Vox: Divided island: the story of Haiti and the DR

How one line created vast disparity between countries. The six Vox Borders documentaries, presented by lululemon, are publishing weekly on Tuesdays.

The Atlantic: What John McCain Gets Wrong About Trump's Nationalism

Between 1947 and 1989, the defining imperative of American “international leadership” was anti-communism. At times, anti-communism nurtured ideals of freedom, human dignity and peace. In the name of anti-communism, America protected fragile democracies in West Germany, Italy and Japan. In the name of anti-communism, the United States fed Europe’s starving post-masses via the Marshall Plan. In the name of anti-communism, the United States committed itself to Western Europe’s defense, thus keeping German nationalism in check and laying the groundwork for a postwar economic boom.

But anti-communism also justified America’s overthrow of elected governments in Iran, Guatemala and Chile. It justified Ronald Reagan’s decision to label Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress a terrorist organization and America’s longtime assistance to the kleptocratic Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. And far from keeping the peace, it led the United States to drop more bombs on Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War than it had during during World War II. [...]

The point is that American “leadership” sometimes furthers the ideals that Americans revere and sometimes it desecrates them. Sometimes it makes America stronger; sometimes it doesn’t. McCain’s implication is that it’s only when American “abandon[s]” and “refuse[s]” its leadership role that it fails its people and the world. But that’s not true. Over the last fifteen years, in a spasm of military hyperactivity, the United States has toppled governments in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, in wars that have cost America dearly, and bred more conflict in their wake. Trump won the Republican nomination, in part, because—facing establishment candidates who would not criticize George W. Bush’s foreign policy—he condemned such adventures and pledged to avoid new ones. [...]

Now McCain and many of his hawkish allies are criticizing Trump’s amoral nationalism, which is good. But until they question the disastrous overstretch that helped create it, they will remain his useful ideological foils.

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Business Insider: The architect of post-9/11 New York City reveals the one move that changed the course of city history

Zoning divides a city into districts that allow for different uses of property, like industry, housing, commercial, and so on. Changing zoning codes can have big impacts on a city's housing affordability, industrial practices, and overall economy. Prior to Bloomberg's tenure as mayor — which lasted from 2002 to 2013 — the last overhaul of New York City's zoning code happened in 1961. [...]

Doctoroff acknowledged in the book that gentrification was a serious side effect of all this change. But he also defended it, saying that gentrifying neighborhoods prove the virtuous cycle of growth — more people moving in, more money raised for the city, more services offered — is working.  [...]

Zoning is a delicate balance: go overboard and you end up with a San Francisco-like situation, where building new housing is so difficult that the city starts to become unlivable. Allow lax zoning and you end up with what's happened in Houston, where sprawl takes over. Some people have recently argued that the hands-off zoning approach there also made the city extra-vulnerable to flooding.

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Independent: Neo-Nazi leader quits movement, calls racism 'rubbish', and reveals he is gay with Jewish heritage

Kevin Wilshaw was a high-profile figure of the National Front in the 1980s and was speaking at extreme right events as recently as this year.

Speaking to Channel 4 News, he explained he had given up his violent past – which included smashing a chair over someone’s head, vandalising a mosque and being arrested for online hate race offences.  [...]

“It’s a terribly selfish thing to say but it’s true, I saw people being abused, shouted at, spat at in the street – it’s not until it’s directed at you that you suddenly realise that what you’re doing is wrong,” he told the news show. [...]

He added that he felt “appallingly guilty” about his past, but also that he would find it difficult to fill the “void” of far-right activity that has shaped his life.

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The Guardian: Pope Francis is changing his church on the death penalty. What next?

Human life, he said, “is always sacred”: that’s a line Catholic leaders are very keen on, of course, but usually in connection with abortion, which it vehemently opposes. Liberal Catholics have long argued that the church should be as vociferous on other aspects of taking life as it is on abortion: what will be most surprising to many about the news from Rome is that the Catholic catechism – its central statement of faith and belief – still, in its 1992 edition, allows for the death penalty in certain circumstances. Abortion is not allowed under any circumstances.

But if it sounds uncontroversial enough for God’s man on Earth to be condemning killing, think again. A US survey last year found that 43% of American Catholics back the death penalty – not as high as the 69% of white evangelicals, it is true, but a significant minority who will inject yet more discontent into the ranks of the church, under the Argentinian pontiff who, while he’s undoubtedly top of the popes in the wider world, is an increasingly divisive figure among his own followers. [...]

If Francis decides to change Catholic teaching on that, he will put the cat well and truly among the pigeons, not only inside his own church (can a Catholic be in the armed forces, if the Pope says war is always wrong?), but also across the whole world, which will have to reconsider the basis of why wars are ever fought, and whether it is ever right for any group of human beings to take up arms against another. The ripples from the fallout of that debate are likely to be truly awesome.

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