This newspaper provides space for a Bill and Melinda Gates press release. No surprise! Oligarchs and their apologists, this newspaper, stumble over themselves to kow-tow to this ‘Man of Vision’. Gates’ answer to the AIDS Crisis is the circumcise every male on the planet!
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/Where-We-Work/China-Office/Case-Highlights/Expanding-Circumcision-Options-to-Reduce-HIV-Risk
Yet in Iran nearly 100% of the male population is circumcised, yet AIDS is epidemic: 66 thousand people living with HIV.
Headline: Iran Struggles To Deal With Its AIDS Problem‘Despite the government’s pledge to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030, the number of individuals suffering from AIDS/HIV in Iran has been steadily rising.According to a 2016 survey by the United Nations, there were roughly 5000 new infections between the years 2010 and 2016, adding up to the total of 66 thousand people living with HIV. However, some estimates claim that there may be over 100 thousand Iranians suffering from HIV, highlighting significant discrepancies between official statistics and reality.
The AIDS epidemic in Iran has a significant drug-related dimension. Being part of the Golden Crescent, a region spanning Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan with prominent illicit opium production, Iran has served as a pathway for drug traffickers in the shipping of narcotics from Afghanistan to Europe.’
But AIDS is rising in Iran, not because of sexual relations, but drug addiction:
While the Iranian government does not treat drug trafficking lightly, the illegal drug trade has fueled the country’s growing problems with drug addiction.
According to a survey carried out by the Iranian Drug Control Organization, there are about 2.8 million Iranians who regularly use narcotics. Out of those, roughly 67 percent take heroin as their primary drug.
The widespread availability of heroin and other opiates, which are often taken intravenously, has served as an important vector spreading AIDS/HIV among drug addicts, with UN statistics claiming that9.3 percent of Iranian drug addicts currently have HIV.
https://en.radiofarda.com/a/iran-aids-hiv-drugs-addiction/29445043.html
Bill and Melinda are political/moral conformists who are unable question the practice of circumcision, rationalized sexual violence, in American life because it has been normalized. Leonard B. Glick provides a revelatory history of this practice:
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/marked-in-your-flesh-9780195176742?cc=us&lang=en&
The Gates’ judgement is really at question here. This newspaper prints the opinion of these two people, who have no qualification, except that they are wealthy nearly beyond the comprehension of us mortal beings. They somehow possess a knowledge, indeed a prescience, that demands our collective attention?
Political Observer
https://www.ft.com/content/f999c4e4-78a2-4f83-9beb-91c15dccd0b8
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In reply to Mike James
StephenKMackSD's Blog 
Mr. James, thank you for your comment. Your argument: ‘their hearts in the right place, and considerable life experience’. To call this an argument is to give power to the cliche of social convention.
Apply your standard as you will. Yet the paternalism that the Gates’ exemplify in all its various expressions is/are toxic. ‘We’ can see the preventative value of ‘social distancing’ wearing masks and other measures that recognize the values ‘we’ place on ourselves and others. But to surgically alter the genitalia of man, woman, child in the name of not just religion, tribal custom, or hygiene is to deny personal agency, the sine qua non of freedom. ‘ I know what is best for you’ is its paternalistic rationale.
You admonish me to ‘clear my mind’ : in American Law ‘Buck vs. Bell’ decided by the Supreme Court, that women deemed to be ‘imbeciles’ should be sterilized. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. helped to decide the reproductive fate of 100, 000 women, over time. In 19th Century terms, was his ‘heart in the right place, and considerable life experience’ a factor in his judgement? Or was it steeped in the social conventions, of another era you, might hold as determinative?
Regards,
StephenKMackSD