We Are Hungry
Saturday, August 20, 2016
Incirlik Nukes Out, Russian Air Force In. Is Turkey Leaving NATO?
From the Corbett Report click on following link: Turkey's NATO Exit
Newsbud Roundtable on Turkey’s NATO Exit
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In a bombshell development, Turkey and Russia are considering military ties and even floating the idea of opening Incirlik to the Russian Air Force. Is Turkey preparing to exit NATO? Or pushing to see how far they can take their alliance with Russia? Or about to be pushed out? And what does it mean if they are? Are the Incirlik nukes in play? And what about Turkey’s role in Syria? Join us today for a fascinating edition of the Newsbud roundtable as Sibel Edmonds, James Corbett and Spiro Skouras dissect the latest developments in one of the world’s most volatile regions.
Show Notes:
Turkey considering military ties with Russia as NATO shows unwillingness to cooperate – Ankara
Russia says Turkey could provide İncirlik base for Moscow’s Syria campaign
US moves nuclear weapons from Turkey to Romania
Will road to Moscow lead Ankara to Damascus?
Dennis Edwards: Here's the confirmation of what I have been sharing with you about the Turkey/Russia alliance accurately predicted in Bible prophecy over the last weeks. Sibel Edmonds mentions the possibility of Greece also leaving NATO. According to Bible Prophecy "the ships of Chittim will come against him (the Antichrist)." Chittim is considered to be modern day Cyprus where NATO has an important naval base. The naval attack from Cyprus is one of the reasons the Antichrist breaks the seven-year "Holy Covenant" and invades the Middle East including Israel. His breaking of the Holy Covenant and placing the "abomination that makes desolate" in the Temple is the sign Jesus gave for the beginning of the three and a half year Great Tribulation period. The invading alliance will include Russia, Turkey and Iran. So the above confirming conversation further indicates we can trust Bible prophecy to help us to understand the events taking place in the world today. Be attentive to the situation in the Middle East.
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
Russia Says Iran-Based Bombers Struck Militants in Syria: TASS
(Reuters) The Russian Defense Ministry said on Tuesday that long-range Russian bombers based in Iran had struck a number of targets inside Syria.
Dennis Edwards: We have gone over this before, but again we see that Bible Prophecy actually does predict the future. The prophecy in Ezekiel 38-39, which many Bible Eschatology students believe could very well be describing the Endtime invasion of Israel culminating in the Battle of Armageddon, mentions Iran (Persia) as one of the nations that participates with Magog (Russia) in the invasion. The news that Russia is using Iranian airfields to launch strikes against rebel ISIS is not surprising, especially if we are correctly understanding the prophecy. Russia will be aligned with Iran and Turkey two of the strongest militaries in the Middle East.
The end of internationalism: Are rich nations turning their back on the world?
“To be honest, right now we are slightly overwhelmed by the world.”
It’s not quite 9am and Yves Daccord asks his assistant–politely–for a second espresso. His office, in a quaint old chateau with big windows looking out to the mountains that ring Geneva, is pretty pleasant.
But he sits with his back to the view, his gaze crosses borders, and what he sees worries him.
Daccord, 52, is director-general of the International Committee of the Red Cross. This 153-year-old institution has a continuing mission to protect the victims of war, with direct assistance and by promoting and strengthening the international laws and principles that guard their wellbeing.
But Daccord believes this mission has never been harder.
“There is a sense of ‘ouf, my God’,” he says. “The gap between the humanitarian needs of the people and the response they receive, not only from us, from anybody, is increasing. That’s clear. Everywhere. We see that. It’s changing quickly.”
The more than 60 million refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced persons worldwide is the most since World War II, and more than 600 million people now live in conflict-affected countries. By 2030 two-thirds of the world’s poor will live in “fragile” states–those unable to deal with the extra burden of natural disasters or war.
In response, the Red Cross’ budget has had to grow by 50 per cent in just four years.
But it’s not just that the world is consumed by conflict, by natural disasters. There has always been conflict, there are always disasters.
What worries Swiss-born Daccord is that he senses a withdrawal, a vacancy at the top.
“What makes everybody so worried is you feel … there is a gap at the global governance level,” he says. “Who’s in charge of that? Where do you address yourself, you know?
“I’m not naive, I don’t feel that before it was easy, that somebody would take care of that. But there was a sense that some part of the world you would have some stability in terms of leadership, you would have an understanding, you would have maybe some country to be in a position to understand to convey this message at the level of [the United Nations] Security Council.
