New Zealand level series thanks to Guptill century

EAST LONDON, South Africa (Reuters) – A brilliant, unbeaten century from opener Martin Guptill led New Zealand to an eight-wicket victory off the final ball against South Africa in the second T20 international on Sunday.

Chasing 169 for victory in 19 overs at Buffalo Park, Guptill helped erase the memory of Friday’s embarrassing capitulation to 86 all out in Durban with a stunning batting display as the tourists reached their target for the loss of just two wickets to level the series 1-1.

Requiring 39 from the final four overs and 11 off the last, Guptill was on 97 and needing four for victory when Rory Kleinveldt bowled the final delivery – a low full toss which was eased away through extra cover.

Guptill’s unbeaten 101 was just the third T20 international century by a New Zealander, the first two belonging to captain Brendon McCullum who was almost anonymous with 17 from 15 balls during a second-wicket partnership of 73 with Guptill.

The right-handed opener was similarly dominant during an opening stand of 76 with Rob Nicol (25) as he drove the Proteas attack impeccably straight and displayed the skills – and patience – so obviously missing from the New Zealand batsman in Durban.

Captain Faf du Plessis led from the front once again as South Africa posted a competitive 165-5 in 19 overs after losing the toss and being asked to bat first.

Du Plessis paced his innings to perfection on a tricky pitch to reach 63 from 43 balls with eight fours and a six in a match reduced to 19 overs per side following a 52-minute floodlight failure.

The deciding match takes place in Port Elizabeth on Wednesday.

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Atheist Kids and Bullying: Just an Xbox and a Football Game Away From Redemption

I’ll never forget the year my eight-year-old daughter came home from school saying she got in trouble for going to the bathroom.

“I was afraid,” she said, “that the devil was coming out of the mirror to get me…. I wanted Aya to stay with me until I was done.”

Like any parent, I sat her down and asked her to tell me why she would ever think a mirror could spawn something as terrifying as that.

“Susie told me because I didn’t believe in god, the devil was coming to take my soul.”

MORE: Bullying the Bullies: What to Do to Save the Next Amanda Todd

“Susie” as we’ll call her, was a fellow eight-year-old student at my daughter’s Catholic school. Susie attended church every Sunday with her family—the same church that many of her classmates to this day all go to.

Was my daughter being bullied for being an atheist? I quickly dismissed it. After all, these were only eight-year-old girls, and it wasn’t like we talked about god hating with our morning cereal.

I soon noticed a new pattern of my daughter: She wouldn’t enter a bathroom without a friend or parent and began wetting the bed at night for fear of our extensive collection of bathroom mirrors pulling her into almighty hell at 2 a.m.

Sure enough, the religious eight-year-old was still pressuring my daughter to consider her morality, spirituality and reason for living daily in the school bathroom.

“When the child goes to school, and encounters for the first time other kids who don’t believe the same thing, whether it’s no belief or a different belief system, that can rock a kid’s world.”

I got on the phone and made sure the principal was aware of the bullying, that the child was reported and that my daughter would hopefully make the choice not to play with her anymore. The school thought I was a little crazy. Bullying was getting punched in the stomach in a dark place behind the school, not a little girl being taunted for not believing she was going to have life eternal. This was a new place they were afraid to gain control of. The principal, a former nun, kept a tight lip.

According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, every day “an estimated 160,000 students in the U.S. refuse to go to school because they dread the physical and verbal aggression of their peers. Many more attend school in a chronic state of anxiety and depression.”

Courtney Campbell, Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University, says he encountered the same case with his own children who were told at a very early age by some of their “friends” that they were “going to hell.” Though there were no physical beatings, the “psychic bullying” may have been worse.

“There is a phenomenon of religious-bullying at an early age, though in my own view/experience with raising my kids, it’s less of an issue than lookism [obese kids], size [‘big’ bullies], or gender, or clothes, or any of a number of things that kids do to manifest power over others,” says Campbell.

He points out that in most conservative/evangelical/fundamentalist Christian traditions, kids are taught at a very early age in their Sunday schools or summer bible camps that there’s only one path to happiness and salvation. That teaching, absorbed at a young age, is on its own rather threatening to the child.

“When the child goes to school, and encounters for the first time other kids who don’t believe the same thing, whether it’s no belief or a different belief system, that can rock a kid’s world,” Campbell adds.

