UPDATED Scott Lucas at the Bath LitFest

Update (5 March): A really nice post at Mr B's Blog of Bloggy Delights on the panel. Thanks for the thumbs-up both for "clear, informed messages" and for "cross-firing pub banter, albeit with professorships for beermats and transcontinental experience for session ale".

I'm setting off for a public appearance at the Bath Literary Festival tonight, sharing a panel with Bronwen Maddox of The Times and author Zia Sardar on "The World and The United States". Somehow I think my opening gambit --- "For me, the term 'anti-Americanism' is at best useless and at worst dangerous" --- may not be to their liking....

The session begins at 6 p.m at The Guildhall in Bath.

Comments

[UJ]

Will it be online anywhere? I'd LOVE to hear the rest of that sentence...

[Scott Lucas]

I've got the handy voice recorder with me so let's see what happens....

[Mae]

yeah, I'm curious how you finish, too, I can think of quite a few options. I imagine it will be a lively debate. Hope you enjoy it!

[ChrisE]

I just wonder whether you will be blogging on your blackberry whilst on stage!

[Mike Dunn]

That sounds like a challenge to me Chris...

[Dave]

'A believing Muslim, Sardar is one of the strongest internal critics of Islam. He believes that the tendency to fall back comfortably on age-old interpretations is now dangerously obsolete. Islam’s relationship and attitude to women, minorities, and notions of exclusivity and exclusive truth need to change fundamentally. In his work, Reformist Ideas and Muslim Intellectuals, Sardar states that: "Muslims have been on the verge of physical, cultural and intellectual extinction simply because they have allowed parochialism and traditionalism to rule their minds." He adds: "We must break free from the ghetto mentality."[6].'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziauddin_Sardar

REFRESHING INDEED! IT'S A SHAME SO FEW ARE THAT BRAVE. MUSIC TO MY EARS.
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George W. Bush, she (Maddox) writes, “has presided over an administration of breathtaking arrogance and misjudgment”,

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article4739489.ece

AND SHE'S PRO-AMERICAN? GEEEEEZ.... MAKES ME WANT TO MOVE TO ALABAMA, BUY A CHEVY SCOTTSDALE (WITH GUN RACK) AND PARK IT ON MY FRONT LAWN, BECOME A REPUBLICAN, MARRY A REDNECK'S DAUGHTER WITH A 6TH GRADE EDUCATION...AND EAT GRITS....

[UJ]

Dave, you got a problem with Alabama?

[Dave]

No. 8 years of living in Europe makes me want to embrace 'The Bible Belt'.. 9/11, Iraq, Gitmo, and so on... Everything is Bush's fault, they say... It was like this even before. The Europeans were upset with Clinton's foot-dragging during the Balkan wars in the 90s. They were that way until the deployment of IFOR. Same with Kosovo. It's always something...

Upstate New York has plenty of its own boondock areas. Believe me...

On a side note -- Maddox is strongly anti-Russian. I'm not anti-Russian at all. I don't see Russia's policies as being as aggressive as she makes them out to be. Russia doesn't have the leverage to divide Europe and the US these days. It did 25+ years ago.

[Dave]

"Maddox is prescient on Russia, which she describes as “belligerent and delusional”. The Kremlin wants to divide the US from Europe and drive wedges between EU member states, because Moscow wants a weak EU with national interests trumping common Euro-atlantic politics."
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article4739489.ece

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The bulk of Russia's efforts (intelligence services/apparatus) are centered on the 'near-abroad', not the far-abroad. The Ukrainians may be nervous and the Poles may also be nervous, but not the far-abroad.

[Scott Lucas]

Regrettably, they made me turn the Blackberry off. Good session --- more than 200 in audience and Sardar and Maddox (more surprisingly, as she was very nervous) made points well in different ways. Most interesting parts of debate over future, rather than past, US foreign policy.