“Today at the top leadership [level] there is a sense of ‘My God, we don’t know how to handle that’. And maybe there is this sense for all of us, ‘my God it’s difficult but nobody knows anymore how to handle it’.”
He cautiously agrees that state leaders are responding to something within: a rise of nationalism, a withdrawal from internationalism, manifesting in Brexit, in Trump, in France’s Front Nationale and Greece’s Syriza, among many others.
In part he puts it down to the global economy. “Despite what the market is telling us, the reality for most of the people around the world is the situation has not improved since [the] 2008 [crisis],” Daccord says.
“If you are middle income, lower income, the reality is your life has become more difficult, from Europe to Africa, Asia, whatever.
“Tomorrow doesn’t look ‘cool’ in terms of economic and social opportunity. And that’s what we reflect, that’s what we hear, that’s why people are coming back somewhat to what they know: ‘my community, my own interests, my border’.
“It’s easier to come back to something which gives a sense ‘at least I know what is happening… in my community’.”
There is not a complete rejection of the global community, he points out. The world has become very small and culturally international. From Seattle to Sudan, children are now “interested in the same people, the same stars, the same brands”.
In Mogadishu, in a country that recently had “zero infrastructure”, he says, “old ladies are playing on the market with mobile phones”.
“There is this sense, which is very global. We are not back to tribalism.”
But globalisation is not all smartphones and Kardashians. It should also be states coming together to solve problems.
Daccord laments a “very inward-looking” Europe that has squandered a decade in which it should have been a world leader in humanitarian work.
He complains that, worldwide, “the big discussions have been about the financial crisis and about the security crisis. And that’s not enough”.
“I don’t feel any appetite at the country level to be able to discuss really key questions.”
And many of the key questions can’t be dealt with by countries acting alone, he points out.
There is the migrant crisis, for example. Europe “is starting to understand that its containment strategy is gone”. And there are other migrant hotspots across the globe–in central America, in south-east Asia.
“What we are really lacking right now is political will at the international level… If you want to solve the migration crisis it can’t be solved at the country level.
“If it’s at the country level then what do you do? You build borders, because you don’t know how to do anything else. If you want to solve it, it needs to be at the global level. It’s a very complicated solution and the problem is I don’t feel we are living in a time where we have the space to develop consensus. Consensus has no traction these days.”
Daccord doesn’t think much of Australia’s policy on migrants, though he adds that the Danes and Malaysians are just as bad. “What I find amazing is to believe that by detaining people and closing the border you will manage a migration crisis,” he says.
“If detention is used as a tool to manage migration, and it is in a lot of countries, it’s bound to be a real problem… you should treat the people with dignity. If you start not to do that, if you start to treat them badly almost on purpose to try to give a message ‘please don’t come to my country’, I think there is a real risk that you spiral negatively over time.
“I would push as much as possible for Australia to [ask itself] ‘do you think your policy allows people to be treated humanely?’. That’s the question the government should be able to answer.”
As another example of a failure of internationalism, he presents Ukraine–a simmering internal conflict where the Red Cross is almost single-handedly providing aid in the east of the country, propping up the health system, trying to defend the rights of prisoners on both sides of the ceasefire line.
“I’m worried that Ukraine is completely falling out of the interest of the international community,” Daccord says. “As a humanitarian [organisation] we have some limits and most of these questions should be resolved politically. But if there is not pressure or help from the international community I think it will be extremely difficult to solve.
“If you look at the broader perspective, Ukraine is just one among other situations where you see the international community has a lot of difficulties to establish a minimum of convergence to deal with conflicts. We see Ukraine as being one among other conflicts where the international community can’t find solutions.”
Syria is another of the world’s biggest challenges right now. The question we should be asking, says Daccord, is what do we do collectively to allow Syrians to stay in Syria? Once you look at it this way, the scale of the problem begins to reveal itself, he says. The sanitation and water systems for example–if they break and stay broken, millions more will leave. “We have to have a different type of collaboration (in Syria),” Daccord says. “Between states and organisations.”
It’s not just in the practical work of the Red Cross that Daccord feels an absence.
He says they are “completely confounded”, for example, in the process of building new international law and new norms. This might sound like the esoteric talk of an international lawyer, until Daccord explains that it’s about dealing with new threats to peace and morality.
For example? “Tomorrow in the field you will have robots that will be able to decide if you are an enemy or not, and they will decide that without any human intervention… how do we govern that, how does the law [of war] apply?”