Blame it on fear, maybe a calling out of one’s most sacred and learned family beleifs, but this form of push and shove is only getting more sophisticated.

Rachel Wagner, Associate Professor for the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Ithaca College and author of Godwired: Religion, Ritual and Virtual Reality, says we are overlooking a major player of the religious bullying model—video games.

“If we compare video games to rituals as similar kinds of interactive experiences that are meant to shape how we see ourselves and others in the world, then we can argue something more basic—that video games (like rituals) can teach people habits of encounter—and offer youth deeply problematic models of encounter with difference,” says Wagner, who adds that in her next book, she’ll argue that religion has always had the ability to be “played” like a game, a religious encounter she coins “shooter religion.”

While Wagner admits it’s very important to remember that all world religions also have “deep and abiding practices urging compassion, understanding, tolerance, and social justice,” in today’s media-soaked society, feeling the need to retreat into a simpler world where people can be reduced to camps can be terribly tempting.

Stacy Pershall, author of Loud in the House of Myself: Memoir of a Strange Girl, says that growing up in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, in an athletics-focused, Christian bible belt, she was used to being surrounded by “Jesus talk.”

Pershall, who was bullied for being a “strange girl,” when young, unathletic and atheist to boot, now works and empowers high school and college students as a writing teacher and mental health speaker.

“Although it still makes my heart pound a little to stand in front of a crowd and admit that I don’t believe in god (as I recently did at Catholic University in D.C.), somebody needs to do it. I get to be the adult who says to kids, ‘I’m an atheist, I have morals, I have friends, I’m happy, and I care about how you feel.’ That’s a wonderful, powerful thing. I get to tell bullied kids who might be considering suicide that they’re not alone, and that they have kindred spirits. It’s what the Flying Spaghetti Monster put me on Earth to do.”

Were you ever bullied? Leave what you were bullied about in COMMENTS.

These are solely the author’s opinions and do not represent those of TakePart, LLC or its affiliates.

Related Stories on TakePart:

• 5 Things to Keep in Mind About Bullying

• A Bully’s Paradise: Hidden Halls, Dark Corners and No Supervision

• Mother Bullied to Abort Unborn Twins?

---

Amy DuFault is a writer and editor whose work has been published in EcoSalon, Huffington Post, Ecouterre, Organic Spa, Coastal Living, Yahoo!, The Frisky and other online and print publications. In addition to being a former co-owner of an eco-boutique, she coaches and connects the sustainable fashion community to feed her soul. She also dreams of singing in an all-girl punk band even though she has stage fright. @amytropolis | TakePart.com

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Pro-gun rights US petition to deport Piers Morgan

LONDON (AP) — Tens of thousands of people have signed a petition calling for British CNN host Piers Morgan to be deported from the U.S. over his gun control views.

Morgan has taken an aggressive stand for tighter U.S. gun laws in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting. Last week, he called a gun advocate appearing on his “Piers Morgan Tonight” show an “unbelievably stupid man.”

Now, gun rights activists are fighting back. A petition created Dec. 21 on the White House e-petition website by a user in Texas accuses Morgan of engaging in a “hostile attack against the U.S. Constitution” by targeting the Second Amendment. It demands he be deported immediately for “exploiting his position as a national network television host to stage attacks against the rights of American citizens.”

The petition has already hit the 25,000 signature threshold to get a White House response. By Monday, it had 31,813 signatures.

Morgan seemed unfazed — and even amused — by the movement.

In a series of Twitter messages, he alternately urged his followers to sign the petition and in response to one article about the petition said “bring it on” as he appeared to track the petition’s progress.

“If I do get deported from America for wanting fewer gun murders, are there any other countries that will have me?” he wrote.

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Few tests done at toxic sites after superstorm

OLD BRIDGE, N.J. (AP) — For more than a month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said that the recent superstorm didn’t cause significant problems at any of the 247 Superfund toxic waste sites it’s monitoring in New York and New Jersey.

But in many cases, no actual tests of soil or water are being conducted, just visual inspections.

The EPA conducted a handful of tests right after the storm, but couldn’t provide details or locations of any recent testing when asked last week. New Jersey officials point out that federally designated Superfund sites are EPA’s responsibility.

The 1980 Superfund law gave EPA the power to order cleanups of abandoned, spilled and illegally dumped hazardous wastes that threaten human health or the environment. The sites can involve long-term or short-term cleanups.

