Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

Why Is Iran Running Out of Medicine?

April 12, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
iran-hospital-2

Earlier this week, an earthquake in southern Iran knocked down at least 800 houses, killed dozens, and injured 900. Lax building codes meant the cement structures crumbled fast, trapping people inside. Some of the victims were taken to hospitals in nearby Bushehr, also home to the country’s lone nuclear reactor. That’s where the problems really start—nukes and injury. Earthquakes tend to break bones, and bad breaks require surgery. Starting last fall, however, Iran appears to have run out of basic surgical supplies, owing to sanctions designed to limit the country’s nuclear program. ... Read More

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We Can Do Better on Disability Rights

November 30, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK)

This week, Sen. Harry Reid asked the Senate to take up ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. President Obama signed the treaty in 2009, and the Senate must ratify it for the United States to be a party. The United States is a leader in disability rights. Our civil rights protections, including laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, have been models for legislation all over the world, and have improved the lives of people with disabilities immensely. Even in a polarized and ... Read More

More like this: Legal Affairs
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Who’s Afraid of WCIT-12?

August 21, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

As obscure government meetings go, a mid-winter conclave of telegraph agency bureaucrats feels about as distant from power as one gets. And yet, great sturm und drang is greeting the run-up to this December's meeting of the International Telecommunications Union, a United Nations body that used to regulate telephone communications and now does...something undecided. Which is where the problems have started. The ITU, arguably the modern world's first international body, theoretically regulates humanity's communications networks. However, as explained in this helpful backgrounder from ... Read More

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‘Safe Planet’ Uses the Arts to Explain Chemical Exposure Threat

August 9, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Telling someone they’ve been poisoned in ways that could reshape their DNA and be carried on to their descendants — possibly causing cancer, neurological illness, mental deficiency, birth defects, brain damage and death — isn’t easy. But that’s Michael Stanley-Jones’ job. As public information officer for the United Nations Environment Programme, he’s tasked with engaging the public with initiatives established during the Basel, Stockholm and Rotterdam conventions. While not exactly breakfast-table topics, those gatherings saw world leaders convene to address the dangers of ... Read More

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Wonking Class Hero in Action

June 3, 2010 • By • 2 Comments

The concept of conducting war through targeted killings was taken on Wednesday by someone who should be familiar to Miller-McCune readers: Philip Alston, the United Nation's special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions. Alston, Miller-McCune's Wonking Class Hero in May, in particular takes on the current star on the U.S. effort to root out presumed terrorists along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border — the drone. While acknowledging that the use of these missile-firing unmanned aerial vehicles is both legal and effective in some circumstances, Alston decries their mission creep and the ... Read More

More like this: By The Way ..., Legal Affairs
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