So, who decides such things?
“Normally what happened before in the diplomatic process [was] you bring the states together and it would take between five to 10 years to arrive to a conclusion. That’s the normal process.
“But today that that doesn’t work any more. There is such a gap between the problems and building response collectively that it doesn’t work. Not just in the humanitarian world. It doesn’t happen.
“There is a sense that there is no governance, nobody in charge.”
Daccord is not alone in his fears. In April six of the United States’ biggest humanitarian organisations issued a joint plea for international action, in a report that warned of “a dramatic increase in protracted conflict and displacement, combined with an ever-increasing number of natural disasters [which have] resulted in widespread human suffering, loss of dignity, dashed hopes and death”.
The organisations, which included CARE, International rescue, Oxfam, Save the Children and the World Food Program, presented a doomsday scenario.
“Preserving and enhancing the gains civilisation has made over the past few centuries is at serious risk,” the report said,
It’s not just about money–though money is needed. The size of the global humanitarian appeals coordinated by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs more than doubled from 2008 ($US7.1 billion) to 2015 ($US18.7 billion).
World Food Program chief Etharin Cousin told Fairfax Media last year that “donors have never been more generous”–and new donors such as Saudi Arabia and Korea significantly increased their contributions to the WFP.
“Unfortunately the needs are running at an unprecedented level of increase across the entire global community,” she said.
The WFP has seen a dramatic flip in the nature of its emergencies. Most of its programs used to be disaster-related. But now 80 per cent of its large emergency responses are conflict related, Cousin said.
The trouble is, aid doesn’t end war. “If conflict is what is driving you and… you don’t have political solutions to the conflict, it requires us to continue to provide support.”
Her “ongoing plea”, she said, was “that the world not turn away from those in need… even if they can’t see it. We live on a small planet and we are all responsible”.
Here Come the Young
As tweets and headlines skip from crisis to crisis, the largest youth population in human history is coming of age in a steady, unstoppable wave.
While countries across Europe and East Asia are grappling with declining birthrates and aging populations, societies across the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia are experiencing youth booms of staggering proportions: More than half of Egypt’s labor force is younger than age 30. Half of Nigeria’s population of 167 million is between the ages of 15 and 34. In Afghanistan, Angola, Chad, East Timor, Niger, Somalia, and Uganda, more than two-thirds of the population is under the age of 25.
How well these young people transition to adulthood–and how well their governments integrate them economically, politically, and socially–will influence whether their countries thrive or implode. Surging populations of young people will have the power to drive political and social norms, influence what modes of governance will be adopted and the role women will play in society, and embrace or discredit extremist ideologies. They are the fulcrum on which future social attitudes rest.
These young people could transform entire regions, making them more prosperous, more just, and more secure. Or they could also unleash a flood of instability and violence. Or both. And if their countries are not able to accommodate their needs and aspirations, they could generate waves of migration for decades.
In the face of this deluge of young people, world leaders should be strategizing and taking steps daily that steer us all toward the former and away from the latter. But as serial acts of global terrorism, large-scale humanitarian disasters, perplexing political trends in Europe like Brexit and persistent economic fragility demand urgent attention, the question emerges: Is anyone even paying attention?
Every month until 2030, one million Indians will turn 18 years old, observes Somini Sengupta, the reporter and author of a compelling new book, The End of Karma: Hope and Fury Among India’s Young. These young people will need both education and jobs–lots of them–in a global economy that is most certainly going to feature more automation and fewer of the semi-skilled manufacturing jobs that absorbed earlier youth surges elsewhere in Asia. If India succeeds in this respect, its coming demographic bonanza holds the potential to create an unprecedented surge in the country’s economic health. If not, its youth boom could rock the world’s largest democracy and second-largest population with sustained instability.
“In the coming years, India can thrive because of its young. Or it can implode. Or both. There’s little time left,” writes Sengupta.
And India is far from being the only country grappling with a booming youth population. Africa’s current population of 200 million young people between the ages of 15 and 24 is set to double by 2045. In the Middle East, a region of some 400 million people, nearly 65 percent of the population is younger than age 30–the highest proportion of youth to adults in the region’s history.
Booming youth populations are the demographic equivalent of wild cards for those trying to predict the trajectory of large, strategically important, and politically volatile countries like Pakistan and Iran.
