Deutsche Welle: Women conspicuously missing from Japan's upcoming elections

At present, just 38 of the 242 seats in the chamber are occupied by women, a mere 15.7 percent. Those figures are even worse in the Lower House, where 45 of the 475 seats are held by women, just 9.5 percent.

Japan ranks 155 of the 193 member countries for female representation in its lower house, according to a study conducted by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, a body that facilitates worldwide parliamentary dialogue. Japan is also at the very bottom of the Group of 20 nations. [...]

Indicative of the government's attitudes toward women, Matsumoto says, was the poorly thought-out campaign to promote equality and women's rights. The poster accompanying the campaign showed a line of politicians who would be in the vanguard of improving women's lives.

Every one of them was a man. [...]

And even in East Asia, where male-dominated societies are perhaps considered the norm, Matsumoto pointed out, Park Geun-hye became president of South Korea and Taiwan last year elected Tsai Ing-wen as president.

Japan's failure to elect a representative number of women to its national parliament - a problem that is replicated at the city and regional levels across the country - means that issues that are of importance to women are frequently ignored.

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Politico: NATO’s Germany problem

As many Alliance members become increasingly nervous over Russia’s incursions into neighboring territories and demand a harsher tone with Moscow, powerful voices in Berlin have pushed in the opposite direction.

“What we shouldn’t do now is inflame the situation further with loud saber-rattling and warmongering,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told Germany’s Bild last month. “Anyone who believes that a symbolic tank parade on the Alliance’s Eastern frontier will create security is mistaken.” [...]

So far, Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose center-right alliance governs in coalition with Steinmeier’s Social Democrats, has shied away from the debate, leaving it to party colleagues to express annoyance at the “irritations” the foreign minister’s remarks have created with allies. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble accused Steinmeier this week of trying to score political points at NATO’s expense, saying his cabinet colleague’s remarks “were not just a rhetorical mistake.” [...]

Resistance in Central Europe to taking in refugees, and the increasingly belligerent rhetoric of Poland’s nationalist government toward Germany, has done little to win over Berlin. Merkel also likely has an eye on German elections next year and doesn’t want to spend the political capital necessary to argue for a more robust response.

Washington also bears some responsibility for the situation for not engaging more on European security and leaving the Germans to their own devices.“The U.S. has also dropped the ball,” Kornblum said.

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Jacobin Magazine: Why They Left

The minor rift is present within the British ruling class: the majority of financiers, industrialists, merchants, real estate speculators, and others favor staying in the European Union, while a much smaller minority have opted for Brexit. The evidence of the relative size of the two sides is undeniable. [...]

Despite this interdependence, Britain is far less integrated into the EU networks than the core countries of the union. Trade links between Britain and the European Union are actually among the weakest within the twenty-eight-member union, similar by order of magnitude to trade flows between Greece and the European Union as well as Italy and the European Union. In contrast, for both France and Germany trade with the EU accounts for nearly 60 percent of exports and 70 percent of imports. [...]

The true significance of the referendum, however, is that the rift within the British ruling class has acted as catalyst for the emergence of a far deeper rift within British society. This is a common occurrence when great historic events take place. [...]

There is no doubt that the Leave camp made hay with the issue of immigration during the campaign. However, to ascribe up the referendum result to racism or hostility to migrants is nonsensical, and smacks of the contempt toward workers and the poor often exhibited by their social “betters”.

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Sociology Toolbox: POLICE KILLING OF BLACKS: Data for 2015

Which racial or ethnic group in the US is the most frequent victim of deadly force from law enforcement officers? On the surface, the answer is clear, whites. You can see in the chart below that in 2015, in the US, 578 whites were killed by police. This is nearly double the number of blacks at 301. However, we need to compare these rates to the rates of each group in the general population. Of course (non-Hispanic) whites are the most frequent victims, they are the largest portion of the population – 62.2% in 2014 according to US Census estimates. If we lived in a society where one’s race had no impact, then we would expect to see the portion of each racial/ethnic group killed by police equal to that of the portion in the general population. That is not what is evident from the 2015 data. [...]

Hispanics make up victims of lethal police force at about the same rate as they are in general US population, as do Native Americans. The data distinguishes Arab Americans, but the US Census data does not. Asians made up a much lower portion of those killed by police relative to the portion of the general population (2.1% vs. 5.6%). [...]

Through the analysis of this data a pattern emerges. Compared to their portion of the overall population, blacks are disproportionally the victims of lethal force by law enforcement officers, even when they are unarmed. While most of those killed by police were white, the portion of white victims is lower than the portion of whites in the general population, more than 10% lower. The vast majority of those killed by police were men and most died from gunshots. Only about half of the victims were armed with a gun themselves. The victims in 2015 varied widely in age, but most were between 18 and 39 years old. This data further solidifies the concerns and demands of the Black Lives Matters movement; there is a pattern of police using deadly force disproportionally on blacks that needs to be addressed by policy makers and police departments across the nation.

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CityLab: How 19th Century Immigration Made New York City Rethink Its Parks

In 1811, when New York City commissioners laid out the city’s grid, they didn’t put in many parks. Unlike Paris and London, Manhattan was an island, and so didn’t require the same kind of open spaces for leisure, commerce, and circulation of clean air, they argued at the time.

But over the next few decades, New York’s view of urban parks underwent a transformation. Catherine McNeur, history professor at Portland State University and author of Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City documents this shift in a new article in the Journal of Planning History. [...]

It was becoming harder to know who was a part of New York society and who wasn’t. There was a lot of fear of confident men, or conmen, in this period because the city was growing more anonymous and you couldn’t tell where people stood in the hierarchy. The 1830s park boom reflected this, as wealthy New Yorkers looked to secure spaces that were exclusive where they could promenade and mix with people they were certain were their equals. [...]

That vision didn’t quite pan out. The concept for the park, as lofty and noble-seeming as it was, was planned, executed, and maintained via a “top down” approach, McNeur writes. And perhaps that’s because even the most progressive elites at the time considered Central Park to be a place where the poor could be regulated, not a place that they could coexist in equal capacity. The creators of the park (including Olmsted) and city officials made sure that the lower classes were heavily policed there so that it remained a space where the elites felt comfortable—and that practice continues till today. If poor people of color in America even have access to open public spaces, they are punished for being in them. The idea that parks are for all, born with the creation of Central Park, is still waiting to be realized in a meaningful way.

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