Los Angeles Times Festival of Books: Global Ideas Panel

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books ranks as one of my premier Los Angeles events of each year. I just love it. The reason I go is because I consider it a quick return to college. This year, as always, I went to a number of panel discussions. I'll be posting these over the course of the next few weeks.

First up was a panel discussion titled "Global Ideas: Shaping the Past, Shaping the Future."

There were three panelists. The following short biographies were taken from the LA Times Festival of Books website:

Sarah Chayes is the author of “Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security,” a finalist for the 2015 L.A. Times Book Prize in Current Interest. She spent most of 2001 to 2011 in Afghanistan, much of that time in the Taliban heartland of Kandahar. She then worked for two commanders of the international troops and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A Pashtu-speaker, she lived among ordinary Kandaharis. She is now a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Mitchell Duneier is the Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology at Princeton University and the author of the award- winning urban ethnographies “Slim’s Table: Race, Respectability and Masculinity” and “Sidewalk.” His newest book is “Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea.”

Mei Fong was a Wall Street Journal China correspondent, where she won a shared Pulitzer, as well as awards from Amnesty International and the Society of Professional Journalists. Her book “One Child,” predicting the end of China’s one-child policy, fortuitously came out as Beijing announced a shift to a two-child policy and has received acclaim in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

The following are my notes from the panel discussion. There are potential misinterpretations to what I heard so take that into consideration.

Mei Fong. She decided to look into the one child policy that went on for 30 years in China. What it meant? How did it impact people? There were academic books on the subject, but no general interest books. Mei is a female Chinese so she knows about the patriarchy society -- even though she is Chinese Malaysian. Even though China recently announced a change in policy, the one child policy hasn't totally ended. The rules are complex, like the US tax policy. There is still a bureaucracy behind it.

The one child policy has made an imbalanced society. Too many old people. Too many men.

She is sympathetic to population control goals as it impacts issues such as resources, but feels that there are other ways to get there. The policy led to human rights abuses. It was devised by engineers with no input from demographers or women. It was like a crash diet. Do you drink just lemon water or do you exercise and eat right?

With the current demographics issue, there is a backlash against educated women. There is pressure for them to get married. A new term called "Leftover Women" has been coined to pressure folks not to hold off on marriage. One is not considered an adult until they are married.

Will China's birthrate increase? Propaganda works. It is hard to change 35 years of policy. Other countries have tried, but not succeeded.

Mitchell Duneier. The ghetto has been around for 500 years. It was associated with Jews for 90% of that time. Only recently has the term been applied to African Americans. He decided to look into the ghetto as 1928 was the last time a book focused on the ghetto. The term began to be applied to African Americans during the Nazi era. Black intellectuals thought it was time to focus on the ghetto and point out the irony of the fight against German racial purity while African Americans at home were being segregated. It was an attempt to create an affiliation with Jews.

He grew up when real work started coming out on the Holocaust. He grew up on Long Island. Jewish use of the word seemed to be obliterated when he grew up.

Hitler used the word ghetto to convince the Catholic Church that he was simply doing what the Catholic Church did for years. At the same time, he told his advisers that he wanted ghettos so that Jew's could be observed as wild animals. Hitler tricked people. Even some Jews thought it was a good idea as Jews had done well in the ghettos. Due to this, many didn't realize Hitler's ultimate goal.

The idea of the ghetto coming to an end in America won't happen until whites are willing to give up their privilege. For example, even radicals (even more left than Californian liberals) will send there children to top schools versus the average American public school.

Sarah Chayes. Panama papers revelation reflects quality of the corrupt government structure. What the papers suggest are that these states are not weak, but sophisticated criminal states. Family members own construction companies. The construction done doesn't benefit the public. Instead the construction projects are used to funnel cash. What is interesting is that countries such as the US, Finland and Sweden who rank high in controlling corruption is where this money eventually ends up in and therefore provide support to the corrupt states.

She was told in Afghanistan that the US needed to control corruption to gain control of what what was happening. Corruption allows for personal dignity to get violated. And it isn't just money bribery that occurs. There is also sexual exploitation. For example, she knows of a Nigerian judge who took advantage of a woman. What does the family do? Does the brother turn to terrorists such as Boko Haram for revenge? The terrorist will tell the brother that this judge cannot be good. They make a moral argument. This results in violent religious reaction to extensive corruption.

So the question in Afghanistan should be: how do we build good governance? That issue never gained any traction until recently. The US foreign establishment is finally getting it.