In Pakistan, two-thirds of the population is under the age of 30. Many of these young people will only know Pakistan after its latest transition to democracy from 2008 to 2010 and after Pakistan ended its most recent war with India in 1999. They will also know political corruption, extremist violence, and dire shortages of energy and water. In Iran, two-thirds of the population is currently under the age of 35. These young people are educated, tech savvy, and full of potential. Whereas the revolution will be something they learned about in school, many will remember seeing Iranians pour into the streets during the Green Movement or to celebrate the nuclear deal with the United States. And they will be watching to see whether engagement with the West benefits them or not. Will young Iranians and Pakistanis uplift or splinter the politics, economies, cultures, and security of their respective countries–or both? Will they engage the world productively and peacefully, turn inward, or pick fights with neighbors?
Given the size, strategic position, and military capabilities of these two geopolitically critical countries, the answers will determine whether these two critical countries will export vitality or violence.
Unfortunately, the countries that have most of the world’s young people are also the ones that are the most ill-equipped to grapple with their needs, ambitions, expectations, and inevitable frustrations–let alone capitalize on their potential. According to the United Nations, developing countries are home to 89 percent of the world’s 10- to 24-year-olds; by 2020, they will be home to nine out of every 10 people globally. Like too many developing countries, countries like Chad and Niger rank high on lists of the world’s most fragile states. They also have populations in which half of their citizens are under the age of 16.
With this information, it is all too easy to conjure a dystopic future, the Hollywood caricature of a lawless developing country dominated by gangs of rough-talking young men brandishing firearms (Think, “I’m the captain now.”)
But what if we made a different choice? What if the world invested in the potential of these young people? It is feasible to believe these countries could pull themselves out of poverty and instability within a generation–the way China did, the way India might. But if the international community fails to act now, we will all suffer the consequences
As we ponder our path forward, we should consider that the developing world’s youth boom coincides with four interrelated global trends: an information revolution, the largest movement of refugees and displaced people in recorded history, growing urbanization that will concentrate youth in cities, and a rise in terrorism and extremist ideologies. Together these trends will spread not just people but, more importantly, their ideas at an unprecedented rate. They will raise and dash expectations pushing and pulling young people toward and away from their hometowns and homelands, toward and away from their desired futures. They will make young people around the globe aware of how others are living, the divisions within their societies, and how those they identify with are treated by governments, security forces, and other groups. This knowledge can inspire or anger. It can commit people to elevating their families and communities–or make them lash out against them.
Coming to terms with the global youth surge is about so much more than managing the logistical and governmental challenges of providing enough healthcare and education and jobs. It is about how the expectations and grievances and aspirations of these young people will shape the cultural norms and societal ideals of their societies. It is about the character and mores of a still-forming generation–and how they will affect us all. But, again, we must ask the question: Is the world even paying attention?
“Aspiration is like water,” writes Sengupta. “It needs a place to go, or else it drowns everything in its path.” In other words, if the raised expectations of masses of young people are left unmet, frustrations may fester, grievances will grow, and those people may choose to seek out their opportunities elsewhere.
Already, an exodus of people fleeing violence, poverty, or simply a lack of opportunity is underway; rising youth populations are only likely to feed it. The young, not the old, are more likely to vote with their feet. Roughly 25 percent of all Afghans want to leave their country, according to a recent Gallup poll, and more than 100,000 Afghans are expected to head for Europe this year. The same poll, compiled from more than 450,000 interviews in 151 countries from 2009 to 2011, found that 40 percent of Nigerians (a country of more than 180 million) would emigrate to the West if they could. Approximately two million Iraqis have already left their homeland. And they are willing to pay high prices and accept great risks to do so. As a young Kurdish doctor fleeing Iraq in a dangerous voyage via a rubber dinghy told New York Times correspondent Rod Norland, “Better to die quickly there than slowly in Iraq.”
Developed countries in Europe are not the only destination. Migrants from more than a dozen African nations have already landed in North Africa and an estimated 100,000 African migrants now live in Morocco alone. Syrian refugees registered by the United Nations now number 2.1 million in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon; there are 2.7 million in Turkey and more than 29,000 in North Africa. Half of all Syrian refugees in the world are children under the age of 18, many of whom missed important years of schooling and whose future paths are now in question.
Youth booms historically paid dividends in the form of economic growth. South Korea, for instance, translated its youth boom into twelvefold GDP per capita growth between 1970 and today, keeping unemployment for its large youth population around 10 percent. If this history repeats in large population centers like India and Pakistan, Nigeria and Ethiopia, Egypt and Iran–all of which currently have unusually large youth populations–economic booms will transform whole regions.