Jeff Tittel, executive director of the Sierra Club in New Jersey, says officials haven’t done enough to ensure there is no contamination from Superfund sites. He’s worried toxins could leach into groundwater and the ocean.

“It’s really serious and I think the EPA and the state of New Jersey have not done due diligence to make sure these sites have not created problems,” Tittel said.

The EPA said last month that none of the Superfund sites it monitors in New York or New Jersey sustained significant damage, but that it has done follow-up sampling at the Gowanus Canal site in Brooklyn, the Newtown Creek site on the border of Queens and Brooklyn, and the Raritan Bay Slag site, all of which flooded during the storm.

But last week, EPA spokeswoman Stacy Kika didn’t respond to questions about whether any soil or water tests have been done at the other 243 Superfund sites. The agency hasn’t said exactly how many of the sites flooded.

“Currently, we do not believe that any sites were impacted in ways that would pose a threat to nearby communities,” EPA said in a statement.

Politicians have been asking similar questions, too. On Nov. 29, U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., wrote to the EPA to ask for “an additional assessment” of Sandy’s impact on Superfund sites in the state.

Elevated levels of lead, antimony, arsenic and copper have been found at the Raritan Bay Slag site, a Superfund site since 2009. Blast furnaces dumped lead at the site in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and lead slag was also used there to construct a seawall and jetty.

The EPA found lead levels as high as 142,000 parts per million were found at Raritan Bay in 2007. Natural soil levels for lead range from 50 to 400 parts per million.

The EPA took four samples from the site after Superstorm Sandy: two from a fenced-off beach area and two from a nearby public playground. One of the beach samples tested above the recreational limit for lead. In early November, the EPA said it was taking additional samples “to get a more detailed picture of how the material might have shifted” and will “take appropriate steps to prevent public exposure” at the site, according to a bulletin posted on its website. But six weeks later, the agency couldn’t provide more details of what has been found.

The Newtown Creek site, with pesticides, metals, PCBs and volatile organic compounds, and the Gowanus Canal site, heavily contaminated with PCBs, heavy metals, volatile organics and coal tar wastes, were added to the Superfund list in 2010.

Some say the lead at the Raritan Bay site can disperse easily.

Gabriel Fillippeli, director of the Center for Urban Health at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, said lead tends to stay in the soil once it is deposited but can be moved around by stormwaters or winds. Arsenic, which has been found in the surface water at the site, can leach into the water table, Fillippeli said.

“My concern is twofold. One is, a storm like that surely moved some of that material physically to other places, I would think,” Fillippeli said. “If they don’t cap that or seal it or clean it up, arsenic will continue to make its way slowly into groundwater and lead will be distributed around the neighborhood.”

The lack of testing has left some residents with lingering worries.

The Raritan Bay Slag site sits on the beach overlooking a placid harbor with a view of Staten Island. On a recent foggy morning, workers were hauling out debris, and some nearby residents wondered whether the superstorm increased or spread the amount of pollution at the site.

“I think it brought a lot of crud in from what’s out there,” said Elise Pelletier, whose small bungalow sits on a hill overlooking the Raritan Bay Slag site. “You don’t know what came in from the water.” Her street did not flood because it is up high, but she worries about a park below where people go fishing and walk their dogs. She would like to see more testing done.

Thomas Burke, an associate dean at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, says both federal and state officials generally have a good handle on the major Superfund sites, which often use caps and walls to contain pollution.

“They are designed to hold up,” Burke said of such structures, but added that “you always have to be concerned that an unusual event can spread things around in the environment.” Burke noted that the storm brought in a “tremendous amount” of water, raising the possibility that groundwater plumes could have changed.

“There really have to be evaluations” of communities near the Superfund sites, he said. “It’s important to take a look.”

Officials in both New York and New Jersey note they’ve also been monitoring less toxic sites known as brownfields and haven’t found major problems. The New York DEC said in a statement that brownfields in that state “were not significantly impacted” and that they don’t plan further tests for storm impacts.

Larry Ragonese, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, said the agency has done visual inspections of major brownfield sites and also alerted towns and cities to be on the lookout for problems. Ragonese said they just aren’t getting calls voicing such concerns.

Back at the Raritan Bay slag site, some residents want more information. And they want the toxic soil, which has sat here for years, out.

Pat Churchill, who was walking her dog in the park along the water, said she’s still worried.

