, is The Final Countdown (1980), in which the nuclear-powered US aircraft carrier U.S.S. Nimitz is enveloped in a bizarre electrical storm in the Pacific and transported back in time to 1941, conveniently just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. The ship’s commander is played by Kirk Douglas, with Martin Sheen in the role of an enigmatic civilian who just happens to be on board. One memorable exchange between the two Hollywood heavyweights occurs just after the crew has realised that something strange has happened. Douglas muses that it could all be a Russian plot, perhaps involving parapsychology. ‘Excuse me, Captain,’ interjects Sheen with an impeccably straight face, ‘we also have to consider one alternative possibility: the possibility that what is happening here is real.’

The end of the Cold War in 1991 sparked a great debate about the fate of the international order and, in particular, of the so-called Westphalian system in which nation-states were the main actors. Since the end of the bloody Wars of Religion in 1648, there has been, in short, a sort of understanding that the international system should concern itself with wars between states, not wars within states. The problem is, however, that many conflicts today belong in the second category. In its endeavours to keep the peace, the international community has to adjust to this reality. The question is how.

Here is what veteran war correspondent and Pulitzer Prize-winner Peter Arnett has to say about American political deliberation in the information age: ‘Government decisions are made by an inside group of Congress and the American public largely doesn’t give a damn. When they vote they don’t vote in terms of international policies; they vote in terms of local issues.’ New Zealand-born Arnett first worked in Vietnam for Associated Press, then in 1981 joined and subsequently became the voice and face of CNN. He has interviewed both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. How does he explain the US myopia he diagnoses? By looking at the news sources most Americans use: ‘They get talkback radio, which is skewed to the right usually; they look at a bit of television and maybe some magazine shows, and that is it. They don’t give a shit.’ But does he blame them? No. The controversial journalist (CNN, under pressure from government, dismissed him when he fronted a programme that accused the US of using sarin gas on American defectors in Laos) blames his own profession, or at least that part of the profession with corporate clout. ‘All this is the media’s fault. It is the newspapers’ fault for not including a page or two of international news every day so that people, like it or not, are going to see it.’ Nor does Amell spare the television networks: ‘CNN should be doing more, even though it has limited viewership; it should be doing more than covering celebrity stuff now, which it does domestically. Fox is a joke. There is an ignorance that is growing in America and it is frightening.’