But the ability of developing countries to create enough jobs in today’s technologically advanced and ruthlessly efficient global economy is far from assured. Even wealthy and well-educated countries like Germany and the United States are struggling to employ elements of their workforces and sustain a prosperous middle class. A lack of economic opportunity concerns young people worldwide as the pace of technological advancements decreases the demand for manufacturing labor even when economies are growing. In Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, for example, youth unemployment rates already exceed 30 percent, and youth populations there are expected to grow by another 20 percent or more over the coming 15 years, according to the U.N.
There is also the risk that the unmet expectations of youth could fuel widespread violence. While there is no empirically concrete link between joblessness and terrorism, unemployment can contribute to a broader sense of marginalization and grievance that can drive young people to commit acts of violence, whether they live in Nairobi, Baghdad, or the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek. According to recent survey by ASDA’A Burson-Marsteller, Arab youth across the Middle East view a lack of jobs and opportunity as factors that aid the recruitment efforts of extremist groups in that region.
As a 2015 Mercy Corps report and many other studies makes clear, grievances due to experiences of injustice, discrimination, corruption, and abuse by security forces are more important drivers of political violence than poverty. Thus, merely finding jobs for youth does not reduce the incidence of young people committing acts of terrorism or political violence. Addressing their grievances through effective institutions of governance and justice is an important, though admittedly long-term, response. Yet another, perhaps more easily attainable objective in the short term, is giving young people a sense of self-worth and the ability to contribute to and shape the future of their communities as well as their own individual futures. Economic needs are important but are only one of many dimensions of a person’s life.
To change the trajectory of youth living in challenging circumstances around the world, young people need economic opportunities, civic engagement, and justice as well as opportunities to positively change their communities. They need to develop their identities as individuals who have something to contribute, and as citizens. They need to come together to shape more positive futures for themselves and for others. And they are not just going to wait.
Tapping the potential of massive youth populations worldwide could be the opportunity of the century. Or, it will unleash even more disorder, division, and violence. Or both. To echo Sengupta again, the world is now home to a tipping-point generation that will bend the arc of history. There’s little time left.
How Moving to Kenya Made Me a Less Fearful Parent
Things shifted when I noticed my preschooler handles daily life in Africa better than I do.
Just four days after my family moved to Nairobi, Kenya, I was ready to jump on a plane back to California with my young son.
I spent the day with him at his new preschool, attended almost entirely by local children. My introverted and cautious child behaved exactly as I expected. He clung to me, refused to participate in activities, and looked terrified whenever someone spoke to him. When his teachers finally pried him off of me and kicked me out of the classroom, I could hear his wails from the other side of the school.
Later that day, I lay down in the fetal position and decided I was a horrible mother. What had my husband and I been thinking, asking a three-year-old to simultaneously adjust to a new country, culture, and school?
Over my son’s protests and my own fears, I took him to school again the following day. And the next. When I dropped him off on the third day, he said goodbye to me with a smile and ran off to find his new friends.
As many other new parents have experienced, I was stunned by the quick adaptability of my child. I was still struggling mightily to adjust to life in Kenya, but my pint-sized offspring had already hit his stride on a new continent. Perhaps coming here hadn’t been such a bad parenting decision after all.
When I was growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, my parents sheltered me as best they could. They carefully shuttled me from school to home to church and back again. We stayed in communities they knew, with activities–such as Cantonese-language school and church fellowship meetings–they were familiar with.
As immigrants in a foreign land, my parents wanted to protect me from anything that might cause me harm. But the message I internalized was that the world was a scary place. I grew up believing I couldn’t handle the different and the unfamiliar; avoidance was my best option.
When, later on in life, I found myself in new environments, I realized how poorly equipped I was to adapt. All that sheltering had not prepared me for the challenges of adulthood in these new contexts.
Recent psychology research has demonstrated how stress can be good for us. Stretching ourselves beyond what we’re comfortable with actually builds resilience and self-confidence. We’re tested in new ways and find that we are okay, that we can do more than we realized.
As Christians, challenges help us discover that God is more present and faithful than we previously grasped. Our trust in him grows when we put ourselves in situations that force us to depend on him. It’s not always easy to recognize this when I’m in the midst of hardship. But God has shown up so many times when I’ve been in extremely stressful situations that I now have a long record of his mercies and his provision to encourage me when I feel overwhelmed.