“There are unanswered questions. You can’t tell me this is all contained. It has to move around,” Churchill said.

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Markets steady amid Xmas exodus, US budget doubts

LONDON (AP) — Financial markets were largely steady in holiday-thinned trading Monday though concerns remain over the progress of U.S. budget discussions and the future of the economic reform program in Italy.

For weeks, the discussions between the White House and Congress over a budget deal have been the main driver in markets. If a deal isn’t agreed to by the start of 2013, automatic spending cuts and tax increases worth hundreds of billions of dollars will be imposed — which many economists think could push the U.S. economy back into recession.

The prevailing view has been that a deal would be agreed to in time but as the deadline nears there are growing doubts over whether the U.S. will be able to avoid the so-called “fiscal cliff.”

“The reality is given that the U.S. government is now closed for the holiday break the likelihood of anything other than soothing procrastination is highly unlikely much before the Jan. 1 deadline,” said Michael Hewson, senior market analyst at CMC Markets.

Most markets across Europe were only open for half a day and will only re-open again on Thursday. German markets, and others, were closed for Christmas Eve.

Among those that were open, Britain’s FTSE 100 index of leading British shares closed up 0.2 percent at 5,954.18 while the CAC-40 in France was down an equivalent rate at 3,652.61.

Wall Street was poised for falls at the open in what will also be a holiday-shortened trading day — both Dow futures and the broader S&P 500 futures were down 0.3 percent.

Doubts over the progress of discussions prompted a fairly sizeable sell-off last Friday though many analysts still think there will be agreement on some sort of short-term measures.

“Even if this stopgap measure is implemented it may not be enough to prevent unwanted volatility in equity markets going into 2013 as investors try and assess the adverse impact on the U.S. economy,” said Neil MacKinnon, global macro strategist at VTB Capital.

As well as monitoring developments in the U.S. over the coming days, investors will be keeping a close watch on what’s going on in Italy ahead of a general election in February.

Over the weekend, outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti indicated that he would be willing to return to the role if pro-reform parties back him.

Over the past year or so, Monti and his technocratic government have won plaudits in the markets for their economic reforms and efforts to get a grip on the country’s borrowing. Italy has the second-highest debt burden among the 17 EU countries that use the euro. Only Greece’s is higher.

Earlier in Asia, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng, closed up 0.1 percent at 22,531.51 while South Korea’s Kospi rose less than 0.1 percent to 1,981.82. Japanese markets were closed for the Emperor’s birthday holiday.

Other financial markets were subdued too. In the currency markets, the euro was up 0.2 percent at $ 1.3224 while the benchmark New York oil price was down 16 cents at $ 88.50 a barrel.

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3-day trip becomes 3-week ordeal for 2 Jamaicans

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — It was supposed to be a three-day fishing trip at most. It turned into a three-week ordeal, drifting under an intense sun for hundreds of miles in the Caribbean in a small boat with a broken motor.

The two Jamaican fishermen survived by eating raw fish they caught and drinking water from melted ice they had brought to preserve their catch. The Colombian navy finally plucked them from the sea a week ago and delivered them home Saturday after treating them for severe dehydration, malnutrition and hypothermia.

Everton Gregory, 54, and John Sobah, 58, recounted their story in a telephone interview from Jamaica, while the boat owner and the men’s employer also provided details.

The men set off from Jamaica’s southeastern coast on Nov. 20. The water was glassy, the wind was calm and their boat was laden with 14 buckets of ice, 16 gallons of water and several bags of cereal, bread and fruit.

They headed to Finger Bank, a nearby sand spit 8-miles-long (13-kilometers) that is known for its abundance of fish like wahoo, tuna and mahi mahi. The owner of the 28-foot (8-meter) boat said she usually joins them on fishing trips, but she couldn’t go that afternoon.

After spending a couple of days around Finger Bank, the two men set off for home with their catch. But the boat’s engine soon died. The water was too deep to use the anchor and the current too strong to use the oars, so the boat slowly drifted away from Jamaica.

At first, the men got by on sipping the water and eating the food they brought with them. But days turned into weeks, and they began to eat the fish they had caught and drink the melted ice that had kept it fresh.

Gregory and Sobah kept eating raw fish and used a tarp to try to collect water, but the rain clouds remained at a distance.

Back home, friends and family called police and used their own boats to search the area where the men were last seen. The two fishermen work for the Florida-based nonprofit group Food for the Poor, which chartered a plane to search along Jamaica’s coast.

Marva Espuet, the owner of the boat, said she knew she had packed it with more food and water than needed for a three-day trip, but the thought provided little relief.

“If I had gone, there would have been two boats going,” said the 52-year-old woman, a longtime friend of both fishermen.

With searches proving fruitless, Sobah’s niece grew frantic, recalled Nakhle Hado, a fishing manager for Food for the Poor who helped lead the search. She “begged me that she wanted John back for Christmas,” Hado said.

Hado said some people believed the two men would never be found, but he and others didn’t give up. “My gut was telling me that they were still alive,” he said.

Hado said he had trained Gregory and Sobah on how to survive at sea.

“In case something happens, they don’t have to think twice. They know how to react,” he said. “It’s very important, their mental state.”

Gregory and Sobah finally ran out of fresh water and went several days without drink. A healthy human being can die from dehydration anywhere from three to five days without water.

Then on Dec. 12, a Colombian navy helicopter patrolling off the coast of that South American country spotted the men near Lack of Sleep cay, more than 500 miles (800 kilometers) from where they started. It took two days for a navy vessel to reach them because of bad weather. The men were hospitalized for several days at the Colombian island of San Andres before boarding a plane back home to Jamaica.

“It feels good,” Sobah told the AP in a brief phone interview after arriving.

Gregory said he had lost hope, but Sobah tried to keep him positive that they would be rescued. “I just had that belief,” Sobah said. “I believe in the Creator.”

Yet it is Gregory who plans to keep fishing despite the ordeal because he needs the job.

Sobah said he’s done. “I’m not going to go fishing again. No way.”

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News summary: Nintendo’s TVii replaces the remote

TVii LAUNCH: Nintendo if flipping on its TVii service Thursday, a month after sales started for its Wii U game console. The service turns the GamePad controller into a TV remote control, channel guide and Web video surfer.

SALES HOPES: Nintendo hopes the free service boosts sales of the console after recording 425,000 sales in the first week since its Nov. 18 launch.

HEAD START: It’s the first time a game console maker has put live TV controls into a device, but analyst Michael Pachter says competitors will copy the function soon.

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Nick Cassavetes Sued For Allegedly Stiffing Twin Canadian Pop Duo on $300K Movie Loan

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Nick Cassavetes, Canadian twins and incest – besides three phrases that you probably didn’t expect to read in the same sentence today, they’re also elements of a bizarre new lawsuit that hit the California court system this week.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, TwinSpin music – home to twin Canadian pop duo Carmen & Camille – claim that “The Notebook” director failed to pay back a $ 300,000 loan to help make the upcoming drama “Yellow.”

The complaint alleges that the writer-director backed out of an agreement to give the duo parts in the movie and to feature a song of theirs in the Sienna Miller-Ray Liotta film.

The film chronicles a woman who’s addicted to pain pills and is fired from her teaching job for engaging in sexual shenanigans on school grounds. Oh, and she also had a love affair with her brother at one point. According to the suit – which also includes TwinSpin manager John Thomas as a plaintiff – TwinSpin and Cassavetes entered into an agreement in September 2010, in which TwinSpin would loan Cassavetes $ 300,000 to start production on the film.

In return, the suit says, Cassavetes agreed to pay the loan back with interest – for a total of $ 345,000 – the next month. Cassavetes also agreed to cast the duo in speaking roles in the film, use a song of theirs on the soundtrack, and to give Thomas a producer’s credit, the complaint claims.

But the money never came, the suit says – and neither did the roles, the song and the credit, without which the loan never would have been given.

“But for these representations, Plaintiffs never would have entered into the Loan Agreement or otherwise granted the Loan,” the lawsuit reads. “Plaintiffs are informed and believe that Cassavetes never had any intention of casting ‘Carmen & Camille’ in the Picture, or featuring a song by ‘Carmen & Camille’ in the Picture, of providing the producer credit to plaintiff Thomas, or of repaying the loan on a timely basis.”

Cassavetes’ agent has not yet responded to misrepresentation request for comment.

Alleging breach of contract, breach of covenant of good faith and fair dealing, fraudulent misrepresentation and negligent misrepresentation, the suit is asking for damages of $ 500,000, the amount that the plaintiffs believe is currently owed to them by Cassavetes, with accruing interest.