The younger we are when our circumstances stretch and shape us, the better off we may be. Children who experience tolerable levels of distress develop brains that are better at managing fear, improving impulse control, and increasing positive motivation. While parents may be tempted to put off overseas living or other adventures while their children are elementary-school-aged or younger, there are good reasons not to wait if the opportunity presents itself.
Allowing our kids to be pushed in their everyday lives, beyond even what we as parents are comfortable with, gives them the opportunity to gain new tools, skills, and levels of fortitude.
While the desire to protect our children from distress is a positive thing, it’s possible to shelter them so much that we do them a disservice. In the bestseller The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids, clinician and educator Madeline Levine explains how children who grow up in privileged homes, where they are well protected and challenged only in their academic and athletic endeavors, often struggle when they enter adolescence and young adulthood.
“While many of these teens are verbal and psychologically aware, they don’t seem to know themselves very well,” Levine writes. “They lack practical skills for navigating out in the world; they can be easily frustrated or impulsive; and they have trouble anticipating the consequences of their actions.”
When faced with a trial–academic or professional failure, relationship troubles, or lack of meaning and purpose–these young people can slide quickly into anxiety, depression, or self-harm.
Jesus modeled how to intentionally place ourselves in unfamiliar and challenging contexts, regularly traveling into hostile territory and interacting with people from vastly different backgrounds.
He sent out his disciples to preach the gospel with this stark warning: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. Be on your guard…” (Matt. 10:16–17). There is no question that he loved his followers dearly, and yet he knowingly sent them into danger and guaranteed them hardship and suffering. He knew the courage, strength, and faith that such experiences would provide them, preparing them for even greater ministry after his ascension to heaven.
In the nearly four months since we moved to Kenya, my son’s maturity and self-confidence have grown in leaps and bounds. The same little boy who used to hide behind me every time someone said hello to him recently gave a short speech about his career ambitions (to be a soccer player) in front of a group of 60-plus adults.
Even more importantly, my son recognizes that almost everyone here is different from him, but they are not to be feared or avoided. His teachers, his classmates, the colleagues in his dad’s office, and our fellow worshipers in church all have brown skin and speak with different accents. But they are his friends and his neighbors, people he trusts and enjoys being with.
Our children will experience hardship no matter how hard we try to protect them. They will encounter people who are very different from them no matter the communities we try to keep them in. So while they’re still young, and while we as parents can still offer guidance, support, and a safety net, why shouldn’t we give them the opportunity to be in environments that stretch them?
As a preschooler, my son has already experienced many of the daily realities of the developing world. We have regular power outages in our home; hot water does not come instantly from the tap; our favorite foods regularly disappear from grocery store shelves for weeks at a time. My husband and I, as adults who grew up in the US, feel burdened by these inconveniences. Our child takes them all in stride, excited to use a solar light, turn on the water heater, or try a new food item.
I know that living overseas is not an option for every family. But we can each choose to bring our children to places that expose them to new people and new cultures. We can befriend others that are different from us and take our children with us when we serve those in need.
Such experiences will shape the adults they become. By adolescence they will have already learned that God is faithful and they need not fear the world or the people in it. They can live with courage, emboldened by the experiences they have already had, wherever they end up going.
Jesus is my doping, says Almaz Ayana after 10,000m world record
AFP, August 12, 2016
RIO DE JANEIRO–Ethiopia’s Almaz Ayana brushed off doping suspicions about her astonishing world record-breaking Olympic 10,000m victory here Friday, attributing her performance to hard work and religious devotion.
The 24-year-old smashed one of the longest-held records in athletics as she romped to victory in an electrifying start to the Rio Olympics track and field competition.
Ayana’s winning time of 29min 17.45sec sliced nearly 14 seconds off the previous world best of 29:31.78 set by Wang Junxia in 1993 during the era of notorious Chinese coach Ma Junren.
The astounding display immediately raised eyebrows in the athletics world, with British women’s marathon world record holder Paula Radcliffe one of the first to remark upon the Ethiopian’s performance.
“I’m not sure I can understand that,” Radcliffe said. “When I saw the world record set in 1993 I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. And Ayana has absolutely blitzed that time.”
Yet Ayana–who had only raced the 10,000m once before heading into the Olympics–smiled when asked to respond to suggestions that her performance might not be all that it seemed.
“I praise the lord, the lord gives me everything,” she said through an interpreter.
“My doping is my training, my doping is Jesus–otherwise I’m crystal clear.”
Ayana said she had not planned to set a world record heading into the race.
“It’s amazing–I saw the record after the race,” she said. “My only plan was to win the race.”