(Pamela Chelin contributed to this report)

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Meanwhile, Deep Inside Your Belly Button …

Dec 23, 2012 7:00am

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Reported by Dr. Amish Patel:

Researchers have found that more than 2,000 different species of bacteria live in our umbilicus – the medical word for belly button.  That means you have more kinds of bacteria in your belly button than there are different kinds of ants or birds in North America, according to the study.

The majority of these bacteria were rare and occurred in just one individual.  No single type was common to all 60 belly buttons sampled.

“I don’t find it alarming,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an expert in infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn.  “We knew belly buttons weren’t sterile.”

However, Schaffner believes that this does not minimize the study’s findings.

“This is in the context of a much larger study, which is trying to … get greater insight into the source of pathogens and how the [bacteria on our body] changes with antimicrobial therapy and age.”

Perhaps, he said, we can “use this to develop new antimicrobials.”

The benefits may extend beyond antibiotics.

“Understanding the biodiversity of our bodies and how it differs among people may play an important role in understanding why some … people are susceptible to the same pathogen or respond to the same drug or diet,” said Dr. Rob Knight, associate professor of molecular biophysics at the University of Colorado – Boulder.

Although the findings of the study do not have any immediate implications, this is good timing for a public service announcement from Dr. Gregory Poland, infectious disease expert at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

“The current fad of women piercing their umbilicus has led to many case reports of infections,” Poland said. “And with today’s multiple drug-resistant bacteria, it can lead to disasters.”

SHOWS: Good Morning America

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China and India: The $10 Trillion Engine of Future U.S. Growth

My friend and colleague Michael J. Silverstein, writing in this space in late October, mentioned that the most dangerous thing about China is America’s misguided attitude toward the country. In short, we appear to be afraid of China’s success.

The U.S. has never before run from a challenge. This is the wrong time to start.

As Silverstein and his co-authors—Carol Liao, David Michael, and Abheek Singhi—point out in their new book, The $ 10 Trillion Prize, one of the reasons many Americans feel threatened by China is they don’t know a lot about the country. What they do “know,” by and large, is what they’ve been told by politicians and others who accuse China of stealing U.S. jobs.

Yes, many low-skill, low-wage U.S. jobs have moved elsewhere, in many cases to China. Yes, many low-cost, mass-produced products that used to be made here are now being made there, and in other low-cost countries, such as India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Thailand, and Vietnam. And, yes, many of those jobs will never come back.

But as China and the other developing countries grow, they also become potential customers for U.S. goods and services, from corn and soybeans to automobiles, commercial jetliners, heavy machinery, construction and farm equipment, and banking, investment, and insurance services, to name just a few.

It wasn’t that long ago that the prevailing American vision of the Middle Kingdom was that of millions of mindless peasants marching in automaton-like lockstep to the orders of the party bosses. They led lives of drudgery, on collective farms, toiling for mere survival. Everybody dressed like Chairman Mao. Dissent was met with tanks. And it wasn’t that long ago that that may have been accurate in some respects.

But China today, as Silverstein and his co-authors make clear, is a booming multiclass society with hundreds of millions of people who want nothing more than their own version of the American Dream: a nice home, a quality car, a good education for their children, appliances and conveniences, better health care, stylish clothes, more time for travel and leisure. In short: a better life for the next generation than the current generation enjoyed. The same is true in India.

The authors visited with and tell the stories of dozens of Chinese and Indian families and entrepreneurs who are striving for the same things Americans want—and for the first time in their lives, they have the money to get them.

My colleagues have calculated that between 2010 and 2020, Chinese and Indian consumers will spend some $ 64 trillion on goods and services. Chinese consumers will spend approximately $ 41.5 trillion, with annual expenditures reaching more than $ 6 trillion in 2020. Indians will spend $ 22.5 trillion, with annual spending hitting an estimated $ 3.6 trillion by 2020. Combined, they will be spending some $ 10 trillion per year by 2020—more than three times what they spent in 2010.

That’s what U.S. politicians and business leaders should be talking about: the promise of China and India as engines of future U.S. growth. That’s the prize the book is about.

China and India today show the kind of unbridled optimism that used to be the hallmark of America. Many Chinese and Indian entrepreneurs expect their companies to grow by factors of 10 over the next decade.

Rather than fear such growth, Americans should embrace it, wish them well, and make sure our businesses, farms, and factories are prepared to meet their needs.

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